Rete – JavaScript framework for node-based visual programming - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/retejs/rete <comment> c-rack The name reminds me on the Rete algorithm, which is pretty cool, but unrelated:

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

<comment><USER2> I found the name confusing for exactly this reason. Rete is a big deal in rule-based systems.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. It's such a unique name for a classic algorithm and is so thoroughly established in symbolic pattern matching for production systems that I'd seriously recommend against adopting it for any other purpose in CS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any time I see something like this I'm reminded of Yahoo Pipes and how ahead of its time it was. Is there anything like it that's designed for enterprise ETL these? It occurs to me it's a much better way of thinking about data flow problems than code.

<comment><USER5> Node based / dataflow UI are also the bread and butter of CGI and compositing industry. It's hyper efficient both for machine because it's often freely memoized/cached and user (think of it as a simplified haskell at your fingertips) because the stateless and unlimited-undo aspects.

I'm still pretty sure it should be the default UI for half computer introduction. Text for the rest, with the right paradigm of course.

<comment><USER6> Node based user interfaces can be great indeed. Unreal Engine 4 has a visual scripting system called Blueprints that is very impressive. [https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Engine/Blueprints](https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Blueprints)

Another example of a node based user interface can be found in the open source 3d modeling and animation software Blender. [https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/blender_render...](https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/blender_render/materials/nodes/introduction.html)

The open source virtual modular synthesizer VCV Rack is node based as well, though it is so "by nature" in the sense that hardware modular synthesizer work in fashion of connecting inputs and outputs with patch cables. [https://www.vcvrack.com/](https://www.vcvrack.com/)

When done right, as all of the three I mentioned above in my opinion do, node based user interfaces are great.

Not all node based user interfaces are equally good. I used LabView a bit at a course at the university and did not enjoy their system. The LabView node based user interface felt very clunky the whole time, even for doing simple things.

I've been wondering occasionally whether certain kinds of data processing that I am doing with Unix tools could benefit from a graphical system.

It's not that I am not comfortable with the command line, but even as a rather die-hard user of Linux and FreeBSD I must admit that the command line has several shortcomings.

Of course, designing a graphical successor to Unix pipelines is a _major_ undertaking that will require through thought. But I think that keeping that idea in the back of ones mind while implementing some smaller node based systems could eventually lead to realization of most if not all of the considerations that must be kept in mind for the design of a graphical successor to Unix pipelines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems great for creating smaller graphs as long as they don't get too complex. I'm kind of obsessed with node-based environments for DSP and media stuff (Reaktor, vvvv, and many others). Whenever my graphs attain some level of complexity, some features become very important such as selecting/operating on multiple nodes and most of all grouping. Rete.js doesn't seem to be quite there yet (no multi select? and Modules only hint at proper grouping), but it's definitely on the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try this: [https://github.com/jagenjo/litegraph.js](https://github.com/jagenjo/litegraph.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really nice, haven't figured out what it's capable of, but reminds of a similar interface I wrote from scratch about 15 year ago in Java Swing. Blows me away how powerful browsers and JS have become. Really amazing that you can do this with so few lines of code, compared the (tens of?) thousands lines I wrote to do similar.

</comment><comment><USER9> Node Red is an other node based visual programming tool that is inspired by Yahoo pipes.

</comment><comment><USER10> The recurring problem I've found with node-based visual programming is that it's very challenging to work with multiple layers of abstraction and that refactoring can be incredibly challenging.

<comment><USER11> Those are definitely two of the major problems that need to be solved for visual programming to really work. Many people look at the problems and just throw up their hands, but I personally think they can be solved. I look at things like people building giant systems in Minecraft, something definitely not even designed for laying out logic or processing, and the way they talk about the physicality and geometry of the processing they lay out suggests to me that some breakthroughs might be right around the corner. Years ago when Supreme Commander was released (the game), they introduced an interface where you held down Ctrl and scrolled the mouse wheel in order to 'zoom' from high level overviews all the way down to single unit detail. It felt so intuitive and natural after using it for a bit that I found myself accidentally trying to do it in a file manager application after exiting the game. I think that would work for visual programming as well. And who knows the possibilities that VR brings along....

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a way to represent recursive nodes or recursion in general?

<comment><USER13> It can be represented visually, but the engine does not support processing recursive nodes

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is nice, great job! I started one framework very similar a couple of years ago, but never finished. I'm going to take a good look at this :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know a similar thing in Python? Need it to integrate it into a project.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks good. Time to brush up on my websockets and glue this into something.</comment>


The science of "vibes" shows how everything is connected - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1490276/the-science-of-vibes-shows-how-everything-is-connected/ <comment><USER2> > [L]iterally every life form and every speck of dust down to the smallest > subatomic particle is influenced by the world through the various forces > that act upon it. An electron is influenced by charged particles close > enough to have an impact, and from objects that exert a gravitational > pull—and the electron behaves accordingly. To exist, to be in the universe, > means that every particle in the universe feels some pull and push from the > various forces around it—otherwise it simply doesn't exist. Thus, the > electron perceives, as I have defined this term, and the electron is a > subject.

I once came to the conclusion that the only true statement I could make is that "there is something", or that "something is going on"... other than that, it's very hard to say where one "thing" starts and another ends, if there even are separate things. At the very least, that even just gravity affects _everything_ (that is affected by it at all, that is), at any distance (so far as we know?), no matter how weakly, always struck me as quite the underrated fact.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18689562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18689562)

For some reason, Nneka comes to my mind. And because everything is everything, I'll just post it. Maybe it'll save someone.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BvvLGoZHs8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BvvLGoZHs8)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so hand-wavey, I'm a bit disappointed to see it on hn.

To the article in question, yes, things can adopt sympathetic vibration, but extrapolating that to high level consciousness is a Herculean stretch.

That they haven't even come up with neural imaging experiments is very telling.

</comment><comment><USER4> Old wine in a new bottle. And a bit of tail-chasing.

Reading Hunt's paper it seems he's not even trying to address the Hard Problem of Consciousness:

> But why, sceptics will object, is all matter inherently experiential? Some > facts are simply brute facts. There are no additional answers below the > level of brute facts and we just accept this and see where these brute facts > take us. I postulate, based on the arguments fleshed out here, that the > stuff of the universe is inherently experiential. This theory leads to an > intellectually satisfying world-view as well as greater compassion for the > universe around us and all of its inhabit- ants. In this case, it is no > tragedy, by any means, to accept that all things are inherently experiential > and that experience complexifies as form complexifies. It is, rather, a very > satisfying path between the dogma of traditional theism and the more recent > dogma of crude materialism.

So, what's the point?[1]

Here's Albert Einstein: "A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

[1] Will this help me build a GAI robot? Will it help me be more compassionate?

\- - - -

Do a video search for "metronome synchronization"... E.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5eBf2KwF8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5eBf2KwF8) Sooooooo satisfying......

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/MACRBOOK.html](http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/MACRBOOK.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> A lawyer/philosopher team up with a psychologist to provide a physical theory of how everything is connected.

tl;dr: speculation

<comment><USER7> Yeah, there's absolutely no science in this article.</comment></comment>


Decommission of Cyrus Email - <AUTHOR> https://www.cmu.edu/computing/email/cyrus/project/index.html <comment><USER2> Cyrus development will not be affected by this. While CMU has been running Cyrus, and employing one of the key developers, FastMail has a team dedicated to supporting the biggest open source project that we use. We have a new developer starting on Wednesday next week as well as Ken from CMU who has agreed to keep working on Cyrus as a FastMail employee and representing the project at conferences.

We are committed to improving the project and keeping it open. As a member of the Cyrus IMAP board, I'm very proud of the 3.0 release that we recently made, and we're currently planning for the 3.1 release which will include further significant improvements.

<comment><USER3> That's great news. We've been considering migrating to Cyrus instead of Dovecot in Virtualmin default installs, as Cyrus seems much closer to JMAP support and we're planning a rebuild of our webmail to use JMAP.

I often worry about infrastructure projects like IMAP, SMTP, DNS, SSH, OpenSSL, etc. They often have very small teams, mostly volunteers, and the implications of a bug, particularly a security bug, can be catastrophic. And, if something we rely on were to be abandoned, we'd probably be screwed; even in cases where we have the technical ability in-house to maintain another major project, we don't have the time (or the budget to add more people to our small team).

<comment><USER2> This worry is why we try to keep in-house expertise for our key tools. That's what got me hacking on Cyrus about 8 years ago to fix some problems we had - and look at us now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The university that I work at switched over to Gmail and its been a big step back in terms of user experience. We canned a small team of dedicated professionals that delivered a rock solid experience for a 'free' option from Google. And since its IMAP implementation is half-assed at best and their web product is also super difficult for older people (and don't even get me started on disabled users-Gmail is completely inaccessible for them) our support requests have skyrocketed and we've got people constantly whining. So we've replaced 5 guys with a data mining product and support costs that would easily cover their salaries. A real net gain.

<comment><USER5> I switch my family email from google apps to fastmail because I got sick of the support calls every time google changed the UI, which seemed to be monthly. Fastmail has been rock solid and lives up to its name.

The spam filtering isn't as good, but Google's false positive rate is atrocious

<comment><USER6> Fastmail isn't free anymore though, it's $30 or more per year.

<comment><USER7> Fastmail is focused on providing a good mail experience, which is worth paying for.

<comment><USER2> [https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/13/fastmails- values/](https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/13/fastmails-values/) we're really unashamed about charging money.

It means we don't have to spend time working out how to trick you out of money, or convince somebody else to give us money in order to hire our staff. I did an all-staff presentation last week at our quarterly meeting - by far the majority of the money coming from our customers goes directly to paying our staff. Hiring good people costs money, and running a good system requires good people!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's really disappointing that nothing better than gmail has come along.

There _are_ open source alternatives, but they aren't as good, that's all there is to it. Setting up a mail server is hard, not because it needs to be but because the software requires eldritch incantations to make it work properly (there are too many things to keep track of in order to A) get email delivered at all and B) not become a spam relay)

It's possible to be something in between the "Just Works" walled garden that gives you no options or control and the archaic wizardry which requires a 2 foot grey beard to understand.

<comment><USER9> For me, the killer feature of Gmail that's hard to compete with is spam filtering.

I remember when people thought spam was single handedly going to make email unusable.

<comment><USER10> On the other side of that, sending mail to gmail can be rather challenging. They have a tendency of 541-ing mails for no apparent reason, under the pretense of "poor mail server reputation".

Basically you don't control who gets to send you mails. You're entirely at Google's uncompromising and unreachable mercy.

<comment><USER8> If you run DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, you shouldn't have any delivery problems.

DKIM is signing your email with the public key in DNS.

SPF is whitelisting which mail servers send mail from your domain

DMARC is how receiving ends should report how your mail is delivered (or not).

Unless you're actively spamming (ahem, "marketing") to large volumes of users, you should have no trouble at all getting mail delivered to users.

If you are doing mass email marketing, stick with your core competence and let someone else handle the mail servers.

<comment><USER11> You _shouldn 't_ have any problems. But you do.

After fifteen years running my own mail systems, I have finally given up. Ever more outgoing mail was getting lost, despite everything being up to date and done by the book. The arch villains, over and over, were Gmail and the MS thing - Hotmail, outlook.com, Live, whatever they call it.

<comment><USER12> > After fifteen years running my own mail systems, I have finally given up.

Same here. I've been hosting my own e-mail for two decades (as of this year) and I gave up earlier this year. My spouse's e-mail to friends who use GMail-- something like 80% of them--would, every couple of months, disappear into the recipient's spam folder or sometimes just disappear entirely. My logs would show a successful delivery but the recipient couldn't find the message anywhere. Occasionally messages would start going into junk _in the middle of a conversation_.

Nothing I changed would permanently fix it. I'd send from a different IP in my block (something.something.194 instead of something.something.193) and mail would flow again...for a couple of months and then stop. My domain registration predates Google's existence by 18 months. I've been sending from the same IP subnet for six years. My colo provider is actually so small that I'm the only customer left on my "neighborhood" /24 (they've recently asked me if I want the entire block routed to me for the lulz). I have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all set up and they've not changed for at least two years. The amount of mail outbound from my server is (was?) so little that I could tail the outbound mail log and keep up with each message being sent.

None of that mattered. I even signed up for Google's Postmaster Tools but, and this really cooked my goose, I send _so little e-mail_ that I don't qualify to show up on their reports. I tried contacting Google but hahahahahahahahahahahaha--wheeze--hahahahahahahaha.

No other recipient had a problem with me. Messages were successfully delivered to Microsoft and Yahoo just fine. Only Google had a problem with my e-mail.

I finally caved. Google has SO MUCH of the e-mail market that unreachability to them is a catastrophe...and they know it. I don't have the leverage to make them play nice.

Thankfully, Fastmail does so I've changed to them. For the first time since February 1997 my MX doesn't point to my own server and that makes me a little sad.

<comment><USER11> My experience _exactly_ , though I didn't bother to spell it out in detail. Also the final move to Fastmail, who, it must be said, serves me nicely and well.

<comment><USER12> Yep, if it weren't for Fastmail I'd still be hosting my own e-mail and just quietly cursing the existence of Gmail. Now I get to have high significant other acceptance factor _and_ curse the existence of Gmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah yes. Just what the world needs: more organizations throwing their data over the fence at Google's walled garden.

We might as well decomission decentralized e-mail and move everyone on to GMail and FB Messenger.

Sigh.

<comment><USER4> Yup. Computers and the open Internet that we grew up with/believed in is being trashed for 'free' products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The big story here is that CMU appears to be the actual developers and maintainers of the Cyrus IMAP mail software, no?

<comment><USER2> CMU still employs one of the Cyrus IMAP developers for now, but FastMail has been sponsoring the bulk of the development work for a while.

We (the Cyrus IMAP board - [https://www.cyrusimap.org/overview/cyrus_bylaws.html](https://www.cyrusimap.org/overview/cyrus_bylaws.html)) are looking for a new home for the project which is independent of any one single company. I'd hoped to have more news to post before this was made quite so public!

<comment><USER14> Might I suggest the Software Freedom Conservancy? ([https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/](https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/))

<comment><USER2> Thanks, they're one of our top two contenders for a new home :) I was going to contact them last week, but the week became a bit busy because we had overseas staff in the office and wanted to use the time with them for face-to-face tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a CMU alum, the benefits of Gmail outweigh the sheer _frustration_ using the SquirrelMail web client in the public computer clusters.

<comment><USER16> >the benefits of Gmail outweigh the sheer frustration using the SquirrelMail web

This sentence doesn't really make sense. When comparing two things an advantage of one thing doesn't "outweigh" a disadvantage of another. Those are both negatives for the second thing.

<comment><USER17> So you actually didn't understand what was meant by the sentence?

<comment><USER16> No, because it implies there is a tradeoff but doesn't highlight what that tradeoff is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is sad, Red Hat switching to Gmail was probably the most shocking to me since it's supposed to be a company pushing open source forward.

<comment><USER18> Do you have any reference about that? I could not tell just by looking at their MX record, and the subject is difficult to google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amazing how long some code lasts. Fond memories of working once in a while with John Gardiner Myers in the 90s.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, John is great. His Unicode handling in Cyrus was way ahead of it's time.

I left CMU & the project 14 years ago. It's nice to know that some code lives on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps they should have tried Dovecot.

<comment><USER22> Indeed, one surprise here is that Cyrus is still around.

Sad that gmail now owns ~50% of all email now though.

(I made that number up. Anyone have any idea how close it may be?)

<comment><USER23> For personal email addresses in the US, my experience would put that number closer to 80%. In some audiences, it'll be even higher.

<comment><USER24> And even for the people who have non-Gmail accounts, Google has made deals with a ton of ISPs to host their email service for them -- so you have a Gmail account even if don't have a Gmail account (in a manner of speaking).

<comment><USER25> Do people still use ISP email addresses?

<comment><USER24> Yes people do. I know a lot of people don't, but there are still a lot of people who do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What we need is a complete open source "work email" solution: email, calendar, tasks, address book. I have to say that exchange is very good at that, but its not open source. I would pay, and it would be wonderful, if an open source project similar to exchange gave birth.

<comment><USER27> I've been trying to create a complete open source solution to this exact problem, although I've only been working on it for a month and so far have only semi-complete the email part of it. You can see the current iteration of it here:

[https://github.com/femto-email/client](https://github.com/femto-email/client)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As expected, the Fastmail pitchmen are out in full force anytime the word email is in the topic.

As the article stated they have a choice of Gmail or Exchange.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I got tagged in to talk about Cyrus, as one of the Cyrus IMAP Board. But of course I'll talk about FastMail too, since we do most of the work on Cyrus these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Brought to you by the people who attacked Tor for the feds: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/carnegie- mellon-u...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/carnegie-mellon- university-attacked-tor-was-subpoenaed-by-feds)</comment>


Ask YC: Hacker moms & dads, what do you read? - <AUTHOR> Ive just had a baby girl, what do you, hacker moms and dads read about children? is there a place online to read interesting stuff? any deadtree books you recommend? <comment><USER2> I just spent four weeks on a pediatric neurology clerkship in medical school, and my wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. Throw away your TV.

Just do it.

After Katrina, when we evacuated to my parents' house, they'd just moved in themselves, the day before. We agreed to not hook up cable. My kids calmed down noticeably. No, remarkably. We watch, maybe, a movie or two a week. The DVD player broke, so they only watch those movies on a computer anyway. The TV hasn't been turned on in weeks. I now own a $5000 Ethan Allen box to hide a $500 TV box that I don't use. Just throw the boob tube away. What do you do with a livingroom that has no TV? Feng shui.

My wife has started advising parents of kids with ADHD to get rid of their TVs. They're scared at first, but they do it. And in a few days or weeks they love her for it.

The pediatric neurologists I was with last month think ADHD probably isn't even a legit diagnosis (psychiatric diagnoses are voted on). They very frankly told me they think it's mainly a combination of TV and bad parenting, which is on the rise thanks to TV and entirely too many double-income homes. And if you're questioning their politics, these folks are _insanely_ smart and educated, and probably more liberal than Noam Chomsky, and I know at least one that raised four kids herself.

In case you missed it: throw away the TV. All of them.

For specific readings, go to PubMed's Entrez site and look up the author "Christakis DA". He's prolific, but his biggest newsmakers are some rather large studies showing dose-dependent correlations between TV and obesity, attention deficit, violence at school, and I think there was something else.

<comment><USER3> The arguments against TVs are very similar to the older arguments made against letting children have books.

<comment><USER4> I'm not one to tell anyone how to raise their children (see arguements below about spanking, yikes). This is just my experience... take it or leave it YMMV. My son is only two, and we find that if we let him watch too much TV his behavior takes a dive... more tantrums, less respect/listening to me and mom. As an experiment, we unplugged the TV for several days and the results were immediate and dramatic. Since then, we try to limit his TV time even more so than before. The danger is that he enjoys it, and us parents enjoy the opportunity to take care of other projects around the house without interruption. So if we find the family slipping into TV reliance, we pull the plug for a couple days. Sometimes he's upset at first when he realizes it doesn't work, but he's over it in SECONDS and moves on to something else. I'm not going to bother guessing why this is the case, but our experience is very clear to us.

My personal philosophy is all things in moderation. So if it makes him happy to watch the Wiggles or some old-school Fraggle Rock on DVD, he gets to. But it's the responsiblity of me and mom to keep it reasonable and keep the house a happy place for everyone.

<comment><USER3> My philosophy is more like "all things thoughtfully". We should care about why TV seems to cause various effects, and what effects unplugging it may have.

For example, suppose a child wants to read a good book, you take it away, and he "gets over it in seconds". Does that mean all is right with the world? No. Whether or not he remains upset about the book, he's still missing out on a wonderful book that could have benefitted him.

One also ought to think about how to correct errors. For example, pulling the plug on the TV avoids any input from someone who might know something you don't (like, your child might know more about how important it is to him to see a particular show). Wouldn't it be better to reach an agreement? The more right you are, the easier that will be, won't it? But if you have made a mistake one time, then getting others to agree will be harder, so you get an opportunity to avoid that error.

<comment><USER4> I think I agree with you on most counts. Although I'm a little confused by your proposal about the importance of reaching a consensus with the child. Are you refering to older children? As I'm sure you're aware, a child under 2-3 (depending on the child) doesn't have the vocabulary to reach a complex agreement with anyone.

<comment><USER3> The less a child knows, the easier it is to reach a (simple) agreement. Objecting requires having ideas, not ignorance. I don't think there's usually any reason for a very young child to disagree with his parent frequently since he generally won't have any better ideas than they do. But there are sometimes cases of serious disagreement and it's important not to gloss those over.

<comment><USER2> The first sentence is an unsubstantiated assumption and, as a parent, I can tell you it's wrong. The less a child knows, the less context they have, so the less room you have to negotiate an agreement. Plus, their knowledge level is intimately tied to their memory span, their language, their capacity to understand their own emotions, and all the things you and I still grapple with, but at least we have more context and language. And even then, if you subscribe to the ideas of George Lakoff, our life experience may be sufficiently divergent that we still can't arrive at an agreement. I think that divergence is what led you to make the original statement, that the less you know the easier it is to reach a simple agreement. It's tempting to follow that one variable, divergence of life experience, back to a singularity, but that neglects the many other variables at play in real life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a hacker and father of four (2 grown now) I've read this thread with interest. What books to read as a new dad?

I wouldn't read any books. Or if you must read them, do so with a pinch of salt. Use your instinct. People in books will tell you all sorts of sounds- good things that rarely have any traction in the real world. It's like business tapes and self-help books: they know a bunch of people are out there looking for advice and they're going to pump your head full of something for your twenty bucks whether it works or not.

I am going to try to make a simple observation that I hope is not too controversial. For all of those "I did X,Y, Z and it is so much better" folks, last I checked humans have been making little replacements for millions of years. These replacements have done all sorts of things like introduce philosophy, conquer sickness, sail the oceans, learn to fly, etc. And I guarantee that none of these hundreds of thousands of exceptional cases ever had a parent that read some special book. Perhaps there is a pattern to how they were raised. If so, that empirical data is long lost to history.

So how about this? Try being a human with your kids. Seems to have worked for the rest of history except the last few decades. Might be worth giving it a shot, right? There are plenty of people out there who will read the books for you. Take a look around on this thread. And they will be more than willing to provide you their special "insight" on your situation -- complete with guilt trips, moral bromides, and sing-a-long philosophies. You should get used to these folks anyway, because whatever you do they'll still be there providing you with their counsel. Whether you want it or not.

<comment><USER6> "And I guarantee that none of these hundreds of thousands of exceptional cases ever had a parent that read some special book. Perhaps there is a pattern to how they were raised. If so, that empirical data is long lost to history."

While I agree that you should read "with a pinch of salt", that's true for anything you read. But the sentiment that you oughtn't read anything is a bit overstated, it seems. Why?

One would (theoretically) avoid engaging a massive project without understanding the fundamentals of project design / development. Nor ought we, say, start a home renovation project without understanding the basics of construction. While one could certainly _end up_ successfully completing one's objectives, there's a hefty 'dumb tax' to be paid without learning from the mistakes of others.

Child rearing is no different. We don't magically know how to raise children. Some of us are lucky in having had good models in our parents. But even in that instance, a broader basis of knowledge is helpful because your children aren't your parent's children.

Certainly one can go overboard. And certainly some parents latch on to cargo cult science as if it were holy writ. But one can also go too far in the other direction and not read anything.

<comment><USER5> I was being somewhat rhetorical. But only somewhat. Your statement that "We don't magically know how to raise children" I find to be very interesting. How then, do we learn how to raise children? Certainly parenting is indeed built into the species, as it is in every other species.

I would not go so far as to ban any learning at all, only to understand that there is a financial motive in people giving you advice from self-help books. New parents are nervous, worried about doing the right thing. This is exactly as it should be. In response to this worry the free market provides us with lots of "security blankets" in the form of books and advice to make us feel like we have nothing to worry about. The odd side-effect to this is that people reading different books feel the _other_ people are all full of tripe. Let the baby cry. Don't let the baby cry. Spank the kid. Don't ever spank the kid! Nurture children. Teach children self-reliance. Discipline. Self- exploration.

These are somewhat contradictory to say the least. Here's an idea: when presented with lots of self-contradictory information, look at nature. Nature is neither good nor bad, nor is it necessarily optimized for modern life. But it certainly has worked for eons. Must be something of value going on in there. In fact, I lean towards trusting genetic learning over self-promotion any day.

My opinion only. YMMV. Do not operate heavy machinery while raising your child.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Man, just go with your gut. I've got two kids, 6 and 1.5 (both boys) and they're night and day different. The best advice is to listen to you instincts. You know your kids better than any one else. If it doesn't feel right, it ain't right.

One caveat: ignore any advice that says you shouldn't get your kids vaccinated. The science doesn't hold up and, even if it did, it ignores the concept of relative risk (i.e. you're statistically more likely to be maimed by an uncontrolled case of measles than to get Autism from the MMR vaccine).

<comment><USER8> I second this advice.

I have two daughters. The oldest is 4 going on 5, the youngest is closing in on 2. I guess I read the same books as my wife when she was pregnant with our oldest daughter ("What to Expect When You're Expecting", and some encyclopedic books regarding kids development and diseases). But neither of us has really resorted to any kind of manuals since then.

The most surprising thing (to me, at least) about having kids was the realization that they aren't alien creatures or high maintenance robots, but little people with their own very different personalities, even as newborns. And like other people you need to engage them on their level. And the relationship evolves from there.

So I guess my advice here is listen to them first. Read some clinical books to get the facts about sickness and heath, and when to call a doctor, but your let own observations be the main guide. Congratulations!

<comment><AUTHOR> I try to follow my gut (and my wifes gut), that seems to be the best way; But im sure there are a lot of things our gut wouldnt be good enough just from not having enough information, thats why im trying to reach the collective intelligence on the subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a father the best thing you can do after attending to your daughters immediate needs, is learn more about how to become the kind of father that your daughter needs. After reading the following book I feel better prepared and informed to be a better father.

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters ([http://www.amazon.com/Strong-Fathers- Daughters-Secrets-Fathe...](http://www.amazon.com/Strong-Fathers-Daughters- Secrets-Father/dp/1596980125))

</comment><comment><USER10> I was looked at like a freak when I mentioned this in my pre/post-natal class, but I got a lot out The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker.

Evolutionary neurobiology is a great way to think about skill acquisition in young children.

<comment><USER11> Haha, unless something monstrous is going on, it would be a couple years, maybe more, before little kids can understand that book!

By the way, what is this pre/post-natal class?

<comment><USER10> I was part of a very Cambridge nutty-crunch-granola class called "Hypnobirthing" run by the midwifery clinic we used.

The pre- part was a lot of learning about the techniques and how to use them.

The post- was a get together with lots of very young kids with parents talking about what worked and what didn't.

<comment><USER11> That actually seems like a fantastic class. Outside of the classroom, where would one get the same amount/quality of information?

And, do you follow related research? Does it fit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We have a 10 month old, a six, and eight y-o. Here are some books that have helped us:

The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer (Paperback) by Harvey Karp

Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion by Dale McGowan

</comment><comment><USER13> Just try to spend as much time with her as you can! The best is to take a deep breath and take full responsibility of your baby for a few hours, just two of you. This helps the create a very special relation between all three of you, while helping poor mum to recover a bit. We did it with our younger kid from the second month as my wife studied on each Saturday for 8 hours or more. From our experience this is a real booster. Be brave!

</comment><comment><USER14> When my children were small, I found the Berkeley Parents Network[1] to be a good source of information.

[1] <http://parents.berkeley.edu>

</comment><comment><USER15> I liked "Super Parents Super Children" ([http://www.amazon.com/Super-Parents- Children-Frances-Kendall...](http://www.amazon.com/Super-Parents-Children- Frances- Kendall/dp/0929205006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204509907&sr=1-1))

From their book description: Provides the libertarian answer to solving all your child-raising problems, based on self-discipline and freedom of choice.

<comment><USER3> libertarians frequently take positions like "I own the TV, so it's my decision if/when it will be used." How does this book handle that sort of issue?

(Note: I am generally libertarian-oriented and this kind of position is often taken by people I otherwise respect.)

<comment><USER15> Here are some quotes from the book which may provide more insight:

"Children are rational and logical, and want to be happy, just as we do."

"The only important difference between adults and children is experience."

"The three main qualities you need to foster in your child's personality are independence, self-esteem and individuality."

"In order to prevent your children from harming your belongings, you need to establish exactly what property belongs to whom in your home.... A working example would be to decide that your child's room, toys and clothes are his property."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Baby Wise. I'd swear by 95% of it.

<comment><USER17> I'd be curious which 5% you don't swear by.

<comment><USER16> mostly CYA, because I can't remember all of it anymore. I do remember thinking "we'll do it a little differently than it says". There wasn't anything in the book that I can recall that I thought was completely wrong, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a 15 mo girl.

My wife read lots of books. I read a few. With a few exceptions, the books have been a waste of time and money. So many of the books in this genre have the feel of the Learn Blub in 21 Days line of programming books. Accept from the get-go that parenting is hard, there are no silver bullets, and you are going to spend a lot of time and energy if you want to do a good job, and filter anything you read from that perspective.

Nevertheless, we did find some helpful books. The most useful books we have are a reference book given to us by our pediatrician and a book about baby sign language (The following link is to the revised edition, which is not the one we have, but it's cheaper on amazon [http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Signs- Revised-Linda-Acredolo/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Signs-Revised- Linda- Acredolo/dp/B0012F7UCI/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204563699&sr=8-1)).

We went through a lot of "the book says" conversations early on, especially related to getting her to sleep. The thing to realize here is that it is up to you how to do it. There's a book out there that will support your position, and many of the books are contradictory. So, in the end, you'll end up having to decide what you think is right. The book many parents find useful is merely the one that reinforces their opinion, and they will use that book to appeal to authority in the passive-aggressive conversations that all new parents seem wont to have.

I had trouble finding what I felt like were unbiased opinions on sleep in particular. This book: [http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy- Child/dp/03...](http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy- Child/dp/0345486455/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204563964&sr=1-1) was helpful, mostly because it more or less laid out three approaches and passed few, if any, value judgements on going to the baby vs. letting her cry herself to sleep.

In the end, I decided I couldn't stand to let her cry, so we settled on developing a very predictable routine at bedtime, and it has worked well. We have had our bumpy patches, particularly during illnesses, teething, and major milestones, but in general my child looks forward to bedtime and naps.

The sign language seems somewhat controversial among our peers, but we are in the less progressive southeastern US. The common fear is that it will retard speech. I just wanted to be able to communicate with my child, and it has made for a pleasant experience so far. She seems to be developing vocbulary at an above normal rate. I don't necessarily attribute that to signs, but it is at least one counterexample to the fear of significant speech retardation.

<comment><USER17> +1 for healthy sleep habits, happy child. Also recommend Happiest Baby on the Block (<http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0553381466/pchristensen-20>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not a book recommendation, but I suggest playing classical music often :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We do that a lot! since pregnancy, in the afternoons, and while bathing her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER20> _Read_ the Ferber sleep book. The details matter.

<comment><USER21> To all those who commented negatively on the book (and especially the person who voted me down):

Have you actually read it? And have you tried the methods? I have read the book, and can vouch for its methods. Yes, the baby cries, and you have to let it cry. It's not easy. But after a while, the baby stops and goes to sleep. And after a few nights (it took mine ~3 nights, with less crying each night), they learn to fall asleep by themselves.

Believe me, when you have a baby who needs its parents by its side for hours before going to sleep, you might view the book differently.

<comment><USER3> "don't object to making children cry until you've tried it"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I read <http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/> and its email list. (Note: website not updated recently.)

I also write about parenting. Try

<http://www.curi.us/archives/list_category/50>

or

<http://www.curi.us/archives/list_category/6>

It's not especially organized and other topics are mixed in. I also write to the email list above.</comment>


Ask HN - Feedback on homepage : Braintrust - organize your team's conversations - <AUTHOR> http://BraintrustHQ.com/

<comment><USER2> At the bottom of the page, put another call to action. Sure, someone can always scroll up but if they've read through the entire page, a concluding sign up button with another push to sign up should give you at least a few more conversions. Also, I'm too lazy to check, but I believe this is the same site that had review for it's original page a while back that was completely locked down and confusing. If so, this is a HUGE improvement! Congrats!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's great feedback.</comment></comment>


Avoid Exposing Concurrency: Hide It Inside Synchronous Methods - <AUTHOR> http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel/article/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=220600388

<comment><USER2> Heh. I read this as a travel-safety tip, "Avoid Exposing Currency [...]", which made the last two words amusingly surprising. :) Perhaps that doesn't work if you're a native English speaker, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for posting the printable version of the article. Much more pleasant.</comment>


Show HN: "Get Mac Apps" - Install Multiple OSX Apps Easily. Would love feedback - <AUTHOR> http://getmacapps.com

<comment><USER2> This is really nice and simple, and might be nicer if you supported selecting the applications from the terminal like..

curl -s <http://getmacapps.com/raw/chrome:firefox:sublime> | sh

Additionally, if you're interested in supporting it, I think this process would work with my "Install all firefoxes" shell script, that works in a similar manner (it curls dmgs, installs, etc.) You can see more about it here - <https://github.com/omgmog/install-all-firefox>

Might be worth adding descriptions, and links to the original sites for applications, so that people can discern if they want to install them or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks omgmog, really good to hear your thoughts.

Cool script, it would definitely be useful to support your "Install all firefoxes script", possibly in a collapsable developers section.

Good ideas. I'll definitely be adding links/descriptions if the site gets any sort of traction.</comment></comment>


A Simple Rule to Eliminate Useless Meetings - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130701022638-22330283-a-simple-rule-to-eliminate-useless-meetings?trk=tod-home-art-large_0 <comment><USER2> It's fascinating how much of this is a reinvention of classic meeting technique.

"Define the objective of the meeting" \--> Have an agenda.

"Identify who is driving" \--> Have a Chairman (Chairwoman, Chairperson, Facilitator, whatever).

"Assign someone to take notes" \--> Have a Secretary.

"Summarize key action items, deliverables and points of accountability" \--> Publish minutes of the meeting.

I used to be involved in student politics. Mastery of meeting procedure is a tactical weapon in that sphere, but even when they are being abused, Rules of Order are effective at keeping ... order.

Having an agenda and attentive chairmanship go together. The role of the Chair is to ensure that the meeting proceeds according to the rules and doesn't stray from the agenda. This often means _not contributing_.

A key reason to stick to the agenda _no matter what_ is given in Tom DeMarco's amusing novel _The Deadline_. If you don't stick to the agenda but still make binding decisions, then everyone has to attend every meeting to guard against the possibility that a decision affecting them will be made in their absence.

If there is an ironclad guarantee that agenda will be followed come hell or high water, then only folk who are required at a meeting will show up. That saves a lot of time and breeds a lot of confidence.

To learn more, you can join Toastmasters or The Penguin Club. You might also join a political party, a professional society, a union, community groups like Rotary, Apex, Lions and so on. There are many good books on meeting procedure, they're worth reading to get the basics down.

This guide is brief, but gives you a taste of classical meeting technique works, in the context of incorporated associations:

[http://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/associationsguide/Content/06_M...](http://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/associationsguide/Content/06_Meetings/6.2_Meeting_Procedures.htm)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for highlighting the reasons for "stick to the agenda no matter what". A good reason that I was not really aware of.

These are the little details I learn from HN every day. Adds up over time. :)

<comment><USER2> It was eye-opening for me too. The relevant chapter in the novel is great.

Up until then I'd been taught to keep meetings on agenda for a different reason: it keeps things moving along at a decent clip. Without an agenda, most discussions wander off into irrelevancies. With an agenda the Chair can say "that's not what we're discussing, we're discussing X which is in the agenda. Consider submitting it for the next meeting". Bam, you've just saved 20 minutes of chatter.

The first meeting I ever chaired lasted for about 4 or 5 hours. It was, in practice, a social get together. The minutes reflected that we decided basically nothing. By the end of my time in a chairman role I aimed for all meetings to conclude in 45 minutes and I was a maniac about sticking to the agenda. And you know what? It worked. It really worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before addressing eliminating meetings based on content and goal, how about looking at the structure of the organization and management teams (in startups) that require useless meetings?

One startup I was an early engineer for had a management team that developed a need to have daily all hands yet still planned on weekends in the schedule. It wasn't obvious at the start, but it crept up over time.

Miss an arbitrary deadline? Meeting. Someone in management forgot to tie their shoe? Meeting.

Sometimes there are just some people that require meetings to justify themselves.

This particular startup eventually had an ok exit (sub 4x multiple) with only four of the original twenty people still there. One of the main needy meeting culprits was not one of them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use a meeting ticker sometimes - one like this: [http://tobytripp.github.io/meeting- ticker/](http://tobytripp.github.io/meeting-ticker/)

Set a low ball hourly rate - so £50 (depending on where you are and who you're with) so that people suspect the meeting actually costs more.

When it comes to the end of the meeting, you say "Did this meeting produce £376.42 worth of value for the company?"

If the answer is "yes" \- you're doing something right. If the answer is "no" \- hold a meeting to discuss how to become more productive in meetings.

<comment><USER6> Ha! This is a good idea. Actually I'd count it by the employee pay/cost being soaked up in the meeting instead of an arbitrary rate. So in your case say the average per hour cost to the company for an employee is £50, and there are 10 people in the meeting for an hour, that meeting cost the company £500. It can keep meeting sizes small as a motivator to keep costs low ;)

(I've seen several $20,000-30,000 "meetings" before that accomplished nothing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Two suggestions from my experience with links to my blog for more extensive descriptions.

Send out a questionnaire before to discover hidden assumptions. [http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/questionnaire_meeting.html](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/questionnaire_meeting.html)

Use Etherpad to rewrite the agenda into a protocol live and cooperatively. [http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/meeting.html](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/meeting.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> tldr: There are many kinds of meetings. This article doesn't even really cover the work involved in the kinds of meetings it's covering.

There are different reasons to have a meeting. This kind is the "present shit" kind of meeting. In that case, you can pretty much just email the material out and skip the meeting. Everyone gets an hour of their lives back. Win!

Or is this actually about the "get buy-in" meeting? Maybe. In that case, you lobby _every_ person who will be in the meeting beforehand so that you know you'll get them all to consensus. And set aside time in the meeting for a Festivus-style "airing of the grievances". Make sure everyone is heard and then make sure everyone sees that they all agree with whatever decision is being made. Win!

If anyone actually starts arguing about semantics or other people's positions, the meeting is fucked. Adjourn, rethink, and try again after some legwork or with a different approach. Don't even bother with the "I want to show my anger to the group and nobody else matters" stuff in a meeting. That wastes everyone's time and makes everyone angry. Also, if it's your meeting everyone will remember that you let it go into a tailspin.

There are other kinds of meetings, too. Like the aspirational presentation followed by the call to action (great with an actual example of the thing in action at the company already), for example. This article doesn't seem to be about those, so I'll hold my tongue.

Meetings should be as short and engaging as possible, letting everyone make/save face and getting them all in line. Most of the work involved is before the meeting ever happens. Get the result you want by knowing how everyone will act/react in the meeting and setting the whole thing in motion before everyone's sitting at the table.

<comment><USER8> There's yet another kind of meeting; the recurring team meeting. Purpose being to get everybody in the same room to discuss whatever is on people's minds.

(This is obviously a type of meeting that needs to be used lightly)

<comment><USER9> True Story: I got chastised in my annual performance review because I didn't have a scheduled staff meeting for my 5-person team.

I've always found meetings like that to be useless, but I guess there was some official policy someone that stated "thou shalt haveth staff meetings".

<comment><USER8> Personally, I've found they do contribute somewhat to team cohesiveness, and if you have a busy manager it is nice to have guaranteed time with them. Of course, everyone is different, and it may well be truly useless in other companies

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like how this rule doesn't do anything at all to 'eliminate useless meetings'.

Somehow reading the presentation beforehand makes the meeting more relevant? Most meetings I've been to on a regular basis were pointless not because there was a presentation, but because there were more than 2-4 people in the room.

<comment><USER11> Surely, if you've read the presentation and the agenda is kept strict and the content isn't relevant then you don't attend the meeting. Or at least you say to your boss - or whoever is demanding attendance - that your attendance is not productive use of your time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I worked at a multinational bank just last year and all these new efficiency procedures are lightyears away. I think in large companies, management philosophies really will need to start at the C-level executives in order to ever be implemented.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've found that the person running a meeting really defines the success/utility of a meeting.

Some bad practices I've learned from:

a) Instead of making a simple decision, plan a meeting, at that meeting plan other meetings.

This Dilbert pointy haired boss-style really happened at a very large corporation I once worked at. I actually thought it was a joke the first few times it happened. Ultimately the simple decision was never made, and the endless meetings delayed oversight because the logic was that the decision could come out of just one more meeting. It had the awesome side-effect of making the manager look incredibly busy. At the end of my first 9 months there, the sum total output of a 5 man team came to a 5 page checklist in Excel.

Finally, and long overdue, that manager was "realigned". I was put in charge of the team and after an initial kickoff where I assigned appropriate people their tasks, we produced the desired deliverable in 90 days and not a single structured meeting after that...just a few ad hoc get-togethers to check status and align priorities. 7 Years later, that deliverable is still used as the gold standard.

b) Be disorganized.

If you think pointless meetings are a drag, wait until you end up sitting through week after week of unfocused, disorganized, confusing meetings without clear recaps, minutes, actions or other useful output.

A pointless meeting is like being frozen to death, the inaction of it all slowly kills you by sapping your strength. A disorganized meeting generates lots and lots of heat and motion but kills you just as sure as getting lit on fire would. The result is the same, nothing gets accomplished, it's just a matter of how you wish to die.

I've had the displeasure of working for/with a few people, usually at smaller companies (50-200 people) for some reason (and usually run over a bad speakerphone as well), who run the most consistently disorganized meetings I've ever encountered: bouncing around the agenda, veering off down irrelevant rabbit holes, no collecting and summarizing of what just happened, no clear actions, things that sound like actions but aren't, no follow up on previous actions etc.

Fix this by:

\- Make a loose agenda

\- as you work through the agenda, stay on topic and don't veer, but be willing to adjust a little as needed

\- if you end up veering a little, it's okay, but bring the ship back to center and recap quickly, or set the issue aside for an "offline conversation" or another, more focused meeting just for that topic (if it's big enough)

\- recap each agenda item before moving to the next one, issue out actions immediately

\- take meeting notes and send out a recap to all hands, the hour you spend typing it up will save dozens of hours trying to fix bad memory screw ups instead

\- put the actions in the meeting notes!

\- use the previous meeting's actions as the framework for this meeting's agenda. Open actions need to be brought up again, this time with a note that it's a repeat x number of times. The more times it repeats, the higher up in priority it goes. If it doesn't move up in priority, it's probably not real anyway and shouldn't have been an action to start with

\- if you use some kind of work tracking system, file the open actions and assign them immediately after the meeting. Budget time to do this around the meeting.

\- Running a meeting is a responsibility not a privilege.

c) Run a meeting like it's a military exercise.

Too many times, at all sizes of organizations, I've run into people who think it's a matter of life or death that meeting run precisely on schedule. I think this is a B-school technique because it always seems to be MBAs who do this. For example, Each agenda item shall take no more than 10 minutes of meeting time, or an hour meeting shall go no longer than one hour, no matter the issues brought up - reschedule the next meeting to take up the issues later. This is dangerous and stupid.

Sometimes during meetings, new critical issues pop up, those need to be triaged, actions to remedy need to be discussed and assigned then and there. I've even seen critical deadlines missed because the meeting was going overtime, the deadline was a couple days later, a critical issue popped up and the meeting was closed due to time till the next week. Stupid stupid stupid.

The problem still needs to be addressed, but now people are going to do it off-channel, uncoordinated and disorganized with unreliable outcome and no control over the situation, management of expectations, clear communication to stakeholders etc.

Worse yet, if the person running the meeting has an honest obligation that forces the meeting to close early, that's one thing, but if they're just closing it down because it's hit its 1 hour mark, people see this and view the meeting manager as disingenuous and weird and end up confused about priorities in the organization. It ends up undermining that person.

The best meetings I've seen basically follow a loose template as jacques indicates here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5968926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5968926)

I'd add that issues that look too big for the current meeting should be sidebarred into another meeting with just the key people involved. It usually is just a two person phone call in reality not a full blown meeting.

The meeting notes and rapidly assigned actions really are the critical bits, the "product" of a meeting. The notes inform and remind, follow ups can usually be solved with 10 minute ad-hoc face to face meetings.

In a different milieu, I've also liked the daily developer roundup in the morning over coffee. The meeting manager just goes around the table and asks each person what they're working on, what they've accomplished since yesterday and what they have in their queue. These are usually 15 minute informal get togethers, but help set the daily agenda. Other can pop in and offer help, or have help asked of them in this environment and the manager unit and reset daily priorities if they need to to ensure project coordination.

I think for small startups (under 15 people), this actually works really well in general, not just with the developers. It lets people understand cross department issues and helps them coordinate across developer/rest of the company boundaries very easily. It even works well with remote and distributed teams. I don't think these need to be dailies, but maybe once every week or two. I've seen startups completely turn around just by adding a weekly all- hands roundup. (it also hilights people who aren't pulling their weight really quickly since they'll have nothing/little to report)

Once the company grows a little bigger, you want to start dropping the all- hands aspect in favor of maybe just the department head and a deputy and maybe a senior. Over 20 people I've found these get unwieldy and boring as unrelated departments talk about their work past each other.

<comment><USER2> > _Open actions need to be brought up again, this time with a note that it 's > a repeat x number of times. The more times it repeats, the higher up in > priority it goes. If it doesn't move up in priority, it's probably not real > anyway and shouldn't have been an action to start with_

Hey, I wish I'd known about this one. I had items that lingered for weeks, sometimes. Maybe a rule like "4 repeats and it gets dropped". That said, a countervailing rule of thumb is that every action belongs to _someone_. If they get too many repeats, it's time to find out why.

I agree with c), that meeting techniques can have a dark side if you go off the deep end and place means above ends which my glowing description elsewhere did not present. However, lots of people don't realise the utility of the fusty old rules. When they are used as a backstop for judicious chairmanship, they speed things up.

It's a spectrum. At one end is chaos and wasted time and "because I said so". At the other end is stultifying rigidity and _Brazil_ and "it's stupid, but I must adhere to this minute inconsequential rule or I'm pretty sure the universe will stop".

In the middle there is a nice median. That's where people should aim to be.

<comment><USER6> > Hey, I wish I'd known about this one. I had items that lingered for weeks, > sometimes. Maybe a rule like "4 repeats and it gets dropped". That said, a > countervailing rule of thumb is that every action belongs to someone. If > they get too many repeats, it's time to find out why.

Exactly on all points.

I've found that repeatedly lingering issues point to deep organizational dysfunction. Elevating the priority or dropping it (up or out) can be a forcing function to take care of it if it's _real_. Making something high priority, even if it really isn't puts pressure on the doers -- they don't want to be the one who dropped the ball on a level-1 issue that's coming up over and over again. And _everything_ has a due date, even if it's open ended...set a tone of work getting accomplished in a reasonable time frame and not dragging on even without a set due date.

If you drop it and it's actually _real_ , it'll be brought up later when it matters to somebody.

> I agree with c), that meeting techniques can have a dark side...the utility > of the fusty old rules...It's a spectrum.

I'm hard pressed to find ways to agree with you more :)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook image object recognition in action - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/oB7P6 <comment><USER2> This is amazing. I had no idea this even existed.</comment>


NitroPad: Secure Laptop with Tamper Detection - <AUTHOR> https://www.nitrokey.com/news/2020/nitropad-secure-laptop-unique-tamper-detection <comment><USER2> If I was a government these are the exact sorts of projects I'd set up as a honey pot to tempt people who are doing illegal things to use my pre compromised hardware.

How can I trust NitroPad more than another laptop manufacturer? I actually trust this much less.

<comment><USER3> If you try to read the article, including the linked projects, it helps a lot rather than broadcasting every nascent thought that pops up in the head to the internet.

All the ingredients have been a long time in the making. To summarise, it builds upon coreboot, heads, nitrokey, and me_cleaner, all of which are open source and have been developed by various people in this domain who also know what they are doing. It uses a thinkpad x230 as it is an ivy bridge processor, the last generation of intel processors whose initialisation is open source and well understood. If you would like to read more about this specific combination, you can also read at [https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified- hardware/#qubes-certi...](https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified- hardware/#qubes-certified-laptop-insurgo-privacybeast-x230) .

<comment><USER2> >> it helps a lot rather than broadcasting every nascent thought that pops up in the head to the internet

I think you mean "broadcasting every nascent thought that pops up into your head to the internet".

I did read the article!

I'm sorry that you feel hurt by me not trusting your hardware company but it's a problem that you will have to overcome if you are going to sell this more secure hardware to people. Maybe not insulting people who have valid concerns about your product might also be a good place to start.

Anyway, good luck with it, I hope you find a business here that is useful.

<comment><USER3> It's not my hardware company. No affiliation with them. I am not hurt; just annoyed because you proclaimed, "I trust this much less". This is precisely the goal of these projects. i.e., To reduce the trusted computing base. And the company is a fairly small part of the puzzle here. A lot of man hours have gone in building and reverse engineering various parts of the stack. Your statement is roughly similar to "I trust this much less" if it had been made sometime in the 90s on the linux announcement thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There will always be an abstract layer over which the user cannot/will not observe.

Until we mere mortals are capable of growing our own chips in carefully maintained vats, we are always going to be at the mercy of the wizards in their high tower, which represents the computing world today.

Computers are simply not something we can safely trust, for as long as they are built from a wide and diverse variety of components, and even then there is not a clear or responsible class of society capable of providing safe audits of silicon designs, without being immediately corruptible.

The only ways computing can contribute to trust is when society evolves, hopefully using a bit of computing power along the way, to trust itself inherently.

Even these third-party, open-source, audited systems are too untrustworthy. We need complete and open design and manufacture, the entire chain audited along the way, to come even close to having trustworthy systems.

With this in mind, I resist efforts of third parties to claim safe/security in their system integration efforts. Please, by all means maintain enthusiasm for the subject, but wake me up when the vat is warming up and the chips are growable, locally ..

<comment><USER5> > carefully maintained vats

We are to assume the firmware running the vats is secure? That they won't be secretly (or openly through legal compulsion) infecting everything they grow? You know, to protect the children.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the vats need to come with docs, and the kids better know how to read by then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The Nitrokey Storage 2 additionally contains an encrypted mass storage with > hidden volumes.

What use are the hidden volumes if it is already pretty obvious that they will be there? I am pretty sure that whichever party you are trying to protect yourself from with this, will know that a Nitrokey will have hidden volumes.

<comment><USER7> The idea is, that hidden volumes cannot be distinguished from a random data, until the correct decryption password is entered. So while the device is capable of having a hidden volume (or more), one cannot prove its existence on device.

Disclaimer: I work with Nitrokey.

<comment><USER8> How does this work with SSDs supporting TRIM? If it's enabled, that large block of space would be erased by the SSD. If you put a large file in its place, that's also suspicious (huge block of random data). If you disable TRIM, also suspicious.

<comment><USER7> Nitrokey Storage uses SD card, which AFAIK does not support TRIM. Before first usage it is overwritten with a random data. Drive is presented to the OS like any regular (non-SSD) flash drive device, hence I do not think OS would issue TRIM on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also Librem Key for a free (as in freedom) alternative [0].

[0] [https://puri.sm/products/librem-key/](https://puri.sm/products/librem- key/)

<comment><USER7> We are actually cooperating with Librem Key, developed firmware and hardware they are using [1]. Librem Key is ours Nitrokey Pro.

[1] [https://www.nitrokey.com/news/2018/nitrokey-partners- purism-...](https://www.nitrokey.com/news/2018/nitrokey-partners-purism-build- librem-key)

Disclaimer: I work with Nitrokey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> my initial reaction is that it's a hefty price to pay for a lightly modded x230, but not everyone wants or is able to do these mods themselves.

I'm surprised nobody is going so far as to do the other common mods (1920x1080 IPS, x220 keyboard swap, make the X220 keyboard have all its native functionality, whitelist mods, i7/16gb config) to offer the fully hotrodded ultimate form. Having done them myself and seeing the amount of work, maybe the market isn't such that they would sell at a price that makes sense for the seller.

</comment><comment><USER11> I7 3520m is a 2012 ivy bridge CPU.

<comment><USER12> Not surprised at all they chose this hardware.

ThinkPad X230 (in my limited and skewed opinion) is still the second best laptop ever made (for purposes like mine), behind only its predecessor, the X220 which has (what I and many others consider) the best laptop keyboard ever made.

It's easy to find one with an i5 that's perfectly adequate for most ordinary business tasks. Pretty good screen, ports, battery life. Upgradable, sturdy, repairable. Highly unlikely to be stolen. $150 in like new condition.

I've bought them for all my non-tech friends and family who I support, all are happy. Please buy these and keep the market for parts alive.

<comment><USER10> if you're not already aware, swapping the X220 keyboard (and palmrest) onto an X230 is a fairly straightforward swap. That modification plus the FHD mod and accompanying 1920x1080 IPS make the X230 a very nice daily driver.

<comment><USER12> Peripherally aware, as I'm tech-adjacent. I will have a closer look. Thanks for the nudge. Is there a definitive source for how-to?

<comment><USER3> Unless you strongly prefer the smaller form factor, I would suggest T530 (the intel igpu version, not the nvidia one) instead of x230. T530 supports FHD natively. The keyboard mod principles are the same for all laptops from that year. Keyboard mod resource: [https://github.com/hamishcoleman/thinkpad- ec](https://github.com/hamishcoleman/thinkpad-ec)

x230 FHD resource: [https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=122640](https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=122640)

<comment><USER10> after using larger machines I realized that laptops (for me) are for situations where a desktop is unavailable - airline seating, casual couch use, all generally things that don't require much. having recently acquired some P53s at work and traveling with them this week has really reinforced that idea. if an X230 isn't up to the task, it's probably the kind of work where I need to be at a desk with one of my desktop machines anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Secure >8 year old Intel Processors full of CPU bugs

I don't get how you can call this secure. Without those CPU's it certainly would be an interesting device. But advertising it as secure and then using something like Qubes where those bugs break the very isolation Qubes is based upon ...

<comment><USER7> As far as I see Qubes 4.x is protected from most of the CPU attacks [1][2] since over a year. Do you have anything particular in mind?

Disclaimer: I work with Nitrokey.

PS Due to comments' post limit my replies might be delayed.

[1] [https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2018/01/11/qsb-37/](https://www.qubes- os.org/news/2018/01/11/qsb-37/)

[2] [https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes- issues/issues/4262](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/4262)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is the dm-crypt decryption key stored on the NitroKey with a pin/passphrase to access the key to mount the decrypted the disk?

<comment><USER15> From what I understand the key is verifying that BIOS and unencrypted part of disk is unaltered. It is not verifying that any of the encrypted part of the hard drive has been tampered with. As such, it is not storing the hard drive decryption key on the USB stick.

<comment><USER16> So this is much like UEFI secure-boot then?

<comment><USER17> Measured boot allows to verify the integrity of the installed firmware (which itself verifies the integrity of the Linux boot partition) by a separate Nitrokey. The idea is that you have your Nitrokey nearby and therefore safe against compromise, other than the laptop which may be left unattended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "The Intel Management Engine (ME) is some kind of separate computer within > all modern Intel processors (CPU)."

Maybe this was a translation to English, but it makes it seem like they're not sure what the Intel ME is.

<comment><USER19> Is anyone, apart from Intel and conspirators, sure what Intel ME actually is?

<comment><USER20> [https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10694-intel_management_engine_de...](https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10694-intel_management_engine_deep_dive)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Basically yubikey with storage?

<comment><USER7> This is actually a set of devices. NitroPad is a preconfigured refurbished x230 laptop, with replaced firmware and deactivated IntelME, as well as removed WiFi module on request. With it comes a companion device, Nitrokey Pro or Nitrokey Storage, which takes part in the boot verification process. Together they form a secure workstation.

Closest to your description is Nitrokey Storage, which in feature terms is a Nitrokey Pro, but extended with an encrypted storage on an SD card.

Disclaimer: I work with Nitrokey.</comment></comment>


Is this food keto? Does it raise my insulin? - <AUTHOR> https://nutrita.app/ <comment><USER2> I think that this is useful. However insulin response is highly idiosyncratic, and the app can't make measurements. For instance there are insulin clamp studies where individual subjects buck the trend and had _lower_ insulin levels after eating chocolate chip cookies. So a general insulin index, while nice to have, can be a poor match for a given person/meal.

The holy grail in this area is an affordable, long lived, implantable insulin monitor that can report to a similar app. If the typical diabetic could see exactly how they respond to specific foods and exercises they could make much more effective choices. It could add many healthy years to millions of lives.

Implantable blood monitors for glucose are a fast growing market. They're still not affordable for non-rich marginally diabetic people like myself, but progress in recent years has been rapid. Faster, please.

<comment><USER3> Hi Hurundo thanks for your insightful comment.

You're quite right that there are a myriad of identified and yet unidentified affecting an individual's Kraft Pattern of insulin release to a particular food. For example,it's becoming clearer that foods like flours with disrupted macromolecular starch network can negatively sway the insulin incretin and subsequent insulin response; 2 foods with identical glycemic responses can stimulate GIP and insulin to significantly different degrees [https://breaknutrition.com/episode-8-starch-digestibility- li...](https://breaknutrition.com/episode-8-starch-digestibility-limitations- glycemic-response/) The point being though we're saying "you're insulin is going to be X in 10min after this slice of pizza", what we're doing is using empirical averages with all their limitations to teach people how pizza, donuts and fruit juices all cause you to hypersecrete insulin, and that's very very bad. Of course, the more advanced users will still be able to track useful dietary, exercise, timing and other metrics for their N = 1's.

You mention implantable insulin monitoring, and that's of great interest to us. I'm a molecular biologist by training and would've loved to work on bringing that device to market. Until we have that though, there are other metrics that are pretty informative. For example, our app is going to have a McAuley Index calculator which plugs fasting insulin and triglycerides into a formula giving a pretty decent index compared to the clinical SSPG 2-hour test [https://breaknutrition.com/episode-34-metabolic-syndrome- ser...](https://breaknutrition.com/episode-34-metabolic-syndrome-series- chapter-1/).

Blood marker tracking is also going to be a part of our app but we're not going to introduce quite yet.

Thanks,

Raphael Sirtoli

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meh, more like tell us what you are buying without much value in return.

Beyond dropping carb intake there is a huge variation between people as far as insulin production and BGL goes which depends on their general life style, time of day, time of year and how they react to specific foods and even at which combinations.

This variation can only be calculated on an individual basis with BGL meters.

I don't see this service being any more useful than a generic GI list because that's just what it is a GI list in an app that monetizes your data.

As far as being on a ketogenic diet healthy young individuals can product 100-150g of ketones a day this figure goes down the longer you stay in ketosis.

If you want to keep ketosis going longer for the specific intention of reducing body fat then intermediate fasting and carb loading is required with a healthy dose of physical activity.

This again varies greatly between individuals some people might get knocked out of ketosis for a few days after carb loading some might be knocked out for weeks, how much ketones they can also produce and for how long to begin with varies a lot and more importantly how much carbs you can intake daily while staying in ketosis also varies same goes for if artificial sweeteners and non- metabolizing sugars like alcohol sugars would have an effect or you or not.

<comment><USER3> Hi, are you familiar with type of content Break Nutrition puts out? I think you'll see it's very science heavy and not geared towards ye' old food tracking app.

First, this app doesn't actually use the glycemic index (GI) of foods because the GI has an excessively high false negative rate (type 2 error), meaning that a 'normal' blood glucose response will often be given in the context of a hyperinsulinemic response.

So we're definitely not "a GI list in an app that monetizes your data".

Second, how many grams of ketones you produce shortly after being ketotic vs long-term ketosis is not at all clear and still an empirically open question - the downward trend is still just a guess based on anecdotes (nothing wrong with that).

Third, your comment about IF and carb loading being necessary to keep ketosis going is simply incorrect. You can stay ketogenic without carb-loading, since this will acutely increase the oxaloacetate-to-aceteyl-CoA ratio, thus diverting fatty acids away from ketogenesis. I think your comment may be in reference to staying 'healthy' in ketosis? Like not tanking your thyroid hormones? Thyroid hormones don't tank because of ketones, they often tank because of chronic caloric restriction - a common scenario in a fat-loss scenario.

Lastly, you're right that many factors keep you in or out of ketosis. You seem to know more than the average person yet even you are not entirely up to date on the clinical side of it, and this is precisely why our app would be of great use to you and other less knowledgeable users: you'd have somewhere to share your metrics, meals and see how it all compares with others if you have a blood glucose readings for instance, or your fasting triglycerides and insulin values. All nicely organized and presented from within the comfort of 1 app.

I wouldn't write it off until you've tried it ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A really nice idea, definitely needed for people who are diabetic or obese and what to lower their insulin level.

<comment><USER3> Thanks.

When I was 15 I remember seeing my grandmother's glucose monitor values scribbled on her little notepad, their were big swings. I didn't know what I know now and I'm that, had she access to better information than what her doctors gave her, she could have better managed diabetes.

I hope this app helps diabetics do what I regret not having been able to for my (type 2) diabetic grandmother - reverse diabetes.</comment></comment>


The Cognitive Upside to an Extended Adolescence - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/metaplasticity/506390/ <comment><USER2> Further reading, youthful mental characteristics appear to keep the brain plastic and adaptable to change. Remain childlike, with the accompanying sense of wonder and engagement in the world to retain your intellectual vigor:

[https://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ed- boygenius.html](https://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ed-boygenius.html)

From an evolutionary perspective, humans very much resemble juvenile chimpanzees physically. There is something about this neoteny that might give insights to our highly adaptable intelligence.

<comment><USER3> It's almost like the Taoist masters were on to something. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article uses the 1950s a reference point for the age at which people leave the home and parents, but the 1950s are actually an anomaly, weirdly young for marriage and household formation, at least for Western Europe culture.

<comment><USER5> Er. The usual marriage age for a girl in premodern and early modern western European culture (and many other cultures worldwide) was "the onset of menses," or about 12 to 14 years old. ("Romeo and Juliet" takes place just before Juliet's 14th birthday.) Even in the modern era, the typical marriage age for women was 16 or 17 well into the 20th century in most of the western world.

The reference point of the 1950s to the present is an anomaly because it's weirdly _old_ in western culture, not weirdly young.

<comment><USER4> (1) You are wrong, at since the middle ages in Europe. See child comment on Western pattern of marriage. I would be interested in your sources besides Romeo and Juliet, where if I remember correctly, they are told they are too young.

(2) The referenced article isn't really about marriage, but about the transition from adolescence to adulthood. There is a difference between a person getting married/ starting to have children versus setting up a household in which a person has an "adult" role; in the recent, Euro-derived West they are one and the same, but not so universally. And in the West, late age for marriage, and lots of non-married is the norm, and that pattern is pretty unique in the world.

If you do a graduate degree in demography, you learn all this. There isn't really any debate about it anymore, though it is very cool and interesting to discuss because it challenges our received knowledge about "normal". Don't get me started on fertility rates for women over 40 and their historical trends....

Among poor people in the US it is fairly common for a girl to have her first baby when she is 17 / 18/ 19 but still live at home; she has hardly left adolescence even if the boyfriend/ husband is also around...

<comment><USER6> >Don't get me started on fertility rates for women over 40 and their historical trends....

Don't leave this hanging. At least point in the direction you're going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm under 25, pay my own bills, own a house and company and remain childlike.

It has nothing to do with unemployment. It's about how you use your time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it just me, or are 40-year old "adolescents" kind of terrifying?

<comment><USER9> 44 year old successful programmer into the latest tech (Elixir/Phoenix) and gamer into the latest games (Overwatch, Fallout, etc.) here. No kids (adds to my "immaturity," I guess), live with a girlfriend. A little offended/saddened at your comment, actually. Tech ageism at its finest, I guess.

You'll eventually figure out that as you age, it's just your body aging mainly. You will continue to learn things and get "wiser," but your _personality_ is immutable data, basically. I first noticed this at my 20-year high school reunion... I grew up without Facebook so this was the first time I had seen many people in 20 years... and I didn't recognize many of them (usually the ones who gained a bunch of weight... note, I did not)... until I looked into their eyes, and/or until they cracked a joke or said something, and then suddenly it was like OMG THAT IS THE SAME EXACT FUNNY PERSON THEY WERE IN HIGH SCHOOL, clear as day.

<comment><USER10> Generally tech ageism runs in the other direction.

<comment><USER9> Tech ageism runs _against_ younger people? Since when is this?

<comment><USER10> No? It runs against the outward signs of maturity, like looking older, not wanting to stay up all night writing code and playing ping-pong, having a family, and so on.

<comment><USER9> That's what I was originally suggesting, since the original comment was about older "adolescents" being creepy</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Marauders Map (Circle Hackathon) - <AUTHOR> http://discovercircle.com/marauder Do you guys remember that magical map from that Harry Potter movie? That thingy a couple of guys at Dropbox made during their hackathon?
We took it to the next level... <comment><USER2> Complete tangent, but I love that there is another company called Circle (my company is <https://circleci.com>). You would think that another company of the same name would be confusing, but it's actually been quite useful so far.

After the other Circle's last Hackathon, we got a couple of new users who "found us after hearing about the hackathon". And we occasionally meet people who "have heard of Circle". Which Circle? Maybe ours, maybe theirs, but it doesn't really matter, because they have heard the brand, and they know something good about it.

So, an upvote for you guys, and for your hackathon (which seems really cool), and for your app which I hear great things about, and for a mutually beneficial co-naming situation :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You do know we use your system to test code right? :)

<comment><USER2> I do of course, but I don't announce who our customers unless they announce it first (thanks!), or they give permission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am concerned that this might provoke a reaction from whoever holds the rights to the name 'Marauder's Map' (probably JK Rowling?). Is that likely?

<comment><USER4> It's a Marauder-like Map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yet another Facebook Application that wants my email address. There was a time when I could choose an anonymous proxy address but It seems that is not possible anymore, too bad.

<comment><USER6> I'm more curious why it wants access to the messages in my inbox, I dislike giving control like that to any third party developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice! Some kids at the Young Rewired State hack week built their own Marauders Map a few weeks ago, which was pretty cool <http://hacks.rewiredstate.org/events/yrs2012/marauder-me>

</comment><comment><USER8> I think you need to buy a proper ssl certificate.

</comment><comment><USER9> I get stuck in redirects.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems like a FB cookie bug, hard to figure out. Try incognito.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool!!!</comment>


This Is America, Take Your Unicode Somewhere Else - <AUTHOR> http://teddziuba.com/2009/07/this-is-america-take-your-unic.html <comment><USER2> The experience and the conclusion do not match.

If seaching for "bjorn" doesnt match "björn" his little search engine just needed to know to turn "ö" into "o" and add that as a keyword as well for the record. Some users want "torbjoern" added as well, as that is how they transliterate "ö" when the keyboard lack it.

Unicode actually include lookup tables for locale dependent collation rules. English or American people expect "Östermalm" to show up among words beginning with O, but we Swedes do not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps the real problem here is that, _conceptually_ , o-umlaut (say) is not really a separate character from "o". Rather, it is an "o" plus an accent. Typographically, this is obvious; how to store o-umlaut in a text data structure is not so obvious. Unicode takes the view that it is a separate character, and perhaps this is the _wrong_ view.

Putting it a different way: the problem isn't that diacritic marks are bad, nor is it a clash of cultures. The problem is that the Unicode standard does not match up well with the way people actually _use_ character strings.

</comment><comment><USER4> wherever there's a silver lining, you can be sure ted dzuiba will be along shortly, to tell you about the cloud that goes along with it.

why would anyone want to live this way, always thinking the worst of everyone around him?

<comment><USER5> I thought he was funny, in my favorite cynical way.</comment></comment>


Reverse HTTP - <AUTHOR> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-lentczner-rhttp-00.txt

<comment><USER2> _The protocol token used in the Upgrade header is: PTTH/1.0_

This is a little too cutesy.

 _In this case, application layer interfaces can no longer be symmetric: If a host needs to invoke a function on a host that cannot function as an HTTP server, than that function cannot be easily layered on top of HTTP._

It's things like this that made me wish RFCs included a few real-life use- cases. Because I just can't see a need for two reasons: 1) the RPC functionality of the inaccessible host ("the client") is unknown, you actually need to have known code running on the end that is opening the connection, and 2) it doesn't matter how bad you want to make a remote call to a machine you can't get to if you need to wait for it to initiate the connection. If you can put known code on a remote node, you can just have it open up a non-HTTP connection to accept RPC calls over.

Not only does this break stock proxying, but clients would have to use the CONNECT method to enable bi-directional requests on port 80. This is normally reserved for things like SSL, where you need end-to-end connectivity assurance. This sounds like a way to by-pass firewalls ("if we make it work over HTTP, it'll be able to punch through anything!"), which may be a legit goal, but as a system, network, and security administrator, it doesn't enamor it to me.

<comment><USER3> It's a clean (but probably untenable) replacement for long-polling. You open up a web application somewhere. You make lots of little connections to grab images, post data, etc. You also make another connection to allow the server to post back to you.

Presumably, the idea here is that you'd be able to drive the "client's server" side of this from Javascript event handlers.

In the real world, CONNECT proxies aren't going to allow these connections anyways (try running Meebo through a BlueCoat). Although in fairness, the whole industry has already adopted "run-whack-ass-protocol-over-HTTP-POST" as the accepted tunneling solution --- that ship has sailed.

<comment><USER4> Yes, replacing the monster that is comet/longpolling with something sane is indeed a worthy goal. But I also agree, this is not the solution.

For the simple reason because it won't work over standard proxy servers and I don't see the trillions of proxy servers currently in use being updated to support this any time soon...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is probably a better solution to the problem that is already implemented in one, albeit unpopular, browser:

[http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/comms.html#server-sent-events)

</comment><comment><USER4> What about proxy servers?

<comment><USER3> Probably a dealbreaker.

<comment><USER4> Thought so.</comment></comment></comment>


Restraints Upon the Utilization of Inventions (1938) - <AUTHOR> https://doi.org/10.1177%2F000271623820000104 <comment><AUTHOR> Discusses and documents opposition to technological advances, through economic, political, social (labour), financial, power, and other dynamics. Many of which may be familiar today.

Sterns research in this area inspired his stuent research assistant to write the short story "Trends", in 1939:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_(short_story)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_\(short_story\))

[https://archive.org/stream/Astounding_v23n05_1939-07_dtsg031...](https://archive.org/stream/Astounding_v23n05_1939-07_dtsg0318#page/n33/mode/2up)

The assistant was a Russian-born Brooklyn-resident of Jewish descent, Isaac Asimov.

Full text available via Sci-Hub[1]:

[http://sci-hub.tw/10.1177%2F000271623820000104](http://sci- hub.tw/10.1177%2F000271623820000104)

________________________________

Notes:

1\. Ironic irony duly noted.</comment>