Physicists suggest selfishness can pay - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-suggest-selfishness-can-pay-1.11254

<comment><USER2> If only nature were as cut-and-dried as simple thought experiments. Prisoners' Dilemma for instance: its likely the warden will lie, and punish you anyway. This changes the whole game. Conclusions about evolution based on mathematics are naieve to use such simple models.

<comment><USER3> I think you'll find that this is not a useful way of thinking. There is always something else you could try and account for. To save your thinking until you can account for everything simply results in no thinking. It's far better to fully understand the simplest model possible and add complication as nessisary, than to start with the hardest system. That is how science moves forward.

<comment><USER2> Sure. But the simplest model for creatures evolving must include statistical behavior. Every decision is not driving evolution - its a series over (life)time, with lots of noise in the result. E.g. If sometimes behaving selfishly works well and sometimes it doesn't, likewise altruism, the statistics will drive evolution, not the logic of the situation.

In the end the Markov chain of of event-decision-state change will favor those decisions (genes) that avoid the early-death state and favor the lots-of- reproduction states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I understand the article correctly the argument is that ZD strategies don't do well against each other, so they can never dominate a population. Therefore they will not exist evolutionarily.

I don think that conclusion follows. I would expect the strategy to wax and wane around an equilibrium in which the proportion of other ZD players drops the value of the strategy to that of other good strategies. It's similar to many investing strategies that work well when a few people are using them but not when everyone is. These strategies never die, they oscillate from feast to famine.</comment>


My short bout with Emacs and why I chose to stick with Vim. - <AUTHOR> http://satyajit.ranjeev.in/2012/06/08/short-bout-with-emacs.html <comment><USER2> Note that you can also run commands right in vi with the ! extended command, piping a range of lines through them. I use this with fmt all the time, and tend to prefer it over ctrl-z when I just want to check something.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but the ability to tab-complete commands/arguments is missing. But as you have said for something small it should just be fine.

<comment><USER2> Right, and you can search for (the start of) a command with up, when you've only got a few versions of something slightly longer that you use with moderate regularity. If you use them (or anything else) with high regularity, of course, bind them to a key sequence.</comment></comment></comment>


Nerdery - <AUTHOR> http://foohack.com/2008/12/nerdery/ <comment><USER2>
      Hacking on your own can be fun, but no matter what it is,
      projects really take the fuck off when a few heads are
      working together. That's how you get explosive momentum. No
      matter how smart or driven you are, you cannot do it alone.

Groups help give explosive momentum, sure, but when it comes to _starting_ projects or making bold developments, nah. I'm thinking of the precendents set with, say, Linus Torvalds and Linux, Matz and Ruby, or DHH and Rails. It takes the dictatorial "I'm making all the decisions and getting this to the next step" approach to really get a project going. Big shifts require hunkering down too - when Parrot and Perl 6 started, there were so few people involved, but they really kicked it off.

Of course, the open source world has proven that once you reach a point where you have something useful and not too experimental, it can only improve under the influence of others :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely.

When I say that they take off in the presence of multiple people, I'm not just referring to multiple decision-makers or coders. Sometimes just hearing "Wow, I'd like to use that, when will it be ready?" is enough to push something over the brink from "forgotten idea" to "working prototype".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Get thee to the Nerdery!"

The idea is more of whimsical as opposed to intellectual interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh? I've found that a healthy nerdery is a key component to getting much of anything interesting done. For people who are so often socially stupid, and yet involved in business, which is so socially dependent, I'd think that the development of good nerderies would be a fairly relevant topic.

Maybe I'm just more socially stupid than the average nerd, so this stuff seems less obvious to me.</comment></comment>


Google: Software is never going to be able to fix Spectre-type bugs - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/?p=1462619 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19170396](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19170396)

</comment><comment><USER3> So, admittedly I'm still wrapping my brain around the nitty-gritty of Spectre, but what's the solution to this then? It can't actually be that we'll all just accept that sandboxing only works if you spin up a separate process for every single container.

I remember when these attacks first came out that a few people were saying, "speculative processing was a mistake, we should just eat the performance costs and get rid of it." I vaguely remember that position getting a lot of criticism.

Is that where we are though? Are the performance costs of abandoning speculative processing greater than the performance costs of relying on spinning up a new process every time you want sandboxing to work? Or is there a middle ground that I don't understand? Obviously there's a lot of old hardware that's never going to be replaced, but let's say I sit down today to build a new processor for a new computer. Do I just accept that it will be vulnerable and move forward anyway?

My naive reading of this is that Google is saying we need to rethink processors themselves if we want to fix this (and we _really_ do want to fix it). Am I reading it correctly?

<comment><USER4> > My naive reading of this is that Google is saying we need to rethink > processors themselves if we want to fix this (and we really do want to fix > it). Am I reading it correctly?

That's the gist of it, yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand the theoretical issues with the Specter-class of bugs: shared machine environments leaking data, javascript in browsers stealing encryption keys etc.

What I don't know is the actual real-world potential for data theft. IIRC, the data could only be stolen at a few k/second and you would need to know which address to start poking at. If my sister-VM has 64GB of ram an 64GB of swap, what are the chances of finding anything before the end of time?

<comment><USER6> 64 billion bytes at 2,000 per second is 32 million seconds, or 1 year to scan the entire contents of RAM once. Obviously data and processes are going to bounce around in that year, so just peeking randomly and naively at your RAM, the chances are perhaps slim, but not "end of time" levels of slim. Randomly probing millions of different targets, the chance of finding _something_ of value is much higher.

<comment><USER7> So, what you're saying is that we just need more RAM?

<comment><USER6> Can't speak for everyone, but I sure do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Chrome folks working on the largest mitigation to Spectre-class bugs -- Site Isolation -- are the same folks who were behind the controversial proposal that would have broken certain third-party ad-blocker extensions.

Their experience, literally, was, "we tried to fix it and the whole Internet yelled at us".

I believe a practical (if oversimplified) model of the trade-offs is more like "secure, useful, fast: pick two".

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure how the two things are connected. The ad blocker thing I don't believe was connected to Spectre or isolation.

<comment><USER10> I think he was just pointing out that that team appears to mostly be working on security, and it wasn't just some ad team behind that proposal.

FWIW, it's not surprising. I don't install extensions because I don't see how you can possibly trust arbitrary code published by a pseudo-anonymous screen- name to have unlimited access to all browsing activity. That proposal sounded great to me, it would have been nice to be able to use an ad blocker.

<comment><USER11> The proposal, as it was initially, would have prevented ad blockers from working. I think extending the proposal so people could give that full access to extensions they trusted (such as ublock origin, which is open source and you can build for yourself if you'd like) is the best way forward on that.

<comment><USER10> > The proposal, as it was initially, would have prevented ad blockers from > working.

Is that true? I thought the proposal was to allow extensions to provide rules to be run on requests being made, but not to see the requests themselves. The same way Safari extensions apparently work?

<comment><USER3> > but not to see the requests themselves

No, the observation API is untouched[0]. It affected the ability of extensions to arbitrarily intercept and redirect requests, which (to be fair) is a potential MITM risk.

 _IF_ an extension relied on the declarative model and ignored the webRequest API, you would get a reasonable increase in privacy, because extensions wouldn't be able to monitor what requests had been made or whether or not they were really blocked.

But there were no plans to discourage developers from using the non-blocking parts of the webRequest API, so those advantages were pure speculation.

> The same way Safari extensions apparently work?

Yep. It's worth noting though that:

A) Safari hasn't removed the ability for extensions to use the non-declarative model.

B) Safari's approach does have documented downsides that make adblockers using their new strategy objectively less powerful. Adblock has a decent page up describing their take on the tradeoffs between the two approaches[1], and you can find similar conversations surrounding other Safari blockers if you poke around long enough.

[0]: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nPu6Wy4LWR66EFLeYInl3Nzz...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nPu6Wy4LWR66EFLeYInl3NzzhHzc- qnk4w4PX-0XMw8/edit#heading=h.t5tc5efl7rfz)

[1]: [https://help.getadblock.com/support/solutions/articles/60000...](https://help.getadblock.com/support/solutions/articles/6000099239-what- is-safari-content-blocking-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For web devs out there I would refer you to this paper from Microsoft research on the realities of side-channel attacks in Saas [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/side- ch...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/side-channel- leaks-in-web-applications-a-reality-today-a-challenge-tomorrow/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I once heard that anywhere we try and get extra performance, there is probably the possibility for a side channel, and I think that's true. Any optimisation in such a complex system is likely to have some sort of side effect, given that simply timing is often sufficient as a side channel it is going to be difficult to eliminate this class of attack.

</comment><comment><USER14> _" With careful construction, an attacker can make the processor speculate based on some value of interest and use the cache changes to disclose what that speculated value actually was. This becomes particularly threatening in applications such as Web browsers: a malicious JavaScript can use data revealed in this way to learn about the memory layout of the process it's running in, then use this information to leverage other security flaws to execute arbitrary code. Browser developers have assumed that they can construct safe sandboxes within the browser process, such that scripts can't learn about the memory layout of their containing process. Architecturally, those assumptions are sound. But reality has Spectre, and it blows those assumptions out of the water."_

So this is yet another reason to avoid Javascript.

<comment><USER15> Couldn't the CPU maintain a few speculative cache lines that commit to regular cache if the speculation worked, and dump if not?

This would keep the L1 clean, at least

<comment><USER16> Yes, but it wouldn't help enough. For example, a speculative load from one core can observably evict or change the state of a cacheline on another core.

<comment><USER15> That seems to require a much more sophisticated attack. Also my point is that a speculative cache would be a separate (like a peer to L1) cache, only showing its side effects in L2/3\. That'd be a bit harder to crack with the shared core noise and larger size.

<comment><USER17> The problem with that is, what happens when your speculative code changed values in that region of memory that another core just wrote to. who wins? and how do you do it without now violating a bunch of other problems where one core sets up a memory fence and other things like that. It ends up incredibly complicated to decide what to do with the result that it's probably not worth the extra work.

<comment><USER15> Why not ask the folks who did TSX?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are these Intel-only bugs? AMD uses a different approach to speculative execution and claims that the Meltdown-type attack won't work on post- Bulldozer CPUs.

</comment><comment><USER19> Are Spectre-style bugs present on other processors like the ARM64 or POWER?

<comment><USER4> Yep, ARM is affected. See this: [https://developer.arm.com/support/arm- security-updates/specu...](https://developer.arm.com/support/arm-security- updates/speculative-processor-vulnerability)

<comment><USER20> *ARM processors with speculative / out of order execution are affected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In other news google announces its new bare medal cloud services</comment>


Fred's ImageMagick Scripts - <AUTHOR> http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/index.php <comment><USER2> Seeing tools like this pop up periodically and get so many upvotes it seems a lot of people aren't aware of great tools. It would be interesting to see a gallery of Unix classic/modern tools presented in a structured course. Is anyone aware of one?

Something like images (imagemagick), video (ffmpeg/vlc), audio (sox), phone (asterisk/etc.), SMS (pdus/various), linguistics (various), classification (NNs), version control, snapshots, clustering (PXE/corosync/pacemaker), security (kernel toolkits), transaction systems and databases (sqlite/RDBMS/noSQL/time series), networking (filtering/firewall rules, intermittent connectivity, local multidrop protocols, tcpdump/wireshark), kernel security toolkits, CI/CD, etc.

Scope would be essentially everything except tools lying within the popular web stacks.

The goal would be that a student with interest could work their way through the syllabus and emerge a capable multi-domain unix hacker, rather than needing to encounter these problem domains over decades of career, rediscovering well worn approaches.

<comment><USER3> YES THIS PLEASE.

I learned programming through the web, so I lack a lot of knowledge in basic systems / bash / *nix / I'm not even sure how to call that.

I've googled so many time "learn bash" etc but it's never really what I'm looking for.

I regularly discover tools that are so basic yet so powerful (all things you mention) yet I feel there is a lack of (great) resources online to "learn the basic tools of your CL".

<comment><USER4> You mean you don't just go read the man page for every bash command and intuitively understand it?

Sorry for the sarcasm, I just feel your pain. Learning even basic things in bash has been slow for me too. I love it. I prefer it to GUIs on most things I have figured out.

But there's so much to learn.

<comment><USER3> from a sibling comment: [http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/](http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/) seems to be great :)

<comment><USER5> It isn't as good as: [https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide](https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide) (which is the one that gets recommended on #bash @ freenode). Also: [https://shellcheck.net](https://shellcheck.net)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The whiteboard script is particularly interesting: [http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/whiteboard/index.php](http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/whiteboard/index.php)

<comment><USER7> I can't seem to find the link now, but there was a post here a couple of weeks back about someone doing a very similar thing (in Python, IIRC) to clean up pictures of handwritten notes. It seemed conceptually simple, and worked quite nicely.

<comment><USER8> I know the one you mean, this classic one was linked from it: [https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html](https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html)

<comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16567275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16567275)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh man this page brings back some golden memories! I remember working with ImageMagick for the first time in 2010 or 2011 when I wrote a bash script to programmatically scale and center thousands of images for creating image gallery thumbnails on an internal social platform for winners of a design award. I somehow landed on this page and used the massive amounts of knowledge to learn how the ImageMagick scripting interface worked. Then it was a fairly simple task to build the script, but - like all bash scripts for me - I've forgotten every single parameter now :)

Somehow that feels much longer ago than just 7 years, maybe its just the website or the feeling of nostalgia looking at it.

</comment><comment><USER11> fisheye2rect is just mind-blowing

[http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/fisheye2rect/index.ph...](http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/fisheye2rect/index.php)

I guess I never really understood why fisheye lenses were so valuable, until now. =)

<comment><USER12> Yes it is. I've been using that script to create 360 photos which can be fed into Google's web vr view. [0]

[0] [https://faa-aviation-data- portal.github.io/routeDemo/camera/...](https://faa-aviation-data- portal.github.io/routeDemo/camera/cube.html)

<comment><USER13> This is really cool, can you explain more how you did this? :)

<comment><USER12> I don't have the script on hand at the moment. But essentially I take two 180 degree fisheye photos one pointing straight up and one pointing straight down. (for this, I used a homebrew cardboard box and two mobotix cameras)

I then use OP's script to "unroll" each fisheye photo. I then stick them together top to bottom with looks like this:

[https://faa-aviation-data-portal.github.io/routeDemo/camera/...](https://faa- aviation-data-portal.github.io/routeDemo/camera/fused.jpg)

Which I feed into this:

[https://github.com/googlevr/vrview](https://github.com/googlevr/vrview)

voila

took a couple hours start to finish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those interested we implemented from scratch a subset of these commands as a REST API service available to call at request from any programming language.

[https://pixlab.io/cmdls](https://pixlab.io/cmdls)

<comment><USER15> This is a bit far from what most would consider REST. Just call it a HTTP api?

Looks cool though! I would love a product that behaves like a proxy/CDN for images and does some on-demand resizing/filtering.

<comment><USER16> There is no true REST API. Just like there is no true Scottsman.

<comment><USER15> I don't disagree with you, but this one in particular seems very far from the definition even if you ignore all the hypermedia stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would be interesting to augment an image recognition dataset with additional inputs generated by minor transformations under these scripts.

<comment><USER18> This is fairly standard practice (although I don't know if ImageMagick is specifically used).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting to see this re-surface on Hacker News. This set of scripts has to be among the most useful things I've found on the internet, and I've used some of these in many of my projects!

</comment><comment><USER20> These are great and I need to start using these. For instance the dominantcolor script extracts color schemes from pictures. Something I've tried to do by eye in the past with limited success.

[http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/dominantcolor/index.p...](http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/dominantcolor/index.php)

</comment><comment><USER21> There is some very powerful stuff in here. I wonder if the author has implemented these in any DCC plugins?

</comment><comment><USER22> That awk Mandelbrot script is pretty hardcore.

</comment><comment><USER23> If ImageMagic isn't your thing and like a GUI but don't like Photoshop or the GIMP I really recommend PixInsight ([http://www.pixinsight.com/](http://www.pixinsight.com/)). It's normally used for astronomical image processing but it's well build with some advanced stuff in there. Unfortunately not free, but people have to pay the bills!

</comment><comment><USER24> No no no, we can't have this, that's too old fashioned!

Proper way to do this is to create an image processing SaaS around these scripts, announce to store the filter presets on blockchain and create a marketplace platform for filter creators, have a $50M ICO, spend the cash on lambos, and fail awesomely.

EDIT: Ok, I just didn't scroll far enough :) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16668686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16668686)

<comment><USER25> It constantly amazes me how huge the variation is between some software services and the reward for their effort.

On the one hand you have giant startups earning millions from a tiny SaaS tool.

And on the other hand you have a single developer sharing a huge library of useful tools for free.

It's a crazy world now, it seems opportunity is everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Old and gold

</comment><comment><USER27> It's listed alphabetically and difficult to know what each script does. I had to click each one to find out what it does, but these are my favorites:

* tshirt- Transforms an image to place it in a region of a tshirt image

* tileimage - Tiles an image to a given size with various tile arrangements.

* shadows - Applies drop shadows to an image.

* grid - Superimposes a set of horizontal and/or vertical grid lines on an image.

* lupe - Applies a magnifying glass effect in a local area of an image.

* multicrop - Crops and unrotates multiple images from a scanned image.

* peelingpaint - Applies a peeling paint effect to an image.

* picframe - Adds a picture frame around an image.

* picturefold - Applies a map-like folded appearance to an image.

* PINBARREL - Corrects or applies pincushion and/or barrel lens distortion to an image.

* PUZZLE - Applies a puzzle like effect to an image.

* RANDOMCLIPART - Randomly distributes clip art over the image.

* SKETCH - Applies a sketch effect to an image. SMARTCROP - Automatically crops an image to a given size around the hightest detail region.

* TILER - Converts an image into a tilable texture.

* UNPERSPECTIVE - Automatically removes pespective distortion from an image.

* UNROTATE - Automatically unrotates a rotated image and trims the surrounding border.

* VINTAGE1 - Applies a a classic vintage effect to an image

* DIAGCOLLAGE - Collages three images in a diagonal orientation.

* DEFISHEYE - Corrects for fisheye distortion in an image.

* EMBROIDERY - Applies an embroidery effect to each color in an image.

* DOMINANTCOLOR - Computes the dominant color in an image.

* OVERLAPCROP - Creates a sequence of cropped subsections permitting optional overlap of the subsections.

* TRIMMER - Trims the background from any number of specified sides of an image.

* outfit - use texture image onto image of clothing

* splitcrop - split one image into many pieces

* whiteboard - Processes a picture of a whiteboard to clean up the background and correct the perspective

* postagestamp - convert image into stamp

* glow - add glow effect

<comment><USER28> There is a summary page of what all the scripts do [0].

0\. [http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/script_list.txt](http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/script_list.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love ImageMagick but I can't believe there's only one feel facto cli image processing tool. Do people know of others?

<comment><USER30> I use VIPS

[https://jcupitt.github.io/libvips/API/current/using- cli.html](https://jcupitt.github.io/libvips/API/current/using-cli.html)

Much better performance and better image format support for my use.

It also has a gui

[https://github.com/jcupitt/nip2](https://github.com/jcupitt/nip2)

<comment><USER31> The GitHub wiki for VIPS has a page [1] very relevant to GP's question. It lists two dozen alternatives to VIPS (both command line tools and libraries) and compares how they performed on a load-crop-scale-apply convolution-save task. The source code for each implementation of the task is right there on the page.

[1] [https://github.com/jcupitt/libvips/wiki/Speed-and-memory- use](https://github.com/jcupitt/libvips/wiki/Speed-and-memory-use)

<comment><USER29> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cool collection of effects. Too bad they are free for non-commercial use only.

<comment><USER33> That seems a little sketchy for the simpler ones, like this: [http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/gaussian/index.php](http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/gaussian/index.php)

He shows the equivalent IM command lines, and it's 2 lines of text.

No issue with the more complex ones though...it's his work.

<comment><USER34> He also documented (with example images) and web-published all of them. It's not just two lines of code.

<comment><USER35> So if I do this in ImageMagick on a commerical project:

      convert $infile \( $infile -blur 0x$width \) -compose minus +swap \ -composite -normalize $tmp0
      composite -blend $mix%x100% $tmp0 $infile -matte $outfile

I now owe Fred something?

So everyone that ever figures out how to do something neat with a free tool and documents it gets to claim the rights to that and ask for money?

Might not even be against this as an idea, but the premise seems shaky to me, I guess

Maybe more to the point is- if you want to ask for money for doing work like this, don't publish the ImageMagick command equivalents? Though I guess that would be hard to avoid other than putting it in some proprietary UI/app or something. Oh well.

<comment><USER36> No, if you save time reading imagemagick documentation by grabbing an off-the- shelf script, you owe him something</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Responsive Web Design vs Adaptive Web Design – What's the Difference? - <AUTHOR> http://despreneur.com/responsive-web-design-vs-adaptive-web-design-whats-the-difference/

<comment><USER2> I'm not convinced of the technical chops of the author.

Right near the top of the article, we get this:

> Since websites designed using the adaptive web design are housed on their > own domain, the web pages load at a much faster rate. ... > Quite unlike the > websites designed using an Adaptive Web Design, the ones designed using a > Responsive web design load at a slow speed.

Sure, you get a difference in page load time based on whether you render mobile-specific templates server-side vs doing the adjustment for screen size in JavaScript and just sending the same thing to everyone, but surely that comes from the slowness of running JS on the client device and the larger page size, rather than what domain it's from? Which domain it's on shouldn't matter at all, there's no reason to assume that both domains aren't served from the same server with virtual hosts in the two-domain case, or that one domain isn't served from two servers through a load-balancer in the single-domain case.</comment>


British scientists claim to have found proof of alien life - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-truth-is-out-there-british-scientists-claim-to-have-found-proof-of-alien-life-8826690.html

<comment><USER2> Published in the Journal of Cosmology?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology#Reliabili...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology#Reliability)

"The quality of peer review at the journal has been questioned. The journal has also been accused of promoting fringe viewpoints and speculative viewpoints on astrobiology, astrophysics, and quantum physics. Skeptical blogger and biologist PZ Myers said of the journal "... it isn't a real science journal at all, but is the... website of a small group... obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth.""

Wickramasinghe and his collaborators make these claims frequently.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be fantastic if this were true. I would think it wouldn't be too hard to genetically determine if these were extraterrestrial, no? The DNA would have some kind of unique markers due to the necessities of living in a different environment? Any biology majors here?</comment>


Fake cellphone towers intercepting your phone calls - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/05/fake-cellphone-towers/?ncid=rss_truncated#home

<comment><USER2> Hey -- enough already?

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fake+cellphone+towers#!/story/fore...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fake+cellphone+towers#!/story/forever/0/fake%20cellphone%20towers) (6 posts in 12 days)</comment>


Show HN: Instant package name checking, supports NPM and Pypi - <AUTHOR> http://instantpackagename.com <comment><AUTHOR> More package manager support will come soon!</comment>


The hazy issue of weed and work - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170725-the-hazy-issue-of-weed-and-work <comment><USER2> I wish people would stop equating cannabis (the correct term) with alcohol. For me and my combat vet friends, it's our medicine, usually a replacement for the serotonin zombie bullshit the VA tries to give us. Of course if the job position is one of, say, operating heavy machinery, etc, drug use should at least be disclosed, but in states that are legal, cbd strains and smaller controlled doses in edibles etc mean I bet there are a lot of people who are high at work and you just don't have a clue. Its just not the same as showing up drunk. Do you immediately fire the guy who takes his adderal?

Too bad I live in a state that doesn't recognize the medical benefit yet, so I forgoe for legal reasons, but some of my buddies in the same state are literally risking jail and worse just to use their medicine.

Its not an employers business whatsoever unless relevant to the particular job. Also, people need yo stop signing employee agreements and whatever paper HR shoves in their face. Last place I was at I signed one document, and just threw away the drug testing paper. Without those papers signed many employees have no recourse on the subject at all anyway. Of course, many people are so far entangled in one form or another they let their employee walk all over them. People ought to be more willing to walk out the door in at will states, and need to be more specific about trigger conditions in contract work.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, cannabis seems to help a lot of people, and nearly anything that reduces rates of opioid abuse is a good thing.

But, man, am I tired of smelling it everywhere. If cannabis users are going to be so inconsiderate about stinking up common spaces, it's going to be difficult to support legalizing it for recreational use.

<comment><USER4> If they use a proper vaporizer or an edible or any number of other techniques, the smell isn't a problem.

Only uneducated idiots actually smoke the stuff anymore. There are so much better delivery mechanisms nowadays which are much less harsh on your throat and lungs, it's not even funny.

Source: I used to live in Denver, and I knew a lot of friends and co-workers who used vaporizers and never had a problem with smell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _And marijuana use is expected to jump significantly over the next few years in North America._

They don't tell who exactly expects that, nor what the chances are such expectation will hold true (nor whether it will in the long run, over the course of decades). At first sight it makes sense, but does it really? I couldn't find any large scale studies, but searching the internet seems to indicate the outcome can go both ways. There's enough articles to be found saying there's actually a decline in use after legalization (e.g. in Portugal and California). Likewise for the opposite. Conclusion to me: you can expect what you want, but without a proper scientific approach to evaluating it you just don't know for sure.

<comment><USER6> As a California resident, anecdotally, I observe a lot more MJ use. This is of course what you'd expect after decriminalization.

Quick googling does not turn up numbers. Do you have a concrete basis for your conjecture?

<comment><USER7> Observing more because there is not the threat of legal jeopardy is not the same as more people using or people using more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll say this here. Because IDGAF.

I worked at a call center. We had an hour for lunch. I had it timed down to a science. I could drive home, even in severe winter conditions, get up to my apartment, and queue up an episode of American Dad on Netflix. I had exactly the amount of run time of that episode at home for lunch, and I would smoke at least two bowls from my water pipe. If the morning had been especially hectic with angry customers, I'd hit it harder.

I'd walk back in to work with 10 minutes to spare. Sit down, catch up on emails I'd seen but ignored in the morning, and get situated back at my desk. Because it was a call center, and it was better to be 10 minutes early back from my lunch instead of 30 seconds late. I would then field my best calls of the day, and my metrics would prove this. I got the best response rates, the best feedbacks, and generally just felt the best about those calls. There was no anxiety, just two people on a phone call, and getting some tech support.

Was I driving while impaired on the way back to work? Yeah, and that shit is bad news, I'm not defending that. But given the stress and rigors of the call center, it's what I did to cope. This was before I took my mental illness seriously as an illness, and sought professional help with a doctor. Just me self medicating at home on my lunch break. But the raw data of my performance numbers don't lie, when I was blazed out of my fucking head, I was the best man or woman on the floor, period.

My manager loved me. But she didn't know every time we'd have our monthly face-to-face performance meetings, I was blazed out of my head then too. Why? She always booked them after my lunch break. My actual goal in those meetings was to see how much of her time I could waste, because they were only scheduled for a half an hour, and they want you on the phones producing all the rest of your metrics non-stop. But if I could get her talking and keep talking about work stuff, that meant more time I wasn't sitting under the barrel of the phones.

I don't know that I have a point to any of this. Just anecdotal evidence to throw on the pile from my own personal experience. But I only feel compelled to bring it up because that job was such a numbers and performance driven affair, and my data backs me up on this. I had actual proof in the numbers, beyond just the assumption that I was doing better because I felt better because I was high.

<comment><USER9> If you did this every day, there is little to no issue with you driving. Regular users get a tolerance, even my grandma will drive while high if she has a proper tolerance and its only a bowl or two.

They were strict when I first came to help them about not smoking and driving, which I of course respected.

However once Grandma was smoking daily she realized its really a non-issue. Even for her. She's 66 btw.

As long as you have a tolerance. That is the key here.

If you do not:

then you shouldn't drive until you have a shower, some snacks and a light nap.

<comment><USER8> I'm talking North Dakota weather. Three inches of ice on the roads, but fuck it they plowed, and that's the weather of the city and nobody gives a fuck and no businesses are closing. Not like Dallas where a quarter of an inch of just slushy snow could shut down the entire Metroplex, I'm talking harsh Winter.

I know about tolerance. From my personal experience I actually very much enjoy actively smoking a blunt while I'm driving down the highway or interstate. But it's still impairment. I am still not of my regular faculties while driving. Even if my regular faculties are wrecked with anxiety and more likely to get me in to an accident. Regardless, if, for whatever reason, anything should so happen and I wreck, it automatically becomes my fault. No ifs ands or buts about it in the face of the current law. And I can't readily defend against that, I think that's the right call.

<comment><USER9> Couldnt agree more, tbh. If the weather is bad you should never get behind the wheel impaired.

Fair point on the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honestly I think the smartest thing you can do as a company when it comes to weed is.. nothing. It's just not the employers business what people do in their free time. There's no upside to getting involved with that kind of issue. If you have an employee showing up high or something that's an issue with their professionalism.

<comment><USER11> This. Treat it like alcohol. Drink as much as you want, just don't come to work drunk or drink on work time.

<comment><USER12> Haha, I'm guessing you never worked in the Valley.

<comment><USER13> Drinking at work and working while drinking are not the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My company has a policy of drug testing but I don't know anyone that has been tested. A couple of my coworkers that have been with the company longer than I have, grow or have grown weed and talk about it at work. Around 4/20 one of my managers said he doesn't care if we smoke weed. But, there's still doubt. Personally I enjoy weed better than alcohol and they're both a matter of going down the street and showing my ID to get. I bought an ounce to keep in my fridge right now but I haven't been using it much because of the doubt surrounding drug testing and whether it is acceptable. I find other ways to deal with stress (kava is my go to atm), but I wish I could feel more comfortable with using weed. I don't think it's the best thing long term but my mind is in overdrive 90% of the time and it helps me actually slow down and feel things. I miss it.

<comment><USER15> First time I've heard of kava but the way you describe "overdrive" is exactly why I continue to use marijuana to slow down after work. Would you mind expanding on how you use kava and how it's effects compare to weed?

<comment><USER14> I drink 2-4 bags of the Yogi brand Kava tea they sell at most grocery stores. There's also a Kava bar in town where I've had the "real" Kava, but I didn't find that I noticed much more of an effect and some of the extracts upset my stomach. What I notice is that my stress dissipates and I slide into one calm train of thought. Tension leaves my body. I can read or watch a movie without feeling like I should be doing something else. It doesn't have any stimulating psychoactive or physical effects, but it's good if you want to shed the coat you carried home from work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In Canada, lawsuits have indicated that being impaired at work isn't necessarily a firing offence. If being sober is a job requirement, you can get fired for not meeting those requirements. But if you're drunk in a call center.. you might not need to be sober to do the job.

</comment><comment><USER17> If they test for weed, they should have to test for alcohol too. Especially the day after the company golf tournament.

<comment><USER8> A skinny kid is looking at a few weeks for the joint they smoked to leave their system. An overweight person is looking at roughly 30 days. Obesity takes you in to ??? mark mode, as many as 90 days is plausible from what I've seen. That's just casual use, habitual users skew the math wildly. Why? THC metabolizes in to your fat cells, and sticks around.

Alcohol? Since it's typically just a urine test, you can expect the traces to be gone within hours. If they're doing a liver enzymes test, they can detect alcoholism or heavy alcohol use in a wider window, but it still doesn't compare to the time weed stays in you.

Further, alcohol abuse can generally be explained away because it's accepted by society. As long as you're not obviously drunk when talking with them about it, you can get a pass. Weed is the devil's herb, cause of all manner of calamity and reefer-madness, don't'cha'kno. There's no explaining testing positive for marijuana away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> No one talks about the benefit of being high while working in a creative job. Forward thinking companies should offer it the same way beer on Fridays is offered (only where legal of course)

<comment><USER8> I worked in the games industry for a stint. Five out of every four people smoked weed. Because for every person who didn't, there was that one guy who REALLY did.

How the fuck else are you supposed to make games about slaying dragons and defending extra-terrestrial Earth colonies from fungal-based zombie invasions? Somebody's gotta be high to come up with that somewhere in the development pipeline.

<comment><USER8> And for that matter. You know that scene at the end of Big Hero 6 where he goes through the portal? And the surreal bleeding colors of the infinite void?

I know -- KNOW -- whoever worked on the Environment Art for that scene has done mushrooms, LSD, or both. Because that's the only way you truly know what that sensation looks like, IMHO. And the way they were able to capture it in 3D animation was spectacular. Big Hero 6 is just Pixar showing off art ability, if you ask me, since it was a licensed IP and they didn't have to work too hard on characters and plot.

But I digress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a startup, Hirebotics, that's working to replace druggies with robots. Hirebotics provides the robots, which are Universal Robots from Denmark, programs them, monitors them, and bills by the hour, like workers. The Washington Post reports on a plant that's gradually replacing employees with these robots on a 1 for 1 basis.[1] The reliable employees are kept. The marginal ones, well...

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rise-of-the- machines...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rise-of-the- machines/2017/08/05/631e20ba-76df-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is really overblown. People who use alcohol but have never touched cannabis likely assume that it makes you drunk like booze. Stoned people have a lower baseline stress level. When you are in a state of decreased stress you can think more clearly and effectively than someone who's mind is clouded with stress. None if these papers want to touch the toxic effect stress has at the workplace, stress does far more damage than any drug.

<comment><USER21> _" Stoned people have a lower baseline stress level."_

That really varies widely, depending on how much of which kind of cannabis you use, how you use it, and the individual that uses it.

It's possible to have a very stressful experience if one takes too much or uses cannabis that's too strong. Some people can have panic attacks, effectively "bad trips", or even psychotic breakdowns (if they're prone to schizophrenia.. and you might never really know if you are until you have one).

Many people do in fact get stress relief from using cannabis, but that effect is by no means guaranteed. You might wind up stressing out, and even freaking out, instead.

Hopefully, when people use cannabis at work, they'll be doing so in moderation, but that's not guaranteed either -- some people do all sorts of irresponsible or ill-advised things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm in a position where I sit behind a keyboard and answer the telephone all day. Nonetheless, I pretty much have the raw power to destroy someone's life financially even at such a low rank in the organization. That we don't have widespread drug testing but do have a problem with rehiring staff who were discharged for misconduct says quite a bit about the organization too.

</comment><comment><USER23> Really it gets down to all drugs tests should only be carried out after a failure of an initial impairment test. That then covers both sides of the issue as fairly as possible.

</comment><comment><USER24> The issue gets even more interesting when you factor in working from home.

Is it wrong to smoke weed while "on the clock" in your panties on the couch? Perhaps if it compromises the deliverable but if the employee is productive, efficient, and timely - should it matter if they are st0ned or not?

<comment><USER25> I feel like this might have been touched on previously. Companies ordering stay at home employees to get drug tested. If I can't work high in my underwear at home then that would severely crimp my ability to work.

<comment><USER26> I guess everyone is different. There's no way I could work like that, I always have to dress like I would show up in an office and go somewhere (anywhere really, even a park) other than where I live.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: NinjaMock – free wireframing tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.ninjamock.com <comment><USER2> This is very impressive, it reminds of me balsamiq but is super convenient because it's browser based and free.</comment>


Food Scientists Are Getting Fed Up with Picky Eaters - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/emulsify-this-food-scientists-are-getting-fed-up-with-picky-consumers-1539352923 <comment><USER2> From Albania here, (2nd world European country, aka still developing).

Due to its mediterranean weather (1), everything raised locally tastes better. Local food is full of flavor, and things made artisan-ally and locally are still good. Even something simple like a 'Tiramisu' tastes better there, most likely because things are still made to be consumed within a day, and not last for ages. Other countries are similar (Greece, Southern Italy, Croatia, Macedonia).

eg. The difference in taste between a home made jam, and one bought in a supermarket is huge. (mainly for the supermarket one having to have a much longer shelf life, and having additives added).

Unfortunately modernization has reached the country and things are getting more 'standardized' and getting that western level of blandness as well.

Ironically: Fresh locally produced and prepared food is a real luxury in western countries, and a normal commodity in poorer ones.

1) Warm weather is important. eg. Hothouse/greenhouse tomatoes or cucumber are never as flavorful as field raised and ripped ones. The more north you go, the blander/crappier the food gets, mostly due to the weather.

<comment><USER3> > _The more north you go, the blander /crappier the food gets, mostly due to > the weather._

It's more complicated than that. Cultural reasons are a huge factor in why Western food is so bland:

> _Serving richly spiced stews was no longer a status symbol for Europe 's > wealthiest families — even the middle classes could afford to spice up their > grub. "So the elite recoiled from the increasing popularity of spices," Ray > says. "They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing > food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should > taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing > flavors."_

> _The rest of Europe soon adopted this new style. "It's a redefinition of > what elegant is," Freedman says. "It's sort of like — in fashion — for a > while having more frills, more jewelry was fashionable. But then someone > said that a basic black dress with some pearls is much better."_

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/26/394339284/ho...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/26/394339284/how- snobbery-helped-take-the-spice-out-of-european-cooking?t=1539535616321)

<comment><USER4> I do believe the parent did mean specifically the base taste is less bland, independent of cultural factors. For someone who hasn't experienced the taste difference one might think 'really, how much better can a tomato taste?'- but no the difference really is substantial, esp when comparing, say, a North American tomato and one from southern Europe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Access: [https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...](https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Femulsify- this-food-scientists-are-getting-fed-up-with-picky- consumers-1539352923&h=AT3KrDMbj5VqukRhmpMml5OvVrkTkeNVA5EdQBR0JwGpW3jmV0wXiP0TQ3t7MFtMV38O1YB9OAzwTyaCyYCw2Y_fWxvDsEFqCgRB78D_YNtCkuKNYL- _yChrhanir8Ff7CIfFjswuPjCDb0AdwKI9EYeW55OMM6uNbytlGPHKU_9WdgQeMR6XAioeTfBOXdcnkQEslFhYAk32bEyVMfpZ1Y2cLj_Q048gFN7Fiq0RP4uADLAVCQI9hLooHEWoco- Iiyshc6s-g_cccnNDXcHlbtB598A8hyFo9OmTRoADoDxDPgq1XPuD9ERqCtP06ywPSr7v0rozz8jE6jPphPEcjF5L5ok82cChF- swy_F)

<comment><USER6> If you don't want to be tracked by Facebook, there's [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft- wsj/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/) which fakes the referrer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I truly think this is because picky eaters are easy to market to; they pay attention to flashy advertising rather then hard science. We have an entire generation of people that think GMOs are somehow harmful and also ignore the tremendous environmental impact of so called organic foods. The same people taking birth control are reaching for grass fed hormone free milk and beef.

<comment><USER8> I think it's a cognitive reaction to safety. Fear is certainly there due to the unknown. People will retreat to what they feel is safe and easy to understand i.e. "natural" food. Little do they know natural food is GMO! The crops that survived today did so by natural genetic mutations for the crops that had the best ability to survive. Humans just took advantage of that fact and sped up the process a bit to our advantage.

<comment><USER9> Of course humans also took it upon themselves to define what "best ability to survive" is.

Not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly a difference between GMO and regular evolved food.

 __Edit: __Well, thinking about it a bit more, of course selective breeding is humans picking what "best ability to survive" is as well...

<comment><USER8> I don't doubt what we decide should survive isn't necessarily what "nature" will decide should survive. If we get to a point where we are in too much conflict with "nature" we will lose most likely. Earth's evolution of life is much longer and stronger than we as a species are. But why not try? It's our imperative as a species to continue doing what's best for our survival.

<comment><USER9> I think what people are mostly afraid of is e.g. developing breeds that we cannot control and that drown out other essential species.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi If the food industry were more responsible and didn't do everything it can to reduce costs at the expense of selling crap, maybe there wouldn't be so many "picky eaters".

Obviously no common citizen can track a list of 20 ingredients and know which of them are the worst offenders and which are harmless. But there is a clear correlation between processed products containing lots of weird-sounding ingredients and products that taste bland, upset the stomach and/or are unhealthy. So in absence of detailed knowledge about what each individual ingredient is, it's a perfectly rational and sensible decision to prefer the food with fewer, and well-known, ingredients. I have a scientific education, know what dihydrogen monoxide is, and still do that, because I don't trust the industry and regulations enough* when it comes to eating an unknown ingredient. And the industry can cry me a river.

*And this is in Europe, where at least there is some more regulation... in the US, the same applies multiplied by 10.

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel the underlying cause of this is the continuing stupidification of Western Societies. It ties in well with the fact that most people just aren't well equipped to navigate complex issues and are easy prey for unscrupulous marketers. Companies take advantage of that fact just as much as politicians do. It's easy to tell people to be afraid of complex sounding ingredients just as much as it's easy to tell voters to be afraid of complex scientific phenomena like climate change. And then you can push your unscientific agenda (whether it's climate change denial or it's marketing your food as natural and your competitors as poison and thus charging your customers double or more for it).

<comment><USER10> People are about as smart as they have always been. The world is just getting more complicated around them.

<comment><USER8> Not true. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146752-we-seem-to- be-g...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146752-we-seem-to-be-getting- stupider-and-population-ageing-may-be-why/)

<comment><USER10> That article isn't convincing to me. IQ testing has known issues and if they didn't control for age then the assertion might apply to the general populace right now but not as a general trend that will hold over time, especially since Millennials and Gen Z together are much larger than Boomers. The fertility argument is dumb IMO because while intelligence is heritable, environmental factors and education play at least as large of a role in ability to perform on an IQ test. Also that trend, if it is anything other than a blip (because the wealthiest may actually tend to have more children) just began do there would not be much reason to think gene shift would be a strong factor in IQ trends.

[https://qz.com/1125805/the-reason-the-richest-women-in- the-u...](https://qz.com/1125805/the-reason-the-richest-women-in-the-us-are- the-ones-having-the-most-kids/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Could this be a food industry backed opinion piece?

The lobbyist could then say: Look, people misunderstand things like dihydrogen monoxide. What should we do with the ingredient list? Perhaps we should have the freedom not to mention scary sounding ingredients?

<comment><USER8> I'm all for conspiracy theories, but we have to use some reasoning here. I don't doubt the food industry does this, but the reality is there's a happy middle ground. Maybe that middle ground could be using common names for things. Food science has made food cheaper and more accessible and that's a good thing. Our food isn't killing us. We are healthier and living longer than ever in history. I do think people who are marketing more expensive food that is marked up tremendously due to an unscientific reason are the real beneficiaries here.

<comment><USER12> Look at what Monsanto did with bribes to scientists to say GMO is ok

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think it's great that processed food manufacturers are trying to replace synthetic ingredients with actual food. I don't see a problem here.

<comment><USER14> What exactly is the benefit of replacing Red #40 with red cabbage extract?

<comment><USER15> Well, potentially quite a lot of benefit:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-dyes-linked-to- allergies-a...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-dyes-linked-to-allergies- adhd-and-cancer-group-calls-on-us-to-outlaw-their-use/)

<comment><USER16> The actual report seems rather weak. Some people have an allergic reaction to it, and some mouses may have tumors growing a bit faster - when over 5%(!) of their diet is red dye - and only in one of the three studies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I freely admit to being a picky eater. And I even understand why I became that way. It doesn't change the fact that I rarely sample things I have never had before.

Growing up we were constantly told to eat everything on our plates because there were kids starving somewhere else. And I was forced to sit at a table and stare at food I absolutely hated the taste or texture of for hours. Watched it get cold. Get even worse tasting. And still I sat. As I became an adult I was able to eat what I wanted and refuse things that I didn't. I developed a taste for things I like, and constantly work to refine those flavors. I cook all the time, I use smokers, grills and ovens, we hand raise our own cows, pigs, birds and fish along with a large garden that I eat very little out of but my wife loves. I love looking for the ultimate version of the particular food that I enjoy eating.

But I still have no desire to try anything "new" not out of ignorance, but because I don't have to.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if there are different levels of picky eaters. For me, there are some things I like better than other things, but I will eat or try something if nothing better is around.

For some people it is an extremely strong aversion -- something that they can't really control, and that would not be influenced by food science or rational arguments.

</comment><comment><USER19> If I want vitamin B12 I don't need to eat fortified cereals. I can just eat beef or tuna.

</comment><comment><USER20> "If there's a label on the food, that's a warning label, because that means it's been processed: real food doesn't need a label."

\- Robert Lustig, M.D., M.S.L.

(source: [https://peterattiamd.com/roblustig/](https://peterattiamd.com/roblustig/))

</comment><comment><USER21> There's quite a few comments in here about how food scientists shouldn't have put so many things in foods to begin with. Well, look. There's a handful of reasons anything ends up intentionally added to large-scale industrial foods:

1) To improve taste, 2) To improve texture (or to preserve texture for products -- emulsifiers and binders added to keep dressings from separating, for instance), 3) To improve shelf life and preserve the food, 4) To stand in for something more expensive (artificial vanilla in place of the real thing, or HFCS in place of sugar that has import tariffs on it), or 5) To improve health outcomes. (Think of cereals fortified with vitamins, or iodized salts -- iodine deficiency was a major health threat until the introduction of iodized salt).

Yes, things that improve taste aren't always good for you -- they're often refined carbs or fats or both. But it turns out that in order to get a bottle of ranch dressing that can sit on the shelf for weeks before being purchased, last for months in your fridge, and still have a creamy integration of oil and water (things that want to separate!) without having to be stirred or shaken every use. If you don't want to buy that ranch dressing, that's fine. You can make your own, or make a vinaigrette. But there's not some vast conspiracy to add chemicals to food. And people add thickeners and emulsifiers to food when they cook at home all the time. "Xanthan gum" is not any less healthy for you than agar-agar or gelatine, and it's used for basically the same thing, it just has different properties. (Gelatin is removed from commercial broths and stocks all the time because it makes it unappealing to pour out of the carton at room temperature, for instance. This is one reason making your own stock and broth yields better soup.)

And the upshot of all of this is that we've made lots of foods cheaper, more plentiful and less time-consuming to prepare than at any other point in human history. That's had real effects on society -- not all of them good, see our obesity epidemic in the US, but on the whole, you can see what people were doing, it wasn't a plot to give us TEH CHEMICALS, it was an effort to give a civilization unparalleled amounts of food security and let people specialize in life outside of the home. (There's an entire tangent about the intersection of technical and social progress, and the interaction between convenience foods and women being freed from being homemakers to entering the workforce and being independent.)

Is all of it good? No. Would it be good for people to become more educated and make better decisions about what to eat here? Yes. But that's not what the article is talking about. There's parallels to medicine here -- on one hand, the pharma industry is clearly devoted to profits above all else, and they do all sorts of infuriating things in both the market (slightly altering drugs in order to make new ones that are just as effective but still under patent, jacking up the price of insulin, etc.) and in science (there's tons of scientific studies you can't trust because pharma companies will run a bunch of studies and file drawer the ones that don't help them). It would be better if people could make more informed decisions about health, if the market wasn't distorted to misalign the incentives of consumers and producers, if there was more transparency and better science. But the opposition to commercially-funded pharma studies is not principled and it does not improve your health outcomes. It's stuff like the anti-vax crusade that is letting diseases largely eradicated come back, and Gweneth Paltrow selling folk remedies to the gullible and clueless. The same thing is true in nutrition -- people who are decrying chemical additives in food or pitching you on fad diets are not trying to help you fight against large agribusiness, they are exploiting your skepticism of large agribusiness in order to enrich themselves at your expense. MSG is fine. "Nitrate free" cured meats have more nitrates (but naturally occurring ones, from celery!) than ones not so labelled. Produce labelled as "organic" often come with more pesticides than regular produce because of how you have to grow organic produce and still get high yields, meaning that they can be less safe for many people. A general rule of thumb is that if you don't trust a company when they're putting xantham gum in your food, you shouldn't trust what they're replacing it with, either, even if the name sounds more natural or some food blogger is telling you that xanthan gum causes sterility or whatever.

<comment><USER21> I forgot one reason from the list -- to improve color.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Paywall bypass: [https://archive.is/Hb6NE](https://archive.is/Hb6NE)

I used: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/archiveror/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/archiveror/)

<comment><USER23> I used: [https://buy.wsj.com/wsjussept18/](https://buy.wsj.com/wsjussept18/)

<comment><USER22> As in intern earning in INR I'll just go ahead and spend literally 1% of my income per paywalled site out there shall I?

Siloing information to those invested enough in the field to need quality information in quantity enough to pay for access is not something I want to or can support.

I don't know a good alternative for WSJ, but I don't know a good alternative for me either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Then they came for monosodium glutamate. Even though food companies say it > is harmless, they eventually pulled it from many products, because that's > what the customer demanded.

So? If there isn't a good reason for it to be _in_ the food, then it probably shouldn't be. On the other hand, if there _is_ a good reason (e.g. the food lasts longer), then I see no reason why not let the market decide what they prefer.

In general, it's not entirely unreasonable to not trust companies. They're mainly after high profits, so unless there is "market pressure" (such as customers not/wanting certain ingredients) they will just continue poisoning us in different ways (lead in gas, nicotine/smoking, trans fats, etc). It also doesn't help that e.g. orange juice is advertised as "all natural pure oranges" but tastes like a high school chemistry lab trash bin.

<comment><USER8> Yes and no. MSG is what gives food that amazing umami flavor. It's in more foods than we realize. It's the same as adding any other spice. It's important to revert to a scientific approach to understanding why something shouldn't be in food.

<comment><USER25> A guy at work thought msg was a neurotoxin. I'm like, "uh, no, it's an amino acid,a normal constituent of every protein you eat..." This is a guy with a master's in a technical field. I honestly don't know how we got here.

<comment><USER8> I've learned that being an expert in any field does not shield you from being very very stupid in many other fields. Critical thinking skills are hard to learn and maintain. It's a constant battle against our own biases and misinformation we are ingesting. Especially when you consider the memories that are strongest are the ones we tie to emotions. That particular fact alone makes it easy to feed misinformation based on things they might fear.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Meaningless (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-myers-briggs-personality-test-is-pretty-much-meaningless-9359770?no-ist <comment><USER2> Duh?

16 possible personality types is all M-B can handle

And most people are borderline on various pairs depending on their mood that day</comment>


4chan hacker discusses the manipulation of the Time poll - <AUTHOR> http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/15/inside-the-precision-hack/

<comment><USER2> I was surprised to read how easy it was to game... at the heart of the success seems to be a real lack of quality coding on Time's behalf.

<comment><USER3> Fair internet voting is generally an unsolvable problem, unless you have a voting list from a more reliable source and you can authenticate people on that list. Despite best practices, any high profile "best person in the world" poll has a pretty good chance of being won by moot/Lowtax/gimmick-meme-of-the- day.

<comment><USER4> Indeed Switzerland seems to seem think that fair internet voting is possible - <http://www.geneve.ch/evoting/english/presentation_projet.asp> and [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/25/world/main645615.s...](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/25/world/main645615.shtml) describe how they've experimented with it in national elections.

<comment><USER5> But a big part of the system described there is about authenticating people as being registered voters, which is what extension said the prerequisite was for fair internet voting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i have to admit, gaming the poll is kind of silly, but this is a pretty interesting recap of the process.

<comment><USER7> I'm always amazed by what lengths random people will go to hack software. Half my developers don't even understand SQL injection attacks. There's not one of them that really understands buffer overflows. So what chance do I have of getting a secure product out?

Those sorts of things really should be part of every programmer's education.

<comment><USER8> This seems far simpler than SQL Injection of Buffer Overlow attacks. Why doesn't Time require some kind of registration? They could use registered users as a basis for, dare I say, "Web 2.0" features.

<comment><USER9> Registration instantly kills participation. This is a poll, not a transaction, or a subscription, or anything complicated like that - there's no reason to make it so.

A captcha would have worked nicely - hassle free, commitment free (remember, most of your visitors will flee for the hills as soon as you present a registration), and tough enough to crack that most people wouldn't even try. Even if you had a script that farmed captchas all day to manual labour the effect is still relatively small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At it again: Website users create internet script in attempt to reach 1,000,000 followers first <http://www.bnonews.com/news/261.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Time used GET to execute the vote script? Initially someone could have set an IMG SRC to the desired URL, right? That's just nuts, you wouldn't even have to click a link at that point

</comment><comment><USER12> they could just captcha the poll, it's not like they really need the random votes of people to lazy to fill it out in the first place.

seems like ip authentication is useless now because of the amount of proxies avaliable to people.

</comment><comment><USER13> At the end, it appears the author doesn't really get it. He thinks there was luck involved:

 _Ultimately, this hack involved [..] and a little bit of luck. Someone figured out the voting URL protocol. [..] and a member discovered the 'salt'_

There is no luck involved in figuring out the 'protocol' and discovering this kind of 'salt'.

<comment><USER14> I believe that "luck" alludes to one of them finding out that voters using an IPv6 address wouldn't be blocked (IPv4 sites got blocked if they voted for the same candidate more often than once every 13 seconds).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really enjoyed reading this article. Zero Cool would be proud.</comment>


Ask HN: How to best deal with 2 computers, but a single control keyboard/mouse - <AUTHOR> Due to a new contract, I now have to actively manage 2 computers during my day. One for the new contract, and another for my existing open source work which requires me to keep in touch, etc, and I'm having trouble figuring out how to ergonomically handle this.
Currently I use 2 or 3 24" monitors where the center one is directly in front of me, for simple ergonomics. I use one or 2 side monitors for other stuff, chat, youtube video, music or reference material. This has always worked great, as I can have my code on the center monitor where my focus is.
But now I'll be about 1/2 time on one computer, and 1/2 time on the other, but would still like to keep tabs on the other thing. Of course multiple monitors allow this. But what is the best way to have the center monitor contain what I'm trying to focus on at that time.
Right now I'm thinking of how to use a KVM to toggle the input of the center monitor. And then use the wing monitors for email/chat notifications of the different scopes.
I'm used to context switching in my head like this, so I'm not worried about the cognitive load. I've just never been forced to use a dedicated computer for a specific contract. This is more about ergonomics for me.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> [https://symless.com/synergy](https://symless.com/synergy)

<comment><AUTHOR> Already a big user of Synergy, but it doesn't do KVM. As in it can't change the view of my center screen from computer A to computer B.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On Windows, "Mouse without Borders" works well

[https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=354...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=35460)

</comment><comment> java-man vnc works well

[https://www.realvnc.com/](https://www.realvnc.com/)

[https://www.tightvnc.com/](https://www.tightvnc.com/)</comment>


Big list of 1-on-1 questions in random order - <AUTHOR> https://1on1hacker.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original discussion is here - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22341138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22341138)

</comment><comment><USER2> thanks for creating this.</comment>


Ask HN: What data format does this look like? - <AUTHOR> Trying to figure out my local bus company's ticketing system.
Here's one of the fields on it, anyone know what it might be?
P08pxI+q7abfvq3LIwspLRy/EWQ= <comment><USER2> It looks like a base64-encoded 20-byte value, which decodes to:

3f 4f 29 c4 8f aa ed a6 df be ad cb 23 0b 29 2d 1c bf 11 64

The length of a SHA-1 digest is 160 bits = 20 bytes. This does not _at all_ conclusively mean this value may be a SHA-1 digest, but 160 bits is not a length of value that's customarily used for random nonces, random identifiers, and the like. I recommend you suppose it's a SHA-1 digest and work from there.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is some binary Base64 encoded, would be my guess. This is because of the combination of characters and the = at the end.

</comment><comment><USER4> That looks like the text left behind when I got hacked.</comment>


A dark web tycoon pleads guilty. But how was he caught? - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615163/a-dark-web-tycoon-pleads-guilty-but-how-was-he-caught/ <comment><USER2> I would just like to point out that this article downplayed the central issue that brought an end to Freedom Hosting: massive, willful hosting of child pornography and a known and stated practice of refusing to take down anything.

This guy was not just a "dark web tycoon", he was a child porn hosting empire owner. Much higher severity in terms of moral heinousness than say selling drugs on The Silk Road.</comment>


Gamelife: the Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/10/12/gamelife-the-game/ <comment><USER2> A very different review that is also interesting to read: [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/books/2015/09/gamel...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/books/2015/09/gamelife_by_michael_clune_reviewed.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. Never heard of 'Suspended' before; sad I missed it as I was the right age.

<comment><USER2> You may have missed it at the time, but you can still play it. All of the Infocom games are well preserved.

I didn't play Suspended at the time it came out, despite wanting to, because I couldn't afford it. I wound up playing it decades later after buying the "Lost Treasures" re-release.</comment></comment>


Ruby DSL Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://clean-ruby.com/dsl <comment><USER2> I think it needs a foreword: "your problem likely is nowhere _near_ needing a DSL, please don't write one just because it makes you look clever".

Signed: everyone who's ever used a DSL which could have been written better as a couple of dozen functions.

<comment><USER3> Almost any problem can be meaningfully and usefully solved by introduction of a DSL. It's a remarkably flexible technique.

Ruby is a really bad language to write good DSLs in. Metaprogramming is an awkward replacement for better DSL facilities.

Maybe this book can demonstrate better techniques?

<comment><USER4> Interesting, that runs counter to the prevailing sentiment that Ruby's metaprogramming makes it great for writing DSLs. What language features do you prefer for writing DSLs?

<comment><USER3> Typing, phantom typing, straightforward lambdas, sum types, tail-recursion, direct syntax abstractions (both Lisp and Idris are great examples).

I find that metaprogramming in Ruby is a tremendous hack for getting something like syntax abstraction and something like control over evaluation order. Personally, syntax abstraction doesn't feel super important for deep or shallow embedded DSLs (though it's obvious a big deal in external DSLs if you want to walk that minefield). You need more than nothing, but making it "human language like" is ridiculous.

Controlling flow is a big part of it though. Ruby's block syntax does a lot here, but frankly functions/abstractions never feel first class in Ruby---only Objects do and Objects are too heavyweight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really looking forward to reading this. I got hooked on the Ruby DSL bug after reading about it in _Metaprogramming Ruby_ ([https://pragprog.com/book/ppmetr2/metaprogramming- ruby-2](https://pragprog.com/book/ppmetr2/metaprogramming-ruby-2)), and I've carried the concepts with me wherever I could.

</comment><comment><USER6> On a related note, here's Rich Kilmer talking about Ruby DSLs way back in 2008:

[http://www.infoq.com/presentations/kilmer-ruby- dsls](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/kilmer-ruby-dsls)

Good stuff from a guy who's done some pretty massive DSLs on DARPA projects.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there some kind of sample chapter?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet. But you can signup for a 5-email crash course. It's being updated almost every day now as I add more content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never been a fan of using "DSL" in the context of Ruby. Sure, you can do some metaprogramming, but you cannot create new syntax, change order of evaluation, etc., which I feel is a fundamental requirement for creating real EDSLs. One simple consequence of this is that you end up having to quote a lot of things.

<comment><AUTHOR> This surprises me. Can you offer an example of those types of problems in some Ruby code?

<comment><USER8> Let's use 'attr_reader' as a simple example. It defines a method that returns the value of a member variable. It would be nice to refer to the variable name literally, but this is not possible:

        attr_reader foo

The 'foo' above would evaluate to the contents of the variable 'foo'. So, you have to do this:

        attr_reader :foo

Because we cannot control how this code evaluated, we must quote 'foo'. This greatly limits what we can express.

<comment><USER9> That's one of the things I like about Ruby DSLs. Because the DSL is just Ruby, you can do things like:

        [:foo, :bar].each do |attribute|
            attr_reader attribute
        end

You probably wouldn't want do actually do that with attr_reader, but it is just an example.

<comment><USER8> Typically, you'd write syntactic sugar on top of regular functions, so that the underlying API is available in the host language to do things like in your example. Using Ruby's class syntax as an example, it gives you a convenient means to describe classes, but underneath that is an API for programmatic manipulation of class objects.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Effect of Zoning on Housing Prices – Research from Australia's Reserve Bank [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2018/pdf/rdp2018-03.pdf <comment><USER2> A week after Grattan published a comprehensive report into housing affordability.

[https://grattan.edu.au/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/901-Housin...](https://grattan.edu.au/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/901-Housing-affordability.pdf)</comment>


Natural Language Processing in Python - <AUTHOR> http://engineroom.trackmaven.com/blog/monthly-challenge-natural-language-processing/

<comment><USER2> NLTK is a wonderful toolkit. Its selection of corpera is great and its many utility functions for processing text are incredibly useful and easily extendable.

That being said, a lot of the ML, porter, and stemmer implementations are a bit out of date from the current cutting edge in the field. If you are interested in using NLTK for serious projects, I highly recommend writing custom implementations of these modules or using other libraries.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I too had given a tutorial on this a while back ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKe4M4iSclc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKe4M4iSclc)) and nltk is a quick way to prototype up something neat,but yes- if you need more than "toy" functionality, there are currently better tools for the job.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the talk, I enjoyed the video. Do you have any good pointers to building a named entity extractor with NLTK?

<comment><USER3> Thank you, I'm glad you you enjoyed it - I hope to have one on more advanced topics at some point. If you are looking for a named entity extractor sample, I have a sample from my talk on github: [https://github.com/shanbady/NLTK- Boston-Python-Meetup/blob/m...](https://github.com/shanbady/NLTK-Boston- Python-Meetup/blob/master/named_ent_chunker.py)

The sample uses the built-in named entity tagger but nltk also has support for leveraging the Stanford named entity tagger: [http://www.nltk.org/api/nltk.tag.html#module- nltk.tag.stanfo...](http://www.nltk.org/api/nltk.tag.html#module- nltk.tag.stanford)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the links. Please put me on the list for when a video of your second talk is out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kindle users, can your reader do this: Flappy bird on e-paper - luka-birsa http://www.visionect.si/blog/flappy-bird-on-e-paper/

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a Kindle. Also, I don't have a golf club either.

But I am certain that if I ever decide to buy a golf club, I won't use it to play hockey, just as I would not buy an e-book reader to play Floppy Bird.

<comment><USER2> The point of the article is not that eInk is all the rage for gaming.

The point of the article is that out there is an eInk platform that makes building and deploying web applications to eInk simple and developer friendly.

Disclaimer: I have developed Visionect Geoffrey restarurant ordering system and Wemar Nautipad nautic application for Visionect V Tablet platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know very little (er, how bout zero) about e-paper technology.

However, I'm guessing when designing it there were certain assumptions and optimizations that were made given the reasonable guess that the screen's content would not change often.

Is it possible you could somehow do bad things to the device by doing something like this? Maybe akin to red-lining an engine, or ghosting an old CRT, or maybe other things?

</comment><comment><USER4> This is mostly just showing off their eInk platform, and at that it does a good job. (with some humor)

The devices themselves look kind of neat, wonder what pricing is at volumes. IE, if I wanted to build a restaurant ordering system based on this, what would it cost per device to sell to my end users?

<comment> luka-birsa We actually have a restaurant ordering system build on our tablets and you could resell that to your end users and/or you could build your own.

Drop us a line at firstname.lastname@example.com to get more info about pricing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nook users aren't impressed.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgb6sVT6OYY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgb6sVT6OYY)</comment>