A New Explanation for Ball Lightning - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/-a-new-explanation-for-one-of-the-strangest-occurrences-in-natureball-lightning <comment><USER2> As phenomena go, ball lightning is one of those things which has always fascinated me. It was said that Tesla could summon a ball of light[1], no one has ever been able to reproduce that feat. That in itself has got to be pretty cool.

I like the idea of a the microwave bubble (or even just an RF bubble). We know that ionized air reflects radio waves (ask any amateur who has bounced off the ionosphere for an over the horizon signal) so I can imagine that a 'ball' of ionized air would reflect any radiowaves that were inside of it with energy leaking out in the form of light. But how to do that with Tesla era equipment? Good question.

[1] _" I never saw fireballs, but as a compensation for my disappointment I succeeded later in determining the mode of their formation and producing them artificially. "_ \-- [http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_20.htm](http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_20.htm)

<comment><USER3> You can make something akin to ball lightning in your (friend's) home microwave:

Get a birthday candle, melt some of it onto a small plate, then stick it on the plate. Put the plate in the microwave. Turn the microwave on high for about 1-2 minutes.

Again - don't do this at home with a microwave you care about...

<comment><USER2> "akin" isn't really much use. To read what visitors to Tesla's laboratory saw it was much like something imagined for a book on magic where a magician conjures a ball of light to illuminate the room and follow around the magician.

It's fun to think about because many many people saw him do it and yet no one has figured out _how_ he did it, and not for lack of trying. Its like the "Fermat's Theorem" of physics phenomena as far as I'm concerned.

Now that I've got a couple of software defined radios (SDRs) that can generate microwaves on demand with an arbitrary modulation, I expect there might be some fun experiments to do here.

<comment><USER4> Tesla's gear kicked out a lot of power in a way that I'm not sure has really been done since. At least I haven't seen photos looking as impressive as the ones of him in his lab [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Tesla_co...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Tesla_colorado_adjusted.jpg)

[https://thevelvetrocket.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/nikola-t...](https://thevelvetrocket.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/nikola- tesla-and-his-wardenclyffe-tower-and-laboratory4.jpg)

<comment><USER5> These are very likely long exposures that captured groundings over time. It'd look much less impressive in person, and more in line with what you've seen reproduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The video in this article comes as a relief. When I was a teenager, sitting in the backseat of my parents car I saw something exactly like that. Nobody else saw it; there were no reports of a meteorite, and I always worried that it was a dream I was unable to separate from reality. I am sure now that I've seen ball lightning.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, but if you slow the video to 0.25x and watch closely, you can see it's a firefly :P

<comment><USER8> 1\. How do you know it's a firefly? It's just a bright spot.

2\. The diameter of the ball increases dramatically, as if it originates from the clouds.

3\. It seems to disappear behind the trees, suggesting it is far away.

This isn't to say that it isn't a firefly; I just have no idea how you can be so sure.

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty convinced it's a firefly after watching the video frame by frame. Go to the YT video, set it 1080p and pause at 36s. Then go frame by frame (use ',' and '.' to go back/forth by a single frame) and you can see it appear as a dark blob, that comes down, eventually lighting up, then contrary to your point 3 it actually goes in front of the trees.

<comment><USER8> I did go frame by frame myself earlier. The fact that it starts as a dark blob is pretty good evidence for it being a firefly, and I think I saw it earlier as part of the dramatic increase in diameter, but I can't see it that way right now.

For me it's hard to tell whether it "actually" goes in front of or behind the trees. I was thinking if it were bright enough it could fade as it descends behind the treeline. It would be a rather large firefly if it went behind the trees, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Even today, we don't have a crystal-clear understanding of how they form and > do what they do

That's not at all surprising, considering that we don't even have a crystal- clear understanding yet of regular lighting.

<comment><USER11> What is left to know about lighting?

<comment><USER10> We don't know how it actually happens. The mechanisms we know for building up charge separation in clouds should not produce fields strong enough to initiate lighting, and measurements back that up. The fields are too weak by an order of magnitude.

We don't know if there is some other mechanism that produces stronger fields locally that gets lightning started, or if something lowers the required field strength, or maybe something else.

Here is a recent article on a new mechanism that may have something to do with it, and that casts doubt on a theory that has been popular for a couple decades [1].

Here's another article that mentions that, and mentions some of the other lightning mysteries [2].

[1] [https://phys.org/news/2016-02-scientists-clues-mystery- light...](https://phys.org/news/2016-02-scientists-clues-mystery- lightning.html)

[2] [http://voices.nationalgeographic.org/2017/05/02/unraveling-t...](http://voices.nationalgeographic.org/2017/05/02/unraveling- the-mysteries-of-lightning/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm glad someone did a good write-up of the research. I read through the paper one afternoon and it was super dense and I couldn't make heads or tails of the math. It is a really cool phenomenon!

edit: More discussion from the last time this came up [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11953566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11953566)

</comment><comment><USER13> Wu's theory is ripe for experimental verification and consequent weaponization.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's surprising and perhaps telling that in this age of dash cams and camera phones there aren't plenty of videos of ball lightning.

</comment><comment><USER15> This isn't new. In fact I'm pretty sure I remember reading an article referenced here at least a year ago. Headline should be "A New Article on the now current accepted theory on Ball Lightning".

</comment><comment><USER16> here's a presentation about measuring x-ray radiation from lightning strikes and how it challenges the traditional models as well [https://www- group.slac.stanford.edu/ais/publicDocs/presentat...](https://www- group.slac.stanford.edu/ais/publicDocs/presentation68.pdf)

With quadcopters being so cheap, I assume a lot more people are going to be experimenting.

</comment><comment><USER17> There is a phenomenon in Norway that might be related to this that I find very interesting. The research here is called Project Hessdalen. See [http://www.hessdalen.org/index_e.shtml](http://www.hessdalen.org/index_e.shtml) Unfortunately, the phenomenon has been victim of a lot of ridicule, linking it to the ufo fringe. Potentially, however, understanding this could be a key to unknown sources of energy. I mean this in a scientific way.

</comment><comment><USER18> 6 damage for 3 mana isn't a bad deal but it's not a strong enough 3 drop in the modern meta.

<comment><USER19> Dies to instant speed removal too.</comment></comment>


Happy Programmers' Day - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmer%27s_day <comment><USER2> The apostrophe is in the wrong spot; it should be _Programmers ' Day_.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmers%27_Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmers%27_Day)

<comment><USER3> Incorrect. The apostrophe is only after the possessive if the thing it's owning is plural in addition to the possessive. Day is not plural.

<comment><USER2> ... what? Where did that grammar rule come from?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So are we supposed to take a holiday from programming on programmers day, or double our efforts and do _more_ programming?

Or just drink a lot after work?

<comment><USER5> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cheers! [https://github.com/the- teacher/cocktails_for_programmers/blo...](https://github.com/the- teacher/cocktails_for_programmers/blob/master/cocktails_for_programers.md)

</comment><comment><USER7> Traditional programmers day celebration in Bulgaria:

\- Write meaningless programs

\- Play games

\- Drink beer

Same as most other days actually.

<comment> vezzy-fnord I think you mean play C-S 1.6 specifically and drink rakia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is the point in having such _days_? Consequently, shouldn't we also have a Scientists' day, an Actors' day, a Plumbers' day, blah blah? Everyone has a place in the universe. All we have to do is never to forget our true calling.

<comment><USER9> It varies country by country, but I'm pretty sure you'll find various aspects of humanity being celebrated on specific days (women, father/mother, workers, and so on), sometimes even at the UN level (i.e. theoretically worldwide). The point is to get mainstream attention to the achievements and problems of specific and necessary roles which would otherwise be mostly overlooked.

In some cases the celebration is named after the activity (e.g. fighting cancer), but meaning is exactly the same -- would calling it "Programming Day" suit you better?

<comment><USER8> Yes I do think the latter title would be more apt. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Born on Programmers' Day, I feel like the night I was born, a falling star killed the village elder.

<comment><USER11> Surely in a time where Programmers' Day has any meaning, the status of __village elders __has somewhat passed.

<comment><USER10> I was hoping someone would get the ADOM reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So it's day 0x100. Good to know

<comment><USER13> Why do programmers confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because OCT(31) = DEC(25)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not Programmers' Day where I'm at. Stupid timezones!

<comment><USER15> Timezones: a bane of any programmer's existence.

<comment><USER16> Programmers' Day is UTC. If everyone used UTC, there would be no bane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> we need a _happy programmmers_ day

<comment><USER18> Nobody would celebrate that. :D

<comment><USER17> heheh :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Programmers' Day lands on Friday the 13th hmmmm...

<comment><USER20> What are the odds!?

1:7 was my guess, but quick check from 1990 to 2200 shows it's much higher, in 60 out of 210 years it will be Friday on Programmers' Day, with all days occurring 29, 31, 30, 0, 60, 30 and 30 times for Monday through Sunday respectively.

<comment><USER21> Try this... version 13 of software... 13th rc release... on the 13th... in 2013.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do we get a wish? If so, I'd like some extra time to develop some open source android apps. Been meaning to do so, but time...

</comment><comment><USER23> So where's the obligatory google doodle? :)

</comment><comment><USER24> If only I could convince my employer to give me the day off without using my annual leave allowance...

</comment><comment><USER16> I think a better choice for Programmers' Day would be New Year's Day, as there is no day 0.

<comment><AUTHOR> New Year's Day would still be Day 1.

<comment><USER16> Yes, that's point. 0 and 1. No day 0, so make it day 1.

<comment><USER25> You're just taunting us that the year isn't zero-indexed! You could at least have the decency to hide it from us like Oracle[1].

[1] [http://www.techonthenet.com/oracle/functions/substr.php](http://www.techonthenet.com/oracle/functions/substr.php)

<comment><USER26> Wow, that was upsetting to read.

<comment><USER25> The best part is that they have to keep it to maintain backwards compatibility!

<comment><USER26> That's when you bring down the deprecation hammer and create a new function with a different name and sane behavior. No need to actually remove the functionality at any point, but at least they could get code bases to phase it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I intended to make some code check-in at work today as token of celebrating this day. But the task slipped. I should be able to do it by tomorrow evening though :)

</comment><comment><USER28> One day I'll make use of the codeappreciationday.org site I got back in 2011. We should make it an official startup company holiday ;-).

</comment><comment><USER29> This is how I feel today [http://cdn.meme.li/i/mditt.jpg](http://cdn.meme.li/i/mditt.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER30> It is officially recognized in Russia.

</comment><comment><USER31> High fives all around

</comment><comment><USER32> we made a plan for today - [https://getssl.me/en/programmers- day](https://getssl.me/en/programmers-day)

</comment><comment><USER33> Ironically or not so much, it was just another miserable day for me.

Yay.

</comment><comment><USER34> Programmers' Day, Friday the 3th and my birthday!

</comment><comment><USER35> Ones' complement to the day - 1111 1111

</comment><comment><USER36> Thank you!</comment>


Xcode Playground + TDD = PlaygroundTDD - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/WhiskerzAB/PlaygroundTDD <comment><AUTHOR> PlaygroundTDD enables you to use TDD directly on Xcode Playground during your development process. If your development workflow is based on Playground, sure you will save a huge amount of time by using our helper!</comment>


Apple takes Openera's lead - <AUTHOR> http://openera.com/apple-takes-openeras-lead-with-passbook-release/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is obviously ironic.</comment>


Shoebox – my virtual hand-drawn, hand-coded live band - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/shoebox-my-virtual-hand-drawn-hand-coded-live-band-454368d0e66f <comment><USER2> This project is so impressive, and I'm so disappointed with HN's reaction.

At this point there are only 7 comments and 42 points for the thread. Yet this is one of the most unique and creative pieces of coding that I've seen on a here ever. I wish the community would take a second look at this. It needs more credit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love it. Fantastic work. I'd love to play around with it if you ever decide to open source it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you aware of MikuMikuDance? There's a big community doing 3D-rendered music videos from drawn characters there, though with somewhat different emphasis.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't - I'll have a look

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is amazing, do you plan to release the engine for this? I'd love to play around with the code.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great job -- nice song, cool video, and thanks for the write-up!

</comment><comment><USER7> Very cool work. How would someone use this with their own song?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I guess there's scope for a web service where people could make their own videos by uploading their music and artwork and although that would be a pretty huge job. If there are any programmers who would want to do something with this I might be open to putting aspects of it up on Github.

<comment><USER5> I'm definitely interested in this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice work, both with the music and the video.</comment>


Passage to America, 1750 - <AUTHOR> http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/passage.htm <comment><USER3> > approximately 200,000 people inhabited the British colonies in North America

Step back and notice the subtle institutionalized marginalization of that statement. That the native population is not counted as "people". No footnote that the figure only counts immigrants, nothing. In author's view it is not even worth mentioning, native americans existing (or more like had existed) being such an unimportant fact. They are not part of the colonies, not part of what will become the America.

That view is pervasive throughout our society and its history. It is never/rarely stated, it's just "assumed". Making it insidious unless you notice it. Which is my point/hope in writing this. That you will look.

<comment><USER4> I honestly don't think the number of natives in America were relevant at all to the conditions aboard the colonist's ships while at sea.

<comment><USER5> njharman quoted the part about "existing inhabitants" in North America, not conditions on ships. Recommended read: "1491 - New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus; Charles C. Mann"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jesus. How horrible was life for these Scotch-Irish/Germans that they would willingly undertake such a treacherous journey with their young children?

<comment><USER7> Given that the famine of 1740-1741 killed 38% of the population of Ireland, it _was_ pretty horrible: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Famine_(1740%E2%80%9341)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Famine_\(1740%E2%80%9341\))

And the peasant's lot didn't improve much, as this happened less than 100 years later: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_\(Ireland\))

...and here's an eyewitness account from the same site regarding the latter famine: [http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/irishfamine.htm](http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/irishfamine.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Whomever dreamt up the idea of Indentured Servitude as a idea and sold it to ship owners was quite an amoral businessman.

Definitely parallels to the passage of migrants to Europe from Africa, but imagine after that ordeal they'd have to be slaves more or less for 5-10 years or so.

<comment><USER9> Well, what do we have nowadays?

Want a house? Be a slave to Microsoft for forty years!

Want to eat? Be a slave to Google!

The poor were more than welcome to stay in England or Germany, it's not like they were kidnapped or anything.

And as far as conditions go, sure, nowadays such trips would be illegal, but how much worse was it than a payed for trip?

Don't forget than if someone died on the trip, the captain lost money.

<comment><USER10> This tech industry bubble and its self-centeredness really gets up my nose sometimes. Yeah, working for google is totally like actually shoving a woman in childbirth out a porthole or watching all the kids under the age of 7 die. Or selling your (remaining) kids into servitude and maybe never see them again. I bet that that nugget of info was on all the pamphlets back in the home countries!

<comment><USER11> Just because injustices in he current system aren't as physically horrible as those in years past, does not mean we shouldn't look back for comparisons and solutions.

The power of labor in the United States has been continually eroded for the past several decades, for the unbounded gain of corporations and management. [https://rewire.news/article/2016/03/11/anti-union-right- work...](https://rewire.news/article/2016/03/11/anti-union-right-work-laws- passed-majority-states/)

The right to organize has been near lobbied out of existence in many states, and any new attempts are easily busted. At the same time, increased automation, ever narrowing specialization and oversupply of an educated workforce has given employers even more leverage over the labor.

<comment><USER10> The OP was comparing _working at google_ , one of the most sought-after jobs in the world, and which you can leave, to a coffin ship experience where the lice were so thick that you could simple scrape them off in bulk.

It's not just 'physically horrible'. How many people at google or microsoft have to _sell their children_ to survive? The OP is just so patently ridiculous that the comment isn't even worth taking seriously - <USER2> unfortunately, there's Poe's Law...

<comment><USER9> I'm not comparing directly, but I want to put our "moral outrage" in perspective.

This was the 1700s. People were living on subsistence farming. If you weren't a landowner in England, you starved, and it wasn't like in 2016 where there's realistic talk of UBI based on automation, I mean it was like over a hundred years before Marx, and long before the industrial revolution.

And it's not like the "wealthy" were so terribly wealthy that they could just take "free" people to America.

And it's also not like the wealthy had nice 1890's first class ship rides.

The times were terrible, and the choices were terrible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programming principles from the early days of id Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/279357/Programming_principles_from_the_early_days_of_id_Software.php <comment><USER2> Choose the right platform for your goals. While id was banging out bare-metal code on a relatively unchanging PC platform, my old partner and I spent our time battling API deprecation, a change of processor, endianness issues, performance issues, just on and on and on, a whole litany of insults on the Macintosh platform.

We were attempting to "just have a successful shareware game business on the Macintosh" but after 20 years of this self-flagellation I bailed. We each now work at rather successful studio/agency development firms and I've probably contributed to more meaningful projects in the last year and a half than in all the years previously.

When you choose the wrong platform, you will not only be running against the wind, but when the wind dies down you will be so tired that you miss the new opportunities. We should have been positioned to capitalize on the iOS store back in the mid-2000s with our substantial codebase, but due to burnout I witnessed others openly rake in $100,000 paydays on projects similar to our own that they only spent a couple of months making. That could have been us, but I can't blame the competition or Apple because in hindsight it was my own sheer inability to stop beating a dead horse that put me in the universe that didn't work out. Really you should always be working in a sustainable way that's not too easy and not too hard so that you can see the forest for the trees, and after a while those small successes often accumulate into something unbelievable.

<comment><USER3> How does one choose the right platform ahead of time? It seems that that would be something you could only judge in hindsight.

For instance, did you know that, over the course of your endeavour, that the powers that be were going to deal you a bunch of API deprecation? Did Id Software know that their respective platform providers, or the market in general, were going to keep their platform a relatively stable development target?

I am thinking about developing a game in my spare time. I don't have any grand plans with it. I thought to develop it on Android (though I hear that's a mess, getting apps to run on various phones and OSes), but I want to try to keep open the possibility that it could be ported to other platforms (iOS, console, etc) relatively painlessly.

Being a web developer, how could I glean enough information in areas I'm really unfamiliar with to judge which is the right platform?

If I decide on Android, for whatever reason, and I become un-enamored with all of its warts, how do I know that the grass truly is greener on the other side?

<comment><USER2> It pains me to say it, but the big companies (even nvidia) are incentivized towards proprietary solutions, so your best bet would probably be to go with something like Unity.

My big mistake was to think that I could manage a game engine. This was in the late 90s and early 2000s before the current paradigm of github, stackoverflow, etc. I got to the point where I was cross-compiling with mingw and using libraries like libpng, libfreetype, libtheora, etc because frankly a lot of the system-level APIs at that time were not up to the demands that games placed on them (and probably still aren't). I spent a ton of time in dependency hell because it was all C++ without a package manager, so it was a game of whack-a-mole just to update a single library. These were all huge red flags but I couldn't see them because I was thinking to myself that if I could keep that mess together long enough, that I could put out a gold master of our flagship game on Mac, PC and iOS (and eventually Xbox etc) and everything would be all better. But what ended up happening that I spent the entirety of my time maintaining dependencies and trying to make rent.

Now id has certainly been down that road as well, and I'm not saying that the Windows platform is free of breaking updates. The big difference was that Windows was already the de facto gaming platform outside of consoles. So id could rely on a vast constituency of established game companies that would put Microsoft's feet to the fire, or simply route around the damage with 1337 code snippets from the community. I always sensed a kind of reverence towards gaming, so that if Microsoft made a mistake, it was instantly under a magnifying glass. Contrast that with the Apple development community, where rampant fanboism has led to an Apple-knows-best mentality that prevents meaningful progress at even the most basic levels: OpenGL drivers are years behind, online documentation goes missing, iOS code signing is a hair raising process, etc etc etc etc etc.. I don't want to be too hard on them but they've lacked a serious software engineering vision for so long that to fix it now would require a reevaluation of where they are going as a company.

I don't know what to tell you as far as your own game development goals, but I know that if I was starting now, I would work at the highest levels that are still performant and likely to be maintained in the future. I prefer fundamentals over cookie cutter solutions, so I might opt to go with up-and- coming standards like WebGL and WebSocket running in Cordova to learn some fundamentals before applying them in Unity. The rule of thumb used to be that anything you were working on would be free and open source within 2-3 years, but that's dropped to about 6 months today. So don't stress too hard about it, just do what feels right and gives the shortest runway between planning and implementation. Often the conceptually correct solution and the most optimized one are the same or similar in the long run. Be wary of solutions like CocoaPods that seem to create their own diverging ecosystem. A few are ok, but if you find yourself knee-deep in packages that's definitely a code smell. So is having too few, monolithic packages trying to take the place of the OS. Prioritizing your time gives you a roadmap on where to put your efforts and helps you remember "don't be like that guy".

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this informative reply!

My game idea is a kind of retro rogue-like, with a few modern conveniences. It's not going to bump up to any boundaries graphics-wise.

However, I've been disheartened to hear about the platform sprawl on android, which is my phone of choice. If it had any modicum of response, I would want to try to port it to iOS, and perhaps desktop platforms, which brings in another layer.

I feel that, I could embrace the game-design challenges, but platform issues would really kill my motivation to complete and launch the product. Especially when I don't own the platforms that people are reporting bugs on.

I know there are muli-platform simple games like Snakes and Agar.io that are pretty simple. Perhaps I should look into how those are written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To anyone that hasn't checked out the source code for Doom 3, it's some seriously beautiful C++.

[https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-3-BFG](https://github.com/id- Software/DOOM-3-BFG)

<comment><USER5> I was just looking at where the cheats are tracked and I suddenly thought, what did IDDQD and IDKFA stand for?

[https://github.com/id- Software/DOOM-3-BFG/blob/master/doomcl...](https://github.com/id- Software/DOOM-3-BFG/blob/master/doomclassic/doom/d_player.h)

<comment><USER6> Dave Taylor (ddt) and I and another friend had some Q's on our college transcripts (from dropping classes after the tuition refund deadline). We joked that we should have a fraternity for losers like us. We called it delta q delta. Dave named the iddqd cheat after that joke. This is also why my vanity domain name is dqd.com. Dave did end up graduating, but I and the other friend didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Write your code for this game only, not for a future game. You're going to > be writing new code later because you'll be smarter.

This alone is worth the read for me. I wish I could shadow this team.

<comment><USER8> I'd recommend checking out this post[1] by Wil Shipley (a longtime Cocoa dev), which includes a story about how Carmack doesn't re-use code. The whole blog post is a fun read.

[1] [http://blog.wilshipley.com/2013/12/my-doom-20th- anniversary-...](http://blog.wilshipley.com/2013/12/my-doom-20th-anniversary- stories.html)

<comment><USER9> Great link. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a subhed that refers to tooling:

> _Great tools help make great games. Spend as much time on tools as > possible._

But the text under it is more related to testing of code and bug-squashing. Anyone have any links/references to id's process and prioritization of building tools?

<comment><USER11> Tools drive _everything_ in games. Your normal AAA team structure is something along the lines of 1:10 dev:art/design. Every improvement you make in tools has a 10x factor in the people using it.

Additionally everything about game development is about iteration. No one really knows what's fun(it's kinda one of those things where "I know what it is when I see it"). So the core of gamedev is iterating and trying as many crazy ideas as you can until something sticks. The right tools that enable that rapid iteration are _critical_. The faster you can make changes the more shots you get at capturing that lightning in the bottle(which is why 10% of games make 90% of the revenue).

<comment><USER10> I don't doubt that. I am particularly interested in how that mentality compares to the priorities of devs in other fields. For example, web development. I'm thinking that games development might be substantially more bespoke than webdev, necessitating the need to spend time on developing bespoke tooling?

<comment><USER11> There's really just 10-50x more "content" involved in gamedev then say web development. You might have 3-4 designers on a front end where a 60M budget game will have 6-8 animators alone, not even considering environment art, character art, level design, gameplay mechanic designers, etc.

Now if you get into indie things are slightly different there but you still see just about everyone using an off-the-shelf engine because no one has the time to invest the man-years needed for proper tooling.

<comment><USER12> "proper tooling" is an interseting choice of words.

Are you saying that the off-the-shelf engines are somehow inadiquate, a necessary evil compared to hand rolled tools?

<comment><USER11> Not really, just each game usually has unique needs and it's hard to build tools that address every possible game style and type. Usually when you use UE3/UE4/Unity you end up making significant modifications/extensions to meet those needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd say all of these principles are still correct today, and apply outside of games, though perhaps only after appying an interpretive filter. Take:

> No prototypes – always maintain constantly shippable code. Polish as you go.

Romero then says that nowadays you will need prototypes. I'll believe him: but I think the right way to prototype is to reduce scope, not quality. So even the prototype is in some internal sense "constantly shippable" \-- even if you are just shipping to the non-programmers within the company.

The alternative is to have a fragile prototype that gets kept because it seems almost ready and just needs a few bugs fixed and some small features added.

Two years and 500kloc later, you are still adding bugs faster than you can fix them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maintain flow at all costs.

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe the most interesting part for me was the very last couple of sentences.

> There was a lot of work that came before id's most famous game, Doom. > Wolfenstein was his 87th game; Doom was around his 90th, he said.

</comment><comment><USER15> Was hoping for Carmack, ended up with Romero.</comment>


Murdoch: Google is mortal and together we can kill it - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/17/murdoch_google_analysis/

<comment><USER2> Ah, but don't strike the King unless you can kill the King. Google has the tragedy of the commons going for it- each news organization would be better off if all the others blocked Google and they theirselves defected and got the Google traffic.</comment>


Show HN: Zhoo – Super simple chat in your browser - <AUTHOR> https://zhoo.app/ <comment><USER2> What's point in saving it in server? Why not Local Storage?</comment>


Many patent holders stop looking to East Texas following Supreme Court ruling - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/patent-cases-in-east-texas-plunge-more-than-60-percent/ <comment><USER2> You can get an up-to-date list of ETC patent cases at [https://dockets.justia.com/browse/state-texas/court- txedce/n...](https://dockets.justia.com/browse/state-texas/court- txedce/noscat-10/nos-830)

Just eyeballing it, it does look like new filings have fallen off a cliff. Good.

It's also remarkably easy to spot the trolls, e.g. "Spider Search Analytics LLC v. The Home Depot, Inc." and "Spider Search Analytics LLC v. Adidas America, Inc."; the pattern appears to be "Company you've never heard of because they're in the business of patent lawsuits vs. Company you've heard of because they're big enough to sue".

Data-mining this to build a real-time list of patent trolls could be fun.

One of them probably holds a patent on that though and would sue you for doing it.

<comment><USER3> > big enough _to be_ sued

fixed this for you, but not really, because usually it's the small firms that may break under the pressure of suits.

<comment><USER4> The cake is too pretty to eat. The child is too full to eat.

Both are fine. Human language is like that.

<comment><USER3> What is "that", or rather how? "broken"? Language is inherently underspecific, yes, but that's the opposite of "fine". The passive is well understood, therefore it should be used. It just baffles me how coders could glance over this. I probably would't have said anything if the topic wasn't a legal matter where precise language is paramount. Suddenly you are framed for cannibalistic tendencies.

<comment><USER2> FWIW I agree that your version is more readable, and since I'd like my writing to not suck someday, I appreciate the edit.

Suggesting edits to others' comments on HN is tricky though because it will usually at best be off-topic for the conversation, and at worst lead to several off-topic comments, as in this case. For that reason they tend to get downvoted.

<comment><USER3> Well it clarified for me that the focus on big firms was apparently true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> East Texas was popular with plaintiffs because it was very troll-friendly. East Texas knew what side it's bread was buttered.

Delaware is popular with companies because of its tax laws. The Delaware tax laws are deliberately to attract companies. Delaware knows what side it's bread is buttered.

I would expect Delaware courts to will be very defendant-friendly.

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of other states with more favorable tax laws than Delaware. Delaware is popular because of it's well developed corporate caselaw and unmatched judicial experience, which is particularly attractive to investors (i.e. potential _plaintiffs_ ) because it minimizes legal risk.

If you want investment, there are only two states to consider when incorporating: your home state or Delaware. Any other state will give investors and their legal counsel pause.

<comment><USER7> Wyoming let's you pay a registered agent to form a company using a nominee manager. You can pay in bitcoin with some of them.

No wonder the USA is the best in the world at being a tax haven.

<comment><USER8> > No wonder the USA is the best in the world at being a tax haven.

The US could hardly be any less of a tax haven.

<comment><USER9> There is a large body of research and a wide variety of actors across the political spectrum who are all in agreement that the US is one the largest tax havens in the world. I can only assume that you've never been exposed to any of that and are simply making a knee-jerk reaction comment.

Here's one recent report from just the past few weeks: "Report Says US Is World's Second Biggest Tax Haven": [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-30/u-s- seen-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-30/u-s-seen-as- world-s-second-biggest-tax-haven-after-switzerland)

There are many, many more such things written over decades. Here's a 2009 article from The Economist on the same subject of America's status as one of the world's premiere tax havens: [http://www.economist.com/node/13382279](http://www.economist.com/node/13382279)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could this also be because the judge in that district court is about to retire and most of the patent lawsuits were filed by his sons who are attorneys in the same district court holding several shell companies?

Update: my source is this mind blowing documentary called Patent Scam (on amazon prime) which mentioned this conflict of interest. It's way too unbelievable, but I believe it is true because otherwise the movie maker would be sued like crazy if it was a lie.

<comment><USER11> > I believe it is true because otherwise the movie maker would be sued like > crazy if it was a lie.

That's a truly terrible standard of evidence. The fact that a documentary maker hasn't been sued isn't evidence of anything.

<comment><USER12> And I bet his only evidence that the maker of the film hasn't been sued is that he was able to watch the movie, making his standard basically that anything you see in a documentary must be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if this will have an economic impact on the communities of East Texas.

I think I read somewhere, though I cannot recall where (maybe Ars), that some companies where investing in community projects, events, and recreational facilities to improve their brands (essentially bribes) in anticipation of patent cases coming to the district.

Anyone know where I got that idea from, and if there might be an economic impact to the region?

<comment><USER14> If there was I never saw it, for years I have driven though ETX and its still nothing but podunk towns. Even the town square around the courthouse in Marshall was nothing special. It's simply a drive from Dallas you can make in a few hours. They have a airport but I hardly think that attorneys would do that over the drive.

As for any of those projects? Likely just a facade for what's really been going on which is essentially good ol' boy politics to keep the money flowing and people in power. The place you want to look at is Marshall, TX. It's not really that exciting of a town but you can find economic reports of that community so see that it's not really a hotbed of economic growth outside of the oil field business.

My opinion comes from many years of maintaining gas stations from DFW to Shreveport off I20 and all through ETX.

<comment><USER15> Tyler is far from podunk.

<comment><USER16> > Tyler is far from podunk.

As a native Tylerite, it's not _that_ far

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "a federal judge ruled that a case against supercomputer manufacturer Cray could be kept in East Texas because the company employed a single work-from- home employee in the district."

That seems crazy. Poor Cray guy....company is pulled into his backyard in a bad way because he worked from home.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's a trial strategy consultant on some of the factors behind East Texas as a venue for jury trials, seen through the lens of mock jurors: [http://www.thejuryexpert.com/2010/03/east-texas-jurors- and-p...](http://www.thejuryexpert.com/2010/03/east-texas-jurors-and-patent- litigation/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Why was the East Texas circuit so popular and why was it so in favor of patent-holders?

<comment><USER10> Watch Patent Scam on Amazon Prime (or on iTunes I guess). Then you'll wonder how is this scam even tolerated!

Basically, its a nexus between the judge and attorneys who have shell companies filing lawsuits against legit entrepreneurs and medium sized companies.

The East Texas circuit is so remote that just going there is a pain.

Laws are such that burden of proof is on the company/person being accused in the lawsuit. That combined with the remoteness of this court, compels the accused to settle, along with an NDA that prevents them from sharing any details about the settlement.

<comment><USER20> This is somewhere between incomplete and inaccurate. The collusion aspect is far overstated, see other comments in this thread. And the idea that defendants settle because EDTX is too far away may account for some small litigants, but large companies can buy plane tickets. The real reason was a set of local rules that promoted expediency (to the point of being biased some may say), a docket not as inundated with drug cases as some other districts, a judge who was very pro patent owner, and a local jury pool comprised of people who were statistically 'dumber' than average and really liked patent owners. And a local cottage industry of sorts set up to support this type of litigation (shell corporation headquarters, local counsel, jury consultants, etc,) I'm not defending any of it, but it's inaccurate to just say it was all a conspiracy

<comment><USER10> They don't the sue the bigger than certain size company exactly for that reason! Hence the lawsuit is never against Google, but against makers of successful paid apps on Google Play Store.

Sure the movie borders on conspiracy / fact . But it certainly is believable for me, who has no idea how patent system or the litigation machinery works in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is absolutely insane, especially in USA. Courts here are supposed to be impartial and just. If you increase your chances by x in a certain court--and you can file there--what justice is it? Shocked that this travesty lasted this long.

<comment><USER22> It's not unlike how major cities are eager to throw tax cuts at Amazon for their new office.

<comment><USER23> Its actually very much unlike that. While the communities in the Eastern District of Texas _did_ benefit from the popularity of the venue because frequent patent litigants -- one either side -- spend lots of money in those communities essentially trying to buy sympathy in the jury pool, those communities have essentially no control over the court rules that drive the popularity of the venue; its not a race-to-the-bottom competition like the Amazon HQ2 competition, and similar (usually less formalized) efforts to attract other big companies with tax abatements.

<comment><USER24> > those communities have essentially no control over the court rules that > drive the popularity of the venue

You mean other than the people of the community that sit on juries and elect the judges?

<comment><USER23> Federal courts, including EDTX, have judges appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate; the judges aren't elected by the district served by the court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> this post is from 10/12/2017

</comment><comment><USER26> Ah, a crop of drowning lawyers, needs more water, their nostrils still have air...</comment>


Great Barrier Reef Dead at 25M Years Old - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2016/10/14/the-great-barrier-reef-is-dead-at-25-million-years-old/ <comment><AUTHOR> My bad. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scientists-take-on- great...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scientists-take-on-great- barrier-reef-obituary_us_57fff8f1e4b0162c043b068f)

The NyPost copied it from Outbreak, which was a 'wildy irresponsible' article meant to highlight the urgency of the situation, it's apparently dying not dead.</comment>


Why I Still Use A Radio - <AUTHOR> http://colbyaley.com/why-i-still-use-a-radio <comment><USER2> "Instead of simply being able to enjoy the music..."

Enjoy the music?! I wish. Radio here is a continuous wasteland of advertisements and Top 40 anthems played over and over and over again. There's talk radio / public radio / news radio, which are good, but not great as background noise as they tend to capture my interest.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget college radio. My local station is AdFree and Awesome. <http://kfjc.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So I agree with him 100% which is why I made a site that plays the music video of the song on the radio. I got about 90% done and lost interest (it's functional though). <http://www.radiobat.com></comment>


Mitochondria may hold keys to anxiety and mental health - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/mitochondria-may-hold-keys-to-anxiety-and-mental-health-20200810/ <comment><USER2> > The organelles are ancient invaders — the remnants of symbiotic bacteria > that integrated themselves into host cells about 2 billion years ago and > specialized for energy production.

That's accepted as scientific orthodoxy now, but it wasn't always. In the 1960's, evolutionary biologist Lyn Margulis proposed the theory that cell organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts were once independent bacteria, which combined through symbiotic mergers of bacteria to evolve into eukaryotic cells. Ernst Mayr called this "perhaps the most important and dramatic event in the history of life".

Throughout her career, Margulis' work could arouse intense objection. One grant application elicited the response, "Your research is crap, do not bother to apply again", and her formative paper, "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells", appeared in 1967 after being rejected by about fifteen journals.

In 2002, Discover magazine recognized Margulis as one of the 50 most important women in science.

In 1995, Richard Dawkins said, "I greatly admire Lynn Margulis's sheer courage and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy. I'm referring to the theory that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, and I greatly admire her for it."

<comment><USER3> Sadly, these days Lynn Margulis is better known for her AIDS crankery:

> Margulis said that "the set of symptoms, or syndrome, presented by > syphilitics overlaps completely with another syndrome: AIDS," and also noted > that Kary Mullis[a] said that "he went looking for a reference > substantiating that HIV causes AIDS and discovered, 'There is no such > document.' "

> This provoked a widespread supposition that Margulis had been an "AIDS > denialist." Notably Jerry Coyne reacted on his Why Evolution is True blog > against his interpretation that Margulis believed "that AIDS is really > syphilis, not viral in origin at all."[50] Seth Kalichman, a social > psychologist who studies behavioral and social aspects of AIDS, cited her > 2009 paper as an example of AIDS denialism "flourishing",[51] and asserted > that her "endorsement of HIV/AIDS denialism defies understanding."[52]

Also: 9/11 crankery!

> Margulis argued that the September 11 attacks were a "false-flag operation, > which has been used to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as > unprecedented assaults on ... civil liberties." She claimed that there was > "overwhelming evidence that the three buildings [of the World Trade Center] > collapsed by controlled demolition."[5]

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

<comment><USER2> The complication with (incorrectly) labeling Margulis "an AIDS denialist", msla, is that you then make her responsible for a whole collection of unsubstantiated tropes that are targeted by that label. That's unwarranted, because Margulis was doing something quite opposite to "AIDS denialism"; Margulis, an esteemed scientist, was proposing an alternative causative factor that may explain AIDS, which isn't HIV, or more precisely, which isn't HIV in isolation.

This fascinating discussion will make your jaw drop [https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/discover- inter...](https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/discover-interview- lynn-margulis-says-shes-not-controversial-shes-right)

<comment><USER3> > Margulis, an esteemed scientist, was proposing an alternative causative > factor that may explain AIDS, which isn't HIV, or more precisely, which > isn't HIV in isolation.

She's not esteemed in the field of what causes AIDS. She's esteemed in a different sub-field. In terms of AIDS, the actual _experts_ have come to the conclusion she's wrong, and one thing we should all have learned by now is that our ignorance is not equal to the knowledge of experts.

> This fascinating discussion will make your jaw drop

Not for the reasons you think it would, though.

<comment><USER4> > _She 's not esteemed in the field of what causes AIDS. She's esteemed in a > different sub-field. In terms of AIDS, the actual experts have come to the > conclusion she's wrong, and one thing we should all have learned by now is > that our ignorance is not equal to the knowledge of experts._

The history of science also told us by now that experts are stubborn, and sometimes they have to first die, for the next generation to accept another theory.

It has also taught us that important new discoveries more often than not come not from established experts in a field, but by people from another sub-field or another field all together...

It has also taught us that scientists should continue challenging prevailing hypotheses all the time, because that's part and parcel of doing science...

<comment><USER5> Exactly. An "expert" is a skilled practitioner of some domain of human endeavor; a scientist is a truth-seeker. Expertise is orthogonal to scientific truth.

<comment><USER3> > Expertise is orthogonal to scientific truth.

Expertise is the result of successful scientific seeking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am disabled with Anxiety and Mood Disorder and chronic fatigue/depression. Typical "Bipolar" presentation. It runs in my family on my mothers side. We also have a history of early (45 years old) heart disease.

So I knew this was mitochondrial but it was revealed when I received my genome. We have issues with our electron transport chain; Complex I (ND1 and ND4) and Complex III (MT-CYB).

So diet and lifestyle was crucial in getting me off all of my meds, and I was on a lot. High dose riboflavin was a huge help.

Getting complex I to work well helps with the heart since it increases NAD. Also getting enough ubiquinone from diet helps. I get it mostly from seafood like Salmon and Liver. I might try and take a CoQ10 supplement soon. But the fact that we make it endogenously makes me think it is not needed. Statins will stop the production of CoQ10 by lowering FPPP production which is why they fail to help people with Heart Disease.

Balancing the flow and the oxidative stress from the mitochondrial electron transport chain is crucial.

<comment><USER7> > Statins will stop the production of CoQ10 by lowering FPPP production which > is why they fail to help people with Heart Disease

I would like to know more about this. I've been on a statin for several years and feel like my energy has dropped through the floor in that time. I also feel like I have a 'statin hangover' when I wake up in the morning (I usually take it with my supper). This could all be correlation, and aside from cholesterol levels I haven't been diagnosed with heart disease. But I would like to know more, because I hate taking this stuff and really don't like the idea of being on it the rest of my life.

<comment><USER6> This is pretty much all you need to know:

[https://ubiquinol.org/sites/default/files/statins.gif](https://ubiquinol.org/sites/default/files/statins.gif)

The thinking on cholesterol and heart disease is changing rapidly and there really is no strong evidence high cholesterol before a heart attack leads to any bad outcomes. After a heart attack, statins are ok.

But like we see, side effects. My doc wanted me on them but they gave my mother horrible myopathy so I passed. My HDL was really low until I took out all plant oils and eat fats pretty much only from fish and olive oil. Now my HDL in mid range normal. This is becasue the omega 3 helps with reverse cholesterol transport.

But again, this is me and my genetics. We have Saami (Inuit) heritage which is why I think i need this diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article does not really warrant the title. The best evidence seems to be "a meta-analysis of 23 studies on mitochondria and anxiety: 19 demonstrated "significant adverse effects of psychological stress on mitochondria"", but that's the other way around. And there are of course many factors associated with anxiety and other mental health issues that do not seem related to mitochondria.

Nobody is going to deny that a badly functioning component in your body can affect your mental health, and some of the mechanisms sound interesting, but not enough to call mitochondria the "key to anxiety and mental health". It's more like: an easily overlooked factor that can contribute.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised that the role of Magnesium isn't discussed as well.

"Mitochondrial Mg2+ homeostasis decides cellular energy metabolism and vulnerability to stress"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960558/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960558/)

Anecdotally, I've been taking Magnesium l-threonate and it's probably the least anxious I've ever been in my entire life (I'm 42).

The only thing comparable was Lexapro, but I always had a love/hate relationship because of the side effects.

<comment><USER10> Your opening line made me laugh inappropriately. When I was in grad school in molecular biophysics, someone asked, "if I fall asleep during a talk, and wake up just in time for questions, what question can I ask, to look smart, regardless of the topic of the talk?" The answer? "What was the magnesium concentration?"

<comment><USER11> I recall a similar story regarding (iirc) programming language type theory: "How does it handle recursion?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This guy theorized that autism is caused by a problem with ATP and mitochondria. He did a trial of an old, obscure drug that blocks ATP receptors (for signaling, not metabolism) on young ASD patients and there was noticeable improvement in their symptoms. More studies are underway.

[http://naviauxlab.ucsd.edu/science-item/autism- research/](http://naviauxlab.ucsd.edu/science-item/autism-research/)

<comment><USER13> >>> obscure drug that blocks ATP receptors

In case you are wondering, Suramin[1] is the drug

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those, like me, who find this article too pseudo-sciencey, the paper _Psychological Stress and Mitochondria: A Conceptual Framework_ [1] lays the foundation I was missing:

> It is also interesting to note in the context of stress regulation that all > steroid hormones, including glucocorticoids and sex hormones, are > synthesized in a process that is regulated by, and occurs in mitochondria, > further linking mitochondrial biology to stress signaling.

Stress in this sense refers to all biological stressors such as physical exertion. Mitochondria, therefore, are not only central to energy production but also to stress response. This is simply how the system works.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5901651/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5901651/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Presumably it's not the mitochondrial DNA itself that is causing the problem but rather chromosomal DNA (or some combination). If it were only mitochondrial DNA then it would be strongly heritable from the mother's side, which is not what we see.

<comment><USER16> Ha.. my mom is super anxious as was her mom.. and me.. yep!

<comment><USER15> Yes, I definitely got my depression from my mother's side of the family. But as far as I'm aware, after controlling for environmental factors (such as amount of time spent with each parent, etc) there's no detectable bias toward maternal inheritance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fun fact: we still can't genetically transform human mitochondria, and we've tried for _decades_

<comment><USER18> What would it mean to "genetically transform" a human mitochondria, and why are have we been trying to for decades?

<comment><USER17> Add new DNA into the human mitochondria. If you could do that, you unlock a massive amount of science around how mitochondria function, kinda similar to "what I cannot create I do not understand.

From an engineer's perspective, mitochondria are kinda the equivalent to virtual machines running on normal computers, as little "virtual cells" within cells. Their genomes are so stripped down that you can do some wild things with them.

<comment><USER19> > If you could do that, you unlock a massive amount of science around how > mitochondria function

Note that 99% of the proteins contained in mitochondria are [coded] in the nucleus, only 1% is [coded] in the mitochondrial chromosome. It's extremely small, only containing 37 genes of which most are related to translation (but of course translation requires far more, e.g. elongation factors).

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm2959](https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm2959)

<comment><USER20> I get what you're saying, but I think you have a typo in there. Most of the proteins in the mitochondria are coded by nuclear DNA, but the proteins themselves end up in the mitochondria.

<comment><USER19> Thanks! Edited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mitochondria are really one of our cells' most under appreciated organelles and the consequences of them being "the powerhouse" are a lot more profound than you might think. I highly recommend Nick Lane's book on them, _Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life_ , which explores the consequences of the biochemistry, population genetics, of mitochondria for how animals live in general. It's far more interesting than biochemistry has any right to be, along with his other books.

<comment><USER20> Yes and his book "The Vital Question", which covers some of the same ground. Highly recommend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One day we will have a full biological understanding of anxiety and mental health, at which point people will no longer need to change the world around them.

<comment><USER23> I don't understand the connection.

<comment><USER24> Although "all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed," organisms have been known to alter our environments to suit our needs, rather than suffer them even to our deaths. For example, when it rains I often open an umbrella.

Perhaps with the right anti-depressant cocktail, I wouldn't bother.

<comment><USER25> Based on what I've seen in nature films regarding how great apes (chimpanzees, orangutans, etc) react to rain, and the extreme aversion to being rained on that I've anecdotally seen in several different cultures, I have a suspicion that an aversion to rain--particularly to unwanted/unexpected rain--might be not only instinctual but peculiar and specific, similar to our aversions to spiders and snakes. Or maybe not, but it has definitely stood out to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Realizing mitochondria were the "powerhouse" due to a voltage gradient created by chemically transforming ATP to ADP across a membrane gave me a eureka moment about how small such a mechanism can be, and how powerful in great numbers.

</comment><comment> nayeem-rahman the power house of the cell

<comment><USER27> Exactly what I thought of when they said:

> "They're the chief executive organelle of the cell."

Which IMO sounds odd, given that Mitochondria are seldom described as having much "decision making" power.

<comment><USER21> Well, they do start the process of triggering apoptosis or cell suicide, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > In 1924, this man Boris Mikhaylovich Kozo-Polyansky wrote a book called > Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution, in which he reconciled Darwin's > natural selection as the eliminator and symbiogenesis as the innovator.

TIL that evolution is a GAN.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here is one of my favorite videos of mitochondrial transport, in vivo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5IxkI6tkn0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5IxkI6tkn0)

Apparently, there is a whole economy for transporting microchondria within dendrites. More mitochondria in an area of the dendrites allows for faster growth and responsiveness to input.

(There is another time-lapse video I've seen before of mitochondrial transport, but I'm frustrated that my own browsing history isn't making it easier to find. Are there tools that help make ones own browsing history more useful/accessible?)

</comment><comment><USER30> Assuming the title is true, that'd make mitochondria the powerhouse of the self.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if there's a connection to Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) supplementation.

NR is a precursor to NAD+, which has been shown to improve mitochondrial function especially under stress.

NAD+ is one of those molecules used in a ton of metabolic processes and over a lifespan NAD+ avalability declines. This decline is linked to numerous age- related diseases. There's a bit of research showing NAD+ supplementation contributes to anti-aging effects.

NR is easy to take, well-tolerated, and a cheap precursor for NAD+. There are IV clinics that have NAD+ infusions, but they cost like $500. On the other hand, you can get a month's supply of NR for around $50 (Thorne's ResveraCel).

</comment><comment><USER32> I recommend this book:

"Mitochondria and the Future of Medicine: The Key to Understanding Disease, Chronic Illness, Aging, and Life Itself"

\-- by Lee Know

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603587675](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603587675)

<comment><USER33> > _Lee Know, ND, is a licensed naturopathic doctor based out of Canada, and > the recipient of several awards. Known by his peers to be a strategic and > forward-thinking entrepreneur and researcher, he has held positions as > medical advisor, scientific evaluator, and director of research and > development for major organizations. Besides managing Scientific Affairs for > his own company, he also currently serves as a consultant to the natural- > health-products and dietary-supplements industries, and serves on the > editorial advisory board for Canada 's most-read natural health magazine._

At least he's honest about his lack of medical expertise and conflict of interest.

<comment><USER32> And? Do you have any particular problems with any actual insights in the book? Do you think the medical industry is forward-thinking or adverse to new ways of thinking in general? I don't want this guy removing my appendix, but there are many cases of people outside or peripheral to a domain without qualifications that make a huge impact on a particular area and lead the way for more research -- and we are all aware of the medical establishment's lack of proper training when it comes to nutrition.

<comment><USER33> The problem I have is they're attempting to sound authoritative via way of medical and scientific expertise while in fact having none, in addition to having a financial interest in pushing supplements. It severely impugns the credibility of the book.

> _Do you think the medical industry is forward-thinking or adverse to new > ways of thinking in general?_

Both. It's so vast that sweeping generalizations don't really apply.

> _... but there are many cases of people outside or peripheral to a domain > without qualifications that make a huge impact on a particular area and lead > the way for more research ..._

Sure, but an ND with ties to the supplement industry ain't that.

> _... and we are all aware of the medical establishment 's lack of proper > training when it comes to nutrition._

You could even argue the medically-recommended low-fat diet craze was one of the largest health disasters in modern history. Unfortunately it doesn't make this guy any more correct or rigorous in his opinions.

Please understand this isn't a personal attack. I take supplements and aggressively fast every day precisely because I largely believe in the mitochondrial theory of aging. For all I know, everything in the book could be factually correct and not misconstrued. It doesn't change the fact the author is presenting themselves as a medical expert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Whenever I see "X may hold keys to Y", I always augment it with "or it may not". In fact "may not" is the more likely outcome because if it did come anywhere close to "holding" the keys the headline would be affirmative.

It's a variant of Betteridge's law, if you will.

</comment><comment> hoka-one-one Ok Ray Peat

</comment><comment><USER35> Hm, but I was told it's only in my head!

</comment><comment><USER18> Completely left-field comment:

> Carmen Sandi recalls the skepticism she faced at first. A behavioral > neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, she > had followed a hunch

I feel like people use "radical ideas" like this to justify whatever their bullshit of the day is, and generally ignore the fact that they almost always come from experts in their respective fields.</comment>


Viper: Binary Analysis Framework for Malware - <AUTHOR> http://viper.li/ <comment><USER2> Works with the radare2 [1] perfectly (low-level) and MISP [2] (higher level). See examples of such integration on those asciinemas: [https://asciinema.org/a/28844](https://asciinema.org/a/28844) (including related videos)

[1] Reverse Engineering framework - [http://rada.re](http://rada.re)

[2] Malware Intelligence Sharing Platform [http://www.misp- project.org/](http://www.misp-project.org/)</comment>


IETF attendees reengineer their hotel's Wi-Fi network - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/032812-ietf-makeover-257762.html

<comment><USER2> So, I used to work for a company that provided connectivity for hotels, restaurants, stadiums and other hotspots (like temporary venues). In every case, the network is designed for the common case. Hotels would be low churn, low density, a coffeeshop would be high churn, medium density while a stadium would be extremely high density, massive peak association rate but very high churn. Tech conferences have the same use patterns and density of a stadium. Unless there is prior arrangements and understanding of this, all hotels are going to go "yes, we have interne, yes it's good and we'll charge $x for it" and not notify the provider and not make any changes. Everything they did is standard practice for setting up a high density network.

If you are the organizer of a tech conference, please, communicate that you need special network considerations and get in contact with the hotel's provider, or arrange to have your own provider brought in as soon as possible. 3 months lead time is cutting it close.

</comment><comment><USER3> Single page link for those who would prefer to read the article whole, rather than broken up into four separate pages:

[http://www.networkworld.com/cgi- bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=...](http://www.networkworld.com/cgi- bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/news/2012/032812-ietf- makeover-257762.html&pagename=/news/2012/032812-ietf- makeover-257762.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/032812-ietf- makeover-257762.html&site=wirelessmobile&nsdr=n)

<comment><USER4> Install AutoPager and don't worry about things like that anymore.

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/autopager/> [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mmgagnmbebdebebbcl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mmgagnmbebdebebbcleklifnobamjonh)

<comment><USER5> Does it work with Readability?

<comment><USER6> Well I just discovered while reading this article that Readability does the autopaging on its own ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One interesting fact (which is not quite intuitive) is that one way they improved the WiFi network performance was by disabling the radios on a number of the access points in the hotel.

Less is more in some circumstances.

<comment><USER7> Along with that, they decreased transmit power which also helped reduce interference.

And later they _increased_ interference, in order to add a 4th channel.

It's all about tradeoffs...that's why they pay engineers the (market- competitive) bucks.

<comment><USER8> Alternatively, just buy something with features like Aruba's "adaptive radio management" (ARM) that does things like this automagically: [http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/arubaos/adaptive- radio...](http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/arubaos/adaptive-radio- management/)

 _(pretty sure Cisco has an equivalent but I forget its name...)_

Postscript: They talk about HP buying Colubris, but don't think the Colubris- legacy equipment is current-HP stuff; they went and bought 3Com in 2010, and I think that's where most of their current offerings come from.

<comment><USER9> Motorola has something called Smart RF which is the same thing. Since ExtremeNetworks and Brocade OEM the Motorola kit all 3 have it. I imagine all major vendors have this now.

But you will never be able to completely remove the human from the equation. A proper wireless site survey with someone walking around and taking readings pre/post AP installation is really the best way to do things. I'm not really a WLAN guy but I work with some really bright people who are. There is a lot of depth to this problem that we should not expect to be solved anytime soon by AI.

If you're interested in some of the theory about applying AI to RF determination check out the work of Tim Brown <http://ecee.colorado.edu/~timxb/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a PDF with diagrams that shows the changes: [http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/83/slides/slides-83-iesg-11-...](http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/83/slides/slides-83-iesg-11-ietf- operations-and-administration-plenary.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is common behavior for hackers: Few years ago I was on a vacation in a nice villa with "internet in the house". It turned out that this means DSL in the administrator's room. One hour trip to the near town later there was Wifi coverage in the estate. Nothing of the their work's magnitude, of course. Drinks were on the house that night.

<comment><USER12> Only trouble is, they knew how to maintain that DSL in the administrator's room. You won't be there when something goes wrong with the wifi.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maintenance of a basic WiFi access point has exactly one step:

1\. Reset Router.

Hardly rocket science...

<comment><USER13> > Reset Router.

The shitty crap $20 routers I've seen where plugging it out and in again makes them work again for about 40 seconds make me wish there was a button on them that'd give everyone in the company that pretends to have made them an electric shock.

Dear everyone - you know not to buy anything that's sold through spam emails by now. How about not buying a router that, when you plug it in, makes a faint fizzing sound, costs less than what you think it should and isn't a good brand? No, Belkin is a level of shit yet to be reached by the crap factories of Turdtown. If I had a dollar for every F5D7230 that I wanted to fold in half... just don't trust the reviews. Don't get that Netgear, their firmware is utter crap. Oh, you want bridging mode? You'll need to buy the v8, we've enabled it in the firmware for that. The v7 won't cut it, oh no. WGR614 was the name for that abortion of a craptardation. Just don't buy that crap. If, for a fucking router, they need to do ten revisions of the hardware WGR614v1 to WGR614v10, to get their supplies they need and their shit together, don't buy. Cisco, Linksys, Billion, TP-LINK, Fritz. That's not a whitelist though. Even they have produced utterly worthless things that manage to give LEDs their 5 Volts and whatnot milli-Ampere and give you a nice UI to manage a Wi- Fi connection that just doesn't work.

You want a router for grown-ups? Get the WRT54GL. Ten year and then some track record. Put your own damn firmware on it. How do you know it's for adults? The Amazon page says WARNING CHOKING HAZARD -- Small parts. Not for children under 3 yrs. That warning ain't on D-Link.

The time I have wasted on these pieces of crap you wouldn't believe. Thank you Hacker News, for giving me a place to vent.

<comment><USER14> Don't forget Apple.

<comment><USER13> > Don't forget Apple.

You want a simple page you can open in your browser? Noooooo way, that's way too industry standard. Rather have something where you need to keep your configuration software up to date too! It even doesn't work on Linux! What a feature!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm kind of confused by where conferences (particularly large/government/etc. focused conferences) choose to be. Paris isn't really my first choice for a cost-effective place for a tech conference.

It's not as bad as the ICANN meetings, which were deliberately held in obscure/expensive places around the world just to keep people from attending, in the guise of "being globally representative". The funny/sad thing is that this isn't one of the worst decisions ICANN has made.

<comment><USER16> There is a world outside of the US. Most participants of IETF conferences are not from the US or from North America at all. In fact, the IETF came close to deciding not to hold conferences in the US anymore due to increasing visa US from many foreign visitors[0].

[0]:<http://isoc.org/wp/ietfjournal/?p=190>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hope that hotel put out free cookies or something for them.

<comment><USER18> Actually, the other thread of discussion throughout the week is that IETF attendees at the Concorde Lafayette hotel have been regularly having their rooms burgled. The hotel has not been proactive responding to it, and arguably has been turning a blind eye.

So, more like lumps of coal.

<comment><USER17> no good deed goes unpunished?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand the data rate changes. Anyone?

<comment><USER20> " Increasing the minimum data and multicast rate from 1Mbps to 2Mbps "

In wifi networks, you can significantly reduce on-air collisions with other packets if you can send at a higher rate. A packet being sent at 2Mbps spends 1/2 the time on the wireless channel as compared to a one that is sent at 1Mbps. Therefore halving the probability that this packet will collide with some other transmission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article read like a Michael Crichton short story.</comment>


A Long List of Data Broker Sites and How to Opt-Out of Them (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne9b3z/how-to-get-off-data-broker-and-people-search-sites-pipl-spokeo <comment><USER2> This is the sort of thing you use to try and illustrate the need for additional privacy protections in a discussion. The sheer volume of names, and the effort required to interact with each, is obviously too overwhelming to reasonably expect a person to undertake. Surely, even if you're on the fence because you're in the camp that thinks we should be able to decide for ourselves whether or not to monetize our data, you can support legislation that gives people with a real need for digital privacy a way out. Off the top of my head I can imagine these services being used to assist in stalking an ex, going after a child I lost custody over, get the new phone number of someone I'm harassing, etc. Surely even laymen could at least understand situations like these and be persuaded that /some/ amount of digital privacy should be protected, maybe from there they could be made more open minded towards the more abstract but no less important forms of digital privacy.</comment>


Not a full timer - <AUTHOR> https://mohamedhayibor.github.io/blog/post/Not-A-Full-Timer/ <comment><USER2> > Posted by Mohamed Hayibor on Sat, Aug 31, 31089

I mean, if I were a time traveller, I wouldn't be spending my limited output on this sort of stuff ;)

More seriously - to me this guy seems a bit.. I dunno, try hard? Like they want to prove something about how aggressive they are.

You don't need to be all "gogogo" to do contracting.

The last bit is kind of illustrative. I think they've had bad experiences in the past and are perhaps recovering from burnout in some way. This post doesn't look like a good sign to me in that context.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did burn out and recovered. And I write from 1st hand experiences, not speculations.

If you're young and insecure you might fall into the low pay downward spiral trap. You'll burn out.

And I'm not advocative anything "gogogo"or aggressive, in fact I said that you should be aiming to work less hours...

Finally I'd be interested in knowing what life experiences you had to think that this post was "aggressive" or "try-hard".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I feel like I'm reading half of an argument here. Is this a response to something? Who in the world works for free when they're doing contract work?

<comment><USER4> It happens all the time.

The development scope is feature X with A,B,C. Customer asks for D and E. Technically D and E will add maybe 3 hours and Y cost to the total.

Your choices:

a) Bring it up which almost always leads to some haggling. Emails turn into calls, calls turn into meetings. Meetings turn into negotiations, negotiations lead to some compromise, in the end you have spent 3 hours just reaching an agreement, which nobody will reimburse you for. If you don't reach an agreement you stand your ground in numerous ways, most of which result in getting stiffed or losing business.

b) Spend the extra 3 hours.

A lot of times it's just simpler to choose (b), and like the author says, give in to tyranny. It's a genuine problem.

<comment><USER5> If you follow the authors other advice of not charging to little (which is strongly connected to how much your client values you), that's rarely a problem in my experience. My client knows my hourly rate, so when I tell them that the extra features take 3 additional hours they know exactly how much that would cost them. No haggling, no negotiations, no meeting.

Of course that only works with time-based billing, and a lot of people would advise against it, but it's one of the reasons why I love it.

<comment><USER4> This is definitely the case with "good"/recurring clients, and it's very painless. Not so much with others.

<comment><USER6> Then you don't want those others. I know it is hard to turn down work when you are getting a consulting business going, but there are "good" clients, and "bad" clients. You are not doing your future self any favors by rewarding bad clients with free work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _80% of my clothes are sportwears for a long time. It gives the feeling that you are a pro. A professional athlete, and a professional at your career, your performance totally relies on you._

Nothing looks more professional than someone sitting at a desk in yoga pants or a tracksuit. Yes indeed.

You know what else looks professional? A military or public services uniform. This guy should get a firefighter outfit to wear while sitting at a desk typing code. Then he'll feel really professional.

<comment><USER2> I'd go for the blue jumpsuit. Throw in a couple of spanners for good measure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > A quick litmus test: if you're getting paid by the hour. You're not a full > time employee. You're a contractor.

That's utterly ridiculous. There are so many jobs where this is not true from flipping burgers to civil engineering. Clearly the author hasn't thought this out at all.

</comment><comment><USER9> It never feels like the contractor is an "expert" in a field, is any more efficient than another employee and is nothing more than another person that has been hired to do programming with less HR/employment overhead.

So not sure which audience this article is aimed at.

Maybe my experience in London doesn't reflect other places but as a contract and as someone who has looked for contractors it never felt like we got anyone special. They were another person and they took just as long to on board and become efficient.

<comment><USER10> Your not paying for the best you are probably paying a similiar amount for your fulltime employees. What you get is all of the people who couldn't find a fulltime role who have to take this without any benefits so the quality is lower.

Now if you remote sourced the role gems will be found.

<comment><USER11> You have completely misunderstood the UK market - note that the OP talked about London. Perhaps as a way to get past the recruiting problem, UK corporates pay a premium for exerienced programmers on the basis that if they cannot do the job, they are let go immediately without severance. Most contractors are 30+, don't want to be 'in charge' (at meetings, giving interviews, being trained in the latest corporate 'values') and are happy to be given a product to build or maintain.

Every contractor I know resigned from a permanent position in their early thirties to go contracting and make 1.5x-2x as much money as a contractor. Businesses regularly offer contractors full-time positions and are regularly turned down.

Contractors may not be particularly special technically, but they will focus on doing what they're told in the team and not attending training, seminars, workshops or HR meetings. I'd much rather build a product with a team of suitably incentivised and managed contractors than a team of permies.

<comment><USER9> True, when I was contracting I did attend less meetings although it always felt like too many and the pay was good (not so much now).

But I always found it a little bit of a lie when the idea of a contractor coming in and working on a problem from day 2 or 3.

Granted this usually was because the problem was poorly defined and/or limited but even when I joined teams that had really good project managers it still was not as simple as "work on this in isolation".

I have since ditched contracting in UK, too much of a mess with the taxman.

<comment><USER11> Well, there are very few projects where someone can make a real difference from day 2 or 3. But given that there are numerous permie developers who want either to be a) Product Owners, b) Software Architects or c)professional Youtube viewers, getting a contractor in means you can cut your losses at the end of a 4 week period if you want to and firms do. While it's possible, I've never seen a permie cut during the probation period.

What did you do instead? There is a wave of people looking to get out of contracting in the UK right now exactly because of the messes HMRC keep making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > If you can't do a "one shot, one kill" email. Then call the person.

Please don't do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried it and gotten a 1st hand experience? Tell us about it?

<comment><USER12> [https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/91kw4d/just_call_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/91kw4d/just_call_them_oc/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find the term 'full time' unnecessarily ambiguous.

Certainly 'employee' suggests something contra to 'contractor', but there's no reason someone working 40 hours a week can't or shouldn't be considered full- time regardless of their permanent / contractor status.

I can't tell if this is irony, in the context of being 'precise in your communications' and advice to 'edit ruthlessly':

> You must ruflessly cut out bullshit, bloat, ...

<comment><USER14> I believe it is just an unimportant mistake from someone that might not be a native English speaker. I do those all the time, something like a _" phonetic typo"_; I write things as they sound in my native language and don't realize it.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps.

Note that the author asserted:

> It helps to actually take time 6 hours, 12 hours before a reply. Meditate on > the email. Write the email by hand on your notebook. Edit ruthlessly. Type > it up on your computer. Only then, send it.

So, a) they knew how to type ruthlessly at least once, and/or b) had spell- check pick them up on that one.

But the gist of the particularly prescriptive advice was to word your missives carefully lest they be misunderstood.

In good faith, let's assume it's an unimportant mistake.

So let's consider:

> Fuck "working for Free"

> If you work for free. You are contributing to tyranny. You are facilitating > the spread of tyranny. Nobody in their right mind and right intentions work > for free.

I'm typing my considered and reasoned response on a computer that's running almost exclusively free software, the authors of which I'm eternally grateful to.

Because I'm currently employed (full time, contractor) for an agency that's doing good work (by my assessment) I'm quite happy to perform occasional non- billable work.

Certainly, in my time I've worked in places that made me feel something approaching TFA's emotional response, but it's not a set of rules that I feel can or should be casually applied to all contractual engagements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a contractor and make more than I would as a full time employee. Companies also don't tend to overwork me because they need to pay for every hour.

</comment><comment><USER16> >If you're a full-time employee who must go to the office, you have to dress the part. If you look different than your peers, you look ridiculous and out of place.

I have been full time employee in my whole career, no one had really told me what to wear. I have been to office in sportswear and no one seems to mind that. I don't think this point is necessarily true at least in tech.

</comment><comment><USER17> It depends on the firm. At some non-tech firms, being an independent is the only way to get higher cash. (Not universal) In this case an expert developer who doesn't want to manage people escapes junior level salary bands.

<comment><USER18> In the US, it's a cash vs benefits trade-off. I am happy to sacrifice a lot of salary to get the Cadillac healthcare my company offers to me and my family at no cost.

<comment><USER19> Why not just buying the healthcare package yourself and paying for it from more cash you make as a contractor? Honest question since I live in a country with a very different healthcare system...

<comment><USER18> It's usually much more expensive to buy as an individual compared to a group. Health care economics are weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Posted by Mohamed Hayibor on Sat, Aug 31, 31089

We're living in 2019, Mohamed is living in 31089 apparently. How's the future? ;)

<comment><USER21> Well, he must be a very experienced senior software engineer with centuries of experience then. Therefore, this confirms the 10x programmer / contractor legend. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had to stop reading at "ruflessly", I can't trust someone's opinion if they can't take the time.

<comment><USER20> I am assuming the author has English as a non-primary language, which is totally fine almost all the time...

Except the author talked about making sure communication is succinct and the article has a lot of unnecessary fluff and indirectness.

This article could be really great with more polish.</comment></comment>


Registration for Windows 8 Upgrade Starts - <AUTHOR> https://windowsupgradeoffer.com/

<comment><USER2> "windowsupgradeoffer.com" frankly sounds like a scamming site. I imagine it isn't, but it's such a MS-ism to not host it on a Microsoft subdomain.</comment>