Deconstructing a Sexploitation Attack - <AUTHOR> http://rethinksecurity.io/post/deconstructing-a-sexploitation-attack <comment><USER2> > Keep sensitive data off of shared systems, use a strong password and Two > Factor Authentication, keep your systems up to date, and be thoughtful about > the trust you put into where you upload your data.

Also be thoughtful about the trust you put into _who you share any data with_ (especially photos) and be conscious about who can see it (this is a big deal on social media, where privacy and visibility permissions aren't easily understood or used by people). Unless you're a celebrity (and sometimes even if you're a celebrity), sensitive information could leak from anyone you've shared it with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, I should have made this clearer in the article. There have been many breaches in the past and the more places you put your sensitive data the more likely it is to be lost!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Recent versions of Windows 10 have the Sandbox feature which gives you quick and easy access to a temporary VM that would let you safely open the attachment as described in this article. Obviously not as secure as Kali Linux, but more usable to most people than spinning up a Kali VM.

</comment><comment><USER4> So a whole lot of nothing. They pulled a list and loaded an email campaign. I wonder who is actually paying up here. Nice to learn about some tools that I was not familiar with though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I'm glad it turned out to be nothing. I was pretty concerned to see my valid credentials in the subject line. The PDF was reasonably convincing, and very threatening. It got me thinking about things like "this can't be real, right? but what if it is? Should I just pay it to make it go away?" I figured if I was thinking those thoughts others might, so it was worth the investigation. Thanks for reading!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't think PDF files could contain executable code.

Are PDFs as attack vectors common?

<comment><USER6> PDF is postscript + other stuff. And postscript is turning complete.

<comment><USER7> Brainfuck is also turing complete, but it's not Tetris complete. That's a very important distinction for possible attack vectors.

PDFs on the other hand are tetris complete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There seems to be an accessibility issue with this link. I do get an essentially empty page in Firefox and Chrome when I try to read this with a screen reader. Opening the same page with lynx also gives me an empty page (no surprise there), and skimming through the page source, the HTML/CSS/JS contains far too much obscure stuff to actually trust this page.

</comment><comment> zenit-mf-1 "international hacker negotiator" Seems an interesting and trendy job

</comment><comment><USER9> tl;dr: they got one of these spam email that you'll find a dozen of in your spam box, made up a bunch of "potential" bad things that could happen but none of that happened and the spammer just wanted bitcoins.

<comment><USER10> TL;DR+= they put the message body in an encrypted PDF to evade keyword-based spam filters

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://share.icloud.com/photos/0fB49xX6FueVyXTFbo0my- OEg](https://share.icloud.com/photos/0fB49xX6FueVyXTFbo0my-OEg)

This is literally the entire article on mobile safari

EDIT: purify ad-blocker caused the issue</comment>


Nasdaq's New Portal Market: IPO Alternative for Startups? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/13/AR2007081301170.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The benefits of an IPO w/o the regulatory burden?

Here's an overview:

 _Any private firm can list on Nasdaq's new platform ... [any firm that does list] would remain private and not have to make public their financial statements or submit to federal regulation, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accountability law._

<comment><USER2> Sarbanes-Oxley compliance costs prevent many legitimate companies from going public that would have otherwise done so. So this could definitely be an attractive choice for companies in this situation.

Too bad this market is only accessible by mutual funds and the super rich..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Will there be a Portal index? I wonder how long it'll be before there's a Portal Market ETF, for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a very welcomed alternative.

</comment><comment><USER5> Strange.

I just tried to submit this same article, and now I can't vote this one up. What's the deal?

<comment><USER6> When you submit the same link it just up-votes it for you instead of re- submitting.

<comment><USER5> I assumed as much. Thanks for clearing that up.</comment></comment></comment>


What Happens When Celebrity Twitter Accounts get Hacked [Infographic]  - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetecnica.com/2011/10/what-happens-when-celebrity-twitter.html

<comment><USER2> good link!</comment>


Ask HN: Considering a move to the Bay Area with a family. Where should I live? - <AUTHOR>

I have what might be a very good job offer in the Bay Area. Not going to reveal with whom, but it's in the vicinity of Mountain View.
It would involve relocation to Silicon Valley, so evaluating the possibility of living there is a major part of evaluating the offer.
First, some background: I love tech and love to build things, but I also love other things too. I have a family and a five month old baby, and my wife wants to stay home while our kids are young and I support this as well. I am quite interested in developing my career, but I have no interest in becoming an unbalanced workaholic. I also want to have a life, pursue other things, and spend time with the people I love.
It's not the job I'm concerned about here. It's the real estate hyperinflation of the valley and the culture that this engenders.
So what I'm looking for is: if I want to lead a balanced life with a family, where should I live? Is there anywhere in the Bay Area (commutable to Mountain View in <30-45 minutes) that isn't unattainably expensive and where my wife and kids would feel comfortable living?
I'm looking for cultural insight, since financial insight is something I can do myself. I've already made a number of spreadsheets.
Edit: I'm more interested in the long view-- in neighborhoods we could eventually call home. I'm interested in areas where being a stay at home mom for a while isn't terribly weird, where our kids would have other kids to play with, and where the cost isn't so astronomical that it's going to eat up any advantage from the job's compensation. <comment><USER2> I think of renting in the bay area much as I do of jobs and careers in the bay area- almost nobody's in it for the long (5+-year) term, so it makes sense to go for what makes sense now (within a longer term plan) and then readjust as your conditions change.

The cheapest rents within a reasonable commute of MV are going to be in East Palo Alto. These are still ridiculously high (compared to other metro areas), and the crime rate there is the highest on the peninsula (still very tame by most big city standards; I've never been in another metro area where most residents don't really in their gut understand what crime is).

Many people put up with the commute from the east bay, and Union City/Fremont can save you a few hundred dollars a month on rent. Run your hourly rate against the hours spent in traffic and the east bay probably comes out behind. If your wife wants a social life while she stays home, there's probably a little bit more of that in the east bay (from personal experience, there's just not very much room for that in Silicon Valley- nearly everyone's there to work to make the rent or mortgage).

Best wishes- if you're coming from a smaller place you may find your perceived standard of living is quite low for the amount of wealth and income that everybody seems to have.

In order to guide you better, may want to give us an impression of what metro area you're coming from.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently in Asheville, North Carolina. Lived for six years in Boston, which is not as expensive as the Bay Area but certainly isn't cheap.

Asheville is hugely cheaper than the Bay, but isn't particularly cheap by its local standards.

<comment><USER3> How are you enjoying Asheville? I've always entertained dreams of moving there because I love the woods and being around nature, but I also don't want to be disconnected from the music scene, happenings in the art world etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Asheville

\- The good:

It's gorgeous. Really. One of the most beautiful places in the country.

The art and music scene here will _not_ compare to a New York or a San Francisco, but compared to other half a million person small cities Asheville punches _waaaay_ over its weight class. Its art and music scene is better than many medium sized (2-4 million) cities. There are lots of festivals too, like this: [http://mountainoasisfestival.com](http://mountainoasisfestival.com)

The food here is incredible. It's easily as good or better than the food you will find in Boston and New York. It is difficult to find a bad restaurant downtown.

There is, of course, tons of beautiful outdoors stuff to do: hiking, biking, kayaking, backpacking, mountain climbing, just about anything except skiing (it's the South, no snow). There's lakes not far away too, including some that permit power boating. So there is _that_ kind of skiing.

Weather is nice. It can get a little cold/snowy in the winter. Hard winters are not unknown but are rare. Last winter was very mild. Summers are warm but since it's up in the mountains you do not get the soul crushing Southern heat you get in, say, Atlanta or Orlando.

If you are a single heterosexual man... well... you will probably like it. I'm not so it doesn't matter to me, but if I were I would not have been disappointed.

If you're gay, I know there's a decent gay scene. I'm not so I can't talk about that from first hand experience. It's also generally a pretty tolerant place.

Finally, downtown is alive. Unlike most interior cities, Asheville revolves around its center. There are lots of people walking around and lots of people (including me) live right in the middle of the city.

\- The bad:

It's a small town. It can feel small after a while.

The tech scene is so-so. There are a few decent startups and a few major employers, but keep in mind this is a small city. If you're looking for a hot tech scene you'll be disappointed. Personally I kinda wanted a break from that, so I didn't care. I found a good job and picked up some very interesting freelance work. If I turn down the Silicon Valley offer I may go more in a freelance direction, and try to bootstrap my own startup project too.

Asheville is an island amid the pentecostal / fundamentalist Christian back country of Appalachia. Drive for 30 minutes in any direction and you are in the _hiiieeeeells_.

The job market frankly sucks for most people. If you're in tech -- and _especially_ if you can freelance/telecommute -- you can escape it to some extent. But the joke is that Asheville has the "best educated wait staff in the country." It's not really a joke. Underemployment is a huge problem.

And real estate here including rent is not cheap when you compare it to the median income. It looks cheap compared to Silicon Valley, but SV also has a lot of high salaries that you'd find it hard to earn here (unless you can telework / freelance / startup). The RE market is distorted because Asheville is a major vacation and retirement destination.

You have to advance your own dreams or career goals. Unlike big, driven cities, the city's culture will not push you. It is easy to get comfortable and give up. (This is a problem outside any of the major cities, honestly.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad to see your question, because I'm asking similar questions! The housing market seems prohibitive for a family to move to the area, especially for someone who wants to keep their family as their main priority.

Have you looked south, to Morgan Hill or Gilroy? That's a longer commute, but it seems like you can get more for your money. And many companies offer shuttles so you can at least avoid some of the traffic pain.

I've also read that the housing market is very competitive, and there are many offers on houses. So if you look for real estate and find things you might like, that doesn't mean you'll get it. You may end up settling for what's left over after the cash buyers with offers 10% over asking price have cleaned up the good stuff.

If I were single or even young and married with no kids, I'd make the move in a heartbeat just for the sense of adventure and to see what happened. With kids and a family (especially kids in middle school), it's not so easy. It's important to settle somewhere good on the first try and not risk moving around a lot. It seems very daunting to find a place to live, with good schools, a safe and nice neighborhood, with a commute that is doable, and a house that isn't a million dollars.

I guess you can't have it all.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was in almost the exact situation as you about a year ago.

I had an offer in hand from a well known company in Palo Alto to join one of their innovation labs. From a career standpoint, it would have been a game changer.

However, like yourself, I have a young family with small children that I like to spend time with. Moving from Texas to the Bay Area would have quadrupled our cost of living, for only a modest increase in salary compared to other, work-from-home opportunities I was getting. So I chose to take one of those other opportunities.

The conclusion I've reached is this: if you didn't start your career in Silicon Valley or SF, it is exceedingly difficult to adjust your life to fit in there when you are more experienced and have family responsibilities.

If you still want to do it, I would suggest renting for a year in Mountain View, Menlo Park, or Palo Alto. If you don't mind a little bit of a drive, you can look at Redwood City or San Mateo. Don't worry about the "long view" as you will need to gauge the situation after you get there and don't be at all surprised if after a year, your family wants to move out.

Feel free to email me if you have more questions. Email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER6> You looking for an apartment or a house to rent? An apartment may be a bit easier to find, but rents right now are pretty high. My business partner just went through this exercise for her sister and it was not fun to say the least.

I live mid peninsula - meaning Belmont, and know the area around me pretty well after living here some 25+ years.

Foster city is pretty kid friendly and a bit cheaper, but be prepared for finding a place to be a challenge in general.

The commute to MV by car can be a nightmare depending on time of day, you may consider taking the train to MV and biking to the office.

Redwood city and Menlo park are also options, but neighborhoods in these areas area a lot like New York City, a block or two can be a HUGE difference in neighbors and whether or not you will feel comfortable.

<comment><AUTHOR> An apartment initially, probably a lower cost (in Bay Area terms) one at first, but my thoughts are more long term. I would eventually like to contemplate renting something on a long term basis or buying. The latter seems almost unattainable unless I want to go all the way down to South San Jose or similar, but I'm curious about what locals think and I know there's a lot of SF people on this site.

BTW: the thing that has me floored is that the offer would be jaw-droppingly good anywhere else, but has me wondering if it's worth it in the Bay Area. Your real estate costs are mind-numbingly insane. In the long term something has to be done about this or employers are going to start fleeing the area in search of reasonable wage environments, because employees in the valley have to ask for at least 50% higher wages simply to break even with other places.

What are your thoughts on east bay: Newark and Fremont and such?

<comment><USER7> I was born and raised in the area (born at Stanford. Went to high schools in Mountain View and San Jose) and can tell you that the high prices and wages are nothing new. I remember saying the same thing as you back in the 80's. (re: "employers are going to start fleeing...") Needless to say, it never happened! And I doubt it ever will.

Speaking of South San Jose, that's where I last lived (before leaving the area) and commuted all the way to Palo Alto every day. It wasn't so bad back in the 80's (around 30 minutes) but I have no idea what it's like now. Maybe it's better!

I have a sister who still lives there and is a top-notch real-estate agent. I'm sure she'd be happy to help with any questions. Let me know if you need her number.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just curious: why did you leave? Cost? Job elsewhere? Just for a change?

<comment><USER7> My company transferred me to Texas. I'd probably still be there otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I moved to San Jose from a small NY town back in 2007. What I quickly realized that is that 30-45 mins away is very wide spread and there are times when driving an hour might not get you very far :-)

If the job is in Mountain View, maybe consider Sunnyvale, Cupertino. Morgan Hill would take you 45-1hr with good traffic. Longer at times. Santa Clara.

There is Fremont/Union City but that is outside 30-45 mins usually, I would say. I dont know about the schools.

Really good schools in Cupertino, but higher rent and house prices for sure.

E-Mail in profile you wanna chat about this.

</comment><comment><USER9> You're probably looking for something like San Mateo. Midway between San Francisco and Mountain View, so you're not committed to South Bay companies. Relatively(!) affordable and family friendly.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ask your new employer for a realtor recommendation, talk to him/her. You have not internalized how expensive the area is and how bad the traffic is. The bridges and the freeways are maxed out during commute. Each city has good areas and not so good areas often next to each other. Newark and Fremont are at least an hour each way to MV. Live close to MV or close to a CalTrain Station. For schools, your choices are Palo Alto, Menlo Park, or a private school.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've encountered this kind of sentiment elsewhere too. It's incredible... not even New York could make a solid six-figure offer almost look like a Wal-Mart wage.

The school situation is puzzling to me. The tax base should be fine, and the majority of the schools I see get high ratings on a nationwide basis. Is this genuinely a problem, or is a Valley resident's idea of a bad school one where the majority of the graduates do not get into top-ten universities? Cause my idea of a bad school is one where you have to go through a metal detector to get in and the majority of their graduates go nowhere. :)

Great tip about the traffic too. I went off Google directions, and I'm guessing those times are for light non-rush-hour traffic.

<comment><USER11> when you inch along in traffic, you can be 15 mins to your destination for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just going through the same thing with my wife and 2 kids. We thought California might be good for a lifestyle change, but I'm not sure of the valley is the place.

My employer has offices in Sunnyvale and Costs Mesa. But I'm finding the real estate a little crazy.

</comment><comment><USER13> San Mateo

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks promising. I see that the schools are not quite as highly ranked as Palo Alto and similar, but aren't bad. They seem to be ranked higher than where I presently live.</comment></comment>


When Melinda Gates's kid asked for an iPod, she replied "You may have a Zun - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/magazine/24fob-q4-t.html?_r=1&ref=global-home <comment><USER2> What a terrible attitude. First, it says: hey son, I _could_ spend the same amount of money on what you actually want, but instead I am going to get you what you don't want (never mind that this family could afford to buy one of each kind of music player and not break a sweat). Second, they're not slightly curious why their own kids much prefer a competing product? They are not at all interested in improving the Zune to the point where their kids would ask for one? They ignore the most honest possible feedback about a product, information that marketers and product planners should kill for?

<comment><USER3> Ahhh... Melinda Gates doesn't work for Microsoft nor does Bill anymore so they can't really make Zune better.Anyways, it seems the kids are mostly teasing them.. (from the follow up answer that their daughter teases Bill about being No. 2)

Btw.. the reporter gets to ask Melinda Gates a bunch of questions and he/she comes up with questions regarding bill gates wealth and Apple vs MSFT rivalry rather than asking more about the charitable foundation she's part of (about half of the total were off topic I would say).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's sound parenting.</comment>


ArchiveTeam rescues Justin.tv videos - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/476064989879349248 <comment><USER2> I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, so I might as well: unless they changed it after I left, JTV has been deleting videos older than a week for many years. I wrote the original (well, almost original) system, and IIRC, we took it down to a week of storage back in mid-2009 or so.

JTV caught quite a lot of static for _" not giving more than a week's notice"_, but it's pretty hard to do that when you're going from one week of storage to _no_ weeks of storage.

Also, since people are asking: back when I first worked on it (circa late 2008), we started by installing (again, IIRC) 40TB of RAID6 disk space, and that was enough to store about a month of video before we ran out. By the time I left, we had something like 4-5x that capacity, and we were down to a week of archive storage. So that should give you some perspective on the amount of data involved....and it's probably gone up substantially since then.

<comment><USER3> > JTV caught quite a lot of static for "not giving more than a week's notice", > but it's pretty hard to do that when you're going from one week of storage > to no weeks of storage.

I have trouble understanding this point you make. What prevented them from announcing something along the line of "We keep videos for one week at the moment; in 3 months time, however, we will stop this and there will be no more storage." ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the ArchiveTeam.

Jason Scott, the leader of the project, gave a fantastically entertaining talk about how they saved Geocities, Yahoo! Video, and Friendster — using a Distributed Preservation of Service Attack. Definitely worth a watch.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog)

</comment><comment><USER5> Since people are interested... a fact that may be obscured from the conversation and statistics is that somrthing like 550gb of those videos have ZERO views.

Kudos to archive team!

<comment><USER6> How can videos with at least 10 views also have zero views? The ArchiveTeam is only keeping videos with at least 10 views because the total size of those videos with less than 10 views is 1.01 Petabyte.

<comment><USER5> Sorry for not being clear. Out of the 1.1 petabyte, something like 50-60% of that has zero views. Archive Team duplicated everything with 10-infinity views, which was about 10tb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The page for their project: [http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Justin.tv](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Justin.tv)

I'd be curious to know how many hours (days? months? _years_?) of video content JTV actually has.

<comment><USER8> 5 years ago, it was 22 hours recorded per minute[1]. That translates to 25 years per week, which is their previous retention term. The volume has probably gone up substantially in the intervening time.

[1] [http://mashable.com/2009/05/21/justin-tv-usage- stats/](http://mashable.com/2009/05/21/justin-tv-usage-stats/)

<comment><USER7> So they're huge numbers, but still pretty small in comparison to YouTube which claims to have 100 hours of video uploaded every minute [1] - meaning they probably have at least several _millenia_ of stored video... wow.

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html](http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I guess this answers why they're not doing archives anymore. 1,000 TB of videos with fewer than 10 views!

<comment><USER9> Where do you see that statistic?

<comment><USER10> They said they archived 10TB (and that covered everything with at least 10 views), and that the total including all videos would be 1.1PB, ie 1100 TB. So there is over 1000TB of videos with less than 10 views.

<comment><USER11> 1.1PB would cost $56,000 at the cost of Backblaze's latest pod, based on their recently posted pricing.[1] That would be for live storage in physical computers. If they put it on tapes at $0.01/GB, it would only cost $11,000 for the tapes.

1: [http://www.tuaw.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-now- storing-100-pet...](http://www.tuaw.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-now- storing-100-petabytes-of-data-announces-storage-p/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to sell 'data science consultancy' service? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm struggling with the following: many companies can benefit from data science/AI/ML to optimize their processes, profit, costs, etc. We are trying to help companies by doing data science projects for them. But we don't know how to find the clients. I assume potentiel clients don't just google for "data science agency" when they have a problem. They may not even realize things can be optimized/automated, or they may not seek the solution in the data science corner. So how do we sell our services? How do we make them find us, and what keywords/phrases should we use? Should we focus our website on very practical concrete examples, or should we keep it all very high level? <comment><USER2> B2B sales leads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you maybe expand on this a little bit?

<comment><USER2> _Sales Lead: A sales lead is a prospective consumer of a product or service, created when an individual or business shows interest and provides contact information._

You can buy b2b leads lists from specialized companies.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Seomoz lying? - <AUTHOR> http://wimprint.com/~pocha/log-47

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's lying about the position as Codelearn comes up #17 for me for 'rails tutorials'.

However, any position beyond #10 is pretty much useless on anything but the most popular terms. People just don't tend to venture that far. The difference between position #17 and #40, say, will be like fighting over 0.0001% vs 0.0003% of the audience (not real numbers, just to illustrate a point).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Peter for the explanation. I think I agree to your point.

In addition - probably the rise & fall in impressions for the keyword is not to do with the keyword ranking. Any idea on this ?</comment></comment>


Leaving My Job To Create My Own Business And Travel - <AUTHOR> http://sparklewise.com/?p=590

<comment><USER2> As if we care...</comment>


Sketch.systems - <AUTHOR> https://sketch.systems/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a somewhat unfortunate naming when one of the leading design prototyping tools are called Sketch ([https://www.sketchapp.com/](https://www.sketchapp.com/)).

Looks pretty cool, though.

<comment><USER3> True, I thought it was something new that Sketch had released at first glance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks cool - should I be concerned about the terms and conditions? "However, by posting Content using the Service you grant us the right and license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content on and through the Service. You agree that this license includes the right for us to make your Content available to other users of the Service, who may also use your Content subject to these Terms."

<comment><USER5> An unlimited grant to both the company and all users of the product is absolutely insane and makes it entirely unusable from a commercial standpoint. Unfortunate, it seems interesting.

<comment><USER6> GitHub has similar terms [1], which are there to ensure that nobody can share their content through the platform and then claim that they never allowed them to copy it. Sketch.systems probably wants to provide a collaboration feature, which would need some kind of license grant.

GitHub's terms are better, though, because they clearly explain the purpose of the requirement.

[1] [https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of- service/#4-...](https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of- service/#4-license-grant-to-us)

<comment><USER5> They aren't similar. GitHub's terms clearly restrict their license for use within the service. Sketch.systems grants an unlimited right to use and distribute AND gives the same rights to all of their customers. That is incredibly broad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like how this encourages designers to think about all the states of a UI component.

I understand that there are designers and design orgs out there with the discipline to be detailed in their design to cover all states of a UI element. There are also many designers that just design for the happy path. For the latter, we need to ensure they start to think about edge cases for what they are designing.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a developer, I feel like the target market are product owners or managers that want to pretend to have bigger product insight than is viable for their role. At the point where you're building these complex mockups featuring real logic and real code you might as well code it out. If it takes you much longer to release a test build than make a prototype in this cluttered UI then you should be working on your tooling.

<comment><USER9> It depends on how tolerant your application is dependent on bugs. I see this as a user-friendly intermediate between mainstream programming and formally- verified programming:

It is easy to see that your program is in one of several states ensure that its state-transition behaviors are consistent with the state transitions you have designed, and it is easy enough to reason about state transitions at a high enough level. On the other hand, it is difficult to reason about the state of multiple asynchronous components. This will help with that.

In addition, when designing a new feature, I can see this helping to decide where would be an appropriate and natural place to tack on the feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks great! Probably even has applications for anybody prototyping a Finite State Machine, which are very common. Also, I'm not aware of any intuitive FSM design tools which one can "get" in a 5 min tutorial.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't trust anyone telling me he "got" state machines in a 5 minute tutorial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really nice and looks great. The diagram is super useful and I could see myself using this for the rough planning of an app. That being said, I feel like like the use cases are super limited unless you flesh it out some more. There needs to be a way of encoding more information about state, maybe scoped variables that you can modify on events or something!

</comment><comment><USER13> People interested in this might also like Harold Thimbleby's book _Press On_ about using FSMs in UI design and analysis.

<comment><USER14> Cool, I wasn't aware of that book but I'll look into it!

Other resources folks might want to check out are:

\+ David Harel's original paper on the statecharts formalism (which Sketch.systems implements): [http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/seoc/2005_2006/reso...](http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/seoc/2005_2006/resources/statecharts.pdf)

\+ Ian Horrock's "Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts" book: [https://amzn.to/2sT1e4x](https://amzn.to/2sT1e4x)

It's also worth noting that Sketch.systems doesn't do any kind of formal analysis or checking of invariants. If you're interested in that sort of thing, look into TLA+ (video intro: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/video/videos.html](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/video/videos.html)) or Alloy ([http://alloytools.org/](http://alloytools.org/)).

<comment><USER15> > Sketch.systems implements the statecharts formalism

!? Do you know the phrase "bury the lede" (sic)!? ;-)

This is cool, this is something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a UX Designer with limited coding abilities this looks very interesting. I tried to describe a little feature that we will need to build soon. That was pretty straightforward, but I also felt very limited as there was no way to comment anything in the spec.

But it can be really helpful to think through all the states that the application can be in, something I often neglect. Not sure if I will automatically think through the non-happy paths, but it might help.

With a more fleshed out syntax, I could very well see myself using this. But I don't see myself using the Javascript / prototype part, if I actually to that I could probably just create a prototype in Vue.js, which then also would describe all the states. I would focus on the spec part and make that more powerful.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for trying it out, and I 100% agree with you that it's helpful to "think through all the states that the application can be in".

I'd consider Sketch.systems a huge success if the only thing it achieves is teaching UX designers how to think of behavior in terms of states. (And reminding programmers, since coding sometimes makes easy to skip thinking about states and just keep nesting callbacks =P)

Re: Syntax --- the spec language does support comments: all characters following an octothorpe (`#`) will be ignored.

See this "egg timer" sketch for an example: [https://sketch.systems/lynaghk/sketch/32bb376ee5c9dc9bf26012...](https://sketch.systems/lynaghk/sketch/32bb376ee5c9dc9bf2601253b8ceb521)

I'll add comments to the default spec so that they're more discoverable.

Can you be more specific about what else you'd like to see "fleshed out" in the syntax? Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it!

<comment> irq-1 The transition names aren't scoped.

Typing breaks the diagram until you've correctly typed the line. It should ignore the line if it's not syntacticly correct, or you could have the diagram show an error.

It needs functions, or at least function names, that lead to different states.

Interesting though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hmm kind of like finite state machines for UI

<comment><USER18> Which is kind of like Elm, using The Elm Architecture, though I wouldn't suggest the target demographic for this too could pick that up in 5 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks fantastic, excellent job.

It's tough to find the right balance between an initial design and an actual plan is user interactions, especially without having to go down the whole prototyping path.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a product person. I personally feel if the designer should know how to code so they can skip this tools process. It seems to add more unnecessary complexity to the design process for those designers who know how to code and understand how to fix issues as they arise.

<comment><USER21> I understand the temptation to "just use code", but I've experienced this going wrong at even small team scales:

\- Our programming languages just don't give us an efficient abstraction to think about user flow. This tool shows in one diagram what it might take 10 React component files to capture in production.

\- This would make hiring good designers near impossible for most teams, or at least shift the hiring criteria away from user experience and craft into code ability (which means your design will be bad).

\- Putting designers in production code is a waste of time because they then have to "own" the parts of engineering that aren't code too (style, test coverage, deployment, interrupting design to fix bugs they created a year ago, etc).

\- Even if you hired a great designer for cheap who could see all this logic easily on your web app, for ex, this kind of logic often need to be spec'd for multiple products/platforms simultaneously.

\- For medium and large companies with complex logic (many companies), a spec of how the app works is used beyond product teams that need answers in a document fast. For ex, by support teams who are trying to figure out if behavior a user is seeing is a bug or part of the design so they can file a ticket correctly.</comment></comment>


Seemore: Physically Based Rendering in WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://blog.playcanvas.com/seemore-physically-based-rendering-in-webgl/

<comment><USER2> Awesome! Reminds me of Luigis Mansion/Resident Evil - oh, and the graphics engine is amazing! - You're going places.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems to be a good week for PBR in WebGL: first Sketchfab and now PlayCanvas as well :)

<comment><USER3> Yep, this stuff looks great

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> WebGL doesn't get much sweeter than this. :o)</comment>


Flickstagram: The best way to import your Instagram photos to Flickr - <AUTHOR> http://flickstagram.org

<comment><USER2> Too bad -- a few more minutes of thought might have produced "InstaFlick", which seems more apt in terms of direction.</comment>


Poverty is what's crippling public education in the US—not bad teachers - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/101508/poverty-is-whats-crippling-public-education-in-the-us-not-bad-teachers/

<comment><USER2> TL;DR:

 _The reforms missed a critical factor driving achievement gaps: the influence of poverty on academic performance. ... An increase in the minimum wage would provide increased stability to millions of families, which would help children focus on their studies instead of where their next meal will come from._

However, I think this ignores a more important influence: good parenting.</comment>


Google Earth API has been deprecated - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/earth/

<comment><USER2> Context from the Google Maps API G+ page:

"FYI that we've just announced deprecation of the Google Earth API due to Chrome and Firefox removing support for NPAPI plugins for security reasons. Per our deprecation policy, the API will continue to be supported and function for one year."

[https://plus.google.com/+GoogleMapsAPI/posts/6TA4QGkDW48](https://plus.google.com/+GoogleMapsAPI/posts/6TA4QGkDW48)

A shame, but hopefully we can get Google Earth-like functionality in the Google Maps API, now that browser support for WebGL is widespread.

<comment><USER3> Zooming all the way out on maps.google.com does get you a planet view. It might be interesting to see how layers apply at that zoom level.

<comment><USER4> I hadn't noticed before but holding down the shift key at that zoom level gives you the same rotate and tilt controls which Google Earth offered:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-140.0068556,4793697...](https://email@example.com,-140.0068556,4793697a,20y,350.97h,21.12t/data=!3m1!1e3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here: This news is dissapointing. I've been using the Google Earth API for years now and while it does feel "bolted on" it's gotten the job done. Sure the updates were slow, and bug fixes/enhancements few in the past couple of years, but it works well. I'm actively looking for an alternative. Here's a brief list of what I've found.

World Wind - [http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/](http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/) Cesium - [http://cesiumjs.org/](http://cesiumjs.org/)

<comment><USER5> WorldWind is not going to be an option in the browser much longer either. Applet support requires the Java plugin, and that's also going to be affected by the push to deprecate the NPAPI (plus a lot of places have it disabled already due to the ongoing security concerns).

Cesium's excellent. Still missing some features compared to GE and WorldWind, but the core dev team has been cranking away on it consistently, they're very responsive to discussion, and I love being able to dive right down into the source to see how things work inside (as opposed to the giant binary black box that is GE).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was one of the early users of it in 2009: [http://hmap.unh.edu/atlas/](http://hmap.unh.edu/atlas/)

and it seemed they stopped developing it very shortly after it came out, as there were 'known bugs' with ugly hackarounds that never went away. The plug- in stopped installing for me on OSX about 2 years ago. A regretful technology choice.

</comment><comment><USER7> Has there been any announcement about the Google Earth Windows client being deprecated? I think it's been over a year since there were any updates.

I'm guessing Google is putting all of their efforts into Maps, but it's a shame because I really like the Windows client version. I have spent hours just roaming around the planet using it.

<comment><USER5> Pretty sure that's hanging around for the foreseeable future. It's the browser plugin that's going away.

<comment><USER8> Google Earth Pro seemingly has a fair few customers at the moment so I would assume the free desktop version will stick around for a while.

[https://www.google.com/intx/en_uk/work/mapsearth/customers/](https://www.google.com/intx/en_uk/work/mapsearth/customers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what was the reason behind this.

Another thing I realised that I never had this API in any of my projects requirements, is there any important apps that use it other than information visualisation?

<comment><USER5> Per the article, the primary reason is that Firefox and Chrome are both trying to eliminate the use of browser plugins. Plugins are potential security problems, and can also affect browser behavior (from reading Mozilla blogs, a very large percentage of UI hangs are caused by plugins).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have been using the Google Sky version of the API for many years now at my star finder astronomy site (eg. [http://www.starsfree.com/view/91.025/-24.3/M8](http://www.starsfree.com/view/91.025/-24.3/M8) ). I don't know of an alternative. There is a Moon version and a Mars version, too. I don't know if the images for Sky, Moon and Mars are available to create an alternative, but if they were, I would be up to cobbling together a program to replace these.

<comment><USER11> Getting a 403 on your site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Understandable that they don't want to keep maintaining this as a browser plugin, but it's a shame anyway. I wonder what will happen to the Google Earth Flight Simulator ([http://www.gefs-online.com/](http://www.gefs-online.com/)), which has been one of my favorite time wasters the last couple of months. Their blog does not seem to have an announcement regarding their future. I hope they are aware of this. :-(

<comment><USER13> One would think they'd rather have it as a browser thing than a desktop thing, this is Google we're talking about. Chromebook and what not. I really wonder if this is a sign that Google earth itself is next.

<comment><USER14> I hope not. No live GPS/"moving map" with Google Maps on a laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the main question is: Will there be an alternative?

<comment><USER16> I presume that there maybe something to replace it in the future but its anyones guess.

From [http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/announcing...](http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/announcing- deprecation-of-google-earth.html)

"Google Earth has a proud legacy, which continues with the new Google Earth for Android, powered by a brand new renderer. 3D is in our blood, and while we can't announce anything just now, we look forward to sharing more exciting product news in the future."</comment></comment>


The Coming Privacy Panic - <AUTHOR> http://bryce.vc/post/6514946956

<comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2652194>

And as I write it's still on the "Newest" page, _and_ it's made the front page.</comment>


Closure of NM solar observatory a mystery - <AUTHOR> https://www.abqjournal.com/1219922/nm-solar-observatory-closed-authorities-mum.html <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17978598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17978598)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. We moved the other comments there.</comment></comment>


Attn Joe [Hewitt]: Should we trust iPad? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/01/29/attnJoeShouldWeTrustIpad.html

<comment><USER2> _"But I don't trust these companies, and I especially don't trust Apple or Google with my writing work. I can see a day when what I write has to be approved by someone who works for Steve Jobs before it can be read publicly."_

When I read something like this, it makes it harder to take the surrounding article seriously.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it. The iPad has a web browser, and a good one. Doesn't this undermine his entire argument? Is this more about Facebook or about Apple?

</comment><comment><USER4> I think those criticizing Apple's closed environment should focus their energy instead on creating a better platform or product.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, people dissatisfied with Apple are creating N different platforms and none of them has enough R&D budget to match Apple. Android vs. Maemo vs. Chrome OS is the new GNOME vs. KDE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"Apple would never approve anything remotely like the OPML Editor_ "

Why wouldn't they?

<comment><USER5> It's an IDE and runtime for the UserTalk programming language.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps it's an app that should be running in the cloud, similar to what Palm is trying to do with Project Ares.

<http://ares.palm.com/Ares/about.html>

I think Apple's attitude is that anything that can't run in a safe, restricted sandbox needs to get the hell out of the consumer's device and run on _your_ servers.</comment></comment></comment>


DIY clear glass whiteboard - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tk-diy/diy-clear-glass-whiteboard-25ec54daf7bc <comment><USER2> This is pretty simple. I just used glossy white panel board material and screwed it into the exposed studs in my basement. Not as elegant but effective and much cheaper than a framed prefabbed whiteboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, in the end it's really about how effective it is and whether you end up actually using it.</comment></comment>


Mental illness: is there a global epidemic? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/03/mental-illness-is-there-really-a-global-epidemic <comment><USER2> Since mental illness is largely defined as any sort of behavior or thoughts that make it difficult for one to be a productive member of society, however that society defines 'productive', if the structure of society changes such that previously normal and healthy behaviors and beliefs become destructive and difficult for people, that will lead to an increase in so-called mental illness even if people as individuals haven't changed at all.

<comment><USER3> > Since mental illness is largely defined as any sort of behavior or thoughts > that make it difficult for one to be a productive member of society

I have seen enough of this up close to know that it isn't society's construct, that many sufferers are objectively having problems.

Maybe not all cases and conditions are like this. But it doesn't do anyone favors to handwave some of those serious conditions away.

<comment><USER4> The more society becomes increasingly oriented around thought-work the more these problems will manifest. Humans evolved to cooperate, but we didn't evolve to spend all day thinking about long-term work-related stressors that are only indirectly related to our own well-being. Once it became trivially easy to obtain food, water, and shelter, a good portion of our biological imperative was left without anything to be concerned with.

For an interesting tangentially-related thought, try asking people what the definition of "healthy" is for a human. Mental health is the hardest part to define out of all health.

<comment><USER5> > Once it became trivially easy to obtain food, water, and shelter

I would argue that the average human being doesn't consider these things easy to acquire. For society it COULD be easy to distribute these things if we decided that was a goal of ours, but we haven't gotten there yet. I would be very interested in seeing the ideas (or problems?) invented by children born into a world where this was true, but unless things get very interesting very quickly, I doubt we'll get the chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think that since industry has boomed, we exposed ourselves to hazardous chemistry.

While testing for toxicity, cancers and other illnesses, I think science is not able to foresee the effect of all the new chemicals we created, especially cocktail effects, endocrine disruptors, and every bit of thing which is a product of industry. If we investigate product per product when something goes wrong, there will be a lot of things that won't be detected.

I'm sure there are many effects of all those products, but we cannot remove those components, because of cost/benefits and all the great things they bring. As long as public health agencies can be happy, things are okay. When we are not able to really make quality studies on how the brain is affected because we cannot measure a brain, things become foggy.

Add this the norm of 9 to 5, lack of sleep, bad diet, sedentary life style, political frustration, it's expected to have mental illness or imbalance.

<comment><USER7> Without some sources, I remain a bit skeptical that any old cocktail of chemicals will interact in a way to cause the whole spectrum of mental or mood disorders we are seeing. It is hard to refute with authority as this is just such a sweeping statement that encompasses most everything around us.

I believe there are some indications that it is not that accurate: firstly, depression and anxiety disorders as well as schizophrenia have probably been described in ancient times (of course with a very different wording) and in different regions of the world.

Second: if you look at this chart ([https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php?title=File:Share_of_the_population_reporting_that_they_had_chronic_depression,_2014_\(%25\)_HLTH18_II.png)), and squint a bit, you can see depression tends to be more frequent in rich, northern European countries like Ireland, Germany, Finland, Sweden than poor, southern countries like Greece or Cyprus. Public awareness is a probable confounding factor, but it could still be that the amount of daylight and outdoor activity is helping in the South, even though living conditions are objectively worse as are environmental standards.

It could also be related to social media use (correlation with this: [https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm](https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm)) but this is a very recent phenomenon, so I doubt it is the causal reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In God We Trust. After a fashion that is, because if you told your doctor you just met god, they'd lock you up for being delusional or at the minimum prescribe anti-psychotic medication. Yet Billions of people claim to believe in a "magic man in the sky", think of it; some parents are Actually Proud that their children blew themselves up to kill other who disbelieved.

Perhaps the crisis is far, far worse than even the pill pushers proclaim. Just a thought.

<comment><USER9> It's different. Nobody will prescribe anti-psychotic medication to a religious person. It's just not the same thing. Speaking as someone who has a family member with mental illness, you know it when you see it, it's just a different thing. When someone who's never in his life had religious inclinations, suddenly starts doing weird rituals, not sleeping, and claiming to be the messiah and behaving differently then before,... well, it's just, has nothing to do with being a religious person.

<comment><USER8> > It's different. Nobody will prescribe anti-psychotic medication to a > religious person

I feel you are missing the point(s) I made. I am not referring to someone with a Messiah complex; and I dated someone who was suicidal (for almost a year) and interacted with some people in her therapy group--schizophrenics, people with mania and so on. So I'm not a "virgin".

I just wanted to point out the blatant hipocrosy that some, not all, of the experts in this arena. I think my points do stand on their own merit--despite the fact that I'm low on sleep due to a 16 hour work related grind yesterday, and I could have been a bit more precise with my original post.

<comment><USER9> I didn't just mean the messiah complex, it's someone experiencing a distorted reality and no amount of evidence will sway their delusional ideas. It's very noticeable. I don't really understand where the hypocrisy is and what your actual point was. I don't think anyone considers religious extremists completely sane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Worth pointing out Robert Whitaker's book Anatomy of an Epidemic. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_an_Epidemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_an_Epidemic). It goes in depth into the conflicting paradox of a dramatic increase in amount of mental health care and the paradoxical increase in the burden of mental health on society. It concludes that the latest generation of psychiatric drugs are hurting long term outcomes of psychiatric diseases.

<comment><USER11> Pretty bad conclusion on insufficient data.

What we see is medicalization of mental illness, which also includes sharp diagnostic tools and accurate data.

In past someone like that could be called Bohemian or eccentric or moody or slow, work at physical tasks to which they were still suited; with exception made for truly insane (mostly schizophrenics, murderers and catatonics) got committed, and even the it was layperson or law's idea, not of medical profession.

Remember how new even psychoanalysis is...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Read Lost Connections by Johann Hari recently. It's a touch repetitive but a quick and easy read. And I think it hits some important notes on why we might be seeing this. A lot has changed about how we live and that deserves more attention.

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't recommend it - Hari is a notorious bullshitter.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Plagiarism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Plagiarism)

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain- flapping/2018/jan/...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain- flapping/2018/jan/08/is-everything-johann-hari-knows-about-depression-wrong- lost-connections)

<comment><USER14> I read it and would give it a mild recommendation for the layperson that holds onto old misconceptions about mental illness and psychiatry (eg that depression is a deficit of serotonin).

That guardian article doesn't really refute anything Hari says, it mostly complains that what Hari says is well understood by modern mental health practitioners, which is true but he's not writing for mental health practitioners.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. I read it and enjoyed it because it opened my eyes to a new way of looking at things, and it also kinda made me realize that is where some of the problem with my depression does lie. Enough that I know if I'm feeling down, simply doing something with people is a great way to help lift myself up before it gets into full blown can't leave my room depression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." \- Jiddu Krishnamurti

<comment><USER17> > _The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these > vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the > errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same > form of mental pathology does not make these people sane._

\-- Erich Fromm

> _Of course it 's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to > adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can > within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent > person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an > ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice > cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. > Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological". On the other > hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal". > But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general > society._

\-- Noam Chomsky

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't part of the rise due to the fact that, in 1990, DSM-5 classified a substantial number of additional symptom sets as mental illnesses?

</comment><comment><USER19> Redeclaring what for aeons was wanted and usefull behaviour as sickness? Yes, your ancestors wanted that hobo under the bridge.

He made a excellent scout, he was fearless and his pattern search skills where superior to yours. He kept you fed, he kept you save, until he was no longer useful. If it has no skin colour, and the difference is all in the head- one could obviously not term this a race. It has to be visual, to be a acceptable concept.

Look at him, going the way, you will go, once your usefullness has ended.

</comment><comment><USER20> I like to think of mental illness like myopia. Many people used to be blind, but then we figured out the technology, it got cheap, and now 60% of adults wear glasses.

As there is an incentive to classify mental illness for insurance, occupation, and drug development reasons, there is going to be 60% of people on 'mental illness' treatment, because we have an 'ideal human' (20/20 analogy) that we are trying to reproduce.

As the ideal changes (e.g. homosexuality was thought of in the past as non- ideal, so it was a mental illness, now these things have changed in many parts of the world, so those parts of the world do not classify it as such anymore.), the treatment options/norms change.

tl;dr, it is entirely possible due to biology that eventually ~60% of us will have some classification of mental illness that we will be treated for.

<comment><USER21> Pretty sure myopia rates increased quite a bit in the 20th and 21st centuries. Scientists now think myopia is heavily related to sunlight exposure in youth: don't get enough bright hours, get myopia. 3 is the recommended minimum for outdoors time.

<comment><USER22> I've spent a few hours looking into myopia. You're correct that it's been increasing and is still increasing, it's increased so quickly genetics can't explain it, and the sunlight hypothesis is new to me.

Some areas in Asia have >80% myopia rates.

(As an ally myself, I also think it's worth pointing out that Gen-Z having a 7% LGBTQ rate theoretically could also have an environmental cause. There is evidence of a biological basis for transexualism.)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near- sightedness#Asia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness#Asia)

<comment><USER23> Personally I think the increase in LGBTQ people would most likely be caused by increasing public acceptance and/or awareness - if you're going to be ostracized by everyone you know it's a lot harder to come out, and if you think feeling however you do is bizarre/unprecedented/obscene you similarly won't tell people. Plenty of anecdotes out there of people who didn't think they were gay/bi/trans/etc because they didn't think of it as a thing-you- could-be; you see things like "oh, I thought everyone thought girls were hot" (or equivalent).

As acceptance and awareness grow, the bar gets lower -- fifty years ago it'd take a _lot_ of dysphoria to justify trying to transition; now it's still not _simple_ but it's a lot easier, and so more people who are comparatively less dysphoric are willing to take that particular plunge, and more of them know it's a doable thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >>First, to bust some myths: there is no global epidemic. It is not growing exponentially. It is not a disease of western capitalism.

>>Second, a warning. Data is remarkably patchy.

Well, if the data is remarkably patchy then don't boldly claim something is or isn't happening. Admit the uncertainty, so we can proceed with due caution.

<comment><USER13> Confidence is inextricably linked to effect size - we can be very certain that nothing _major_ is happening, even if we're completely unsure if _something_ is happening. Put more crudely, it takes a very large sample size to ascertain if bacon might increase your risk of colorectal cancer, but a very small sample size to ascertain if a bullet to the head causes brain damage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> no... there are just more people and we are more connected than ever.</comment>