Using 'radioactive data' to detect if a data set was used for training - <AUTHOR> https://ai.facebook.com/blog/using-radioactive-data-to-detect-if-a-data-set-was-used-for-training/ <comment><USER2> At first glance, this seems like one of the more interesting projects to come out of Facebook AI. Justification: In the future, AI models will increasingly become interwoven with tech. It's not going to be so much "AI programming" as just "programming".

That raises an interesting question – one that has bothered me for a long time: Who owns copyright on training data?

As we saw with Clearview AI, a lot of data is being used without consent or even knowledge of the creators. And it's extremely hard to detect this usage, let alone enforce rights on it.

I might be misunderstanding this work, but it _seems_ like this would give you the ability to mark your digital data in such a way that you could prove it was later used in a model.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. You don't have access to the models (normally). And I'm betting that this work is somehow domain-specific, meaning you can't really come up with a generalized marker to imprint on all your data.

But this implies you might be able to mark your data with _many_ such markers, in hopes that one of them will later be triggered:

 _We also designed the radioactive data method so that it is extremely difficult to detect whether a data set is radioactive and to remove the marks from the trained model._

The flipside is interesting, too: This might give companies yet another way of tracking users. Now you can check whether a given user was in your model's actual training set, and if not, fine-tune the model on the fly.

Looking forward to seeing what comes of this.

<comment><USER3> Is there any particular reason to think this won't become another cat and mouse escalation as training algorithms have built in protection against this (and other related training set manipulations, especially the poisoning one the article talked about)? That isn't to say it is useless, as most cat and mouse escalations prove to be quite useful as long as the mouse stays a little ahead of the cat.

In this case, wouldn't such a marker be able to be detected by looking at images of the same class and seeing if there are any common perturbation across them, adjusting the images by the common perturbation , and then training the neural network? Even if there isn't such a common perturbation across them, adjusting them by the false flag common perturbation generated shouldn't be any more destructive than this method would be.

If there was a way to make it dependent upon the initial image and the class, that would be much harder to detect, but would such a method be possible to detect since all images within a class would not have the common perturbation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not relevant to the main trust of the article but barium sulphate is not radioactive, it just efficiently absorbs X-rays. Radioactive markers are I believe most commonly used in PET scans, Wikipedia suggests flourine-18 as the common isotope used.

<comment><USER5> you are very correct - authors are doing a fascinating and smart parallel, but the analogy (contrast X-RAY imaging) is wrong. A radioactive element (F-18) marking a glucose molecule for tracking sugar metabolism in the human body with an imager (PET) is what they mean. This is one of many techniques in the field of nuclear medicine or molecular imaging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is hard to believe that modifying input datasets won't modify the qualitative behavior of the outputs in some way.

This appears to be a modern variation of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry) / copy-trap behavior that mapmakers have made in the past.

<comment><USER7> I think most ML models aren't very "lean", meaning there is space in their weight layers for information isn't directly attributable to predictive accuracy. That space is likely where this new "radioactive" like data is being "stored"/"remembered".

The leanness could be increased during training by progressively trimming width/depth of weights, but I doubt if every model has this done.

<comment><USER8> This is definitely true. In fact, this can be exploited to extract sensitive/private attributes about the training data from the learned models. This may become an issue for, e.g., AI in healthcare.

"Overlearning Reveals Sensitive Attributes": [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.11742](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.11742)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Radioactive data could also help protect against the misuse of particular > data sets in machine learning.

This last sentence is the real reason behind this technology. Training data isn't cheap and I'm sure the paying party needs a watermark on it.

<comment><USER10> "Watermarking" and trademarking can be different things. And access to data is already licensed.

I think you're right in that DRM systems are likely to be built on top of such infrastructure, but DRM has been broken in other contexts before and the system doesn't necessarily have to be used for DRM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The question would be whether it's possible to make one's behavioural data (online or offline) "radioactive" to then prove with a high degree of accuracy whether someone (like Facebook) is stalking you online to deliver targeted ads.

At the moment advertising providers use a lot of data for ad targeting, some of which is benign and/or acquired with informed consent. As a result it makes it impossible for the user to tell whether an ad was targeted to them based on data they consented to share or if the data used was data they didn't want to be collected or used for advertising purposes.

<comment><USER12> Could be easy enough if your opponent is not expecting it and deploying countermeasures. Something like a customized AdNauseam [https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/) that prefers clicking some particular crap you don't like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Large companies have no problem scraping data to be used to train their models, but they don't seem to feel the same way about you scraping theirs.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised that it's even necessary to modify the dataset to achieve this. From what I've read, large models will often memorize their training data, and it seems like even with smaller models it should be possible to tell whether or not it was trained with some set of images, simply because the loss will be lower.

<comment><USER15> It is already possible to know if a particular image has been used in training (see eg. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06396](https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06396) by the same authors), but this new work also provides a p-value to give you a confidence on the result it gives.

Also notice that being proactive in watermarking the dataset can be desirable in some cases. For example, many datasets have large overlaps in the base images they use (but sometimes different labels), so it can be interesting to know whether a model was trained on "your" version of the dataset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not mentioned thus far anywhere in the article or in comments: potentially weaponizing this against deep fakes.

What's to stop cameras from making raw photos "radioactive" from now on, making deepfakes traceable by tainting the image-sets on which the models generating the deepfakes were trained?

This isn't my field. I'm certain there's a workaround, but I'd suspect detecting sufficiently well-placed markers would require knowing the original data pre-mark, which should be impossible if the data is marked before it's written to camera storage. I haven't even fully thought out the logistics yet, such as how to identify the radioactive data.

But am I missing something? I feel like this is viable.

<comment><USER17> Printer manufacturers have been doing this [1] for a long time.

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

<comment><USER16> Yep, one of the reasons color printers can't print black+white without yellow present.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ctrl+f shows no mention of the study of post-processing quantization nor pruning on their tampered dataset.

Overall, I instinctively think that one can create an NN architecture that is not affected, or even easily detect the tampered pictures with a pre processing pass, and untamper them.

NN are actually fuzzy, they support noise, you could add a bit more noise in the dataset to defeat the "radioactiveness".

Also, I'm pretty sure Facebook is not doing it to protect user data, but I have no proof.

<comment><USER19> but the noise FB adds is weighted a special way

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Have not yet read the article, as Facebook is blocked at work, but I would guess that this is mostly the application of steganographic techniques, to hide known patterns, in datasets that are likely to be stolen/borrowed for training.

Then observe the outputs of said models to try to discern related patterns.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can see a similar technique in use to detect cheaters in Kaggle competitions.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a major plot point in Accelerando.

<comment><USER23> I've read Accelerando and don't remember a major plot point that remotely looks like this. Perhaps are you thinking of one of the many secondary plot points.

Can you elaborate? Chapter? Context? Thanks.

<comment><USER22> First chapter; the lobsters are afraid of steganographic covert channels in the training data for their translator:

> _Manfred drains his beer glass, sets it down, stands up, and begins to walk > along the main road, phone glued to the side of his head. He wraps his > throat mike around the cheap black plastic casing, pipes the input to a > simple listener process. "Are you saying you taught yourself the language > just so you could talk to me?"_

> _" Da, was easy: Spawn billion-node neural network, and download Teletubbies > and Sesame Street at maximum speed. Pardon excuse entropy overlay of bad > grammar: Am afraid of digital fingerprints steganographically masked into > my-our tutorials."_

I guess it would have only been a _major_ plot point if the digital fingerprints had turned out to be present and had tripped some kind of monitoring system.</comment></comment></comment>


Is this bug in Hacker news? - <AUTHOR> http://recordit.co/Ux5Ehs3PND <comment><AUTHOR> Scenario: when you are in the comment section of a post that has a URL in it, there is a link that naturally should point to the URL, but it doesn't. I have always wondered why this really annoying design choice was made. Please, can anyone enlighten me on this?

<comment><USER2> It shows all posts that link to that domain. Your example was the only post from that domain.</comment></comment>


Cold and flu won't attack you simultaneously, study says - <AUTHOR> https://www.ksl.com/article/46691815/cold-and-flu-wont-attack-you-simultaneously-study-says <comment><AUTHOR> I've long speculated on the idea that the common cold may have some benefits to us, perhaps even co-adapted for increased fitness. The early flu shot, get a cold!</comment>


Google reverses previous China policy - Censorship is OK now - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/20/AR2010072001136.html

<comment><USER2> Once again it would seem that the love of money is the root of all evil. "Do No Evil" indeed...

</comment><comment><USER3> "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn"

That was last January. Didn't take long...

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't like to throw mud in the face of Google since I like their products and am still not sure myself how I feel about their Jan decision.

But this is just... lame.

If they are so susceptible to sales and the bottom line, they should never have made such a big deal about it back in Jan.</comment></comment>


Corey Doctorow: The Coming War on General Compuationat [Transcript] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcript.md

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg></comment>


Stoicism: Indifference is a power - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/why-stoicism-is-one-of-the-best-mind-hacks-ever-devised <comment><USER2> After reading a fair amount about Stoicism and still being unclear, I've found a good summary in Adam Smith's almost forgotten classic, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759) [1]:

"Human life the Stoics appear to have considered as a game of great skill; in which, however, there was a mixture of chance [...] In such games the stake is commonly a trifle, and the whole pleasure of the game arises from playing well, from playing fairly, and playing skilfully. If notwithstanding all his skill, however, the good player should, by the influence of chance, happen to lose, the loss ought to be a matter, rather of merriment, than of serious sorrow. He has made no false stroke; he has done nothing which he ought to be ashamed of; he has enjoyed completely the whole pleasure of the game. [...]

Our only anxious concern ought to be, not about the stake, but about the proper method of playing. If we placed our happiness in winning the stake, we placed it in what depended upon causes beyond our power, and out of our direction. We necessarily exposed ourselves to perpetual fear and uneasiness, and frequently to grievous and mortifying disappointments. If we placed it in playing well, in playing fairly, in playing wisely and skilfully; in the propriety of our own conduct in short; we placed it in what, by proper discipline, education, and attention, might be altogether in our own power, and under our own direction. Our happiness was perfectly secure, and beyond the reach of fortune."

[1] [http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smMS7.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smMS7.html)

<comment><USER3> I have this great collection from 1901 "World's Best Essays" \-- 9 tomes. Everything from Seneca to Adam Smith.

It's sad how much knowledge and social/ethical advancement is being forgotten. Our schools and universities are failing society. We're just going to keep making the same mistakes.

Edit: 10 volumes.

<comment><USER4> This beast? [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001438712](https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001438712)

Any recommendations?

<comment><USER5> Is there a kindle friendly version?

<comment><USER6> Based on the "Full Text", it looks like they used an automatic OCR to obtain the text from the PDFs, so they are full of many spelling and formatting mistakes. I prefer to get the B/W pdf and split it into files that are small enough not to lag on the Kindle hardware (I have the 2nd generation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was only recently introduced to stoicism as a philosophy on a run.

I was asked what my technique is during a run, do I concentrate on pain or ignore it. Of course there isn't always pain and pain during a run can vary greatly, so I explained my answer is simply, _yes_. I have tried everything and nothing works, I explained like everyone some days I dominate and some days I struggle, but I'm always thankful for my _character building days_ and hopeful I'll have new thought processes to try.

I don't know if it's stoic or not, but a cool way to be introduced to the philosophy. Then, I explained a specific thought I sometimes embrace during very difficult runs, I remember when I did a back to back half/full marathons, and on day 2 I was feeling great like there was nothing I couldn't do and just before the race I was introduced to a 67 year old cancer survivor running her first marathon, to this day the thought brings chills and humbles me.

<comment><USER8> > I was asked what my technique is during a run, do I concentrate on pain or > ignore it.

There is a great story that I took a liking to, it centers around the idea that "this too shall pass"[0]. It resonated with me because regardless of how (un)happy you are, it shall pass, a new day will begin. The current state is simply current, it does not resonate over a span of a week, or month, year, decade, etc. Our current state should be approached in a stateless manner as to refrain being too high or too low.

In that frame of reference, all success/failure is part of the journey and doesn't defy ourselves.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This 'hack' is known to drug addicts for centuries. Cyclic withdrawal from the drug to increase potency. Stoicism is the same principal used to recalibrate hedonic treadmill so you don't have to keep running faster and faster.

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

<comment><USER10> The problem is that we are hard wired to always want _more_. It requires constant reflection to short circuit this tendency.

<comment><USER11> Isn't there a valid distinction between the _joy_ of making genuine progress in life and mere pleasure such as that derived from drugs or alcohol?

<comment><USER10> This is a question of virtue versus pleasure which is much explored by the Stoics because a contemporary, competing movement was Epicureanism, which extolled pleasure.

OP is referring, however, to the "life hack" promoted by the article's author which suggests keeping our baseline low so that we are constantly surprised to the upside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Serenity Prayer popular in 12-step programs is the tldr; of Stoicism I keep in mind:

Grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

<comment><USER13> I like a quote from Shogun by James Clavell (it's about mediaval japan getting discovered by a westerner for the first time, it is incredibly without exaggeration).

 _"Karma is the beginning of knowledge. Next is patience. Patience is very important. The strong are the patient ones, Anjin-san. patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, fear. If you don 't give way to the seven, you're patient, then you'll soon understand all manner of things and be in harmony with Eternity."_

<comment><USER14> I do find myself wondering how accurate that book was regarding feudal Japan...

<comment><USER13> It is historical fiction. blackthorne did exist, did get samurai status and estate, did build ships for Toranaga (Tokugawa Ieyasu). The characters are real and James Clavell spent 4 years in Japan researching and writing the book. His depiction was rather accurate, though of course exaggerated and romanticized.

[http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/learning/Learning_from_shogun_...](http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/learning/Learning_from_shogun_txt.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I couldn't agree more.

In so many situations in life, it really only comes down to how you view the situation.

If you see it as a pain in the ass and horrible, it is.

If you see it as a challenge and enjoyable and something to learn from, it is.

Your happiness really is your choice.

<comment><USER16> This is a perspective which is easier to pull off in the first world.

<comment><USER17> Do you really imagine that everyone not in the first world is constantly suffering?

 _That_ is a first-world perspective: Claiming that only first-world-ers can be happy through adversity.

<comment><USER18> _Claiming that only first-world-ers can be happy through adversity._

I think the claim is that it's easier to find first-world-ers which experience less adversity.

<comment> wu-ikkyu >it's easier to find first-world-ers which experience less adversity.

What kind of adversity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Coincidence, or life maybe, is just incredible. I bought "A guide to the good life" a couple of days ago, and started reading it 2 hours ago. I finished the first two chapters, and checked hacker news for the first time today, this post was in the top 10...Good article, even better writing. Cheers.

<comment><USER20> That book was my first introduction into stoicism. Really enjoyed it.

Highly recommend 'Meditations' next

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe it isn't strictly sticking to the definition of stoicism I've found this effective, surprisingly, in road rage or what some would call bullying situations. When someone is getting aggressive, I have just stayed serious, calm and looked slightly determined. I keep eye contact and try to think about being bored as well. When bully-types blow up at a stranger, they usually do it to someone that they think will back down. When they don't, they get confused.

<comment><USER14> Bullys or gorillas, same diff?

<comment><USER21> A gorilla could back up the initial bluff. I look pretty mild mannered but in my youth, I fought a lot in high school. In college and just after, I usually stayed out of it but there were quite a few of my buddies who took a bit longer to learn and thus quite a few weekends included a bar fight here or there. Point being that I'd try to avoid it but if a person moved the situation to a fight, I'm not tough guy but I can handle myself okay. Bullies don't often target someone they think might be able to handle them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The "Obstacle is The Way" is a very popular book and now sits on my nightstand. I have drawn a lot of strength from it as I endure difficult struggles:

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

</comment><comment><USER23> As a stoic I'm getting an emotionally neutral response from this thread.

<comment><USER24> I have no strong feelings one way or the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This seems like a decidedly un-Stoic statement:

"Stockdale rejected the false optimism proffered by Christianity, because he knew, from direct observation, that false hope is how you went insane in that prison."

Perhaps the author is interjecting something.

Stoicism and Christianity share many traits. Consider, as but one example, this statement by James:

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

<comment><USER26> This reminds me of a part of Taleb's "The Black Swan", which I've been rereading in light of recent events.

In it, Taleb describes how a process or event can be misperceived as strengthening those who go through it, when actually it weakens all of them, killing some.

His example is submitting a cohort of rats to radiation. As they are subjected to higher and higher levels of radiation, more will die, the ones who are naturally stronger will survive. Our cohort will appear stronger and stronger as the radiation increases and the dead drop out of the group. But crucially, all will have been weaker after the radiation than before it.

But since we observed a stronger group the more we increased the radiation, we may say that it "hardened" them, in the sense of "that which doesn't kill one makes one stronger".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So _why_ is it? The article didn't really answer the question, for all its meandering through history.

Does anyone know of a good and concise summary of the main points of Stoicism?

<comment><USER28> Epictetus's handbook is a quick read. [http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html](http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html)

<comment><USER27> Thank you, that _is_ a quick read. I found a very nice Greek version as well, I'll read that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> wu-ikkyu >It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control. Nothing is by its own nature calamitous -- even death is terrible only if we fear it.

>There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will.

-Epictetus

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice article. A little off topic, but the book "A Guide to a Good Life. Writings of Marcus Aurelius" is a fantastic read. He was one of the last "good" Roman Emporers, and his ideas on Stoicism are excellent.

</comment><comment><USER30> I always find the poem "If" the epitome of (British) Stoicism.

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

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a fantastic talk about Stoicism [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seLLJP3H1FU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seLLJP3H1FU)

</comment><comment><USER32> Indifference - bad choice of word. It makes it sound like apathy.

<comment><USER33> Not at all. Indifference is quite a different thing. Apathy is pretty much the opposite of Stoicism.

Here is a paragraph from Marcus Aurelius:

XVII. So live as indifferent to the world and all worldly objects, as

one who liveth by himself alone upon some desert hill. For whether here, or there, if the whole world be but as one town, it matters not much for the place. Let them behold and see a man, that is a man indeed, living according to the true nature of man. If they cannot bear with me, let them kill me. For better were it to die, than so to live as they would have thee.

Remember, Aurelius was a soldier and emperor. These are not the words of someone given to apathy. It's all about taking control of oneself.

<comment><USER32> So, indifference in the sense of non-indulgence, not "not caring".

<comment><USER34> Connotations matter, too, though. Indifferent as you may be to them, others do not necessarily share your equanimity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> For an introduction on stoicism as applied to our current life: "A Guide to the Good Life" by William Irvin [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5617966-a-guide-to- the-g...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5617966-a-guide-to-the-good- life)

Ecclesiastes (contained in the Tanakh and the Old Testament) has a streak of stoicism. Written around 25 centuries ago, author unknown. Here is the NJB translation of a part of 1 and 2:

"I, Qoheleth, have reigned over Israel in Jerusalem. Wisely I have applied myself to investigation and exploration of everything that happens under heaven. What a wearisome task God has given humanity to keep us busy! I have seen everything that is done under the sun: how futile it all is, mere chasing after the wind! What is twisted cannot be straightened, what is not there cannot be counted.

I thought to myself: I have acquired a greater stock of wisdom than anyone before me in Jerusalem. I myself have mastered every kind of wisdom and science. I have applied myself to understanding philosophy and science, stupidity and folly, and I now realise that all this too is chasing after the wind. Much wisdom, much grief; the more knowledge, the more sorrow.

I thought to myself, 'Very well, I will try pleasure and see what enjoyment has to offer.' And this was futile too. This laughter, I reflected, is a madness, this pleasure no use at all. I decided to hand my body over to drinking wine, my mind still guiding me in wisdom; I resolved to embrace folly, to discover the best way for people to spend their days under the sun. I worked on a grand scale: built myself palaces, planted vineyards; made myself gardens and orchards, planting every kind of fruit tree in them; had pools made for watering the young trees of my plantations. I bought slaves, male and female, had home-born slaves as well; herds and flocks I had too, more than anyone in Jerusalem before me. I amassed silver and gold, the treasures of kings and provinces; acquired singers, men and women, and every human luxury, chest upon chest of it. So I grew great, greater than anyone in Jerusalem before me; nor did my wisdom leave me. I denied my eyes nothing that they desired, refused my heart no pleasure, for I found all my hard work a pleasure, such was the return for all my efforts.

I then reflected on all that my hands had achieved and all the effort I had put into its achieving. What futility it all was, what chasing after the wind! There is nothing to be gained under the sun. My reflections then turned to wisdom, stupidity and folly. For instance, what can the successor of a king do? What has been done already.

More is to be gained from wisdom than from folly, just as one gains more from light than from darkness; this, of course, I see: The wise have their eyes open, the fool walks in the dark. No doubt! But I know, too, that one fate awaits them both. 'Since the fool's fate', I thought to myself, 'will be my fate too, what is the point of my having been wise?' I realised that this too is futile. For there is no lasting memory for the wise or the fool, and in the days to come both will be forgotten; the wise, no less than the fool, must die.

Life I have come to hate, for what is done under the sun disgusts me, since all is futility and chasing after the wind. All I have toiled for under the sun and now bequeath to my successor I have come to hate; who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all the work into which I have put my efforts and wisdom under the sun. That is futile too.

I have come to despair of all the efforts I have expended under the sun. For here is one who has laboured wisely, skilfully and successfully and must leave what is his own to someone who has not toiled for it at all. This is futile too, and grossly unjust; for what does he gain for all the toil and strain that he has undergone under the sun since his days are full of sorrow, his work is full of stress and even at night he has no peace of mind? This is futile too.

There is no happiness except in eating and drinking, and in enjoying one's achievements; and I see that this too comes from God's hand; for who would get anything to eat or drink, unless all this came from him? Wisdom, knowledge and joy, God gives to those who please him, but on the sinner he lays the task of gathering and storing up for someone else who is pleasing to him. This too is futility and chasing after the wind."

==

For a contemporary take on Ecclesiastes see "American Beauty" or read "Beyond Futility, American Beauty and the Book of Ecclesiastes' by Robert Johnston in "The Gift of Story: Narrating Hope in a Postmodern World" [https://books.google.nl/books?id=2WP_KMBmf7UC&pg=PA85](https://books.google.nl/books?id=2WP_KMBmf7UC&pg=PA85)

<comment><USER36> Doesn't it sound more like some sort of fatalistic nihilistic hedonism?

Nothing matters so just do the short term things that bring pleasure, or do long term things, nothing really matters (including the fact that nothing matters).

Eric S. Christianson-Ecclesiastes (Blackwell Bible Commentaries)-Blackwell (2005) academically show how various commentators perceived Ecclesiastes over the last few millenia.

Understandably up to mid 17-18th century most writers/commentators tried to show that Ecclesiastes was being critical of this nihilism / proto existentialism.

However, once you realize that Epilogue (12:9–14) is a tacked on commentary itself, then you are back to nihilism.

How do you progress beyond futily?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I read A Guide to the Good Life roughly once a year and found this summary a nice way to stay on it between readings:

[http://becomingeden.com/summary-of-a-guide-to-the-good- life/](http://becomingeden.com/summary-of-a-guide-to-the-good-life/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I wonder if taking a stoic approach to life could help with depression?

<comment><USER39> If stoicism is a kind of proto-Cognitive-Behavioral-Therapy, and CBT improves depression, it really should. Gratitude is IMO very important to improve depression, and stoicism could help with that. Personally I must say that the negative visualization that Irvine proposes causes me problems rather than solve them, because it adds anxiety. Also, imagining things worse than what you have does not automatically make all things right - you can still long for a better version of your world while imagining a horror scenario.

Accepting reality as the only possible (and thus, best) reality works a lot better for me.

Identifying misalignments in my views of other people (or the world), which lead to negative knee-jerk emotions or general low-tune malaise, is another "mind hack" that works for me, but I would not necessarily call this stoic - but a CBT therapist might suggest that.

<comment><USER40> I wish to strongly second your observation that focusing on the worst case results in one steering towards the worst case and leads to rumination which results or at least worsens depression. And acceptance of reality as it is seems to he roughly the antidote. The below is dangerous for some minds.

"By keeping the very worst that can happen in our heads constantly, the Stoics tell us, we immunise ourselves from the dangers of too much so-called 'positive thinking'"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Marcus Aurelius started each day telling himself: 'I shall meet with > meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people'

In other words: every day I will meet with sinners - but additionally "just as I myself am a sinner"

Christianity understands this much better than the stoics. The problem of the world is sin and what is the remedy?

Jesus Christ

> he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the > sins of the whole world.

or

> For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it > pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of the world

</comment><comment><USER42> So where is the International Stoicist Front fighting today against the evil in the world and the suppression of the poor? Oh, they aren't. They are working for international cooperations in a middle management position.

Why is meditation and Stoicism so hyped these days?

</comment><comment><USER43> Stoicism is life's consolation prize.

(I should know...)

</comment><comment><USER44> Stoicism is fundamentally subversive to the Hobbesian leviathan that has been constructed from within the post-enlightenment university system. It is the foundation of western morality and ethics, (the Bible borrows heavily from it).

Stoicism is not taught in public schools because it would make citizens ungovernable. Most education today is about training dependents, where stoicism teaches a kind of spiritual freedom. No grand conspiracy or anything. When education was elite, students learned elite ideas. Now that it is common, for cohesion they must learn common ones instead. Universities wouldn't have survived centuries if they produced graduates who would overthrow their governments, or obviate them entirely.

To cosmopolitanism, great and principled men are dangerous and anathema. Irony is that its most prominent works were by the rulers and elites of city states. Some people on the alt-right spectrum have taken that strain and created a kind of genre-philosophy out of it, like what John Williams is to classical music, some alt right thinkers are to classical philosophy.

<comment><USER45> I'm not sure I agree. If I understand Stoicism correctly a Stoic wouldn't work on changing the system or getting into a better position himself. A real Stoic at heart would therefore be just as good as a believer in your system.

The reason why it's not widely taught may come from that Stoicism hasn't growth wired into it, like Christianity or Islam has. If a Stoic is content with a world outside of his power, then he has no need to convert others to Stoicism.

<comment> wu-ikkyu I tend to agree with both you and OP in different ways. Perhaps this Epictetus quote will contribute to the discussion:

>I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > _No wonder the Stoic sage, in Western culture, has never obtained the > popularity of the Zen master._

Perhaps author should check history of Roman Empire and relation between stoicism and Christianity.

</comment><comment><USER47> > stoic

> Someone who does not give a shit about the stupid things in this world that > most people care so much about. Stoics do have emotions, but only for the > things in this world that really matter.

Best definition I've seen of 'stoic' yet :)

<comment><USER48> Do stoics worry about Trump?

<comment><USER47> > Do stoics worry about Trump?

I don't think he cares, so in that sense Trump is stoic w.r.t. stoics.

Seriously tho, I couldn't sleep on Election at the thought of all the hateful, racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric that put him in office. The next day, I felt physically ill and that's when my Dad told me "Beta (son), stop worrying about sh_t that you have no control over. Just ride out the next 8 years* _, stop watching news and stop reacting and arguing about it, because all said and done, he was DEMOCRATICALLY Elected into Office by a Majority of Voters who got off their butts and cast their vote. "

_* 8 years = My dad believes that Trump, like Dubya, will get re-elected no matter how bad his Presidency is, because in his own words "When a White Republican President sh*ts, People call it Honey"

<comment><USER49> Well he was democratically elected according to the rules. If the rules had been different, he might have also have got the majority of voters. We will never know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Anyone interested in Stoicism should have a read about Buddhism, especially the Theravada branch. There are quite interesting parallels to be drawn.

<comment><USER51> Have any concrete connections between the two been drawn? The timeline generally works out that Greeks from Alexander's armies _could_ have been exposed to Buddhists in some of his eastern campaigns.

<comment><USER49> The idea that your own happiness or suffering is created by your reaction to events rather than the events themselves is utterly Buddhist.

But I wouldn't say that Buddhism was some Indian equivalent of Stocism. I also read about Epicurianism or even Cynisym and say "hey, that idea is totally the Buddhist, POV". I suspect the same can be done for other Indian schools.

Sages of the axial age from around the old world discovered many similar good ideas, and people later built philosophical schools around them combining things in different ways.

This is why I don't think there was much idea transfer between India and the West. They simply had the same good ideas. (But I am sure the Greek Buddhists of Ghandhara had a field day with the parallels. I wish we had written records of their ideas, to go with their art.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I really do agree with the advantages of Stoicisms ... and agree that they 'do it better in the East' ...

but to say: "No wonder the Stoic sage, in Western culture, has never obtained the popularity of the Zen master."

I think is pushing it a little far.

There are a lot of Christian Monks - now and throughought the ages who would be borderline stoics. And many big thinkers as well.

We (Westerners) just didn't define it very well :)

<comment><USER33> You don't have to live on bread and water to be a Stoic. You don't have to be a big thinker either. It's a practical philosophy not a theoretical one. Also it seems to me that you could be surrounded by adherents of this philosophy and not know it because they are hardly likely to make a great fuss about it. You might infer it from their behaviour.

<comment><USER51> Indeed. One of the more prominent Stoics was a Roman emperor, who had access to every luxury that the world of that time possessed.

<comment><USER33> Perhaps you should elaborate a little.

<comment><USER51> Too late to edit, but I was mostly replying to this part:

> You don't have to live on bread and water to be a Stoic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I came upon stoicism in the Andreas Eschbachs - "the Last of his kind" (great book by the way). Its really quite a fascinating worldview- not at all the "depressed punching bag" of the universe as it looks from the outside.

</comment><comment><USER54> What is the relevance of the image at the top here of a sub-Saharan African to an article about an ancient European philosophy.

An ancient European philosophy we know of today thanks to written language and a European civilization that developed, preserved and cultivated countless worldchanging ideas.(like the controlled conveyance of photons into your eyes relaying this information)

Written language was never even devised in sub-Saharan Africa!

These agenda driven, Magical Negro juxtapositions are becoming obscene.

</comment><comment><USER55> So people in concentration camps who werent enjoying it just had a bad attitude?

<comment><USER56> Ah, the reductio-ad-concentration-camp: If advice isn't applicable to Auschwitz, it's not valid in any form.

<comment><USER55> Sorry for the bluntness. I responded with better phrasing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Hindus and Theravada Buddhists would laugh at this.)

<comment><USER58> Why would they?

<comment><USER59> For exploring the (Theravada, but really 'fundamental/historical') Buddhist perspective, the best resource I have personally found online is _Access to Insight_ at [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/](http://www.accesstoinsight.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I couldn't make it through the first sentence of fluff.

</comment><comment><USER61> Stoicism resurgence seems very unusually connected to the rise of the alt- right.

<comment><USER62> Not so much as stoicism itself, but a cargo cult version of it: [https://emotionsblog.history.qmul.ac.uk/2016/11/how-the- alt-...](https://emotionsblog.history.qmul.ac.uk/2016/11/how-the-alt-right- emerged-from-mens-self-help/)

<comment><USER63> Key quote: "All the classical philosophers that some alt-righters claim to revere put virtue before brute power. The Stoics, in particular, were cosmopolitans – they believed in a universal moral code that transcends race, gender or nationality."

In other words, some people wind up cherry-picking pieces of Stoicism, like equanimity in the face of misfortune, and ignoring others, like cosmopolitanism and considering virtue as the highest/sole good.</comment></comment></comment>


Couple turns to viruses to beat back superbug - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/phage-therapy-1.4090666 <comment><USER2> Phage therapy is often effective and very promising, but it's specific to each infection, labor intensive, and basically impossible to scale up or patent to mass produce like an antibiotic is (perhaps why it hasn't caught on).

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

Most of the ongoing active use and research is in Poland

[https://www.iitd.pan.wroc.pl/en/OTF/](https://www.iitd.pan.wroc.pl/en/OTF/)

<comment><USER3> It can scale in distributed fashion. The labor is fine. People working to save people is a completely valid labor, important, meaningful, possible.

It's not like we don't have any free human time. Lots of people need work.

Packaging this into a repeatable, portable process seems worthwhile.

The search for better super antibiotics can continue. If we get lucky, great.

I read there is a group in Poland who will match a phage to an infection in a few days. They need a sample.

Scale that. The world needs it.

<comment><USER4> > basically impossible to scale up or patent to mass produce like an > antibiotic is (perhaps why it hasn't caught on).

I think they mean that the profit motive of pharma giants is an important part of promoting new treatments.

<comment><USER5> There wouldn't any profit for pharma giants. You can't patent bacteriophage, they're the commonest life form on Earth (if you consider viruses to be a life form), they're extracted from unwanted waste (raw sewage) and they reproduce themselves in bacterial cultures.

This is why their use continued in the Soviet Union when they fell out of favour in the West. Profits don't matter under communism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's great having friends in the right places. Why in these stories is the patient always a researcher or married to a researcher in the field? People die of infections like this every day in every hospital. If i demand of my dieing grandmother's doctor "phone the CDC and let's try some phages" i'd be laughed out of the room. One is left with the distinct impression that, end of life or not, those in the club are provided extreem options the rest of us are not. (See many of the ebola stories.) They may be totally experimental but facing the end most would take experimental over nothing.

<comment><USER7> You do not really understand what "experimental treatment" means without doing medical research. In general, it means it is extremely more likely to acutely hurt more than it helps you. I mean like million to one odds.

<comment><USER8> But for some reason doctors and researchers are viewed as understanding that better than the public. But they're still happy to tell a wife that they might want to call a priest for her husband in a comma...

<comment><USER9> "But for some reason doctors and researchers are viewed as understanding that better than the public."

Wait: you're arguing that doctors and researchers _don 't_ understand the risks of experimental treatments better than the general public?

Why would you think that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found the original article that the CBC writer based this story on more interesting and entertaining. I submitted it on HN a couple days ago: [http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/sd-me- bacter...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/sd-me-bacteria- virus-20170426-story.html)

<comment><USER11> jfc that site is laden with shitware for your browser

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Bacteriophages were once used as a treatment in the U.S. and Europe, but > when penicillin came to the market in the 1950s, their use was largely > abandoned outside of Russia and Poland.

I wonder what insights into safety of those therapies doctors in Russia and Poland have to offer.

<comment><USER13> I believe the general problem with bacterial viruses, is that our body mounts a immune response against them.[1] It works okay for a little bit, but because our immune system "learns" (e.g. clonal selection) the second time they are used they aren't usually effective.

I've read that they kept being used in Russia because Russia didn't have the industrial capacity for antibiotic production & refinement. It would be interesting to know if the Russian/Polish medical communities learned anything novel about bacterial viruses though.

[1] Our immune system doesn't know that they're harmless, and the tricks that some viruses use to avoid are immune system are typically harmful to us, so you wouldn't want to use those ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy -- no more and no less. That fact is gravely important to remember and often forgotten to great detriment.

<comment><USER15> It kind of sounds like you have a very specific context in mind when you say this. Mind explaining?

<comment><USER14> Not at all. What I mean to imply is that simply because someone or something aids one in the fight against another doesn't mean that that particular someone or something is friendly towards one. At best, one can infer that, at least for the moment, one isn't that person or thing's most valuable target at the time of aid. It might be a cynical way of looking at things but it helps to distinguish between that which is actually your friend, knowingly sacrificing something of itself for one, and your temporary and unwitting ally ready to turn on one the moment the, by chance or strategy, existing target is eliminated.

To elaborate, the situation described in the article is a case report. In this case, the gamble paid off and the man was cured. However, we rarely hear about the cases in which this gamble was lost and the experimental treatment did _not_ result in a successful return to health. It's human to want to belong and to have others come to our aid. Sadly, it's also human to be thanking the cat for killing mice one day and then cursing it for eating our goldfish the next.

<comment><USER15> Right. But that's implied by the fact that the phrase exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> given that the expertise to manufacture and program viruses has matured quite rapidly over the past decade, i think we may look at them not as an "enemy" but more of a tool, i.e. a cellular syringe to be manipulated at will. Why most ppl in that field call them "vectors" these days.

</comment><comment><USER17> This feels like an episode of House MD.

</comment><comment><USER18> Phages are being used in Russia. Right now two types of phages are sitting in my fridge.

<comment><USER19> Can you expand on how they are being used? I'd love to know.

<comment><USER18> Doctors routinely prescribe phages when they think that antibiotics would be an overkill or if they don't want any side effects from antibiotics.

Here is the list of phages that are sold in Russian pharmacies: [https://imgur.com/a/vkEJo](https://imgur.com/a/vkEJo)</comment></comment></comment>


Git and GitHub Secrets [video] - <AUTHOR> http://confreaks.com/videos/1229-aloharuby2012-git-and-github-secrets

<comment><USER2> The the talk goes on about GitHub and then Git, so the title could be structured a little better; I don't use github as much as I use git, so here's the link to the second part of the talk -- [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Foz9yvMkvlA#t=1570s)

There's quite of few intricate git parameters I didn't know about, so here's my notes for almost all of them:

       git add -p [ a logical way of staging hunks ( diff entities) ]
       git checkout - [ '$ cd -' for branches ]
       git branch --merge [ show all merged branches ]
       git branch --no-merge [ not merged branches ]
       git branch --contains [ which branch contains a particular sha ]
       git checkout BRANCH -- path/to/file [ copy a file from a different branch ]
       git log branchA ^branchB [ show commits in a that not in b]
       git fsck --lost-found [ show deleted content that hasn't been gc'd]
       git diff HEAD --stat [ force display commit message ]
       git blame -w [ shows who changed each line while ignoring whitespace changes ]
       git blame -M [ ignore move commits, display only code changes ]
       git blame -C/-CC/-CCC [ ignore different levels of move/rename and only display code block creation or modification commits ]
       git config remotes.mygroup 'remote1 remote2' [ group multiple remotes ]
       git status -sb [ colorize status, remove fluff ]
       git diff HEAD^ --word-diff [ colorize and highlight word changes instead of producing line diffs ]
       git config --global help.autocorrect 1 [ convert 'did you mean' messages into action, questionable usefulness ]
       git config --global rerere.enabled 1 [ remember previously merged commits when merging repeatedly with same branches, i.e. master -> long running dev branch ]
       git config --global color.ui 1 [ command that I keep googling on stack overflow whenever I setup git on a new machine ]
       git commit --amend [ modify commits that haven't been pushed to remote ]
       git reset --soft HEAD^ [ retains commit diff as 'staged' as opposed to complete erase with --hard ]
       git shortlog -sn [ count number of line diffs by author? committer? ]
       git commit (--amend) --author "Author Name <author@email>" [ attribute commit ]

A minor nitpick about the talk, is that the speaker tries to humor everyone and most of the time it falls flat, I mean calling everyone who can setup SSH keypair neckbeards? It's a little more cringeworthy than funny, and thanks to moments like this the attitude of the presenter comes off as a bit presumptuous.

<comment><USER3> I haven't watched the talk, but I'd like to highlight a couple of commands you mention.

"git add -p" is absolutely phenomenal. I'm probably not the only one keeping on working on something until it functions, which often means solving several issues at the same time. This command lets you add file chunks in the commit staging area, instead of entire files, up to the point where you can actually edit the patch itself. As useful as it is dangerous (it's a good way of committing invalid code).

"git commit --amend" - this works only on the last commit of the current branch, and it doesn't care whether your commit has been published or not. You might care, though, once you attempt to push your amended commit and it complains the remote can't be fast-forwarded. Extremely useful though (how many times have you forgotten to add a new file to your VCS before commit?)

I'm surprised not to see "git reflog" in the list of commands listed. Git being something of a wonderful footgun, this is a command every git user should know. It essentially records the commits you have made. Feeling bad about your last "git branch -D"? Your rebase didn't turn out so well? You need "git reflog".

I'll toss in "git whatchanged" as well. This is "git log" but with the list of files modified.

<comment><USER2> About 'git commit --amend' actually it works on any commit that hasn't been pushed upstream, the speaker talks about for some time, so the more verbose version of the command would be 'git commit --amend <SHA Hash>' but all of the previous commits are usually pushed upstream anyway, so effectively this command works only on the last commit.

I didn't know about reflog and whatchanged, I'll definitely read up on them. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Clearly not with every git:

      $ git commit --amend a98fd2e95dde78041132b6281f6c2127712507f5
      error: pathspec 'a98fd2e95dde78041132b6281f6c2127712507f5' did not match any file(s) known to git.
      $ git --version
      git version 1.7.11.msysgit.1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://zachholman.com/talk/git-github-secrets>

</comment><comment><USER5> this is probably unrelated but can anyone explain why the size of the 1080p video is so much larger than the 720p one? (1920x1080) / (1280x720) = 2.25 while 1.6 x 1024 / 237.3 = 6.9

<comment><USER6> probably bitrate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this link bait or actually worth reading?</comment>


Awk vs. Perl (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/awk-vs.perl.html <comment><USER2> I learned Awk in 1988 before Perl was around (on our systems, anyway). It was super useful at the time. But if you know Perl and Perl is available on your system, there's certainly not a compelling need for writing standalone, multi- line Awk programs. But Awk is really, really useful for one-liners. As Larry Wall has said: "I still say awk '{print $1}' a lot."

Brian Kernighan himself, in this 2015 talk [1] on language design, states that Awk was primarily intended for one-liner usage (he mentions this at 20:43).

[1] [https://youtu.be/Sg4U4r_AgJU?t=19m45s](https://youtu.be/Sg4U4r_AgJU?t=19m45s)

<comment><USER3> Once I learned Perl I never used awk or sed again. Even for one liners with the -n -p -a options you can easily write one liners in Perl that are concise as those in Awk.

<comment><USER4> How do you write

        awk '{print $3 ":" $1 " " $2}'

in Perl?

<comment><USER5>
      perl -aE 'say "$F[2]:$F[0] $F[1]"'

<comment><USER4> That's indeed concise, but it doesn't work. I think you need -naE

<comment><USER5> -a implies -n since v5.19.3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The nice thing about awk is that it's really only suitable for simple record processing. You therefore stop using fairly quickly when the problem reaches sufficient complexity to use a better suited language.

It's like a very neat, small domain specific language for use processing simple record based text files. And within those limits it's super useful.

<comment><USER7> >The nice thing about awk is that it's really only suitable for simple record processing.

Not exactly only simple processing, IMO. Record processing, yes - it is a domain specific language, and its core feature is the pattern-action thing, and it was (at least originally) meant mainly to operate on record-oriented text files (even if on lines, since a line is a record with one column). I don't have good examples off the top of my head, but can mention a few things:

The books The Unix Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike, and either Programming Pearls or More Programming Pearls, by Jon Bentley, have some examples of advanced uses of awk - so it is not just for simple record processing. And I've read somewhere that just shell and awk and other Unix tools have even been used to create a DBMS of sorts. Plus, with later versions like GNU awk and so on, they've added more features to the language, including probably many more built-in functions, and also some network programming support [1].

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-complex-software- writ...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-complex-software-written-in- Awk)

According to an answer at the above link, an nroff-subset text formatter and Lisp subset interpreter have been written in awk. Those are more complex than simple record processing.

Also:

[1] Effective awk Programming, 3rd Edition [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596000707.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596000707.do)

<comment><USER6> Right, I mean it's Turing complete, and you can do anything you want. But at least when I use it, I quickly reach for another language after using it for basic reformatting/simple calculations because using awk to do so would be too difficult and awkward.

<comment><USER7> I get you now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article doesn't say much, besides replaying many common thoughts. Actually, as an article, it's pretty much useless.

U have been reading "The AWK programming language" and actually kinda fell in love with awk.

Awk does many simple things, it's fairly nice to combine such simple things, and it's generally a nice and handy tool to know.

<comment><USER9> Yeah it's basically "I know Perl and I don't know Awk". I'm surprised it got to the front page.

Obviously, the two languages overlap in functionality, and the one you know is going to be easier for the job (for you).

If you know neither, Awk is easier to learn, but that's of course because it does less. That may be good or bad, depending on what you are trying to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I agree with the sentiment of the article, it misses a larger argument. Perl is reasonably good at "making common things easy and hard things possible". Meaning if the needs might vary, it's not a stretch to evolve the code to match the requirements.

And despite having a strong affinity for Perl, I don't think it's productive to just bannish Awk to the trash: part of being well-rounded is knowing many tools—which can overlap to some degree—and appreciating the sweet spot of each one. For some one-liners, Awk is just as (if not more) elegant as Perl.

<comment><USER11> Could you give some examples of one-liners you feel might be more elegant in Awk than in Perl? It might be fun to get a thread going where people try to give clean Perl versions.

<comment><USER12> Basically anything that uses $1, $2,... because you save a split().

      awk '$4 ~ /T/ { print $1 }'
      perl -nE '@x = split /\s+/; say $x[0] if $x[3] =~ /T/;'

... _stares at this and wonders_ ... _reads `man perlrun`_ ... Oooh, there's a switch to auto-split-on-whitespace in Perl.

      perl -anE 'say $F[0] if $F[3] =~ /T/;'

Sooo this doesn't quite answer your question anymore, but I'm going to leave this here since it's a nice instance of TIL.

<comment><USER13> The best part about using the @F array, is you get more than 10 things you can split and dereference. $0-9 only in awk.

That and maybe because i'm an old perl die hard, its just easier to pipe to perl than remember how awk does its shenanigans.

<comment><USER14> Awk is not limited to $0 to $9; where did you get that??? Maybe you're confusing this with register substitutions in regex: \1 through \9.

The nice thing about the @F array is that @F[0] doesn't represent the whole record.

There is a class of Awk bugs whereby arithmetic is being done on the parameters using $N (where N is some calculated variable containing an integer). Everything is fine when N >= 1, but if there is a bug where N is accidentally zero, then $N refers to the whole record instead of throwing an out-of-bounds error.

And things are accidentally zero quite easily in awk, e.g.

       awk '{print $X}'  # X is undefined so serves as zero; this prints all lines

<comment><USER13> Solaris awk. :)

<comment><USER14> I see on my Solaris 10 VM that indeed the "broken old awk" doesn't work past $9.

However, on the same OS, "nawk" does.

<comment><USER13> Yep, there is also /usr/xpg4/bin/awk vs /usr/ucb/bin/awk etc...

I've long since had to deal with Solaris but for about 10 years of Solaris I always treat awk with a lowest common denominator approach. Which means I tend to avoid it even to this day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think awk is great, i enjoy working with awk. The GNU version is indespensible because of multidimensional array support of course. Perhaps I enjoy the way it feels like driving an antique car, it really harkens back to a bygone age. Yet its fast.

I dont want to invest the time in Perl, when there are better general purpose languages out there. Perl certainly has a different look, I can understand why some would love it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a strong affinity for Awk. I also have a mild dislike of Perl. Not sure if this is normal or odd.

<comment><USER17> I find Perl extremely useful for making prototypes really quickly, and never learned how to use Awk because I only started with Perl in the first place a year or two ago. I'm sure it's just a matter of preference.

<comment><USER16> Preference and experience.

My time with Perl was wrestling with code that people wrote to show how good they were at Perl, and where maintainability was a secondary concern. This is a bit harder to do in Awk (but not impossible). I moved from Perl to Python in the 1.5 days in part because of this.

I believe this occurs with Java now too. Neither Perl nor Java are bad languages, they are both powerful and performant. However there are some architecture astronauts who seem to enjoy making life harder for the rest of us.

<comment><USER17> +1 for "architecture astronauts", you made my day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To me that question never really arose. I learned Perl before I knew the shell well enough to make use of awk or sed. By the time my shell scripts hit the complexity ceiling, I happily switched to Perl and haven't regretted it.

The shell scripts I write are usually just canned commands, maybe some tweaking with environment variables. Anything more complex I usually handle using Perl.

Shell scripts supposedly are more portable because the Bourne shell is always there, but that only is true with different Unix flavours. Once you run into a Windows box, (or more exotic systems like OS/400 (whatever IBM calls it these days), VMS, z/OS, BS2000), shell scripts won't help you. Perl will. ;-)

Last but not least: CPAN. There are perl modules available for nearly anything you could ask for. (Except talking to SharePoint, which I sadly have to do on a fairly regular basis. OTOH, having known its horrors, I can understand why the Perl community wants to stay away from that POS.)

</comment><comment><USER19> There is no reason to deal with multiple flavors of Awk when you have Perl, especially when you are working with different operating systems. That and Perl's regex which is the defacto across multiple languages, made me completed do away with Awk.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would have been nice with a comparison of typical command line scenarios and perhaps even speed comparison.

<comment><USER21> I would also be interested in this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Awk fits on a manpage and in my head. Perl doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER23> FWIW, Ruby has a lot of the same command line arguments that Perl does.

<comment><USER24> Ruby does not have $_ which you happen not to see in perl one liners because of its implicit nature, and that makes those one liners very clear and terse.

<comment><USER23> Ruby has $_

         seq 1 20 | ruby -pe 'puts "num is #{$_}"'

Perl is probably a bit more concise, but you can do a lot of stuff with Ruby, which is convenient if you use it for other things too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author of this article makes himself appear bat-shit crazy for his claims about Perl syntax being better.

In Awk, you can define a function like this:

      function add(a, m, n,
                   sum)
      {
        for (sum = 0; m < n; m++)
          sum += a[m]
        return sum
      }

_Named parameters_ (wow, there is a concept); and few dermatological problems: no damn sigils, or required statement-terminating semicolons. The array reference is a[m], the scalar is m and so on.

Using an extra parameter (which is not specified in the call) for the local variable sum is a massive design fail, but no worse than any of the Perl design fails.

Perl repeats most of the design flaws in Awk, with compounded interest.

</comment><comment><USER25> When I need to do something like this I usually use _sed_. It's similar enough to _vim_ that I don't have to remember too much. I've never liked _perl_ at all and _awk_ doesn't offer that much more than _sed_. Maybe that'd be different if this sort of wrangling was a steady diet but it isn't. If I was gonna use _awk_ I'd just skip straight on through to _python_.

<comment><USER14> > _awk doesn 't offer that much more than sed_

Not much; just, oh, stuff like floating-point math and trig functions; integer math, associative arrays, access to environment variables, named functions with arguments and full recursion; control and looping structures like if, for and while, file I/O and redirection, string literals with C escapes, ...

      $ awk '$0=sin($1) + cos($2)'
      0 1
      0.540302
      1 0
      1.84147

How about sed?

Just kidding ...

<comment><USER25> Holy double angle formula, Batman. Awk has command line trig functions? Riddle me this. Is the Google search bar just an Awk script and they won't tell you? That's just the sneaky kind of trick L+S would try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> TXR Lisp Awk macro:

[http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-012F3A2C](http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-012F3A2C)

POSIX standard's Awk examples, translated:

[http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-03D16283](http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-03D16283)

</comment><comment><USER26> I love awk, it's my go-to. Somehow learning perl sufficiently (yet another programming language) is more mental work I'd rather not undertake, what with its idiosyncracies and often implicit nature.

I find awk easy to understand when I read a script after not seeing it for a long time (though I have to google each time I'm writing string manipulation and use arrays) .

</comment><comment><USER27> I had to find the longest line in a really big file and tried both awk and Perl. I was surprised at how much faster Perl was:

[http://alquerubim.blogspot.com.br/2016/09/a-linha-mais- compr...](http://alquerubim.blogspot.com.br/2016/09/a-linha-mais-comprida-de- um-arquivo-ii.html)

Still, awk was simpler.

<comment><USER14> Your benchmark doesn't specify which implementation of Awk you're testing, and which version of it.

Your code is verbose: length($0) shortens to just length:

      awk 'length > max { max = length } END { print max }'

The Perl seems to have an off-by-one error.

<comment><USER27> It was an Oracle Linux 6 (64 bits) with GNU Awk 3.1.7 and Perl 5.10.1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> At work I grapple with an HPC job scheduler written as a set of concurrent Perl scripts coordinating through transactions in a Postgres database. What a disaster.

Still, it is good fortune that the scheduler was not written in awk.

</comment><comment><USER29> Given that the comments are from 2009, I expect the title is slightly misdated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah looks like it, updated it

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't visit this site on mobile without being redirected to a spam page that looks suspiciously like Facebook.

<comment><USER12> I wondered at first because the text had some gaps in it, and thought that images were not loaded because of my strict uMatrix policy. After enabling the usual suspects (ajax.googleapis.com) didn't work, I inspected the gap and saw that it was just an ad container. And in fact, the same ad service is advertised below the article text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Anyone else learn of Perl in the footnotes of the "sed & awk" book? :)

<comment><USER7> IIRC I first learned of Perl in the Unix Power Tools book from O'Reilly. That book was really good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> why chose, TIMTOWTDI

<comment><USER14> Because at some point you actually have to DI, and then you have to choose a W.</comment></comment>


Geo-enabled text message service - <AUTHOR> http://⌖.ws <comment><USER2> Edit2: Wow, doesn't a one-letter .ws domain cost ~$50,000?

For the curious: It's this Unicode character <http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2316/index.htm> known as "Position Indicator" and it looks like a reticle. Kind of makes sense for a position-based service, but a bit hard to type :)

edit: Previous discussion about the actual icon for the app: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4285919>

<comment><USER3> OP used Punycode (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode>) to encode the character, which in ASCII is "xn--8hh.ws"

<comment><USER2> I don't think so, the link is written as <http://⌖.ws> And that wouldn't change the fact that ⌖.ws is a single-letter domain name.

<comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name>

They're very common and cheap; it's a single character domain name, not a single letter or number.

<comment><USER2> Oh interesting: _In the Domain Name System, these domains use an ASCII representation consisting of the prefix xn-- followed by the Punycode translation of the Unicode representation of the language-specific alphabet or script glyphs. For example, the Cyrillic name of Russia's IDN ccTLD is рф. In Punycode representation, this is plai, and its DNS name is xn--plai._ I had assumed that domain registrars would be more careful of people buying really short domains that way, since the difference in price is huge. Well I'm off to buy xn--g5g.org (ⅹ.org) :)

<comment><USER5> One pretty cool use of this is the URL shortening service TinyArrows.

<http://tinyarro.ws>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool name for a location app, even if only French speakers can get it.

</comment><comment><USER7> What's with the domain? Why not link directly to <http://tehula.com/> ?

</comment><comment><USER8> Pretty cool, something simple like this built-in to phones would be great. If your friend knows much about the iphone he can go to the maps app and "share location" with you via text or e-mail. Is there something similar in Android?

</comment><comment><USER9> Works really smoothly, seems very thoughtfully put together.

Only criticism would that the "accept request to share location" action button is labelled "share", which I initially glossed over, assuming that it meant "share to social network".

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm still waiting for mobile messaging to get sorted out. We've got iMessage, Facebook Messenger, gTalk, WhatsApp, GroupMe... and who knows how many others.

Of course, there isn't a single service that all of my friends use, apart from traditional SMS. Facebook Messenger comes closest, but I message people I am not Facebook friends with, so that's out.

I dream of a service that's like WhatsApp- platform agnostic, available to all- but also totally open with all the API access you'd need. Of course, I would imagine that is extremely difficult to get popular. Oh, and monetise.

<comment><USER11> And thank god none of them are interoperable. Oh wait, no, that sucks, massively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I could see myself using this a lot more than Apple's "Find My Friends" app. (since none of my friends have that app). Really like the simple UI, does one thing and does it well.

</comment><comment><USER13> So if someone stole your phone and you didn't have tracking, you could try emailing them with this as a replyto?

</comment><comment><USER14> Surprised at this, you can already share your location fairly easily via a text message on the iphone.

Go to maps, press the arrow for current location, click the right arrow and you'll see the 'Share' button. One of the options is 'message'. It sends a google maps link.

</comment><comment><USER15> a more simple version of glympse...i like</comment>


Simon Ritter talks Project Lambda in Java 8  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Std4TEmBdTM

<comment><USER2> Interesting decision to go for dynamic invoke. Does anyone know if the implementation is similar to that of LINQ in terms of using an AST? Would type erasure allow for composing lambda expressions?</comment>


Black Horizontal Line on HN - <AUTHOR> Just noticed the black horizontal line right on top of Hacker News page. Not sure what this signifies to the community?<p>Update: Screen capture of HN: http://imgur.com/lwnjCuD <comment><USER2> HN does this when a prominent tech person dies. The story will be on the front page. In this case, it was Chuck Thacker.

<comment><USER3> It's a sign of mourning for a prominent tech personality's death (in this case Chuck Thacker, a prominent computer scientist that worked at Xerox Park and Microsoft).

<comment><USER4> May be it should include a message so that more people empathize with the purpose.</comment></comment></comment>


Should we be worried about solar flares in 2012 with a breached magnetosphere? - <AUTHOR> http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread531332/pg1

<comment><USER2> Obligatory XKCD

<http://xkcd.com/509/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Okay here is a more reasoned version:

<http://www.2012hoax.org/solar-flares>

but still, destruction of our satellites on a massive scale? What is going to follow for the next few years? What are we going to do about it? Launch new ones? But won't there be more solar flares...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We here talk about the internet, mobile, geo and all this cool stuff... but after reading more about the NASA's recent discovery that the magnetosphere has been breached (by an unusual event, too -- the magnetic fields were ALIGNED when the breach occurred, which flies in the face of what scientists know right now, it seems) -- I am pretty worried that everything we take for granted right now is at risk. Including electrical power lines, and worldwide communications systems.

Anyway, the link I posted may seem dubious, but it in fact seems to describe the situation pretty accurately. By itself, a solar flare is not a big deal:

[http://www.universetoday.com/14645/2012-no-killer-solar- flar...](http://www.universetoday.com/14645/2012-no-killer-solar-flare/)

but this 2008 article didn't realize that our magnetosphere has a giant hole in it 10x bigger than we previously thought. It is 4x bigger than the earth itself. And it's directly on the day side. The earth's magnetosphere has been breached AND the sun is entering its solar maximum period.

Can any people more knowledgeable than me weigh in and tell us what is possible and what is likely to happen? Is there anything we can do to prepare ourselves?

<comment><USER3> Short answer: no.

Long answer: I'm no heliophysicist, but I haven't heard any of this before. In any case, I'm prepared to wait for doomsday scenarios to appear somewhere other than abovetopsecret.com before I start worrying about them.

<comment><USER4> Plus, the "Full story" link goes to RealUFOs.net.</comment></comment></comment>


Prismatic launches a full redesign and shares their awesome design process - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getprismatic.com/blog/2012/11/29/new-prismatic-web

<comment><USER2> I think I am not the first ine to suggest this, but if you have a company blog, put a small section at the top, where you a) state what your company is about and b) link to your main page. If my first contact with a company is through a blog, I always will want to check first what the company is about, to decide if I want to spend time reading. If you put barriers in my way during that step, I might not even bother at all.

<comment><USER3> Great point. It's always easy to assume context where there is none! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> DAE hate their font choice? I guess the previous font stack of sans- serif/verdana fonts looked better.

<comment><USER3> What in particular do you dislike?

<comment><USER5> I'm not OP, but in general you don't want to use serif fonts on (72dpi) LCDs. Maybe you all have retina display screens at work, on but regular low resolution screens serif fonts slow down reading speed.

See this site for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks great! The underlying service is fantastic so it's good to see the web UI updated. I'd be curious to see some of the other design options they looked at.

I have a few questions:

1\. Why is the nav on the right? When I'm scrolling through articles I keep wishing the main content was more centered.

2\. Did you guys look at doing a serif font for the header and a sans serif font for the summary? I feel like it would separate the two more.

<comment><USER3> 1\. it may go away entirely soon or change dramatically. We largely agree with your sentiment. :)

2\. Yes, the meta serif turns out to be as readable as it gets for body copy, it's just spectacular! We may later have a toggle so you can select this theme or an all sans serif option...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great! Big fan of Prismatic :) One thing I don't understand is that sometimes there's a dollar sign next to an article (eg one from Forbes.com). What does that mean?

<comment><USER3> It means there is something you can buy. Click the link and you go to amazon and if you buy whatever the item is, we get an affiliate. this is early testing of the revenue model we're working on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So much better now. My only complain is that when you shrink your browser window you lose the interests section, which I visit all the time for specific news.

<comment><USER3> We want to understand exactly what you mean. Can you please send a screenshot to email@example.com ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd quite like to sign-up to this actually, I'm all for specific websites using my tastes to deliver to me what they think I'd like. Saying that, I'd like to sign up using my Google account, why must you be able to 'manage [my] contacts'. Is there a way to opt-out of that, or do I just have to sign up for a stealth account? A little off-topic, I do apologise.

<comment><USER3> These perms are just to be able to use your address book so that we can autocomplete emails when you email share stories.

<comment><USER9> Okay, I'll trust you on this one! It's looking promising, Although I was a little stumped when it stuck me on a "We're learning your interests" page with no indication of...anything, really.

Also, maybe going to the 'landing' page when already logged in should re- direct me to my home page? It gave me the impression I hadn't logged in and got a little faffy.

Besides that,as I said, looking promising and I look forward to seeing what comes up over the next few days/weeks. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> OT, Prismatic is impressive in the choice of articles it displays. So much so that i have noticed it's getting a bit creepy. On some days when i happen to open a lot of pages on a particular topic, Prismatic will start showing me related stories. So is it tracking histories? Do all such services track online usage?

<comment><USER3> Prismatic learns from everything you do. We have implicit signals (when you recommend, share, shave, remove, or click), and explicit signals, when you follow topics, publishers, or people. We know more about your interests than anyone, and you can expect that to be more true over time. Fortunately, we are only partially evil, so we mostly use this information to make your life more interesting, and only occasionally, we will use it to troll your newsfeed! :-P

<comment><USER10> I'm OK with Prismatic using information from twitter and any activity on getprismatic, and but i would not share the rest of my browser usage. For instance there was this day when i was reading up on XML on the browser and opened a bunch of pages on it. Then i fire up getprismatic and lo and behold! i find XML tagged suggestion. That was spooky;)

<comment><USER3> we don't look at browser history, but we may release a browser plugin for chrome that lets you share, recommend, and save stories from the web to prismatic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's a fine article, but the blog could use a bit of UX tweaking too. I have no idea what prismatic is, and the lack of a link to their homepage from their own blog seems like an obvious flaw, which i've seen really often in most website/startups blogs.

<comment><USER3> Another commenter pointed this out, it's a fair criticism and we'll make an update to the blog accordingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks good. Thanks for bringing it up to date!

<comment><USER3> for realz, the web needed so much love some of internally were not using it much due to utter shame!

<comment><USER5> Try again with proper grammar?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The white space at the right could be used in better places. Now it only contains two icons.

</comment><comment><USER13> from the outside it looks great. But still can't run in on Chrome/XP or on iOS4.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks great!

<comment><USER3> thanks!</comment></comment>


A YouTube Video Without View Count - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpqBNn_BfKE <comment><USER2> You can hide view counts on Youtube.</comment>


Writing things down (how to know what to do next) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.manythingsblue.com/2019-01/writing-things-down/ <comment><USER2> I feel the same debilitating anxiety when it comes to planning out career. It's become so bad that I have started ignoring it and instead checking emails and Hacker News for solace. Questions that keep me up:

1\. What to learn next?

2\. Is this the right career?

3\. Shouldn't I be a CTO by now? What a failure!

4\. Dude, you forgot about your family!! (Gasping for air)

so on and so forth...

<comment><USER3> Life is not a race. Either nobody is judging you for your choices or whoever is judging you doesn't have the right to do so.

If you ask yourself what you want to do instead of asking yourself what you want to achieve, the conflicts that demand solace should be gone.

That said, it's still a nice game to try to achieve the most. But that's stressful and you should be in a position of choosing that stress, not submitting to it.

<comment><USER4> This might also be a good time to pitch the 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius again (a time-honoured classic that pops up very often in HN discussions). I cannot stress how much insight is contained in this book---it may help you achieve a healthy detachment from these things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've learned a similar lesson, and incorporate a high-quality mechanical pencil and quad-ruled notepad in my personal workflow / productivity system. Thanks for sharing your insight, and good luck w/ ProjectPoll!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I appreciate the comment, and the good wishes :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What you describe sounds very similar to my take on the Rubber Ducky method, except with writing things down instead of talking out loud. I think what works is the act of putting your thoughts out into a form you can then turn out and think of as external, then respond to. This enables you to look at it from an "outside perspective" even if it's literally your own perspective. It's hard to challenge your own ideas if you don't put yourself into that seat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, agree there's a perspective shift there.

I also find that typing doesn't work as well as hand-writing for me. I think my brain is in a different mode (publish), so it's judging/editing things as I type -- vs handwriting, where maybe the mechanics are so unconscious the brain can mull the thought over instead of trying to edit it. Maybe talking out loud has the same benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You captured the dilemma of "build the best product and launch it and feel that you've done it when you have not done anything towards finding the users Versus. go without a clean product and get into the act of finding users" very nicely. Again, this is something like moving towards the real goal versus acknowledging the real goal but still continuing to stay where you are.

</comment><comment><USER8> ProjectPoll.io is an outstanding idea.

I think your homepage copy buries the lede though.

For me, this was the a-ha moment: "ProjectPoll sends anonymous weekly surveys, that give you unprecedented insight into your teams and projects. We help you find and tackle the problems you didn't even know existed"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much! I'll definitely move this up. I've spent a lot of time rewriting/moving/mangling copy in the past few weeks -- reasonably sure I've made it worse. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Should link ProjectPoll in your post every-time you mention it, had to manually search :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Very valid, thanks ;). I just added links, should be updated momentarily.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What CRM/Single Customer View system do you use? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a CRM system in which we can add product-level data to a customer. (Most of the ones we have seen are only at 'deal' level).
Ideally the CRM would:- - Have an REST API - Advanced ways to query our customer data - Have Automation tasks
So far, SalesForce is the only SaaS which provides the above. Any recommendations? <comment><USER2> We are launching a new CRM product (technically already available in a limited release), that really came about because we have a nice Marketing Automation system but realized that we really had to offer a simple CRM to help on-board small businesses. We have custom fields that are easy to add which can be attached to almost any entity, but I am interested in understanding your product-level use case more. We have talked about adding product type data for ecommerce clients so tracking could be easier, versus having purchase history in attached pdf invoices or in the notes. So I am game to learn.

We also offer an API that is in beta right now, but it is a REST API that allows you to add, export, query and update your own records.

I didn't see your email in your profile but mine is available in my profile, feel free to reach out and we can talk if you would like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Emailed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know Pipedrive allow you customize your product (and people, deal, organization) fields.

I'm a Pipedrive user.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out Customer.io and Trak.io.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions both look very similar to MailChimp.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Review my Website, Being Served from My Laptop Right Now - dev.trailbehind.com - <AUTHOR> http://dev.trailbehind.com

<comment><USER2> This is awesome. Is that usgs data? Best representation of way points I've seen yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the site includes a list of millions of USGS waypoints, along with other data we have collected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks like your site might be useful for planning hikes and such except that I can't figure out how to get it to work. I think it's probably about 50% that I don't know how it works and 50% that the UI needs some polish, but besides that trailbehind looks like a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> It'd be nice to hint about what you're offering before having to enter a zip.

<comment><AUTHOR> When does it ask for a zip code?

<comment><USER5> In the search box when you first load the home page.

<comment><AUTHOR> The button says "Find Trips."

How might it be made more clear?

<comment><USER6> By having a landing page that isn't just a giant map. You need to explain what your site does. As it is, I suspect most of your visitors will arrive and depart almost immediately.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have a bounce rate of about 40%, which is something we're trying to manage. I think part of that is not knowing what to do on the site, and part of it is because the site is really slow (until tomorrow when we launch the new version).

We're thinking about switching from a giant map home page to having the "Geo News" (in the main menu) as our home page, once the news page is polished.

<comment><USER7> Why not just use geo-location to pull up a map based on where the user is right now?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll do that eventually... it's just another feature filed in our bug tracker. It's not clear how valuable that is though, particularly on a US level.

The first goal for personal geo-location will be to show foreign visitors a world map.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It'll be nice that you deploy it somewhere with better bandwidth at this time it's hard to try it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, right now it's running off of Django's dev server, forwarding a port on my laptop through an SSH tunnel to my production server. So it's a little slow :)

I'm surprised it hasn't crashed under all of this traffic actually, since Django's dev server isn't threadsafe.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is roughly what we are going to launch tomorrow. The current site is at: www.trailbehind.com

</comment><comment><USER9> How about an Australian version. _plese_ ==> looks great!

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll be uploading some aussie data this month, if not this week.</comment></comment>