A Commercial Path to Fusion - <AUTHOR> https://physicsworld.com/a/a-commercial-path-to-fusion/ <comment><USER3> This is R&D - not a commercial path.

These types of fusion projects are trying to prove the most basic piece of the puzzle: net energy generation. And it is a big problem, even for Commonwealth. I've heard that the magnets are underperforming by about a factor of 2 - <USER2> that's 4 years into the project.

But commercialization is a lot more than just proving that the concept is physically possible. It was proven possible that man could walk on the moon, but it's not a commercial activity 50 years in. Commercialization for nuclear energy systems means global deployment, mass manufacturing, lack of proliferation risk, extreme safety, etc. Fusion systems like Commonwealth's do not meet any of these criteria. They are constantly generating radioactive waste because they have to breed their fuel and reprocess it on site.

To commercialize, you have to be able to deploy the technology in a significantly better way than traditional fission. These large fusion prototypes ($65B for ITER and $5B for Commonwealth based on their 2015 white paper, so probably 2-4x larger now) exacerbate traditional nuclear's cost problems because they are construction projects that will last decades. Viable nuclear solutions will be factory manufactured rather than constructed.

For comments from MIT dissenter in 80s that stand true today: [http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The- Trou...](http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trouble-With- Fusion_MIT_Tech_Review_1983.pdf)

For a review of fusion problems: [https://thebulletin.org/2018/02/iter-is-a- showcase-for-the-d...](https://thebulletin.org/2018/02/iter-is-a-showcase-for- the-drawbacks-of-fusion-energy/)

<comment><USER4> If Apollo 11 had found oil on the moon, we would have a few thousand people living there already. There is just nothing profitable in going to the moon.

With fusion the opposite is true: we know energy is precious, and we know its market price. Just prove it can be done and commercialization will happen very quickly.

<comment><USER5> > If Apollo 11 had found oil on the moon, we would have a few thousand people > living there already.

You're forgetting the most important piece of information in the economy: price.

Since oil produced on Earth is cheap, compared with hauling it back from the Moon, we don't get any from the Moon.

Now, if we had found some exotic energy source that didn't exist on Earth at all, that would be a different story.

<comment><USER6> > Now, if we had found some exotic energy source that didn't exist on Earth at > all, that would be a different story.

Which does exist, btw: helium-3 which is deposited by the solar wind and captured in cold traps on the lunar poles. It doesn't exist on Earth in any quantity, except artificially produced in nuclear laboratories. He3 fusion is easier to achieve and less dangerous to operate.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like an excellent reason to go to the Moon :-)

<comment><USER7> Unlikely:

"The helium-3 incantation" \- [http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1)

tl;dr the popularity of mine-the-moon-for-he3 meme is due to wishful thinking about sustainable moon colonies, and there's no analysis that suggests it's even remotely practical to do.

<comment><USER6> That article is bogus. Let's take the outline points:

"There are no fusion reactors."

Well, duh. Fusion power isn't _that_ far off though. Even Lockheed has a self- funded fusion power program being run out of Skunkworks, which isn't known for ivory-tower boondoggles. Even so, part of the point is that He3 fusion is different from D-T fusion, which brings us to...

"Helium-3 fusion is even more difficult than regular fusion."

No, He3 fusion ignition temperatures are higher than D-T fusion. But in every other way aneutronic fusion reactors are easier to build and maintain than neutron-generating D-T. They can be smaller, lighter, generate less radioactive waste, permit more efficient direct electrical current generation, and require simpler electrostatic containment than Tokamak-like designs. You can literally build one in your garage.

"Helium-3 may be very difficult to locate and mine on the Moon"

This was invalidated by LRO's data on the cold traps in permanently shadowed craters on the Moon (and MESSENGER's data on Mercury), which were then validated by simulations of the Moon's exosphere and interaction with the solar wind. The regolith in these craters is as much 40% volatiles by weight, of which a economically extractable fraction is He3 from the solar wind.

<comment><USER8> The huge point against lunar 3He, even ignoring that it's two orders of magnitude less reactive than DT, is the difficulty of extracting it on the moon.

3He occurs in regolith in concentrations measured in the ppb. Even with beneficiation of fine fractions and efficient recycling of heat from the thermal extraction step, the energy requires are large, a significant fraction of the energy the 3He would produce when fused.

So to power the terrestrial economy with 3He, you need to put a significant fraction of the terrestrial energy output on the moon to get the 3He. Power plants on the moon will be much more expensive than on Earth (because labor, materials, and supply chains will be more expensive there, even with cheap space transport), so this is unlikely to pencil out.

<comment><USER6> Your information about the composition of the moon is 30 years out of date. He3 would be mined from the cold traps in permanently shadowed craters at the north and south poles of the moon. There it exists in extremely high concentrations, alongside other useful volatiles that together make up 40% of the surface material by weight.

"Refining" is a process as simple as shoveling it into a pressure container, heating it, and then letting dissipatively cool back to ambient temperature, collecting the other volatiles as they condense out. What's left is a mix of inert gasses, including He3.

<comment><USER8> There is no data on 3He at the poles. The area there is small anyway.

The concentration of 3He on the moon in general is such that simply heating regolith without heat recycling and separation of fines would use more energy than the 3He would yield if fused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For a breakdown of the reasoning behind the project, if you haven't already seen it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk)

<comment><USER10> For a layman this was incredibly interesting. The speaker explains the concepts very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For anyone interested in learning more about the history of fusion power research I would recommend the book: A Piece of the Sun: The Quest for Fusion Energy

I found it informative, and a really easy read to get a good overview of the history of the research.

<comment><USER12> Agreed this a great history about how the standard designs came about, particularly the two big ones historically: Tokamak (Soviet approach, mentioned in this article) and Stellarator (US/Princeton approach). Then later in the 1970s ICE using lasers (inertial confinement fusion) which is the other dominant form in modern attempts since Stellarator hasn't worked out.

Reads a bit like those Manhattan Project books.

[https://www.amazon.com/Piece-Sun-Quest-Fusion- Energy/dp/B00D...](https://www.amazon.com/Piece-Sun-Quest-Fusion- Energy/dp/B00DRG3WH2/)

<comment><USER13> Approx four or five years ago I had an accidental/random conversation with one of the prominent researchers at the Princeton facility (PPPL). Long to short, he said, "We're getting there. The more funding we have, the sooner we'll get there. But yeah, we're really close."

Mind you, that's what any research scientist would say. But everything I've seen and read since tells me he's was being honest and has been accurate. I hope he's right.

[https://www.pppl.gov/](https://www.pppl.gov/)

<comment><USER4> That's really one of my dream: that fusion ends up being up in the corner and suddenly the energy crisis is over.

<comment><USER13> I too will be happy to see the clean energy problem solved. On the other hand, if big oil - and the countries that depend on it - implodes then we have a new problem. That's not pretty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The plasma needs to be >=200 million kelvin, the superconductor that contains it doesn't work if its not <=20 kelvin. No wonder this is an engineering nightmare!

I wonder if gradients that extreme exist in nature.

<comment><USER15> I won't say it's not challenging, but bear in mind that while the plasma is at high temperature, it has very low density. The atoms are moving really fast but there aren't many of them. Consequently the amount of _heat_ is comparable to fossil plants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How would a commercial venture plan to recoup their investment cost when (if) they finally reach a viable reactor design?

If an American/European company came out with a working reactor, would India and China pay for the technology, or would they put hundreds of billions into developing their own? What about the opposite scenario? Even a tiny peek at the design would shave off a large portion of the cutting edge investment. On the other hand, fusion could completely alter the course of climate change, perhaps it's cheaper in the long run to just give out the technology.

<comment><USER17> Disney manages to get them to pay for movies enough of the time. Reactors are more difficult to bootleg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Omega Tau podcast had some very interesting discussions about various improvements needed for fusions reactors to hit parity in their Wendelstein 7x episode. Some discussions I think come out all the more because the 7x was targeted to plasma research so many practical aspects are discussed outside the normal fusion discussion that hits regular science media.

[https://omegataupodcast.net/312-the- wendelstein-7-x-fusion-e...](https://omegataupodcast.net/312-the- wendelstein-7-x-fusion-experiment/)

</comment><comment><USER19> _The SPARC project's first task, over the next few years, will be to build and test a full-scale prototype HTS fusion magnet. ... one of the primary missions of the prototype HTS coil will be to investigate our ability to detect and mitigate a "quench" event, which is a sudden loss of superconductivity._

Good for a decade of funding and theses before having to actually work on fusion.

This is not a "commercial path to fusion". This is superconducting magnet R&D.

</comment><comment><USER20> With renewables getting better every day, at what point will they make fusion reactors irrelevant?

<comment><AUTHOR> Saul Griffith has an old talk entitled "Climate Change Recalculated." The gist is that he converts everyday energy consumption into averaged watts over a day, and then looks at the energy area density of renewables. The resulting picture is rather daunting. If we go 100% renewable--If we even could!--all of our lifestyles would be radically curtailed, and this is after a construction binge of enormous scale.

We absolutely need fission and/or fusion. Of this there is no doubt.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's bullshit. Energy density of renewables doesn't preclude current lifestyles. The Earth is constantly hit by 100,000 TW of sunlight, and the energy collected doesn't have to be used near where the collectors are.

<comment><USER21> Density in this case referring to "kW per acre of solar panels", and the #s come out to something like covering all of Australia with solar panels, if I remember correctly.

<comment><USER20> > and the #s come out to something like covering all of Australia with solar > panels, if I remember correctly

You do not remember correctly. Estimates seem to vary, but Musk reckons 100 miles by 100 miles for America[0] which I make as 0.003% of Australia. It's a large (if imaginary) place.

[0] [https://futurism.com/elon-musk-tells-national-governors- asso...](https://futurism.com/elon-musk-tells-national-governors-association- how-we-could-power-the-u-s-with-solar)

<comment><AUTHOR> GP remembers correctly. From [http://longnow.org/seminars/02009/jan/16/climate-change- reca...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02009/jan/16/climate-change- recalculated/) :

> In other words, the land area dedicated to renewable energy ("Renewistan") > would occupy a space about the size of Australia to keep the carbon dioxide > level at 450 ppm. To get to Hanson's goal of 350 ppm of carbon dioxide, > fossil fuel burning would have to be cut to ZERO, which means another 3 > terawatts would have to come from renewables, expanding the size of > Renewistan further by 26 percent.

<comment><USER8> That confuses primary energy with zero-entropy energy (work). One does not replace a gigajoule of coal with a gigajoule of electrical energy. It also is talking about biomass, which is very land inefficient.

So, basically, the source you are pointing to is obviously flawed and should be ignored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> FWIW, Dr. Robert Bussard claimed in 2006 that the inertial electrostatic confinement fusor could be developed for ~$200M IIRC

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

"Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really)" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6z1vP4Eo8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6z1vP4Eo8)

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't believe that for a moment, and Google probably didn't either.

It's interesting how the internet enables wishful thinking like this. You'd have thought the dearth of peer reviewed papers about Polywell would have been a clue, but true believers admit no impediment to their belief.

There are good theoretical reasons to believe IEC fusion cannot work on advanced fuels, reasons that HAVE appeared in the peer reviewed literature.

<comment><USER22> Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Would it be so terrible to do a little more research? If only to honor Dr Bussard's (RIP) memory? Google's not hurting for cash right now?

"When a physicist tells you something is possible you should believe him, when a physicist tells you something is impossible you should doubt him."

I forget who said that, but it holds. Lots of things had "good theoretical reasons" for not working until someone figured out how. Planes? Visiting the Moon?

<comment><USER8> Absence of evidence is evidence of shenanigans.

If someone is making a claim, especially a remarkable claim, it is their responsibility to provide evidence for their claim. If they cannot, or if their evidence is such that it cannot pass peer review, something stinks, and one should be highly skeptical.

This is not a case of "no one has shown X, therefore X should be dismissed". It's "P has claimed X, but has not shown evidence to justify their claim, therefore their claim should not be believed." If someone holds a position, presumably they had a good reason to do that, and one can ask for that reasoning and evidence (and ask that that reasoning and evidence be verified by peer review.)

<comment><USER22> Dude, Dr. Bussard died not long after the video I linked to, so maybe you don't realize you're kind of disparaging a man who's no longer here to defend himself.

In any event, I didn't mean to upset you. I'm not a physicist, nor some sort of "true believer", I just think Dr. Bussard's ideas deserve more research before we can rule them out so definitively. Maybe I'm a gullible dufus. On the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> SPARC is an HTS experiment, showing the viability of compact Q>1 using the technology, showing you don't have to be ITER -size to have successful fusion. It doesn't claim to be and won't be much more than that. An important step, nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER24> What I find particularly troubling about the design of tokamak reactors is that on one hand you have magnets that need to be cooled to -250C or whatever the "high" temperature is nowadays and in the middle of it you have plasma that will leak thermal radiation in any way possible. The magnets themselves will heat up from running large electric currents through them. This just feels like a recipe for a disaster - if things suddenly stop working, due to heat or otherwise you have a very hot, radioactive plasma trying to equalise its energy with the outer world...

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, there's kind of a chain of intuitions here that are off by up to orders of magnitude. First, YBCO has a critical temperature of 93K, not 23K or so as you've suggested (albeit not as a value for YBCO). In other words, there have been advances in high temperature superconductors. Second, the magnets will not heat up from having large currents running through them. This is the point of superconductors. So, this estimate of resistivity is high by several orders of magnitude. Third, any estimate of the total energy of the hot plasma that gets us anywhere near verbiage hinting at explosions is too high by several orders of magnitude. You could typically extinguish a burning plasma by blowing gently on it. Finally, the thermal gradients aren't nearly so dire as, you know, 200e6K _immediately_ next to 90K. There is typically over a meter of, in order: near-vacuum; inner wall; flowing lithium blanket; outer wall; and liquid nitrogen or other cryogenic coolant, all between the plasma and the magnets.

This is the farthest thing from a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER25> Just want to point out that specific critical temperature varies with magnetic field. The article mentions 12T and 20K so presumably that is within some reasonable safety margin of the limit for YBCO at that field strength.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Don't fusion reactors have problems with vessel degradation from fast neutrons turning the reactors themselves into radioactive waste?

LFTR is what fusion should have been, and should have gotten equivalent funding. Plentiful fuel (thorium), can "burn" current nuclear waste as fuel, meltdown safe, etc etc etc. And they can scale down to pretty small sizes, per another commenter's "construction" vs "factory production" comment.

The only interesting fusion idea I've seen is antimatter catalyze fusion rockets for space travel.

Wind/Solar/Storage have won. This would be wasted money.

<comment><USER27> If they have won why do they not power most of the grid?

<comment><USER28> Inertia. If I remember right, if you look at how the distribution of new power sources rather than existing ones, more than half of new power is renewable.</comment></comment></comment>


Do goofy names mean we're in a bubble? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119189215196852951.html

<comment><USER2> No it's just a trend. Along with e-this, i-that and trying to fit @ into your companies name to make it sound technical.

Plus the lack of short urls these days.

</comment><comment><USER3> No. It mean that all the '.com' with generic names are taken.</comment>


Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories? - <AUTHOR> Hi!
I somehow stumbled upon a previous 2011 thread [^1]. It was fascinating and quite inspiring. It also got me wondering, considering the mobile apps gold rush seems over, and SaaS has exploded. What new stories do you have to tell ?
To quote the original poster, "Can you share some stories/links even though it has been shared before on an unrelated thread?"
Have a great day everyone! <comment><USER2> There was a thread with 600 comments 3 months ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332072)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, nice! Don't know how I missed it. Thank you!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: CES Tips and tricks for a hardware startup? – No stand, invited to speak - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> * prepare list with separated categories of importance for followups - and write it down immediately after talk, so you do not loose a details

* if you do not have stand, try to share your location or communicate where you will be at what time ... via twitter?

* hydrate :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ask questions of people you meet. You're a start up. By definition you are not an expert in your customer needs. Use the chance to ask contacts you meet for help (connections, advice, etc)</comment>


The mathematics of wheel reinvention - <AUTHOR> https://ilaba.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/the-mathematics-of-wheel-reinvention/ <comment><USER2> Most of mathematics seems to be successfully resisting disruption because there's just not that much money there. Still, it is interesting to see other fields also wrestle with new social affordances.</comment>


Why Children Aren't Behaving and What We Can Do About It - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/02/611082566/why-children-arent-behaving-and-what-you-can-do-about-it <comment><USER2> From the article:

"Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised or lightly supervised. They were able to resolve disputes, which they had a strong motivation to because they wanted to keep playing. They also planned their time and managed their games. They had a lot of autonomy, which also feeds self-esteem and mental health."

Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time. Now they are empty. There are quite a few kids in my neighborhood, but the only time you see them is when they get off the school bus. None of them roam the neighborhood or anywhere. There is a huge park in my neighborhood, too. It's always empty. I never see packs of kids walking on the sidewalks going to the theater or to corner stores. School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session.

When I was growing up from age 6, my mom would tell me to be home by dinner, and I'd spend all day running around with friends or adventuring by myself. This was the norm for every kid I grew up with.

<comment><USER3> And this overprotection of children is now beginning to stretch into their college years too: [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/opinion/nature- student...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/opinion/nature-students- risk.html)

<comment><USER4> I like that article. I have had concussions, broken bones and a lot of other injuries in my youth, probably almost died a few times. I wouldn't want to miss any of them. I find it sad that a lot of today's parents try avoid any kind of physical displeasure for their kinds while at the same time putting a lot of psychological displeasure on them in the form of school and job anxiety.

<comment><USER5> I have two toddlers and I've signed (or plan to sign) them up for two things: swim lessons & tumbling.

* I don't care/want them to be Olympic swimmers but if they fall in a pool or river, I want them to be able to tread water and get out without panicking.

* Despite everything I say and do, they're going to get on the roof. I know, I did. ;) So when they fall, I want them to fall the best way possible.

As a parent, I don't see my job to protect them from _all_ consequences but to prevent and/or prepare them for the worst.

<comment><USER6> I'm from New Zealand, and I'm shocked at how bad some people are at swimming. I'd understand somebody in Kansas or the middle of Australia being bad at swimming, but New Zealand is an island nation, 75% of the population lives within 10 km (6 miles) of the sea.

A significant proportion of people couldn't swim 250 m or tread water for 10 minutes.

<comment><USER7> The first time I went to the Caribbean, I was utterly flummoxed to find out many of the locals couldn't swim at all.

I've known people who volunteered to go to various islands to teach basic swimming skills who also haven't been able to quite figure out why either.

[https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a- difference/2017/082...](https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a- difference/2017/0824/Most-Grenadians-don-t-know-how-to-swim.-But-one-woman-is- changing-that)

[https://alexischateau.com/2016/11/08/10-things-you- probably-...](https://alexischateau.com/2016/11/08/10-things-you-probably- didnt-know-about-jamaica/)

<comment><USER6> I have a friend who worked as a diving instructor on the Gili Islands in Indonesia for a few months. He said that a lot of the local guys who would drive the boats couldn't swim, they also obviously didn't wear life jackets.

It just seems bizarre to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a father of three elementary school kiddos, here's my anecdotal-evidenced perspective:

I see a lot of other children who are experiencing a simultaneous excess and deficit of parental authority. Their parents rarely or never correct behavior that is disrespectful, self centered, or too demanding. From my point of view, they should be saying "No" much more often - firmly and respectfully.

At the same time, the kids are forced into endless regulated, supervised activities and given little or no free time. Or what free time they have is spent on YouTube. Seems to result in kids who are rude, fragile, and ignorant of normal human interaction.

<comment><USER9> I am the father of 4 kids with the youngest starting kindergarten in the fall. My anecdotal evidence is exactly the same. I'd like to add though that many parents I've seen say "No" but then completely fail to follow through; either giving in after repeated requests _or_ failing to provide any consequence for disobedience[1]

If a few more HNers can chime in, we'll have enough anecdotes to call it "data!"

1: This is not new with the current generation either. My sister and I used to complain to our parents that they were too strict, so they talked to my friends parents and told us "Your friends' families have almost exactly the same rules as us!" And our response was "But they don't get into trouble when they break the rules!"

<comment><USER10> In my opinion, schools have a discipline problem in that schools (teachers) tolerate/ignore disrespect from students toward their teachers and the learning environment yet at the same time except discipline outside of school hours, in the form of excessive homework. The net effect is that schools are a poor environment for learning or constructive socializing, and time at home is spent on homework which severely cuts into social activities and free-play.

<comment><USER9> This is definitely a problem; after observing several classrooms in a few schools I noticed a few things:

1\. Some schools have a systematic problem of this; if the administration is not willing to back up the teachers, the teachers have limited options.

2\. Some teachers have difficulty maintaining discipline even when the administration is supportive.

3\. I do my best to avoid schools like #1, and with #2 usually means that there will be approximately zero consequence to the child not doing homework. With 4 kids I have better things to do with my time than policing homework, so I set aside an hour a night as "study time." when my kids have figured out they have a #2 teacher, they spend the time reading a book. The lack of homework is not reflected in their grades, and the only consequence is I get called a bad parent 4 times at the parent/teacher conference, which hurts my feelings not at all.

Finally a funny little anecdote involving one of my kids and a teacher who had _zero_ control of the classroom:

My daughter came home from school on Friday and was obviously upset. After a bit of cajoling she said she was sad because "My teacher said that if I kept on doing [Obnoxious Behavior] I would get detention, but I've been doing it all week and I still haven't gotten detention. What do I have to do to get detention?"

<comment><USER11> This feels weird. Why don't you as a parent enforce homework (or decent behavior) ? There's nothing to be proud of in my opinion; and maybe it's not reflected in grades yet but learning comes through repetition, without exception. Missing out on practice is a big deal for proficiency (and it's not a bad habit to pick up either). Honestly I have very little sympathy for parents that thinks its ok to disrespect teachers _because they didn 't earn it themselves_ (or so it sounds).

<comment><USER9> I will help the teacher enforce homework, but I'm not going to do it alone. If a kid doesn't want to do it, _and_ the person assigning it doesn't care if they do it, my options are limited.

I don't think it's okay to disrespect teachers, but if the teacher's approach to getting respect is by making threats that they never intend to follow through on, then they are undermining themselves. There are limits on what I can do at 3pm if the majority of my child's peers are openly disrespecting the teacher for the previous 7 hours straight with zero consequence.

I will absolutely support the teacher in any efforts they make, but when the teacher makes no effort, there is nothing for me to support.

<comment><USER11> >If a kid doesn't want to do it,

How can this even be an argument.

>and the person assigning it doesn't care if they do it

They do obviously since you have negative feedback from the teachers about undone homework. Also as a parent shouldn't you care if they do it ?

>I don't think it's okay to disrespect teachers

Then why can she be obnoxious in class, complain about it at home and still nothing happens ?

Do you meet regularily with the teachers ? Or communicate with them about how you wished they would enforce punitions ? Or at the very least tell them how you learned about how your child is doing X (why do you even learn it from her, isn't there supposed to be feedback every trimester or such ?) which sucks, is unappropriate and which you've discussed with her, etc...

<comment><USER9> >> If a kid doesn't want to do it,

> How can this even be an argument.

I mentioned it because if my child wants to do their homework then all problems go away. The ultimate goal _is_ that my child will want to do their homework; I'm obviously not going to monitor their homework once they are in college.

>> and the person assigning it doesn't care if they do it

> They do obviously since you have negative feedback from the teachers about > undone homework.

Let me tell you an analogous story from my work: Another engineer tells me they have an urgent problem they need solved. Every time they ask me about it they stress how urgent it is. However, when I ask for clarification or more information, it takes them several work days, and sometimes several reminders for them to get back to me. I ran into them a few weeks after the issue was resolved and asked them how it went. They respond that they haven't done any testing of it yet.

Was the problem really urgent for them? After all, they did tell me many times how urgent it was.

> Also as a parent shouldn't you care if they do it?

I want my child to be successful. Doing homework is a very important part of that. However, as I said earlier the goal is that when they are older they will choose to do that. I do not believe that standing behind my child for 3 hours a night 5 days a week making sure they stay on-task is an effective way of achieving that goal (not to mention that with 4 children it would take up 6 hours each of my time and my wife's time).

My parents were incredibly strict about homework. The day I left the house I stopped doing homework and I nearly flunked out of college. My wife's parents were far less strict about homework and she graduated college in 3 years.

It seems to be working with my kids too. My oldest is a 5th grader and recently had a research paper due. She gathered her materials and then procrastinated. She was obviously embarrassed when she asked to stay up late to work on it, which to me is a sign that she understands it's her responsibility to get it done.

>> I don't think it's okay to disrespect teachers

> Then why can she be obnoxious in class, complain about it at home and still > nothing happens?

I never said nothing happens. In this specific case I had her collate worksheets for the teacher before school one morning. I find it absurd that I had to be the one to correct a behavior that had been going on in the classroom for 5 days.

> Do you meet regularily with the teachers?

In general 4 times a year (there's a quarter system here). For this specific case, I volunteered in the classroom for an hour a week, so I saw the teacher a lot (it's also how I know that she had zero control over the classroom). The teacher never informed me of my daughter's behavior, nor the threat of detention.

> Or communicate with them about how you wished they would enforce punitions?

Yes. Some listen, others ignore me (My wife has been told she's wrong, perhaps a bit of casual sexism there, but I never been contradicted, just ignored by the teachers that tell my wife she's wrong).

> Or at the very least tell them how you learned about how your child is doing > X (why do you even learn it from her, isn't there supposed to be feedback > every trimester or such ?) which sucks, is unappropriate and which you've > discussed with her, etc...

Yes, I've done all these things (and it's quarters rather than trimesters where I live).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's strange considering we've been told that kids today are the best behaved.

"Today's teenagers are the best-behaved generation on record"

[https://www.vox.com/2014/5/25/5748178/todays-teenagers- are-t...](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/25/5748178/todays-teenagers-are-the-best- behaved-generation-on-record)

"Today's Teens Better Behaved Than Their Parents"

[https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/the-kids-are- more-...](https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/the-kids-are-more-than- all-right/)

"Wonkblog Today's teens are way better behaved than you were"

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/13/today...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/13/todays- teens-are-way-better-behaved-than-you-were)

But it's summer ( notoriously slow news season ) and what better to sell than fear to parents. The other parental fear piece within the last 24 hours.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17214841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17214841)

<comment><USER13> The definition of "behaved" in use in those articles has to do with drug use and unprotected sex.

You don't do drugs and have unprotected sex if you stay home all day. The lack of opportunity to misbehave doesn't make you more "behaved".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a parent of two, and step-parent to two, between the ages 5 -11. I think a lot about this, and one of the biggest issues I see (besides the many valid points I feel the article raised) is that with the rise of Internet video, we are showing kids to kids more often, if that makes sense.

I grew up in the 80's, and cartoons were most of the media I consumed. You usually saw anthropomorphical characters depicting behaviors. When you did see live action, it was usually centered more around adults teaching or mentoring the kids (or Muppets), and when kids did appear, they were polite unless being used to illustrate bad behavior.

Today, with so much self-published content, kids are seeing other kids, often acting in outrageous ways to get views, likes, followers, and fans. When media became decentralized, I think we lost a powerful cultural platform for shared experience and norms, and it is starting to show.

<comment><USER15> I will disagree with the TV thing, but I think isolation and very strict control over their schedule isn't helping. For example my 3.5 year old wanted to play in our backyard, I said no because we have no fence and he could wander away plus I found some garden snakes last week and didn't want him alone down there. However part of me felt bad for him because he wanted to be outside in the grass and I was too worried to let him do it.

<comment><USER14> Do you not trust your child to not wander away if you said something like, "Yes, go play, but be careful, and remember not to go past the tree (or whatever)"?

Do you let your son ride in cars? That seems way more dangerous than letting him play in his backyard.

I don't know you, and there's all kinds of ways to parent, but it feels like you may have some unhealthy anxiety surrounding your child's safety if this is your standard reaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > certified parent educator

There doesn't seem to be any legitimacy to that claim. Meaning there are places that claim they can certify you, but they themselves have no real legitimacy (e.g. no specific educational track, just a broad philosophy you agree to adhere to).

The article is worth reading, but it is more accurate to describe the author as a journalist with three kids, they have no specific qualifications.

<comment><USER17> Bingo! This is hocus pocus lifestyle bullshit. I live with a psychologist and child behavior is something that has been studied extensively. There are well researched techniques to help a child behave and nothing in that article made me believe the author had a clue about them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _> far more children today struggle to manage their behavior [than in the past few decades]._

What evidence does the book cite to support this premise?

Also, a plea: let's please answer this question before everybody posts their personal hot takes on children and parenting.

<comment><USER19> Amount of psychiatric drugs stuffed down their mouths as a hotfix.

<comment><USER19> Oh, you said the book - apologies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a father of three here is what keeps me from just sending my kids out to play:

Other parents.

Other parents see your kids alone and freak the fuck out. Some will call the police, and then threaten you that they will call CPS/DPS if they need to and report neglect.

In fact I was out with the kids on their bikes the other day and they were a bit ahead of me when they stopped safely at a crosswalk to wait for me. A woman pulled up and started chastising them for being unsafe because they weren't with a parent, when I walked up. She said "You're lucky I came along because some other people around here would run them over or call the police."

So yea, I'm not sure what's wrong with these other parents, but I'd love to send my kids to play outside all day without me worrying that I'm gonna get a cop on my doorstep.

<comment><USER21> Utah has recently passed explicit amendments to their child neglect statutes to clarify that otherwise well cared for children allowed to play unsupervised is _not_ child neglect.

Other states should follow suit.

[https://le.utah.gov/~2018/bills/static/SB0065.html](https://le.utah.gov/~2018/bills/static/SB0065.html) [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/well/family/utah- passes-f...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/well/family/utah-passes-free- range-parenting-law.html)

<comment><USER20> I saw this and thought it was great, but simultaneously thought all hope is lost if Utah is setting the standard for being reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think it's Adults who are supposed to manage their own behaviour. Children? Not so much. This sounds like a rehash of the 'Kids today' perspective. Children have always been children and Adults have always struggled with their behaviour.

Adults have always romanticised their own childhood 'it wasn't like that in my day, I'd have never gotten away with that' etc.

I just don't buy it.

<comment><USER23> Are you a parent?

<comment><USER22> Yes. And they've both turned out fine so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a terrible article that just uncritically assumes the worst of the 'kids today!' stereotype (which has been around since Plato's time) as a starting premise. I know it's Sunday but I'm surprised to see such fluff high up on HN.

<comment><USER25> "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

-Plato/Socrates (though _incredibly_ likely this is apocryphal)

<comment><USER26> Apparently this was not Plato or Socrates. However, the author wrote it in 1909 so the point still stands!

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving- childre...](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in- ancient-times/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's all down to cars. In two ways, one of them less facetious than the other:

1) Automobiles have a vast amount of land space dedicated to them. And the land that is not physically occupied by parking lots and roads is subdivided, separated and made inaccessible[1]. And this trend is continuing[2]. It's why other large mammals (bears, moose, wolves) face significant problems in reproduction. Add to this the noise and the light pollution and even if you did not fear that your neighbor, reaching back to pass an organic fruit- leather to the fruit of his loins, would mow down your child, the available outdoors is just not what it was.

2) Paedophiles and rapists are greatly facilitated by the availability of fast, relatively anonymous, convenient transport. The same characteristics that make said automobiles attractive to terrorists (when they're not actually directly driving them into people as a weapon that no one acknowledges).

1\. [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/12/19/roads-i...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/12/19/roads- impact-on-ecosystems/) 2\. [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6362/442](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6362/442)

<comment><USER28> I agree the automobile is at the heart of it. Everything from land use and distance, as you mentioned, to the danger of roads for kids. Children these days are driven _everywhere_ , even to the local park or for soccer on the weekends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The part about being "unemployed" to me immediately made me think about the prevalence of future tense pressures for modern kids. I'm in my mid 20s and I went through it.

While my parents had good intentions and many others I'm sure did too. You start building this monster of future pressures about colleges, social media emphasizing what you should like, and lots of other pressures you can't actually resolve in Elementary or Jr. High but you are made aware of them and focused on them by your surroundings.

</comment><comment><USER30> The reason children aren't behaving (at least in the U.S.) is because a large number of parents never _practice_ parenting and never seek out advice from reliable resources.

For example-- I've heard numerous vacuous rationalizations from parents young and old for spanking their children. What's the research say on spanking? The vast majority over decades says that it doesn't improve behavior and in fact increases the likelihood of aggression in children.

So why would parents continue doing it? It's the same reason an ineffectual guitarist keeps starting over on Stairway to Heaven. Because, "Gosh, I had it perfect _once_ out of 200 failures in my bedroom by myself last week."

So it is with parents: "Gosh, I don't get why they're acting out, they were _so good_ that _one_ time out of 200 outbursts while I was paying a moderate amount of attention to them last week."

Edit: clarification

<comment><USER31> >never seek out advice from reliable resources.

What reliable resources would those be? Poorly defined, crap studies done by people who've never had children and the study was never independantly reproduced by anyone?

In the beginning, pain is the only means of communication (although we didn't actually spank, a little tug on the side burns did the trick). In my experience, once a child is old enough to understand time-based punishment (e.g. you don't get to watch TV _tomorrow_ ) a little and what it will mean, that becomes more effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Having seen a whole tide of articles like this recently, I wonder how long it will be before popular opinion and parenting practices trend back toward giving children appropriate amounts of autonomy.

I hesitate at the thought of raising children here (or at all) for a variety- pack of reasons, one of which is that I was rather over-protected as a child, and I'd rather not pass the results of that that on to my kids.

Any current American-kid-havers care to comment on how difficult it actually is to raise non-sheltered kids in the modern age? Is it a big problem or perhaps overblown for the NPR crowd?

<comment><USER33> I am wary of joining this conversation in general. But I have kids, and I have lived both in big cities where stuff was stolen from our porch on a regular basis (we needed a neighborhood watch) and in small towns where we never had to lock our doors.

I've lived in incredibly liberal and conservative areas as well. Some places were very religious with a church for every few hundred in the populace, and where you couldn't even find a church.

Across the board, the liberal, non-religious, high-populace areas had the worst behaved children in public. But religious groups control public perceptions better (my opinion) so privately they could be just as bad or worse off, but that doesn't seem to be the point of this article.

But what I found as a parent, was that children mimic their parents. Period.

Even if you have vacant parents, the kids will still have enough time around them to copy their beliefs and act on them.

I taught in college for 12 years, and the kids that came into my class room changed dramatically from early 2000s till I was done. Something changed in society the past 20 years in a way I can't understand.

One thing is for certain though, you can take a nice decent kid, and give them everything they want, and they can turn into brats when you try and take anything back.

I learned this the hard way with cellphones. My first kid turned super nasty as soon as she got a phone. Partly because all her friends ignored her, she was the only one without a phone in the group settings, so she sat by herself with no one to play with. So we got her an ipod touch, and we instantly had behavior problems.

In retrospect, she was copying my problems as a person, so it's not her fault. But any discussion where the blame isn't placed squarely on the parents first and foremost, is in my opinion, either deceitful with a motive or simply ignorant and possibly a parent in denial.

A parent can raise decent children in almost any environment as long as they are willing to stand up against the negative influences around them.

<comment><USER34> > Something changed in society the past 20 years in a way I can't understand.

> My first kid turned super nasty as soon as she got a phone.

I think you might be on to something here...

<comment><USER34> And Scott Adams agrees: [http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-06-07](http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-06-07)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm not sure what are the root causes of the kids' behavioural crisis (I'm not even sure there is one), but let me tell you with 100% confidence what will not solve them: Yet another parenting book.

</comment><comment><USER36> We've been reading and seeing this shit since Socrates.

"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise."

Lets frame this a different way.

1\. Crime has gone down in all measurements. (Theories state its likely lack of lead pollution.) 2\. More people renting, and less engagement in the community. 3\. People whining about kids these days 4\. Older adults realizing they dont younger generation doing what they did 5\. Kids now have more inhouse distraction (computers, games, etc) that their friends are on 6\. Parent(s) working long hours and cant take kids to friends houses 7\. Scare articles like this one whipping parents into a frightful frenzy

<comment><USER37> > We've been reading and seeing this shit since Socrates.

No, we haven't. That beautiful self serving quote is from a students dissertation from 1907 - [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving- childre...](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in- ancient-times/)

Novel quotes which have a ring of truth don't get to invalidate peoples' opinions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> 20 years ago, my father attributed the general "change in children" to the widespread availability & use of household air-conditioning.

Granted this won't be true throughout all climates, but I recall thinking it had a lot of merit at the time and I continue to think so today. My father would tell me that, when he was a kid, they'd either sit at home in a 90F+ house on Long Island with the windows open -- miserable, as I can attest from living it when we'd visit as a kid -- or they'd go outside and play "stick ball" in the same weather with their friends. For them, it was an easy choice.

Today, children either play on their devices at home (often interacting with 'friends' online) or they go to the home of their friend and, likewise, they often play indoors.

I truly believe that the climate-controlled dwellings of today are a large part of the reason; I know that personally I'd generally far prefer to be indoors in my climate-controlled 72F dwelling versus outdoors riding a bike or similar and I'd imagine the same, unfortunately but not surprisingly, holds true for children as well.

As a fairly new parent with another on the way, I'm not sure to what extent we'll try to combat this; as a child myself "screen time" was often a point of contention though in my case it was also the early start of my career.

</comment><comment><USER39> Spanking. No kiddin. You don't need to put your children in a hospital. But a little slap in the buns never killed nobody, and as a last resort toll. can be really effective. Of course, go for ligth mesures before, and then scalate.

Take the things the kid like first, for a while, like no videogames fo a week, or two. If the nocive behavour dosen't go away, increase the time.

<comment><USER40> There's probably something to this. I don't have kids so luckily I don't have to think much about it (yet, at least). While there are plenty of studies about psychological issues from spanking, but I've always been uncomfortable about the definitions. There is a fair difference between a single sharp smack on the butt (clothed, not bare) like I and my siblings, friends etc. used to get (and deserve) as kids, and actual abuse (i.e. beatings, using implements, hits to the face, arms, torso, etc.), but I feel like most of the studies lump them in together.

It's also hard to control for whether it's a single spank for discipline used only when the situation warrants it or routine, arbitrary or random spanking. There's probably going to be psychological abuse or neglect coming along with it if it's the latter but far less likely for the former.

<comment><USER41> I have children (too young for this to matter yet) and I have the same discomfort. I was 'smacked' on the bottom sometimes as a child - no real idea about the frequency as this would now be a long time ago. Small children don't have the same sense of reasoning / looking forward as e.g. teenagers or adults, so I appreciate something more primeval should work better (and I'm not going to take away their food). But while all the data suggests hitting or spanking a child is bad, there seems to be no mentions of discriminating between genuinely physically harming the child (e.g. lasting damage like a bruise) and something which hurts but has zero long or medium-term physical effect - just a temporary stinging of the skin over a heavily muscled or fatty area like the bottom.

My personal feeling is that if researched well, the data would probably show that in small children, some form of physical punishment would be shown to be effective and leave no lasting psycological issues. I just don't think there's any good evidence either way.

<comment><USER17> I promise there not only has been research on small children and corporal punishment and that it's not at all effective and that it is damaging. Above I linked to an article on the subject by the APA. Here's a link to the meta- analysis referenced in the article: [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10567-005-2340-z](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10567-005-2340-z)

<comment><USER41> From the abstract at that link:

"The results indicated that effect sizes significantly favored conditional spanking over 10 of 13 alternative disciplinary tactics for reducing child noncompliance or antisocial behavior. Customary physical punishment yielded effect sizes equal to alternative tactics, except for one large study favoring physical punishment. Only overly severe or predominant use of physical punishment compared unfavorably with alternative disciplinary tactics."

In short:

conditional spanking - more effective that 10/13 other disciplining methods

customary spanking - no more or less effective than other disciplining methods

severe / predominant use of spanking - worse than other methods

The rest of the material available without access to the full paper just seems to back the assertion that data is poor on this topic, and there are methodological issues that make it hard to assess different levels of physical punishment seperately.

<comment><USER17> My bad. I usually try not to do _exactly the thing I did_, rage-pasting a link without reading it fully.

I'm not going to get into a deep back and forth over this, but nothing I am aware of shows spanking of any sort has good long term effects on behavior and pretty much every piece of literature out there points to corporal punishment being effective for getting a kid to cease acting out, but either ineffective or worse for long term behavior changes.

And sure, maybe being super calm and measured with your application of corporal punishment will prevent it from doing damage. Just seems like a strange path to take when there are effective ones out there that don't require violence or the threat of violence against children.

<comment><USER39> My mom and dad use to hit me in the bottons witha flip flop as a last resort.

Usually the first measure would she put me staring the wall for a few minutes. To a children that was horrible since I was really bored with the punishment.

In more than one occasion she forget that I was in the "thinking corner" and found me sleeping on my feed, suported by my face in the wall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> From what I've seen, parents aren't parenting like they used to. Mom and dad, if they're even in the same household, often both work full-time jobs.

These fundamental changes in the average family have consequences.

<comment><USER43> I was a full-time mom for a lot of years. I say such things to my adult sons. Trying to say it on HN tends to go bad places. It isn't politically correct to observe that the lack of time to parent could negatively impact parenting. No matter how neutrally I say it or how carefully I word it, I am inevitably accused of sexism, as if my position is "Women should all be barefoot and pregnant."

Oy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > asks why so many kids today are having trouble managing their behavior and > emotions.

...For starters, is there evidence that this is actually a thing?

Once it gets down to the details it sounds like Generic Parenting Advice From Any Point In The Last 50 Years: don't use bribes, make consequences clear, give kids some control but not too much, when you're overwhelmed walk away... but the initial premise is a pretty big one to just throw out there unsupported.

</comment><comment><USER45> Most children are raised with single parents.

That implies daycare and possession schedules.

Both have the potential to drastically screw up a kid. (Imagine being bounced back and forth between two homes throughout the month. It would drive you mad.)

Strange that he article doesn't mention it. The utter lack of stable and consistent housing for children (due to possession schedules) is perhaps the biggest societal 'experiment' ever run.

<comment><USER46> "The Majority of Children Live With Two Parents, Census Bureau Reports"

[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press- releases/2016/cb16-192...](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press- releases/2016/cb16-192.html)

<comment><USER45> I'd be interested in seeing how 'parent' is defined. Does it include step- parent?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why the text only version link? I prefer the formatted: [https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/02/611082566/why- chi...](https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/02/611082566/why-children- arent-behaving-and-what-you-can-do-about-it)

<comment><USER48> Not to have to accept the tracking cookies policy, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think this has a lot to do with the housing crisis.

Hear me out...

When I was a kid I was lucky enough to be raised in a new development community packed with YOUNG families. Imagine this. These were 1st, or maybe 2nd home buyers (age 23-32) who were STARTING their families there. It was a time when young people could afford a nice home in a safe neighborhood, AND support kids.

The result was amazing. Kids. Lots of kids. Kids roamed the streets. The sense of community was abundant. Halloween and Christmas were a BLAST as all the families went to great lengths to dress up their home.

Nowadays? I live in a different neighborhood. People are RENTING. There's no safe, nice, affordable neighborhood for new families to settle. Sense of community as a result is diminished. People don't feel planted and invested in the home so they're less likely to be invested in the community. I don't see any kids these days. Halloween, could be any other day.

<comment><USER50> As a counterpoint, I grew up in a relatively poor neighborhood, in a rented home. Was part of a huge community of kids who all played together unsupervised, especially all summer long. In the school yard, downtown, down by the river, in the park, we ranged pretty far as we got older. Once you had a bike there were unsupervised day trips to wooded areas where we played a poor-man's predecessor to paintball using slingshots and pilfered grapes.

From my limited experience, home ownership is not a requirement for free-range children.

<comment><USER51> Yeah, no kidding!! Literally every single person I know rented growing up and the streets were filled with kids. In fact, since apartments are smaller, it's more incentive to get outside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Because the generation that gets all high and mighty about their childhood being more fun and outside (i.e. Gen Xers) are now the ones that are raising the next generation of children to be safe and are also complaining about it.

</comment><comment><USER53> 140 comments and almost none about why children aren't behaving and what to do about it. Just like the article

</comment><comment><USER54> Parents should teach kids to appreciate diversity and accommodate adversity

</comment><comment><USER55> You know who are terrible models for learning human behavior? Children. Why do we expect our children to learn good models of human behavior by interacting with other children?</comment>


Quicklisp - The upcoming solution to Common Lisp's "library problem" - <AUTHOR> http://netzhansa.blogspot.com/2010/09/quicklisp-upcoming-solution-to-common.html <comment><USER2> QuickLisp is the future of Lisp. I knew that after I tried it for ~15 minutes, long before it was announced to the public (I must have been the user #4.)

I am currently testing it with ABCL. Common Lisp on the JVM. I would say about 80% of Common Lisp libraries work on the JVM unchanged, and the rest (CFFI/UFFI stuff) we're patching them manually.

It's pretty sick stuff. It's Lisp, but it can call 100% of Java libraries. I made a quick "breadth-first" conquest of Java libraries and I seem to be able to use everything; J2SE, J2EE, Android and JavaFX. I am still learning Java, but I can safely say that Java apps and libraries are almost 100% usable via Lisp.

<comment><USER3> Also, as an aside, I wish I could expect more of the HN readership than a cowardly downmod with no response. If you disagree with somebody, say so and take the time to formulate a counter-argument. Save the downmods for things that are offensive or completely off-topic.

<comment><USER2> Trolling does not entitle you to intelligent responses.

" _The future of Lisp, if it has one, is Clojure._ "

It's not the Clojure part that got you downvoted, as that would have been a valid argument, seeing how sweet clojure is. I think it's the "if it has a future" part. Anyone even remotely aware of programming languages will tell you Lisp has a future, in the same way Algebra does. It's the simplest representation of computable functions, and it has existed, on paper, at least since 1930, and as an implementation since 1958. It's a gateway drug to lambda calculus ,combinatory logic, complexity theory, computable functions and CT, the entire FP field, symbolic logic, formal semantics, compiler construction, and a host of other non-sexy, but essential fields of study.

<comment><USER3> Less tersely, I will simply quote Tim Sweeney:

 _LISP: This is the apex of untyped programming with nested scoping and metadata manipulation. It's at the end of the line, not because of lack of potential, but it's so simple and powerful than any improvements to it can be implemented in LISP itself without affecting the core language. In 100 years, after the last C and C++ programmers are long gone, there will still be LISP enthusiasts. But don't expect large-scale software development to happen this way._

So yes, Lisp has a future in that it epitomizes a certain programming paradigm, but as a language with real production significance it has a very hard road ahead, and will need all the advantages that a single-implementation JVM/CLR dialect like Clojure can provide.

You'll notice that hardly any of the companies spawned by Y-Combinator, the ultimate Lisp cult, actually built their systems in Lisp.

<comment><USER2> You would be mistaken to think YC is a Lisp cult. Calling them that is like calling the American government a bastion of Anglo-Saxon, Anglican, Royalist hegemony. Sure, the two speak English and they share common cultural heritage, but they're either philosophically at odds, or completely unrelated.

You would be stupid to think YC companies amount to anything in the global economic radar. One DoD contract is more profitable than all their revenues combined.

Take a step back, get yourself a phone book and scan it, read international economic reports; none of what we're doing is the apex of human innovation. The AK47-wielding fucktards in the Congo have more global influence than all the startup founders combined. In the grand scheme of things, computer programmers, their bosses, project managers, and employers are the janitors of the world economy. We're call-center operators, glorified with a smidgen of science. And YC "com'nies" have less than $50k standing between them and obscurity; that's less than what the typical restaurant owner spends on kitchen renovations.

Wake up and small the coffee; it's a 99-cent 7/11 re-fill, and I hope you like it.

<comment><USER3> I've been listening to just this kind of glib, arrogant, self-satisfied rhetoric from Lisp zealots for over a decade now. Your tangential tirade about militants in the Congo is novel but the tenor is familiar. Are you a Naggumite?

The really smart Lispers like Peter Norvig recognized Lisp for the lost cause it is and moved on to build companies like Google. Maybe you've heard of it? People have been solving hard problems for decades without the "magic" of the Lisp primadonnas.

<comment><USER2> Please, let the recently deceased rest in peace. You don't need to invoke their name in vein to win an argument over the living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't wait to try it... yet another "solution" to the problem. Lispy, mudballs, cl-build, etc... there are lots.

Most of them seem to just download the source from some repository and stop once it builds. It's a step up from the manual or scripted process from before, but it's hardly anything on the scale of CPAN.

It's probably too much to ask, but I'd love to see something like an actual CPAN for Lisp. A centralized, mirrored archive network. Standardized package meta-data. Standardized documentation tools. Author verification that doesn't require the users to store individual author keys on their rings.

But I suppose the reason it hasn't been done is:

1\. Lispers don't care/need/desire it 2\. It would take a significant group effort and most people would rather be hacking something else 3\. What we have works well enough that it doesn't justify the effort to go that last 10%

Still... one can dream (and I'd throw in my hat to help too).

<comment><USER5> Quicklisp does have a centralized location for archives (hosted on S3), and it statically extracts a lot of useful metadata about project contents and relationships. I'm trying to work with what's available without asking for cooperation from authors.

I have lots of ideas for more metadata that can be gathered automatically or semi-automatically. It should be straightforward if time-consuming to set up automatic testing, even if it's as simple as "Does library foo compile and load on implementation bar on operating system baz?" Same with gathering data to answer questions like "What foreign libraries are needed for this project?" or "What is the license for this project?"

If you'd like to give the early version a try, drop me an email (firstname.lastname@example.com) or visit freenode #quicklisp.

<comment><USER4> Will do.

Maybe testing can just start with a TAP library.

POD-like documentation would be a little harder with reader-macros. Maybe a syntax can be defined that doesn't step on too many toes...

Either way, I'll be taking a look at it ASAP. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quicklisp Lisp screencast in two parts:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11wYPAy9qNw>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA5aeG-sdqY>

</comment><comment><USER7> Common Lisp implementations already come with heaps of libraries: just grab a commercial one. Do you think programming languages _must_ be free? You lack a business mindset, I think. Commercial programmers are willing to pay for languages which make their jobs easier. People have always be willing to pay for CL. Would have they be willing to pay for Ruby or Python when such languages came out? I don't think so.

EDIT: Free implementations thrive and grow because they are free (as in free beer) even when they start - or are - lesser. That does not mean not having a bells and whistles free implementation is a measure of a language's worthyness.

<comment><USER8> I have been thinking about creating and selling a programming language + development environment, but I'm not sure if anyone is really willing to pay for such a thing. For a better IDE for an existing language yes, but for a new language? Any thoughts?

<comment><USER9> Maybe see how the REBOL guy is doing: <http://www.rebol.com/>

<comment><USER8> He seems to be doing fine, but he has definitely not taken over the world yet...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've heard Clojure described as a solution to that, because you get access to every Java library, and in Java there's pretty much a library for every modern-ish need.

<comment><USER11> Clojure is my first choice language for new projects, but improving other options in the Lisp space is a Good Thing. I prefer the idea of having more than one making headway outside the hardcore programming lovers, if that's possible.

<comment><USER10> Python is still my GOTO language for Getting Things Done but the two new technologies that have gotten me most excited recently have been Clojure and Arduino. I'm a newb with respect to both I look for more excuses to use them everyday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _But this[read half baked libraries] is true with libraries in all languages_

Really? Rails, DJango, qt, SciPy, need I go on?

<comment><USER13> Well, good libraries like those don't appear overnight, and a good environment for developers, with good tools, is proven to attract developers.

<comment><USER14> Lisp has been around for a lot of nights.

<comment><USER5> The pattern I've sometimes seen in the CL community (and others) is the notion that "Well, if _thing_ was so great, somebody would probably have created it for me by now." It actually takes individual effort and creativity to make progress - useful things don't just spring up out of nowhere. _Someone_ made SLIME. It took until this century to do it.

People get used to their working environment, and find ways to solve problems even in the absence what, in hindsight, are amazingly useful tools. When you pitch something new to people, they basically have to imagine to some degree how their life will be improved with it. (Will Wright talked about this regarding videogame box design and The Sims. People pick up a box and then have to basically design the game themselves in their head and imagine how much fun, or not, it would be.)

Anyway, I hope Quicklisp will be an easy sell, because I think it works pretty well where everything before it has worked pretty poorly. It won't take a lot of imagination to see that.

<comment><USER9> "Well, if thing was so great, somebody would probably have created it for me by now."

If you play this game in the Perl or Python or Java communities, you get a very different average than Lisp. Not saying that that's a good or bad thing, mind, but it is true.

<comment><USER5> It's a good way to get complacent in any environment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Entrepreneurshit. The Blog Post on What It's Really Like. - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/11/18/entrepreneurshit-the-blog-post-on-what-its-really-like/ <comment><USER2> AKA the blog post currently on the front page:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4800776>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah! And I was careful to clean the tracking noise from the URL and counted on Hacker News to catch if it was previously submitted. They should really add that to the site by default...</comment></comment>


Boston hospital experiments with Google Glass in ER  - <AUTHOR> http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2014/03/wearable-computing-at-bidmc.html?m=1

<comment><USER2> Now, like all pieces of medical equipment, it would probably good to culture some swabs off them to see what's growing, and how hard they are to clean.

<comment><USER3> Huh, why would that be good? Why is the sterility of a doctor's eye-wear a concern?

Tabloid scare-stories of "X species of bacteria found living on Y" just feed on the public's ignorance of microbiology; i.e. "wow that many on the average toothbrush!"... well, how many are found in your mouth? In the intestines? How do we define a bacterial species?

<comment><USER2> The sterility of a doctor's eye-wear is a concern because of the following simple scenario:

A doctor has been seeing patients all day, and visits one with an active C. difficile infection. They touch the patient's bed (which has been shown to be as contaminated with organism as the skin), and then, before they change their gloves, adjust their glasses - transferring the pathogen to a surface it can likely persist on for some span of time.

Later that day, they adjust their glasses again (seriously, I do this like 20 times a day), and recontaminate their hands before examining another patient.

Glasses - along with _shoes_ , ties, lab coats, cell phones, etc. represent potential sources of cross contamination between patients, and are an active area of scientific and medical research.

<comment><USER4> Let's rephrase: why would glass be any different than a doctor's normal glasses? If it's not, then are you just saying "we should probably treat this like their glasses, i.e. do research but currently do nothing special in a clinical setting"?

<comment><USER5> I'm willing to bet Google Glass has a lot more nooks and crannies for the little bugs to hide than a normal pair of eyeglasses.

<comment><USER2> > Yea, and smartphone have a lot fewer nooks than traditional cell phones > since they have no keys. Better do a study to see if we should recommend > that all doctors upgrade from their old Nokia!

Um...trying to figure out what to do about smartphones and the contaminants they carry is a very active area of discussion in infection control right now.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but you can not use a smart phone while treating patients. If you're using Google Glass, you can't really not use it, especially if the reason you're wearing it is to help patients.

I do believe this is a solvable problem (as do the people working on it, I'd imagine), but it hasn't been solved yet.

Perhaps a sealant on the device plus a cleaning regimen will do the trick, but right now I'd put google glass somewhere near neckties (glad that that's been largely dealt with), lab coats and, well, pretty much anything that has places that will readily harbor foreign bacteria as a terrible thing to wear from room to room in a hospital.

So I guess that given the state of things right now (riddled with such harbors), it's perfectly reasonable to give the technical benefits of glass a try. Maybe we'll come up with some good software that will save some lives.

(This may seem like a retraction, but I was really just comparing Google Glass vs regular glasses in my original reply).

[Edit] this was intended as a reply to the person the parent was quoting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting article, but 2 things stood out:

1\. "Google Glass immediately recognizes the room and then the ED Dashboard sends information about the patient in that room to the glasses"

This sounds like a redundant level of indirection. Why not just have a patient-unique QR code on the bed?

2\. Very OT, but the use of "emergently" made me bristle. "Emergent" has a very well-established meaning that is not "very urgent". Sorry, end of rant.

<comment><USER7> > emergently.

As a self-styled knitpicker and guardian of language, I had to look it up. The references I found [1] [2] indicated emergent _can_ mean calling for immediate action or urgent, however, it's only in the weakest use of the word. And I find the adverb form of the word another step weaker.

I believe the definition you're highlighting is related to the dictionary definitions referring to "appearing casually or unexpectedly," such as emergent phenomena, which are, arguably slow. These near opposite meanings of the word are unfortunate, b/c people don't really know what sentences using the word are supposed to mean: Is an emergent page one that appeared gradually over time or one that must be attended to immediately?

I find the author's repeated use of the word clumsy and non-descriptive. Exactly the kind of trendy abuse of a word to signal self-entitled and undeserved superiority. To get paged emergently doesn't describe the process of getting paged for an urgent issue, since the action of paging is different from the issue (how was the page button pressed?). To "emergently reverse" blood thinners could just as easily have been stated as "quickly, immediately, or urgently."

Therefore, I would follow your suggestion and drop use of the word as a high- falootin' synonym of "urgently."

[1] [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/emergent](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/emergent)

[2] [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emergent](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/emergent)

<comment><USER4> "Emergently" used in this sense is extremely common medical lingo and has nothing to do with the author. It sounds like you're judging this physician based on your own ignorance of the parlance of _his_ field. There's no need to check how Merriam-Webster thinks the _general population_ uses the term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "We replaced all the Google components on the devices so that no data travels over Google servers. All data stays within the BIDMC firewall."

I'd love to know more about that.

<comment><USER9> It's just a small Android strapped to the side of your head. Google 'AOSP'.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the hint but I think that was obvious. My point is: the quote makes it seem easier than it is to do such thing and still be 100% confident and sure you will never ever have a confidentiality or privacy breach with patients data involved. Google Glass is fantastic but also very scary for a lot of people, I can't even imagine how that would turn out inside a hospital.

<comment><USER10> "still be 100% confident and sure you will never ever have a confidentiality or privacy breach with patients data involved"

That is never true, ever, in any circumstance, with any system, ever.

Stop wishing for unicorns and come back to the real world.

The question is, is it reasonably safe, and does it help patient outcomes? Keep in mind, the more likely it is to improve patient outcomes, the more risk is considered acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The example in the article of the physician being able to respond quickly to a brain bleed and an allergic reaction because of information available on Glass was very compelling.

While it may not be practical right now for a lot of hospital use cases, being able to react quickly with data at your fingertips for emergency medicine seems like a great use of the tech. I'm sure the utility will only expand as the technology and the software integration improves.

</comment><comment><USER12> Was the post deleted? It is still cached

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xB8946F...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xB8946FgopQJ:geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2014/03/wearable- computing-at-bidmc.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER13> I won't be surprised to see products like this grow into a huge industry. Just imagine... surgeons wearing Glass or a Glass-like device which can alert the surgeon to abnormalities while performing surgery. Or have a HUD for the surgeon to monitor all sorts of data while performing surgery.

What if a "normal" doctor could pull up a patient's information while chatting with them, and have the current chat (which usually goes something like: "Any new problems?" "No." "Started smoking recently?" "No.") transcribed to the patient's file. Way less clunky than reading through the manila envelope of charts.

</comment><comment><USER14> The scenario about being in ER and needing the patient's allergy medication, how did the doctor access the info on Glass? Was it just always on screen? Or voice activated? Could the same effect be achieved with a "Star Trek" style computer? The doctor would say the same command. I guess I can see how it might be more convenient in some situations to have it as visual info instead of a voice response.

I'm curious as to why Glass would bring about changes in medical care. For instance, I hear someone was interested in using it in surgery to record things. But certainly the basic technology of a head-mounted spycam has been around for quite some time. I was under the impression that Glass's innovation was making a hip, consumer-level product. Not that Glass brought new camera technology, for instance.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ok, so hospital is one of the place that are so far behind in term of technology and someone had the idea of using google glass in ER.

Priorities seem to be a hard thing to do in hospitals.

<comment><USER16> BIDMC is not exactly some struggling rural hospital with cold war era x-ray machines.

<comment><USER15> I wasn't talking about the diagnostic equipment, I was talking about the patient history infrastructures.

I'm actually more knowledgeable about Canada's health infrastructure but I'm pretty sure they share some characteristics.

<comment><USER2> > I'm actually more knowledgeable about Canada's health infrastructure but I'm > pretty sure they share some characteristics.

Not really. The heterogenity of healthcare in the U.S. means things like access to patient information ranges from Extensive to the Point of Being Spooky (Kaiser) to "Who are you again?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >We replaced all the Google components on the devices so that no data travels over Google servers.

This sounds intriguing. I think aside from the privacy issues, google glasses are stupid because many people don't _want_ to wear glasses, but being able to have a CyanogenMod-type firmware for google glasses would at least remove the privacy risk to the user, if not for other people in the area.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've shared this video before because I love the concept of augmented vision in this type of capacity. It might seem a little farfetched now, but I could see how something like Google Glass could reshape the medical and research fields:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orXws08ODiQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orXws08ODiQ)

</comment><comment><USER19> A sanitized version with much less information was posted: [http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2014/03/wearable-computing- at...](http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2014/03/wearable-computing-at- bidmc_12.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> This sounds incredibly useful in a hospital/emergency room. A definite step up from the use case of walking around town blinking to take pictures. Anyway to see more screenshots?

</comment><comment><USER21> Link seems to be broken now. Too bad.

BIDMC in general is at the top of the health IT development and practice game. Good for them for expanding into glassware!

<comment><USER22> This link works correctly [http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2014/03/wearable- computing-at...](http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2014/03/wearable-computing-at- bidmc_12.html?m=1)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you get your first remote job as a junior developer? - <AUTHOR> Share specifics, if you can. Where, what, how long, how much, etc. <comment><USER2> It was back in the 90's.

A friend, a university lecturer needed a hand with some collab projects he worked on with Ecole Polytechnique Paris.</comment>


There is no middle ground for deep disagreements about facts - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/there-is-no-middle-ground-for-deep-disagreements-about-facts <comment><USER2> While I agree that the article does a good job of describing the current state of things, I don't think it has always been this way. Let's go with the opening paragraph:

"Consider how one should respond to a simple case of disagreement. Frank sees a bird in the garden and believes it's a finch. Standing beside him, Gita sees the same bird, but she's confident it's a sparrow. What response should we expect from Frank and Gita? If Frank's response were: 'Well, I saw it was a finch, so you must be wrong,' then that would be irrationally stubborn – and annoying – of him. (The same goes for Gita, of course.) Instead, both should become less confident in their judgment."

It's interesting they point out that both should be less confident. I think this is actually how it was a few years ago. People used this tactic of gaslighting or spreading possibilities to discount the hazards of cigarettes and climate change. Comments like "well not all scientists agree," and "some experts have taken the opposite view."

Then people began to doubt all experts, not just the ones spreading false rumors. They determined if you can't trust one expert, and you don't have the knowledge to determine if they are a good actor (which most people don't have), then you just shouldn't trust experts and "trust yourself." Now we're in the realm where our opinion is our reality. And since there are no experts or anyone to trust, people are just herding opinion in their direction to get people to buy things or do stupid things.

I feel like in the 90s, if someone were given the same story about what bird it was, they would ask "well do either of these people know anything about birds?" If someone knew more, they would trust their opinion more. Now that question isn't even asked.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article observes that people tend to ignore facts when it threatens their identity. Therefore, it seems like the way to change people's minds is to proactively find ways to remove the threats to their worldview and/or helping them to find other worldviews that meet their needs.

That's, for example, the issue I have with Richard Dawkins. His job is supposed to be promoting science, but by actively using it as a weapon to try to attack people's worldview he makes people more likely to reject science.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article doesn't seem to have any ideas about how to deal with these deep disagreements. Do we just let every try their best, and the faction that piles up economic inefficiencies due to ultimately counter-factual beliefs to the point that they fail is the loser? That seems to have been how the world solved the Cold War, and the problems of the colonial powers.

<comment><USER5> That's assuming false beliefs act as economic hindrances - this is not necessarily the case. Global warming comes to mind, and pretty much anything else that's an externality on an international level - deforestation, pollution, overfishing... Believing that the best contraception is abstention, and no other method should be taught, will result in increased fertility due to all the unplanned pregnancies, causing the group with that belief to grow faster than groups using effective contraception.

Truth and Darwinian utility are correlated, but they are not the same.

<comment><USER4> > Truth and Darwinian utility are correlated, but they are not the same.

I agree completely, and that's a problem - the USSR piled up a great many externalities while slowing going down. But if we can't agree to disagree, and even the factual basis of the universe is in contention (flood "geology"), then what's left? You can't teach by armed enforcement. As the article says, and experience dictates, arguments (in the sense of a set of convincing statements leading to an inevitable conclusion) just don't work. The US as a society slowly slid away from some kind of consensus about reality. You have to let reality (which doesn't go away when you stop believing in it) teach a few hard lessons. I hate this conclusion, by the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like an article written by someone who's dating a homeopath and trying to make amends after an argument.</comment>


Microsoft Virtual PC Flaw Lets Hackers Bypass Windows Defenses  - <AUTHOR> http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/microsoft-virtual-pc-flaw-lets-hackers-bypass-windows-defenses-031610 <comment><USER2> Let's only be fair and try to discover if the flaw is really Microsoft's or something they bought from Connectix.</comment>


API Quirks: a new blog series documenting weird web API behavior - <AUTHOR> https://zapier.com/blog/2012/10/25/api-quirks-yammer-external-networks/

<comment><USER2> I love this. I have a suggestion too. Reddit's REST API is pretty quirky because it's so tightly coupled with their own front end code. Here is a quote from the code that handles posting a comment ([https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/controlle...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/controllers/api.py#L1092)):

         # remove any null listings that may be present
         jquery("#noresults").hide()

To be clear: that's Python you're reading. It's pretending to interact with the DOM. These calls get bundled up and sent back with the response for the frontend code to slavishly execute. The result is quite a schizophrenic API. On the one hand, you can get very nicely formatted JSON about data like so <http://www.reddit.com/r/skateboarding.json>. On the other hand, it's needlessly difficult to write code that can tell if a comment posted successfully or not when the response data looks like this:

       "jquery":[
          [0, 1, "call", ["#form-t3_iqhw5ili"]],
          [1, 2, "attr", "find"],
          [2, 3, "call", [".status"]],
          [3, 4, "attr", "hide"],
          [4, 5, "call", []],
          [5, 6, "attr", "html"],
          [6, 7, "call", [""]],
          [7, 8, "attr", "end"],
          [8, 9, "call", []],
          [1, 10, "attr", "find"],
          [10, 11, "call", ["textarea"]],
          [11, 12, "attr", "attr"],
          [12, 13, "call", ["rows", 3]],
          [13, 14, "attr", "html"],
          [14, 15, "call", [""]],
          [15, 16, "attr", "val"],
          [16, 17, "call", [""]],
          [0, 18, "attr", "insert_things"],
          [18, 19, "call", [
                [{
                      "data":{
                         "content":"

[+]KerrickLong [S] -1 points0 points1 point <time title=\"Fri Jul 15 16:57:16 2011 GMT\" datetime=\"2011-07-15T16:57:16.209277+00:00\">91 milliseconds</time> ago  (0 children)

[–]KerrickLong [S] -1 points0 points1 point <time title=\"Fri Jul 15 16:57:16 2011 GMT\" datetime=\"2011-07-15T16:57:16.209277+00:00\">91 milliseconds</time> ago
<form action=\"#\" class=\"usertext\" onsubmit=\"return post_form(this, 'editusertext')\" id=\"form-t1_c25u9i38va\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"thing_id\" value=\"t1_c25u9i3\"/>

Hey!

search!

\n

<textarea rows=\"1\" cols=\"1\" name=\"text\" >test comment</textarea>

formatting helphide help
<button type=\"submit\" onclick=\"\" class=\"save\" style='display:none'>save</button><button type=\"button\" onclick=\"cancel_usertext(this)\" class=\"cancel\" style='display:none'>cancel</button>

you type:	you see:

*italics*	italics

**bold**	bold

[reddit!](http://reddit.com)	reddit!

* item 1
* item 2
* item 3

item 1

item 2

item 3

> quoted text
quoted text

Lines starting with four spaces
are treated like code:

    if 1 * 2 &lt 3:
        print \"hello, world!\"
	Lines starting with four spaces
are treated like code:

if 1 * 2 &lt 3:
    print \"hello, world!\"

~~strikethrough~~	strikethrough

super^script	superscript

</form>

permalink

edit

<form class=\"toggle del-button\" action=\"#\" method=\"get\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"executed\" value=\"deleted\"/>deleteare you sure?  yes / no</form>

<form action=\"/post/remove\" method=\"post\" class=\"state-button remove-button\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"executed\" value=\"removed\" />remove</form>

<form method=\"post\" action=\"/post/distinguish\"><input type=\"hidden\" value=\"distinguishing...\" name=\"executed\"/>distinguishdistinguish this?  yes / no  / help </form>

reply

",
                         "contentHTML":"

Hey!

search!

",
                         "contentText":"Hey!\n\n**[search!](http://www.google.com/)**",
                         "id":"t1_c25u9i3",
                         "link":"t3_iqhw5",
                         "parent":"t3_iqhw5",
                         "replies":""
                      },
                      "kind":"t1"
                   }],
                false
             ]
          ],
          [0, 20, "call", ["#noresults"]],
          [20, 21, "attr", "hide"],
          [21, 22, "call",[]]
       ]

Edit: Didn't mean for this to come off as a pop at them. I know how this sort of thing happens and I know that feel.

<comment><USER3> Wow. That is definitely crazy. At least in the end the serialization is fairly straightforward.

Some of the worst API's we've seen are definitely due to lack of proper documentation (or completely undocumented features). Hopefully we can start to fill the information void with the help of the Google Bot's indexing prowess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Write a post about MailChimp's PHP API...I dare you.

</comment><comment><USER5> found today - facebook likes for network solutions is negative.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there something similar but just for shit APIs? I'm spending as much time writing an API for as I am implementing a library for TVDB because the API is so... just stupid. By time I'll be done with this it will cache from TVDB and be able to serve all of the content back in a SANE REST API rather than in the random URL, extract string, request url, get a zip with 3 conflicting xml files inside. Ugh.</comment>