Life Is a Braid in Spacetime (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/life-is-a-braid-in-spacetime-rp <comment><USER2> > Some people find it emotionally displeasing to think of themselves as a > collection of particles. I got a good laugh back in my 20s when my friend > Emil addressed my friend Mats as an "atomhög," Swedish for "atom heap," in > an attempt to insult him. However, if someone says "I can't believe I'm just > a heap of atoms!'' I object to the use of the word "just": the elaborate > spacetime braid that corresponds to their mind is hands down the most > beautifully complex type of pattern we've ever encountered in our universe. > The world's fastest computer, the Grand Canyon or even the Sun—their > spacetime patterns are all simple in comparison.

Thank you. I would never be able to express this idea so eloquently, and now I can just point people to this paragraph.

<comment><USER3> This concept is from where I conceived my online alias 'Chaoticmass.' I thought it was really deep when I was 13.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Discussed at the location in time of publishing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10323222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10323222).

</comment><comment><USER5> I've always had a fundamental problem with the identification of human knowledge with reality. I see this idea as identifying the function with its graph, in a sense. But that requires us to have a logical framework that will asymptotically approach reality. I don't think that may exist.

For one, the uncertainty principle suggests there is no exact, fully determined reality.

Second, Goedel showed us that logical systems are either incomplete or inconsistent.

Third, there is more certainty in the past than the future - in so far as credible measurements may exist of the past and not the future. The present may then be the collapse of all those possible futures into a knowable past. There is a way to discriminate the past, present, and future from one another.

While we certainly have some helpful wisdom built up, I think the true nature of reality may not be known. There will always be a layer below or additional properties unknown, unknowable, or undecidable portion to the universe.

<comment> 08-15 > For one, the uncertainty principle suggests there is no exact, fully > determined reality.

Absolutely not! The uncertainty principle suggests that position and momentum are inappropriate descriptions of reality. The quantum mechanical wave function would be a complete description, if quantum mechanics was all there is to reality.

> Second, Goedel showed us that logical systems are either incomplete or > inconsistent.

He didn't. He showed us that finite theories in sufficiently powerful logical systems, specifically number theory expressed in first order logic, admit multiple models. Turning this into "any theory of the universe will be incomplete" is playing fast and lose with the meaning of the word "incomplete".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> By the end of the article the author seems to have forgotten about the postulate in the beginning. Much better article by the same author: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14677846](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14677846)

</comment><comment><USER7> For me, the problem with thinking about time as just another dimension is that while we can move through the spatial dimensions, with time we are either locked in one place or flowing at an absolutely constant rate* (depending on the bird/frog perspective).

*extrapolating from general relativity.

<comment><USER8> > flowing at an absolutely constant rate

Not really. We are moving at an instantaneous speed. Wanna try it? Go to bed, you'll wake up almost instantly but 8 hours later.

The perception of time happens in your brain. The speed is just your brain processing information. Not necessarily all human perceive time the same way (you can never know, heh?) but we can be pretty certain about the order of the spacetime flow.

<comment><USER9> I have an eerily accurate internal clock. In high school I repeatedly awoke around two or three second before my alarm clock went off in my washroom. Enough time to get there and turn it off just as the first beep was starting.

Unless I'm sick (or otherwise mentally altered) I know how much time has passed.

<comment><USER5> It's not like our brains actually turn off while we sleep. Being that aware of time seems like a good trait though. Congrats!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Determinism in math is countered with randomness. You can abstract over the randomness to get absolutes but within the realm defined by randomness, you can still obtain meaning by hacking away at it.

Many things we think are random aren't _entirely_ so. So you can have fun using your brain to tease out the factors and then eventually master your approach to the randomness.

Math allows us to not have to endlessly solve the same problem over and over and over again.

<comment><USER11> > _Determinism in math is countered with randomness_

What randomness? Where would the source of randomness be in the universe?

<comment><USER12> one pretty obvious source starts with a q

<comment><USER8> There is speculations (interpretations) that quantum processes are random. But we can never be sure since we still don't know the true nature of reality.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Black listed url in Facebook. Support not replying. - <AUTHOR> http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/10008027/black-listed-url-in-facebook-support-not-replying

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole story:

We have our main URL black listed by Facebook for almost half a year now. What can we do in order to get some reply from the support team ?

We're a sitebuilder: <http://www.cabanova.com>. We give our users a free url: username.cabanova.com. One of our users got us black listed in Facebook about half a year ago. We acted very quick and disabled / removed the spammy user site. Nevertheless we noticed that we could not post anything with our url: <http://www.cabanova.com> in Facebook.

We tried to contact Facebook support several times even sent an official letter, but we got NO reply. What can we do ?

Facebook is really important to us.

Please advise.

<comment><USER2> Change your Url?

<comment><AUTHOR> Changing the URL is not an option. We're into business since 1999 with this URL: cabanova.com. There must be another solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The unhelpful answer is that this is an unfortunate possibility when building your business on top of another business.

IANAL; have you looked down any legal avenues?

<comment><USER4> > _IANAL; have you looked down any legal avenues?_

I'd have thought it went something like "Facebook's servers; Facebook's rules". They don't have to allow any content they don't want, and if they had a spam coming from an URL they're probably going to block that.

It's unfortunate that a company's customer got that whole company banned from Facebook. It could be a lot worse - all those networks could share data about who they've banned and the company could be banned across Twitter and etc as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here at Cabanova we take abuse complaints very seriously and take down any phishing / spam sites, our users make. It's the same as banning gmail.com if some user sent a SPAM mail.

It's a shame that Facebook takes so long to answer or give feedback to it's support requests. I know there are probably many support requests but this is unacceptable behavior.

<comment><USER4> > _It's the same as banning gmail.com if some user sent a SPAM mail._

Very many sites get blocked because of the actions of their users.

A quick websearch found this:-

(<http://www.419scam.org/419-cabanova-com.htm>)

I don't know anything about how Facebook works, but that's enough to have you in some email blocklists for some time.\

> _I know there are probably many support requests but this is unacceptable > behavior._

No. It is frustrating for you, but it is not unacceptable. They've had malware / spam / phishing coming from your domain. They've blocked your domain. That's good behaviour.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Brains, Sex and Machine Learning (Geoffrey Hinton at Google Tech Talks) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78&hd=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Speaking of Geoff Hinton: He will be giving the course Neural Networks for Machine Learning on Coursera, starting this September. <https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets>

<comment><USER2> Thanks for pointing this out. Here is a similar awesome by Andrew Ng <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmNOAtZIgIk> who teaches the original Coursea Machine Learning class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Great talk. I don't know much about artificial neural networks (ANN) and even less about natural ones, but I have the feeling that I learnt a lot from this video.

If I understand correct, Hinton's ANN's randomly shuts of a substantial part (~50%) of the neurons during each learning iteration. He calls this "dropout". Therefore, a single ANN represents many different models. Most models never get trained, but they exist in the ANN, because they share their weights with the trained models. This learning method avoids over specializing and therefore improves robustness with respect to new data but it also allows for arbitrary combination of different models which tremendously enlarges the pool of testable models.

When using or testing these ANNs you also "dropout" neurons during every prediction. Practically, every rerun predicts a different result by using a different model. Afterwards, these results are averaged. The more results, the higher the chance, that the classification is correct.

Hinton argues, that our brains work in a similar way. This explains among other things a) Why are neurons firing in a random manner? It's an equivalent implementation to his "dropout" where only a part of the neurons is used at any given time. b) Why does spending more time on a decision improve the likely hood of success? Even though there might be more at work, his theory alone is able to explain the effect. The longer you think, the more models you test, simply by rerunning the prediction. The more such predictions the higher the chance, that the average prediction is correct.

To me, the latter also explains in an intuitive way, why the "wisdom of the crowds" works well when predicting events that many people have an, halfway sophisticated, understanding of. Examples are betting on sport events or movies box office success. As far as I know, no single expert beats the "wisdom of the crowd" in such cases.

What I would like to know is, how many, random model based predictions do you need until the improvement rate becomes insignificant? In other words, would humans act much smarter if they could afford more time to think about decisions? Put another way, does the "wisdom of the crowd" effect stem from the larger amount of combined neurons and the diversity of the available models that follows, or from the larger amount of predictions that are used to compute the average? How much less effective would the crowd be, if less people make more ("e.g. top 5") predictions or if the crowd was made up of few individuals which are cloned?

If the limiting factor for humans is the time to predict based on many different models and not the amount of neurons we have, this would have interesting implications. Once, a single computer would have sufficient complexity to compete with the human brain, you could merely build more of these computers and average there opinions to arrive at better conclusions that any human could ( _). Computers wouldn't be just faster than humans, they would be much smarter, too.

(_) I'm talking about brain like ANN implementations here. Obviously, we already use specialized software to predict complex events like weather, better than any single human could. But these are not general purpose machines.</comment>


Why was Paul Buchheit's article criticising Ayn Rand taken down? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It was off-topic, generating uncivil discussion, and the title was misleading people about who wrote it -- not YC's Paul.

</comment><comment><USER3> BTW It's not _that_ Paul Buchheit.

It's this guy: <http://www.commondreams.org/paul-buchheit></comment>


Why isn't iphone.com optimized for the iPhone? - <AUTHOR>

www.iphone.com <comment><USER2> Because if you're interested in buying an iPhone, you probably are not currently browsing the web on one?</comment>


A Sixteenth Century Pope Buried His Pet Elephant Under the Vatican - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-16th-century-pope-buried-his-pet-elephant-under-the-vatican <comment><USER2> Jose Saramago, a Nobel Prize winner for fiction, wrote a brilliant and surreal book based around this elephant and mahout. I highly recommend it: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Elephants-Journey- Jos%C3%A9-Sarama...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Elephants-Journey- Jos%C3%A9-Saramago/dp/0547574118)

<comment><USER3> I'll add this to my reading list next to Saramago's The Double, the source material for 2013 film Enemy.

<comment><USER4> The Double (2013) and Enemy (2013). One starring Eisenberg, one Gylenahsiadjkl.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >He wasn't such a large elephant (his shoulder reached about four feet tall)

If I am not mistaken, that's 1.3m in the SI world. Isn't that a bit small for an elephant? That's nearly what a very large dog reaches.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps the elephant was still a juvenile or it had the equivalent of dwarfism in humans, but for elephants.

Either that, or they bred elephants back then until they became very small not unlike ponies. Less likely perhaps.

<comment><USER5> >they bred elephants back then until they became very small not unlike ponies.

Unlikely, considering the images of the elephant with a guy sitting on its back. Looks like a honest-to-god Indian elephant.

Most likely, the size got lost in translation between whatever measuring system they had in the 16th century, SI and those measuring units from the colonies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It must have been something to live in an age like that where wonders still existed. (Yah, yah, I know there were drawbacks as well.)

Today it's just so hard to get excited about things, since anything you want to see or know is available in an instant.

<comment><USER6> I still feel like there's plenty of wonder in the world if you go to the right places. Lots of stuff still isn't on the internet.

But that being said, I also sort of agree and feel like the modern world pacifies me with instant information, I think I'm less adventurous as a result.

Before: "I need to find out about a specific topic, time to take a walk to the library! Who knows what real life things might happen along the way."

Now: "Meh, it's a 5 second google search while I'm on the couch."

And so on.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I could be traveling around the world, or alternatively I can just load up MapCrunch and look up some random street views (albeit that they always include a street).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Which is exactly what one should expect from a 16th century pope.

<comment><USER10> Still beaten by his predecessors: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod)

<comment><USER6> amusing read, thanks

<comment><USER10> There's also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_IX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_IX) :

> _Aged approximately 20 at his first election, he is one of the youngest > popes in history. He is the only man to have been Pope on more than one > occasion and the only man ever to have sold the papacy._</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why programmers work at night - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/why-programmers-work-at-night/swizec/3198

<comment><USER2> "To conclude, programmers work at night because it doesn't impose a time limit on when you have to stop working, which gives you a more relaxed approach, your brain doesn't keep looking for distractions and a bright screen keeps you awake."

\-- and everyone else in the house is sleeping and can't bug you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Be very careful with screwing with your sleep cycle. Our bodies and to some extent our minds are hardwired to depend on the natural rhythm caused by daylight/night-time. Obviously this is pretty easy to mess with thanks to artificial light and the cross-over of light spectrums.

There are chemicals in our brains which are only produced by certain rhythms, not to mention the need for sunlight and vitamin D. Being especially hard on your body can be detrimental to your long-term health and when we sleep is almost certainly as important as how much sleep we get.

I write this as someone who has a very tough time on both counts and is seriously envious of his wife who gets good sleep at the drop of a hat.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Because being tired makes us better coders. [...] Similar to the ballmer peak, being tired can make us focus better simply because when your brain is tired it has to focus! There isn't enough left-over brainpower to afford losing concentration."

Couldn't agree more. I find it easier to design complicated algorithm/architecture at night than I do during the day, even when I'm fully reseted and without distraction.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think there's a simpler answer they might not have considered. Whatever job I have, I am alway most productive at night. That's because I am nocturnal. I always have been. And the fact is that while I can be at an office early, my mind doesn't function at it's highest capacity until after midnight. Again, this might be an isolated case, but I have a feeling a good percentage of programmers are night owls.</comment>


78% of Reddit Threads with 1,000+ Comments Mention Nazis - <AUTHOR> http://www.curiousgnu.com/reddit-godwin <comment><USER2> So, is that a lot? Let's assume a very simple model, with Reddit writers picking words from a fixed distribution, 10 words per reply, and all 'over 1,000 comments' threads having exactly 1000 comments.

Then, if the probability of picking 'fried rice' is p, the probability of 'fried rice' not appearing in that 1,000 comment, 10,000 word thread is

      (1-p)^10000

That apparently, is around 0.22:

      (1-p)^10000 = 0.22

Solving for p gives us

      10000 log(1-p) = log(.22)

      log(1-p) = log(.22)/10000

      1-p = exp(log(.22)/10000)

      p = 1 - exp(log(.22)/10000)

That's about 0.000066, or 1 in 15,000.

Let's compare that with [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nazi&year_star...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nazi&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=5).

That gives us numbers close to 0.000066, but only for the mid 1940's. Current level is around 0.000008 or 1 in 125,000. Let's compute how many words such a long Reddit thread needs to get at that level:

      (1-0.000008)^w = 0.22

      w log(1-0.000008) = log(0.22)

      w = log(0.22)/log(1-0.000008)

That gives me around 190.000 words. That does not seem impossible for me. If long threads on average have 2,500 comments, it is only 36 words per comment. One would have to look at the distribution of thread length and #words/comment to say more about this.

Now, let's hope there isn't an embarrassing error in the above computations :-)

<comment><USER3> People don't pick words from a fixed distribution in the manner which you wrote. I scanned over 500,000 words I wrote and I never mentioned the word mentioned on the headline of this article. I'm not sure if any kind of meaningful interpretation can be made from the headline, but I think it's an interesting observation nonetheless.

<comment><USER4> > I scanned over 500,000 words I wrote and I never mentioned the word > mentioned on the headline of this article.

Funny how you're trying to avoid breaking your streak of not mentioning nazis.

<comment><USER3> Yep, a little joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Nazi is an easy shorthand for evil. You don't need to show a Nazi kicking a puppy to say the Nazi is evil, because they're already a Nazi! We get it.

The downside of this shorthand is that it dumbs down conversation. The Nazi- accuser shunts the Nazi-accused into a digestible category that needn't be historically comparable at all to be rhetorically effective, and the accused has less incentive to cordially communicate when it is clear that they are not being taken seriously, so either reasonable people leave or inflammatory folks troll, and we're all worse off.

<comment><USER5> At the same time, not all Nazi analogies are equally wrong- it's fallacious to claim that moustaches are evil because Nazis had them; it isn't exactly fallacious to claim that persecuting and demonizing a minority combined with enthusiastic nationalism through slowly increasing propaganda campaigns under the leadership of a charismatic leader should seem at least slightly worrying because we have Nazis as a historical example. The Nazis and the 30s and 40s can present real historical lessons- another is that in the 30s, the German Communist party declared "After him, us!" in response to Hitler's rise and their refusal to cooperate with the socialists, with the reasoning being that his disastrous short term would hasten about a communist revolution. Unfortunately, we often see the exact same argument used by both socialists and some of the more extreme Bernie Sanders fans today with regards to Trump. There are historical lessons and analogies in the past which can be genuinely useful to understanding the present. At this rate, it feels like if 1930s Germany had Godwin's law, it would have been used to quash any dissent about the _actual rise of Nazism_.

<comment><USER6> Good job sneaking in a comparison of Trump to the Nazis without a shred of supporting argument. I'm no Trump fan but the comparisons to Hitler are totally unwarranted.

Take his most controversial proposal. Deporting 11 million people--who don't have the right to be here in the first place--is bad policy and callous, but it's fair.

There's plenty of examples of populist nationalist leaders hurting their countries, like Berlusconi in Italy. No need to raise the false specter of concentration camps, mass murder, and totalitarianism.

<comment><USER7> "the false specter of concentration camps"

Because this is a civilized justice system reacting to people whose only crime is to be residing in a place or working without proper authorization: [https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AW395_Arzimm_G...](https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AW395_Arzimm_G_20100723214924.jpg)

Don't get me wrong, I know we are not at the 'trains full people taken to be burned at the ovens' stage. But you know what Trump calls the picture above? He calls it being too soft on immigration...

He is running in a xenophobic platform, in which he tells a largely uneducated frustrated majority that all their problems derive from a few already underpriviledged minority groups in their country, and that the correct response is electing a tough leader that will make those minorities pay and restore the country to imagined past glories. How on earth is a comparison to Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy not an appropriate analogy here?

<comment><USER8> > I know we are not at the 'trains full people taken to be burned at the > ovens' stage

This implies that there is a natural progression from holding/detailing immigrants, to mass murder. Is that what you are saying? That it's a slippery slope?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, but I'm a bit disappointed the author didn't at least try to filter out things like "grammar nazi" or, as might be found in r/seinfeld, "soup nazi".

<comment><USER10> Yeah, or "I did nazi that coming", the bigger the thread the more memes are in it.

<comment><USER11> Ctrl-F "nazi that"... yep.

I don't think we can draw any conclusions from this beyond the fact that the Reddit hive mind thinks Godwin's law is hilarious and mentions Hitler at every opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting that the highest non-history subreddit is /r/european, which is a neo-nazi forum. Cool dataset at least.

<comment><USER13> > _/ r/european, which is a neo-nazi forum_

That's not an accurate characterization.

There is an element of that, but it is frequently pushed back against.

It's mostly people who are dismayed by this recent migrant madness and the resultant massive spike in horrible crimes.

It is ostensibly also just a place for discussion of european culture but attention to the migrant madness, and seeking political solutions for it dominates the conversation because the issue is so heavily censored elsewhere on reddit.

edit: And it's highly likely that the vast majority of occurences of the string 'nazi' in that sub are in the context of satirical postings like, _Oh, you think borders should be secure and rapists should be prosecuted? You must be a nazi!_

<comment><USER14> Alright, sure, to be more precise it is both neo-nazi and white supremacist.

I thought I'd have to look at least a little bit harder than literally the first link I clicked, but: [https://www.reddit.com/r/european/comments/4htthg/til_muslim...](https://www.reddit.com/r/european/comments/4htthg/til_muslim_population_in_france_is_growing_two/)

Some choice comments include "sieg heil, NSB (Dutch fascists) was not wrong," comments about "negroid France," calls to poison halal food, issues they find with the survival of the white race due to the "blacks" and Muslims.

It is not a place for discussion of European culture. It is a vile cesspool of racists and hate.

<comment><USER15> Also on the front page, 4chan in-jokes and donald trump's face. I somehow doubt most of the posters actually live in Europe, as opposed to the typical /pol crowd latching onto a convenient issue.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, it makes me wonder if cb18 isn't right there among them to be so willfully ignorant of its true nature. His posting history here suggests sympathy to the /r/european mindset (e.g. citing infowars about crime statistics specifically to paint black people en masse as inherently more criminal, citing a ridiculous blog that says most advances in modern history are only due to white people, etc.)

Also the whole 18 being a symbol of neo-nazis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That stat is hard to interpret in a vacuum.

What percent of such threads contain a comment that mentions potatoes, or bismuth, or juggling?

<comment><USER17> Did you guys run any sort of analysis like this, on comment content in aggregate, during your tenure? I would guess with all of that data it'd be fun for hackathons to come up with interesting conversation starters like this one, despite the flaw you point out.

Glad folks are putting together these datasets now, too, if informally.

<comment><USER16> No; we were usually too busy just keeping the site up and trying to generate revenue.... though actually, there _were_ occasional times where we said "fuck that" and took a break to work on something fun, like an April Fools stunt.

If anyone did such an analysis, it would have been ketralnis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Allow me to make a more general conjecture: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving word_x or word_y approaches 1.

<comment><USER19> My thoughts exactly. I won't put any credence in this information until I see a graph comparing the relative frequency of "nazi" as discussions grow with "Justin Bieber", "anosmia", and "Kevin Bacon".

<comment><USER20> Why? The definition isn't relative to these in any way. It doesn't say that Nazi mentions are more frequent than Bieber mentions. Just that it's more likely to occur in longer threads relative to shorter threads.

<comment><USER21> That's an obvious and boring conclusion, though. It's barely beyond saying that if you roll dice, sequences with more rolls tend to have more sixes.

<comment><USER20> Yes; unfortunately, Godwin did not commit to any numbers, like "the thread length required for a 79% probability is 500 responses".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I suppose that reddit threads with 1000+ comments will mention a lot of things. Seeing how they have so many comments and so much text and all.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd like to propose Godwin's Number: the number of responses needed to produce a 50% chance of a reference to Nazis.

<comment><USER24> I like it! It can be thought of as an LD50.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm amazed that a full 22% of ultra-sustained Reddit threads are completely free of Nazi references. That's a beautiful display of self-restraint by a big crowd in an ugly world.

I would have pegged the odds of sustained Nazi-free discourse on Reddit as comparable to -- say -- the odds of finding 1,000 Medium posts without the word "f*ck" or its variants in any of the headlines.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's important to remember that civilized intellectual Westerners relatively recently democratically elected leaders who shovelled intellectual, sexual, and racial minorities into mass graves based on magical theories.

<comment><USER27> True. But not important - or salient - 78% of the time on popular Reddit threads, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So? It's like mentioning good or evil.

"Nazi" is just a stand-in for "the worst evil" (or sometimes just for plain evil).

It's also a major historical and political even of the 20th century, with tons of analogies and lessons to draw from.

I always found Goodwin's law (and especially the corollary, since the law is just a funny observation) BS.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well Nazis were arguably the biggest stain ever on human history.

Pretty much a reference point for any human being who has gotten some education.

Also a handy, lazy way to box-up anyone you disagree with or want to troll.

As generations move further and further away from WW2 people may stop relating to it though. Hard to imagine kids in 2100 using Nazi references. Might be climate destruction references instead.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am not surprised and I don't find it alarming. More comments means more fights and words like "Nazi" are bound to appear because it is basically a slang for evil.

Forget reddit, a quick look at American politics itself shows very liberal use of phrases like Fascist and Nazi when in reality people probably mean just evil.

</comment><comment><USER31> First rule of the Internet : all comment threads tend towards comparison to hitler. Multiply by 20 for YouTube.

<comment><USER32> That's called Godwin's Law

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> To validate Godwin's Law, you have to apply it properly.

What Godwin's Law refers to is this: either an _ad hominem_ attack occurs in which some debating parties compares their opponent(s) to Nazi's, or else some other sort of _non-constructive, inappropriate_ comparison is made between some subject and the Nazis. ("Those crazy GNU Nazis don't want anyone to get paid for programming." "I'm gonna ignore you topic Nazis and write about whatever I want.")

Simply _mentioning_ Hitler or the Nazi party is not enough; there are valid, constructive ways to do that. For instance, a legitimate thread about WWII history will probably mention Hitler or the Nazis! Also, comparing any violently repressive regime to the Nazis is completely valid.

<comment><USER33> Did you read the article?

> Then I excluded history subreddits

<comment><USER20> How can you be sure that an _ad hominem_ attack or other inappropriate invocation of the Nazis doesn't take place in a history subreddit that is also chock full of legitimate references?

<comment><USER33> Godwin's law doesn't talk about only ad hominem attacks though. It talks about comparing someone/something to nazis, most often it'll be related to the content the comments are on. Most of the content outside r/history is unlikely to be originally related to WWII. I would count a random mention of nazis under a trump article as Godwin's law.

Although, knowing reddit most of the comments are probably along the lines of "I did nazi that coming".

Source: I spend a lot of time on reddit

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hey, maybe it's just worthwhile talking about Nazis? World War II was one of the most catastrophic failures in the history of the world, and the rise of Nazism was an enormous subcategory of failure. These events defined the shape of the century; they demonstrated the horrific extremes to which humanity can descend, and they're absolutely worth appreciating so that we can forestall their reappearance again.

Moreover, it's not like the Nazis just went away; they continued to exist, and the ideologies that produced them not only still exist but are once again becoming a powerful political force.

So fuck yeah, everyone, talk about Nazis. It's one of the most important things you can talk about. (But read Hannah Arendt first.)

</comment><comment><USER35> It's kind of the de facto escape hatch for some and a baseline analogy many can comprehend because of decade long conditioning. It does not surprise me one bit.

What's always rather surprised me though is that no one seems to have realized that the decades of collective shaming of Germans for having gone through the national socialist dictatorship and war, has led to a deeply lost and self- loathing society without pride, dignity, or healthy identity. The society is in rather advanced stages self-destruction and decomstruction. The question is really only whether German culture and society will at all survive it's suicidal tendencies.

<comment><USER36> I think that, in a way, the developing immigrant crisis (look at the problems at Cologne on New Year's) is going to be a good thing for Germany, forcing them to determine what parts of their heritage are worth standing up for after all. The Greek crisis was also an example of Germany standing up for themselves; I think that, if you ask the Germans, they've made as much restitution for the Nazi period as it's meaningful to make (look up the details, they're pretty formidable), and at this point improvident foreigners looking for handouts and talking about Hitler are just engaged in bullying.

In the long run, I expect Germany to survive, but I'm not making the same bet on the US. I'm planning on moving from the US to Ireland at some point; I don't really want to be here, or to make my children be here, for the chaos almost certain to ensue 40-50 years from now. (Or 10-20 years from now, if we end up with President The Donald and he keeps his campaign promises.)

<comment> rm_-rf_slash >I'm not making the same bet on the US

As The Economist put it, America has "friends to the north and south and fish to the east and west." If anything truly threatens the US, it is ourselves. The idea that anyone could sustain supply lines to invade the States is out of their mind or has fallen asleep too many times to reruns of Red Dawn.

<comment><USER36> I don't watch trash. It's precisely ourselves that any threat will come from; I expect that the current environment of political upheaval will only get worse.

<comment><USER37> What exactly is wrong with the current passel of immigrants to the States?

<comment><USER36> It's not the immigrants that I'm afraid of; it's the locals. The Scotch-Irish are being shunted aside by the march of history; their cultural values, especially their economic improvidence, keep them from getting into the mainstream (read _Albion's Seed_); and they're not going to go gently into that good night. As Christian belief declines in the Scotch-Irish parts of the US, Nazi belief grows. (I have personally seen an aspiring pastor with a tattoo on his arm incorporating both the cross and the swastika, who saw no contradiction between the two.) Things are going to come to a head -- either in fierce government repression, or in uprisings or civil war -- and I don't want to be collateral damage when they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> ⌘-F "Godwin" shows me seven usages in this thread. I was looking for something like "see, Godwin was right". One commenter seems to have gotten it right. The rest think it's something one "invokes" (to quote one usage). Godwin's law is like the law of gravity: it always existed (in Godwin's case, post-WWII, obviously), whether you "used" it or not. You drop an apple, it'll hit the ground. An online discussion (or probably any discussion) grows longer, someone's going to make a Nazi comparison, which this article seems to confirm.

</comment><comment><USER39> Novelty account names tend to have references, just saw one the other day where not only did a commenter have the username of "Hitlerly Litler" or something to that effect, but someone pointed it out with the /u/username syntax because they thought it was funny.

If they're doing naive string searches, does every thread that guy shows up in get counted? What about robot_hitler, MeinFurher, and all the others?

Did anyone control for the topic very well? Many of the current news stories deal with fascism, or things people might worry to be fascism or totalitarianism or genocide.

</comment><comment><USER40> So I know that reddit has always been a bit more crass than your average community, and this _could totally be me_. But the last time I pulled up reddit to waste some time, I seemed to notice that more pseudo porn, wtf and generally nsfw stuff was on the front page. I personally don't care that is the case per se, but its utility as something to introduce me to something new/interesting seems to be vastly reduced. Maybe I should just yell get off of my lawn and move on.

<comment><USER41> I think a thread being godwin'd on reddit, is like any programming thread on HN getting dragged down into "but, you should use Rust."

Annoying, very annoying, and a hard problem to solve.

<comment><USER42> It's solved by the OP of every programming thread using Rust of course!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Use of the term should just throw a flag and information the user that users able allowed to filter comments based on keyword and if there comment will not be viewable to XX% of the community. Second, mods should still be reviewing the community for inappropriate behavior.

While I'd never use the term, it's a good reminder that what words you choose often define you.

</comment><comment><USER44> Yeah a thread will eventually have someone comparing someone else to Hitler or Nazis. It is Godwin's Law.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)

</comment><comment><USER45> It would be more interesting to compare TTH (Time To Hitler) on different websites. Not sure reddit is a contender. Maybe look over to Fox news.

</comment><comment><USER46> Sounds like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle)

</comment><comment><USER47> Thus Goodwin's Law has been proven to be true once again.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is the code available for this in github? The dataset is 370 GB, i think. What did the author use - postgres/Spark/other?

<comment><USER49> BigQuery, it's mentioned in the linked article.

[http://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh- bigquery:reddit_co...](http://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh- bigquery:reddit_comments.2015_05)

Probably this dataset which is updated periodically

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Somewhere the people in a subreddit are kicking themselves for not doing their jobs well enough to bring that up to 98%.

</comment><comment><USER51> ... does this correct for non-Nazi Nazi usage? Like "Grammar nazi" or "Spelling nazi"?

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm sure there are other common words in most/all of those threads that wouldn't surprise us.

</comment><comment><USER53> I bet you could find other words than "Nazis" for which this is also true...

</comment><comment><USER54> Maybe try it on HN threads, don't think Godwin's Law would be as effective

<comment><USER55> Unlike Reddit, invoking Godwin's Law in Hacker News will get your comment killed.

<comment><USER56> Yes, the moderation is literally Hitler here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> 181 comments and already 35 mentions of Trump. Beats Godwin.

</comment><comment><USER58> Seems likely that most 1,000+ comment threads are political.

<comment><USER55> Incorrect. Most 1,000 comment threads are in the default subreddits.

Using BigQuery to group the number of threads by subreddit:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_bL0dVn3z2R-pUkWuWNr...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_bL0dVn3z2R-pUkWuWNr7rnVe5SVXHfm3U6ZczV3u5U/edit?usp=sharing)

       SELECT subreddit, SUM(num_comments >= 1000) as num_comments_gte1000
       FROM [fh-bigquery:reddit_posts.full_corpus_201512]
       GROUP BY subreddit
       ORDER BY num_comments_gte1000 DESC
       LIMIT 1000

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> 40% of Reddit threads with 1000+ comments involve photos of kittens, including all 22% that don't mention Nazis. That means 18% of Reddit threads involve both kittens and Nazis.

<comment><USER55> Your snark with made-up numbers assumes that p(kitten) and p(nazi) are independent. Which they aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> per a random selection of 1000 comments, how how likely is it that a comment will contain mention of nazis?

</comment><comment><USER61> Was anybody surprised by this?

</comment><comment><USER62> I did Nazi see that coming!

</comment><comment><USER63> anybody what is the exact query being used ?

</comment><comment><USER64> and only 65% of hn threads

</comment><comment><USER65> So .001 * .78 or, .00078 of comments mention nazis.

<comment><USER66> I think the thread is counted if there is at least 1 mention of nazis in the thread.

Therefore it is possible that there are multiple mentions per counted thread meaning that at least .00078 comments mention nazis, but in all likelihood far more comments mention nazis.

Edit: after reading the article, I don't think that this observation stands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> So is his extrapolation that at 4k+ it will reach towards 100%?

<comment><USER68> Right, the first line of the post.

<comment><USER67> Downvotes for summing up the whole article into a simple concept?

<comment><USER55> You are likely getting downvoted because your comment is redundant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dabble Do: social to-do list Facebook app from the makers of Dabble DB - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dabbledb.com/2007/08/introducing-dab.html

<comment><USER2> Another work in progress tool to work together: a shared todo list + calendar application at <http://tudulist.com>

It is not really a startup or something like this, some week ago I finished to write the Ruby framework we are using in our company to develop web apps and I needed to test it a bit so I started writing this application that ended being good enough to be put online.

I'm continuing the development because at this point we are using it as a tool in my company and other companies of our friends are using this too. Feel free to try it and give suggestion now that it's the initial stage of development and there is a lot of room to change things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most productive facebook app to get things done. Pass todos to friends and 'crack the whip' until they're done.

</comment><comment><USER4> Stuff To Do has drag/drop sharing of tasks, as well as the ability to look at how other people in your group have spent their time:

<http://stufftodo.dedasys.com></comment>


The End of Dynamic Languages - <AUTHOR> http://elbenshira.com/blog/the-end-of-dynamic-languages/ <comment><USER2> > This is my bet: the age of dynamic languages is over.

I doubt it.

Yes, all the points the author makes are valid benefits of static typing. But the benefits of dynamic languages still exist. There are reasons people like both types of languages.

However, I think a more relevant point was made in the article: that statically-typed languages are looking more and more dynamic. And we can add to that that we see signs of dynamic languages adding more 'static' features, like optional types. Those are signs of convergence, of both major classes of languages learning from each other and improving.

But I still don't think we'll end up in the middle with "static, but feels totally dynamic". We'll still have both types of languages around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I may have failed in getting it across, but a big point is this: I don't think dynamic languages will suddenly die out. Instead, strongly-typed languages will become more convincing. We are seeing better tools, and they are becoming more ergonomic.

Elm's latest blog post said it really well:

> Compilers should be assistants, not adversaries. A compiler should not just > detect bugs, it should then help you understand why there is a bug.

[http://elm-lang.org/blog/compilers-as-assistants](http://elm- lang.org/blog/compilers-as-assistants)

<comment><USER3> Please call it 'dynamically-typed' languages. You don't say 'strong language'. You say 'strongly-typed language'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author seems to have missed the Ring Spec [1]. It provides a complete breakdown of what is in a ring response and a ring request for the core spec.

The middleware (at least those that ship with ring) are all documented in docstrings explaining the keys they add or work on. This is available in the repl via `clojure.repl/doc` or inspective `(:doc (meta foo))`. It's available in your editor if your editor has clojure support (I only use vim and emacs, and both of these can search/display docs on clojure code). There is also nicely formatted api docs at [2].

[1] - [https://github.com/ring- clojure/ring/blob/master/SPEC](https://github.com/ring- clojure/ring/blob/master/SPEC) [2] - [http://ring- clojure.github.io/ring/index.html](http://ring- clojure.github.io/ring/index.html)

That said, it would be nice if more of clojure was documented using an executable schema or type system, ala Schema or core.typed. The author would have done well to pick less well-documented libraries though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I did miss the ring spec. But as a beginner to ring, I'm not sure how I was suppose to know that such a document exist.

For the most part, Ring is well-documented. But, as you noted, human-typed doc strings go only so far. I applaud the writers of ring in their discipline, but certainly we can do better than depending on human discipline.

You even noted, I picked "less well-documented libraries." I didn't pick them because they were not well-documented—I picked them because I'm using them!

<comment><USER4> I suspect you might have encountered the SPEC if you opened the README of the ring project or visited its github page (which displays the README by default). It's mentioned and linked in that README:

From [https://github.com/ring-clojure/ring](https://github.com/ring- clojure/ring):

        Ring is a Clojure web applications library inspired by Python's WSGI and Ruby's Rack. By abstracting the details of HTTP into a simple, unified API, Ring allows web applications to be constructed of modular components that can be shared among a variety of applications, web servers, and web frameworks.
        The SPEC file at the root of this distribution provides a complete description of the Ring interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Totally agreed, using dynamic languages, all became a guessing game, everyone is guessing, the IDE is guessing, the programmer is guessing what's inside this variable?

<comment><USER3> Strange. I'm just asking the Lisp system:

        CL-USER 1 > (class-of *standard-output*)
        #<STANDARD-CLASS EDITOR::RUBBER-STREAM 40E035A2E3>

Oh, the class of the value of

        *standard-output*

is EDITOR:RUBBER-STREAM... From there I can find the source, find the applicable methods, the slots, the super classes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree with the author. Even in a "statically typed" language like Go, which has a simple type system, compared to languages like Scala or Haskell, the benefits of static typing are very real and enables a lot of extremely useful tools (code completion, refactoring, linting, whole program analysis, etc.).

<comment><USER4> Code completion, refactoring aids, linting, and whole program analysis also exist in dynamic languages. Take a look at emacs with anaconda-mode for python or cider for clojure. IntelliJ in the forms of Cursive and PyCharm (or the Python IDEA plugin) also support all of these. Even vim can do this stuff (python-mode, fireplace.vim). I don't Ruby very often, but I suspect these tools exist here too.

<comment><USER7> def some_function(some_obj): ...

How does any IDE or editor know what some_function would be passed without a severe amount of inspection?

I might be wrong on my definitions, but almost by definition, there's just not enough information before runtime in dynamic systems to infer enough to do any real refactoring or smart completion.

I use PyCharm everyday, and I like it, but it's refactor menu is limited, can fail, and pales in comparison to my uses of java w/ IntelliJ or even a well hinted php app w/ PHPstorm.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I haven't yet encountered an IDE that has any hope of doing anything more than being able to enumerate the defs in a module or the functions in an object. JavaScript is one of the worst because there is no canonical "include" semantic so you really have no idea what's going on. The corollary seems to be that many of these languages are fast to develop (and run) so excessive console.logs appears to be the "solution"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A completely contrary case can be made where static typing is doomed because hardware is getting more and more powerful, JIT and tracing is getting better and dynamic typing is convenient to the programmer while static typing is very convenient to the compiler and the processor.

It's nonsense, both ways. Both static and dynamic type systems have their uses and, unless we substantially change the way we use computers (which is plausible) I don't see either side wiping out the other.

<comment><USER7> I think the main point is that its very convenient to the IDE/developer, not for the performance. You know what things are before runtime. You can explore and have discoverable APIs much easier.

Most dynamic languages I've used in my career (javascript, python, php) have either metadata to typehint, a hinted superset of the language or new language support for typing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A note on Typed Clojure: Ambrose is doing excellent work with it, and I'm excited to see it develop.

But I wished there was a bigger push from the top, from Rich himself, on "first-classing" typed Clojure. Aim for 100% annotation coverage for the most popular libraries. Start with core (maybe it already is? I haven't kept up) and ring, then move outwards from there.

Library writers will be more motivated to add annotations if the big libraries are doing it.

<comment><USER10> I doubt Rich will ever push for it, but stranger things have happened. Types get in the way of data. When you ask a request "What's in you?" in Clojure you can just look at the data and find out. In Java you can ctrl+space in your IDE and look for public methods that by convention start with 'get', and then for the return values of those things also look for things that start with 'get', but that's a pretty impoverished way to get at the data. Try printing it out and you're likely to just get a memory address, great. So what do types buy you? Sometimes performance, but if that were always true then all static languages should be about as fast as C. The other thing is this "certainty" mentioned, and that certainty is just that you didn't make a typo or spelling error, woop-dee-doo, those are among the fewest sets of errors dynamic programming language users run in to, especially when you change your workflow to take advantage of the nature of dynamic languages, and a more valuable certainty is that this piece of data you have isn't going to change underneath you. You have to go all the way to Haskell (I'd argue Shen) to get real benefits of typing beyond performance and typo-protection, and most programmers are unwilling to do that for very good reasons.

<comment><USER11> I fear I must be misunderstanding your points. Are you really stating that, in order to know what you can do with data, you need just need to inspect it at _runtime_? Or that types only protect you from typos?

Types allow the compiler to do a lot of validation before your code is even executed, removing whole classes of bugs before they even have a chance to manifest themselves. You thought that value was an int and divided it by two? It was a string. I'm glad I didn't have to wait until runtime to find out about it, or to write tests to make sure that _every single code path_ to that division results in the value being, in fact, an int.

Types allow developers to trust whatever data they receive without feeling the need to protect against hostile, or less experienced, application programmers passing incorrect data. They allow you to know, with absolute certainty, that what you wrote can only be executed the way you meant it to be executed (whether that's correct or not is another question altogether). A function in a dynamic language is never complete, you never know what data, or shape of data, you will receive. Types buy you that certainty.

Code efficiency is not the point - developer efficiency is. When you can trust your data, you can focus on what your code needs to do - that's usually complicated enough without adding the complexity of not being able to trust _a single value_.

The main argument against static languages is that, in their struggle to be sound, they end up not being complete - and it's absolutely true: there are perfectly legal programs that you can't write with a static language, but that a dynamic one would run without batting an eyelash. Duck-typing comes to mind, I'm sure there are other examples.

Another argument is that type systems get in the way of what you want to do. There are a few cases where it's true - see the point just above. But in my entirely anecdotal experience, the vast majority of times someone complains the compiler won't let him do what he wants, it's because _what he wants to do is not correct_. The complaint is not that the compiler is too restrictive - it's that your bugs are shoved in your face much, much more frequently and quickly than they would if you had to wait for runtime. And that's a _good_ thing.

<comment><USER10> "Runtime", or "REPL" time, or "doc time" are all ways you can just "look at it". Do you think knowing "x" is type "Foo" tells you anything about what you can do with "x", other than use it where you can use "Foo"s? You need to figure out what you can do with "Foo" by reading the docs around "Foo". Yeah, I know a priori I can call a method on Foo that returns an int and pass that to other int-taking methods, but is that what I want to do? Which method returning an int do I want to call? You need to look at what "Foo" is to determine this. Rich's example is HttpRequestServlet in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdnJDO- xdg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdnJDO-xdg) I'd recommend watching that and ignoring me. A lot of the issues he raises, as contextfree points out, are around OOP rather than static typing in general so take these as my views and not necessarily his...

If "Foo" is just dynamic data, perhaps in a map, composed of other data, and it's values all the way down, any of those three points of time are easy ways to look at "Foo" and can generally be faster than reading a JavaDoc page or ctrl+spacing figuring out what you have access to and what it all means and what you want to do with the data and code associated with "Foo". Since you're going to be looking at the thing you want anyway, I find it very uncommon in practice that I accidentally divide a string by 2. Static typing would let me know before I run the thing that I was an idiot (maybe, see next paragraph), but I'll find out almost as quickly when the code I just worked on (either in the REPL, which is very nice, but even from the starting state) actually does what I want -- you do that regardless of static/dynamic typing, right? You don't just write code and never verify it does what you want, trusting that it compiled is good enough? Anyway when I run it, I'll immediately hit a runtime error (which can be handled in Lisp in ways way more flexible than exceptions in other languages) and realize my stupidity. So I don't find that particular situation or class of bugs very compelling.

Nor do the presence of declared types alone guarantee my safety -- I need to know about any conversion rules, too, that may let a String be converted to an int for division purposes, or if there is operator overloading that could be in play. Conversion rules and operator overloading are interesting regardless of the static/dynamic typing situation because too much or too few can lead to annoyances and bugs. Java lets you concatenate ints into strings with "+", Python doesn't, but Python lets you duplicate strings with "*".

What I have run into in both static and dynamic languages is division-by-zero errors, which, unless you go all the way to something like Shen that supports dependent typing, your type system with "int" declarations will not help you with. I've run into errors (in both static and dynamic languages) parsing string contents to extract bits of data. I've run into errors around the timings of async operations. I've run into null pointer exceptions (though much less frequently in dynamic languages, maybe once the Option type is in wider use I can rely on that too but its issue is poisoning the AST). I've run into logic errors where I thought the system should be in state C but instead it transitioned to state E. The bugs that take the longest to diagnose and fix are simply due to not understanding the problem well enough and having an incorrect routine coded, so I have to figure out if it's a logic error or an off-by-one error or simply using the wrong function because it had a suggestive name and I didn't read through the doc all the way. Rich made an interesting point in one of his talks that all bugs have both passed your type checker (if you have one) and your test suite. My point is that I'm not convinced static typing as I'm given in the languages I work in is worth it for any reasons beyond performance because I don't see any other improvements like making me more productive or writing less bugs. I'm not opposed to types and schemas themselves in general, just static typing. I'd rather see pushes towards full dependent typing and systems like TLA+ (which has seen more industry usage than Haskell) and Coq than things like core.typed in Clojure.

The last point I'd raise is that I agree with you developer efficiency is more important than code efficiency. But this has been one of the mainstay arguments from the pro dynamic typing camp for many decades, with static typing advocates conceding that yes the developer will be more productive in a dynamic language but the performance is terrible for anything serious. If you want to argue static typing was actually more efficient all along from a developer perspective than dynamic typing, you have a lot of work to do. I'm not particularly interested in that argument (at least today) but the point still needs to be raised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't like when people don't understand the difference between dynamic languages and so-called dynamic typing.

For example in Java a dynamic feature is that it has class loaders which enable to load classes into a running Java program. This way a program can be updated and extended at runtime.

Other dynamic features are 'late binding', runtime evaluation, code as data, introspection/reflection up to a full blown meta-object protocol which enables things like modifying inheritance, slot allocation, instance creation, method dispatch and so on.

One of the features of Erlang for example is that it enables application updates, while providing zero downtime. The demand for that in the telco business is far from 'end'ing.

What actually 'dynamic typing' is and if it is seeing its end is a totally different question.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think Hiccup is way better than separate HTML templates, much less noisy.

<comment><USER4> Hiccup is different than HTML templates. Hiccup is trivially composable because it's a library based around native data structures. If you want something your designers don't have to think about, Enlive (uses HTML as templates and provides a jQuery-esque transform system) and Selmer (Jinja2 or Handlebars, mixing HTML and a template language) both exist and are well- tested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I agree. Dynamic languages had their appeal when the only mainstream alternatives were Java and C++.

But in today's world, with verbosity-eliminating type inference, more expressive type systems, and tools that can make use of all the extra information to greatly increase productivity, it's really hard to think of any meaningful benefit dynamic languages can provide (that is related to their choice to have dynamic typing, not other parts of the language).

</comment><comment><USER14> > that we disdain verbosity

Dynamic languages show there's a tradeoff. Repeating yourself is often useful, when maintenance is expected and code is cheap to produce, without having to worry about strict typing.</comment>


How to improve usability in software. Lots of tips - <AUTHOR> https://blog.serverdensity.com/how-to-improve-usability-in-software/ <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has any questions about our process I'll happily answer them here.</comment>


Patent Trolling Doesn't Pay: Intellectual Ventures Shows A -73% Return - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/28/intellectual-ventures-negative-return/ <comment><USER2> Conclusion does not follow.

IV does much more than just buy up other people's patents and license them out. They also put considerable resources into researching and developing new inventions. How do we know that it isn't the latter activities that are responsible for the low return?

If we want to know whether patent trolling pays or not, shouldn't we look at firms that only do that? For example, Acacia Research? Acacia has done quite well financially.

<comment><USER3> They also put considerable resources into PR considering all the puff pieces out there on them.

And, right, let's look at a sample size of one to find out if trolling pays! Brilliant!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read a puff piece on this place in Harvard Business Review. It did not have the intended puffing effect.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just give them enough time and they'll become the Monsanto of ideas. It'll be great!</comment>


Lenovo X1 Carbon coil whine? - <AUTHOR> I've been wanting a new laptop, replacing an XPS 13 that I returned due to coil whine. Does the X1 Carbon have it? <comment> VuWall-Matt I've never heard a peep from my X1C3 or X1C5.</comment>


Comcast modem activation bug potentially exposed customers' private data (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbkgn8/dont-rent-a-modem-from-comcast <comment><USER3> Recently, Cox had an outage in the city where my parents live. My dad, close to 70, misconstrued the situation and though it was just our modem being slow. He drove to a brick & mortar Cox shop, where a rep promptly sold him on leasing a gateway for $10/mo that would be (and I quote) "25 times faster" than the speeds we were currently getting (roughly peaking at 250 Mbps down).

Of course, my Dad, not knowing too much about this stuff, rents the new router. And of course, it doesn't solve the fact that there was an outage in the first place. I tested the new connection and while I could see _rare_ instances of faster peak speeds, for the most part it was not much faster than the old setup when sampled over time.

I really hope there comes a day when companies can be held accountable for straight up lying and taking advantage of customers who simply don't have the technical means to know any better. It really, really bothers me when my parents get taken advantage of like this and I know I'm mostly helpless to prevent it without micro-managing my dad's tech purchasing decisions.

<comment><USER4> Caveat Emptor

Your dad has been around for 70 years. How has he not figured out not to trust a salesperson and do independent research or consult an expert (literally YOU, his son, one phone call away).

<comment><USER5> Not everyone enjoys the task of performing extensive research, and perhaps a 70 year old might value their time doing something else? I've also met more than one 70+ year old person who was convinced that they understood how things worked, and to admit otherwise was to display weakness/lose credibility (despite that not being the case at all). The point is, what is obvious to you may not be obvious to others, and you have no idea why they chose the route they did.

<comment><USER6> > and perhaps a 70 year old might value their time doing something else?

They should be content with their inferior choices then.

> I've also met more than one 70+ year old person who was convinced that they > understood how things worked, and to admit otherwise was to display > weakness/lose credibility

These people deserve it.

Note, I certainly do think that there should be more regulation on lying salesmen, but these are kind of bad examples imo.

<comment><USER7> I hope in your old age you never have to interact with people as devoid of empathy as yourself.

<comment><USER4> I have empathy. I also have a brain, which I used to come to the conclusion that you either have self-agency and therefore you are liable to the consequences of your actions or you do not have self-agency. If a person chose to not do research, then he is liable to the consequences of his ignorance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Warning for anyone using a customer owned modem with Comcast: Be sure you keep your receipts and original packaging.

I recently canceled service and switched to AT&T Fiber. It was actually an unexpectedly easy process. But when I dropped off my cable box at a Comcast store, they asked me for my modem. The one that I bought myself. The person taking receipt of my equipment was fine when I said I owned my modem, and just "put a note" on my file.

... then I get a collections letter, explicitly related to the "unreturned" modem. Despite having no history of receiving a rental modem, and no monthly surcharge for modem rental on any of my years-long billing history, they refused to budge. I happened to still have the original box with the serial number on it and that combined with a printout of my Amazon order from back then was enough to at least to successfully dispute the debt on my credit reports. But it wasn't enough for Comcast, and I'm sure I'll still have to pay that bill and put down a giant deposit if (when) I move somewhere that forces me back to Comcast.

<comment><USER9> They did something similar to me too. I dropped off the modem, with my two small kids on hand, and forgot to grab a receipt. I figured dropping it off in person would leave no room for doubt. That was not correct.

A few months later, I'm getting threatening calls that I need to return the modem. I call them and the rep says "Oh, thanks, we will note that you returned it." So, they just send a collection notice and don't actually keep a record you have returned it inside their own systems.

<comment><USER10> In my case, it was the HD receiver. The Comcast guy was surprised I asked for a receipt, and was shocked when I checked the serial number on the modem vs what was on the receipt. They matched, as they should.

Then they still tried to ding me for an unreturned equipment and when I called they said 'it takes 2 - 3 months for it to come off your account'. It eventually did fall off, but was insane for hand delivering it to Comcast/Xfinity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how much longer we'll even have the option to use our own equipment. Late last year I briefly tried AT&T fiber, and it was required to use their hybrid modem/router monstrosity. It didn't even have options to disable the router functionality, the best you could do was turn off its WiFi networks and disable its firewall. Even after setting all of my own passwords on it it was still possible to access settings through my AT&T account online, telling me that the thing is backdoored all to hell. TBH that thing was a big factor in me canceling the service after 5 days (also the service was mediocre and they tried to screw me on pricing).

<comment><USER12> Fiber doesn't use a "modem" so I'm a little curious what you're talking about. As to "backdoors"—all fiber CPE has to have the capability to be managed from the provider side. A lit fiber is like an Ethernet cable plugged into the provider's switch. Nobody would be crazy enough to not control both ends of that connnection. Even if you spend thousands of dollars a month for a business grade Metro Ethernet connection, the provider will install CPE that it can manage remotely, usually an L2 switch.

<comment><USER13> I think the issue is with the fact that it also forced you to use their router as it was built in, as I'm pretty sure all fiber providers require you use their hardware.

<comment><USER14> Good to have a service from a proper and somewhat local ISP. They set us up initially with a DASAN fiber->WiFi router completely administered on their end, but at some point I called them with the request to replace it with just a fiber->Ethernet bridge. They complied without a problem, replaced the box, and gave me the PPPoE credentials with a warning that past the bridge's Ethernet end, I'm on my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Last month we made a decision to buy our own router and not rent from Comcast (Xfinity). Then I started doing the math, and soon realized at the end of the day it might be that much better.

1 - It's unclear which is the best modem/router by doing research. Gives you the maximum speed, etc. 2 - You start reading reviews on Amazon around reliability and you see a lot of comments that basically give you doubt. It falls in two ways: A - the model/router stopped working after a 12-18 months so they had a buy another one. Put it at same price as renting. B - <USER2> firmware upgrade path was unclear and it could only be initiated through comcast (in some instances). Making you worry about upgrade support using a third-party product.

C - Overall issues with support. Tech support is already a pain, again as above is going to be worse with third-party products.

With modem/router price ranging from $100-200. Renting from Comcast at $120/year it means that you always have a de facto warranty. Something goes wrong with the modem/router call comcast they'll send you one or just drive to the local store and get a new one. There is probably some savings if it all goes well. But then again is it worth my time?

<comment><USER16> > 1 - It's unclear which is the best modem/router by doing research.

Comcast actually has a page for that: [https://mydeviceinfo.xfinity.com/](https://mydeviceinfo.xfinity.com/)

> With modem/router price ranging from $100-200. Renting from Comcast at > $120/year it means that you always have a de facto warranty. Something goes > wrong with the modem/router call comcast they'll send you one or just drive > to the local store and get a new one. There is probably some savings if it > all goes well. But then again is it worth my time?

How often do you actually think modems fail? No seriously, I'd really like to know the numbers. I bet failure rates are well under 1% annually.

So what this amounts to is enabling Comcast to sell fraud. It's not a warranty, you're getting a replacement to fix an issue the modem didn't cause. You can't tell me it's much of a time saver when local stores sell modems or you could order same/next day from Amazon.

<comment><USER5> > Comcast actually has a page for that

That page doesn't give any info other than "sign in", "type in your address" (lol), and "consider paying us rent for hardware, learn more".

<comment><USER16> > That page doesn't give any info other than "sign in", "type in your address" > (lol), and "consider paying us rent for hardware, learn more".

Put a zip code in, no login. It will work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the biggest lost opportunities for the robustness of the Web has been people not running servers at their homes, even though they do have a connected computer running 24x7 - the Router. It will probably take a Google or Apple to turn routers into standardized platforms with its own "app store", but by then it will be too late.

<comment><USER18> I know people who are literally rocket scientists (most of them actually work on fighter jets) that have trouble correctly configuring video game servers. In my experience for most people trying to run any sort of server themselves is quite a hassle (I mean my work has a lot of experts whose sole job is to make sure the servers are all running correctly and they still get it wrong sometimes).

<comment><USER17> > for most people trying to run any sort of server themselves is quite a > hassle

Yet we run background apps on our phones quite easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My ISP (Altice/Optimum/Cablevision) makes it very hard to use your own router or modem, despite Federal laws empowering customers to buy their own equipment if they want to. For starters, their techs will not install new service with your equipment; you MUST have their equipment installed, set up your equipment, and then travel to nowhereville to return their equipment. After doing this, I've had my modem bricked by Optimum for not having "the latest firmware." No explanation given beyond that. There is no justifiable reason whatsoever to permit ISPs to rent equipment at all. The only reason they do this is so they can advertise cheaper service prices. Altice/Optimum/Cablevision markets a "$99 per month plus taxes and fees" bundle that actually comes out to $145 per month once you have added the equipment fees and taxes. They should also have to advertise total price. Good thing that the Democrats are fighting so hard for "net neutrality" which would solve this. Oh wait, no it's wouldn't. It just makes Netflix slightly cheaper. Great priorities!

<comment><USER5> Well, if they are obviously violating a Federal law, then it sounds like lawsuit time. They clearly aren't going to change by themselves.

Considering that ISPs insist on being monopolies (in the US), it shouldn't be too hard for any competent law firm to make it into a class action lawsuit.

<comment><USER19> They aren't violating the law as one can still buy. They just make it really really really hard to buy. They should be banned front renting outright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People who write this kind of article grotesquely underestimate how hard these companies make this task.

I use centurylink DSL, mainly because the local cable monopolist is mediacom, and I tried mediacom for two weeks of downright insulting lack of service[1], it was the only alternative.

This[2] is the information centurylink provides about what modems are compatible with their service. Do I know whether I have ADSL, ADSL2, VDSL, GPON, or whatever the hell any of those other acronyms mean? No. Does it say so on the bill? Who knows, I haven't seen a paper bill for years, no idea when they stopped sending them. I suppose I could dig up some three-year-old piece of paper from a kitchen drawer somewhere that might say which, or that might say the unused landline number they hooked the DSL to so I can maybe try to figure out how to get into some online account (lord knows I've tried to find a username that they'll recognize to get a password reset). Or I could call them, and talk to a minimum wage, probably offshore, customer service person in a call center who might maybe give me accurate information as to which acronym I have.

Or I could not look a gift horse in the mouth. Right now, I'm sending someone a not huge amount of money per month, and I actually have residential internet service that kinda works (and when I actually need reasonable speeds I can bring my laptop to the office). Relative to the standard condition of life in our third-world situation in the United States with crooked monopolists charging people for service they don't actually provide, I feel lucky being charged for service I actually do receive. And don't feel particularly inclined to rock the boat on that.

I rather suspect a similar calculus is going through the heads of millions of American households. What we need is regulation for the monopolists, not more articles scolding captive consumers about buying their own goddamn modems.

[1] This letter sums it all up. [http://paul- gowder.com/pgmediacom.pdf](http://paul-gowder.com/pgmediacom.pdf) Needless to say, after receiving a "this is a lawyer who is clearly insane and extremely angry" letter they sent me my money back.

[2] [https://www.centurylink.com/home/help/internet/modems-and- ro...](https://www.centurylink.com/home/help/internet/modems-and-routers/what- modems-are-compatible-with-centurylink.html)

<comment><USER21> If you really wanted to buy a modem for CenturyLink, the best thing to ask about technology is the current modem -- it will tell you somewhere. But you'll notice that almost all of the listed modems are customized for CenturyLink, that's what the C in the name means (and presumably the other letters too). That means you're more than likely stuck with whatever customization that you might have liked to get rid of, or features you might like to add. (Like a bridge mode that actually works).

Not being able to realistically do better than what equipment you already have, you could probably just buy a new one of the device you already have, but then again, it's hard to predict how long that will be useful. If you move or by some miraculous force, CenturyLink offers an upgraded service, your device may be useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Comcast has a site to help determine what 3rd party modem will work with your Internet package:

[https://mydeviceinfo.xfinity.com/](https://mydeviceinfo.xfinity.com/)

Sign in, it takes a look at what speed/connection you have and then will recommend a list.

Or don't sign in and just specify your address. It'll tell you the speeds available at your location. Select the speed and it'll list out the modems they officially support, including ones with phone support.

The ones that everyone I know has is the ARRIS SB8200 or the Motorola MB8600. Both support Docsis 3.0 up to something like 1.4Gbps. They're $150 or so, so you'll break even in a little over a year.

</comment><comment><USER23> My cable ISP makes it hard to use your own by refusing to use just any DOCSIS 3 modem and not publishing an approved list. It would be nice if regulatory policy changes would force the industry to accept all standards compliant modems.

</comment><comment><USER24> I tried. The modem didn't work. It was on the approved list. Had a tech come out, he installed a Comcast router and it worked. They waived the rental fee for 6 months. As much as I hate Comcast, I hate not having internet more.

<comment><USER25> It all ends up back as a problem of that monopoly.

Here in Australia, while we have our own problems, you could just switch ISP if they're playing shenanigans like that.

In America, don't like your ISP? Guess you're living without internet then!

<comment><USER26> Unfortunately unless you live in a metro area your options in Australia aren't much better. Most rural or country areas and even some suburban zones are only serviced by a single ISP who may decide you don't need internet.

I lived in Ipswich for 1.5 years, prior to moving in I signed up for ADSL2 (no NBN available in the area yet) with Telstra as they are the only ISP servicing the area.

I was told that the local exchange has no available ports, and that I would need to go on a waiting list to be given a connection.

I was periodically getting their "Sorry we can't provide you usable internet yet, how about ADSL1 or some 4G data at rip-off prices?" for that entire time, until I moved out and cancelled the still-pending service.

<comment><USER25> That's specifically due to Privatisation of Telstra though, which is exactly the monopoly being talked about.

NBN was supposed to fix this, not sure if it still will though with the neutering of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a topic that is near and dear to me - last year I attempted building my own router/firewall on an ARMv8 board (the espressobin) and I've been extremely happy with it as a DIY router solution [1]. While this sort of approach doesn't solve the larger problem of non-technical folks being fleeced by Comcast and other ISPs en masse, maybe with gradually-increasing tech literacy, projects like loading up an espressobin with a pre-imaged SD card for a home router will be a tenable option someday for more people.

From a hobbyist perspective, the router has been a dream to work with, and you can do some really weird stuff when the router is a Linux box you're in complete control of (DNS tricks, packet scheduling experiments, et cetera.) I always get a kick out of updating it periodically and seeing the latest mainline kernel loaded up (it's on 4.20.10 at the moment).

I've never studied up on home-brewing the modem/DOCSIS 3 aspect, but realistically I don't know how feasible that is in comparison to the relatively more simple DHCP/DNS/firewall parts of a typical home router.

[1] [https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect- router/](https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect-router/)

<comment><USER28> ARM boards tend to be bad wrt getting timely security patches because they don't run the mainline kernel, and don't run a mainstream Linux distribution with a paid security team. Even relatively well supported ones like Raspbian have this problem.

My advice is to rather get a low end x86 device.

<comment><USER27> While I've absolutely had this experience with some of my ARM boards (notably, most of my ODroids are stuck on some variant of the 4.14 kernel with vendor patch sets), the essential parts of the espressobin are in mainline, device tree and all.

The larger problem of developer/security team time and effort is still there, though. Arch Linux ARM and Armbian are active and well-maintained, but I do find myself running into problems that indicate that the community of active users for this type of hardware is vastly smaller than a traditional architectures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I returned Comcast's modem because:

1) I wanted better control of routing (have a bunch of wireguard tunnels). I want all the IOT-crap on a separate network, etc.

2) Whenever there is a transient link connectivity issue on the cable side it seems that the comcast modem tries to "fix" this by rebooting itself which takes a good 5 minutes.

I got a Netgear CM700 which is basically just a DOCSIS / Ethernet -bridge (you just get the public IP using DHCP on the ethernet side).

The cable modem connects to a homegrown Linux ARM based router and then I use Unifi PRO Access Point from Ubiquity Networks for Wifi. Never looked back since. The Unifi AP have multiple SSID's configured which is separated on different vlans on the way back to the router. The Netgear modem have so far never had a single hick-up from what I can tell (about six months in now).

OpenWRT certainly is an option, but unfortunately getting high performance wifi out of it is a bit of a dice roll in my experience. I've tried a few hardware variants but eventually gave up and bought the Unifi PRO instead. Also I'd just rather have separate things that do each thing well.

</comment><comment><USER30> Where I live, we have Frontier FIOS. Frontier FIOS _requires_ you to get their "wifi router" for $10/mo even though, I quote, "you don't have to use it". There's simply no option to not get it with a new subscription, not online, not on the phone. How this is legal, I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would love to stop renting Comcast's over-priced modem, but those fuckers' gigabit service is extremely unstable in my area and causes both my Arris SB8200 and NetGear CM1000 modems to constantly hang. I have to reboot my modem at least 2 or 3 times a day, no matter which one I use, and sometimes every 20 to 30 minutes. I haven't tried the Motorola MB8600 yet, but I'm kind of weary of dropping another couple hundred dollars on a modem that isn't guaranteed to work.

Comcast's router at least stays up for more than a day at a time, but of course I'm only getting 400 to 500 Mbits down on my gigabit service. I'd leave Comcast in a second but the only other option in my area is CenturyLink, with their whopping 20 Mbit speed.

</comment><comment><USER32> I just signed up for a CenturyLink connection in Seattle. CenturyLink feels like they're playing catch-up to Comcast, and thus are sort of on the humble end of the arrogant-to-humble pendulum of monopolies. They are giving me a per-month service that can be cancelled any time, "no price-hikes" (though how can that be possible, am I going to get the same price in perpetuity into the future?), and I clicked the "I will install my own router" option, and there are no extra installation or equipment fees. My Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite is in the mail.

We'll see if there's another shoe to drop.

</comment><comment><USER33> Not sure why you wouldn't. Modem rental costs, what? 5 or 10 bucks a month? Just buy a modem and it pays for itself pretty quickly. I'm honestly surprised that they let you do it.

<comment><USER34> Say rental is $8/month and approved docsis 3.1 modem is $180 to buy outright. Buying doesn't really make sense unless you will be sticking with the same ISP for at least two years. (And in two years, you might take a promo deal and sign up with another ISP; or move to a different apartment building which doesn't allow your current ISP; or your roommate or SO might decide to take care of connectivity; or technology will advance and you would want a different modem anyway.)

<comment><USER35> If you quit the ISP in under two years, you can still sell your used modem for a decent chunk of change. If you actually own, you can resell it. I've done this both ways, selling one I no longer use but also buying one used from someone else. So, there's no actual reason for most people to ever pay $180.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I switched from Comcast's router to a Ubiquiti Edgerouter 6p. It's fast, easy to configure, flexible, and gets regular security updates. Overkill, but still cheaper than renting a comcast router. Adding QoS really helped as well. In particular I wanted a VLAN/dedicated port for untrusted consumer widgets (TV, Stereo, fitbit, etc).

</comment><comment><USER37> Even if you use an "approved modem", their support will not by any means help you unless you're using the official rented modem+gateway. You end up having to lie about using the rented one they give you (they don't check if you're actually paying for it) to get any actual support.

<comment><USER38> I've always had my own modem and I've never had a problem with Comcast/Xfinity not helping me. Maybe I'm the exception.

Recently they updated my area to DOCSIS 3 (or 3.1, not sure). My DOCSIS 3.1 Motorola modem (found this out later) has a firmware bug that causes random modem lockups. Comcast went as far as replacing the cable from the telephone pole to my house in the middle of winter (it was ridiculously cold that day), running signal analyzers, and various other things before looking into the modem.

Also, Motorola Modem customer service was shockingly good as well. They sent me a free replacement modem while they worked on the firmware updates. Provisioning that temp modem was as simple as using the online provisioning.

Now, it would be nice if I didn't have to set annual calendar reminders to call them for when they increase my monthly price by 40%...

<comment> m-ee Which modem do you have? I have a motorolla modem and my service has gone to shit recently

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I went from having to restart the FiOS router all the time to fix the WiFi to never restarting with the edgerouter/unfi ap.

Buying your own hardware cost more up front but over the course of a 2 year contract you're paying over $240 ($10 a month) for something that barely works from Verizon.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'll rent you modems and routers for $8/month.... you'll save at least $5/month.

</comment><comment><USER41> When I worked there we only guaranteed speeds coming off a Comcast router/modem.

</comment><comment><USER42> _" Over time, users wind up paying Comcast significantly more money than the modem or router is worth."_

It's not really the cost, probably for 90% of users, it's more your average soccer mom doesn't want to deal with owning, updating, and maintening networking gear. So the service has some value to people.

</comment><comment><USER43> For the love of God, can the titles remain consistent with the posts?

</comment><comment><USER44> We should sue those ____

</comment><comment><USER45> good

</comment><comment><USER46> Most users, consumers, on Comcast do not have a choice, next election go out and vote rather than stating the obvious.

<comment><USER47> That's strange, I've had cable internet through Comcast at four different houses and have always used my own equipment, didn't rent theirs at all.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Change in developer salaries in 2020 Q3 and Q4? - <AUTHOR> Will there be a change in full time developer salaries in the coming months? Freelancer rates are already dropping but will full time follow or stay the same with fewer firms hiring? <comment><USER2> Lyft just cut internship pay. I know thats not valuable input, but thought I'd add it.

<comment><AUTHOR> When do they start posting internship positions? Next summer's salaries will be an interesting data point.</comment></comment>


TicketNews (the leading ticket industry publication) Exposes Rails - <AUTHOR> http://www.ticketnews.com/news/Ticket-Evolution-hires-former-TicketNetwork-staffer-as-deadline-for-funding-raising-nears081006729 Skip to the second-to-last paragraph. <comment><AUTHOR> Skip to the second to last paragraph.</comment>


Zimbabwean journalist who died of Covid-19 had no water, used bucket toilet - <AUTHOR> https://africafeeds.com/2020/03/24/zimbabwean-journalist-who-died-of-covid-19-had-no-water-used-bucket-toilet/ <comment><USER2> Zimbabwe is such a sad story.</comment>


The Aging of America - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/04/business/aging-population.html?hp <comment><USER2> Wow. There wasn't a baby boom, it was more of an earlier depression/war bust.</comment>