Wisp: a homoiconic JS dialect with Clojure syntax, s-expressions and macros - <AUTHOR> http://jeditoolkit.com/try-wisp/

<comment><USER2> As somebody who contributes to ClojureScript, I genuinely do not understand the purpose of this project.

If you want a JavaScript with Lispy syntax, there are a few things like <http://lispyscript.com/> \-- Spiritually similar to CoffeeScript. But if you want Clojure semantics, there is ClojureScript: Very different than a simple transpiler like CoffeeScript. ClojureScript includes a standard library of rich data structures and utility functions.

But why would you want Clojure syntax without Clojure semantics? Especially since Clojure syntax implies several data types that JavaScript can't provide natively. It just doesn't make sense...

<comment><USER3> I agree. The comments here make me think that the commenters don't know all of the extra ideas that Clojure brings besides a "different syntax" to Lisp. Even just for the immutable, persistent data structures that support value semantics (& distinguishing state from identity), ClojureScript ought to go a long way to helping write better code.

<comment><USER4> Note that most functions exposed by wisp do not mutate existing data structures and match clojure in behavior, it's just they use array's instead of vectors and dictionaries instead of maps. My hope is that it will imply same immutable style even if underlying data types remain mutable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wonderful, one more language for me to consider in addition to Roy and Parenscript. I guess there's also Whalesong for Racket, but I don't know how clean the cross compilation to JS is. I've always been drawn to Clojure but the JVM kept me at bay. The fact that it's not "Lisp all the way down" also clouds my decision for it. I guess Wisp would be highly compatible with Lighttable?

<comment><USER6> Parenscript seems pretty cool. I tried Clojurescript about 2 months ago and the build process was disturbingly frustrating. :-/ I will take a swing at Parenscript next time I get on that particular project.

<comment><USER7> > build process was disturbingly frustrating

that pretty much sums up my experience with ClojureSctipt as well.

<comment><USER8> Same here, and also the use of Google Closure was pretty disappointing.

<comment><USER9> Can you clarify?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the benefit of having three ways to write strings?

            \a  ;; compiles to "a"
    	:a  ;; compiles to "a"
    	"a" ;; compiles to "a"

This is not meant as destructive criticism; I'm genuinely interested in the motivation for that.

<comment><USER11> Seems like a disadvantage to me. It's mostly just confusing and the only thing it affords is the ability to use :keywords as functions (:like so) which is just sugar for property access, so["like"]. This is broken, though.

The coolest thing about :keywords in Clojure is that they really are functions and you can do things like (map :keywords ontoSomething) to extract the same property out of many things. It don't work in Wisp.

<comment><USER3> What you're not realizing, though, is that each time you use the string "like" as a key for a map/dictionary, you're allocating a new object on the heap. So what if you have many keys, and they're all strings? What if you have many maps that share the same keys? That's a lot of memory to allocate, and strings are an extremely inefficient way to implement what is essentially a unique identifier to address map values. Instead, use an integer as a unique identifier.

That's basically what keywords do -- they are human-readable and compile down (prob. using some hash) into some integer, and the integer is stored globally only once. The biggest savings in memory comes when using maps, and that's how & why keywords get their name.

<comment><USER12> Javascript strings are immutable and literals are almost certainly preallocated and stored in a table of constants. Why should using a string keys cause heap allocations?

<comment><USER13> If you have a VM where strings are immutable and interned, you're right. Java doesn't guarantee that strings are interned (though you can ask the VM to intern it), so Clojure treats them differently.

Also, Java declared java.lang.String as final, so Strings can't be extended to implement clojure interfaces to get nice behavior, like IFn and IKeywordLookup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really cool. I've always been a fan of lisps, but not to the point of picking them up. Building for the web using a lisp has always seemed difficult due to (perceived?) lack of tooling, documentation, and community. JavaScript is for the web like no other language, and Wisp looks like it makes building web projects in a lisp a reality. Kudos!

<comment><USER15> If you're interested in building for the web in a Lisp, you should seriously give Clojure a try!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the first lisp dialect which I can make sense of with just light reading. It's simple enough that I actually tried it and liked it. The output is fairly clean JavaScript which helps in learning and reduces barriers.

As a non-lisp guy who doesn't know any better (me), good job.

</comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of ParenScript <http://common-lisp.net/project/parenscript/>

Which is basically a subset of common-lisp that compiles to human-readable javascript. It's a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER18> One idea: \- A major drawback to using generated javascript is that line numbers in error messages don't relate to your original source files. Perhaps a debug option to add line number comments in the generated code?

<comment><USER19> Or even better, source maps support.

<comment><USER4> Adding source maps support to wisp is my no 1st priority for wisp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does Wisp have any facility for namespaces - I didn't see anything about that in the link?

<comment><USER8> It appears like it does: [https://github.com/Gozala/try-wisp/blob/gh- pages/src/main.wi...](https://github.com/Gozala/try-wisp/blob/gh- pages/src/main.wisp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Personally, I'd rather see lisp with JS syntax (CoffeeScript would be even better)

<comment><USER22> What does that even mean?

<comment><USER23> Dylan</comment></comment></comment>


It's all Greek to me: Thoughts on code readability and aesthetics - <AUTHOR> https://avraam.dev/posts/greek-to-me/ <comment><USER2> >Next time we have a conflict with a colleague on what is "readable", let's ask ourselves "Am I talking about understandability or I am talking about aesthetics?"

This is why I'm in favor of auto-formatters like Black for Python. Nobody really likes it, but nobody really hates it either and you get used to it. What this does is that it completely removes the style component of the discussion, leading to better and more content-wise discussions of the code written.

<comment><USER3> I'd say the main reason for strict formatting is the organizational one: when you really need for the same file to be edited by many people and not turn into a mess.

Otherwise, it _may be_ convenience, as I don't have to maintain consistency manually. May be, because in languages where there are multiple syntactic ways to do things (Python, JS), I want flexibility in emphasizing things. (Even if I don't overuse it.) It's hard for people who came up with formatting to predict everything what can be done in the language. People may use more imperative, more functional syntax, mix things etc. This may be even warranted in the context.

Of course, you can force a particular set of idioms, but this again becomes shifted to the context of a project or organization. In languages where the syntax is more uniform, it's easier to standardize formatting throughout the whole ecosystem. And indeed it is standardized in Lisp and Go for example - not in the C family for probably historical reasons.

<comment><USER4>
        languages where there are multiple syntactic ways to do things

Python zen says: the should be one (and preferably only one) obvious way to do it. Perl might fit your description better.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately we have many ways to do format strings now :P

<comment><USER6> list(map(f, iterable)) versus [f(x) for x in iterable] also comes to mind!

<comment><USER4> If I remember correctly, it is recommended to use list comprehension (see stackoverflow)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> OT question from non-native speaker: those commas that mimics speech pauses are syntactically acceptable in English? (Or Greek?)

> In Greece, we have a similar phrase [...] > Readable code, is a piece of > code [...] > In Germany, they say [...]. > In 16th century, in the > Habsburgermonarchy [...] > [...] but let me, tell you a secret: [...] > > Readable code, is a piece of code [...]

(I'm from Bohemian village where we were taught commas delimits sentences and such usage would be technically incorrect, but I suppose there are different rules in other languages.)

<comment><USER8> A comma separates clauses that make grammatical sense on their own, or at least where one of them does. So "In Greece, we have a similar phrase" is fine, because "we have a similar phrase" is complete in itself. Whereas "Readable code, is a piece of code" is not correct, because "is a piece of code" is not complete - it's missing a subject. Likewise, "In Germany, they say" and "In 16th century, in the Habsburgermonarchy" are fine, but "but let me, tell you a secret" is not.

As a native speaker, i can understand those sentences well enough, but they look wrong, and i wouldn't expect a fluent native writer to write them.

I have a Greek friend who is similarly scattershot with commas (eg "Hey send me, the photo of your office!"). I wonder if this comes from mapping some feature of Greek sentence structure onto English?

<comment><USER9> I am Greek and we don't use that many commas. Definitely not in this way. I think the Greek language is also not as flexible with comma placement as perhaps English is.

What I've noticed is that some people never learned how to use them. They just write a sentence (or a whole essay) and generously sprinkle some commas afterwards, normally wherever they would make a short pause. I've seen this with colleagues from Germany, Greece, Russia and the US.

<comment><USER10> I'm Greek also. I was taught at school that you place commas where you would naturally have a pause when speaking a sentence aloud. You can hear that rule very clearly in operation in the way school kids read when asked to read a text aloud (e.g. in national holidays etc). They always _very deliberately_ pause after each and every comma.

Anyway, other than the last two examples, the examples above don't look wrong to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have yet to figure out what makes code readable. My own anecdote: I remember reading some code written by Jeff Dean and was amazed by how easy it was to parse and understand. Funny thing is it had quite a few violations of the style guide. In contrast, when I read some of my own code a year later I was scratching my head. It was too dense, variables had too-long names etc. (and it's the etc that I cannot fully articulate/correct)

<comment><USER12> It's probably like prose: sorry to write such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one.

To express something well, you need a sense for all the different ways to express it, to be able to choose the right one. But to just express it, you only need one.

anecdote: naming is hard. I can code something in a few hours, and still not have ideal names after weeks. Some come the next day.

<comment><USER13> I often think if I'm struggling to name something then perhaps the design isn't what it should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whenever this kind of disagreement happens with my team, we put it to a vote and then the winning convention is enforced across the codebase from then on. There are tons of things in programming that come down to opinion but the important thing for me is that the team has a set convention and sticks to it.

<comment><USER15> I worked in a place where my team lead wanted us to vote on a technical decision. I found that unfair because half of the team was at a junior level.

<comment><USER16> If you can't explain why your idea is good to a junior engineer, voting is the lead of your problem. If you mistrust half your team as a rule, how can you trust anything to get done well?

<comment><USER17> It's hard to explain to junior engineers why chasing fads is a bad idea. Why boring technology is often the best choice. That's only something that most people figure out with experience.

<comment><USER18> Seniors often don't like doing new things for the simple reason that they already know how to do things a different way and they don't feel like learning something new.

<comment><USER19> and juniors like to make mistakes because that's how they turn into seniors.

The point is, and will continue to be, that a senior's opinion should be heeded or you disallow them from steering the ship away from the glacier that they know is there.

You can always justify everything with a reason. If your goal is to justify, then great, you did that. If your goal is to be effective, you need to stop trying to justify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a side-side note:

[https://msfn.org/board/topic/158668-virtual-memory-on- usb/?d...](https://msfn.org/board/topic/158668-virtual-memory-on- usb/?do=findComment&comment=1018485)

>From John Phillip Mustachio of Houston, this excerpt from the trial testimony of the plaintiff, whose first language is Greek.

Q. What I'm trying to do, Mr. Emmanonil, is to show that you have quite a bit of experience in owning and operating real estate, do you not?

A. No. The only one experience I have is just to - to know how is the valuable of the land is going to go up or down. That's I'm good only. But legal phrase like this one, I'm zero. Like I say earlier, I have gift know when is good piece of land or not. The rest of this stuff _it 's English to me_.

Original link is down, the sentence can be found here:

[https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_&T...](https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35605)

Somewhat Criminal by Jerry Buchmeier

VOL. 60 NO. 9 TEXAS BAR IOURNAL 991 October 1997

[https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_](https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_) [https://www.texasbar.com/Content/NavigationMenu/NewsandPubli...](https://www.texasbar.com/Content/NavigationMenu/NewsandPublications/TexasBarJournal1/SayWhat/1990_s.htm)

</comment><comment><USER21> We really should stop formatting the actual code to make it 'readable'. The editor or IDE should take care of formatting the displayed code to our preferences with a built in linter/prettier. That should end the pointless and annoying discussion.

<comment><USER22> I read your comment too fast and I almost dismissed it, thinking you were talking, like everyone else, about formatters (gofmt, rustfmt). But what you are saying is much more interesting, as we are all allowed to keep our preferences. Is there any major editor/IDE working on this? You are making me miserable, now that I read this I can't live with just formatters anymore :D

<comment><USER23> So, this is indeed a very cool idea, the fundamental issue you'd have though is that you can't abstract away from the 'ground truth' formatting at the source control level.

You could even sort of brute force this without IDE support by reformatting everything to your preference on git pull and back to ground truth on git stage/push, but when it comes to diffs, merges, etc, you _must_ work in terms of the ground truth formatting. That's not even to mention doing stuff like PR reviews in online tools, not in your local editor/IDE. Going back and forth between the two like this would probably just be counter productive, you're better off just thinking in terms of the ground truth formatting from the start, I'd say.

I think while it might be possible under a very narrow set of limitations and usecases, it's probably just a very leaky abstraction to try to 'hide' the actual formatting of code in a text file.

<comment><USER22> I can definitely see it might have quite a few problems. Forest [0] and others even attempt to abstract on syntax, which I generally disagree with as it becomes a problem to learn the language or get help / discuss some things with other people, especially online.

I'm not dismissing the default formatter, it's obvious you still need one canonical representation of the code, but I don't think you should view it as "hiding" the formatting. In my view, it's more like opening a web page with one browser or another, or with one device or another. It always looks a bit different. Or maybe I have a theme configured on my main browser or whatever. I like to have my preferences, but if I have to look at the page from another browser, it's not a big deal either. The extra configuration might not be worth it or slightly inconvenient in some cases, but I doubt it's counter productive. The same way as I might prefer to read/write with a certain font or use this or that color palette.

Maybe the takeaway is that code is more personal for some people than we like to generally admit. You are talking in a language and you want to be able to express yourself as comfortably as possible. I mean, we have had turing- complete and even "productive/decently ergonomic" languages for a while, and yet a lot of people keeps coming up with new languages, because they are much more than just a tool to get things working. We want to express ourselves as we "think", and formatting may be a small part of that, but it's still a part of it.

[0] [https://github.com/forest-lang/forest- compiler](https://github.com/forest-lang/forest-compiler)

<comment><USER23> I definitely agree with most of this but I have to challenge the web browser analogy because that's a scenario where the concept of the view (visual, screen reader, etc) being interpreted from the textual representation is built in - as in, there is no end user who consumes the raw markup as-is. So different end users working with different views is a completey natural and expected thing.

I guess that's what's missing to make this work for code. The raw code _is_ intended as the final representation to the end user.

Maybe what you'd need to make this work is to build in the concept of formatting to the source control itself, so all the way through the tooling you could 'render' the code as you'd like to see it, and do all operations on it using that view (including diffs, etc). Maybe sort of like you can with syntax highlighting, except with positional formatting instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Let's not try to be smart. Let's try to be understood.

By myself later

When forced to wade through what seemed

So clear at the time

<comment><USER25> It's all Japanese to me...

<comment><USER26> わからない。

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm more troubled that we might be banishing perfectly good features for the flimsiest of reasons.

Take, for example, JavaScript's double-equals == versus triple-equals === comparison operators. (I already know you have a strong opinion on these!) The language designer saw fit to include both. Now, if I introduce one bug where I need to use === explicitly instead of ==, should I advocate for a ban the use of == across the entire program? How about if I introduce this bug twice? Three times? What if I've only _heard_ from a senior dev that triple-equals is "bad"? Or should we test the least-experienced member of the team and let their understanding make the decision for us? What happens when that team member gets more experience, do we lift the ban?

Double- versus triple-equals example is probably one of the most clear cut trade-offs and worth exploring. What about all of the other rules? Double versus single quotes, for example? What about declaring arrays using array- literal syntax versus using the new operator?

<comment><USER28> > The language designer saw fit to include both.

=== wasn't introduced until ECMAScript 3 in 1999, originally there was only == when the language was created in '95.

The accepted wisdom is to prefer the newer === in the interest of clarity and consistency. With ==, it's easy to forget about one of the types it overloads (e.g. string vs. number) when making changes to existing code, and correct- looking code may behave unexpectedly for one of these types.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> As far as linting and formatting is concerned, having a company-wide policy and having IDEs implement it automatically and presubmit checks enforce it is enough.

However a lot of the arguments over code review come from (sometimes) aesthetic preferences about code decisions. Should this be pulled out as a function? What should it be named? Should this be inlined or pulled out as a variable? Is ~A or ~B more readable or ~(A and B) (the latter ends up causing the ugly sandwich (!( in languages like C++ or Java), etc etc.

These don't have automated solutions, but can nevertheless spark impassioned arguments.

</comment><comment><USER30> Absolutely agree. So many times I've seen developers instantly dismiss unfamiliar code as ugly and poorly written when it's qualitatively very similar to their own, underneath some cosmetic details.

</comment><comment><USER31> My rule about code comments applies here as well. [https://nixpulvis.com/ramblings/2018-09-29-comments-in- code](https://nixpulvis.com/ramblings/2018-09-29-comments-in-code)

I agree every language has what I call warts, but some are definitely worse than others.

</comment><comment><USER32> Ah but you didn't mention Clojure which is as near perfect as anything :)

</comment><comment><USER33> In our world of Ship It/Get Shit Done/Move Fast Break Things, code readability doesn't stand a chance.

I find there's little allowance for time spent thinking about the poor sucker who has to read my code, lest the sprint burndown chart suffers.

That's why code linters and formatters are so important. When applied correctly, it's the closest we can come to having the entire codebase looking like it was written by one person. A single standard you can learn once. Go and Dart are good at this.

<comment><USER34> This might be true at some shops, but if so, they're doing it wrong. You can move fast and still maintain code readibility. No matter how fast you're moving, code shouldn't be accepted into a shared repository unless it meets minimum standards. A well-functioning agile team cuts corners by not over- engineering, by not waiting for elusive completion, by releasing minimally- viable products that provide user value to get feedback and drive further development. Even breaking things is ok, but sloppiness is not. When you push out crap code to meet an arbitrary velocity target, you're just digging an inescapable hole of tech debt. If you're not thinking about the poor sucker who has to read your code, you're doing it wrong.</comment></comment>


Academic expert says AI researchers aren't doing science - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/07/14/academic-expert-says-google-and-facebooks-ai-researchers-arent-doing-science/ <comment><AUTHOR> Is suppose the Keck observatory is also just a feat of engineering. Sure enables a lot of science though.</comment>


Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2017/mar/30/douglas-coupland-the-nine-to-five-is-barbaric?CMP=fb_gu <comment><USER3> Hyperbole like this makes it difficult to take his arguments seriously, even if he makes some good points about the changing nature of work.

Really, barbaric? Having set work hours in a steady job with regular pay in a safe workplace with benefits usually included, including paid vacation?

It's such a dramatic leap forward from the way most humans in history--and many still today--have had to scrimp for survival, working long hours in the fields, barely achieving subsistence, sharecropping for feudal lords or tyrannical landlords.

Sure, work is changing, and many people are lucky to be able to detach from such schedules with exciting and unknown results for the future workplace. But those of us fortunate enough to have had access to 9-to-5 jobs would be tone deaf to act like it's such a traumatic experience, when so many people in the world would be so grateful to have such an opportunity.

<comment><USER4> _Really, barbaric? Having set work hours in a steady job with regular pay in a safe workplace with benefits usually included, including paid vacation?_

I don't think it's hard to see that as barbaric. Think of it as "I am forced to be away from my loved ones for most of the daylight hours and most days of the year excluding these permitted 'holiday' periods".

<comment><USER5> "Think of it as "I am forced to be away from my loved ones for most of the daylight hours and most days of the year excluding these permitted 'holiday' periods"."

As opposed to what, though? Hunter-gatherers may or may not have had a lot more leisure time, depending on who you ask, but they didn't hunt and gather together in family groups all the time, and while many people use their words to sing the praises of this time period their actions suggest they don't really want that, since they could still have it if they wanted it enough. Not to mention many of these hunting trips often spanned multiple days from what I gather. I suppose militaries had a lot of cohesion, as long as you don't mind defining "loved ones" as "my squadmates". Family farms still generally would end up with the family cut in half between the women and men, assuming the men even stayed together. Etc.

I can't off the top of my head think of a time period where there wasn't a large portion of the population separated from at least half their family for long periods of time.

The current situation isn't perfect, but let's be precise about what we're comparing it to, and when exactly it supposedly existed and was widespread.

<comment><USER6> 1) I think you're understating the amount of free time people had in the past, especially with respect to hunter gatherer societies.

2) Joining an autonomous hunter gatherer society obviously isn't possible now, because they doesn't exist. The paraphrased "it's your choice, if you hate the 40 hour a week routine so much, just become a hunter gatherer in the Rockies" line doesn't cut it.

Even when hunter gatherer societies did coexist with more sedentary civilizations, states had to constantly fight to control the bodies and labor of the people it ruled, because they constantly were calling it quits to join the hunter gatherer societies.

The transition to agricultural, state dominated societies was a slow, contested, emergent property of collective violence, not something most individuals wanted.

<comment><USER5> "Joining an autonomous hunter gatherer society obviously isn't possible now, because they doesn't exist."

Yes, they do, even now. Of course, they're so inconsequential on the world stage that you don't hear about them much, but yes, they exist.

Now, you have the problem that they probably won't accept you, and will probably eventually try to kill you if you seriously set up next to them and start truly doing the hunt-gather routine.

But then, that's the authentic hunter-gatherer experience too.

(I don't believe the garbage about how peaceful they supposedly were. It is logistically ludicrous.)

<comment><USER6> No one is claiming that hunter gatherers were peaceful. It weakens your argument to try to put words into people's mouths. I might as well say, "well, why are you claiming that there's no crime or inequality in modern society? There obviously is!!!1!"

And no, they don't. Sure, you can find a random tribe in the barren wastelands of the Kalahari that's ostensibly "hunter gatherer," but they are much more integrated into the economy of South Africa than any hunter gatherer society would have been two thousand years ago. Most people born into those hunter gatherer-lite societies spend at least some time working in the capitalist economy.

Compare that to millenia ago, where hunter gatherers occupied some of the most economically productive regions of the world. It's an apples and oranges comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a load of shit. All the more clear as I'm traveling in a 3rd world country where people actually have to deal with difficult working conditions. I see people in their mid 70's doing long days of physical labor on a farm for dollars a day. Ask them how barbaric the 9-5 desk job is.

As the other commenter mentioned, hyperbole like this only ever damages a cause.

I think there are probably better ways to do work and as we move towards the connected future I think many of them will increase in popularity, but that's due to an increase in options from our already very open ended lives, not some struggle against imagined barbarity.

<comment><USER8> a load of shit, indeed! This degree of hipster self-pity is intolerable. I couldn't make it more than half-way through the stupid article.

"Barbaric." I wonder if he realizes how insulting and patronizing that is. I wish he could have met my grandfather, who worked his life in a coal mine literally scratching out a living six long days a week before dying of lung cancer in the 1950s.

A man who lived in a company house, was paid in script, money that could only be used at the company store to buy good at inflated prices. A man who was shot at with cannon and rifle by the us government for daring to challenge this status quo and try to form a union (see "WV mine wars" for details).

Vacations? Unthinkable. Benefits? no. A paycheck that was just enough to stay alive until the next one came along? yes.

The idea of fulfillment from one's work was probably not even a concept to daydream about. Leisure time didn't exist. It was called "resting" and it's what you did when not working.

He would have seen the cushy desk job of the average HN reader as paradise itself, the "stress" of meetings or deadlines as literally laughable compared to the very real stresses and dangers he "enjoyed" : mine collapse, poisoning by noxious gases, explosions, fire, or cancer.

Load of shit. That's the perfect description.

<comment><USER9> Ahh yes, the always tired retort of "people in the past/in a different place have it worse, so you have no right to complain"

totally legitimate argument, im sure your grandfather fought hard for there to never be better working conditions for his grandchildren, and would hate that working conditions have gotten better and continue to improve.

have you ever complained that something tastes bad? dont forget theres starving children in africa, so you aren't allowed to complain about your food tasting bad, because someone has it worse, right?

Have you ever been thirsty and asked someone for water? that gall on you! people die everyday from dehydration, you being thirsty is just hipster self pity, you aren't going to die, so you aren't thirsty

see also:

>Fallacy of relative privation ("not as bad as") – dismissing an argument or complaint due to the existence of more important problems in the world, regardless of whether those problems bear relevance to the initial argument.

<comment><USER10> Not every opposing argument is a fallacy. I observe the grandparents [1] as trying to put things in perspective, which is a very reasonable followup on a decidedly opinionated original article.

[1] Grandparents as in comment hierarchy, not as in coal miners.

<comment><USER9> i never said every opposing argument is a fallacy, but this one definitely is.

what our grandparents experienced is irrelevant to discussions on how working conditions should continue to improve.

Would you have told the men starting the UAW that they should stop because their grandparents had to work longer hours and that they have no right to complain? Thats idiotic, its fallacious, and its not even an opposing argument, its an attempt to stop a conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If nine to five is barbaric, what does that make jobs requiring you to wake up early and stay late? This guy seems to have a chip on his shoulder because of some bad workplace experiences and now seems to think every job sucks.

Jobs with regular, stable work hours are not simply there by corporate decree. People actually like having that predictability in their lives. It makes it a lot easier to budget your time when you have that block of time carved out where you're making money.

Now, this guy would say hey, you could work half the time if you quit your job and started your own business. Well, that doesn't match up with the experience of any of the business owners I know (they regularly work 12-16 hour days), but even it was true...now I have to run and operate my own business. I can't just show up and do good work and take home a paycheck. I have to deal with insurance, I have to deal with payroll, or I have to pay someone to deal with all of that. If the only benefit I get from that is saying, "but at least I don't have a boss," it's not even close to worth it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Rather than going down the barbaric tone. When it comes to 9-5 jobs, I keep going back to city infrastructures.

Where I live in Toronto, all the highways and subways get clogged as everyone needs to make it to the office for 9-5. Everyone then complains about poor infrastructure, but then all cities keep building for a short burst peak traffic. Infrastructure is overbuilt for other times.

I can understand a lot of it is due to having kids (schools let out around 4pm) so everyone tries to streamline dropping kids off and picking them up from work.

I really wish everyone can try for a staggered approach to deal with congestion. I don't have a hard sync like picking up kids or anything like that yet so I avoid the normal envelopes around 9-5.

Many initiatives like Smart Cities are being rolled out but yea... I'm not a huge fan of the common 9-5 pattern.

<comment><USER13> Another complaint I have about 9-5 is I can't find time to do certain things because everyone all works the same hours. Certain services such as doctors appointments are only available while I'm working, or if I need contractor services at home, again, only available while I'm working. Luckily I work in a city centre so I can do some things in my lunch hour, but if you happened to work out of town (e.g. business park), or if the thing you need to do takes longer than an hour you're shit out of luck.

<comment><USER14> In former times it was perceived to be ok to see your doctor during the 'regular' office hours. Go figure

<comment><USER10> It isn't? I do that regularly here in Germany (although of course I coordinate my appointments to not conflict with important meetings etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At first blush, I was aghast at the idea of no weekends. Then I realized I am essentially on-call 24/7, even on vacations, as I'm the primary infrastructure person at my company. Yet, because it's well designed and managed, I do tend to have that free time.

The problem becomes when you don't have that free time because of constant work issues. I can't say a future without 100% free time is such a great place.

</comment><comment><USER16> Look, we all know there are much harder jobs than a 9-5 office job. However, I think an interesting question is:

How _necessary_ is the job? How much does the job satisfy human needs, or contribute to human well-being? If it simply doesn't, if its _only_ function is institutional, why _should_ we consider it anything less than barbaric, or even perverse? Institutions such as businesses exist to serve people, after all, and doing things the other way around has been at the heart of some of the 20th century's major atrocities.

[http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/)

>Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don't like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Neither does the task really need to be done – at least, there's only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there's endless piles of useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it's all that anyone really does.

<comment><USER17> If my job, and even the entire company I work at, disappeared today, not a single soul would notice. Or they might casually notice, but their life would not be affected in any meaningful way.

The work is soul destroying, I'd love to be doing something better.

<comment><USER16> Yep. There's immense dignity in doing something that society really needs done, even when it's hard work. There's also immense degradation in working hard when you secretly know society doesn't need you, and you're just doing it so someone you think is delusional will pay you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> First, I was a big Douglas Coupland fan when I was young. Especially because I was working at Microsoft shortly after Microserfs came out, and his writing resonated with my then 24-year-old male brain.

However, I just don't think his idea will ever scale to the general populace, though. He says, "people with internet brains are capable of doing huge amounts of work, quickly and from anywhere. " Yeah, probably a few. I think his opinion might be biased because he's an artist who has commercial success (he's essentially made it as a business owner/entrepreneur, which we know not everyone is capable of).

Anecdotal evidence: I'm currently working in an office where there's no way people around here could function without the same daily routine, without micro-management, without hard deadlines, etc. Yet, the company still manages to exist and be profitable.

He does make some other good points, if you can look past the flamboyant/hyperbolic sound bites: * "Always have an actual skill as a back- up, that's very good advice." * More part-time jobs/partial employment

</comment><comment><USER19> I personally disagree with premise (though a few points I must agree with), I think the real problem is the lack of satisfaction in general. Because some capitalistic societies are obessed with growth, we've created problems for ourselves that are not only pointless, but exist in part, to employ drones of people, who due to their own life circumstances, cannot say "no."

Once all jobs serve a visible, real purpose and those working said jobs can feel the satisfaction of being a part of the "cause", this problem will continue. 9-5 or not.

One example of this may be flipping burgers at McDonalds, versus stocking planes that ship food rations to war-torn nations. Funny how similar the jobs are, yet the purpose differs.

<comment><USER20> In my area McDonald's is a pretty large employer of physically disabled people. Not a single one of them has the dexterity or strength to load a plane. Coincidentally I know some people who work at my local airport and they don't have any idea what they're loading or unloading or where it's going to unless they happen to speak to the pilot.

Employment does not exist to fulfill your personal sense of self worth. You're providing a service to someone who is paying for it. In fact, most of those jobs that _do_ fulfill your personal sense of self worth often pay less due in part to that.

<comment><USER14> Get money out of the equation and everything changes dramatically!

<comment><USER20> If only everything was free and nobody had to work for anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps the word "barbaric" is a bit much, but there is certainly an element of truth to what he's saying about the office being obsolete; at least in some professions.

For example, I am a software engineer, and there is literally no reason whatsoever for me to go into an office everyday. None. I am more productive when I'm remote, and working where, how, and when works best for me. I also have no emotional need for social camaraderie in the workplace, which some people do. My family meets my emotional needs, so I don't need social constructs foisted upon me by my employer. Being social for the sake of being social drains the life out of me and makes me less productive. I've worked in offices and I've worked remotely for almost 30 years, and remote work, at least for me, has proven time and again to work best.

While "barbaric" may be a hyperbolic choice of words, when describing the 9-to-5 grind, I do have to say that the reasons typically given for forcing engineers to work in a modern, open-office environments (e.g. "We need to collaborate") are shallow at best. These environments have been proven to cause more problems than they solve, so in this case, I'll have to side with Coupland, in spite of his embellishments. The collaboration excuse is especially annoying when we still use Slack to communicate, even when we are sitting two feet from each other.

</comment><comment><USER22> He's been a successful author for over 25 years. I wonder if he really has much experience in a 9-5 career. When he was in that career, was he unhappy because it's an objectively bad experience? Or had he not found good jobs? Or was he never committed to that career because he dreamed of being a writer?

I enjoy my 9-5 career. I realize I'm lucky because I have a better experience than most, but I'm not singularly lucky or gifted to be in my position. I don't think I'm one of the few who doesn't consider it "barbaric."

I don't think it's necessarily universal to place a high value on "freeform scheduling" like he says and having structure to the day does have benefits.

> "Most people who work in tech – 99% – don't want to look at the implications > of what they are doing"

My work boils down to the difference between someone seeing one ad vs. another. I need money to live and this is what I'm good at. I don't pretend I'm making the world a better place but it's equally overdramatic to say the implications make the world worse. For better or worse or society is about the freedom to sell things and all the propserity and inequality that comes along with that. For all their flaws, a shift away from those fundamentals would take generations and people don't agree what they should be replaced with and there's no guarantee the replacement would be better.

</comment><comment><USER23> This piece reeks of entitlement. If you love programming or speaking at conferences, sure you don't mind meshing it all together or follow necessary irregular schedule. But there are many people who just want to sell their labour and skills for money and go to their favorite hobbies - whatever they are - without money attached to them, be that woodworking or playing with your dog. Free scheduling should be an option, many people would like that, but calling the other option "barbaric" is tone deaf

</comment><comment><USER24> I totally understand the people who think barbaric is too strong a term, but I'm not sure why they believe physical labor is such a terrible job. I've had physically harsh jobs before, construction, military, and they could also be 9 to 5, or sometimes they were more seasonal, it wasn't any worse. It was better in some ways, since the physicality of them made me stronger and probably had good mental effects on me. It was great to actually be out during the sunny hours of the day.

The 3rd world countries have it worse argument is a fallacy, the existence of a worse condition does not negate the negatives of another and we should be smart enough to address issues with both and improve issues with both simultaneously.

Having said that, I'm not sure the structure he describes sounds any better to me. At this point, I just wonder why work is still at the center of our lives. It seems possible to me with today's technology to organize a society in a way where we finally redistribute back the gains of automation and optimisation made in the last 200 years. I would love a society where you're free to work as little or as much as you want. Or where everyone is a part time worker. You can get two jobs if you want to work more. I don't have the answer to how it would all work, but I'd love to see a discourse about the possibility.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Most people who work in tech – 99% – don't want to look at the implications > of what they are doing. They just want to hit their milestones and that's > it.

That's a hell of a strange line.

As far as I can see, people in tech spend way more time looking at the implications of tech work than anyone else does. (Except, perhaps, people like Coupland who are make their money from doing so.) Tech workers are responsible for much of the endless conversation on web privacy and AI risk and automation and gamification and all the rest. Which is how it should be, presumably - <USER2> assume architects spend more time looking at the implications of building design than the rest of us.

The best justification I can see is that he's just restricting a general, Stugeon's Law observation (90% of everyone don't look at implications) to one specific field.

There ought to be a name for making a true observation, but singling out one instance of it for no particular reason. It happens damned often.

</comment><comment><USER26> I 'm sure there are plenty of people in HN who don't work 9-5 or work independently. It's an upgrade; for me its a kind of upgrade that one does not want to reverse (like moving from a small town to a city). 'Barbaric' is obviously hyperbole, but quitting the 9-5 lifestyle is a change promised by technology that hasn't yet been realized. Sectors like IT could have pioneered this shift, but for some reasons it did not happen (much like most IT workers do not work remotely, even if it's technically possible). I do think that work schedules deeply affect the structure of cities, and it would be nice to see some alternative arrangements, even as an experiment.

</comment><comment><USER27> Highlights:

 _while most people like the notion of free time, actually having to deal with it is horrible. It's a deal with the devil. At least when they're employed they don't have to deal with the freefall; the nothingness of free time._ (Sounds Heiddegerian - the dread that comes with freedom)

 _...This constant influx of news and data means we've come to perceive time differently. The future used to be a far-off thing, but now we experience it at the same time as the present, he contends..._

Obvious: _"The winners in this labour force will be the people who have an actual skill," he says. "Always have an actual skill as a back-up, that's very good advice."_

</comment><comment><USER10> > Always have an actual skill as a back-up, that's very good advice.

This advice from Coupland is the best part of the article, because it uncovers the intended audience: telephone sanitizers. [1]

> Most people who work in tech – 99% – don't want to look at the implications > of what they are doing. They just want to hit their milestones and that's > it.

This statement actually works for about every profession.

[1] If you don't get the reference: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golgafrincham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golgafrincham)

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting read.

I was born 1980 so I straddle the web when it hit mass market adoption.

The differences are indeed marked, my father did the same job for 20 years, I can't imagine that now.

</comment><comment><USER29> This article was a difficult read for me due to all the hand waving and "in the future so and so will happen." That said, I have a lot of respect for Mr. Coupland. Microserfs is still one of the best books I've ever read, and really hits home in so many ways.

</comment><comment><USER14> What would be his answer when I tell him that a nine-to-five hour job would mean more free-time and vonsiderably less stress to me while being at least as productive as now, constantly sheduling things for latency instead of throughput?

</comment><comment><USER30> Different strokes for different folks. I imagine some people enjoy the structure. Other people don't. That's why some people enjoy life in the office while others enjoy writing objectively crappy novels like "JPod."

</comment><comment><USER31> Not that I'm one to disagree, because day jobs are fucking bullshit, but...

I worry that as advanced technology continues to unfurl evermore convenience into our lives, how spoiled will we become?

<comment><USER32> It's interesting that you choose to use the word "spoiled" here. It is a testament to how firmly entrenched the class system is.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure we understand each other.

If there comes a moment when no single individual knows how to perform essential tasks, because automated sytems have been doing such tasks for us, and then those systems stop working, we'll notice serious problems emerging unexpectedly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Of course it's actually 7-6 with the commute and lunch

<comment><USER20> My lunch is included in my day but I know that's an extremely rare situation. The 4-mile, 10-minute drive is pretty nice too.

But serious question: do you think your employer should pay you to commute?

<comment><USER25> > But serious question: do you think your employer should pay you to commute?

In a practical sense, most employers should or do. Not for your personal choice of commute, that's on you, but an employer in downtown LA or rural Nebraska does end up having to compensate people for living somewhere so hard to get to.

<comment><USER10> When I talked to my brother (a civil engineer who's doing his fair share of driving to remote working locations all across Germany and beyond) about the prospect of autonomous cars, he said that he wouldn't want to have one of these as a company car, for the same reason he wouldn't want to go by train: Under German law, when you're driving the car yourself, it counts as work time. When you're being driven by the car (or when you're going by train), it counts as free time. So if the location was 5 hours away, he would lose 10 paid work hours if the car was driving him instead of the other way around.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Is This Site? - <AUTHOR> I was meditating and this websites name came to me. I know it may sound super odd but, it is what it is.
Best wishes, JOY <comment><USER2> We're just a group of nerds, geeks, software engineers, engineers, startup junkies, and overall technologists who share news, talk concepts, and just about anything computer/science related.</comment>


Megagames: Giant board games for hundreds of people in the same room - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/welcome-to-the-world-of-megagames-300-players-take-part-in-watch-the-skies-board-game-10213384.html

<comment><USER2> This looks like a lot of fun. Here are some entertaining videos from shut up and sitdown that seem to capture what its all about.

[http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/v/susd-play- megagame-...](http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/v/susd-play- megagame-2-pt1/)

[http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/v/watch- skies-2-pt-2/](http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/v/watch-skies-2-pt-2/)

<comment><USER3> Also this video from their first time playing it (1 year earlier), which I found a bit easier to follow (it's also only half as long)

[http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/v/susd-play- megagame/](http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/v/susd-play-megagame/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone know of a links page or any good way of find the groups that run these sorts of things?

All I can find is the main one in the UK: [http://www.megagame- makers.org.uk/](http://www.megagame-makers.org.uk/) [https://www.facebook.com/groups/mmakers/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/mmakers/)

One in the US in NY [http://megagamesociety.com/](http://megagamesociety.com/) [https://twitter.com/MegaGameSociety](https://twitter.com/MegaGameSociety) [https://www.facebook.com/megagamesociety](https://www.facebook.com/megagamesociety)

And a random twitter account [https://twitter.com/chicagomegagame](https://twitter.com/chicagomegagame)

I read there is also some activity in Australia, but couldn't find any links

<comment><USER5> We just ran two events in Seattle.

The "MegaGame Society" is sort of the over-arching organizing group (they licensed Watch the Skies from the UK group, updated it significantly, and are recruiting more groups to run it locally).

They're definitely the folks to follow for information on games outside of the UK.

<comment><USER4> Any plans to run any more on the west coast this winter? I'd love to participate.

<comment><USER5> We'd like to! We're thinking of something this winter, but are taking a much- needed break for a few weeks.

Our first event was a lot of work and these are entirely labors of love--the ticket cost lets us basically break even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "And I know there are some big Larps in California, but those still only have about 100 people at any one time."

Well, we've got at least two LARPs in the UK which have been well over the thousand mark for a while now: Lorien Trust ([https://www.lorientrust.com/](https://www.lorientrust.com/)) and Empire (which is run by Profound Decisions - [http://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire](http://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire)). [I'm excluding Curious Pasttimes, since I have no data, but suspect it's also 1000+]. Typically Empire (which I play and have a better idea of numbers) has around 1500 people: around 1300 players and 200 crew.

Empire is interesting from a Megagame perspective because it places the players as the movers and shakers of the world and then gives them the levers of power -- there are senators dealing with the temporal politics of a ten- nation Empire, the synod wrestling for the protection of man's mortal soul, the mages who bargain for power from the alien beings from outside Creation or for those aliens to not deal with the Empire's enemies. And it's on a timescale of four weekends a year, for years, rather than a one-off game. (This isn't even the only large LARP they run -- I believe their mythological era Odyssey game is several hundreds of players)

And as the comments of the article say; Germany has some epic LARPs too -- and pretty sure other places do too.

That said, I'd love to play in one of these tightly plotted megagames...

[full disclosure: I play Empire, have played Odyssey, and played Lorien Trust a long time ago and wasn't a massive fan. If you book for either of the first two games with 570.2375 we'll both get money off.]

</comment><comment><USER7> I never believed a game as complex as Eschaton could exist in the real world. I'm glad to be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER8> I recall teams playing "War in Europe" a couple of decades ago in Toronto's original wargaming club "The General Staff:"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Europe_(game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Europe_\(game\))

It may not have been a megagame, but it certainly was a monster.

</comment><comment><USER9> These are fun. I played in the June Chicago game and I'll be assisting with the October Chicago game. Like many people, I learned about the concept from Shut Up & Sit Down, the board game review site.

In these games, each player on a team has a role that grants them access to a part of the game unavailable to most of the rest of their team. Communication is essential. Teams use a mix of methods to deal with this ranging from tweeting to smartwatch texts to using members of their team as information couriers (in our game, we had a member of our team with wider on the lookout for hand signals from the more restricted members.)

<comment><USER4> Are there any details on the October Chicago game?

<comment><USER10> Do you have any information on this? Where could I sign up etc?

<comment><USER9> You can sign up for the Chicago mailing list here: [http://bit.ly/1CM2nad](http://bit.ly/1CM2nad) (found at the bottom of [http://www.eventbrite.com/e/watch-the-skies-chicago- registra...](http://www.eventbrite.com/e/watch-the-skies-chicago- registration-16166271754)). You can also keep an eye on the Facebook page for all the games: [https://www.facebook.com/megagamesociety](https://www.facebook.com/megagamesociety)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is just a LARP… a 300-person actual boardgame would be weird/interesting, but this is just "get a bunch of people in a room with assumed roles and restricted social interaction & see what happens" which is every roleplay cons' big event since the 90s</comment>


The sparrow with four sexes - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/the-sparrow-with-four-sexes-1.21018 <comment> brian-armstrong There's a diagram about halfway through that illustrates how this works. I miunderstood the article at first and was wondering why you wouldn't just say that there are two species, but the diagram sorted me out. The tan stripe birds almost always mate with the white stripes, and the offspring have a 50/50 chance of having the mutation.

I wonder if the birds instinctively "know" that they have 4 sexes

<comment><USER2> > The tan stripe birds almost always mate with the white stripes

The "almost" hints at the origins of homosexuality.

<comment><USER3> Same sex birds adopting eggs from other breeding pairs are quite common in the avian world, especially among populations that nest in close proximity such as penguins.

There's no "origin" to homosexuality. If anything having differentiated sexes is an aberration, the majority of plant species have both as well as many of the precursor species to modern mammals like snails and flatworms. In situations where the separation of the sexes provided some kind of evolutionary advantage it took hold. In others it never happened.

Also our preconceptions about gender goes out the window when there's four possible expressions as in the case with these birds.

<comment><USER2> > There's no "origin" to homosexuality

Did I use the word "origin" incorrectly? Because evolution of a second sexual system in these birds results in white-striped birds and tan-striped ones mating only with the other _almost all_ the time instead of _always all_ the time, homosexuality is being built into the differentiation of a species into 2 sexes, I presume because DNA processing can never be error-free. I didn't imply it starts happening after the differentiation.

<comment><USER3> The term doesn't even apply here since the physical expression of gender is more complicated than the typical binary variant seen in mammals.

white/male + white/female is not "homosexual" by any conventional definition. If anything it's "homomorphic".

Birds, like any creature, don't do anything all the time. I think you're reading way too much into these observations.

<comment><USER2> > white/male + white/female is not "homosexual" by any conventional > definition. If anything it's "homomorphic"

Did I use the term "homosexual" incorrectly? Perhaps "origins of homosexuality" would be more accurate. That's what I said in the first place.

The article says "the researchers had come up with the concept that the birds were evolving a second set of sex chromosomes" and "the inversion on chromosome 2 doesn't include genes that determine sexual development — but it does contain some that affect the birds' reproductive behaviour". The tan- striped "swingers" are monogamous and fiercely protect their hatchlings from predators, whereas the white-striped "singers" are aggressive, promiscuous, and more cavalier about their offspring. The tan stripe birds _almost always_ mate with the white stripes, but there are exceptions. We're seeing here firsthand (on a genetic time scale) the origins of homosexual behavior.

I appreciate your comment because when I first got the 5+ downvotes without any comments, I thought it was homophobic attitudes from HN readers. But now I know they could also be anyone with an overly pedantic reaction to the use of certain words.

<comment><USER3> > We're seeing here firsthand (on a genetic time scale) the origins of > homosexual behavior.

Again, nope. I think you're taking a lot of flack here for implying that homosexuality, or homosexual behaviour is somehow unnatural and needed to evolve. That it's an aberration of some sort.

I'm asserting it has always been there, that it pre-dates the very concept of genders. There's an evolutionary bias _in some species_ towards heterosexual relationships, but in others there's no such pressure. Aphids don't need to reproduce sexually, but they do if they feel it's a better deal. Snails possess both genders and breeding gets complicated.

The only thing we're witnessing the start of here is the introduction of new arrangements of genes that behave in a sex-like way. If there was a species where a sex gene was being evolved away there would be just as much scientific interest.

<comment><USER2> > I think you're taking a lot of flack here for implying that homosexuality, > or homosexual behaviour is somehow unnatural and needed to evolve

First you dispute my use of "origin", then you dispute my use of "homosexual". Now are you saying my use of "origin of homosexuality" to explain the _almost_ in "A _almost_ always mates with B" implies I think homosexuality is "unnatural"? You have an overly pedantic reaction to my use of certain words if you're inferring the opinion words "unnatural" and "aberration" from my first one-line comment.

<comment><USER3> I have no idea how that could be construed any other way. Whatever you're trying to say, you're saying it in the most confusing way possible.

There's nothing even remotely "homosexual" about your "A mates with B" statement. Horses _almost always_ mate with other horses. Sometimes they mate with donkeys. That does not make the act homosexual in the least.

There's no origin, genesis, beginning, or start of anything homosexual with this addition of new sex genes. It just broadens the spectrum of what gender actually is.

<comment><USER2> > I have no idea how that could be construed any other way. Whatever you're > trying to say, you're saying it in the most confusing way possible

I think my clarifying comments above are clear enough, certainly not "the most confusing way possible". Your comments each argue against something I'm not saying or implying.

If you have no idea how my original comment couldn't be construed as anything other than implying "homosexuality is somehow unnatural and an aberration", then I suggest perhaps you're bringing something from your personal situation into your reading process. I wrote the comment immediately after reading the entire article.

<comment><USER3> You asked why you were being down-voted, so I explained how your comment was perceived.

You can either put down the shovel or keep digging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Four sexes" sounds click-baitier than "two morphs." It's not like they have unique procreation, other than effectively two subspecies whom cannot interbreed (they both have males and females respectively). It's interesting a species can diverge with a large mutation and split the gene pool suddenly. More intriguing is how enough of a population could grow from the first individual and thrive.

EDIT: gotta make you wonder if there were a large forest fire, volcano, human hunters or other event that almost wipe them out, and that the survivors went through a population bottleneck, perhaps picking up the mutation along the way.

<comment><USER5> No, it's very different than two subspecies. The males of one morph almost exclusively mate with females of the _other_ morph, and produce offspring which are one of the four sexes in roughly equal proportion.

<comment><USER6> Do we know that they "almost exclusively mate with females of the other morph" or is it just because same-morph matings are infertile?

<comment><USER7> The article isn't explicit on that, but they did observe the birds for 30 years, so maybe it's in the paper.

<comment><USER8> The paper says 1.5% of pairs were indeed between the same morphs. No mention of infertility, but white/white pairs produce 1/4 of chicks with both 2nd chromosomes mutated and the only male chick of this kind they found was 50% underweight runt, though two such females grew up as normal white adults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The tl;dr:

The species has two chromosomes that act like sex chromosomes. That is to say, our Y chromosome never get's to mingle with other Y chromosomes, and so it accumulates mutations fairly quick, and thus a sex chromosome. In the bird species, there are 2 such chromosomes, and thus 4 unique states with regards to those unique chromosomes, as opposed to our 2 states.

They are defining sex not through sexual organs, but through the chromosomal state.

<comment><USER3> It's a very interesting combination of factors here, and they're also making the observation that this could be how the original XX/XY split occurred.

Sexual genetics are actually a lot more complicated than people think. There are YY "supermale" people, though it's more common in fish which gender-flip depending on population balance leading to XY males breeding with XY females. A YY male will always produce male children.

There's also XXY, XXXY and so on which is where things get even more complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Quite a few bird species and some other animals[2] can have chromosomes of both sexes[1]. When it happens to northern cardinals, they end up split down the middle in color--one half gray like a female and one half red like a male[3].

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150916-these-animals-are- ma...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150916-these-animals-are-male-on-one- side-and-female-on-the-other)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynandromorphism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynandromorphism)

[3] [http://www.remotesensingart.com/CardinalMF/index.html](http://www.remotesensingart.com/CardinalMF/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> > "This bird acts like it has four sexes," (...)

Interesting to see that one phrase was changed to make the title more interesting, by nature.com.

<comment><USER12> Sadly, that's the nature of journalism.

<comment><USER13> Were you just saying that for the pun?

Regardless, I wanted to point out that the title, while interesting, is hardly "click bait and switch." These birds DO have four sexes, from the point of view of their chromosomes, which results in behavioral differences between the four sexes, and produces birds that can only mate with a quarter of the entire population.

The biologist that said the "these birds act like..." quote was not the author of the paper being discussed. Also, later on he says "...in a four-sex system, each bird must work that much harder to find a mate — a white female is not just looking for a male, she needs a tan one — so selection will favour a more advantageous two-sex system instead."

So which is it? "A four-sex system" or something that "looks like a four sex system"? I think the article makes it pretty clear that it's the former.

Also, from the article: "Some animals, such as reptiles, have two sexes and no sex chromosomes, whereas the freshwater protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila has seven sexes, each of which can mate with any type except its own. Two sexes with one set of sex chromosomes is the most common arrangement, and has evolved independently many times. But there's no reason a species can't have more sex chromosomes, Wilson Sayres says. "If you've got two genes linked together that can't cross over during meiosis, and one of them plays a role in sex determination, suddenly you can have a new sex chromosome.""

How is the title incorrect?

<comment><USER11> Well, I would think that having a 4-sex-system would lead to all possible combinations of those. Let's say there are A, B, C and D individuals. You would have a breed from A x B, A x C, A x D, B x C, B x D and C x D.

But what I got is that there males and females. But some of them have a different chromosome, to that it's transmitted for their little cute birdies. Let's call it _n_ and _m_ versions, and keep the males (Y) and females (X)

So you have Ym, Yn, Xm and Xn. You just have Ym x Xm or Ym x Xn. OR Yn x Xm or Yn x Xn. You don't have Ym x Yn. Nor Xm x Xn. You just have 4 possible combinations, not the whole 6 combinations if there really were 4 different sex.

Perhaps I'm missing something from the article, from the paper, or from biology, but since those special mutation from the chromosome 2 doesn't generate infertile offspring, I simply understand it as "birds with a white hair prefer those with red hair, instead of opposite-sex with the same hair color, generating a offspring that will have white or red hair with the same probability."

<comment><USER13> That's not what the paper described at all. Even the article explicitly said that the birds could only mate with 25% of the population -- the "opposite sex" along two dimensions, instead of just one.

Those "special mutations" on chromosome 2 result in a chromosome that cannot recombine like a normal chromosome -- a new separate sex chromosome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's something I don't get.

Can someone explain to me what prevents a tan-striped male mating with a tan- striped female?

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if they could recreate the original single inversion, and check the fertility of those.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe this is just a "correlation vs. causation" error?

Think about humans. For Chinese males, it is very likely to mate up with Chinese girls. That's not just a matter of availability (in China, there live mostly Chinese-looking people o_o), but also a phenomenon overseas, I believe. You have a lot more in common, similar values and similar cultural perceptions.

PS: This case shall not be construed to address Chinese especially, I'm convinced it works the same with all the similar ethnic groups and even subgroups.

<comment><USER17> What shall be the "correlation vs. causation" error here? I mean, if you draw an analog here, it would mean that Chinese people could get children of any race but those would still pair up. The birds do not know which type they are but still pair up with the different morph, so its something intrinsic inherited from the genotype that influences the sexual phenotype.

<comment><USER18> Or possibly that birds value reproductive success, and learn to mate with partners who can produce eggs from experience.</comment></comment></comment>


Please Solve the Information Redundancy Problem - <AUTHOR> http://codeismightier.com/2009/02/solving-the-information-redundancy-problem/

<comment><USER2> <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BayesianAnalysis.html>

It wouldn't be that difficult to implement this. Run your RSS feeds through a program that will look in the articles for words you are already familiar with.

If you read an article, you can rate it good or bad and it can look at which terms are /in/ the article. If you rated it good, then the new terms are added to a list of terms to look for, terms that the algorithm will think are part of articles that will interest you.

If you rate it bad, it'll look at terms in common with other articles you've rated bad and see know what to look for in articles it should not bring to your attention.

It would be nice if such an algorithm would allow you to rate the articles on different scales for entertainment, technology, philosophy, etc, so when you are in one of those moods, you just click on the category and it'll hunt for things that may interest you.

I think an algorithm like this would be much more suited to an individual than a social group type filtering system like most groups use. At some point, the individual wants to break off from the group and explore independently and to do that effectively, they need a teacher.

In a way, this algorithm would be a teacher constantly showing you new things in the world and keeping your interest up.

The problem with social sites now is that there are many large communities who all at once look for a new venue for their point seeking. It promotes a king of the hill mentality where individuals within the group compete with others for points rather than personal excellence, education, and betterment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have implemented such an algorithm in the past. The problem is that it actually makes things _even more redundant_ since it gives you stuff you have already read and liked. The results returned are usually articles on the exact same topic from a different source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't see redundancy as much of a problem for a couple reasons:

#1 If you teach yourself to scan text well, your brain becomes very good at parsing the data that is new. I can get the gist of a one-page article in 10-15 seconds if it contains only a few paragraphs of truly "New" information.

#2 Redundancy cements important knowledge in your mind. I am willing to bet that if you examined any 'designed' course of study such as you would find in college, you will see a great deal of redundancy. Studies have shown that spaced repetition and review can greatly impact how well you retain a certain body of knowledge. If you are reading articles on the same subject in an attempt to learn a body of knowledge there would be some benefit to the overlap, especially considering that any new nuggets of info would be learned in context and cemented in place next to already known facts.</comment>


The Increasing Growth Rates of SaaS Companies - <AUTHOR> http://tomtunguz.com/saas-revenue-growth-rates/

<comment><USER2> Great article. I'd love to discuss sometime with you regarding this.</comment>


Show HN: Grow – simple habit tracking app - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.przybylski.grow <comment><USER2> Looks good! I'm using HabitBull[0] for past few weeks, and it's not bad, but i like your approach, so i'm going to give Grow a try.

Few random notes after first minutes in the app:

\- i made a typo in the habit name and couldn't find a way to edit it

\- it would be useful to have an option to check the relevant days for each habit (eg. only mondays, exclude weekends, …)

[0] [http://www.habitbull.com/](http://www.habitbull.com/), got a link from some HN comment i believe

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Regarding your notes: I am planning on fixing editing but I am not sure about setting a specific day. I can see a reason on doing so but I am assuming (also basing on the research) that habits are behaviours performed daily. But again this is something I heard from other people so I guess I will give it a bit more deeper thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can't install on my Xiaomi Mi 4.

What Android API features does this app use that are not available on the Android version I have installed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Which Android version are you using? I am not using anything extraordinary, Room, Support Library and Design Library as external dependencies.

<comment><USER3> Android Version: 4.4.4 KTU84P

MIUI Version: 7

<comment><AUTHOR> You are using API 19 where minimum API level is 21. The 21 is used because I am using Vector Assets Generator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very similar to Forest - Stay Focused in mechanism

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't aware of "Forest" \- even tho it looks similar in a way of "rewarding" the concept of the app is different. "Forest" has this reward mechanism developed a lot better tho.</comment></comment>


What will travel look like after coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/coronavirus-travel-industry-changes/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> _\- Cruises will be very cheap. But it might not matter for newcomers

\- Cleanliness will be addressed -- a lot

\- Hotel room rates will drop more before they come back up

\- Travelers may feel safer in hotels than vacation rentals

\- Look for lower airfares and emptier planes

\- Business travel may spur recovery for airlines

\- Air travelers will have more booking flexibility -- for a while

\- Increased sustainability is a possible windfall_</comment>


Google+ Demo - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/demo/

<comment><USER2> I'm really looking forward to trying this out, and here's why:

With Facebook, I felt as if I was on this huge football field with all of my 'friends.' I could lean in to whisper with a friend here and there, or even put on some face paint and huddle together with like-faced friends to form a group. But everyone could still see me, and I could see them – I just had to peer down the field. I can't _really_ say things to my group that I'd normally say in private because with all these people on the field with me, someone would certainly overhear us!

With Google+ the structure is different. Rather than a field, it's more like a big building with many rooms. Each room can be decorated and tailored to a specific group of friends who hang out there. Best part is once I'm in the room, I can close the door and be myself! I can go up two levels, change hats, and walk into a different room.

tl;dr Google+ lets me fully engage my various social sides, whereas Facebook never really let you as you were always in the eye of the public.

Edit: One thing I did notice that I wish they would change is that it seems as if a friend can only be placed into one circle. Often times there's a lot of overlap among my social circles and friends may be part of at least two different groups.

<comment><USER3> I'm testing Google+ as we speak. I can confirm that you can add people to several circles. However, I haven't yet been able to test how people in those circles see an item that you share.

As far as I've understood, Circles are your personal aliases for groups of people and they are not visible to other people. This is really useful in certain situations, but it can also create some confusion when people are commenting and discussing about your photo, as they don't have clear visibility who else is seeing the photo and their comments.

<comment><USER3> Okay, tested also how Circle is visible to a receiver. It seems to be like I explained above, i.e. Circle is your private alias for a group of people.

The receiver account was not part of Google+ so things might work differently when sharing between Google+ users. The photo just shows Visibility: "Limited", no visibility who else is seeing the photo.

<comment><USER4> If you click or hover over the `Limited` then you can see who it's shared with.

disclosure: I work for Google, but not on Google+

<comment><USER3> It doesn't show them for non-Google+ users, but I assume that Google thought it's a marginal use case in the long run ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are several reasons I am hopeful for this.

1\. It looks CLEAN While in my opinion one major reason Facebook ended up beating out Myspace was its wonderful interface, I feel like recent renditions have just lost that simplicity. I want connecting with my friends to be simple, not a bombardment of Farmville updates and a poorly designed messaging system.

2\. Sparks Hopefully Google will succeed where Facebook has failed in actually making keeping track of your interests, well...interesting.

3\. Circles Friend management in Facebook has always been one of my biggest complaints, Circles seems to be a legitimate approach to making organizing your friends a little bit more intuitive.

I am very excited to see Google+ roll out to the masses, and I do hope it is successful. Not because I want it to take Facebook down, but I think it wouldn't hurt to make them break a little sweat and think about their users a bit more.

<comment><USER6> Circles is awesome. I can't believe Facebook hasn't done it yet. Hopefully you can drop friends into more than one circle.

As far as Huddle goes, I hope it's easy to go from a normal text straight into a Huddle. Also, typing status is very helpful in a chat room to avoid the inevitable conflicts that occur when people happen to type responses at the same time.

Sparks looks somewhat like Google News filtering. I'm not sure if I'll use it if that's all it ends up being.

Hangouts could be interesting, but because it's many-many communication like Huddle, the conversation flow could be difficult to maintain. I hope it works out.

<comment><USER7> Based on the demo you can only put friends in one circle, but I hope that's going to change or just isn't properly reflected in the demo; I have plenty of people I would consider to be in multiple circles. The easiest example of which is a "co-worker" who is also a "friend".

<comment><USER8> Oddly enough, I hope this maps to the gmail groups concept, since I already have people mapping along those lines in there, and winds into my android device as well.

Google seems to run into the large corporation octopus issue where knowing what the left and right hands are doing is a difficult task.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A little tangent here, but does anyone else find it increasingly difficult to manage multiple sessions on the Google platform?

I keep having difficulty not knowing which google account I'm logged into, having issues enabling/disabling features before I have access to a feature X and then, I find out feature X is not available with google apps hosted account; but it's available with my gmail account.

There really isn't a solution other than using chrome, incognito window and n browsers per google account. I sure it's a minority of the google user base having this issue, or I'm sure it would be dealt with. Anyone else experience this, and have a solution? I'm just short of abandoning data in all my accounts but one, and moving everything over to it (and forward emails).

<comment><USER10> Go here, accept the conditions <https://www.google.com/accounts/MultipleSessions>

On the right top menu, Switch Accounts, sign in to second account, (may need to accept conditions again). At this point, you will be able to switch back and forth, between the two accounts

<comment><USER9> I've done that and have been using it - it has many limitations but it's a small step in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks to me like Don't Be Evil showing up as a competitive advantage. Facebook seems want my data and my network for its own exploitation; Google seems to actually be thinking about what's best for me.

<comment><USER12> Facebook makes advertising money through user profiling and only from within their site. Google makes advertising money just from the fact that you're using the web. Google is able to do _more_ though profiling, but they have the flexibility and hindsight to do it less intrusively. Remember, Google's properties are more spread out than Facebook's (and AdSense is almost everywhere). So with Google you don't even have to be logged in for them to advertise to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think one of main Google problem is Brand Fatigue, people are tired of Google this and Google that. Why not call it friend something or give it a generic name like Baboo, Facebook or something fresh that will give the impression that it is something new.

<comment><USER14> Had Google called it friend something, at least I won't have bothered. The only reason I am looking at it is because of brand Google. Granted that Google would have called it something else and I would have still used it, but that would be only because it's Google. Majority of people I know don't have Google brand fatigue - they love brand Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's the best web demo I've ever seen. I'm a jaded person, but I clicked on all the things and did all the stuff and felt pride at using their (impressively easy) interface. Serious unexpected design chops from Google!

</comment><comment><USER16> Honestly, I'd be open to trying this JUST for the circles. Too many times I've had to restrain myself from posting certain things because of the wide range of "friends" I have on facebook.

</comment><comment><USER17> Really well done, interactive demo.

<comment><USER18> Extremely well done. I didn't bother reading about all the features, but the demo made me go through all of it. I'm now excited about instant photos. Success, google.

I liked the huddle text input, you don't choose what gets written... pogo boots vanilla beetroots?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I adamantly insisted through the whole Facebook is a Google killer period, that when Google decides and turns its eye towards FB's turf - they won't be able to compete. For two simple reasons:

1\. Google has more of everything. 2\. When Google commits to something they don't give up after a failed attempt. They learn and come back meaner and badder.

What I like about this service is that it offers (not in beta mind you) actual value as it seems. And I mean that in a productivity sense, not just vanity shots and addictive "click like an automaton" games.

I believe that it is time for someone to hire me as a strategist.

</comment><comment><USER20> Flash instead of HTML5.......

<comment><USER21> Just this "demo". Makes sense considering some of the animation and interactivity they have on the small windows. I doubt the actual product uses Flash for anything other than, maybe, sound and video (as does GMail/YouTube/etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can't put 1 friend into 2 circles? Great job on simplifying my social life..

<comment><USER23> I just tried this out. Yes I can add people to more than 1 circle easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is great. The circle groups and the group chat is awesome. But I'm wondering how many groups you'd be able to create (would there be a limit?) and how the center stage of group chat works? It said in demo that the person talking or the loudest would be center but what if 3+ people hit the same volume level, or if like tinychat, there are multiple people talking? Would love to get a reply from someone in Google+ beta.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm specially interested in the potential of a developer API for this new Google Sparks. Since users _explicitly_ list their interests. If google let's developers access user's interest graph with AppEngine. Then we can do some really really cool customized user experience with it.

My brain is going crazy with ideas after reading about this. Just imagine the possibilities... hmmmmm :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Yesss, finally I'll be able to get off Facebook! Even though I use Facebook lists, circles seems a lot simpler and functional. For me, photos, and comments and discussions generated off photos is really important, so I need a social network that my friends are also on. The only other service that all my friends share is GMail, so this is really great.

</comment><comment><USER27> The "Keep Me Posted" button brings me to

<https://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/+/learnmore/notifyme.html>

which is a 404. I had to manually delete "-GB" to get a 200.

<comment><USER28> It worked for me after coming back a minute later, perhaps they had a transient fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Whatever can make them close down Orkut faster, I'm down.

</comment><comment><USER29> Bad sign:

> 404\. That's an error.

> The requested URL /intl/en-GB/+/learnmore/notifyme.html was not found on > this server. That's all we know.

</comment><comment><USER30> Tried to add myself to the waitlist, and got a 500 server error. When the waitlist fails, it doesn't inspire confidence.

</comment><comment><USER31> Very slick use of Google Maps underlying tech, it looks like. Similar to Prezi, too.

</comment><comment><USER32> this is very _nice_ , although seems to be overlapping with couple of independent offerings. to me, for example, sparks == instapaper, instant- upload == path/color etc.

</comment><comment><USER33> The functionality feels really similar to Prezi.

</comment><comment><USER34> Loved the hangout feature. Really!

</comment><comment><USER35> Good luck. When my grandma joins I'll take a look. She's on Facebook. ;)

<comment><USER36> Hah, I had the opposite reaction. Finally a social network where I don't have to accept friend requests from my relatives =)

<comment><USER37> And even if you do accept them, it should be much more convenient and less awkward. That's what I'm looking forward to. I still want to keep up with my family but they don't care about machine learning and don't need to know everything that I'm doing with my friends. Circles sounds great for all of that.</comment></comment></comment>


Beginner's Guide to Participating in ICANN [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/participating-08nov13-en.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Given the recent controversies and demonstrations of corruption in ICANN, it's more important than ever to participate in (and yell at) the organization that (by and large) controls the internet.

I hope anyone reading this at least considers participating more in the organization: a lot of people have no idea that you _can_ , and there's a lot of helplessness because it doesn't feel democratic at all because of that.</comment>


Major routing issues on the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://status.pingdom.com/incidents/0n95zvcxb19m <comment><USER2> From cloudflare status [1] posted on HN [2]:

> Network Performance Issues in multiple locations

> The issue is related to a specific transit provider and we are working on > temporarily disabling this provider to route around the issue

[1] [https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/](https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/)?

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14246888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14246888)

<comment> semi-extrinsic That cloudflare status is very strange: it says (said) Angola, Dubai, Philadelphia (US), some Australian locations and some in South America were affected. Anyone have a good explanation of such a random distribution?

<comment><USER3> Telia, the ISP that cause this issue, is very very large -- one of few Tier 1 ISPs. That said, when Tier 1 ISPs experience issues they're incredibly wide spread and behave oddly.

The POPs you mention are the Cloudflare POPs that experienced degraded or dropped throughput due to Telia being (one of?) Cloudflare's preferred routes for that POP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks like Telia is apparently the issue.

Our CDN's are having problems all over the place. No indications of what shit the bed, but this is more then Cloudflare or Level3.

<comment><USER5> Do you have a source? (Would like to pass it on internally)

<comment><USER3> Multiple ISPs I work with have explicitly stated to me that it was Telia. I'm not aware of any public sources confirming this yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OT, but that yellow/white combination of background and font color is terrible.

</comment><comment><USER7> We dropped Telia as a carrier about 2 months ago. I've never seen a network with such stability issues; outages/slowdowns occurred on a weekly basis for us and tech support was useless. The only good thing about Telia is they did a great job with service credits. According to VP's there they have been going through major transitions in the last year but given their Tier-1 status, you would expect more stability.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well that's...specific

</comment><comment><USER9> I just saw this as well. Got a downtime alert, but app seems to be working from my location.

<comment><USER10> Same here. Not sure if Pingdom is acting up or they legitimately can't reach my site due to the problems reported by Cloudflare or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it possible to determine the transit provider at fault based on Cloudflare's list of affected areas?

<comment><USER3> I don't believe that would be possible... (Caveat: I am not the World's Smartest & Bestest Network Engineer Ever™, would be great if other's chimed in!)

1\. Each Cloudflare POP has multiple bandwidth providers. 2\. Each Cloudflare POP can and does change it's preferred BGP routes. 3\. Telia's outage wasn't 100% of their network, so there are plenty of Telia links -- including ones to Cloudflare POPs -- that were not impacted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cloudflare is reporting that the issue has been resolved.

[https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/51q3xhq8w7t8](https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/51q3xhq8w7t8)

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks like telia was down and has fixed a mistake in their configs.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious what Pingdom uses to detect their own outages.

</comment><comment><USER14> Experienced uncharacteristic connection issues in the last ~15 minutes, was primarily SSHing into AWS EC2 at the time though so can't comment on the true scale.

</comment><comment><USER15> A BGP problem again? Or something else this time? It amazes me that there has not been an alternative to handle routing except full trust for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER16> HN has been sketchy for me for the last half hour or so.

</comment><comment><USER17> I noticed reddit went down briefly.

</comment><comment><USER18> Reddit is down

<comment><USER19> no, it's not.

<comment><USER20> It was.

Or at least they showed me error message that their CDNs were down.

Haven't seen that kind of error before in Reddit</comment></comment></comment>