Support Single-File Apps in .NET 5 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/36590 <comment><USER2> I just really wish they start investing into true static compilation for .NET.

Some serious projects [1] started adopting CoreRT [2], despite Microsoft's neglect for their own runtime. CoreRT seems to really deliver on the single- file fast-startup small-size .NET promise. Getting this project folded into the LTS .NET 6 release should be a priority.

The source generators [3] that are coming to .NET 5 easily cover 99% of our Reflection.Emit use cases, so the JIT is going to be more of a legacy burden once .NET 5 comes out.

I want Go's small size, fast compile times, fast startup, without Go's bs (explicit error checking, seriously?).

Pieces of our software get deployed over a satellite link so yeah, megabytes matter (and that's why I don't even dare to propose using .NET for those parts). Sharing code with the rest of our .NET stack is a PITA though so people are getting itchy to rewrite the rest of our .NET stuff in Go for better sharing (the Reflection.Emit parts would be replaced with "go generate" which is... a source generator). It would be good to get some clarity on the static compilation roadmap in .NET because I like my job, but I also don't want to become a fulltime Go developer.

[1] [https://github.com/dotnet/corert/issues/7200#issuecomment-62...](https://github.com/dotnet/corert/issues/7200#issuecomment-624618015) [2] [https://github.com/dotnet/corert](https://github.com/dotnet/corert) [3] [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-c- source-g...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-c-source- generators/)

<comment><USER3> C# code still uses too much reflection (serialization, asp net routing, ORM, view model binding) to be statically compileable. They seem to be doing something against that with code generators

<comment><USER4> Reflection isn't an issue. CoreRT allows you to include the symbols for reflecting on though it does increase the filesize significantly.

<comment><USER5> This is exactly what newer versions of Java allow you to do. The problem is, nobody does it. I really like C# as a language, its better than Java in nearly every way. But this is a rare case where C# is implementing a feature Java has had for a very long time. And just like in Java, I don't think it will have the impact advertised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even small utilities in dot net core are ridiculously big and have tens of dll files. Maybe a proper dependency management is needed so that only what parts of the framework that are actually used are included in the executable.

<comment><USER7> Why not statically compile and tree-shake? If this already exists why is it not effective?

<comment><USER8> C# Source Generators [1] will help improve things considerably re: reflection.

[1] [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-c- source-g...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-c-source- generators/)

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately I have doubts. This is one of the few features copied from Java instead of the other way around. You can pre-process code in Java and generate classes at build time instead of reflecting, but I know of just a handful of libraries that leverage this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> BTW One thing I've always liked about dotnet is the binary is an executable and you run that not the interpreter/vm process. When you look at list of prcesses running you see your process, not java or python.

On windows the dotnet runtime is so ubiquitous I'm a bit surprised this is needed.

<comment><USER10> It's not just the runtime, but dependent assemblies too.

E.g. I have one app that has 4 aseemblies (the program + 3 internal libraries), 5 more "internal" general assemblies/libraries of mine, and 12 dependencies from nuget, for a grand total of 21 (+ 1 wrapper .exe) files. Now double that number if you want the pdbs (debug/symbol files) too. Without the runtime.

Shipping 21 files isn't horrible (I have seen node_modules directories in the hundreds of thousands of files), but shipping one single self-contained .exe would be even nicer.

You can kinda use IlMerge (and some hacking) to achieve a similar result, but it can break in subtle ways (especially when you try to debug something) and does not work with netcore as far as I know. And it's not officially supported either.

<comment><USER9> OK I get it, makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm confused about something -- does this "single-file" contain the full .NET runtime, a-la a Go executable? Or is this single-file just the full set of managed code, packed together, and still requires a runtime to execute?

<comment><USER12> Yes, it can contain the .NET runtime like a Go executable. You can already (mostly) do this today with .NET Core 3/3.1 (I say "mostly" just because it simply unzips the runtime on first run). I deploy to Linux with everything in a single file and it's been perfect - headache-less deploys. You can read more at [https://github.com/dotnet/designs/blob/master/accepted/2020/...](https://github.com/dotnet/designs/blob/master/accepted/2020/single- file/design_3_0.md) and [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-pu...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-publish). I haven't had any problems with it at all. The size is a bit bigger, but I don't really care about that and then I can just run it like anything else without worrying about making sure that the .NET runtime is on my deploy system and kept up to date.

You can also use the PublishReadyToRun flag to do AOT compilation so that startup times are faster ([https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/whats- new/dotne...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/whats-new/dotnet- core-3-0#readytorun-images)). It still keeps the IL (intermediate language) around for certain things so the file sizes can be a bit larger, but if startup times are a concern, it's an option.

<comment><USER13> I wish there was an intermediary solution, where it wouldn't ship the runtime but would still be single file.

The full .net framework had ILMerge that was doing exactly that. But it isn't compatible with .net core.

<comment><USER14> It seems like you can set PublishSingleFile true with self-contained false, isn't that what you want?

<comment><USER13> If we can do that (and don't pay a sluggish start up time as some mentioned we currently do) then yes, absolutely.

It doesn't bloat the executable with binaries that are already installed on the machine, and the executable benefits from future updates to the framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Single exes are nice, but people still don't want to download and run single exes. Once you use an installer or package manager to grab it anyway, doesn't the benefit become smaller?

I guess for some scenarios such as deploying webapps etc, it might be very handy to copy ONE file and run it. But for client apps, is there a visible improvement to having 1 exe instead of 1 exe and 5 dlls, which are the same size together?

<comment><USER16> I've written a few utilities that have been released to the public. In my eyes the most important aspect of a single executable is simplicity. I personally prefer applications that I can just drag to any folder. I think, even though I don't like the OS as a whole, macOS does a pretty good job at creating a compromise with .app folders. You can keep framework dependencies, embedded resources, etc contained within one area that you can move around easily, but you don't have to package it up in the binary.

I see the whole thing as more of an issue of your target demographic and the scale of your application. Things that run as background services would make sense to distribute as an installable package. Larger applications like Office or Visual Studio are much too large to throw in a single executable. Something else though like Acrobat Reader or FileZilla I think would make sense to distribute as a single executable. Most times I just don't want to install anything. I use FTP so seldomly that I'd rather want to just download a portable FTP client than keep something installed or even have to extract a multi-file archive somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wrote an amalgamation tool once that took all my project files hierarchically together and built one big source file, after compiling it became one EXE file. Made it super easy to move projects to different machines for compilation.

on most windows machines where the .net framework is installed you can find a compiler.

my motivation for building this tool was to have access to some basic tools in a locked-down enterprise environment _ducks_

</comment><comment><USER18> About a decade back I had to write this goofy little custom client-server deal. I hadn't done Visual Basic since 6, but I thought I'd give the client a go in VB.NET, using whatever we had at the time. Aside from feeling like a chimpanzee dropped into the cockpit of a F-22 at the IDE (which kept _doing things_ ), the people who wanted the project were fairly annoyed that I couldn't figure out how to smash everything down into a single .exe.

I ended up being so annoyed by the experience I wrote the server backend in Python and trying out the Python "compilers" for the next client.

When you have something that is going to be scattered across maybe ten or twenty machines tops for a small project, for whatever reason, people just like the .exe and I can't say I blame them.

<comment><USER19> I'm confused, how did Python solve your problem?

<comment><USER18> The first project was VB.NET client, Python server.

Project two was a different problem, and compiled Python client, Python server. I dimly recall using something like "freeze" for Python to generate something with many fewer files. I changed my methodology partially based on my dislike of the IDE that Visual Basic had at the time and partially due to the criticisms of the VB.NET client I had produced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is a fody plugin that can combine assemblies into one, works also for Net framework: [https://github.com/Fody/Costura](https://github.com/Fody/Costura)

<comment><USER21> this plugin is obsolete since .net core 3 introduced single-file executables and assembly linking

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Will this make .NET. a contender for Go in places where .NET is used widely and Go is used to develop standalone tools that are easily distributed?

<comment><USER23> I actually very recently wrote a project originally as a single binary .net WebAPI, but rewrote it to go because runtime memory usage was comparatively insane. That is likely WebAPI's fault though, so I'm optimistic about sticking with.net in the future for these single-binary scenarios.

The thing go has though is that single-binary cross-compilation is _much_ easier to grok. It took a lot of reading .net docs to understand what incantations I needed to pass to the compiler.

<comment><USER24> Was this on .netcore 2? If yes, then memory usage for moderate apps has gone down significantly. Turns out they just optimized for demanding apps before.

<comment><USER23> Yes, it was on the latest. I even tried enabling 'desktop' mode for memory, which helped but barely.

One of my main goals was to have a single binary hosted on heroku free dyno (512mb ram), and this was using ~1gb vs go which idled at ~50mb.

<comment><USER25> What was the API doing? 1gb with client GC? I'm assuming a single core as well?

<comment><USER23> Nothing really, it just loaded up a JSON file into memory and then served 2 endpoints to query that structure. I dont have the .net version uploaded, but here is the go version [1]. The 1gb might have been while running load testing on it, I dont remember entirely. It was very consistently hitting it though.

[1] - [https://github.com/J-Swift/GamesDbMirror- go/blob/master/pkg/...](https://github.com/J-Swift/GamesDbMirror- go/blob/master/pkg/server/server.go)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting to see Java moving fast enough to overtake .Net in some aspects that .Net needs to copy from Java now

<comment><USER27> But hasn't .NET been always copying from Java from day 1?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm confused. Isn't this already a feature of .NET Core?

<comment><USER29> Currently the single file solution is a zip that unzips into directory with many files. It was a great stop gap solution but not the final thing (hopefully).

<comment><USER28> Okay, didn't realize that was the case. I had used the single-file solution a few times, but mostly just for the convenience of deployment, never really paying attention to any other aspects of it.</comment></comment></comment>


Insidious Optimizations II: Machine Text - <AUTHOR> http://verisimilitudes.net/2018-06-06 <comment><USER2> Your blog article doesn't contain any code or empirical data so you can expect it to be rightfully ignored.

Here are some of the elements that would make it more compelling.

* Provide a reference implementation in a widely-used language. I would pick C or Rust. The code should be under a widely used open source license, have high test coverage, and be fuzzed.

* Write a specification and conformance tests. What happens when a word is not in the dictionary or the dictionary is corrupt?

* Provide size and performance benchmarks of real-world datasets. You assert that English words can be encoded compactly so try encoding Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg books, or the text files in the Calgary Corpus.

* Compare your proposal against state of the art compression algorithms like PPM or LZMA.

* Fork a text editor application and change it to use your reference implementation. What are the effects on editing latency and RAM usage?

* Shared dictionaries were tried in the 1980s (e.g. Spellswell Word Services) but failed in the marketplace. What's different now?

<comment><AUTHOR> >Your blog article doesn't contain any code or empirical data so you can expect it to be rightfully ignored.

That doesn't usually seem to stop them.

>Provide a reference implementation in a widely-used language. I would pick C or Rust. The code should be under a widely used open source license, have high test coverage, and be fuzzed.

I suppose I could go ahead and start writing an initial implementation in Common Lisp; it would likely be under a new article, though. I use the AGPLv3, don't need tests, and don't need fuzzing.

>Provide size and performance benchmarks of real-world datasets. You assert that English words can be encoded compactly so try encoding Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg books, or the text files in the Calgary Corpus.

I prove they can be encoding compactly, but I suppose a more concrete example would help, sure.

>Compare your proposal against state of the art compression algorithms like PPM or LZMA.

I can compare file sizes.

>Fork a text editor application and change it to use your reference implementation. What are the effects on editing latency and RAM usage?

This would be a bit much for me at this stage, and editing text as opposed to reading it is still under consideration; it would likely be implemented with characters and a simple notice when invalid words are created, varying.

>Shared dictionaries were tried in the 1980s (e.g. Spellswell Word Services) but failed in the marketplace. What's different now?

I can't find any information on this, but if it was being sold then I take it that it was proprietary, which would help explain it. Anyway, Microsoft products are dominant, which is evidence that the ''Free Market'' isn't a judge of quality.

In any case, it's nice that something I submitted received any attention whatsoever. Usually, my work goes entirely ignored, but that's hardly the only good work Hacker News doesn't like or understand and so ignores.</comment></comment>


An emulator for a Sun 2 workstation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lisper/emulator-sun-2 <comment><USER2> >It now boots SunOS 2.0, 3.2, and 3.5 cleanly. You can install from the distribution tapes. The SCSI emulation code is still shakey for tapes, however.

SCSI was always shakey for all devices. As soon as they make the SCSI emulation code shakey for disks as well as tapes, the emulation will be perfect!

<comment><USER3> I sometimes feel like I'm the only person who has never had big problems with SCSI, even with external cases and chaining a bunch of drives.

Though it sure is fun to talk about the ritual of the two terminations.

<comment><USER4> You're not the only one. I've used SCSI with Classic Macs, SGI/IRIX and Sun/SunOS and never had a problem.

On Windows/Linux/FreeBSD/x86 I've had many problems setting things up and getting decent throughput and I think it's just I've always had cheap/old/dubious SCSI cards.

<comment><USER5> It seemed usually only a "problem" initially when setting things up. I had a homebuilt system with:

\- Adaptec AHA-2940U2W w/ internal and external ports

\- IBM UltraStar 9 GB (!) U2W 25L1910

\- SCSI Plextor CD burner (before DVDs existed)

\- IOmega ZIP External SCSI drive

\- Plextor External SCSI CD changer

\- SCSI scanner

\- Internal TEAC SCSI 3.5" floppy drive

\- Internal SCSI tape drive

For the era, SCSI worked pretty well. That was back in the day when I had an early Zalman copper CPU heatsink with its 7k RPM, 1U-server-loud Delta fan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Much different but will probably appeal to the same crowd: a sparcstation5 fpga workalike [http://temlib.org/site/?page_id=14](http://temlib.org/site/?page_id=14)

<comment><USER7> Hey, that's really, really cool.

Temlib was mentioned in one of the comments here last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303446)

I wonder if it's been used on a Pano Logic G2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome, now I'd love to be able to run (via emulator) a NeWS (Network extensible Window System) (networked display postscript) workstation... Google searches have turned up nothing...

<comment><USER9> I think a Sun 2 is too old for that. You need a Sun 3, Sun 4 or early SPARCstation to run NeWS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a Sun 3/60, then later on a SparcStation 10 (bought them both used back in the 90's.) I loved Sun equipment. Never played around wit a Sun 2 but sounds fun.

</comment><comment><USER11> Also see:

[https://github.com/sigurbjornl/emulator- sun-2](https://github.com/sigurbjornl/emulator-sun-2)

</comment><comment><USER12> >So I wrote this to learn about the MMU and, well SCSI. My goal is to eventually create an FPGA version of the Sun-2.

Okay - THAT I will want to buy, if it ever materializes.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting work. Last commit was over 12 months ago though...

<comment><USER14> Are you... worried that it isn't keeping up with the rapid feature evolution of 68010 workstations?

<comment><USER15> All code bitrots, and no code is perfect the first time (or ever?).

<comment><USER16> Hardware can be finished. If this faithfully implements the Sun 2, further changes defeat its purpose.

<comment><USER17> Not saying you're wrong, but faithful hardware emulation is really hard. The VICE team are still working hard on perfecting a Commodore 64 emulator and recently completed their implementation of the VSP bug, which has been discussed elsewhere here on HN[0].

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5314959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5314959)

<comment><USER18> But that mostly means it wasn't ok (as in not faithfully emulating the hw bug) to begin with, and that it was super hard to fix, not that the VICE code rot'ed over time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


As Phoenix Heats Up, the Night Comes Alive - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/climate/phoenix-heat.html <comment><USER2> I recall listening to an NPR story about the increasing overnight temperatures, particularly due to concrete//cement//pavement. One man interviewed speculated that within his lifetime he'd experience overnight Phoenix temperatures of at least 100F. This aired around roughly 15 years ago, give or take.

<comment><USER3> I'd be willing to guess that the vast majority of increase in overnight temps is due to sprawl and concrete/asphalt acting as heat batteries. Overnight temps are still reliably in the 80s, though.

I was curious, so I went and checked the NWS historical data. It shows that monthly average lows for August are more or less unchanged in the past 30 years, FWIW.

<comment><USER2> > the vast majority of increase in overnight temps is due to sprawl and > concrete/asphalt acting as heat batteries

That is exactly my recollection of what the story covered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a dude who runs around in the Scottsdale hills just after dawn, it's nice to see our tribe get recognized. The city is surprisingly pleasant and friendly at 5:00am in July.</comment>


Rural Democrats: We Tried to Warn You - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/rural-democrats-ignored-suffer-consequences <comment><USER2> _" But they don't know how to talk about ordinary people."_

Riiight... because Americans who live in urban areas aren't "ordinary people". Hey, I bet they aren't actually "Real Americans" either.

</sarcasm>

In case it isn't already clear from the subtext in the OP, I'll make the point plainly: the rural/urban divide cuts both ways.

<comment><AUTHOR> This piece really comes off just as venting. I don't think the people quoted in it are offering anything particularly insightful or that their solutions would really help that much.

One of the proposed solutions is sending more yard signs to rural areas. Do people really vote based on yard signs?

<comment><USER2> _> Do people really vote based on yard signs?_

Sort of.

People are influenced somewhat by the opinions of others in their community, and noticing the number of yard signs for candidates is a low-risk way of gauging the prevailing sentiment.</comment></comment></comment>


The Firefox Browser is a privacy nightmare on desktop and mobile - <AUTHOR> https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2020/01/the-firefox-browser-is-a-privacy-nightmare-on-desktop-and-mobile/ <comment><USER2> This... still seems like a lot better than Chrome. No personal data is being collected, just basic telemetry data on browser function for debugging and an IP address. I'm going to call this Mostly Harmless.

Meanwhile, the article is coming from a company that's selling privacy on a for-profit basis, towards a non-profit focused on attempting the best privacy possible. Most of their products are in the same space as Mozilla.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tracking when you load bookmarks, open new tabs, save a password and login, take a screenshot or download media, is not harmless basic telemetry imho.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but it doesn't record what the bookmark is or its URL, just that you opened a bookmark. Same thing with the new tabs. It doesn't record the login or password or the URL of the page you saved a password for. It doesn't record anything about your screenshots or downloads either, aside from the fact that you did it.

They are very openly using the least amount of data possible in order to know how people use the browser so that they know what to focus on to make things better, or what to fix that isn't working. They don't care who you are, all they want to know is how you are using their product so they can keep making it better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Forget this!!!

You can check everything that is being sent to mozilla at:

about:telemetry

and as you can see there is nothing that identifies you. And even if i'm missing something, you can always disable telemetry and be sure that (unlike others) firefox will respect your config and won't be sending any data

</comment><comment><USER5> Sad that the corporate types even at Firefox have everyone believe this is necessary.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not cool Firefox! That's the kind of thing I would expect to read about Chrome.

<comment><USER7> Don't trust PIA, verify yourself (and read the comments above).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Watch out, this is coming from PIA, the company now owned by malware producer Kape, with a CTO who participated in the Mt Gox Bitcoin fraud. Not a company to be trusted.</comment>


Google Announced their D-Wave 2X Quantum Computer Works (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a18475/google-nasa-d-wave-quantum-computer/ <comment><USER2> As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't work until Scott Aaronson says it works.

EDIT: My comment was kind of snarky and curt without much info; I need to be better about that. I did read Scott's post when it was published, and the consensus I got from it is that D-Wave's device achieves a constant-factor speedup, not a quantum one. I just think, with that being generally accepted by all parties now, it's pretty disingenuous to keep calling it a "quantum computer", when it's really a (faster) classical computer that uses quantum mechanical effects. I mean, the Intel chip in my laptop also uses QM effects because the feature size is so small, but nobody calls it a quantum computer. Maybe that's the media's fault though. Are D-Wave/Google themselves still saying "quantum computer"?

SECOND EDIT: Rereading Scott's post more carefully, it seems like Google and D-Wave are now calling it a "quantum annealing device" and are more forthcoming about the lack of quantum speedup. So unless they're talking out of both sides of their mouth and still saying "quantum computer" to the popular press to build hype, I guess everyone is a reasonable person after all and it's the media's fault as usual.

<comment><USER3> This article and the discussed work was put out last December (see [http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02206](http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02206)). Scott Aaronson weighed in around that time; see [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2555](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2555).

<comment><USER4> The blog entry includes a reference to the HN discussion in the updates toward the end.

The previous HN discussion clarifies that google reports a constant (although large) increase in speed for a specific application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > We note that there exist heuristic classical algorithms that can solve most > instances of Chimera structured problems in a timescale comparable to the > D-Wave 2X. However, we believe that such solvers will become ineffective for > the next generation of annealers currently being designed.

From the abstract.

<comment><USER6> I was wondering if these exist. My last counter of D-Wave is they could be using a good algorithm with specialized ASIC's or regular HPC hardware in a cluster. As in, they're certainly accelerating things but making up the quantum part. That possibility has to be eliminated.

That there's classical algorithms that might get a similar speedup, esp if on custom hardware, validates my prior concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> google shouldn't call anything wave :)

<comment><USER8> Just for the anonymous record... I came up with the design for Google Wave, it was a protocol I was working on. I won't name names but I met someone whose name rhymes with Cint Verf at a charity dinner and in a stupid attempt to impress him hoping he'd want to do business described every aspect of the exact product they came out with over a series of emails 8 months before Google published Wave.

Just to include me in the development somehow would have meant so much to me, instead I feel stabbed in the back by someone who was a hero to me. It's my fault because I foolishly told him and I didn't publish my code first but that's still how I feel.

<comment><USER9> What?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought it wasn't considered a quantum speedup if you're talking about a constant factor. Otherwise, how are you going to jump across complexity classes?

</comment><comment><USER11> talk about changing goal posts and pivoting, anything to save face about rushing success.

quantum everything is obviously the future of technology, but it is a long long path.

i get more excited about fundmanetal quantum research and research on new methods of testing quantum states.

people claiming to have full working computers of any value, if they even do work</comment><comment></comment><comment>-are just blowing smoke and mirrors like elizabeth holmes from theranos. nearly criminal behavior , alleging things are simply what they aren't in order to get money.

there is an epidemic of hack science and engineering occuring to secure and suck in scarce funds. and where-ever there is military related big money the likelihood of fraud is even bigger.

read the book about the hafnium bomb and you will understand why the military investors are frequently so easy to scam---a two pronged version of greed and desire to have the unstoppable weapons.

paradoxically enough , if more pre-investigation was done, they'd have more money to spend on real R&D. i guess economists would just call this a massive case of malinvestment.

</comment><comment><USER12> I got about halfway through the article wondering why the NSA wanted to talk about their quantum computer so much, then realized it was _NASA_.

</comment><comment><USER13> We changed the url from [http://trendintech.com/2016/05/07/google-announced- their-d-w...](http://trendintech.com/2016/05/07/google-announced-their-d- wave-2x-quantum-computer-succesfully-works/) to one of the (more) original articles about this, that didn't specifially get discussed last year.

There were a few discussions at the time (e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698317)) but perhaps the community is interested in more.</comment>


Why I'm Dropping Rust - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/why-im-dropping-rust-fd1c32986c88 <comment><USER2> Rust is an interesting language where writing good linked collections is _really_ hard. You'd often start learning a language like C or Python with "create a library for handling linked lists". Well, with Rust it turns out you can write a book about it: [https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many- lists/](https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/)

I'm not surprised that the author gave up if he started his adventure with trying to write bindings that use tree with parent links. Fortunately many other things are actually simpler than in other languages, so there's a balance.

</comment><comment><USER3> Should put '(2016)' in the title.

</comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR I tried to do object oriented programming in a language that wasn't designed for object oriented programming and found it was difficult. Wrong tool for the job.</comment>


Exploiting the Diffie-Hellman bug in socat - <AUTHOR> https://vnhacker.blogspot.com/2016/02/exploiting-diffie-hellman-bug-in-socat.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is Thai Duong, co-discoverer of the TLS BEAST, CRIME, and POODLE flaws.

</comment><comment><USER2> Possibly relevant: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11014175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11014175)

</comment><comment><USER3> Could someone explain why isn't it an issue that socat hardcodes any `p` at all? I mean, isn't the negotiation insecure if the person who generated `p` eavesdrops on the connection?

Edit: stupid post - just realised p was supposed to be prime, which kind of is the answer (no factors)

<comment><USER4> Because generating p on the fly is expensive. On the other hand, using a safe prime is fine, even if it was generated by a third party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I need to go learn crypto.</comment>


No Love For Linux in Mozilla's upcoming Web Apps marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193

<comment><USER2> Have you even read through the discussion on the bug? They are actively working on getting in Linux support. They may have prioritized Win & Mac for several reasons, but that's just market realities, not "no love" (I say this as a 10+ years Linux desktop user).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I read through it and followed the conversation. I am not pretty sure you can say they were actively working on it. Yes, they prioritize on Win & Mac, but it seemed that Linux wasn't even in the loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When it comes to defining where their priorities need to be, the word "marketplace" says it all.

In order to ensure that app developers get the best chance they can have at being successful, the most lucrative demographics simply have to be prioritized, even at the expense of the least lucrative ones. Doing otherwise would send a signal to app developers that their interests are not being taken to heart, which would in turn discourage them from developing for the platform, which would in turn mean it's more likely to flop.</comment>


Oracle Database 11g coming to Amazon RDS - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2011/02/01/oracle-database-11g-coming-to-amazon-rds/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exciting! Not necessarily because Oracle is the best choice if you're an AWS customer but because it's and indication that Amazon is planning on supporting even more databases. Let's hope for PostgreSQL-support any time soon!

I think the main reason Amazon chose Oracle over databases like PostgreSQL is that it also makes it easier for a lot of people to convince their boss to move to AWS.</comment>


Eliminating Seven Words Policy for .US Domain Names with FuckNazis.US - <AUTHOR> https://clinic.cyber.harvard.edu/2018/09/12/cyberlaw-clinic-helps-eliminate-seven-words-policy-for-registration-of-us-domain-names/ <comment><USER2> Good on them for fighting this. For those that wish to reduce risk of drama, register multiple domains, set up wildcards and use whatever "A" record you want. i.e. f---whoever.domain.tld. LetsEncrypt supports wildcards now.</comment>


Man who worked on Apollo missions claims it is Neil in the picture - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xove1/iama_97_year_old_that_worked_apollo_missions_1/c5ocyu3

<comment><USER2> <http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11nogold5903.jpg> > E. Aldrin</comment>


Bitcoin Values in Wolfram - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2014/01/20/bitcoin-values-in-wolframalpha/ <comment><USER2> Looks cool, but I don't think it should be using MtGox values as the default.</comment>


A Vegan No More - <AUTHOR> http://voraciouseats.com/2010/11/19/a-vegan-no-more/ <comment><USER3> I'm all for radicalism since radicals are the main force questioning conventional wisdom. But the size of the vegan movement is totally out of proportion to its veracity.

Take the whole "meat is murder" slogan. It's ridiculous from the outset and completely ignores our existence within the earth's ecosystem. I mean industrialized animal farming is fairly horrific, but the way to stop that is by advocating and _paying the premium_ for more sustainably raised meat. Opting out of meat entirely does nothing to change the industry, because most people will always eat some meat if they can afford it.

Meanwhile, as vegans focus on the elimination of meat from our diets, they practically ignore the industrialized food that wreaks direct reproducible havoc on our metabolisms causing epidemic obesity and diabetes. Consider the effect of refined and reconstituted carbohydrates made from federally subsidized crops that make the most devastatingly unhealthy food items also the cheapest. Just the effects of soda pop alone are worthy of an international movement.

<comment><USER4> > Take the whole "meat is murder" slogan.

There are, you'll be pleased to hear, many vegans with stronger ethical arguments than "meat is murder". Such as, in summary:

* unnecessary extreme suffering is unjustifiable.

* some non-human animals (notably the ones we eat most of) are as capable of suffering at the physical level as humans are. We shouldn't discount their suffering just because they aren't members of _homo sapiens_.

* factory farms raise most animals in conditions of unnecessary extreme suffering.

* therefore, it is ethically wrong to eat those animal products.

(This is actually an argument for eating humanely-raised meat instead of veganism, but finding verifiably humanely-raised meat is difficult enough that I'm not sufficiently interested to bother, and there are practical advantages in eating a predictable diet. So I just eat vegan.)

By the way, I hate the federally subsidized crop situation too. I wish I could do something substantial about it. It's disingenuous for you to say that vegans are uninformed about health issues or industrial practice or the farm lobby just because they don't "focus" on it; that doesn't match my experience of other vegans at all, and it's obviously untrue that someone can only pay attention to one issue.

<comment><USER5> It's difficult to find humanely raised meat? I just go to the farmer's market and buy it straight from the farmer who raises grass-fed free range cows. If I would like to verify, I can head to her farm and see how she raises the cows myself.

Or I buy fish that are caught in sustainable ways, which have grown in their natural habitat and not subjected to any suffering beyond the catch (which is a necessary part of consuming them).

Yes, humanely raised meat (and milk, eggs, other animal products) is more expensive, but it's also tastier, and it feels good know the people who have grown and raised the food you eat. I balance out the extra expense, and impact of raising animals, by eating meat or fish only about 2 or 3 times per week; the rest of the time, I pick vegetarian options. That also makes it easier for me when dining with people; I leave my couple of omnivorous meals for the weekend, so I can have whatever's being served without having to cause extra trouble for my hosts.

<comment><USER6> The "tastier" organic myth is a myth in at least some cases. Double blind taste tests of 2 halves of the same product reveal that the half presented as "organic" is often chosen as being "tastier", despite being identical to it's other "non organic" half.

IMHO, he organic food "movement" is marketing targeted at the guilty conscience of the well-heeled consumer of organic foods.

<comment><USER7> lambda never mentions anything about Organic. Organic is not the same as humanely raised meat, nor hormone free. And, IMHO, Organic standards are so varied and in many cases silly that the green label isn't even a tell for a desirable product by my terms.

In my experience, texture is very noticeable when comparing "supermarket" meat vs locally raised, hormone-free meat.

As far as Veganism goes: I rather not take a vitamin supplement--it seems unnatural.

LOL>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I eat meat, I fish and I've hunted. My wife has been a vegetarian for 20 years, since age 19. By vegetarian I mean she eats eggs and drinks milk, but doesn't eat meat of any kind.

It's outright weird how the author swings from one extreme to the other, both emotionally and nutritionally. Why not try adding eggs, milk, cheese and full- cream yoghurt to your diet first? Or even add shellfish or chicken once or twice a week?

She seems to swing from the most militant form of vegetarianism to maniacal flesh gorging with an indictment of the vegan community to boot.

The range of diets that incorporate or exclude meat or animal byproducts is wide as is the impact each variation has on our environment. A productive approach would be to find a meat-veggie balance that works for your nutritional needs and then spend the time to find environmentally friendly and humane sources of the ingredients you need.

<comment><USER9> > _Why not try adding eggs, milk, cheese and full-cream yoghurt to your diet > first? Or even add shellfish or chicken once or twice a week? ... A > productive approach would be to find a meat-veggie balance that works for > your nutritional needs_

Did you even read her article? That's pretty much exactly what she did... it's not like she's engaging in an all-meat diet now or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This post has some great lines in it:

* As a revolutionary feminist and anti-imperialist, veganism seemed to be yet another way I could fight the injustices we are facing.

* Capitalism has turned food, and especially grains, into a commodity, a weapon of war, and a way to make a profit, instead of the inalienable right it should be. The way to prevent hunger is not to feed the starving masses the food we currently feed to animals (excess food production and the resulting food dumping is one of the causes of hunger in the first place), but for the chronically hungry people to throw off the shackles of neo-imperialism and to gain back control of their local food systems.

* It was shocking to realize I had been expounding on the need to transform agriculture and farming without even knowing the bare minimum of what it takes to keep an ecosystem healthy.

Really? Was it really shocking? Really? I feel like I'm in a missing scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian.

On the other hand her 3 paragraphs about the 3 kinds of bad people (the frauds, the foolish know-it-alls, and the evidence deniers) sparked instant recognition and made me realize that those are the exact people that irritate me more than just about anyone else in this world.

<comment><USER11> > On the other hand her 3 paragraphs about the 3 kinds of bad people (the > frauds, the foolish know-it-alls, and the evidence deniers) sparked instant > recognition and made me realize that those are the exact people that > irritate me more than just about anyone else in this world.

She seems to qualify for at least two of those three categories.

<comment><USER10> Instant karma's gonna get you!

Really though, it's the people who take knowing-it-all and evidence denial to a personal level who deserve a special place in hell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is impossible for me to say this person is "wrong" but I figure I may as well throw my data points into the graph - I've been vegan for 11 years and I am more healthy on every level than I've ever been. I went vegan in my late teens when I was done growing, my younger brother went vegan at 12 a year after me and is now taller/broader than me. I know many people who have been vegan over 20 years who are in great health.

Obviously that doesn't just apply to vegans but regardless, the secret is this: you have to hack your diet! You have to learn about nutrition in general and then in relation to YOUR body and experience. There is no silver bullet and I am glad there isn't: life should be a constant practice of critical thinking and mindfulness. "Practicing" veganism is a great way to constantly engage with the world in an active manner.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting how strong peer pressure is in groups like vegans to continue to press someone in to a lifestyle that clearly is not to their best interest.

It reminds me of religious cults, and other 'us or them' styled groups.

Very scary.

<comment><USER13> She even says that she and her family has received threats!

What would make someone do that simply because the lady has started eating meat?

<comment><USER11> It's psychologically complicated but it has to do with people telling you that you yourself are living a lie, and exposing that lie. That ties right in to 'ego' and self preservation.

People do not like to have their core beliefs challenged in a credible way.

<comment><USER14> Yes. It's strange that people really think that what they're doing isn't connected in a way with their self-esteem, especially if they claiming all the time that they're doing it only for a better world.

Wouldn't it be funny, if at the end there's no much difference between the SUV driver and the vegan.

<comment><USER15> I think people buy large SUVs under the false assumption of crashworthiness. For the price range they could have gotten sedans of similar prestige.

<comment><USER11> And of _better_ crash-worthiness!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > I never expected this post to get so much attention.

There is nothing more popular than an anecdote that appeals to people's pre- existing biases. Unfortunately there will be many for which this one story will provide the same weight of evidence as the entire China Study.

<comment><USER17> The point of the story is that not everyone can do a Vegan diet and still be healthy. While this is just one example it does demonstrate the principle that meat is a necessary and vital part of some peoples healthy eating.

I sometimes wonder if Vegans worry about Lions on the savannah eating antelope. Do they want prevent that as well. Humans are Omnivores. We are built to get nutrients from both meat and plantlife. Our metabolisms work _best_ when we eat both in moderation. A Vegan lifestyle makes it harder to eat healthy not easier and for some it makes it impossible.

<comment><USER16> > The point of the story is that not everyone can do a Vegan diet and still be > healthy.

When you hear a story about how some substance 'cured cancer' do you instantly conclude that the claims are necessarily correct - even for the cured person in the story? Would you expect the story to become popular on HN? The problem with one-off anecdotes like this is that they don't even conclusively demonstrate anything.

> I sometimes wonder if Vegans worry about Lions on the savannah eating > antelope.

Dude that is a really ignorant and insulting thing to say.

> Humans are Omnivores. We are built to get nutrients from both meat and > plantlife.

And here you demonstrate your limited grasp of evolution which a resort to a naturalistic fallacy.

> Our metabolisms work best when we eat both in moderation.

Actually the research demonstrates otherwise.

> A Vegan lifestyle makes it harder to eat healthy not easier

That is trivially true in a society where adding animal products to many foods is routine. If even 20% of the population was vegan it would be trivial to follow a vegan diet.

<comment><USER17> > Dude that is a really ignorant and insulting thing to say.

Why? We have it within our power to prevent that particular form of animal suffering. Give me enough money and political power and I could round up all the antelope and lions and keep em seperated. How is ignoring that form of animal suffering any different than ignoring animal farming?

> And here you demonstrate your limited grasp of evolution which a resort to a > naturalistic fallacy.

I'll bite. How is it a fallacy? Fact: Humans are capable of digesting and processing meat. Fact: Humans have been eating meat for as long as we've been around. Fact: Humans get a number of nutrients in meat that are not easily found elsewhere in a form we can process.

>> Our metabolisms work best when we eat both in moderation. > Actually the research demonstrates otherwise.

Citation needed

> That is trivially true in a society where adding animal products to many > foods is routine. If even 20% of the population was vegan it would be > trivial to follow a vegan diet.

Because the market would provide? Either way you still have to work harder and be far more careful with what you eat in order to pull it off so my point still stands.

No where did I say it was impossible. Notice I said in moderation as well. You wouldn't have to eat a lot of meat to get the required nutrition.

<comment><USER18> "Either way you still have to work harder"

Since the production of meat uses up more resources (energy) than plant based food, I think your claim does not hold up.

It is easier to produce plant based food, so why should it be harder to buy plant based food?

I also doubt that you automatically eat healthy by simply adding meat to your diet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Look, veganism is a preference, not a religion.

For me, the salient facts are that eating animals and animal products is a) ethically questionable and b) avoidable.

But it's just a choice. If I go round someone's house and they've cooked me an otherwise vegan meal but put cheese on top, I'm not going to be a dick about it, I'm going to eat it. Food isn't magic. Maybe this makes me not really vegan, or a "bad vegan" or whatever, but I don't know or care what the rules are. I don't even know any other vegans. It's nobody else's business.

I know it's a privilege to be affluent and healthy enough to be able to be selective about what I eat, but I choose to exercise that privilege, just as I choose to exercise other counter-evolutionary privileges like using contraception and not murdering people who annoy me.

Could I do more? Could I be a better person? Certainly. Always. But doing this much is so easy that it's a no-brainer, so that's how much I do. Maybe I'll do better tomorrow.

I feel kind of shocked and alienated by how aggressively negative some of the posters here are being about that choice.

<comment><USER20> > _"Look, veganism is a preference, not a religion."_

The line between preference and religion can be awfully thin. See: Urban vs. suburban, Nikon vs. Canon, Vi vs. Emacs, etc.

All of the above are contentious issues that are, at the end of the day, incredibly asinine to argue about. And all sides in the above suffer from incredibly poor signal to noise ratio - both defending their ego more than they are any notion of reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> For what it's worth, I don't think of people who eat diets supposedly free of animal products as "vegan". I think of them as "fundamentalist". To me, veganism is about creating a culture where we don't abuse animals. It happens that part of that work for me involves mostly not eating meat. But sometimes eating meat is exactly what I need to do.

Eating meat, in specific ways, can be a way to connect with people, a way to nourish myself... there are lots of ways in which eating meat can lead directly or indirectly to my helping to lessen animal abuse.

And I think that's profoundly vegan. I think the OP feels the same way, but she's apparently not as comfortable hijacking the word "vegan" as I am.

The way she uses the word, and the way most people use the word, makes it useful only to marginalize people. What a waste of a word. I'd use it to inspire people.

Like the mormon who might occasionally share a beer with their sister, in the spirit of love and family and togetherness (important mormon values)... a vegan can eat meat. These labels do not have to be so cut and dry.

<comment><USER18> There are lots of reasons for being vegan. What if you can not digest animal products very well, or just think it is healthier to eat vegan. YOur world view seems rather black and white.

Also I don't understand the part about connecting with people - so if you don't eat meat, you have troubles connecting (if you eat something else)? How so? Also, does eating meat also help you to connect with vegans, or maybe not?

All in all, I call bullshit.

<comment><USER21> _There are lots of reasons for being vegan. What if you can not digest animal products very well, or just think it is healthier to eat vegan._

That's great. I think those are wonderful reasons, and am happy for those people to include themselves under the umbrella of veganism.

 _YOur world view seems rather black and white._

Why are you attacking me?

 _if you don't eat meat, you have troubles connecting (if you eat something else)? How so?_

When I went to Spain, there were often situations where I could either eat Spanish food with Spanish friends, or I could sit and not eat anything with them, and then go home and cook my own food. I chose to share in their culture and participate. I didn't really eat much meat, but I did eat some vegetarian food. And I did try some of the meat.

 _does eating meat also help you to connect with vegans, or maybe not?_

I don't recall a situation where eating meat helped me connect with vegans. I generally connect with vegans by eating vegan food with them, or talking about vegan food.

 _All in all, I call bullshit._

Why are you antagonizing me? I'm just honestly expressing my thoughts about something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. Please be a little nicer to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ginny Messina, who is a dietitian and actually has some qualifications to talk about this stuff, wrote a great response to this blog post - [http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/11/do-ex- vegans%E2%80%99-stor...](http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/11/do-ex- vegans%E2%80%99-stories-make-the-case-against-vegan-diets.html)

<comment><USER9> > _That doesn't mean I think she has made any of this up._

She has an awfully weird way of expressing this. The first few paragraphs of her post are dedicated to implying as hard as she can that this blog post is some sort of meat industry propaganda.

For example:

> _There is so much that is eerily parallel in these stories—not just the > vague descriptions of the health-related experiences but also the evolving > philosophy regarding food justice, and some very, very similar language._

<comment><USER22> I think Ginny's saying that the the author of the blog post is simply echoing things she read elsewhere. That doesn't mean it's some sort of propaganda effort on the part of the blog poster.

<comment><USER9> I think that's definitely how she's trying to spin it "officially", but her actual intent is pretty clear.

> _I have to admit I'm always a little suspicious when an ex-vegan dives > headlong into a love affair with meat._

I mean come on, what else is that supposed to mean? Is she "suspicious" that the author is simply echoing a new-found respect for meat? That doesn't even make sense.

<comment><USER22> Sheesh, you really love your conspiracy theories.

Ginny's post is primarily about debunking the ridiculous health claims in the original post. She's "suspicious" of the claims because they're ridiculous, and the amount of fervor that Tasha shows suggests that there's something going on besides nutrition.

<comment><USER9> It's a conspiracy theory to suggest that others are seeing conspiracies where there are none?

Man you people are nuts.

<comment><USER22> You're saying that Ginny is suggesting a conspiracy, when she isn't. That's all I'm saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a perfect example of why one must use the utmost caution in allowing a choice to become part of one's identity. When the time comes for that belief to be challenged you will fight not because it is true, but because it is perceived as an attack on the self. You will ignore reason and fight to save that piece of yourself from annihilation like a feral animal cornered by a predator.

You are not a vegan. You are not an atheist. You are not the car you drive or the contents of your wallet. You are a human being, and nothing that is within your power to change should be exempt from introspection.

<comment><USER24> I've added this to my personal collection of awesome quotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reposting my thoughts from Reddit:

As a vegan I'm sad on two fronts.

a) That some vegans see the need to attack someone in this way.

I know some vegans consider (including myself) see it as a deeply moral issue. However, I'd rather be like Ghandi than a fundamentalist. First and foremost, we can't help how we are made. I can't understand how it is immoral to care for oneself first. That said I personally haven't suffered adverse health (quite the reverse).

b) The fact that my choice for me causes some people to want to knock me down.

Time and time again, I find my veganism attacked by people who aren't vegan. Whether they make a joke of waving their meat meals in my face, or attack my moral/ethical/dietary stance. It seems like a lot of people who are omnivorous either feel guilty about it or simply don't like the idea that I have chosen a moral stance stricter than their own. I find it disappointing, both in the title and the comments of this thread that people seem to want to take me down a peg for my beliefs.

<comment><USER26> Maybe people just don't like being told that their moral stance is less strict than yours when they don't feel they're doing anything wrong. Your post is almost literally asking, "Why are people upset when I have a holier-than-thou attitude?" What is really the difference between, "I have chosen a stricter moral stance," and holier-than-thou?

<comment><USER25> Stricter implies that I am applying more conditions to myself, 'holier-than- thou' implies that I'm somehow applying them to you too.

I've chosen my morality for me, I'll happily advocate it if you are interested. However, my act of choice in no way threatens your own act of choice.

What I find frustrating is that because I've made a choice for me people choose to assume I'm judging them.

<comment><USER26> This makes your point... I just find it incredibly odd.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that when you say "stricter moral stance," you mean "more rules." That is not how I would interpret "stricter moral stance."

I suppose I'm also thrown off by the concept of "my morality." If morality is entirely personal, the whole concept of stricter or looser moral stances seems nonsensical. If it's entirely personal, then isn't everyone, by definition, strictly adhering to their own morality?

<comment><USER25> Some definitions of the word strict from the Random House Dictionary that might explain my position:

3\. closely or rigorously enforced or maintained: strict silence.

5\. extremely defined or conservative; narrowly or carefully limited: a strict construction of the Constitution.

8\. stern; severe; austere: strict parents.

You could also think of strict as the root of "restrictive". I have a moral code which allows me to do less than you, it restricts my actions.

However it doesn't follow that my morality inherently requires me to expect it of others. That's a very western belief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was never a vegan, but I was a pretty strict vegetarian for about ten years. I started to rethink it when my doctor told me I was seriously deficient in iron, B12 and folic acid.

The first time I ate meat again, a lamb shawarma, it was _freaking delicious_. I felt my body scream "YES!" Now I incorporate some non-industrial, locally sourced meat, cheese and eggs into a predominantly plant-based diet, and it seems to be working well for my overall health.

Unfortunately a bread bar (exactly what it sounds like) operated by a Slow Food chef recently opened near my house, and I find myself eating altogether too much fresh baked bread.

</comment><comment><USER28> > As a feminist, this body-hating rhetoric infuriated me. The willing > participation in the denial and degradation of my bodily needs smacked of > misogyny, patriarchal control and violence against the female body, and > everything that I fight against.

Huh? So somebody who willingly does not eat animal products despite the health issues is misogynistic? What does this have to do with sexes?

> I refuse to play the game that so many women (vegan or not) are forced to > play by our violently woman hating society; I will never feel shame or guilt > for eating what my body wants and needs to be healthy.

It seems like veganism is not her only problem...

</comment><comment><USER29> It sounds like she was getting very little fat and protein in her diet. When you demonize fat, and don't eat much protein, you have no choice but to fill the void with carbs, if you can fulfill your csloric needs at all

Also, Leafy vegetables are wonderful sources of nutrients, but terrible sources of calories. It seems like she was trying to fill her caloric needs with leafy vegetables, which simply isn't going to work.

<comment><USER30> The article specifically mentions iron and B12. There is no natural way for a human to get B12 without some kind of animal product or a supplement (usually made from an animal product) and this woman developed a nutritional deficiency as a result.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12#Sources>

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've never been a vegetarian, but I used to eat very little meat.

The one mineral I rarely hear about when talking about a vegetarian or vegan diet is Zinc. It is nearly impossible to get enough Zinc without eating animal products. You can either eat nearly _3 pounds_ of peas, or little more than .5 ounces of canned oysters to get enough Zinc in your diet. Being low on Zinc weakens your immune system, and your libido, so yeah - it's important.

YMMV, but I am feeling much better now that I've made it a point to eat more (local, organically-raised) meat.

<comment><USER32> Oysters are actually a weird case for some vegans, in that a lot of the arguments made for veganism don't really apply. They don't have brains, so there's not really a chance for suffering, and they can be farmed in an eco- friendly way. Peter Singer, the animal rights philosopher that vegans are always quoting, has at points said that he doesn't object to eating oysters. <http://www.slate.com/id/2248998/>

<comment><USER33> Unfertilized chicken eggs don't have brains either, right? They are still "unclean".

<comment><USER32> I eat eggs sometimes, but I'm not proud of it. The moral considerations are very different from oysters because of how they're produced. Producing a lot of eggs requires a lot of hens. Having a lot of hens (and not roosters) involves killing a lot of male chicks. Producing any volume of eggs economically requires having a lot of hens in not that much space, which typically involves things like clipping beaks. This also produces a lot of concentrated waste which can often cause environmental damage. Keeping a lot of hens fed requires that you give them a lot of feed, which requires agricultural resources which might otherwise have produced food to be eaten by people. So eating eggs entails killing and torturing birds, producing toxic waste and using agricultural resources inefficiently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Perhaps those who eat meat should slowly introduce vegetarianism into their diet (if they wish to) rather than going vegan straight.

I turned veg about 15 years back (but still ate an egg). My haemoglobin count actually went up by a point (a year later). About 5 years ago, i gave up eggs too. A year later my Haemo was up by another half point.

I do have a small amount of milk in tea/coffee. In India, there are millions of vegetarians who live without health problems. Veganism seems a little extreme to us.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hmm, in the same way that this girl strongly was able to have a strong moral stance for being a vegan before she has also been able to justify a strong moral stance against it, pointing to large scale farming now as the enemy.

I'm all for the overall feeling but it does show that people can very easy justify contradictory stances at different times.

<comment><USER36> It did seem like that the author should examine her decision making/philosophy adopting process along with her dedication to veganism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I went to a 10 day meditation retreat a few years ago. As you can imagine I met a lot of interesting people there.

One guy actually was a body builder _and_ vegetarian. He told me that he had problems with being anemic as well. So his doctor told him to have a steak once a month, which helped him a lot.

There is a reason why we can chew and digest both plants and animal products and meat.

While personally I lean towards a vegetarian diet (for reasons of health, morality, and sustainability) any such bias has to be paired with "wisdom".

Generally if we know how to listen our bodies will let us know what they need. I mostly eat whatever I want, whenever I want it. It somehow naturally ends up being mostly vegetarian, with diary product, and occasionally meats and (yes) some candy.

Edit: I do avoid all low fat products and products with sugar replacements.

</comment><comment><USER38> Reminded me of a comment by Linus Torvalds [1]:

 _Meat is kind of important to people. Young kids in particular need a lot of varied nutrients, and a balanced diet - with meat - is likely to be way healthier than the alternatives.

Quite frankly, being vegetarian is like being religious: you should let the kid decide on his/her own when they are grown up and can make that choice on their own. Plus by then they've done most of their development, so your choice won't mess them up for the rest of their lives.

Humans are designed to be omnivores. Don't play games with your kids nutrition.

Eating meat is not at all unnatural. It's generally considered to be one of the main reasons humans could afford to evolve a larger brain - because meat is denser in nutrients than vegetarian diets.

Yes, you can do a healthy vegetarian diet (and even a vegan one, although at that point you really are crazy - there's no substitute for milk), but it is certainly not at all a trivial matter. It's much saner to just say "eating meat is natural".

Once you're fully grown, it's a different matter.

Quite frankly, anybody who tells their kids to "don't eat meat" is kind of crazy. You're much better off telling them to not drink sodas, avoid overly processed foods etc.

And yeah, I care a hell of a lot more about my kids health than I care about cows or even pigs. Deal with it._

[1] [http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/05/pig-lovers- oath....](http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/05/pig-lovers- oath.html?showComment=1274201279556#c6797364674668189582)

<comment><USER39> As a counter point, I've been vegetarian (ovo-lacto) my whole life. My parents aren't crazy, they just decided they wanted to be vegetarian, and the logical consequence of that is that my siblings and I were raised the same way.

I'm 6'1", ~175 lbs, and am strong and healthy. I've never had a blood test show any deficiencies. I don't have to go out of my way to find protein: dairy, eggs, and legumes are in enough dishes to make it easy. Plus, you don't need nearly as much protein as most people get.

Linus is often wrong about things, especially when they're outside his areas of expertise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Personally, I can't wait until we grow meat without having to kill animals who can feel pain, distress, etc, to get it. It won't come one day too soon.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think this a case of the 'tail wagging the dog'.

The author decided she wanted to be vegan for (possibly) superficial reasons.

She then found she couldn't be vegan for health reasons, but rather than take a step back and hold on to some of the principles she claimed to have (and become an ovo-lacto vegetarian; and see if that worked) .. cognitive dissonance came into play and she shifted her entire world-view around to suit her new choice of meat-based diet.

I imagine it must have been difficult to make the choice - but there's something about the subsequent rationalisation (and justification) that makes me feel uncomfortable.

<comment><USER41> Okay, maybe I'm being a bit harsh - but I did find the sea change in opinion a bit difficult to comprehend.

Some people might _need_ to eat animal derived products to function - but that should still be able to be compatible with a desire to ascribe to vegan ideals. When a person chooses involve politics in dietary choice, pragmatism should still be able to operate. Fundamentalism at any level is a bit wrong.

I don't see why the alternative - of becoming a fully fledged carnivore - <USER2> taken when there was an intermediate step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> That was kind of eye-opening.

Not because it shows how bullshit veganism is; I knew that already.

But because it reminds me of this friend I have, who is always complaining that she feels tired and weak. She goes to the doctor at least monthly, who diagnosis her with some new deficiency. She's always taking some new pill or food type.

I always thought she was a hypochondriac. But it just occurred to me that she might not be, because she's a vegetarian.

<comment><USER43> > because she's a vegetarian.

400 million Indians are vegetarian (milk and/or eggs): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_in_India> and I've been a vegetarian all my life. Last year I ran 50 miles non-stop in Grand Teton at 10,000ft elevation so I can say from personal experience that it is certainly possible to be healthy on a balanced vegetarian diet. I can't say the same about veganism though and it's not popular in India at all: [http://business.in.com/article/recliner/being-vegan-in- india...](http://business.in.com/article/recliner/being-vegan-in-india/4482/1)

<comment><USER44> while I agree with your base assumption (living without eating meat is not a health drama) pointing out to vegetarian indians is a fallacy that people should stop making.

We have no knowledge of related/correlated facts about those 400M people, so you can _for example_ follow the fallacy and say:

Life expectancy in india is lower than the world average and a lot lower than other "poor" countries where vegetarianism is not common, such as north korea, brazil or the palestinian territories. Thus vegetarianism leads to at a shorter life.

Proof by underanalyzed example is not a good one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I was glad to see the food miles metric[1] tangentially mentioned in this post (when she talked about importing exotic foods to keep herself healthy). This is a notion that, in my opinion, doesn't get enough attention: it doesn't matter how great the farming practices are if the food is then shipped three thousand miles to my door. (Yes, the food miles notion is imperfect, but it's at least a reasonable first-order approximation of the environmental impact of your food.)

Besides being fun, one of the best things about hunting is that you can directly observe the cost of transporting and processing food from animal to table. On top of that, the animal I hunt most frequently (feral hog) is a depredating pest in most of the southeastern US, doing substantial damage to farm and ranch land. Most of my hunting is done on land where cows are pastured, and I'm only happy to help reduce the population of hogs, protect the grazing lands, and get a little meat out of the deal.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_miles>

<comment><USER4> > it doesn't matter how great the farming practices are if the food is then > shipped three thousand miles to my door. (Yes, the food miles notion is > imperfect, but it's at least a reasonable first-order approximation of the > environmental impact of your food.)

I don't think so. Transportation accounts for only 11% of the environmental impact of food[1], so that's not a first-order approximation of the true cost at all. It is not only possible, but is in fact often likely, that shipping food three thousand miles from somewhere where it was efficient to produce has _less_ environmental impact than buying food with epsilon "food miles".

(Which means that the take-home message is: if you want to use food miles as a metric, you should generally only buy food that is grown as efficiently where you are as in the part of the world that grows it optimally.)

[1] <http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es702969f>

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Another data point: I've been vegan for five years and haven't noticed any related health problems and I have a friend who has been vegan for 30+ years without any related health problems.

Whatever your position on the subject, it's important to approach this matter with objectivity, logic, openness, sensitivity and lots of data. :)

</comment><comment><USER47>
      When the doctor first told me that I had numerous vitamin and mineral
      deficiencies, that I was almost anemic, and my B12 was so low she
      wanted to give me an injection immediately, I refused to believe her.

That's poor diet. Vegan or not. B12 is made by bacteria (not animals or plants) and industrial meat is full of it because we feed livestock with putrified waste foods while industrialized vegetables are unnaturally clean with chemicals. Organic vegetables have enough B12.

Also modern diet has anti-nutrients preventing absorption (like coffee and iron.)

The broad generalizations from reactionaries like political vegans and their anti-vegan counterparts disgust me. Both groups are completely uninformed and stubborn. For them it's about confirmation bias and group think.

<comment><USER48> Actually it's recommended for vegans to take suppliments of B12, you can read more about different aspects of vegan health at <http://www.veganhealth.org/>

<comment><USER47> Many foods like wheat flours are already fortified with B12 and iron. At least where I live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I do know, anecdotally, of someone who is literally unable to eat meat(causes digestive problems). A rare case, and I'm pretty sure ovo-lacto vegetarianism is still OK. For my part I'm definitely one of the meat-eating types, though I have my limits.

A bit more OT diet-related: As the months have grown colder I recently noticed a dangerous binge-type craving for sweet stuff. So I decided I would go low- carb and high-fat for a few days leading up to Thanksgiving just to see if it could change my appetite. It's made a very obvious difference. One daily Starbucks venti breve latte just obliterates the problem, though it's a bit hard to digest and tiresome to drink.

</comment><comment><USER50> > In the span of just a few days I received an outpouring of emails from > fellow 'vegan' bloggers, who told me in confidence that they weren't really > vegan 'behind the scenes'.

> I even received emails from two very prominent and well respected members of > the vegan AR community. One a published and much loved vegan cook book > author, the other a noted animal rights blogger, their emails detailed their > health struggles and eventual unpublicized return to eating meat.

This pisses me off the most, and what makes veganism look like a religion to me. You learn much more from being wrong, and talking about being wrong, than from standing by a point of view because it's popular.

</comment><comment><USER51> There's a (somewhat) rebuttal to this here: [http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/11/do-ex- vegans%E2%80%99-stor...](http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/11/do-ex- vegans%E2%80%99-stories-make-the-case-against-vegan-diets.html)

</comment><comment><USER52> "A Vegan Diet" is nothing more than a diet devoid of animal products or byproducts. A vegan diet could technically be nothing but potato chips. What did this woman eat? What did she eat exactly? What sort of workout did she do every day? How many green smoothies did she rely on for energy for her workouts? This has nothing to do with veganism, but everything to do with a very confused person who did not know how to feed herself.

</comment><comment><USER53> _I know that the lipid hypothesis is completely fallacious, these animal foods won't hurt me or cause me ill health in anyway, in fact, the vitamins and minerals they provide, along with the nutritious cholesterol and wholesome saturated fat, will restore my health._

Great to hear that she sees the forest from the trees.

</comment><comment><USER54> Considering how this submission got voted and how the discourse is going, this is a good example of how powerful the USA are.

I wonder how the discourse will continue now that it's dark night in the USA and the day is starting for Europe and India.

</comment><comment><USER9> _"You once were a ve-gone, now you will be-gone."_

\--Scott Pilgrim vs The World

<comment><USER55> Who knew iron pills broke vegan edge?

<comment><USER56> I'll tell you one thing iron supplements do and that is stop up your pipes >.<

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I simply can't understand why eating meat is wrong, when eating plant is not wrong. I feel they are same.

<comment><USER19> Is eating a human the same?

<comment><USER57> This is same question many of my veggie friends ask. I think no, it is not the same for humans. For other carnivores, it does not make any difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> It's normal to eat meat. People who don't, look kinda sick, you can tell.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it a good idea to leave school for a year to join a startup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm thinking about leaving school for a year and joining a startup. I technically will be enrolled as a full time student and for the purposes of school will be a practicum. It will probably be a year and then I'll go back, but open to staying longer. <comment><USER2> Other answers are good, so I will add something else to the mix.

Bear in mind that if you go with the startup, you will have an awkward decision of whether to leave after 1 year (giving up any further vesting in shares) or stay and perhaps give up on school or delay it further.

If they don't give you shares then don't bother. And if they do they will probably try to screw you on the terms so you walk away with nothing (or needing serious $$$ in savings that you can exercise your option or lose it) - search HN for all the gory examples of that. And even if you get all that right they'll probably fail anyway and you will end up with nothing. Not being negative just very realistic.

I agree with the statements about learning something. This can either be technically interesting or about the startup life and strategies so you can learn from their mistakes when you start your own.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My bad on lack of detail.

-Pay is most likely $70K. -Job is in SF. -I don't get school credit for this. -Will push my graduation date back either a semester or two semesters depending on how many credits I want to do per semester. -College Fund (Will graduate with no debt)

<comment><USER3> Based on the pay alone and the location I would say this is NOT a good deal for you unless your getting housing thrown in for 70k... after taxes and rent, your going to have very little money for the experience. Even if you were living at home, 70k would not be such a great offer.

The reality is your going to get a year of experience but I don't think that is going to do a lot for your resume, and your putting off graduating a year.

As for getting the experience, well theres a ton of need in the open source world. If I were looking at two resumes where they were fresh out of school I'm going to look longer at your github account than the year you do at this job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given the essentially complete lack of context I don't see how this is even remotely answerable... so "maybe".

</comment><comment><USER5> Just stay in school. The terms aren't that great, and there will always be another startup. Getting your degree will facilitate finding other opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER6> You have to answer one question -- will you learn a lot? Will you learn more at the startup or at university? Do you have other work experience / internships where you can graduate and get a job? If you don't, take the job. If you have a good resume, solid experience performing whatever craft you're doing, then it's probably best to stay in school!

</comment><comment><USER3> One last thing, there is a law in CA that even if your a salaried employee, in computer programing field, they are liable for overtime unless you make more than a certain amount.

That number was something like 83k the last time I checked. 70k is not 83k... if it isn't over the exemption minimum your dealing with a company that has NO idea what its doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. What is the pay like (I'll be frank, this matters)

2\. How far/remote is it from school? same city/town? someplace else?

3\. Are you sure your going to go back?

4\. Will you getting credit for this, and if so how will it impact your graduation date?

5\. How are you paying for school now?

</comment><comment><USER7> If you have to ask, no.</comment>


Despite big efforts, the US is still a major consumer of illegal elephant ivory - <AUTHOR> http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-22/despite-big-efforts-us-still-major-consumer-illegal-elephant-ivory

<comment><USER2> I always wish researchers would figure out how to make an indistinguishable synthetic ivory and have the government subsidize to the point where we could flood the market with it. If ivory were as easy to come by as plastic, nobody would bother going after elephants for it.

<comment><USER3> There are some companies working on synthetic rhino horn, like Rhinoceros Horn LLC and Pembient. But I think there are concerns that it will just increase demand for the real thing.

I'm not sure how to handle it. Maybe marketing campaigns to make consumption of ivory and rhino horn extremely uncool.</comment></comment>


How the new open-source typeface used by GitHub and Mozilla came to be - <AUTHOR> https://www.figma.com/blog/the-birth-of-inter/ <comment><USER2> Link to the font: [https://rsms.me/inter/](https://rsms.me/inter/)

I am not one who gets worked up over typefaces so my short take is "yet another san-serif font" but the discussion about why he chose to do things in certain ways was useful for me in appreciating how this font differs from other, similar offerings.

<comment><USER3> I am at once awed by the level of work that goes into a really good typeface, and also astounded that this still seems to be a difficult sort of terrain that people are not just willing, but positively excited to summit. Why go to the trouble when your font is only going to be seen by a small number of people and used by even less? Are you really having any ideas that haven't been had already in plenty of other fonts? Will your extra 0.001% tweak to readability make life easier for 0.001% of people that read something written in it?

<comment><USER4> There are font nerds just like there are nerds for a million other things. Their passion is fonts, so yes, they will spend that amount of time on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most it resembles is the San Francisco font (Apple's default system font) which itself was inspired from Helvetica and DIN.

Personally I liked this font much better than the other opensource alternatives, especially with the number of weights it offered. I am glad it's gotten popular.

<comment><USER6> Did Apple reuse the San Francisco font name? Man, they really aren't in touch with their roots.

The original San Francisco was designed by Susan Kare. You can see it here. [1]

This makes me feel old.

1\. [https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_...](https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp- cms/uploads/2019/06/i-2-90359757-apple-just-resurrected-an-original-mac-font- for-anyone-to-download.jpg)

<comment><USER7> This comes up every time San Francisco is mentioned...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one that wishes the article about the font "made for screens" went into more detail about what makes this specific font better for screens?

<comment><USER9> Verdana is a great example of a font designed for low-resolution screens[1].

What's interesting is that Ikea chose to use Verdana for many of their print & in-store display material[2]. To me it looks a bit blocky and unfinished, which actually is a not a bad look for Ikea.

[1] [https://www.moma.org/collection/works/139312](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/139312)

[2] [https://www.google.com/search?q=ikea+verdana&rlz=1CDGOYI_enG...](https://www.google.com/search?q=ikea+verdana&rlz=1CDGOYI_enGB753GB753&oq=ikea+&aqs=chrome.2.69i59l3j69i65l3.3950j0j4&hl=en- GB&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=6GfxrxXVJlsrRM):

<comment><USER10> According to a font designer that was commissioned to design a custom font for IKEA, they decided to go with Verdana after all due to bad webfont support at the time. (They wanted to be consistent online and in-store.)

With that said, I share your opinion on Verdana and that can definitely have played a role in their decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Roboto is installed default on many systems, specially on phones. The speed factor to me is key. That's why I avoid using webfonts. I use both San Francisco for those on Mac and iOS and Roboto for the rest of the mortals, including other san-serifs.

<comment><USER12> One system (Android), not many.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but accounts my 65% of visits. I use other system fonts as a fallback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > With a typeface, it's just this black box as to who is using some of the > stuff, then you have no way of reaching back. You're completely reliant on > whoever makes use of it tells you about it, which probably no one does, > right?

I've seen multiple websites (What The Font being one of them) which analyses a picture with text. They then try to guess the font being used. If you could automate this process, you might be able to scrape content and figure out who's using your typeface. I guess that is mostly interesting for a commercial typeface looking for software piracy, though.

<comment> mark-r What The Font does an amazing job sometimes, but it's not infallible. I'd say it misses more often than it hits.

Web crawling seems like a great idea, but probably not worth it just to get a list of customers. And it will never tell you who's using it in their app, or for signage.

<comment><USER13> What The Font was an example. I used multiple tools to find an obscure font. It was my first time trying to search for 2 fonts whilst I only had logo where the 2 fonts were used. One was relatively easy, the other one not. It cost me some time because like you say not every tool is as good as you'd expect it to be, but I did succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > How do you define 'core set of glyphs'? There are more than 150 different > written scripts in the world — at least those that are well-recognized. Only > a small portion of them are Latin-based ... Then, there's the Greek alphabet > which is similar to Latin as well as Cyrillic. Then we have Arabic and > Hangul

> Within the first year, before making it open source, I had something that > covered the 200 most common Latin characters.

Seems like most of the time spent on Inter was the result of the creator not properly limiting his scope. Later he even talks about how the Cyrillic characters in his font seem completely wrong to actual users of Cyrillic because he can't read Cyrillic. As someone who deals with multiple different scripts on my computer, I always hated the fonts that try to set a uniform style for every script when many of the designers clearly had no idea how many of these scripts worked. It really only makes sense to try to support every script for fallback fonts like Unifont. Rarely do typographic concepts translate well between scripts. If you want an example, install the CJK font "Hana Mincho" and type some English text in it: It looks atrocious.

</comment><comment><USER15> Took me a bit to realize that this is the same font as "Inter UI" (which I installed right at the end of 2018). It was apparently renamed to just Inter in February this year.

The changelog provided on Github gives some interesting insight into development of this font [https://github.com/rsms/inter/releases](https://github.com/rsms/inter/releases) Not only have I found it rare to see a font with active development like this, but it's also exciting seeing changelogs that are this detailed.

</comment><comment><USER16> What's the best way to use web fonts on a site that needs to be internationalized.

I realize that not all web fonts support all languages but picking between the best ones and then supporting all the languages seems like a pain.

<comment><USER17> Google's Noto fonts[0][1] will give you good coverage. You should still do some basic smoke testing when launching a new language for your site though.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noto_fonts](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noto_fonts)

[1] [https://www.google.com/get/noto/](https://www.google.com/get/noto/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This font reminds me a lot of "Rail Alphabet" which is a font designed by British Rail in the 60s which was used to railway signs and also in hospitals. Newer fonts are starting to replace it, but there is still a lot of it around if you know where to look.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is it just me or does Inter look like a clone of Helvetica?

<comment><USER19> It started as a clone of Roboto, which in turn started as a clone of Helvetica (sort of), so that's not really a surprising reaction. Fonts are weird like that.

<comment><USER20> It's the slightly condensed Roboto look but I'd say it looks a lot more like San Francisco with fewer things parallel to the baseline (not as bad as Arial vs Helvetica, but noticeable).</comment></comment></comment>