Inception isn't science fiction (spoilers) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samstokes.co.uk/post/890499536/inception-isnt-science-fiction-spoilers

<comment><USER2> The best interpretation I've seen is that the entire movie is an allegory about movie-making. The "shared dream" is very analogous to a movie.

Stokes' interpretation doesn't look deep enough. He attempts to figure out what is really happening before, after, or even during the movie. I find more use in interpretations that try and figure out what something means and what the underlying message the writer/director is making (if any).

Stokes focuses too much on plot and not enough on meaning. Reminds me of people who think the Six Sense is awesome (pretty much everyone) because of its amazing plot twist. But that's all it really had--not too much meaning. A movie worth analyzing shouldn't just stand on plot alone. Thankfully Inception has both an awesome plot and some decently profound meaning.

<comment><USER3> But where does Cobb's rampant guilt and Fischer's paternal reconciliation fit into this metaphor for filmmaking? And what does it tell us about filmmaking that would make this worthwhile?

I think it's safer to say the concepts of creation and inspiration are common to dream making and filmmaking and leave it at that.

<comment><USER2> [http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP- THE-...](http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING- AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/Page1.html)

Not that these excerpts really do the analysis justice, but:

>Except that this is exactly what Nolan is arguing against. The film is a metaphor for the way that Nolan as a director works, and what he's ultimately saying is that the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life. Inception is about making movies, and cinema is the shared dream that truly interests the director.

>The whole film being a dream isn't a cop out or a waste of time, but an ultimate expression of the film's themes and meaning. It's all fake. But it's all very, very real. And that's something every single movie lover understands implicitly and completely.

To answer your question more directly, the familial issues in the plot are a vehicle for emotion. These emotions are just as real in a dream as they are in a movie, as they are in real life (to borrow from the analysis' phrasing).

<comment><USER3> Hmmm I read the analysis and I don't think it's all that meaningful: just like numerous other films Inception has some themes which it explores (regret, guilt, grieving/loss). If the exploration is insightful enough, then the audience can learn from it. Is Mighty Ducks a metaphor for filmmaking because emotions are just as real in a hockey match as they are in a movie, as they are in real life?

The film touches on some ideas like the intoxicating power of the imagination but I think saying the whole film's a metaphor for filmmaking goes a bit far and the evidence is stacked against his analysis.

<comment><USER4> I dunno. There are enough references to other films, blatant and subtle, that it makes me wonder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> No no no... "inception" happens when they plant an idea inside a safe/vault inside someone's dream (inside someone's dream, inside someone's dream), rather than extracting one. Cobb doesn't undergo inception, he just works out his problems as the plot develops with some help from Ariadne. Why? Because it would be a dull and empty plot if all these characters were brought together simply to perform a job. Furthermore the film makes clear that Cobb learns to reject he projection of his wife, so it makes no sense for him to then embrace projected children instead at the end. The children represent reality not just in physicality but in the emotional truth that underscores the film. That's why he spins the top then ignores it soon as his children appear - they're a more certain anchor for reality.

<comment><USER5> "Because it would be a dull and empty plot if all these characters were brought together simply to perform a job."

What you describe is a very common trope for heist movies, and Inception-- despite its depth--satisfies on that level, just as The Matrix satisfies as a sci-fi shoot-em-up despite its depth.

A lot of the best movies satisfy on multiple levels this way.

<comment><USER3> They never make movies about 'just another job,' which is what this would be if not for Cobb's psychodrama/inner-conflict and Ariadne's attempt to help. Although I suppose the goal of inception would make it unique from the characters' perspective but that's too weak because it means nothing to the audience beforehand.

<comment><USER5> Except it's not "just another job" at all--it's an impossible job, they have to assemble the best team, they make an elaborate plan that goes all wrong and they have to clean it up--Cobb's personal issues are part of it, and motivate his desperation to take the job, but without that angle you still have the classic heist (or at least caper).

<comment><USER3> But c'mon, name a classic heist/caper movie that doesn't up the emotional stakes in some manner not inherent to the job itself (eg. Love interest, betrayal, apocalypse, even just the time honoured 'one last job' etc). I didn't say it would necessarily be dull and empty overall but the plot itself would. There's no way the audience would care enough about the impossibility of the job or the crackness of the team, because it's all just thrust upon them wih no prior context. Now, of courae, it could still be a great film minus the Cobb psychodrama, but there'd be something else there in its place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "And then he woke up" is the ending to every 5th graders first ambitious story. I don't buy it.

I did think the little dream machine in the movie looked like game console. You and several of your friends slide in the IV to play a round of, what exactly?

I thought the movie portrayed a pretty decent game already, just getting from one level to the next. More: <http://www.kmeme.com/2010/07/inception- game.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> As a meditation on the way in which our creations are inexorably haunted by the personal, _Inception_ works.

As a movie about dreams, it's a missed opportunity. We find dreams compelling because they're profoundly uncanny in a way that we can never fully express; and I think most people would agree that when we dream there is a loss of agency, that dreams simply unfold before us. But there's hardly anything dreamlike about the movie at all, unless you're a lucid dreamer. _Inception_ models a dream as a location rather than as a series of emotionally charged impressions, and it employs a Hollywoodesque narrative grammar rather than dream-logic. It's essentially a heist movie.

Another way to put it is that when I was watching the movie, I kept thinking, "That's so not real." Which is a funny way to respond to a movie about dreams. I hate to be that guy, but I think you're better off reading something like Kafka's "The Judgment" or maybe even watching a good horror movie.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 but doesn't reflect my experience.

> when we dream there is a loss of agency, that dreams simply unfold before us

I never feel that way while dreaming, even though when I wake I realise I was basically on rails the whole time. The closest I've experienced to this is that sometimes in my dreams I am simultaneously reading a book and _a character in the book_ \- as the former I am a passive observer, as the latter I (feel as if I) have agency.

> unless you're a lucid dreamer

 _Inception_ is explicitly inspired by lucid dreaming (the concept of the totem is very similar to a trick people use to train themselves to dream lucidly). However, even though I've only once or twice had a lucid dream, I found a lot about the film reminded me of dreaming in general.

<comment><USER8> I have some experience with lucid dreaming. And the movie is nice entertainment, but real dreams don't work that way. Even lucid dreams.

First: Dream time is approximately real time. (There have been studies to confirm this. Exercise to the reader: How would you design such a study? (Drop me an email if you want to know how the scientist did it.)) Second, you can tell you are in a dream, if: (a) Flipping a light switch doesn't work, strangely your dream imagination can't cope with rapid changes of illumination. (b) Gravity works strange. Try jumping up and down. When you can stay airborne for more than a second you are probably dreaming. (c) If, in general, strange things happen. There are some more signs that you find in dreams.

Fortunately, habbits you have in reality carry over into dreams. So if you make it a habbit to check for dream signs in real life, you will probably check them in your dreams too, and recognize that you are dreaming. Enjoy! (Although I often feel the urge to wake up, once I realize that I am dreaming. It takes a while to resist it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you enjoyed this film and interpretation, I really recommend watching The Prestige, then reading the following:

 __SPOILER ALERT __

The Prestige has a much better "alternative ending" theory, because it is not well known and very unexpected.

The Prestige ends with all the questions supposedly answered, i.e. the twin thing, the machine that Tesla made, etc. Except that, there is one alternative: the machine never existed! Throughout the entire film, Michael Caine's character keeps insisting that there is only one way to do a transportation act, and that is with a lookalike. We already _know_ that Hugh Jackman's character has a lookalike.

We also never see more than one "replica" of Hugh Jackman. The only time we actually _see_ replicas being created is during the memories written down by Hugh Jackman, except, they could be fake!

In short, it's possible that Christopher Nolan has managed to fool pretty much every audience of The Prestige into believing in Science Fiction, when there is a perfectly logical explanation for the entire film that doesn't require magical explanations. But like the film repeatedly says, "Audiences want to be fooled".

<comment><USER10> Except not really; the novel it's adapted from doesn't leave any opportunity for ambiguity, and even in the film, as Jackman's character dies Christian Bale walks past the rows and rows of tanks holding the dead duplicates. If there were never any real duplicates and the whole thing was faked, there's no explanation for those tanks to be there.

<comment><USER9> The tanks don't actually have any bodies in them, at least not bodies that you can see. I checked once: all the tanks hold lifeless human-looking blobs, but you can't see them. Except for the last tank, but that could be the body of the actual double.

The reason the tanks are there is for the same reason the diary was written: to fool Borden.

There are even some people who say that there are differences in makeup between the real Angier and his look-alike, and that you can see that the only real, visible body in the tanks is clearly the twin. Can't say I noticed it myself.

As for the book, still haven't read it, but it doesn't matter: from what I've heard, the book _also_ doesn't have the whole "killing doubles" theme, since the replicas are lifeless anyway. But it doesn't matter, the film is its own story.

I got this whole theory from this forum post, which you should read for a better explanation of everything: <http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=531777>.

<comment><USER10> I've seen the film multiple times, read the book multiple times, and now read that thread you linked. And it's still just plain wrong.

What I see in that forum thread is not a sound argument for this interpretation; instead, it's someone proclaiming a theory, getting it shot down and then using ad-hoc immunization and condescension ("that's just what they _wanted_ you to think", "oh, you believe what you saw, poor thing", etc.) to try to puff it up into something respectable.

The book makes it as clear as possible that Angier's not using a double in the sense Borden is; he really is getting duplicated by that machine and having to dispose of the results. The film never prints it on screen in big block letters with a signed note from the director saying "this is how it happened, trust me", but it doesn't need to -- it's following the book and doing a good job at it. Thus, attempts to read a "ha ha he really put one over on you" secret into the film are just pointless.

(and unless you can show me you're not in the same take-your-logic-and-facts- elsewhere camp as the guy in that forum thread, I'm done here)

<comment><USER9> Your last point first: of course I'm not in the same camp as that guy. I haven't even read through most of that thread (I read through it years ago, but I don't remember most of it, just the original post). I certainly don't think anyone should be condescended to; besides, it's just a movie! I just thought I'd share the inspiration for my comment.

As for the theory itself, like I said, I haven't read the book and it doesn't matter to me; I'm interpreting the movie as a stand-alone work. Judging just by the movie, I haven't seen anything that outright contradicts the theory (for example, the whole "can't really see the bodies" thing). Then again, I haven't spent _that_ much time digging into it. There is nothing that proves this theory either. I just think it's nice that it can be interpreted in another way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The it's-all-a-dream interpretation is the only one that makes sense from a science-fiction point-of-view, however unsatisfying it is from an artistic perspective. The slightly wobbling top at the end points, rather overtly, to the real answer: it's meant to be ambiguous.

That said: WTF? We've got to bring down a company on the verge of being The Most Powerful Corporation in the World. So let's use this highly radical, unproven and improbable, voodoo-science inception approach. Oh, and by the way, we have to plant a mole within the highest ranks of the multinational beast within the next, say, two weeks, so we can get valuable information that is necessary to penetrate and manipulate the fragile psyche of our target.

Cut-scene: it's done. This is logic that only makes sense within the context of a dream. The sort of dream Coleridge, or Rube Goldberg, would have.

Science generally favors the application of Occam's Razor: buy the airline and crash the damn plane with the kid on it. Or just send in the ninjas. The ensuing infighting among the various executive factions vying for the top spot after junior is offed will ensure that any plans Acme Energy Inc had for world domination are put off course indefinitely.

Inception was entertaining. But Memento was the more philosophically interesting film. That's a film that truly merited this kind of philosophical scrutiny. Remember Sammy Jankis.

<comment><USER12> There have been plenty of (non-aweful) movies with more unprobably plots than that, that weren't in a dream of any kind.

I think that stating that the entire plot is a dream just because the main plot is not realistic is akin to denying the film's right to being science fiction!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Still reading but, first and foremost, I think the _opposite_ of his conclusion on what the ending meant is more obvious. It was _clearly_ about to fall over ... =)

<comment><USER14> i second this sentiment (though the metaphor for film making interpretation is also quite nice.).

by this interpretation (the straightforward naive one), Inception is likely the best "hard"/logically consistent science fiction film to have characters that are very engaging and well realized of the past half decade.

If you've not seen Inception yet, fix that soon!

<comment><USER15> I really liked inception, but felt that the character development wasn't there. All the characters except Cobb exist only superficially, as if they are just dream projections. We never find out what anyone else wants, why they are coming along on this mad scheme.

Still a great movie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The best interpretation I've thought of after watching it (and talking with my wife for hours after) was that Saito is the architect and he wanted to get back at Cobol Industries twofold:

1) By getting Cobb to convince Fisher Jr. to feel like his daddy loved him and wanted him to be his own man and dissolve the business to start his own empire and

2) Get back at Cobb for trying to steal his secrets for Cobol by _incepting_ the little seed of "you want to go back home to your kids" in his head and making that his obsessive ends to justify all means. Saito, meanwhile, was willing to wait the dream equivalent of _eighty years_ to exact this revenge. Then, as DiCaprio fulfills his promise and gets Saito in his 80-year Limbo, Saito fulfills his promise, architects a layer where Cobb does reunite with his still-young-as-Cobb-remembers-them children, and the spinning totem wobbles but doesn't actually fall, then the "I N C E P T I O N" credits roll, because Saito ran the inception on Cobb.

Ta-da!

<comment><USER2> I hope this was meant to be funny :)

<comment><USER16> Nope, and the fact that you don't dispute it with anything but a smiley leads me to believe that you believe my belief.

I N C E P T I O N

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Obligatory code that runs the plot. <http://github.com/karthick18/inception>

</comment><comment><USER18> Surely all or most of these interpretations have been considered by the director and have been actively and deliberately intertwined into the story. The budget was $160 million so think of how many startup ideas could be funded with 10% of this amount. So it's easy then to imagine a team of geniuses working to plant the seeds for all these interpretations and ideas in our heads. That, coupled with the art of convincing somebody to fund the movie, is Inception.

<comment><USER19> I really doubt a "team of geniuses" collaborated to "plant the seeds for all these interpretations and ideas in our heads." For one, that isn't how movies are generally made and seems like a pretty boring way to approach making a movie like inception. For another, there's no "team of geniuses" credited — just Christopher Nolan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In a way it's funny if people over-analyse a movie. If they put more meaning into the movie than the director has intended.

Why just can't the reality shown in Inception be the reality, and the spinning top at the end just a gag, in the way that the director doesn't show us long enough the spinning top to see, if it falls or not?

So the spinning top at the end could be seen as an encouragement to think about your own reality.

</comment><comment><USER21> The author is a moron. This movie is amazing, but it's also insanely straightforward. It doesn't require that kind of analysis; almost nothing does.

I'm growing increasingly disheartened at the blogosphere simply because it gives people as stupid as this author a way for even stupider people to reinforce his bad behaviors.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, this would explain why nobody is floating around in the snow mountain fortress.

</comment><comment><USER23> Fun ideas, but this is over-analysis. The movie is as it appears to be. There is no justification for taking a minor aspect of the plot (that the dream- sharing device is only briefly explained) and using it to concoct a whole new layer underlying the movie. The spinning top at the end is a red herring -- it's Christopher Nolan having a little fun with us. The true indication of what happened, that Cobb has reached reality, is in his ability to see his children's faces at last. That's the give-away.

<comment><USER4> I think the ending is several things at once, which is why I like it.

One, it's a red herring as you say, though I'd put a slightly different spin on it. Cobb has chosen his reality, he's had his catharsis and made a very intentional decision to let Mal go. That's true regardless of if the ending is a dream or not.

Two, it's an intentional denial of catharsis for the audience. It's a setup without a payoff, tension without release. Here's the interesting part about that- the audiences I've seen it with provide their own physical catharsis, their own reality-based relief of tension, by laughter or by applause. These physical reactions both release the real physical tension that has built in their bodies and also returns them to the real world, outside of the filmic dream.

Three, it captures the feeling of a certain kind of dream. How many times have you dreamed of almost having the answer, of almost knowing something you want to know...and then abruptly waking up? Yes, exactly.

It's the best ending shot to a movie in quite a long while.

<comment><USER24> My personal catharsis was a grunt of "hmph". For a split second I considered the "question" of the spinning top - is this real or not - then noticed that I didn't care, that it was a banal and uninteresting question, because the question relied on its very existence for its interestingness, as either answer - it's a dream, or it's the final reality - were both cop-outs, were both unsatisfying and cheaply done. "It's all a dream" is the most childish of story resolutions, while the idyllic literal interpretation of the shown ending is unacceptably saccharine for something purporting to be adult entertainment.

As to feeling that you have the answer in a dream, that's down to the extreme suspension of disbelief the dozing mind is capable of. That suspension was something that a movie allegedly about dreams hardly ever brought up. If some character can dream up bigger guns, and another character a freight train in a city street, then why not more? And why are the defensive projections of the dream's owner so tame, merely human, when they could potentially be changing the whole world? And if being weightless at one level creates weightlessness in the next level down, why isn't it transitive? And wouldn't dreaming that the entire building / local area / whatever starts accelerating skywards at 9.8 meters per second per second restore gravity? Why can't that manipulation be used as "the kick"? Seems like a simpler manipulation than what the architect was up to.

<comment><USER25> The sequence where he sees his children seems decidedly like an alternative ending to the sequence we've been seeing the whole way through the film. This already made me suspicious, the spinning top then seemed confirmation that you are not looking at reality.

<comment><USER26> I agree that the scene in which he sees his children's faces is suspicious -- everything after he wakes up is a bit convenient. Cobb breezes through customs, Michael Caine's character is right there waiting for him, and his kids are right where he left them. It's certainly plausible that Cobb is lost in a dream.

But I don't think the top is evidence of that. At the level of reality in which the plane ride occurs, we've seen the top fall. Consequently, it seems clear that, in the last scene, the top will fall, and we do see it start to wobble before it cuts to the credits.

The question, then, becomes whether the top actually is the reliable indicator of reality that Cobb thinks it is. If the top really is a totem, then Cobb made it back to the real world. But where did the top come from? He got it from his wife after she died. If his wife really did escape from a dream by dying (if Cobb was dreaming the whole time, this is possible), then Cobb acquired the top in a dream, and whether it falls or not proves nothing.

I'm pretty sure that I'm reading too much into the ending of the movie. Personally, I think he made it back to the real world. But the director has made other movies that invite a similar degree of scrutiny, so who knows?

<comment><USER27> I haven't seen the movie in a while now but I remember Cobb or maybe Mag placing the top inside of a safe, spinning it, and locking it up while they were in limbo. The top would appear to spin forever at in dreams closer to reality or reality itself because of how much slower time flows at the lower levels. However, the top will not spin infinitely. It will eventually stop when it finishes spinning in the deep nested dream reality, therefore I don't think it is necessarily a great indicator of reality if it topples over or not because it will stop spinning eventually.

At least this is how I read it. To be honest I didn't really think the top made a lot of sense but I think this is what it was intended to mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That is quite a literary interpretation. I think the dream expresses much deeper truths through the metaphors.

The ending ends that way because the producers clearly wanted us to question as to which is reality. Remember when he says do not create places from reality into dreams as that is the best way to lose which is reality and which is a dream. Also, when he meets his older self and tells him he has to jump. That indicates that the "reality" on which the film begins is not really reality, that his wife was probably right. But how can she be right when the spinner does stop spinning and yet in the end when we are brought to the same reality it does not stop spinning?

This contradiction is supposed to be there as it communicates this entire confusion as to which is reality and which is an illusion we have created for ourselves. Speaking of its applicability to the real world it speaks of brainwashing, propaganda, and formation of our own perceptions, how we can through them create a different reality and be lost in there, yet also struggle to find the real truth. The film, through the metaphor, communicates perfectly this entire confusion and it ends with such contradiction because ultimately we as humans and our thinking can not acquire perfection as to what is truth. We are blind in the end to inconsistencies within our illusions, hence the always spinning spinner.

Its a good film, but in the end I think it is really rubbish. The subject is awesome, but it does not go deep enough. The ending is too subtle. There probably should have been some sort of almighty intervention like in the ending of Don Juan for it to become a classic. To allure in the end that there are great forces out there which we depend on and only through taking a leap of faith in ourself can we acquire reality.

<comment><USER3> The spinning top at the end is not meant to make you question the reality, it's meant to question your reasons for believing he's in reality and find a more satisfying/compelling reason. Whether a top spins or not is an unsatisfying answer to any deep question - the reunion with his children is more meaningful. I think we all know we are not dreaming at this moment for a myriad of reasons, but the strongest is probably that other people seem real to an extent that you'd never get in dreams.

I'm starting to repeat myself now in this thread so I better check out (...before I become an old man, filled with regret...).</comment></comment>


YesGraph's Android SDK - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yesgraph.com/android-sdk/ <comment><USER2> Hey, I help make YesGraph!

This is exciting because of what YesGraph's social graph backend can get done. We can cross polinate data from your Android app to your iOS app, and vice versa.

We're starting to do the heavy lifting normally only LinkedIn and Facebook could afford to do. It's also a huge machine learning problem, which is what we spend most of our time working on.</comment>


Intermittent fasting: live 'fast,' live longer? - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-intermittent-fasting-fast-longer.html <comment><USER2> Is eating everything but dinner/supper one day and just dinner/supper the other day and so on an itermittent fasing?

<comment><USER3> It really comes down to the time between eating vs not. Sustained periods of fasting have different affects, most notably beginning after 4-24 hours but most impactful (for health) between 24-72 hours or more.

Breaking the fast occasionally (ie switching between skipping breakfast or skipping dinner) could be advantageous, as long as you're still hitting a reasonable length of fast.

[https://www.zerofasting.com/the-physiology-of- fasting/](https://www.zerofasting.com/the-physiology-of-fasting/)</comment></comment>


What do you think about an open api for restaurant menus? - <AUTHOR>

I am a founder of a restaurant menu website.  I have been working on an api that would allow the menus in our system to be integrated into any app via json, xml, html, or javascript.  Does anyone think this is useful?  If so, how would you use it?  How much would you pay? free, $5, $10, $20 a month? <comment><USER2> good idea, I actually built a webservice for exactly this type of service but never bothered to launch it. The challenge would be getting restaurants to commit to using your service as the only place they'll put their menu information so that it is always current... people would only pay if they know that the data is current, otherwise why not scrape it from other sites...</comment>


Emojli - the emoji-only social network - <AUTHOR> http://emoj.li

<comment><USER2> Why the need to create apps based on gimmicks? Is that what it's come to these days? No more useful original ideas?

</comment><comment><USER3> At least it let's the users be more creative than yo.</comment>


Stop Email Tracking - <AUTHOR> https://alireza.gonevis.com/stop-email-tracking/ <comment><USER2> There's a reason why every successful social media platform has scummy, creepy, privacy-invading practices. It's because if one doesn't do that, one doesn't build an audience.

Ditto with email trackers ... if you don't do it, people will fall off your list, and you won't build and retain your audience.

These practices work, and have emerged from the evolutionary processes of the web in general. There's no point in lamenting them, because the muggles will fall for them every time, and they will continue to become more invasive and more unpleasant.

<comment><USER3> > if you don't do it, people will fall off your list, and you won't build and > retain your audience.

How? What does tracking have to do with people being interested in your content? If you send good stuff, people will buy your things/services/etc and you'll see it in your bottom line without tracking. A single, respectful link to [https://example.com/product?ref=email](https://example.com/product?ref=email) to attribute the conversion to an email would be fine as well as long as it's not per-user and does not involve third-parties (most tracking links out there involve a third-party and obfuscate the final target link).

Furthermore there might be GDPR implications as well. IP addresses as well as device fingerprints are definitely considered personal data, they are inherently sent as part of loading the tracking pixels and yet open tracking is not essential to providing the service, thus should be opt-in (and nobody in the right mind would opt-in).

> These practices work, and have emerged from the evolutionary processes of > the web in general.

Malware and spyware works as well, and yet we generally agree that it's a bad and illegal thing to do. Why should this be any different?

<comment><USER2> I'm not arguing that it's a good thing, I'm observing that all successful platforms engage in these practices. That implies that there might be a causal or evolutionary link between the two.

Again, I'm not arguing that it's a good thing, but there is evidence (not proof!) that if you _don 't_ engage in these practices then you won't be successful.

Consider two mailing lists with content equally well suited to their audiences. One engages in these practices, the other doesn't. The one who engages in these practices has more information, and therefore has more opportunity to tailor their content more precisely. Under evolutionary pressure, the one engaging in these practices is more likely to survive.

I'm not arguing that it's a good thing, but I'm saying that there are reasons why it's turned out like this.</comment></comment></comment>


Simple, minimal and easy note-taking - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/tech/buno <comment><AUTHOR> We already have thousands of note-taking apps. Buno claims to be the simplest minimalist notes app. What do you think?</comment>


Ethereum Now Handles More Transactions Than All Digital Currencies Combined - <AUTHOR> http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/11/22/ethereum-now-handles-transactions-digital-currencies-combined <comment><USER2> 1) They've conveniently ignored many crypto coins with high transaction levels

2) It's believed that 68% of all ethereum transaction value is controlled by just one system - [https://blog.cyber.fund/huge-ethereum- mixer-6cf98680ee6c](https://blog.cyber.fund/huge-ethereum-mixer-6cf98680ee6c) \- A large number of ethereum transactions are just mixing coins to hide ownership.

<comment><USER3> Which coins with high transaction levels do you mean?

I'm not aware of other fully-public blockchains that have comparably high levels, though maybe I'm missing something. With permissioned chains it's much easier to reach high throughput.

The so-called mixer has been debunked here before. It actually looks like exchanges, and the temporary addresses they generate for deposits. That does mean that a large portion of transactions are with exchanges, but that shouldn't surprise anyone, and would be the same on Bitcoin.

<comment><USER4> The IOTA network sustained >1.1 million TX over the last 24h as well (a bit more because there's a gap in my stats) - most without value however.

The selection of protocols is indeed quite selective.

Disclaimer: I work on IOTA.

<comment><USER5> Not really comparable, since IOTA is centralized in its current form.

<comment><USER6> And since they're value-less transactions, essentially unrewarded mining activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bitcoin was a good proof of concept, the true value will come from things like Ethereum and others.

Even thought the ICOs are in a clear bubble right now, the mechanism behind the ICOs is a solid one and could provide low friction VC funding for the next generation of Start Ups. Taking out rent seeking institutions like Private Equity banks, VCs and traditional banks will create a lot of value.

Ethereums first mover advantage for the ICO market will proof to be of a huge value in the race for the dominating world crypto currency.

<comment><USER8> "the mechanism behind the ICOs is a solid one "

No - selling a 'fantasy number' in exchange for real currency is not 'solid' model.

ICO's have been big recently because buyers were hoping to get in early on a pyramid-like scheme. (Yes, I know it's not quite pyramid), i.e. it's been hype.

Because ICO's offer no ownership of assets ... well ... in the long run they're not worth much.

And 'ownerhip of an economy' is not saying much if there is no economy.

Kik's Kin coins are down 80% and not only that - Kik has 900 Billion of the Kins they can dilute the 100 Billion in market with, meaning another 90% devaluation is coming.

And Kin's get you a share of what economy exactly? The 'Kik' economy? There is no Kik economy.

<comment><USER7> Dismissing ICO in this early stage is equal to dismissing eCommerce 20years ago because someone got scammed buying something online.

Countries like Switzerland and Singapore created and will further create a legal structure to connect the real world transactions to the tokens.

Sure some countries will ban it, just like China has banned free internet access, this doesn't mean that free internet access is bad.

<comment><USER9> Name one ICO that has backed a legitimate, on-going, profit-making business, beyond selling ico tokens.

<comment><USER7> ICO sales took of this summer, early stage startups usually, so would be naive to think that most of them should be profitable already.

But here are a two.

Startup that issues you a Mastercard that is backed by your BTC, ETC. So you can shop at any store that accepts CCs, but never hold actual Fiat currencies. You recieve tokens as a form of cashback for your CC revenue. And all tokenholder get a share of all the revenue that happens on all the TenX issued CCs. [https://www.tenx.tech/](https://www.tenx.tech/)

An online casino that shares it profits with the tokenholders (shareholders) [https://www.edgeless.io/#!/index](https://www.edgeless.io/#!/index)

<comment><USER8> "ICO sales took of this summer"

They're almost all flat.

Why does anyone think that anyone will be interested in buying 'Kin' tokens?

These tokens are magic numbers that someone made up.

You people are buying Monopoly money. Worse - Monopoly money is at least made of paper you could use for something possibly.

Kik's Kin tokens are way down, and they are not coming back up. Why on earth would they?

Billions of people around the world are going to start sinking all their money into thousands of fantasy tokens that have no use, and have no value? I don't think so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who cares.

The protocol has so many other issues.

Anyone who has worked with ETH will tell you that it isn't really designed as a currency.

A large chunk of the transactions are exchanged who must transfer deposits to other addresses.

This is a hack that everyone does because Ethereum doesn't allow you to send from multiple addresses reliably.

Also tracking deposits from contracts is a nightmare. The nodes don't work well at scale. Contracts can't be changes (so you have things like the issues with parity multi sig contracts).

The list goes on and on.

<comment><USER6> [https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/19640/how-to- se...](https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/19640/how-to-send-from- multiple-accounts-to-the-one-account-in-the-contract)

Hah wow you weren't kidding. Amateur hour.

To add to your list: no checksum for addresses. If you typo the recipient address, the client will happily render your ether unspendable.

<comment><USER11> Ethereum doesn't use UTXO like Bitcoin, so there is no inherent need to spend from multiple accounts. If you still want to do so, it's easy to write some smart contracts that allow you to do this. I don't see the use-case though.

Also, there are checksums for addresses: [https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-55.md](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-55.md) I don't know anyone who would manually type an address though.

<comment><USER2> If you aren't meant to type in ethereum addresses, why does all the ethereum software provide a textbox to let you type it in? Are they doing this to let you shoot yourself in the foot? Are they plain malicious or just extremely dumb?

While you may not know anyone who manually types in an address, there are plenty of stories about people who do (and make a typo) on reddit & other discussion boards.

<comment><USER6> Literally they could have just copied BTC and implemented base58check from the get go, it would take any competent programmer an hour or two tops. But it was _too much work_ for the _MASTER PROGRAMMERS_ behind ethereum.

Not too much work to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, though. Ofc something so simple is an EIP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To support this high transaction rate, Ethereum is also growing the full node storage requirements at an alarming rate:

[http://bc.daniel.net.nz/](http://bc.daniel.net.nz/)

<comment><USER13> Ethereum has a different blockchain design and ledger security properties than Bitcoin, an archival node is not required for a similar level of security (and is quite extraneous).

From Vitalik, on the link you shared:

> That chart is highly misleading. 300 GB is the size of a full archive node, > which stores the history, present state and all historical states. The state > itself is only ~1-2 GB and the history is ~10 GB. A pruned node would still > store the full state and history, and so would be able to recompute any > historical state if you really needed it, but it would only consume around > 20 GB. If you only care about present state, you can go much lower.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6zcoja/10_gb_in_2...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6zcoja/10_gb_in_2_days_as_a_bitcoiner_serious_question/dmuglq3/?context=1)

More interesting details in this subthread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6zcoja/10_gb_in_2...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6zcoja/10_gb_in_2_days_as_a_bitcoiner_serious_question/dmuht8y/?context=1)

<comment><USER14> >Ethereum has a different blockchain design and ledger security properties than Bitcoin, an archival node is not required for a similar level of security (and is quite extraneous).

doesn't bitcoin also have a feature similar to this? except bitcoin's pruned node takes ~3GB rather than etherum's 20GB.

<comment><USER13> > doesn't bitcoin also have a feature similar to this? except bitcoin's pruned > node takes ~3GB rather than etherum's 20GB.

No, not in the same way. A pruned Bitcoin node loses validation/state that you can't reconstruct, it does not have the same security properties. See the links in my comment.

<comment> TD-Linux Yes, it is in the same way. In both cases you keep enough state to verify future transactions but not enough to rebuild up to the current state if it were to get corrupted. I don't see anything in your links that says otherwise.

<comment><USER15> The difference is that it's possible for new Etherium nodes to sync up using just the current state without having to trust the node they got it from or process the history, whereas new Bitcoin nodes have to either process the entire transaction history themselves or trust someone to give them a valid state copy. Also, pruned Bitcoin nodes are more analogous to Etherium nodes which only store the current state without any history (~1GB according to that link). I think the pruned nodes vbuterin talks about are roughly equivalent to unpruned Bitcoin nodes.

<comment> TD-Linux Nope, Ethereum fast sync has to trust that peers don't give it an invalid state (it checks that all it's peers have the same state, but that is much weaker protection). [https://github.com/ethereum/go- ethereum/pull/1889](https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/pull/1889)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those who don't follow the markets, ETH just cleared its all-time-high of $420 about twenty minutes ago. This is a big deal because such numbers weren't seen since June.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is really misleading. ETH may handle more than the top crypto m by market cap, but Steemit and Bitshares dwarf all of these combined by number of transactions.

<comment><USER18> Steemit and Bitshares aren't decentralized cryptocurrencies: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15766583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15766583)

<comment><USER19> Title: Ethereum Now Handles More Transactions Than All Digital Currencies Combined

Digital currency does not require decentralization, not sure why you and others keep bringing this up. They aren't claiming to be the biggest decentralized, they're claiming to be the biggest digital currency period.

<comment><USER20> You may be correct from a strictly technical point of view but then "digital currency" becomes a meaningless term. After all, one could argue that USD is a "digital currency" as well, given that cash transactions are a minuscule part of all transactions. Also, I can easily devise a "digital currency" which handles billions of tx/s...between address A and address B.

<comment><USER19> One could argue you can stretch any term to mean something and then it becomes meaningless. That doesn't make the argument valid.

In your case, you're wrong because Digital Currency means "Only Digital", where the form of exchange is of information not something physical. FIAT currencies are pretty much all excluded by definition.

Digital currency is the criteria THEY specified. When making vague hand wavey claims to your superiority, you should expect people to point out how silly it is to make vague hand wavey claims and how that usually means the claim is BS.

If they wanted to compare to decentralized blockchain based p2p currency then they should have said that. They didn't, so any digital currency that beats them in transactions proves them wrong.

Its really not that hard to make truthful statements. "We're the highest transaction decentralized digital currency on the market". One additional word to clarify and no one here is arguing this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> These 24h transaction volumes are simply not correct.

[https://www.cointracker.network/rates](https://www.cointracker.network/rates)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is wrong. bitshares and steem both handle more tx's than ethereum.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is wrong. STEEM has the highest transaction rate

</comment><comment><USER24> Does it also mean that Ethereum blockchain size is growing faster than all digital currencies combined?

</comment><comment><USER25> Looking like ethereum is very mature technology these days, it's the companies and smart contracts that are built on ethereum that are a risk now, much like Bitcoin how we have centralization from having exchanges or wallets like coin base everyone uses.

Keep up to date with the live forecasts at [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz)

Ethereum doing fairly well recently

</comment><comment><USER26> Saw an analysis awhile back that over %60 of Ethereum transactions are from a mixer. So artificial.

</comment><comment><USER27> steem handles more transactions than top 20 combined. I like how they ignore half of the market.

</comment><comment><USER28> More than Ripple? Can someone substantiate this claim with data?

</comment><comment><USER29> I see so many 0.01 ETH transactions, are those included?

</comment><comment><USER30> HN is in bad shape when blatant clickbait like this makes it to the top.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is there any way to know which transactions are for goods and services and which are for speculation? That is a necessary number to interpret this headline.</comment>


Google improves its Translation Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/technology/09translate.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> It's good, but I clicked through hoping it was actually announcing some new feature/power - this really is nothing but a PR statement and a nice but oh- so-cursory introduction to Franz Och.

I'm a little suspicious. I note that Google serves the ads on the site. And now look at that author's list of recent articles - it's almost entirely Google. And articles about the Buzz cockup, for example, start ("Google moved quickly over the weekend to try to contain mounting criticism of Buzz") and finish (""I suspect Google might have a minor hit on its hands already," he said.") on quite positive notes.

I don't want to step up any allegations of dishonesty, it's more likely to be lax or fanboyish journalism, but it's really quite poor stuff from that journalist.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've admired Franz Och for quite some time now. Giza++ is an impressive piece of software that has really put SMT on the map. Nice to see the man finally get some press recognition.

<comment><USER4> For context: SMT here is statistical machine translation, not simultaneous multi-threading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google is awesome. And frightening. And frighteningly awesome.

But I guess that's partly the status of anyone with _that_ kind of computing power just lying around.

 _"While many translation systems like Google's use up to a billion words of text to create a model of a language, Google went much bigger: a few hundred billion English words. "The models become better and better the more text you process," Mr. Och said."_

 _"Last month, for example, it said it was working to combine its translation tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cellphone photo of a menu in German and get an instant English translation."_

Simply awesome. Add that to the Youtube transcribing they've been fiddling with for a while now.

<comment><USER6> Not only massive computing power, but also some pretty smart and creative folks too. I sometimes wonder where Google will be in 10 years.

<comment><USER7> Couldn't help but recall this pic I saw a while ago:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/thevoyagers/518750492/>

<comment><USER5> Fark generates some fun stuff :)

And while it'd be a privacy nightmare, I'm sure nearly everyone would _love_ a search that indexed their house. Think of it: never lose _anything_ , ever again. I could use that pretty often, especially with roommates and cats :D (guess which cause more lost items)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Former developer at software company deletes his code to protest its ties to ICE - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailydot.com/irl/former-chef-developer-deletes-code-ice/ <comment><USER2> "Earlier today, a former Chef employee removed several Ruby Gems, impacting production systems for a number of our customers."

So the developer already had left the company but one of his own Open Source code hosted on his personal github was used in production by Chef Customers ? Really ? That is just Wow. I don't have any strong opinions on whether he did the right thing but this absolutely surprises me. Running a small company, I am very strict against any of us using any personal accounts for anything that impacts our company work especially production. This has to be a no no by default I would assume.

<comment><USER3> Remember leftpad?

<comment><USER4> For those interested see: How one developer just broke Node, Babel and thousands of projects in 11 lines of JavaScript

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not completely related, but the tone of the two tweets linked in the article doesn't make sense to me. The first is a reasonable request for a comment about an issue that Shanley cares about, but it's immediately followed by a comment a minute later screaming at Chef to take a certain action while hurling epithets at them in all-caps. How can you possibly assume good faith from the first comment after reading the second? Why didn't she just go straight to attacking them if that was clearly her intention?

<comment><USER6> Expecting good faith from shanley given her track record is like yet another frog offering a ride across the river to the scorpion, despite the frog corpses nearly damming the flow downstream. This is just not a person who deserves to be taken seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The technicals of the story are interesting around the software supply chain.

I'm put off by the statement: "I want to be clear that this decision is not about contract value—it is about maintaining a consistent and fair business approach in these volatile times," he wrote. "I do not believe that it is appropriate, practical, or within our mission to examine specific government projects with the purpose of selecting which U.S. agencies we should or should not do business."

I hear about practicality all the time at my office and sometimes it's real and sometimes it's laziness. This sounds like a little of both but also profit motivated (not saying that's wrong for a for-profit company).

Interested in your options on code of ethics and the above.

<comment><USER7> It's definitely impractical to say you won't do business with anyone who does things you don't endorse. Imagine an electrician trying to demand a certification that the buildings he works on will host only ethical tenants. You just can't run a company that way; even people who do meet your ethical standards won't do business with you.

If you think that ICE is so uniquely bad that they specifically need to be boycotted, that makes sense. Without inviting any debate on whether it's true, it's a consistent position that can be reasonably applied.

<comment><USER8> You absolutely can run a company that way. I do, as do many others. My company has grossed multiple millions of dollars operating that way.

<comment><USER7> I'm glad to hear that you can make it work. About how frequently do you cancel contracts because you've discovered your client is doing something unethical?

<comment><USER8> I recently declined a client who appears to be a white supremacist. I have declined work in the past due to the potential client organizations working with the military, police, or other violent organizations.

We all have this responsibility to place nonviolence above profit.

<comment><USER7> I think that's a very different thing than, as Chef is being asked to do here, terminating existing clients because they got some bad press on Twitter. Both in terms of your own operations (sudden cashflow interruptions are hard) and your clients' willingness to do business (can I justify the risk of waking up one Monday to learn that our CI provider is cutting me off and all development is dead in the water?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> " _Another user pointed out that Chef isn't the only company to profit from working with ICE. Microsoft has raked in $4.6 million, IBM has received $1.6 million, and CISCO has received about $500,000 through their work with ICE._ "

Those numbers seem very low. Is this just for one year or one contract?

<comment><USER10> Does each government agency have to individually enter into a contract with Microsoft et al.? That sounds wildly inefficient and silly. My guess is that this "user" pulled those numbers out of thin air.

<comment><USER9> Yes. Mostly.

The contracts are generally for specific products or services, for a specific time. High-level agencies have a great deal of autonomy and also get to pull their needs out of their own budgets. Lower-level elements within an agency (a NASA center, for example) can also have more or less autonomy.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I shouldn't been more clear in my question. I was more referring to high- level services (e.g. Office). For specific use-cases, it makes sense for lower level agencies to have at least a little autonomy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hi there. I'm around to answer any questions!

<comment><USER12> Do you think that there is a point in having boarders between countries? If so how should they be enforced? If a 17 year "child" crosses the boarder should they be detained (ie. kept in prison until deportation) or should they be allowed to walk free in the US. If a child and parent both crossed the border should only the parents be detained leaving the child to fend for itself in America? Should they be detained in the same cell? ie keep children detained with adult.

I agree that keeping children in cages is not good, but there are solutions. If ice had a bigger budget maybe it could have more beds, larger cells, better food. I don't see how removing enforcement is a solution.

<comment><USER13> > I agree that keeping children in cages is not good, but

Come on, man.

<comment><USER14> Would you be much happier if it was a normal room, but locked from the outside?

I never saw anyone talking about "cages" until about a year or so ago. It seems the alternative of better accommodation isn't what people are demanding here, but rather, giving children a waiver to break any and all laws. If you want to see children being forced or recruited into cartels in record numbers, making them immune from any kind of border enforcement is a surefire way to do it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You would be a fool to hire this guy after this stunt.

<comment><USER3> What stunt? He removed an open source library from his own personal account because he felt the nazis shouldn't be using his software. It's kinda like when IBM sold the nazis hardware to keep track of the Jews.

<comment><USER11> It's also worth noting that the same result would have happened if I'd died. My will requests the immediate deletion of "all Internet accounts". Such an action (deleting my GitHub account) would have had a very similar result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seth, as a person that has learned a lot from you over the years and benefited from your work while at Chef, Hashicorp, and Google Cloud, this act has only increased my respect for you. Thank you for taking a stand against oppression and injustice.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hero. Too many vanity talkers today, not enough doers.

</comment><comment><USER18> I expect that, to be ethically consistent, this developer will also return all salary or payments he received while creating this now-deleted code.

I think leaving a job is a better protest than doing damage to your employer. And perhaps for his next contract, he might insert a clause limiting what his code can be used for. In limiting the utility of the code he sells, I expect he'd be taking a lesser pay rate for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you read the article, the developer already was not working for Chef. Chef was/is relying on OSS components which the former develop pulled from the open repository. -edit for clarity.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, I overlooked that somehow. (pre-morning tea over here :) )

I haven't read many OSS licenses. Can't someone just publish an 'unethical' fork and life goes on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting approach. Makes me wonder if you authored a component and extended a license to say that "use of this code must abide by [inert relevant code of ethics]", could you enforce that?

<comment><USER19> Such licenses exist, and yes. But it wouldn't apply retroactively.

<comment><USER20> Also such licenses are not Free Software. And from a practical point of view (existing in the ecosystem) that matters a lot.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stop calling it skill. It's really just luck. - <AUTHOR> http://lifeafterliquidity.com/2014/07/03/lucky-you/

<comment><USER2> A lot of success is due to luck, but I think there is something to be said for putting yourself in a position to get lucky.

Sure, someone in a third world country might not have the choice to put themselves in such a position, but certainly lots of people in the United States have a choice to put themselves in a position to (or learn the skills that are necessarily antecedent to) get lucky. Unless you would say that all positions are equally lucky and that no choice you make in your position matters with respect to luck?

</comment><comment><USER3> And because it's luck, it shouldn't even be thought about. In fact, the word 'luck' shouldn't be used. A more correct term would be 'probability'. There will be a certain number of people who will die by a falling brick or lightning each year. It could be you... probably not.

But it's something that brain cycles shouldn't be wasted on. We get out of bed each morning without knowing that a bad thing will happen that day. We should only think about the things that we can control.</comment>


Making some Discourse code a little better - <AUTHOR> http://grantammons.me/2013/02/09/making-some-discourse-code-a-little-better/ <comment><USER2> A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about the impeding launch of Discourse. She asked me if I was worried that people would judge me for the code I'd written (although to be honest, you can't tell who wrote what since we reset our commit history when we launched).

The truth is releasing your code is a very scary thing to do. I knew some parts were good, some parts less so.

Posts like this (and their pull requests) have floored me. Grant did a fantastic job refactoring a large chunk of technical debt we'd acquired, and then took the time to write up why he did it in detail.

I really hope this trend of improving something and writing how you did it catches on. I want to see it in other people's code bases too!

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity - was there any particular reason you reset your commit history at launch? I feel somewhat impotent when I come across a chunk of code I don't understand the reasoning of and discover that its history dead-ends at the initial release commit.

If it is a clever way to get a bunch of people using Discourse right off the bat by asking questions in the meta forum [1], then it is ingenious and I applaud you!

1\. [http://meta.discourse.org/t/would-it-be-possible-to-see- the-...](http://meta.discourse.org/t/would-it-be-possible-to-see-the-full- history-of-the-repo/2610/2)

<comment><USER2> Honestly it came down to there being private keys and other shifty things in there at various points. Also there was a lot of old crap as we evolved the prototype closer to what we released... We just thought it was a good idea.

<comment><USER4> _private keys and other shifty things_

This was a SOP at a company I worked at, for any repository, either for OSS or when delivered as work product to customers. We just didn't want to have to do a commit-by-commit, line-by-line audit for any of an unbounded universe of Things That Would Be Very Bad If They Leaked. A surprising amount of them are not things that are technical in nature -- for example, many developers treat commit messages as watercooler talk between themselves rather than something which could potentially be reviewed in a courtroom. (Guess the precipitating event: "Memo to all developers: One should never, ever, ever, ever, ever mention a developer who is no longer with the firm in a commit message.")

<comment><USER5> > (Guess the precipitating event: "Memo to all developers: One should never, > ever, ever, ever, ever mention a developer who is no longer with the firm in > a commit message.")

Is the purpose here to limit the amount of material that might show up in discovery, and therefore potentially be made public?

<comment><USER6> If X was made redundant rather than fired for incompetence, and then commits were to mention that X was a terrible developer, then if X sues for unfair dismissal, then you've just given X evidence that the company lied.

<comment><USER7> "They said I was redundant, but internal proof shows they think I sucked."

Could you draw that out for me a little more? Because to me it seems backwards.

<comment><USER6> It's a non-perfect example. IANAL, but I think the main problem is that the company is caught lying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really enjoyed reading this!

When Discourse was originally announced, I read this file (quite randomly), and was distressed at the complexity and length (even though I totally understand time constraints and the need to 'get it to work').

I had never heard of the Law of Demeter (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Demeter>), nor had I heard of Sandi Metz's rules for Rails development (<http://gist.io/4567190>), both of which put in concrete terms some of the lessons I've learned when maintaining Rails applications.

I'd love to see more of these!

Edit: After reading over the pull request, I admit I'm a little confused why the response code was refactored into 'perform_show_response' - this seems like the direct responsibility of this controller method (and isn't common or otherwise misplaced). Is there a reason why you moved it out?

<comment><USER9> One idea I've always had in the back of my head but have never pursued was plugins for text editors/IDEs that allow developers to quickly and easily make commentary on the code they are writing, and the end result would be blog posts formatted much like this one.

<comment><USER10> Have you seen Docco?

<http://jashkenas.github.com/docco/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This post is great, I'd love to see more blog posts about refactorings of open source code on Hacker News.

It's good to be reminded of refactoring techniques, and to be reminded of what neatly refactored complex code looks like.

I think being able to refactor code, and make it look that good is a hallmark of a great programmer.

<comment><USER12> I really liked how the author incorporated gists of the intermediate code throughout the post. I will definitely follow their example if I pursue a similar endeavor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good overall, but is there justification for having consider_user_for_promotion called through a before_filter? It doesn't filter anything or redirect the request. It also doesn't retrieve instance variables for the request to process. You could theoretically put the whole method being refactored into a before_filter, but that's just a shell game.

I agree with making consider_user_for_promotion a standalone function. I like that because it is reusable, and self-comments the code.

<comment><USER14> A before_filter is just a method that runs before an action - there's no requirement for it to set an instance variable or redirect. In Rails 4, this method has been aliased as before_action to make this clearer.

Since the behavior of this method doesn't have too much to do with showing a topic, I think it makes sense. Extracting it also makes it possible to move it up to the ApplicationController for wider use.

<comment><USER13> Extracting it into a separate method is what makes it available for wider use --not the before_filter.

That said, you provide a justification--the topicality of the code itself to the idea of "show." It is a decent point that I missed in the article. I'll have to think on that.

I question this logic living in the controller at all, though. It looks like a model logic that should, from the controller perspective, look like current_user.review_for_promotion.</comment></comment></comment>


A Whig History of CRISPR - <AUTHOR> http://genotopia.scienceblog.com/573/a-whig-history-of-crispr/ <comment><USER2> Interesting analysis from my perspective as definitely not a good writer. One comment though:

 _" But science is no longer done in monasteries. Competition, pride, ego, greed, and politics play all too great a role in determining who gets credit, who wins the prizes, and who gets into the textbooks."_

This really was never any different.

<comment><USER3> Science was done in the Royal Society, there certainly was no competition, pride, ego, greed or politics there!

<comment><USER4> To be sure, there was. I had in mind, principally, the monastery in Brno, where a certain monk did some breeding experiments with peas in the mid-19th century. (I am the author of the article.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lander is still smarting from when private industry guy Venter from out of nowhere creamed the government human genome project an order of magnitude faster and cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER6> In a way it's a shame how humans seem wired to want "The One Guy" to credit for any complex outcome requiring thousands of unsung incremental improvements.

</comment><comment><USER7> crispr is fascinating, as is this back-and-forth in the scientific community about its history

<comment><USER8> I hope that scientists who have their reputations bound up in its history don't waste their time trying to stake claim to it.

They will, but there are lessons to be had. For instance: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war), which consumed half the energy of a brilliant man and did little for the progress of the world.</comment></comment>


Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves on LSD (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/connectome-specific-harmonic-waves-on-lsd/ <comment><USER2> Again, this is trash, already known that LSD produces increased crosstalk between functional subunits in the brain. As seen on fMRI. Therefore the different structure under this kind of analysis. So the causation is inverted - you see these harmonic correlations as a result of brain activity not as a mode of action. Wrong direction of cause and effect.

Harmonic analysis brings nothing new to the table. What are the "simple" terms useful for? Why would criticality be the means through which psychedelics work rather than artifact of your analysis method applied to brain with increased inter functional unit connectivity?

Because it it's just "presence of psychedelics" or "seizure" we have tools for these already.

You cannot jump from being a descriptive measure to constructive without a proof. Most importantly, is the measure reversible, as in inducing same measurement (with different means) results in similar state? In which other states said correlations exist or not? How can we induce them?

In comparison, standard method is supported by evidence of "God helmet" inducing signals in specific place in the brain and results of direct electric stimulation. These do not induce any kind of oscillation behaviour nor inter unit crosstalk like psychedelics, yet they have many similar features.

<comment><USER3> You're probably right. But you're being pretty negative. It's a theory that's worth thinking about. Some smart people with PhDs are thinking along these lines, lends it a modicum of credibility.

<comment><USER2> Yes, sure, smart people with PhDs thought lobotomy was good at the time.

This is not a correct argument. You have to show validity of your measure before posing it as a mechanism at least.

We do already suspect that psychedelics work by increasing connectivity (in some way) between units - people with PhDs as well. While this presupposes an even more basic albeit also complex "resonant" mechanism - with no evidence other than its own measurement - it is tautological.

Harmonic analysis will always show you resonances and frequencies, because that's what it is composed off. What if temporal relations matter? Magnitudes?

It's the same as with sound, look at frequency spectrum without time and conclude that's all that matters. We have already figured out much more about hearing and sound processing, which is complicated and adaptive since. Likewise vision, including partial decodings. How does harmonic version help there?

Neurons are complex enough, spiking, chemical and structure driven that this approach is bound to be a dead end. It's simplistic, not simple.

It is akin to telling quantum physicists to just use old Born-Wiener process interpretation.</comment></comment></comment>


The Food of My Youth - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/09/the-food-of-my-youth/ <comment><USER2> Why are stereotypical American "low-income" foods largely processed meats and junk food (e.g. boxed macaroni and cheese, spam, Vienna sausages), instead of staples like rice, oats, beans, lentils, etc. which also keep easily but are far more nutritious, tasty and just as cheap, if not cheaper on a per-calorie basis?

This is genuine curiosity, as I grew up in a region where the average income was much lower than the USA, but the food consumed by lower-income individuals was much healthier and fresher. We'd eat things like red beans and rice, curries, acar (a type of spiced pickle) and often cook meat over wood fires to save money on gas for the oven.

<comment><USER3> 1) Cheap junk food is marketed, whereas cheap staples aren't. Basic white/brown rice is a commodity. There's no differentiation, and ultra-slim margins, so nobody's trying to market it to you. Easy Mac on the other hand...

2) Taste. To us adults (and mostly upper-middle class adults to boot) on HN, rice and beans may sound more appealing than cheap mac and cheese with mystery meat. Take a poll of 3-year-olds and you may get a different result.

3) Ease. Staples like rice and beans are only _really_ cheap when you're buying them in dry form, bulk. This means you need to season them and cook them, which can be a long process. (My wife and I recently tried to save on black beans by cooking ourselves rather than buying canned. The result was good, but by the time you chop onions for seasoning, add other ingredients, monitor the beans, drain and cool the beans, and wash the crock pot, cutting board, knife, various spoons and measuring implements, etc., well, it ends up being a lot of work.) If you're a single parent working two jobs to support your kids, 5 minutes of preparation is meaningfully better than even, say, 20 minutes of preparation.

<comment><USER4> >Staples like rice and beans are only really cheap when you're buying them in dry form, bulk. This means you need to season them and cook them, which can be a long process.

I don't know. You make it sound as if it were difficult to cook these staples. During my college years these were the easiest things to cook, along with pasta and tomato sauce. Basically it was just a matter of filling the pot with water, dropping the ingredients and then just wait.

Similarly with tomato sauce, add the ingredients in a pot and just wait.

<comment><USER5> Adding rice and water to a pot and heating it has about a hundred failure modes that make the result unpalatable and ruins the reagents. Even when it goes correctly, the result is pretty bland, particularly to someone used to packaged food.

One cannot merely put the ingredients of tomato sauce into a pot, heat it in some arbitrary way, and expect the result to be recognizable as tomato sauce.

<comment><USER6> _One cannot merely put the ingredients of tomato sauce into a pot, heat it in some arbitrary way, and expect the result to be recognizable as tomato sauce._

That's literally the description of a famous tomato sauce[1]. You can add a cup or two of water and a pound of pasta _to the same pot_ at some indeterminate time towards the end of the process.

Feel free to argue that arbitrarily heating it may involve burning it. Whatever. Pasta with tomato sauce is ridiculously easy.

[1] [https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015178-marcella- hazans-...](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015178-marcella-hazans- tomato-sauce)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I was a kid there was a time we were on food stamps. My sister used to make "poor man's ice cream" (basically chocolate milk poured over ice) and the food I remember the most is ALDI brand frozen burritos. Eventually we got more money because my mom got a job working in New Jersey for a large insurance company. After high school I went to culinary school because I wanted to cook, in part because poor people food made me feel poor.

After I moved out, I was working in restaurants and wasn't making much by American standards, but I could make myself food that wasn't poor people food.

This stuff clings to you. Some people fight it, refusing to go back. Other people remember the little comfort they were able to get from the foods of their childhood.

Food is so fundamental to life in so many different ways. It's about being cared for. It's about showing someone else you care. It's about literally providing life to another human. There's so many strange cultural hang ups about what it should and shouldn't be. It's used as a way to identify people who don't belong to your group, to shame "the other" or to try and fit in when you don't feel comfortable. People convinced that there are right and wrong choices.

</comment><comment><USER8> _And when the Man handed over our food stamps, we were called moochers, a drain on our country. It's no different now—worse even, as those people on the Hill try to pass a bill that would make people earn their food stamps. Tacking on work requirements—implying that foster kids are too lazy to pay for their own food, that mothers like mine, whose husbands went off to serve and never came back quite the same, are just not trying hard enough to make ends meet._

Ow.

</comment><comment><USER9> This hits me in the feels. My parents weren't the richest in the world but I was fortunate enough to have food on the table without resorting to the equivalent of food stamps in my country.

The struggle is real for some people and we just don't know how much it hurts us years later. Even today whenever I have access to cereals other than the cheapest kind I have this uncomfortable feeling like I shouldn't eat something that expensive.

</comment><comment><USER10> This was such an unexpectedly powerful piece of writing. Thanks for sharing this.

</comment><comment><USER11> We've updated the link from [https://longreads.com/2018/07/18/defined-by- want/](https://longreads.com/2018/07/18/defined-by-want/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER12> Damn, very moving article!

I don't want to get into what I ate as a child. Too crazy.

But I was for sure poor as a young adult in the US. So we ate lots of rice, beans, and whatever veggies were discounted or ready to trash. And for additional protein, eggs and beef heart.

</comment><comment><USER13> Again, I find myself obliged to link to this excellent article:

 _The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor_

[http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you- devel...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop- growing-up-poor/)

 _#5 You Develop a Taste for Shitty Food_

<comment><USER14> Then you grow older on a professional level of income, learn to appreciate great food and realize your food budget averages $1000/month. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER15> As Misao Okawa who reached age 117 said, eating delicious things is the key to longevity \- though western "delicious things" are way different to Japanese "delicious things", I still like to lie to myself and proceed to order the bread pudding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1\. For children mac and cheese tastes better (and a lot of adults). It's highly palatable. 2\. Rice and beans are cheaper but are small bags of rice and canned beans cheaper than some other highly palatable thing that's easier to make? (It takes a lot more time to make dried beans). 3\. Decision fatigue- it's really hard to make healthier decisions when you're poor, overworked, and tired. When you go to the grocery store I'm sure your looking for something that will quickly release some dopamine. 4\. America has a pretty sad food culture and while they're might be some amazing asian or Mexican grocery stores with good cheap stuff, a lot of non recent immigrant people have super negative stereotypes about these types of places.

</comment><comment><USER17> Offtopic but the thumbnail was really misleading to me, because there is such a thing as a prison burrito and the process you make it is actually similar to the thumbnail (pouring something into junk food bag, and using it as a mixing container).

Example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSKpDwDhq24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSKpDwDhq24)

I wonder if the inspiration for these menu items came from similar recipes in low income areas? E.g. the prison burrito might have derived from "hot cheetos". Mostly, recipes born out of a desire for fancier food with limited ingredient choices / availability in food banks / nonperishables

</comment><comment><USER18> That was powerful, made me tear up.

</comment><comment><USER19> This food is disgusting. Cheese whiz in a cheetos bag? Processed crap like this is the invention of greedy opportunists and their factories built to feed people drivel. To long for such things is to long for suicide.</comment>


In which the CPU changes my data under my nose - <AUTHOR> http://troubles.md/posts/i-triple-equals/ <comment><USER2> My first reaction is that the test is wrong, if it's comparing a bit that the processor changes whenever it wants. Isn't this telling you _don 't do that_? I'm wondering if this is a case of a leaky abstraction or just fighting the abstraction instead of going with the flow.

Conceptually, the quiet bit is _not part of the value_. However, I may be missing something obvious about why the writer was trying to control its value.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, let me get this straight.

Is this saying that, on the one hand,

> _[A]s far as I can tell x86 and ARM never generate sNaNs, ..._

but the CPU can still generate the other kind?

> _There we go, that's a quiet NaN._

It's proving a little hard for me to follow along. My understanding is that this is happening from a floating point number being converted to an integer, back to floating point, then back to an integer again? I think I'm wrong.

<comment><USER2> "but the CPU can still generate the other kind?"

I think the point is you can't get the silent bit turned off except by the extreme method of casting arbitrary non-float data. If you deal with floats in the normal way, they are never signalling.

"My understanding is that this is happening from a floating point number being converted to an integer, back to floating point, then back to an integer again?"

The example seems to be integer -> float. The integer is just a bit pattern that happens to mean "signalling NaN" and the author is trying to convert it to a float and unhappy with the "silent" bit/flag changing. I come back to my other comment, that the bit is not _really_ part of the value, so I feel like the concept of equality for the test is what should be fixed.</comment></comment>


The Y Combinator-denied fly to YC Reject - <AUTHOR> http://vator.tv/news/2011-04-11-the-y-combinator-denied-fly-to-yc-reject

<comment><USER2> It's an excellent way to mine the mid-point of the long tail. Clearly YC has limited resources and part of the requirement to be YC is to know that everyone they accept must be able to get the level of support they offer for new ventures.

The resource limitations guarantee that there will be people rejected which are otherwise solid ideas. So finding a way to get those people resources is a good thing for everyone.

I don't think it necessarily has to be a 'competition' but it could also give YC the ability to know what if they had chosen 'project Q' vs rejecting it, giving them a way to perhaps tune their own process a bit.

It's also true that there is an uncomfortable amount of randomness to startup success, founder chemistry, market windows, world events, consumer whim, all contribute an uncomfortably large factor to the success outcome. In some sense knowing the timing can be as important as executing well.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my eyes YCR clearly shows that there needs to be something beside YC. Every super hero needs his arch enemy.

<comment><USER4> There are plenty of alternatives to YC, YC is just the posterchild for incubators rightnow.

As far as archenemies are concerned, if by that you mean there needs to be several competitors in the market so that the customers (the entrepreneur) has choices and the players in the market are forced to compete for the customer, then I agree. There are other incubators in the market, some with better deals; YC happens to carry a good deal of name and a great network with it though.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I send mail to remind myself to interviewer - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>I applied a software developer position at Germany. Someone from HR send little development assignment and asked for my github profile. I coded answer and send with my github profile same day. This was 2 weeks ago. Should I ask what is status of process ? Is this an improper behavior for Germany ? <comment><USER2> In French they call this "mail de relance", it is OK to do so. Just be polite, brief and indicate your purpose from the first sentence.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see no problem with asking it in a polite way.</comment>


Startup Visa Documentary - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nz4N2K64o8

<comment><USER2> I really hope The Startup Visa goes somewhere:

<http://startupvisa.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is discouraging.</comment>