The War on the War on Death Begins - <AUTHOR> http://hplusmagazine.com/2013/12/02/the-war-on-the-war-on-death-begins/

<comment><USER4> > "Tell me, Harry," said the Headmaster (and now his voice sounded simply > puzzled, though there was still a hint of pain in his eyes), "why do Dark > Wizards fear death so greatly?"

> "Er," said Harry, "sorry, I've got to back the Dark Wizards on that one."

from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:

[http://hpmor.com/chapter/39](http://hpmor.com/chapter/39)

<comment><USER5> >"Okay," said Harry, "let me put it this way. Do you want to die? Because if so, there's this Muggle thing called a suicide prevention hotline -"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's something I like to point out any time the subject arises. Let's use 39 per 100,000 population as the current accidental death rate[0]. Perhaps you have reason to believe it is lower for you (you don't have a dangerous occupation, you aren't clumsy, etc. etc.) but that is hand-wavey and anyway you can consider it a rough order of magnitude.

Raise .9996 to 10,000th power and you find you will have a 2% chance of living 10,000 years. Raise it to the 100,000th and you get something very very close to zero.

You should also consider all the thousands of different rare diseases that we won't have figured out how to cure even if we do cure "ageing".

Long story short, you should be prepared to die at some point.

[0] [http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/leadingcauses.html](http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/leadingcauses.html)

<comment><USER7> Thought about that too, thats why i think the approach should be finding a way to transfer the human consciousness onto machines, or find a way to backup your mind. That has a whole different set of other ethical implications of course.

<comment><USER8> I say we should go as far as it's possible: multi-body eventually consistent minds distributed across galaxies.

<comment><USER7> NoSQL would be the obvious choice to implement this!

<comment><USER8> We will have something even less structured providing that the trend carries on. Perhaps one huge concatenated comma-separated string for everything?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh man, this one will be fun.

> Every person must die!

> But I don't want to die.

> But thou must!

> If that's your position, I respect that. I'll go on living and you can die, > even right now if you want to.

> Oh no no no, I don't want to die right now. I just want at some future > moment to have died and be dead and have checked off every one of life's > achievements, including death.

And it is at this point where I cannot continue this sarcastical mock- conversation -- it gets too surreal for me. As horrible as it sounds, at least the people who don't want to live past 80 will gradually die off and leave the rest of us to live.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be nice to spend trillions of dollars on eliminating death instead of spending it on pointless wars and other retarded stuff.

I don't understand how anyone would want to die. I believe when you die that's it. You cease to exist and rot in the ground until you decompose into nothing. How could you want that rather than to run around for a few thousand years at some prime age without pain or disease?

<comment><USER11> If people never die then we will never be able to see phrases like "retarded stuff" finally disappear.

<comment><USER12> Wow, a personal attack for a phrase you don't like, implicitly expressing joy over the prospect of a commenter's death - and you still got upvoted for it. Amazing what people get away with here lately.

<comment><USER11> Give me a break, "retarded" is beyond the realm of just being a phrase that I just don't like.

<comment><USER12> You mean the phrase is so bad that you wish for people who use it to die? Fuck you, seriously.

<comment><USER11> I mean it's completely offensive and outdated.

My original comment was suggesting that without a generational change via natural death, we may never see the sort of progress in our society that renders terms like "retarded" a thing of the past. The word "retarded" being a now derogatory term for people with a mental handicap.

Are you trolling me or do you just have your heart set on getting mad at me? It appears you've completely misunderstood my comments.

<comment><USER12> I'm not here to troll anyone (intentionally at least). Maybe I did misunderstand, but here's what it looks like from my perspective:

There is a huge group of new HN users who just come in here, deliver some poisonous comments, get upvoted for it, and then mostly move on. Here's how you fit that description: The thread's subject is death and life extension. A guy uses a word you really, really hate in a colloquial form. You answer the upside of death is that when he dies the word will hopefully get extinct with him. You get karma for, to use your words, trolling someone by being cheerful of their impending demise.

HN is unpredictable, and sadly you'll sometimes get rewarded for completely dickish behavior, such as expressing glib joy over the death of a fellow commenter. I believe you should not have gotten away with this so easily, because chances are you'll continue to exhibit this behavior here.

Of course you can always say that I'm not the content police and I should just fuck off instead of complaining about things I can't do anything about. However, I hope this will have some kind of impact on you. Using the word "retarded" sets you off, and expressing a wish for people to die sets me off. When you weigh those two, it should become apparent how different they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The recent Torchwood miniseries Miracle Day spent a good 6 episodes talking over this very point. It's worth watching, if only for some good speculative fiction about how humanity would really respond if we suddenly were immortal.

In short, we have a lot more pressing problems to address with the basic human condition before we make ourselves immortal... Removing things like homelessness and poverty would be more beneficial first steps (and ironically would go a long ways to increasing the average lifespan of our population).

<comment><USER12> There are always more pressing problems. There are always more pressing problems than, say, engaging in space flight, or do a lot of research.

In fact, there is a whole class of problems that cannot be meaningfully tackled by addressing them directly. I imagine a physician in the dark ages "treating" people suffering from acute pestilence would say there are more pressing concerns than research into invisible microbes. An aid worker in Africa fighting disease and poverty would say there are more pressing things than life extension and nanotechnology.

And then, unexpectedly to a lot of people, whole classes of problems just disappear because of the consequences of a newly discovered technology. Right now, fighting poverty with advanced 3D printers seems like lunacy or heresy, because our society is based on scarcity. Eliminating unwanted death and disease looks like a maniacal pipe dream that frightens a lot of people, because our civilization is based on death and superstition.

From a psychological perspective it's interesting that heroically fighting a losing battle against certain consequences of our deficiencies is considered good and honorable, while eliminating the root causes is strictly taboo.

As an aside, I liked Miracle Day (but not as much as The Children of Earth, by a long shot), but it portrays a very gruesome and technically implausible form of "immortality". It's clear why they chose to do it like this, because the whole plot hinged pretty much on the monstrosity of that effect. That's however not what it would look like if/when we become adept at life extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's something that I don't think gets discussed enough when this topic is risen. One reason why death is good is that the ideas of old people die with them. Often, it's the only way to scourge ourselves of bad ideas. Imagine a country of people still stuck in an 1850s mindset.

<comment><USER12> I believe the idea that people never change is probably somewhat misguided. Right now, as a culture we reward people for doubling down and never admitting to being wrong. And no matter how wrong a person is, if they are loud enough, they'll always have supporters.

That culture would probably begin to change with the advent of life extension, because you no longer have to make your life about one thing, this one card you have to choose once and then play until you're dead. I admit it's somewhat idealistic, but I hope we'd be more rational in the long term. Being alive does mean constant change.

But even if it doesn't turn out that way, there are certainly a lot of important voices we have lost over the centuries, a lot of ideas and thoughts that we never even got to hear about, and people who would have contributed great things if they had lived long enough. I for one would gladly live in a world where some ancient philosophers are still alive.

Let's go with the worst case and pick, oh let's say religious bigots, they'll somehow muster the intellect to extend their lives, remain prolific spouters of nonsense, and never change for 10000 years. It's a small price to pay to live in a society where I and the people I care about get to live 10000 years! I could just filter the bad elements out, just as I do today, and everything would be absolutely fine.

An argument could be made that those people are bad for society because they hinder progress or steer it in destructive directions. But on reflection, those people carrying 2000 year old ideas in their heads _are here and active in our society right now_ , and we're still moving forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I occasionally ask friends if they could take a pill to live forever, would they?

Most say No.

I then add that everyone else would have access to them too, so their friends and family would also be around. They think a bit more.

Some then say Yes, but some still say No.

I then say they'd go back to a 25 year old's body.

Then they pretty much all say Yes.

The war disappears as soon as you change the conversation. I'm from a secular country though, so I don't what the American Religious Right would say.

<comment><USER16> What does it takes to enjoy your first ice cream in life, second time?

<comment><USER17> What does it take to enjoy your first ice cream in mars? ..While it floats away, and you jump 25m vertically, to grab it with your lips? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Articles and discussions like this seem mostly like trying to comfort ourselves on the fact that in our lifetimes we probably won't clinically cure death.

It'll matter a lot more when we've actually done it, and we're asking people to stop living voluntarily.

<comment><USER19> > asking people to stop living voluntarily.

Haha, I would love to. Here's my argument: For any single living person "hogging" the universe, there are an infite number of possible persons waiting to get a shot at life. After a while of living, most people experience diminishing returns and get jaded. New people do not have that problem. So if you're really about _life_ , and not just for your own tiny little sliver and interpretation of it, the choice is clear. The extreme of that would be "Logan's Run", so I guess the optimimum is somewhere in between that, and a bunch of people living forever just because they're either scared or selfish.

<comment><USER8> Next step would be genetic engineering to make sure that "shots at life" are more successful. And of course all the people with low chance of success (e.g. < 80 IQ) should be put out of misery ASAP.

<comment><USER19> Right. Because getting more joy from the "tapestry of life" (to quote Asimov) than from purely concentrating on one's own, means you're not only into eugenics, but you're also a snob about sentience and intelligence. Speak for yourself there, I personally don't see what intelligence or even health has to do with it. I don't think we can tell others what quality of life they have, even people in pain enjoy the few nice moments they have, and want to live.

But if you think this through, then everybody living forever would mean hardly any newborns, unless you propose we all cover everything in concrete 10 miles high until we figured the whole swarming over the galaxy thing out. OR not everybody would be immortal, and it would likely devolve into a two-tiered society straight out of dystopia; take your pick, but don't fucking blame _me_ for you not thinking this through, and don't project the Frankenstein/Mengele possibilities of rushing into immortality headlong on me, either. Just nope.

<comment><USER18> Well if you consider the effect progress has on birthrates (they drop - <USER2> replacement rate in fact) then it seems likely that we have effectively unlimited time to delay having children, it's likely birth rates would get even lower.

However, clinical immortality isn't absolute - an on average we would survive about 250 years between fatal accidents.

One of the conclusions I've always thought we can draw from this is that it's a decent explanation of the apparent paucity of life zipping around the galaxy: civilizations discover immortality before they get warp travel or whatever, their birthrate drops to near zero and the population stabilizes so you get no exponential growth across the stars, and so relatively few of them are actually out exploring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ive been thinking alot about the ethics of it and its really hard. Personally id love to live forever but i am not sure if any form of meaningful live extension is due within my generation (i am 30 now). Probably not. Would be kind of sad to be the last gen to have normal lifespans though. On the other hand dying from non natural causes in a world like that would be even more dramatic.

<comment><USER20> You probably wouldn't want to be born into a world where no one dies. You'd have loads of old people with enormous wealth, and no incentive to give even a tiny bit of that to the young.

(And please don't say "taxes" ... How do you tax people who hold a massive insuperable block vote?)

<comment><USER21> With infinite life the entire concept of wealth changes then. At the moment most people work to better the lives of their offspring because that is how we handle mortality and immortality. You may not live forever but your genes and resources (money, property, photo albums) live on with your children and grandchildren.

With no reason to save I could do whatever I wanted. Walk all the way to Everest, swim the Atlantic, tell my boss to fuck off. As for wealth, I'd spend decades hacking into bank accounts, because why not? What are they going to do send me to prison?

If we could all be immortal it would kinda suck to be wealthy. No one would need your wealth, and if you they did you'd spend all your time trying to protect.

<comment><USER22> > With no reason to save I could do whatever I wanted.

You still need to pay for food, clothes, housing etc. As a minimum you will have to sign contracts that bind you to a job for a minimum amount of time (probably years). Someone will have to "keep the wheels turning". You want someone to pick up your garbage, pave the roads and other necessities.

Who would want to do that without getting something back? The world would have to change. Probably by introducing forced labour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Callahan seems in no hurry to let his own death have its day, and I can't > blame him.

Reminds me of a (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) warning against the universal condemnation of suicide that those who have discovered the most compelling arguments for it aren't around to give it a proper defense.

</comment><comment><USER7> How about transferring human consciousness onto machines? I think its much more probable than to stop the human body from aging and its also more secure. Id at least have two offsite backups of my mind somewhere, just in case you know. And dont forget the encryption in case the NSA gets ahold of it!

<comment><USER24> The idea is usually to approach several paths (e.g., regenerative or rejuvenative medicine, mind uploading) in parallel, because we have only so much time and there's no guarantee that the one we'd prefer will work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As long as humans are so forgetful, people will experience forever, which is a good reason to live forever.

</comment><comment><USER26> Three conditions would make life extension practical for me.

1) Cost of living becomes negligible or earning a living is still possible at 100+. 2) The additional years are healthy ones. 3) Breeding is reduced or resource availability is increased.

But even then, I think Asimov's premise that a longer-lived person doesn't have the urgency of a shorter-lived person has merit (The Naked Sun.)

If you have hundreds of years to live, why do something risky (or even expressive) RIGHT NOW?

<comment><USER27> > If you have hundreds of years to live, why do something risky (or even > expressive) RIGHT NOW?

If we transitioned into a post-scarcity society (your point 1), then why do we need people to take risks? How about a society living for self-actualisation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What would we need more life for? To consume more experiences, people and things? Do you really need 100 years to become what you are, learn empathy and letting go, and to get some perspective? Personally I think if you can't hack it in 50 years, you can't hack it in 5000 either. Health is nice, youth is fun, but living longer for the sake of living longer is something I pity rather than envy.

<comment><USER28> Status quo bias much?

If there are things worth living for and important to learn, it is incredibly illogical to postulate there there is a maximum length of lifetime after which they aren't desirable/important anymore. Especially one that just happens to be the currently normal one.

How would you react to the assertion that 20 years of adult life are enough to experience everything worth experiencing and everyone who doesn't commit suicide at 40 is greedy and pitiable.

<comment><USER19> > Status quo bias much?

Randomness much? You could say that to _anything_ said in response to a proposed change. Why is there no possible explanation for what I said in your mind? Why jump to something I can't possibly prove to not be the case, and which adds and asks nothing, right away?

I don't like the status quo in a thousand aspects. But from where I stand, stuff like this is an _extension_ of the status quo, not a meaningful change, it's just another step down the rabbit hole of selfishness and delusion. And it's one I have been waiting for since the 90s, I was always astonished by the creepyness and emptyness of the people talking about such stuff, at least the ones I saw on TV. They talked about learning more languages or traveling a lot, and oh yeah, more time for shopping. It's gonna be great. We will _never_ have to stop consuming!

I don't have anything against longer lifespans per se. I just also smell the petty spirit of this current dream. I see the people ruling this planet, I see our societies, and I say good luck.

By the way, we already live in a world in which people can get locked up and have their shoelaces and belts taken away. Are you really worried about people telling others to stop living? I wouldn't dream of that; but the idea of being forced to live, now there's some scary fucking shit. Let's assume costs go towards zero; fuck prison, let's put people in the eternal hell our forefathers dreamed up.

Nope, not envious. Not envious at all. Just, once again, thinking real hard about wether I want to have children.

On the plus side, combined with automation and current concentrations of power and wealth, what do you think would happen if the rich and powerful knew they could live forever? Do you really think they would share the already burdened and stinky planet with _everybody_? Haha! Oh wait, you're serious; let me curl up and cry.

> If there are things worth living for and important to learn

I agree. I also still remember one night realizing that I will die one day, and that ENDLESS amounts of cool stuff, like discovering the universe and meeting aliens, will happen while I will simply not exist anymore... that was the first time in my life I felt real deep grief, incurable grief, I cried so hard. Thankfully I had no idea about the heat death of the universe then ^^ But on the other hand, I was a kid...

> it is incredibly illogical to postulate there there is a maximum length of > lifetime after which they aren't desirable/important anymore.

... and as I grew up, I intellectually came to "know" (as far as anyone can claim that about anything) that there is no free will, that everything is everything period, and all subdivisions just constructs and ultimately delusions. If you can reason about this and come to other conclusions, I'd love to hear them.

Although I'm far from achieving realisation of that, I think ultimately ego is just a fever to be overcome, that a joy and peace are to be found that way which are without equal, from what I can tell so far from random bright moments of the soul. And I think I can be forgiven for assuming that once one has overcome their ego, life and death and "doing important things" kinda loose their weight, since why would it be so terribly important that _I_ do an important thing? If I still have to be continually fed with experiences, peoples and things, I still haven't found liberation and peace. Like Plutarch said, the mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled. Like Erich Fromm said, to have or to be.

50 years for that just sounded good, I wasn't actually trying to name a hard limit here, but I guess the whole point was lost on you anyway. I wasn't talking of lifespan either, but about 50 years to "become yourself, learn empathy, get perspective", etc.

You also have to consider that 5000 years doesn't just mean having 5000 years to go into whatever you would consider a good direction. It could also mean 5000 years to become more sadistic, intellectually dishonest, good at sociopathy, crazy, sad -- my point being, that in my books, if you go a good way, you trend towards a happy and content center, of both yourself and the universe, and once you roughly reached it, you only settle in better, but don't really move far away from it anymore. On the other hand, if you do NOT go a good way, you can basically run into the woods as far as you can run for as long as you live, build better and better walls and illusions. I'd even say the more deranged people are the more driven they are... Noam Chomsky is a super busy bee, but not really _driven_ , like, say, Steve Ballmer.

I'd be the first to agree I'm a simpleton in the black and white way I think about this stuff but it's simply false that I just "want stuff to stay as it is for the sake of stuff staying as it is". You don't know me, at all, and the fact that you come out with such a cheap shot right away says more about your end of the conversation than mine. Even if I'm utterly wrong and misguided, it's not for that reason.

> How would you react to the assertion that 20 years of adult life are enough > to experience everything worth experiencing and everyone who doesn't commit > suicide at 40 is greedy and pitiable.

I already said I wouldn't agree with that, see the reference to "Logan's run".

But hey, let's say there is a pill tomorrow which makes you immortal (and, while we're at it, physically invincible) for 5000000000 years - would you take it? If not, you agree that there is _some_ point beyond which it might not be desirable to live, at least not with our current psychological makeup, right?. 100 years, 1000, 10000, 100000000000 etc... we could squabble about that, and I think it really depends on what you consider worthy aims in life, and how you consider your importance versus others who live or could live - <USER3> tried to roughly answer that for myself, I appreciate that the mileage of others may vary, but I also reserve the right to frown upon some of the motivations and horizons that are to be found out there. Simply put, we're still stunted children in the big scheme of things, and to become immortal _now_ would be the worst curse imaginable. It's not just the nice people, you know. It's not just you and your friends and Kurzweil. It's Henry Fucking Kissinger and Schwarzenegger, too. All the artists and actors who just don't know when to quit in dignity - forever.

And the people who are already ruthless cutthroats will react in a very predictable way to the stakes suddenly getting a lot higher. No more philantropy near the end of your lifetime, now it's literally the winner takes all. _Good luck with all that, you 'll need it._

<comment><USER27> I don't think anyone's suggesting you should be forced to live forever (physical invincibility) - just that dying is no longer forced upon you.

Presumably in 80 years the Buddha's mind stopped being a fire being kindled? Do you think he would mind living longer? I don't. I think rather that he would use that extra time wisely.

In fact, that's the general conclusion I come to about people: given long enough, people would probably become wiser, not more evil. Some would get there earlier, but I think everyone would get there in the end.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Potential Facebook Security Flaw - <AUTHOR> http://blog.screenreach.com/facebook-security-potential-flaw/

<comment> mike-cardwell I don't consider this a Facebook security flaw. The person with the Facebook account added your email address to their profile.

It's tantamount to them giving you a copy of their house key, you using it to get into the house, and then stating that there is a security flaw in the door.

<comment><USER2> What happens if someone gets access to your email though? For example, a silly person might forget to logout of their email when using a public computer. If I notice this, I can just hijack their Facebook account.

<comment> mike-cardwell You're kidding right? If you get access to somebody's email account then all bets are off. You could take over somebody's HackerNews account exactly the same way. You could take over accounts on _most_ websites this way...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty shocking. What sites don't verify emails in 2020?

<comment><USER4> Umm 2020?

Interesting story though, and one more thing that would make me concerned about having a FB account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I raised the same question as the the first commenter on this post a few months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341852></comment>


Device Stitches You Up Without the Need for Stitches - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/asb4do/this_device_stitches_you_up_without_the_need_of/ <comment><USER2> $30! Wow. Sorry - i'll stick with duct tape and superglue.

They seem to think I'm going to use this instead of going to the ER??? No. I'm going to patch myself up with it then take myself to the ER to get it done properly.

Great idea - wrong marketing.

</comment><comment><USER3> For small cuts super glue will work better than this. For complex, dirty or deep lacerations, this will not be good. We still use sutures for a reason, despite the fact it takes us longer to put them in.</comment>


Black holes do not exist where space and time do not exist, says new theory - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-01-black-holes-space-theory.html <comment><USER2> I've never heard of "gravity's rainbow". It seems that it's what happens when one derives general relativity using "doubly special relativity" instead of normal special relativity. I hadn't heard of "doubly special relativity" either.

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

It seems to have been around for at least ten years but perhaps never gained much traction. In short, this seems like it may be an interesting result that only applies in a fringe variation of accepted modern theory. Perhaps someone with actual training in physics can comment in more detail.

<comment><USER3> This isn't a "fringe" variation in any but the sociological sense. I hadn't heard of either of these ideas until today, but my first thought was, "Yeah, that makes sense" (I'm a physicist, but not a gravity person.)

If you believe in the Planck scale (and almost everyone does) then incorporating it into SR as an "observer independent maximum energy" that is comparable to the usual "observer independent maximum velocity" is a very natural thing to do.

The theory might not have got much play, but this result will definitely increase interest because the black hole information paradox is a pain. However: the amount of interest a theory gets does not reflect the likelihood that it is correct. Caloric was once a very popular idea. Currently string theory is. Tomorrow maybe "extra special relativity" will be.

<comment><USER4> >If you believe in the Planck scale (and almost everyone does)

What? The idea that spacetime is quantized is most definitely not widely accepted. Spacetime is presumed to be continuous by basically every mainstream physicist (though most will admit that we don't have conclusive evidence either way, we only know that spacetime is not quantized down to a certain scale (which is short of the planck length by a good deal)). I personally think spacetime is quantized, but the only physicists pursuing the consequences of such an idea tend to be the fringe ones...

<comment><USER3> I should have said "take seriously" rather than "believe in". Most people take the notion seriously, for some value of "seriously". It's not a binary state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a physics PhD I feel like an idiot for accepting the theory of the classical black hole.

If you write the equations for the space around a black hole in the straightforward way you see a singularity at the event horizon. You can make a coordinate change that makes this singularity go away, but then you get the classical black hole singularity where there is either an "end of time" or an infinitely dense point or ring.

Physicists believed that this coordinate transformation was valid but it is not because it infinitely stretches space/time which at some point will blow up the Planck scale to be visible, at which point something completely indescribable happens -- it might be something like DSR or it might be different, but you void any warranty on the space time continuation, so the classical black hole is science fiction.

The obvious semiclasicalization is for the infinitely dense singularity to become a highly dense object which has some dimensions on the length of the Planck scale, but no model of quantum black hole using actual quantum gravity looks like that at all.

We don't have a "complete" theory of quantum gravity but we do have a number of competing partial theories, and we can already make some strong conclusions, such as holography, that are generic to many or any QG models. Underlying this are principles such as unitarity (unitarity is pretty much the one thing you need to make QM work) that means no information is lost when stuff falls in a black hole and that can't be reconciled with the mass being concentrated all in one place.

<comment><USER6> As _not_ a physics PhD it seems so much easier to realize that GR's equivalence principle fails at the event horizon, in which case black holes are a mistake of GR. (Let downvotes commence since I must be a crackpot.)

Let a particle be above the horizon and escaping to infinity, as GR allows. By definition of a black hole, a signal can't be sent from below the horizon to the escaping particle. In an inertial frame, signals can be sent between any two points in the frame. Then an inertial frame relative to which the escaping particle is at rest can't extend below the horizon. That's a violation of the equivalence principle, because (we'll call this law of physics K:) inertial frames can wholly contain other inertial frames, and the inner frames can be extended to fill all of the outer frame. But as we've proven, a frame falling through the horizon of a black hole violates law K. An inertial frame relative to which the escaping particle is at rest _cannot_ be extended to fill all of a frame falling through the horizon. Texts on GR tell us that an inertial frame can fall through the horizon, but we've just proven that such frame cannot be inertial without violating the equivalence principle. That principle is the core of GR, so black holes need be rejected as a mistake of the theory.

Black holes are predicted by the Schwarzschild metric. That metric can be tweaked to not predict black holes, while still agreeing with all physical experiments of Schwarzschild geometry to date. In the tweaked metric the escape velocity is always less than the speed of light (including at r < 2M), so that escape is always possible in principle. Singularities vanish (with escape always possible, no body need implode to one), so no quantum gravity is needed to make GR compatible with QM, and much better agreement to Occam's razor. Also solves the black hole information loss paradox.

Please downvote this major advance of physics if you haven't already.

<comment><USER7> I don't completely understand the argument you're making, so please correct me if I'm misunderstanding you, but I think I see the problem.

It is true that in an inertial frame you can send a signal between two points. But if you have an inertial frame which is falling into a black hole any signal sent from beneath the event horizon will not reach any other point until that point has _also_ fallen beneath the event horizon.

Remember that the inertial frame is in free fall, so points which are fixed in the inertial frame are moving according to a distant observer.

<comment><USER6> > But if you have an inertial frame which is falling into a black hole any > signal sent from beneath the event horizon will not reach any other point > until that point has also fallen beneath the event horizon.

Problem is, the escaping particle never falls beneath the horizon. So an inertial frame in which that particle is at rest cannot extend below the horizon _at all_. That's a violation of law K for a frame falling into a black hole. By violating law K, the latter frame cannot be inertial. Note that law K is about allowing inner frames be extended to fill all of an outer frame.

Let a cloud of particles straddle the horizon. Let all the particles above the horizon be escaping to infinity. According to GR, such cloud must be splitting apart. The particles below the horizon must move inexorably inward, toward the singularity at the center of the black hole, whilst the particles above the horizon move ever outward, away from the black hole. Then a frame falling through the horizon of a black hole cannot be inertial, for in an inertial frame the cloud needn't be splitting apart (since law K applies). For example, in an inertial frame in Earth's atmosphere you can have a cloud of particles in which half the particles are given to be escaping to infinity, and the cloud needn't be splitting apart (just let all the particles escape in formation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where is it that space does not exist? The headline seems like a contradiction in terms.

<comment><USER9> Your question, actually, is self-contradictory. "Where" already assumes space.

<comment><USER10> I believe that was the point. The article title makes the same mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11>
       "In gravity's rainbow, space does not exist below a certain minimum length, and time does not exist below a certain minimum time interval"

Does this imply that neither space nor time can go below the given threshold independently? I.e.: could a situation be imagined where time remains above the minimal interval, but space is below? Also, would those answers be different depending on the observer's time / position?

<comment><USER12> I had never head of anything like this. Does that mean that space and time are somehow discrete instead of continuous?

<comment><USER3> They have a scale. They are not "discrete" in the sense that pixels are discrete because there is no grid (no orientation, no preferred direction, etc).

Think of it like the resolution of a microscope: you can only see objects down to scales of 1 micron, say. That doesn't make what you are looking at discrete at the 1 micron level. It makes it blurry (invisible, or in the case of space and time, non-existent) below that level.

<comment><USER5> How it shows up depends on the model. Superstrings are objects of (usually) Planckian size, so if the particles are the size of the "grain" then that is one way a scale could manifest.

In other models like loops quantum gravity you can only ask questions about loops in space and not about points so that is another way the scale manigests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having so little evidence and information about the phenomena [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#Observational_eviden...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#Observational_evidence) the entire theory around black holes is a mathematical model that probably has nothing to do with the real phenomena.

<comment><USER3> Absence of information in Wikipedia isn't very good evidence that there isn't very much evidence.

Black holes can be observed in multiple ways:

1) radiation from infalling matter 2) gravitational lensing 3) dynamics of orbiting objects

Remember: we not see the moon by its own light. We see the moon by the light it reflects from the sun. That reflected light is a direct causal consequence of the moon's existence, and we quite properly take it as such... even though the moon emits no light of its own.

No one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever suggested we ought to treat the evidence for the Moon as scanty or inadequate on this basis. So the fact that the radiation we see from black holes originates from the heat of infalling matter, which is a direct causal consequence of the black hole's existence, should constitute similarly strong evidence.

Lensing and dynamical measurements are also quite direct, strong and compelling. There exist compact bodies with more than 1.4 solar masses, which is the limit for nuclear matter (we would have to be wrong about quite a lot of nuclear physics for this to be otherwise.)

The question is: what is the best theory to describe black holes, given we know based on this deep and broad evidence that they exist? Currently we have a rough combination of GR and quantum theory, and while the theory has issues, the claim it "probably has nothing to do with the real phenomenon" is minimally plausible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wouldn't something like the uncertaintity principle mean information is destroyed all the time?

I don't see how you can find an earlier state from knowing the current state since you can't know position and momentum, right?

<comment><USER15> The uncertainty principle doesn't imply that any information is being destroyed, it implies that there is a limit to the amount of information you have. Position and momentum are things that you derive from the available information. You just can't use the same limited pool of information to derive the both in a way that would use more information than you have.

>I don't see how you can find an earlier state from knowing the current state since you can't know position and momentum, right?

State has little to do with position and momentum directly, but the underlying information. We use those concepts to indirectly refer to state, but state is more fundamental. Information arises from a correlation between states, and position and momentum are different measures of this correlation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Could it be that when space and time get stretched beyond the Planck interval, then the black hole ceases to exist at all beyond that point? In other words, the center of a black hole is non-existence itself.

Looking at it from the time angle, we all blink in and out of existence constantly. But when time and space gets stretched too far, it becomes impossible to blink back into existence, as if the process runs out of gas if the out-of-existence time period is too long.

</comment><comment><USER14> Would this imply hawking radiation doesn't exist? Can we no longer use black holes as a potential energy source?

<comment><USER3> On a quick read before I've entirely finished my morning coffee, Hawking radiation will still exist.

The argument seems to go like this:

1) the event horizon in GR is _infinitely sharp_ 2) gravity's rainbow implies nothing can be infinitely sharp (because that requires space and time to exist on scales below the Planck scale) 3) therefore gravity's rainbow implies the event horizon does not exist _at those scales_

Above those scales, something that looks very much like the event horizon still exists. The time taken to fall into a black hole will still be very long, just not infinite. Presumably the details of the theory show how this happens, which is the interesting bit. It's one thing to say "Hey, maybe the horizon is smooth or doesn't exist at small scales!" but to be useful the theory has to show how reality will actually behave if that is the case.

With regard to using black holes as power sources: if we have the technology to do that we'd be unlikely to need black holes as power sources.

<comment><USER14> I didn't see what about your explanation says why hawking radiation would still exist? It's caused by particle-anti particle pairs being created with one on each side of the event horizon, no?

<comment><USER3> When I first posted that response I was thinking that the scale that mattered was the compton wavelength of the particles being emitted, but having actually finished my coffee now I'm no longer so sure. My point was that so long as the horizon is sufficiently fine on the scale of the particle's compton wavelength then hawking radiation can still be emitted, even granted the horizon is not infinitely fine. This may be correct, or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article looks like one big paradox that shouldn't actually exist.</comment>


Sarco: 3D-Printed Suicide Coffin - <AUTHOR> https://exitinternational.net/sarco/ <comment><USER2> So it's free and 3D printable... but if you read the FAQ, it talks about having an AI-based system to ensure it isn't misused (sure, let's add AI to it) and that you'll have to take a test online to prove you know what you are doing to get a code to activate it.

Pretty sure if someone can build this they can leave out the safeguards.</comment>


Why It Took Us Two Months to Rebrand ChallengePost to Devpost - <AUTHOR> http://blog.underdog.io/post/129780533362/why-it-took-us-two-months-to-rebrand-challengepost <comment><AUTHOR> This is a great article. You don't usually think about all the engineering tasks behind a company rebranding.

<comment><USER2> Thanks Brett,

Branding -- and rebranding -- are big tasks at any company. I hope founders keep that in mind when dropping vowels out of words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really took 6 months if you factor in design/marketing work.</comment>


Netflix Hiring Practices and Benefits - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_39/b4051059.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily Netflix offers unlimited vacations, you structure your own compensation packages and more. And they pay (apparently) much higher than industry standards in the Valley. <comment><USER2> Did they bother talking to any Netflix Shipping Center pickers? I'd imagine that's a significant chunk of employees/temps that they employ.

Via: <http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2007/02/working_for_net.html>

"After working at Netflix for a while, it starts to get boring and it really brings your emotion down since there's not many interactions with your fellow coworkers, like for me, sometimes I feel really shitty after shipping for about three and a half hours and that's why I try to do many talking, walking during our breaks."

Just a small sample size, but I could imagine that job sucks a pretty big one, especially if your manager/quota-bot is on your ass 24/7.

<comment><USER3> This is my objection to many "high-tech" companies: in many cases it boils down to grunt work, mindless labor. I don't want to get rich off the backs of poor people doing menial jobs. I think moving humanity forward is going to involve obviating exploitation, and if you're not doing something progressive then you're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Rah-rah" HR articles are just another form of marketing for the company.

I used to pay attention to the "Canada's Top 100 Employers List" until I noticed McDonald's was on it.</comment>


A stress relief site to stay calm and carry on - <AUTHOR> http://soundtocalm.com/?cooler <comment><AUTHOR> CSS waves of colors are just amazing)</comment>


Ask HN: What side-projects have you been experimenting with in your spare time? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I would normally say shameless promotion:

But you asked! I'm working on this website called BrainAB[1]. It's an intuitive way to search for and download classic ebooks.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool!</comment></comment>


A Field Guide to Finding Fossils on Mars - <AUTHOR> https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2017JE005478 <comment><USER2> I once read someone stating that one geologist with a hammer could could do more science in an afternoon, than all of our rover missions have done combined. We wouldn't have known about the moon glass beads if we hadn't gone there to stumble upon them. Who knows how many wonderful discoveries Mars has waiting for us. Fossils would definitely be on the top of my wish list.

<comment><USER3> It would be truly shocking of macro-scale fossils visible to the naked eye were found (although perhaps fossils of large microbial mattes or films could be found that way?) I suspect fossil hunting on Mars would require a microscope, though I would expect there to be a lot of more mundane geology work a geologist with a hammer could get done quickly.</comment></comment>


Student Team Wins Amazon Alexa Artificial Intelligence Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/student-team-wins-amazon-alexa-artificial-intelligence-challenge/ <comment><USER2> Just glancing through the teams it looks like UCD was the only team with a member (Chun-Yen C) that has industry experience. Everyone else pretty much stayed inside academia. Wonder how much of a factor that was to their success.

<comment><USER3> The teams were _selected_ to compete.

I wonder if a team heavy on industry experience would have been _selected_ compete.

Also, I wonder what Amazon gains from this? My cynical hat wants to think Amazon would have made the competitors sight over IP rights etc, but I haven't looked in to the conditions of the completion so I'm spectacularly.

Does anyone know how this is likely to pan out for the students, and not only those who won? Each team was given US$250,000, so it's sort of _paid work_?

I don't particularly have a problem with a company fielding skills in that way, just pondering.

1\. [https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/9f406f35-c997-...](https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/9f406f35-c997-4d17-a6ac-89a35f69b661/announcing- the-2018-alexa-prize-participants)

<comment><USER4> >Amazon would have made the competitors sight over IP rights etc,

I would like to know this too. I think that since it is an academic competition, by default everything is open source and the method must be fully outlined in the system description paper, so I don't think IP would be an issue.

<comment><USER5> Just because something is open source doesn't mean the IP is granted to everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> B-Con Glad to see my alma mater doing well.

> Some of the distinguishing features of the bot included incorporating > language disfluencies — pauses such as "hm" or "ah."

Note that Google recently faced backlash over this very feature demoed in their Virtual Assistant. I'm guessing that public sentiment won't last long, it's a natural part of human language and it feels funny when it's missing.

<comment><USER6> Each confrontation of the uncanny valley is an uncomfortable experience that gives us pause and causes us to consider the dangers of interacting with AI. It's a healthy learning experience that will linger with any part of the population that already distrusts AI. Since you probably want to sell to those people too, why not make allowances?

Disfluencies and breath sounds are peculiar when they're missing from human speech, so not injecting them into AI speech would be an easy design choice to distinguish a speaker as artificial, perfect for Virtual Assistants. For theatrical functions, in video games and movies, it makes sense to add as many human vocal quirks as possible, even the occasional resonance obstructions to simulate colds or a whistle for gap teeth.

<comment><USER7> I think you're trying to project and are seeing more than what there really is.

For 99,9% of the people who have an issue with such things it's not about "oh, it's hiding very well as a human and could take over, I distrust AI more due to it".

It's about the uncanny valley problem of our brain being pattern matcher, and having difficulties classifying the AI using these new features as the "human pattern" or the "AI pattern" and so we don't like it / feel weirded out by it. Give it a few years and suddenly it has become part of the AI pattern and all is well.

I'm not saying distrust toward AI is growing or not growing, but that it doesn't even play at all in the public reaction to such AI features.

<comment><USER6> I hope I'm not projecting a distrust of simulacrum. I distrust other humans, not our tools. But I'm not oblivious to my bubble and people outside it that have no idea how these tools work or how others might use them to their direct/indirect disadvantage. People create stories to explain their losses and sometimes blame tools.

I understand the uncanny valley as a product of a pattern matching exercise that humans developed well before we encountered AI. A part of our "friend or foe", "like me or unlike me" mechanism. If a user considers the tool a "potential foe" (for instance, a customer service resolution bot) every shallow attempt by the tool to approximate "friend" could further alienating the user. I don't think the "weird feeling" just goes away at that point.

I'm also pretty sure that we're going to be in the uncanny valley for long enough to make use of that "weird feeling" for effect outside of fiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Weird that a university press release wouldn't make it easy to find actual details for work in question, but a few links deep you can find a paper on the winner:

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/dex-microsites- prod/alexaprize/2018...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/dex-microsites- prod/alexaprize/2018/papers/Gunrock.pdf)

> Gunrock: Building A Human-Like Social Bot By Leveraging Large Scale Real > User Data

Abstract:

> Gunrock is a social bot designed to engage users in open domain > conversations. We improved our bot iteratively using large scale user > interaction data to be more capable and human-like. Our system engaged in > over 40, 000 conversations during the semi-finals period of the 2018 Alexa > Prize. We developed a context-aware hierarchical dialog manager to handle a > wide variety of user behaviors, such as topic switching and question > answering. In addition, we designed a robust threestep natural language > understanding module, which includes techniques such as sentence > segmentation and automatic speech recognition (ASR) error correction. > Furthermore, we improve the human-likeness of the system by adding prosodic > speech synthesis. As a result of our many contributions and large scale user > interactions analysis, we achieved an average score of 3.62 on a 1 − 5 > Likert scale on Oct 14th. Additionally, we achieved an average of 22.14 > number of turns and a 5.22 minutes conversation duration.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have a recording of the 9 minute conversation? Would love to hear how this sounded in person. Tried to find it on Youtube and Google, no luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> Czech Technical University number 2!

The teams site [http://alquistai.com](http://alquistai.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> Prof. Zhou Yu explains her work on Situated Intelligent Interactive Systems here. You might find this useful.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39T9ukI9HnQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39T9ukI9HnQ)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is the used dataset with conversations available somewhere? What about the model architecture?

</comment><comment><USER13> You can test a few of these by saying "Alexa, talk to me"

</comment><comment><USER14> So, is 10 minutes enough to pass a Turing test, assuming speech counts equally to typed text? Or is that question like asking if a submarine can dog-paddle?

</comment><comment><USER15> The Grand Challenge, of maintaining a coherent and engaging conversation for 20 minutes, still remains. As does a $1 million unrestricted gift which will be awarded to the winning team's university, if their socialbot meets this challenge...

</comment><comment><USER16> It would be nice to see more details on the method they used.

</comment><comment><USER17> Have they made the architecture of this bot public ?</comment>


Social Finance Faces Sexual Harassment Claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/business/social-finance-sofi-sexual-harassment-lawsuit.html <comment><USER2> Wouldn't it be helpful to look at these in isolation?

Corporations routinely have these disagreements and dissatisfactions regardless of the sector.

"Another Silicon Valley Startup" versus just an article about SoFi?

Implying a pandemic of sexual harassment would seemingly indict corporate America as a whole, and it would be disingenuous to go sector by sector if the intention was to reveal the news.

<comment><USER3> Looking at these in isolation might give some the mistaken impression that these instances of workplace sexism and harassment are isolated incidents. When viewed as a whole, it's clearly a problem for software engineering (as people in the field have been claiming for years). In fact, I'd be willing to bet that we'll soon see comments full of anecdotes from people who have never seen sexism or this kind of harassment in their workplaces claiming that there is no problem. Or implying that this is somehow not all bad.

For sure this is an issue in many fields, but software engineering seems to be the only one in which people proudly proclaim there is no problem, despite the increasing number of reports to the contrary.

<comment><USER4> > I'd be willing to bet that we'll soon see comments full of anecdotes from > people who have never seen sexism or this kind of harassment in their > workplaces claiming that there is no problem.

I think this happens because people generally believe that a anecdote confirming the null hypothesis serves as evidence for that hypothesis. It's one of the best examples of something that scientists, engineers, and so- called "logical" thinkers screw up on a day-to-day basis.

In other words, suppose I claim that some days a subset of the population can see the earth's sky as green, rather than blue. My null hypothesis in this case is that the sky is blue and always will be for all people at all times. Finding several anecdotes from people who have seen the sky blue can never confirm my null hypothesis. They may have simply never seen the sky green.

In statistics, we can sort of work around this problem with p-tests or confidence intervals. In interactions with normal humans, I like to take the personal approach of always putting a little more weight in anecdotes that push against the null hypothesis. Just because they're contrarian, it doesn't mean their argument is more valid, but when you encounter something "outside of the norm" it's worth evaluating whether your sense of "normal" is more biased than you might think.

<comment><USER5> Erm, what? Encountering normalcy is evidence for things being normal. It might be weak evidence - after all, the "sometimes some people see the sky green" also predicts a lot of sky-looks-blue. But it's still evidence, you can't just throw it out because you've labeled it the "null hypothesis".

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying you throw it out. Read more carefully, don't put words in my mouth please.

> Finding several anecdotes from people who have seen the sky blue can never > confirm my null hypothesis

were my words exactly. May I ask what issue you take with this wording? In your counter, you misinterpreted this and claim that I throw evidence out. My actual claim is such anecdotes actually do not serve as well as evidence.

As you said, you cannot throw out such evidence, and I agree. You seem to have misunderstood what I meant.

More importantly, you then fall prey to the exact logical fallacy I'm discussing while trying to counter me:

> Encountering normalcy is evidence for things being normal

False. False. False. False. This is legit the encapsulation of what makes this a fallacy. Consider the following thought experiment:

Suppose I give you a black box, and I ask you to prove to me that this machine works perfectly. You sit down and watch the machine, and you can verify that it is working perfectly right now. It is now logically impossible to prove the machine works perfectly at all times, however, because you lack any evidence the machine does not operate normally. You could watch the machine all day, and all night, for eternity, till the stars die in the sky. At any point while watching it, would you claim that you now have evidence the machine always operates normally? How do you know I haven't programmed it to break the instant you turn away from it? Or the instant you stop observing it? There's no way to know for sure...so do you have any evidence it's performing perfectly?

Anecdotal evidence is very similar. Many anecdotes re-affirming that all is working as planned don't tell me anything because that is the "null hypothesis". I take issue with your wording "because you labeled it the null hypothesis". I didn't label one or the other maliciously or even intentionally. The definition of the null hypothesis is (in my experience, I'm not a mathematician by trade) the scenario which is the "default" or "normal" or "expected". This fits both the scenario I gave and the analogy I make.

Again, I'm not saying I'm "throwing out" such evidence. In actual human interactions, we cannot swing the pendulum entirely the other direction and simply ignore and throw any evidence that confirms the "normal" either. In such a case, we would be making the exact same logical error except in reverse. I'm just trying to point to a general guideline based upon statistics and our usage of the null hypothesis within it.

Mathematical ideas do not map perfectly to worldly ones, but they serve as useful tools and models. In this case, I use my model to remind myself to consider anecdotes that are "abnormal" or "beyond the norm" as more important evidence since these "abnormal" events are the very things I want to be able to recognize.

A more rough "human" example might be: Say you give your cancer test results to five random doctors, and 4 of them say you're okay as expected, but one says you have cancer. My point is that the fifth doctor's evidence is more "important" (in a human, not mathematical way) to me than the other four. He could have found something they all missed.

<comment><USER5> I think we actually agree - if competing theories both expect a lot of "normal" to happen, you make much smaller updates on "normal" than on "abnormal". What I take issue with in particular is:

>I think this happens because people generally believe that a anecdote confirming the null hypothesis serves as evidence for that hypothesis.

It is evidence. It's not much evidence, and it's evidence you should expect from "unusual things sometimes happen"-type hypotheses, but it is evidence.

Maybe the phrasing I want is something like "People generally believe that anecdotes consistent with multiple theories help distinguish them". Dunno. Probably a lot of this is just Bayesian vs Frequentist worldviews talking past each other.

>It is now logically impossible to prove the machine works perfectly at all times

It's logically impossible to prove anything at 100% certainty. The best you can do is gather more observations and make incremental updates each time. I can give you what my belief is that my next observation will say that everything is fine (if I don't know anything else, it's Laplace's Rule of Succession - if I observe it 100 times at it all works, my confidence level for the next time is 101/102).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are these types of cases based on contingency?</comment>


Oumuamua continues to perplex astronomers a year after it vanished - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/oumuamua-interstellar-space-rock-alien-spaceship-evidence-2019-1 <comment><USER2> I really recommend this Ars Technica podcast that features a long and in-depth interview with Avi Loeb:

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/nailing-down-the- nat...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/nailing-down-the-nature-of- oumuamua-its-probably-a-comet-but/)

He makes a pretty convincing case that there are several highly unusual properties of Oumaumau that makes it reasonable to hypothesize that it is of unnatural origin. Whether or not you're convinced, you'll at least come away much better informed about his arguments that from the soundbite back-and- forth that passes for debate in articles like the BI one.

<comment><USER3> Avi Leob is THE person.

You might find also interesting his interview on Rob Reid's podcast: [https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/040](https://after- on.com/episodes-31-60/040)

<comment><USER4> I believe that is the same audio in the linked article. They said it's an Ars podcast but it's After On.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps a dumb question but...

"The mysterious object flew within about 15 million miles of our planet on October 14.

But it wasn't until four days later that humanity finally spotted it in telescope data."

How do we know any of this if we didn't see it until later? Or are we just reverse extrapolating it's orbital path from what we saw later?

<comment><USER6> In general, most laws of physics are reversible, so extrapolation backwards is as accurate as extrapolation forwards. In the case where it's just mostly motion and gravity, we can do it rather accurately.

<comment><USER5> I know that, but that makes the assumption that the flight path was unaffected by external forces. How is this distinguishable from, say, an alien spacecraft seeing it was spotted, boomeranging around the Sun, and exiting the solar system?

*Wow, sorry. Guess I'm a conspiracy nutjob for skiing an innocent question.

<comment><USER7> Theoretically we can't distinguish them. But then again, if CCTV shows a hooded guy exiting your shop's front door at 4 am, it would be safe to assume that the same guy entered the shop some time before that, even though theoretically it could be an alien lifeform teleported into your shop out of thin air.

It's never aliens. (Until we actually find them, of course.)

<comment><USER5> Seems more akin to saying, since we see this runner on the track, he must have been running around the track for an undeterminable period of the past time. It's just as possible that the runner just started running when you saw him.

All I wanted to know is if we observed the past path or inferred it. Seems a valid question to me, but whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would really only be concerned if we see two more of them, because they come in threes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Meh. This is tripe for a slow news day.

      1. OH NO! SUNLIGHT OFFGASSING!

      2. OH NO! CIGAR SHAPED!

      3. OH NO! TOO FAST AND WE MISSED IT!

      4. OH NO! UNANNOUNCED ARRIVAL!

      5. OH NO! THE MATH IS HARD! I CAN'T TELL IF IT ALL ADDS UP!

Taken together, none of these things are confusing or cause for concern, until you introduce the joirnalistic willingness to ask questions like "Do you believe in ghosts???"

Take an event with large gaps of direct knowlege, inject speculative anxiety cutouts tat fit neatly inside the huge gaping holes of the narrative, and selectively avoid alternative theories that could supply a less emotionally charged conclusion.</comment>


The Post-Human World - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/the-post-human-world/517206/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> That does not seem so bad to me. Loosing my self. I have been trying to stop imagining or storytelling in my head and trying to exist as if I was enjoying a work of art in my spare time. Spare time spare time spare time spare time spare time</comment>


Brain activity 'key in stress link to heart disease' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38584975 <comment><USER2> > Heart experts said at-risk patients should be helped to manage stress.

Is there any high-quality evidence that "stress management" interventions actually lead to a medically significant reduction in biological stress? I see this sort of thing mentioned in passing in lots of places as a potential mitigation, but studies that actually examine its effectiveness seem to be in short supply, and what I can dig up quickly seems to be low-quality (underpowered, not randomized, not controlled).

<comment> gm-conspiracy I don't even see how one could have effective "stress management" provided by a US health insurance company or healthcare provider.

Good luck getting treated for GAD without first some random SSRIs and blood pressure med cocktails.

<comment><USER3> My insurance company covers counselors for "medically necessary" reasons. What constitutes medically necessary is up to the counselor. They know how to bill it so you're covered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A long time ago people reduced stress during the work day by stepping away from their desks, going outside, and enjoying a cool, relaxing, mentholated product from the Philip Morris company

<comment><USER5> A nice smooth refreshing cigarette, and it will give you lung cancer before the heart disease kicks in.

<comment><USER6> You'd be surprised.

There are far more heart disease than lung cancer deaths in the US -- and has been so since forever (4 times more or so).

In fact the number of lung cancers peaked in 2014 -- way after smoking became a faux pas. It was less when everybody and their dog smoked.

<comment><USER7> Wow, this is a great example of dishonest statistics. The _rate_ of lung cancer deaths peaked somewhere around 1985-95. This being the population that began smoking back in the 50s and 60s, by my estimate. You can't use raw numbers here because population has changed substantially in the US over the years.

<comment><USER8> And smoking causes heart disease...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how this relates to other findings about the relationship between stress, health, and mortality. It's a TED talk, but I found it to have some practical and interesting conclusions. Beliefs about stress impact how much harm stress causes.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress...](https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this new? I've heard for years that stress causes all kinds of health issues (first of all, heart disease) and thought it's universal knowledge.

<comment><USER11> It was but there wasn't a lot of information about how stress caused heart disease. This article talks about a potential mechanism for how it happens.

<comment><USER12> We already knew that the amygdala activates the sympathetic nervous system during stress, which causes inflammation, and this was suspected to be the reason for heart disease. This study just provides more experimental evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great news. Except now, how do quell activity in the amygdala?

<comment><USER14> Psilocybin

<comment><USER15> Actually, this is the best answer here. This is basically exactly what shrooms do to the brain.

<comment><USER5> When do we get /that/ on the ballot?

<comment><USER16> Once all the baby boomers drop dead. Seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> See? Don't overthink it.</comment>


What the Obama Emails teach us about Email Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.klaviyo.com/blog/2012/11/14/free-what-obama-emails-teach-us-email-marketing/ <comment><USER3> First of all, it is hard to take seriously any analysis that leads with a word cloud.

Two...as someone pointed out, this really isn't marketing. These are emails to the kind of people who would sign up for campaign emails, I.e. the candidate's supporters. So there really isn't much today about which approach is more successful in an apolitical contest because for one thing, you aren't correcting for demographics of the supporter base. Romney's approach could have been far more successful in terms of open-rate, but garnered lower donations because of his's base's spending habits.

And of course, this is all moot without knowing the actual open rates for any of these emails

<comment><USER4> > Two...as someone pointed out, this really isn't marketing. These are emails > to the kind of people who would sign up for campaign emails, I.e. the > candidate's supporters.

Are you serious? This is a great case exhibiting what email marketing does best - repeat business - keeping your customer base aware of (and buying) your products/services, and discussing it with others.

That aside, Obama's emails were a call to action (fed the grassroots operations that led to his smashing victory in many swing states), while Romney's were more about inspiring the recipient about the candidate - <USER2> given the many gaffes commited by Romney, seem like a rearguard action.

Shorter: Obama wanted you to get others to vote. Romney wanted you to vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with a lot of this analysis, but one things stuck out: "Marketing will become better – and harder to resist." While I don't doubt that marketing will become better, I do think we'll develop ways of filtering it out just as we have with "banner blindness", SPAM filtering and DVR-skipping commercials. Maybe the people who continually bug their friends about some cause, campaign or product will tend to lose those friends too. It wasn't uncommon to hear people say they're unfriending people on Facebook during the last election for political posts. I know I personally tried hard to resist posting political comments on social networks to maintain peace and tranquility from amateur campaigners.

<comment><USER6> I think our ability to resist marketing decreases marginally with each marginal increase in quality. At a certain point it does become useful, and we don't want to resist. Telling me about a product I really do want and/or need and can afford, that I ultimately buy, is not the type of marketing we will learn to resist. To a certain extent we even seek it out (Twitter followers, catalog subscriptions, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ugh. A little bit of me just died realizing that politicians are going to get even more aggressive about their marketing after the success of Obama's campaign tactics. They'll use it as a template moving forward.

Since they're the ones writing the anti-spam and anti-robo-call laws, we'll have absolutely no protection from their pursuit of marketing their messages to us.

The really sad thing is that back around 2007, Obama promised an open campaign that would use public funding - signaling that he was a different kind of candidate who didn't want the corruption of money to taint his campaign. Rather than leading the way on the high ground, the whole process is being dragged rather deeply through the mud.

<comment><USER8> Obama's use of public funding is rather historic. In his first election, he raised more money in small increments from individual donors than any other candidate before him. That's regular people paying $10 or $20 each instead of Citizens United or "Swiftboat Veterans For Truth" putting hundreds of millions behind candidates.

Do we want to have "secret donors" investing billions dollars to get the government to suit their business interests? Or do we want to get spammed daily by politicians asking for money? The first route cedes control to businesses, assuming that what they want will be good for most people. The second involves direct participation and a small amount of suffering from individual citizens, but puts the financial aspect of politics more into the hands of the people. This is a question that's more fundamental to the concept of democracy than it may seem.

<comment><USER9> The trouble with the micro-payments (micro, campaign-funding-wise) is that they are not vetted in the same way that larger payments are. Pardon my ignorance, but would it not be trivial for a foreign entity to take advantage of this and create a great many small payments from disparate sources (prepaid credit cards and such)? I understand there was some minor hand-wringing over this prospect in the most recent US presidential election.

<comment><USER10> Or they could become a major investor in a company which has "free speach rights" and just write one big check. I expect in 2016 some country is going to decide that they should just spend a few hundred million dollars to get the foreign policy they want.

<comment><USER11> Right, I find that a more likely end, if it's not already being employed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Romney word cloud was clearly election-based. To look at Obama's, you'd think it was a collection from a Groupon mailing list or something. Same goes for the subject line analysis: Obama's subject lines have the same qualities as spam subjects.

And it worked.

</comment><comment><USER13> Was the marketing successful? Popular-vote wise, it seems like most Americans just flipped a coin and voted heads for Obama and tails for Romney. Hardly a success, if you ask me.

<comment><USER14> The GOTV campaign by Obama was considered very successful. His opponents even said as much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The difference in email strategies is very interesting.

However, this article assumes that the outcome of the election proves that one strategy is better than another. Is this true? If true, how much better is it? People vote for candidates and email campaigns are one part of the whole campaign machine. I'm not saying that the article is wrong, but it is hard to draw conclusions from it without knowing more information.</comment>


"Readability"  - <AUTHOR> http://herbsutter.com/2010/04/10/readability/ <comment><USER2> "Readability" has been around a while, but it indispensible, IMHO. David Pouge (NY Times) called it the best single technical idea of 2009. I'd call it an absolute necessity to reading postings on the Web.

Article: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/technology/personaltech/31...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/technology/personaltech/31pogue.html?_r=1)

Discussion: [http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/1...](http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/technology/personaltech/31pogue.html?permid=50)

Both best viewed with Readability.

</comment><comment><USER3> Or just use Opera's accessibility layout.

</comment><comment><USER4> Readability is awesome. I use it even on Wikipedia.</comment>


A Big-Picture Look at Google, Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/a-big-picture-look-at-google-microsoft-apple-and-yahoo/ <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to break this down by revenue, and compare what each company is actually making on each category.

Google would be dominated by search, which would likely be a fraction of the other companies business. Microsoft would dominate office suite and and OS while the others would be a non factor. But the rest of the categories would be pretty interesting.

<comment><USER3> I agree. 'Calendar' & 'RSS Reader' aren't much of a categories and shouldn't have the same weight as "Gaming" or "Ad Network"

<comment><USER4> True, but services like Calendar and Reader bring Google TO you and thus raise the odds that you'll use their search engine again.

Google's recent work, including Android, is all about reach and becoming part of various aspects of our online lives. And when they are part of our lives, search revenue follows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The New York Times overlooks that Microsoft has one of the largest, although not numerically, active social networks with its Live and more importantly Xbox Live service. This is a key part of Microsoft's strategy currently as well as moving forward as evidenced by integration in their upcoming mobile phone and most likely other platforms.</comment>


Benchmark Capital: Open For Business - <AUTHOR> http://abovethecrowd.com/2008/12/01/benchmark-capital-open-for-business/ <comment><USER2> That's leadership. I hope they are very successful, as I suspect they will be.</comment>


Lean Media in the music world: From Led Zeppelin to the Deftones - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/lamont/2013/04/15/lean-media-music-led-zeppelin-deftones/

<comment><USER2> It's not unusual to have first takes used on jazz albums. In fact you can read about making of "Kind of Blue" ([http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_Kind_of_Bl...](http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_Kind_of_Blue.html?id=CNSmSI5q3OMC)).

What you hear on that record is not only the first complete take of each tune, but also it was the first time the tunes were played at all.</comment>


Next Big Thing, a HN-like site for music content - <AUTHOR> http://liisten.com/introducing-next-big-thing

<comment><USER2> This site looks great, signed up. However:

> Next Big Thing is not a place for ... anything else flat out offensive.

One of my favourite bands at the moment is "Rotting Christ" that name alone is very offensive to some people. Does that mean I can't post stuff about them? Where is the line? Can I post anything Black metal related? What about Gore Grind?

I think music has a much wider view of what is acceptable than tech. For example a lot of music/art is made with the sole purpose of being offensive. This is going to be hard to moderate.

<comment><USER3> If you have no objection to a band, song or album cover that degrades your mother or someone else you love and revere, then hey, maybe it should all be fair game.

Do you understand where I'm getting at? That's how Christians feel with names like that.

P.S. I don't think for a second that the name of someone you love should be degraded. Nor should someone I love either. That's my point.

<comment><USER2> I am not quite sure that I do understand. Firstly I don't have any problem with art mocking my mother or anyone else. Secondly I think mocking my mother is more personal than mocking my religion so your argument doesn't quite work. Thirdly people of many religions listen to black metal, and are aware that often it is a parody of itself.

<comment><USER3> I don't believe you.

Ditto @Buzaga

<comment><USER4> Well then there's nothing further to discuss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not saying this was done on purpose, but I find this name and concept eerily similar to the music analytics startup Next Big Sound.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, the name is way too similar. The concept I think is different -- Next Big Sound provides a paid analytics service for labels, artists, and other music-oriented companies. Their consumer-facing product and partnership with Billboard and others does has a similar concept though. I find Next Big Thing to be similar to We Are Hunted and The Hype Machine as others pointed out, but the site's not loading for me so it's hard to judge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the value add over hypem or r/music?

<comment><USER8> or some of the more obscure subreddits, like (<http://www.reddit.com/r/listentothis/>) where you're supposed to upvote things new to you.

I've found some great music there.

<comment><USER9> or r/musicnews. Music lovers are also used to reading blogs. Just things to keep in mind.

<comment> simba-hiiipower or (shameless act of self-promotion, sort-of): r/musicindustry

..which is more narrowly focused around the business of music and industry- related news, for those interested

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks good so far - I've already discovered some great sounding bands.

Just a few suggestions:

* When you vote, the arrow should disappear. Instead, it just pops a notification saying you can't vote again - but there's no easy way to determine which songs you've voted on.

* It would be great to see a page of links you've upvoted so you can refer back to songs you liked.

 _Edit to add..._

* A way to exclude domains you can't use (e.g. Spotify, which is unavailable in some countries).

* There's no need for the site to auto-scroll to the top of the page and display a Thank You message every time you vote.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the feedback Ryan, appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Being middle aged and not particularly into music I'm surprised to find I'm already aware of most of the 'next big things' on the front page. I don't think this is a good sign.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Site got mentioned a few places and is currently down from traffic.

In the post I do mention that you can do the same thing with reddit or following a ton of music related twitter accounts, but the voting and input from different people. We're not doing anything new, but I do think the presentation and appeal is there for nbt.

If you are interested, bookmark the link, it should be up again shortly.

<comment><USER13> A nice touch might be if voting reordered the site's RSS feed as well as the webpage. If you have a way to generate a podcast from submitted music, that could be a great combination. I have a lot of trouble following HN through an rss reader because the filter is so much worse, but there's no reason the .xml file should be in any different order than the html file. And podcasts have even worse navigation options than other rss feeds.

This would probably not work with PuSH. But two separate feeds, one for PuSH and one that gives a voting-ordered snapshot when it's fetched, might let you target both the very-frequent and the casual users.

(haven't been able to check out the site yet, so this point might be extra ignorant)

<comment><USER11> The site does do this :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll be sure to keep checking this out. It could end up being pretty good.

A bit off topic: I'd love to see something like this but for motion graphics. I had planned to try to build it but that's clearly not my skillset, ha.

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks good, and I'm excited by the idea of finding music new to me.

NBT itself seems to have died under the traffic, so I have some (perhaps stupid) questions:

1) How do you deal with voting rings and other gaming?

2) How do you deal with 'bubbles' - Some services keep me pretty tightly locked in to a certain bubble, when what I want is some leakage to explore and find new content.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there an open source version of HN anywhere?

<comment><USER16> You might like lamernews[1], made by antirez, which uses redis.

[1]: <https://github.com/antirez/lamernews>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like this idea, but I can't see it's use. :(

</comment><comment><USER18> Thank you for this :) It is sometimes hard to connect with new people and stand out. Created my account and posted my stuff as Psy Conversion !

EDIT : I liked the sign up experience, that was really quick, kudos for that !

</comment><comment> cm-t Next Big Thing, a HN-like site for music content (/r/music)

</comment><comment><USER19> This seems similar to The Hype Machine. A site that gauges taste in music really needs lots of people using it for the "popularity" of a song to be useful.

<comment><USER20> I agree. Good luck to any website making me switch away from hypem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem with this is most people have bad taste in music.

<comment><USER22> From your POV ;)

What I see as a problem is that it's probably going to become (if it gets really big) a copy of mainstream charts or (if a a genre group becomes the majority) only have music for that genre and related genres.

I wish them the best of luck but I personally don't see a future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's not coming up. Load problems I suppose.</comment>


Microsoft declares victory over Linux, names Apple and Google main rivals - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-declares-victory-over-linux-names-apple-and-google-main-rivals/3756

<comment><USER2> Huh? I think zdnet is reading a bit too much into what appears to be a 15 minute edit done by someone from marketing. They might as well claim that Internet Explorer was defeated since they removed that text as well... oh wait.

No but seriously, I doubt MS has seriously looked at Linux as any type of threat in the last 3 to 5 years. It's not exactly parading in and stealing their average user from them. Maybe they just shortened it because they realized no one really cares to read filler like this -- with the exception of some news sites apparently.</comment>


On the Future of Computing - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-future-of-computing.html

<comment><USER3> In many ways this vision is why I believe in ChromeOS.

I don't believe you'll ever see desktops with ChromeOS on it. But I think the line between Desktop and everything else will blur to the point that desktops will eventually stop existing (and I think it will happen much faster than the 20 years this author predicts)

At that point the laptop won't be a desktop replacement as much as it will be a way to quickly and reliably take a little bit of functionality with you. So while your TV and your table and your walls will be your home computing devices the laptop will be something that you want to just open up and do a few discrete functions on.

When you look at it that way ChromeOS' priorities are in the right place. Speed, simplicity almost to a fault and highly redundant.

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant Benjamen Bayart said: "The printing press allowed people to read. The internet will allow them to write." Sorry, but people won't have that right if everything is in the cloud, because it will be controlled by a handful of giga-corporations. If you think this future is likely, I humbly suggest you screw that, and fight for an alternative.

Here's one : (1) 5 years from now, people will begin to distrust for-profit corporation with their privacy. (2) 10 years from now, the FreedomBox will be ubiquitous. (3) 15 years from now, consumer awareness and demand (triggered by the FreedomBox) will raise upload capacity up to download capacity. Likely results are ubiquitous (and _unstoppable_ ) self publishing, e-mail that's actually private, and distributed encrypted back-up that just works. This should help flourish public debates and actual democracies.

</comment><comment><USER4> My understanding was that voice transcription was stuck at around 95% accuracy (one word in twenty wrong!), and wiki says only 80% <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#Performance> Of course, you'll do far better in severely curtailed domains (eg. recognizing digits, since there's only 10).

Is there other evidence for voice transcription improvement? Otherwise, this sounds a bit like "AI is just around the corner".

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_n...](http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science.html)

Juan Enrique shares his insights on similar lines.

"It would be mildly arrogant to presume, the purpose of the universe from 13.5 billion years, is we men. Home Sapiens give way to a new breed of Living creatures called Homo Evolutus, that controls its own existance" - <USER2> paraphrase, from what I remember. A must watch.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Self driving cars will have begun to become common.

This is, unfortunately, not true. It it _were_ true, its (massively positive) effects would dwarf everything else mentioned in the essay.

<comment><USER7> Why do you think self-driving-cars are so far fetched? We already have some pretty good prototypes.

Additionally, what would be those massively positive effects? I can see less car accidents and reduced amount of mundane driving, but I wouldn't consider those effects as dwarfing everything else.

<comment><USER6> > Why do you think self-driving-cars are so far fetched? We already have some > pretty good prototypes.

We've had pretty good prototypes for more than 20 years. There are two huge barriers:

(1) The progress in computer vision, like voice recognition, has slowed. People had pretty good speech recognition since the 1980's, but the gap between "pretty good" and "good enough to use" remains uncrossed. The gap in computer vision for cars will be even wider because mistakes will be much more costly.

(2) Even with all the tech problems solved, the regulatory hurdles to implementing this are staggering.

Suffice it to say, I would make a "Long Bet" (longbets.org/) against autonomous cars making up 5% of all cars in 20 years, with 10:1 odds.

> Additionally, what would be those massively positive effects?

Car accidents cost the US about $250 Billion per year, with 45,000 killed. Autonomous driving has the potential to decrease this by at least an order of magnitude (most accidents are due to driver error). That's a _mind-bogglingly staggering_ benefit.

10 million Americans commute more than an hour each day, which is $25 Billion per year at _minimum_ wage. There's much more lost among the rest of the commuters, and a factor of 4 to account for realistic wages.

I could go on about how autonomous driving would also (a) drastically reduce the total number of cars we'd need, (b) cut emissions and gas usage by allowing ubiquitous slip streaming, (c) virtually eliminate the need for nearby parking in cities, freeing up vast amounts of extremely valuable real estate.

<comment><USER8> Yes, it's absolutely huge. A while back I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation trying to account for the direct and indirect economic benefits, and it was on the order of a trillion dollars a year. That might even be low, because I don't think I considered your points about parking and real estate.

I would have agreed with your barriers, but I'm very encouraged by Google's experiments. They show that you can deploy automated vehicles alongside normal traffic, and that getting government permission isn't an insurmountable problem.

If it does gain traction, there will be a point where our collective rationality will be tested. It's nearly certain that occasional system malfunctions will occur resulting in deaths. Hopefully we'll be able to realize that such incidents are on balance vastly less harmful than the damage done by human drivers, and won't allow manufacturers to be sued out of existence or shut down by demagoguing politicians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Computing will cease to be something separate and discrete. The internet will be a literal extension of your brain."

Can't wait.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm setting up some free coding classes, would you be interested? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone,<p>I just wanted to gather some opinions on whether this may be worthwhile. I'm thinking of setting up a free online class for entrepreneurs/beginners looking to learn about building websites, apps etc. I may even look for a public venue in the future if this is something of interest. If you'd like to sign up you're very welcome to reach out via my personal website found on my profile. <comment><USER2> To answer your question: I have a huge interest in these sort of classes, take them regularly, but there are _so_ many of these out there, one feels drowned in choices (embarrassed from the riches?).

Is there something different, if you have ideas for a new angle, please share.

Typically there are youtube videos, udacity, coursera, edx, freecodecamp, medium posts and dozens of others who try to tackle this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood! I thought perhaps the more there is available out there the better. I also come from an angle where my experience is from building products for start-ups/entrepreneurs rather than the usual purely academic stance. I thought it would also give an insight on how these products are actually built and what's required. But I appreciate where you're coming from!

<comment><USER2> That might be a great angle, but what does that mean for the course? Does that mean you will take us through deployment on AWS/Heroku? Does that mean you include testing etc?

Consider Hartl's (famous) Rail tutorial: [https://www.railstutorial.org/book](https://www.railstutorial.org/book)

Will it be different from that?

I do there is a market for copying Hartl for Django, Vue/Node, etc

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely!

It'll be a little different as i'll be going through the projects i've previously created (such as some of the e-commerce platforms i've built and mobile apps).

<comment><USER2> David - Well, in that case I would be interested. Keep us (HN community) updated as to your progress and for feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wonderful, i certainly will!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey, I'm actually looking to hire a dev, sent you an email now.</comment>


Why Is There So Much Hate for the Word "Moist"? (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/why-is-there-so-much-hate-for-the-word-moist <comment><USER2> Personally, I hate it because of the technical use of "moisture" by mechanical engineers that do thermodynamics of steam. Hank Sauer, summer 1980, University of Missouri - Roll, Thermodynamics class. Sauer was a jerk, of course, all heat engineers are jerks. When water is at a temperature and pressure where it can be both liquid and gas, the "quality" of the steam is the proportion of gas to total water. Sauer used the word "moisture" a lot when describing this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember that in the TV series " _Dead Like Me_ " the main (dead) character's mother vehemently abhors the word. It was the first time I had ever encountered aversion to it and I marked it down as deliberate "quirkiness-injection" by the scriptwriters.

When I later discovered that the aversion was widespread (much like my inexplicable hatred of parsley) did I realise it was an actual phenomenon. I always put it down to the connotation of female sexual arousal.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because "adults" in some places shaped by puritan religious culture can't stand anything that reminds them of "dirty" bodily functions or sexuality?</comment>


The Old Guard - <AUTHOR> http://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-old-guard/

<comment><USER2> The most important part of this piece is the very last sentence:

>>> when it becomes apparent [those key values] are no longer serving the company, [the Old Guard] must be willing to let those values evolve.

I would go even further: if your values _aren 't_ evolving with scale, something is wrong. As you scale, you get different priorities and as you get different priorities, the optimal values for your company will change.

For example, generalists are far more useful early in a company's life. The first few people need to create a UX, set up a data store, create a deployment mechanism, talk to users, make more features, etc. If something becomes a priority, it's great to be able to shift everyone up and down the stack as needed. A generalist culture tends to shun documentation because things change so quickly and enjoys less structure because moving fast is the priority. Near-sightedness - doing what is good in the short term - is optimal.

However, as a company ages, generalism become rarer by necessity. As each aspect of the stack becomes more complex, you need specialists in each area to make progress. Each group depends on other groups to provide something stable and predictable. You require more documentation, more tests and planning in advance to state what each internal service within the company needs to provide. Far-sightedness becomes optimal.

Typically, you end up getting a bunch of distinct groups within your organization, each responsible for a different service AND a structure on top of those groups to handle the cross group communication and planning.

So yes - Old Guard needs to make sure this transformation is culturally kosher but they also need to be on the constant lookout for what old processes are beginning to fail.

</comment><comment><USER3> The older engineers are usually the nicest. They exist peacefully in a privately-defined world of polygon rendering, or TCP stacks, or vector math. They're the REAL thinkers. They won't hassle you.

They're on autopilot half the time anyway; they wrote all their best games/apps/whatever a long time ago and now they just kinda float around soaking up compliments and contributing advice.

They lead quiet, comfortable lives with a history of industry respect and good stock options. But: It's usually easier for a contractor to predict when his or her actual, final day on the job will be. Yay for Q.A.!

<comment><USER4> Till something goes pear shaped in multi threaded database optimizer written in C. They contemplate core dumps and sources for few days and magically come up with an answer. Source: I've seen that happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> T RANDS SHOULD WE TELL THEM?</comment>