Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.100-living-in-denial-why-sensible-people-reject-the-truth.html?full=true&print=true

<comment><USER2> There is one other commonality amongst "deniers" that NewScientist missed, and it's one that's especially prevalent on sites like HackerNews and Reddit. Let's call it "transference of expertise".

That is, you get a group of self-described experts together, and then ask them to critically analyze some aspect of a field in which they have no expertise at all, and they'll attempt to apply their expertise in the unrelated field.

For example, "I am a programmer, so I understand systems, and everything is a system..." Well, yes, but only in the most superfluous way: that a "system" is a network of causes and effects. Otherwise, programming has very little to do with, say, quantum mechanics, or with global ecology.

This even happens between sub-fields of expertise; I happen to personally know more physicists than the average person, and they have the same tendency to try to apply their expertise in one particular sub-field of physics to some other field in which they have no specific knowledge.

For yet another example, there's Zed Shaw's "Programmers need to learn statistics or I will fucking kill them" article from sometime back. There you have a field that is only slightly mathematical in nature, and because of that, many of the people with enough expertise in it believe that they know "enough" math. Except, they don't.

It seems to be terribly hard for someone who is an expert at anything to admit that they aren't an expert at everything.

<comment><USER3> Yet another example is the Salem Conjecture which notes that a large fraction of creationists with advanced degrees are engineers. Obviously, if you understand differential equations and studied heat transfer, you're perfectly well equipped to assess genomics and microphysiology!

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis>

<comment><USER4> The engineers in question are probably Chemical Engineers. If my college experience was any indication, Chem Engineers are some of the most right-wing people you'll ever meet. I guess it's because a lot of them go into the petroleum industry, and since they don't want to bite the hands that feed them, they end up swallowing the entire conservative ideology (including skepticism towards evolution).

<comment><USER5> I've worked with loads of highly religious Christians, Jews and Muslims in web startups, both in the Bay Area and NYC.

Chem Engineers are right-wing, though. Just wanted to point out that it's not just them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the flip side, painting critics with the "denialists" label is an easy way to deflect valid criticism.

In the H1N1 case, there are a lot of critics claiming:

* Press about H1N1 caused a shortage of seasonal flu vaccines. [0]

* H1N1 vaccine supplies were limited during the period leading up to flu season. [1]

* H1N1 vaccine production was not ramped up quickly enough. [1]

* H1N1 vaccine was oversupplied after the 2009/10 flu season, leaving public health agencies with massive surpluses. [2]

So, given that public health agencies massively overstocked their supplies after they could do any good, it's easy to see why politicians might be angry. With oversupply in Germany alone at €53.3 million worth of vaccine [2], a valid concern might be that if there was in fact corporate influence over the WHO decision to declare H1N1 a pandemic, then that would call their credibility into question [3]. Another concern might be that given the supply issues, the world is not able to effectively respond in time to a flu pandemic.

Rather than addressing those issues, it's a lot easier to paint critics as denialists.

Or, it could just be that they're wackos.

Whatever.

[0] <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/health/05flu.html>

[1] [http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Health/h1n1-vaccine-deliveries- incr...](http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Health/h1n1-vaccine-deliveries-increase- manufacturers/story?id=9057889)

[2] <http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100507-27035.html>

[3] <http://www.ihsglobalinsight.com/SDA/SDADetail18082.htm>

<comment><USER7> Agreed.

From the first paragraph of the article: "Never mind that the flu fulfilled every scientific condition for a pandemic, that thousands died, or that declaring a pandemic didn't provide huge scope for profiteering. A group of obscure European politicians concocted this conspiracy theory, and it is now doing the rounds even in educated circles."

"that the flu fulfilled every scientific condition for a pandemic"

>> WHO officials have always stressed that global spread, not severity of disease, defines a pandemic. [My comment: so we're not worried about risk or danger, just spread. Not to mention that this defenition was recently changed.]

"that thousands died"

>> Tens thousands of people die from the common flu (amongst other things) every year.

"that declaring a pandemic didn't provide huge scope for profiteering"

>> Really??? Canada _alone_ (population ~ 30 million) spent several billion (I don't have the exact number) on vaccine specifically for H1N1...do the math globally.

I wonder if, according to the article's author, profiteering is actually _possible_ , under any circumstances? How many billions have to be spent before it is considered profiteering?

"Thousands died..."

>> WOW!!!!....THOUSANDS.....killed, by flu!!! Unprecedented! (if you ignore every single year for the last how many thousand years????)

I mean, how disingenuous can you get?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I only skimmed this article, NS is not one of my favorite publications, and publishing an article about "denialism" on a site ostensibly devoted to science journalism does not raise its stature with me. I did find this little gem about halfway into the article "... denial finds its most fertile ground in areas where the science must be taken on trust".

I have enough education to follow most scientific arguments at some level. I don't have enough higher math to follow string theory, for instance, but I can understand pandemics, one of the prime examples in the article. When science relies on trust, is it still science? I'm also bothered that this article seems to lump anyone on the "wrong" side of a scientific debate as a "denialist".

<comment><USER9> _Science_ doesn't rely on trust. But for those that consume the result of science, it sometimes does rely on trust of the scientific method and the scientists themselves.

The example given in the article is a good one: we can observe antibiotics in action, so we don't need to trust anyone that they work. We can observe people get better on them. But with vaccines, the point is to not get sick in the first place. Most individuals will never have the opportunity to observe that they work since they are preventative. Again, the science itself does not rely on trust. It's the non-scientists who must trust something they will likely never observe themselves.

<comment> a-priori To misquote Churchill: "Science is the worst form of learning about the world except for all those others that have been tried."

Science isn't perfect. Far from it. But at it's best it's a very effective way of learning about the world we live in. At its worst, it's still better than any alternatives we've found so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Replace the word "denialist" with "skeptic" and you have a semantically identical but implicitly reversed rant. _Why are people so skeptical? Because they quite sensibly question dictates from institutions/corporations/government bodies/etc which demonstrably do not always have the public's interests at heart_. Etc, etc. Any time you hear somebody loading up and firing slur after slur after slur after slur, it's best to look for a different rant.

Do vaccines cause autism? Apparently not. But, you know, it is possible and as long as we're injecting millions of people with pathogens, we are probably wise to consider possible negative effects. It's not "denialist".

<comment><USER11> Regardless of the article itself, what do you call it when people persist in believing in the alleged link between MMR vaccine and autism, after the link has been thoroughly debunked? To paraphrase one of my favorite writers, those people have their feet wet and can see the pyramids really well, 'cause they're standing knee-deep in De Nile.

<comment><USER7> "after the link has been thoroughly debunked?"

If a relationship between a vaccination and a negative reaction cannot be definitively __confirmed __, then it does not show up in the statistics...in case you actually are interested in the truth.

There is a website somewhere that tracks all of this, but my question is, why wouldn't the official people already involved track fucking everything? It costs exactly zero over and above what they are doing now, so why exclude it?

This is where the conspiracy theories come from. You have the means and budget to track everything, but you don't. My question is: why? Combine that with some weird stories I hear, and the fact that it is _free_ for you to counter them with data, but you don't, and there you go, a conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER11> _why wouldn't the official people already involved track fucking everything? It costs exactly zero over and above what they are doing now, so why exclude it?_

I'm not really sure who are those "official people already involved", but what I would _really_ like to know is how you're so sure that "it costs exactly zero and above what they are doing now" to track "fucking everything"?

First, let's go with the simple thing: _how_ this tracking is supposed to be done. I'm just extrapolating here, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I've had no doctor follow my kid around after vaccination 24/7 to monitor whether he's suddenly developed a symptom, so I suppose it's not by direct observation. Therefore, it must depend on some doctor connecting the dots ("oh, so you vaccinated your kid 3 months ago and now he has X?") and reporting it to some tracking body.

Which leads me to the next issue. To put it like you did: how the fuck do you track "fucking everything"? I can understand that the doctors would be informed about a suspected link between A and B and would therefore report any cases of A and B happening "together", where "together" is defined as a parameter of this suspected link. But for that, you need to at least suspect that there's a link between A and B.

Maybe I'm too naive, but to me it stands to reason that tracking "fucking everything" does not cost "zero", because otherwise someone would have been doing it already. Whenever someone claims that it would be easy to do something someone's not doing already, I remember Yegge's post "Have you ever legalized marijuana?": [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever- legali...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized- marijuana.html)

 _Combine that with some weird stories I hear, and the fact that it is free for you to counter them with data, but you don't, and there you go, a conspiracy theory._

Okay. Here's how that reads: "I hear _stories_ from people and nobody seems to counter that with _data_ , so I choose to believe in a conspiracy. Especially because I believe it would be 'free' to come up with data."

 _...in case you actually are interested in the truth._

In case _you_ are, here's a dose of it: <http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html>

<comment><USER7> This: ("oh, so you vaccinated your kid 3 months ago and now he has X?") and reporting it to some tracking body.

Why is this not done? Doesn't that seem a bit odd?

And yes, I was exaggerating, it wouldn't be free. But it could be done for very little cost.

<comment><USER11> Okay, I see the message is not getting through. What makes you claim it could be done for very little cost? I mean, I don't work in the medical field, so I don't have any insider information on the existing infrastructure. If you have some -- or any other argument to support your claim, for that matter -- please share.

For example, what tracking body would the doctors report to? Is it CDC? If so, will existing staff take on their new duties, meaning that they will now have less time for other duties? Or will they have to hire new staff for that? If not CDC, which organization? Who pays their wages? How to disseminate information (to all doctors) on what to report to the tracking body? Do doctors now have a legal duty to inform themselves? Or is it someone else's duty to inform the doctors? Can I sue for malpractice if my doctor doesn't report? Or is it voluntary for doctors to report? What channels do they have for reporting: phone, Internet, some other? Who will pay for establishing those channels? I could go on, but there should be no need to, hopefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm on the fence on this one. I think it is very very dangerous to blindly trust Perfect Science as we've seen with ClimateGate. Scientists are of course humans, and all humans are prone to competitiveness, greed, and deception. Science is fallible. On the flip, though, I become very nervous when I think about what happens when public perception of scientific truth begins to erode..

<comment><USER13> But isn't it strange that many climate deniers are skeptical of global warming, yet have total faith in a much more implausible idea: a coordinated group of scientists are systematically suppressing dissent to further their ideology.

<comment><USER14> I don't deny the climate. It exists, I can see that out the window.

I don't deny that the climate has gotten warmer on trend for the last 150 years.

I don't deny that humans have increased the c02 concentration through the activities of forestry clearing and fossil fuel burning.

I am skeptical of the proven link between c02 and large temperature rises.

I am extremely skeptical of the climate models developed.

I am extremely skeptical of the climate alarmism promoted through science and quasi-science publications, and on through the regular media. People have made these predictions for 30 years, and not one has come close to being true.

I am extremely skeptical that the current costs associated with ineffective present-day solutions (cap & trade, carbon tax, wind power etc) are going to be less than long-term adaption if climate change proves to be a problem.

Yet, for most of the climate change cheer squad, I am filthy denier who probably believes that cigarettes don't cause cancer and who probably doesn't believe in evolution.

The blanket 'with us or against us' attitude developed by many is the worst thing : denying criticism or outright rejection of alternative views is the worst kind of denial.

Solid scientific concepts don't need to be packaged, managed and sold to the public.

<comment><USER15> _Solid scientific concepts don't need to be packaged, managed and sold to the public._

Many people understandably belive that they do need that when such concepts are opposed by well funded industry lobby groups _and_ everyone's preference for not having to change their lifestyle.

<comment><USER14> Please, enough with the well funded industry lobby groups line. I'm sure you can come up with better arguments that this talking-point line which has no basis in truth.

There is no evidence, none, that there is a well funded industry lobby group in operation. The large mass of skeptical enquiry into climate science is done by amateurs and/or people with tenure in universities. It is done on low-rent blogs and in pay-per-visit speaking tours, and all done on a comparative shoestring. I remember reading an article somewhere that breathlessly revealed that a climate skeptic had been paid $100,000 for a speaking tour to spread the no global warming line. $100,000 is a drop in the bucket, an absolutely meaningless figure. This was the best they could come up with, when it's quite simple to see, say, $1.4 million dollars being spent to explore the link between malaria and climate change when there have been plenty of scientific papers to say there's no link at all, or such a small link it is drowned out by the noise.

Compared against the billions spent by governments, NGOs, lobby groups, and yes, oil companies, to promote climate alarmism, it is an ocean compared to the bits and pieces of fuding that well known sceptics. You've only got to compare the heartland institute's climate seminar in chicago - a two bit affair, to the grandiose climate-alarmism conferences in Indonesia, Copenhagen, and later this year, Cancun to really see the difference.

I will agree with you that nobody wants to change their lifestyle, and that is a major problem for the adoption of policies. But then, in democracies, the burden of proof lies with the person proposing the changes, and they should be self evident. This is a sup-optimal solution, no doubt, by the inertia involved means that it prevents making too many mistakes. If all of the various scare campaigns of the last 100 years were all enacted straight away, we'd have seen millions of human lives, and billions of man-years of effort wasted making the planet a worse-off place.

By all means continue to argue to your passion, but I would advise coming up with a new meme over the 'industry funded lobby groups' one.

<comment><USER15> Actually, the 'industry funded lobby groups' are very much a well-documented truth:

[http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/global-warming- and-e...](http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/global-warming-and- energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries-secretly-fund)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore%27s_Penguin_Army_video_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore%27s_Penguin_Army_video_controversy)

[http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/local_govtpolit...](http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/local_govtpolitics/article/letters_sent_to_perriello_called_fakes._area_advocates_names_forged_by_d.c./43439/)

[http://www.businessgreen.com/business- green/news/2247933/gre...](http://www.businessgreen.com/business- green/news/2247933/greenpeace-uncovers-astroturf)

<comment><USER14> You've made my point - absolute drops in a bucket.

Your links contain: -6 forged letters to a congressman -a youtube spoof of Al Gore -lobby group organizing political rallies (up to 1100 people!) -$24 million from Koch's company (link to the greenpeace site, really?)

Again, against the tide of NGO and Government money spent to promote alarmism, it's like a water pistol against a firehose.

If this is the best evidence available, it's a very weak case. If the industry funded lobby groups have managed to sway the opinion of the voting public against climate charge alarmism, then they have gotten very good value for money.

<comment><USER15> Can you give numbers to substantiate that "tide of NGO and Government money spent to promote alarmism"? Note that this cannot include money spent on measures against climate change, since that's a different matter.

How much money was spend on pure PR to "promote alarmism"?

And yes, industry lobbyism is widely known to give extremely good value for money (especially when, as mentioned before, its aims line up with what the voting public wants to believe out of convenience). That's why there is so much of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Junk Science site is scary, because it's so _close_ to the truth. You really shouldn't take "may" or "possibly" as a statement of fact, and it's _true_ that statistics can be used to manipulate facts and present false ideas. And yet much of the site is about denying ("debunking") real science, not pseudoscience.

<comment><USER17> I think this underlines the fact that distinguishing "real" science from psuedoscience is a matter of professional judgment. It's not enough just to be a reasonable person who knows _modus ponens_ and some statistics. To distinguish good physics from bad physics, you need extensive training as a physicist (and likewise for any other science).

This is unfortunate, because it means that independent scrutiny of science is extremely difficult. Virtually no-one outside a particular scientific community is competent to evaluate the quality of the work within that community. An argument that seems obviously flawed to an outsider can seem compelling to someone who has the relevant background knowledge.

It would be nice if there were some kind of solution to this problem, but I doubt that there is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a non-scientist but one who takes their work seriously, I am still often in denial is because so much of the work in statistical validation seems to be trying to compress a multidimensional model to fit on a one dimensional scale that, even using accepted/established methods, always gives you a very flat understanding of the topic at hand.

Even those working most closely with the data sometimes seem somehow unable to present anything beyond the oversimplified model, but are dying to even take further than one dimensional and draw a line so they have a false dichotomy so they can paint things black and white.

This is practiced on both sides making results inherently useless despite scientific techniques and credentials of the researchers.

And so, for example, neither side in the climate change debate provides the public with anything remotely resembling a model they can develop faith in by subjecting it to reasonable scrutiny or trying to decide whether it smells right based upon ongoing critical analysis.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think its due to conditioning and the inertia of the surrounding environment.

Many [most?] smart people work 9 to 5 even though this clogs the roads at those times, so is optimally bad resource usage.

Even more so for religion or political affiliations, due to social circle.

It might be a rational response - the cost associated with overcoming these environmental factors is high, they are at a local minimum ?

</comment><comment><USER20> So, the price of progress in a free society is the suffering of misguided human beings?

If one has been born as a laboratory rat, it's a really good idea to find oneself in the _control group_. Likewise, while it might be dandy to be the misunderstood genius, the odds are that one is instead the deluded fool. Don't be the deluded fool.

Education tends to mitigate this.

</comment><comment><USER21> > There's a lot of it about, attacking evolution, global warming, tobacco > research, HIV, vaccines - and now, it seems, flu.

One thing that seems strange to me - whenever there's one of these pan-denier arguments, the arguer tends to choose topics that the Starbucks crowd would agree with, and nothing that the Starbucks crowd might deny in the face of evidence.

For instance, we know really firmly that there's a larger standard deviation in intelligence and success in men than women - men are overrepresented at the top and the bottom. That is, men reach the highest levels of business, science, and leadership more often than women, but also are victims of homicide, suicide, and are incarcerated more often than women. This is thoroughly proven, but even at Harvard the university president lost his job for saying something like this!

So how come these "look at these idiot deniers!" arguments never look at denial of the fact that men and women have a different hormonal mix, different cognitive mix, and that leads to different patterns of behavior and results. I mean, that's so bloody obvious just from a casual observation of the world, but it's now also proven, at least to a much higher standard than global warming is.

Or hell, the New Scientist article uses evolution/creationism - yet a lot of people who believe in evolution reject the fact that natural selection and sexual selection would make groups evolving in different circumstances evolve differently... that comes hand-in-hand with evolution, but people are often deniers about that, thinking that everyone evolved to be the same in all meaningful ways, and any differences in wealth, aggression, preferred behavior, even musical ability must be due to culture. Which is obviously nonsense - but this kind of denial of something obvious is never mentioned in a pan-denier argument, it's always a bunch of mostly proven things with a vocal, ignorant minority, plus global warming.

<comment><USER22> This seems like an interesting proposition to me. Are there true things that society as a whole is better off not knowing? For instance, one epidemiologist estimated that 75% of SIDS cases are actually homicides. <http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/328184.html> That strikes me as a fact that could fall into this category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A: "You are in denial"

B: "No, I'm not"

A: "Told you"</comment>


Colluding Banks Allegedly Slowed Apple Pay Switzerland - <AUTHOR> https://www.macobserver.com/news/colluding-banks-apple-pay/ <comment><USER2> Yes, typically Apple wanting a large slice of whatever they touch, like the app market. Let a gorilla like Apple into your market and soon your slice will get smaller and smaller, slice by slice. They call the the salami game, one slice is not worth much, so you let it go, then another - soon all that is left for you is the string, and that is not worth fighting about either. That said, the greed of the banks/cards with their 3-5% (?? or so) fee on products that might well have less than a 10% margin has invited competition, as all vendors hate these high fees, and if Apple charges a lot smaller fee, they may well shoulder their way in. After all, the merchants now finance all these points, and miles etc, so some good may come of it.

So I say let Apple in, but also let in google and facebook and other payment methods and cards, lets get a broadly based competitive milieu going.</comment>


Writing User Space Network Drivers - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.10664 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16014307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16014307)

Code: [https://github.com/emmericp/ixy](https://github.com/emmericp/ixy)

Cool stuff for the C that we are currently working on: [https://github.com/emmericp/ixy/pull/14](https://github.com/emmericp/ixy/pull/14)

Same driver in other languages: [https://github.com/ixy-languages/ixy- languages](https://github.com/ixy-languages/ixy-languages)

Talks:

[https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9159-demystifying_network_cards](https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9159-demystifying_network_cards) (25 min)

[https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9670-safe_and_secure_drivers_in_...](https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9670-safe_and_secure_drivers_in_high- level_languages) (50 min)

[https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/writing_network_drive...](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/writing_network_drivers_in_high_level_languages/) (20 min)

</comment><comment><USER3> ccc talks by one of the authors:

\- [https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9159-demystifying_network_cards](https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9159-demystifying_network_cards)

\- [https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9670-safe_and_secure_drivers_in_...](https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9670-safe_and_secure_drivers_in_high- level_languages)

</comment><comment><USER4> This driver might fit perfectly in a microkernel architecture especially with a virtio front-end</comment>


How to build a React.js chat app in 10 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-build-a-react-js-chat-app-in-10-minutes-c9233794642b <comment><USER2> I'm so sick of these "build x in x minutes/lines of code" - they're cancerous.

These contribute to the myth that one can become a good software developer by taking a few coding classes. You need hands on experience over some length of time, but ten minutes sure as hell isn't enough time.

Experimenting is great, but without including fundamentals, such as testing, compilation, environment management, etc, you're really just "building" one small part of an application that runs locally.

Spam.

<comment><USER3> It depends, those titles are definitely click baity but the content isn't necessarily bad.

No one said you're done after doing one ten minute tutorial.

Check out some of these recommendations [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591918)</comment></comment>


Hoping for some feedback on my new iOS app, Quizick - <AUTHOR> http://www.projectfreetvonlinenow.com/the-big-bang-theory-season-9-episode-3/ <comment><AUTHOR> It is free and no ads of course</comment>


Why does HN prevent replies sometimes? - <AUTHOR> I tried searching for this but the results were full of people stating they couldn't reply but I did not see any explanation as to why. <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I don't know what HN's algorithms are. These are my non-rigorous observations on how HN seems to behave.

If the article is flag-killed, you can't reply to any of the comments in the article. (I'm pretty sure about this one.)

If the thread is getting "heated" (too many replies too fast, too much anger), I think that the thread may throttle replies. People can still reply, but they are rate-limited. (I suspect that this one may take intervention from a mod to trigger it, but I don't know.)

If the discussion gets too deeply nested (indented too far on your screen), I think that the replies may get throttled as well. You see this with posts showing up without a "reply" link. If you refresh a few minutes later, _then_ there's a reply link.

Finally, individual users can be rate-limited. This might be due to getting flagged too many times, or might require intervention from a mod.

As I said at the beginning, take all of this with a grain of salt, because I'm just guessing based on what I see.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I was not getting a reply button. I recieved quite a downvotes in the thread so I thought maybe that plays into it. I saw the button show up after about 20 minutes.

<comment><USER2> You can cheat. If you click on the "x minutes ago" to the right of the commenter's name, you get a screen where you can reply, even if there isn't a reply link below the comment. (That won't let you reply to a flag-killed topic, though. And it may not help if _you_ are rate-limited.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I didn't know that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Example Microcoded CPU (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://minnie.tuhs.org/CompArch/Tutes/week04.html <comment><USER2> This a great example of horizontal microcode.

Vertical microcode like you see in modern microcoded cores looks a little different and was really well documented by these guys: [https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9058-everything_you_want_to_know...](https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9058-everything_you_want_to_know_about_x86_microcode_but_might_have_been_afraid_to_ask)

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately I couldn't get mythsim to load. Does anyone know of any mirrors for this?

</comment><comment><USER4> Yep. I used to design and build exactly that in the 70s and 80s. Some people thought we were crazy or gods but I had the mindset and loved it.

Today's gluing together of modules and blocks is boring in comparison.

<comment><USER5> >"Today's gluing together of modules and blocks is boring in comparison."

Can you elaborate on this? Aren't microcoded CPUs still around?

<comment><USER6> Author is probably alluding to a shift to SoC-driven design where they mix and match silicon components like programmers do third-party libraries. They stitch black-boxes together much of the time. With all the synthesis, they also spend more time driving black boxes that generate the circuits rather than hand-making parts of them.

As a non-hardware guy, I'm still wondering why microcode isn't more popular. It's flexibility is great. Especially if the company has a HLL-to-microcode compiler so the users can create custom instructions. I know they like to change microarchitecture around. They could say they refuse to support anything below the ISA with backward compatibility. Customers will have to port their microcode extensions to each new hardware. That said, you can do some neat stuff with it like people did with PALcode on Alpha. You can bend the ISA to your application or even make certain instruction combos atomic. I remember using microcode for crypto gave performance boosts, too.

<comment><USER7> On something like Skylake, your complicated instructions would execute out of MS-ROM and they would confuse the hell out of the hardware scheduler. Alternatively, you could write simple instructions which would get translated into μops and cached into μop store.

FPGAs are a better and saner approach to user programmed performance acceleration. User microprogramming has never worked. It's a maintenance+security nightmare for everyone.

<comment><USER5> What is MS-ROM? I am not familiar with this, is it specific to SKylake?

<comment><USER7> That's Intel's term from the Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Optimization Reference Manual. MS-ROM stands for microcode sequencer ROM. Complicated instructions aren't decoded from x86 into μops. They're read from the MS-ROM (what Fog calls the microcode ROM). They pollute the μop cache. Basically, they support the really complex instructions but that's it.

Clearly the ROM is a ROM and read-only and I mistakenly said that user microprograms would be written there. No, they'd be written to a WCS, Writeable Control Store.

All that said, the Intels + ARMs of the world would hate this idea. You'd be eeking out a wittle bit of performance at significant support cost. They'd just tell you to buy a faster or another CPU.

User programmable WCS was an idea from the 80s. But now, it's a bad idea. If it were a good idea then Microsoft or Google or Amazon would be all over it because they have the capital, the leverage and the need to do it. Yet they don't.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.live555.com/liveMedia/faq.html#no-source-code-repository <comment><USER3> A source code repository lets me see what bugs you have fixed, and lets me do things like "git bisect" to discover the identity of the commit where you broke something six months ago that wasn't discovered because it's not covered by tests. Helping others find your bugs helps you.

Anyone who is serious about any open source project today has a repository.

Your bogus rationalizations sound like you haven't held a software job working with other developers in twenty-five years, if ever. Hey, putting tarballs on the sunsite.unc.edu FTP site worked in 1990---why change a process that works?

Exposing a version history doesn't imply that you're supporting old baselines. What is or is not supported is declared separately from version control.

You cannot stop people from merging their local changes to your upstream by not having a repository. Linux didn't have a repository for years, yet people maintained and shared complex patches outside of the official tree anyway. (And with tools like Quilt, refined that to an art form.) People will take your snapshots, import them on into an upstream branch and do their own ad-hoc version control on your code.

<comment><USER4> I have a source code repository for the code I write on my computer to track changes, and then I upload tar.xz's of the project for each "release". I can't see much benefit in opening a source code repository; if someone finds a bug, he can e-mail me a patch or even notify me about it.

Having a repository where many people can come and open issues puts a burden on my shoulders - I'll look at the page and see that I need to fix <some number> of issues, otherwise I'll look bad, or people will stop using my code.

Releasing my code in releases (so that everyone is on one release, or not on any release at all) means that I don't have to deal with people who've cloned the code half-way through the implementation of something large and complained that it won't run, or that it's full of bugs.

Releasing releases has been a solid model for me, especially as I work alone, or with a maximum of two or three other people at once.

If I was going to use a public repository, I think I'd end up using CVS.

<comment><USER5> If it's a personal project, it's largely a matter of taste, I think. I did tarball-upload style myself before.

I just like to comment that having public repo doesn't necessarily mean you suddenly have to deal with issues piled up by others, although in recent trend repo providers do encourage that kind of open communication (On github, I can turn off issue tracker but I don't know how to turn off pull requests).

Even using private repo, you still get bug reports, feature requests and patches via email, or (worse) stumble upon a blog or tweet complaining something isn't working for somebody. The reason I moved to public repo for my projects was that I got tired of dealing with patches manually - <USER2> people sent patches against the release which was already fixed in my repo or had conflict with HEAD; sometimes I couldn't reproduce the problem so I had to send provisional patches to the user reported a bug to check out if that would address the issue. With public repo, I could just say "give me a patch against HEAD" or "I push a potential fix on a branch so check it out". It's so much easier. But again, this all depends on what kind of feedback you're getting, or how often your releases are, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see an issue with this (am I supposed to? Do we demand everyone use git or similar now?). They can give you the source however they want.

On another topic, did anyone see the license section?

\---

If you distribute a product (whether software or hardware; whether free or for pay) that uses the LIVE555 library code, then you must - when requested by either a customer, or Live Networks, Inc. - upgrade it as soon as possible to use the latest version of the LIVE555 library code (or else provide a way for your customers to perform this upgrade themselves). Similarly, you must allow any of your customers to - at their discretion - replace the LIVE555 libraries used by your product with their own version (that uses the same API). (Note that in particular, because Apple restricts which iOS apps are made available on their 'App Store', you cannot use the LIVE555 library code in an iOS app that's distributed through Apple's 'App Store'.)

\---

Does the LGPL enforce this, or is this some extra requirement?

<comment><USER7> > I don't see an issue with this (am I supposed to? Do we demand everyone use > git or similar now?).

That depends on your job. If you are a software developer, -engineer or similar, I would argue that you should. There are good arguments for version control.

\- divide & conquer for bugfinding \- reconstruction of history \- being able to revert back to an older version if/while operations require it \- it allows tracking of changes over time \- it is the best way of understanding what changed since the last version (for people actually using the library) \- finding complex faults \- branching and merging (but the author is opposed to this)

So, well, what concerns live555, IMHO it's a huge red flag for people considering to actually use the library. When it comes to "not seeing an issue with not using source control", I believe that one can state without a doubt that it is a good and proven practice.

<comment><USER8> Obviously source control has its benefits, but ironically often tarball-only developers produce very high quality software (the most prominent example is djb at cr.yp.to).

Conversely, GitHub is full of low quality software.

<comment><USER9> djb's software is pretty low-quality for very many metrics of "quality". Lots of it is not elegantly interoperable with existing UNIX systems, because he has his own idea of how UNIX systems should work. There's the entire qmail backscatter thing. There are pieces of crypto code written in a _custom_ assembler. Curve25519 has its own reimplementation from Chrome's Adam Langley, and all of NaCl its own repackaging in the form of the libsodium project, because the official distributions are difficult to use. NaCl has been promising certain features in the "next release" for years (notably Ed25519 signatures), but no release has been seen. All the downloads are over plaintext HTTP with no cryptographic signatures: I've always interpreted this as implying that if you're not qualified to audit the entire tarball you downloaded, the software isn't for you.

None of this is to claim that he's a bad _cryptographer_ , or even a bad _software engineer_. But pure code output is far from the only important metric for software. GitHub makes it easy to do _release engineering_ well, or to let other people help you with that if it's not your forte. (libsodium, for instance, is on GitHub.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Subclassing for versioning, eh? I remember talking to a friend in the early 90s who was doing that at the company he worked at.

I was reading about SCCS at the time, and wanted to convince my management to use that, but couldn't get them away from the "directory tree per release version" method.

My next job in the mid 90s used RCS, and I've never worked at a job since that didn't use some kind of version control / archive software. Hard to fathom that some organizations still avoid version/revision control. How do you "undo" to yesterday when you change your mind about something???

<comment><USER11> > How do you "undo" to yesterday when you change your mind about something???

One might argue that developer time is valuable enough to ensure that it's spent on things that won't be "undone".

<comment><USER12> That's totally unrealistic. Often it's not the dev. that changes his mind, but the client. And since they have the $$$ you will be "undoing" previous work.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. Any good development process and software architecture must be responsive to change without enduring huge problems trying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not really sure I understand the problem here? I'm willing to bet that most people ready to excoriate the developer over their lack of version control will probably never even directly use the library.

They are still offering the library as open source in an easily-downloadable form. It is a gift. You can take a gift or you can leave a gift, but you don't whine about how the gift isn't the one you wanted.

<comment><USER15> A "gift" that comes with conditions that obligate you to do work (e.g. upgrading your own code to the newest release of their library whenever they make one) is not usually considered a gift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Of course there are still people who don't understand what repositories are and how they work. That's really a pity with such a big, well known project, because then others have to do that work for them. (And this kind of project usually has many repos because people don't talk to each other)

Example: [https://github.com/hackeron/live555](https://github.com/hackeron/live555)

</comment><comment><USER17> The quality of their code looks pretty terrible too. For starters, just look at their genMakefiles script (something of a WTF itself - y u no configure?):

[https://github.com/hackeron/live555/blob/master/genMakefiles](https://github.com/hackeron/live555/blob/master/genMakefiles)

It should be more like:

        os=$1
        modules="liveMedia groupsock ..."

        for module in $modules
        do
          /bin/rm -f $module/Makefile
          cat $module/Makefile.head config.$os $module/Makefile.tail > $module/Makefile
          chmod a-w $module/Makefile
        done

<comment><USER18> I'm sure they would welcome contributors!

I wonder if the classic excuse for not open sourcing software applies here - that the developer is ashamed of their source, that they think it is messy and no one will like it, applies here?

Either way, one shouldn't really overtly negatively criticize - it probably wouldn't encourage such a developer if they do have that thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 1\. It sounds like they do not want outside contributors.

2\. They might not use one internally or using something old that does not expose to the internet well.

<comment><USER20> I actually managed to contribute to it once, via the mailing list. This doesn't really invalidate (1), but maybe they just don't want GitHub-style forks ("modifying the supplied code 'in place' is something that we discourage").

<comment><USER16> It's unavoidable with open source. Take any project with daily tarballs and mailing list diffs and you can probably even code a solution that will transform it to a git repo. Actually a git repo is not that different from a tarball webshare with a shell client for diffs etc.

<comment><USER13> You mean _in theory_ it will happen. I think the real question is, "Does it work in practice?" We'd have to look at software like these to see how many got forked versus similar software with repo's and such. My guess: I bet it does work for a good many of them because of developers being too lazy to go through the trouble. If the functionality is useful enough, then it won't work because the maintenance is easier than duplicating their work.

Still, I'm not sure of the value in doing this kind of thing. The licensing schemes where you can't use the projects name in derivatives made sense: poor knockoffs can hurt image and adoption. Yet, people not wanting _code_ to be used so easily probably shouldn't be open licensing it in the first place. These people are weird lol...

<comment><USER16> Of course for small projects it won't happen. But for big ones it happens for sure. And then it doesn't matter if that (or these) repos are by the original author or not. If you can rely on regular updates to that repo then people will use it just as if it would be the original source and will spread just as far as any other repo based FOSS project. So I think for major projects the limitation you can achieve that way is minimal.

<comment><USER13> I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> AFL "fuzz" is also delivered like that ([http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/)). It's a smart tool to do fuzzing with a genetic algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER22> You are, of course, free to set up your own public source code repository. Many have done so:

[https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=live555](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=live555)

</comment><comment><USER23> My experience is that for a software development project of just a few people, for a _code repository_ fairly obvious use of the hierarchical file system on a shared server is just fine.

<comment><USER24> No, it isn't. Especially since it's so damn easy to setup a git or mercurial server.

<comment><USER25> Whats worse is most of the labor saving benefits like rollbacks, bisection, branch/merge all work just fine if you never type git push. Even just "what have I changed so far, oh git status". The client alone has many benefits.

Time for old guy rant that in the bad old days I just had a box I could ssh into and that was enough, or should I say, that was better than subversion. Don't forget to init the remote repo before pushing into it, as I forgot seemingly every single time. There was life before gitolite, gitlab, and github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I suddenly don't want to know how the source looks like.

</comment><comment><USER27> Dude's old ass 1994 website and coding practices gave me enough of a cross- section as to who he really is. Lazy.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ugh, what people will do for job security.

</comment><comment><USER29> "As the software is open source, however, hobbyists are also free to use it, but to post to this mailing list, they are expected to demonstrate at least a minimal level of 'cluefulness' by using an email address with their own domain name - not just a generic "@gmail", "@yahoo", etc.-type email address."

Makes sense.

<comment><USER30> Apparently I am no longer a 'clueful' user then. Makes me chokle.

Nobody with a clue waste hours setting up their own email server when gmail can do it for you in a few minutes.

<comment><USER31> I pay Fastmail what's currently going for $40/year for an "Enhanced" personal account that includes using my own personal domain.

Having my own domain avoids problems like, oh, Google going mad about true names with Google+ and shutting down my Gmail account.</comment></comment></comment>


Barbara Liskov: The Power of Abstraction [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/programming-abstraction-liskov

<comment><USER2> A brief summary:

* Nowadays, we have the concept of interfaces to achieve modularity and local reasoning

* Liskov's initial contribution: partition global variables, require functions to only use variables in their partition or call functions in other partitions.

* Use data abstraction as a methodology (later on, use object orientation as the target of that methodology)

* She created CLU to communicate some of these abstractions to programmers: 1. Procedures are attached to types, not objects, 2. Parametric polymorphism: if quantification is needed, use structural subtyping, essentially, 3. For loops: use iterators with state stored on the stack (generators)

* When looking at object orientation in this context, she found that inheritance was widely used, both for interface/implementation and for type hierarchies. In both cases, semantics are important, even if two objects implement the same methods by name/types. Came up with Liskov substitution principle.

* Trends today: one of the issues with e.g. Java, C# is that they're not great for beginners who are forced to work around crufty abstractions (public static void main) without having the experience to know how to generally use those abstractions. On the other hand, Python is great for beginners but (according to Liskov) doesn't have great data abstraction for large-scale software engineering.

* Some perceived tradeoffs in a language that is good for both beginners and experts: 1. Ease of use vs expressive power, 2. Readability vs writeability (Liskov is worried about too much focus on the latter), 3. Modularity and abstraction, 4. Powerful abstraction matters, 5. State matters (see below)

* Finally, for massively parallel computers: how to do programming methodology?

That's what I thought to write down. I also thought to take a more precise transcript of her comments on Haskell:

> My final thing, which is in some sense aimed at Haskell, is that state > matters. So, mostly computer programs are about managing state. And, > although I am very sympathetic with the desire to keep most of your program > immutable, because it's much easier to reason about correctness if you > aren't doing modifications, a major part of your program is going to be > concerned with state, and it has to be done in a simple way. It can't be > complicated, it can't be hard to understand.

State is one of the most important (and sometimes annoying) things you deal with in Haskell when writing large programs. However, is it really better to sweep it under the rug and muddy semantics in the name of simplicity? One might merely just be pushing essential complexity to where it is harder to reason about.

<comment><USER3> I feel very strongly that my understanding of state has both improved and become far simpler after programming intensely in Haskell for a long while. State in mutable languages is just too big to have a meaningful way to think about it on its own. Much of my Hs code lives in the state monad today, but I am never at a loss as to what that means exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a good talk. It's cool to see a brief history of CLU as given by Liskov herself. However, there's a problem I see recurring in our field, even from respected sages like Liskov: programmers are willing to establish and vocalize an opinion on technologies they don't understand (Python and Haskell in this case). Is that pervasive in other fields as well? Why is that?

<comment><USER5> Be careful with criticizing an obviously smart person like this based on a side comment you didn't had a chance to ask her to elaborate upon. I think with Python she meant things like Python not having real private variables or methods and not having real explicit interfaces, which I guess makes it pretty correct to say it doesn't have data abstraction.

<comment><USER4> Lack of private variables I can see criticism for. Lack of explicit interfaces seems to be a side effect of being untyped. That doesn't mean it doesn't have data abstraction -- at that point you'd also have to say that Scheme doesn't have data abstraction, yet SICP has a whole chapter dedicated to that topic!

I don't mean to criticize just Liskov. It seems to be a "feature" of a great deal of obviously smart people in our field, as well as some less obviously smart people. I don't get it.

<comment><USER5> Scheme doesn't have data abstraction in the sense Liskov's CLU had it for example, you can try to roll it yourself like SICP does, but it is not the same as having it as a language feature. Also interfaces can still be useful in an untyped language and there has been discussion of their inclusion in Python, see a good discussion here (some of the problems mentioned would apply to Scheme just as well I think):

[http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0245/](http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0245/)

I am not invalidating your observation in general, to the contrary, I just don't agree Liskov is to blame of this here.

<comment><USER4> Ah, I see what you mean. Thanks for clarifying for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> She gave this talk at my university, and was an engaging speaker. I was pleasantly surprised at the turnout, especially considering that the timing was strange.</comment>


Gloss – A Bidirectional Path Tracer in C - <AUTHOR> http://geon.github.io/programming/2013/08/22/gloss-my-bidirectional-path-tracer/

<comment><USER2> > I have been interested in pure C lately, and I really need to level up my > experience.

> I wanted to use a object oriented style with constructors and polymorphism. > Since it isn't supported directly, you are free to implement it as you feel > like.

I've been there in the "pure C" land some time ago. I drank all the 'C++ is shit' koolaid that was spread some time ago all over the net. And I hacked away quite a few projects in C - with my own implementation of polymorphism, strings, etc.

But then I got really really tired of it. It's all extra work you don't have to do in C++. Yes, C++ can be a horrendous mess if you use all features. But it also offers awesome syntactic sugar for "structs with methods" style programming.

std::string and vector alone save you so much time. And RAII + shared_ptr will free up another huge chunk of time you otherwise would have spent thinking about memory and resource management issues.

I think everyone who's doing C++ work should go C-only for some time just to appreciate what the lovely monster called C++ actually did for programmer productivity.

* This is no flame against C. It has its place and I appreciate its existence.

<comment><USER3> I actually find it more interesting that you had to postscript which says an indifferent discourse on your experience on C and C++ was not a flame against C.

While I agree with your remark wholeheartedly(Yes, C++ has a lot of toolchain, but no one decreed that you _have_ to use everything in your toolbox), I think had I written this response, I would've added that defence somewhere. I guess it's telling how far the C vs C++ discussion went and how long it raged on...

<comment><USER4> C++ advocate here. It doesn't seem to be a strongly represented opinion here, so I think it's actually worth me chiming in.

All the criticisms are valid. Yes, C++ is like "making an octopus by nailing 4 extra legs onto a dog". None of us like having to remember that we need virtual destructors if we have derived classes, because otherwise deleting a class through the wrong derived pointer type would cause complicated problems. There's a bunch of crap there.

But I spent years coding C and I hate going back.

I miss smart pointers when I'm stuck with C. I miss containers that don't suck. I miss lame stuff like log4cpp and boost::asio.

If you're willing to accept a bunch of dependencies and can handle serious (sometimes grevious) conceptual overheads, you can write native code with an expressiveness approaching Python. To me, that makes it all worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice writeup!

3D rendering helped me a lot to learn new programming languages because the visual outcome is more pleasing than seeing "hello world" in your console.

For those interested, here is the source of my Java "path tracer" (with Blender exporter): [https://bitbucket.org/thuijzer/thrender001pt/](https://bitbucket.org/thuijzer/thrender001pt/)

Note that I'm not a very good programmer, don't know very much about Java and math and didn't even know how to program a camera. But Jeffrey Ventrella helped me with some basics and also his document "Intuitive Computer Graphics Camera" helped me a lot: [http://www.ventrella.com/Ideas/index.html](http://www.ventrella.com/Ideas/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're really interested in Raytracing, get hold of the Book "Physically- based Rendering" by Matt Pharr and Greg Humphreys.

It's pretty-much the bible for raytracing theory at close to production level rendering, and has pbrt - an open source raytracer - which ships with it which is a relatively capable renderer, and an excellent example of how to design a renderer in an object-orientated way.

</comment><comment><USER7> Same (and more) in real-time: [http://raytracey.blogspot.co.nz/](http://raytracey.blogspot.co.nz/)

</comment><comment><USER8> It looks like low-discrepancy sequences ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low- discrepancy_sequence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-discrepancy_sequence)) might be applicable for your quasi-Monte Carlo sampling of the scattering.

</comment><comment><USER9> You might be interested in energy conservative BRDF's.

<comment><USER10> The BRDF functions I implemented are supposed to be energy conservative. However, the most important part is the photon importance sampled bouncing, which is by definition energy conservative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks, that was fun!

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome read.</comment>


[O'Reilly Radar] Is Google Spreading Itself Too Thin? - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/09/is-google-spreading-itself-too.html <comment><USER2> _Google hasn't built another business yet to rival its initial search franchise.

How dumb is that? No one has built another business on the web to equal Google's initial search franchise._

That is very true. I think Google has a go at a lot of tricky markets. So when it doesn't crack them (eg knol) its all fingers pointed. But I would guess they expect some to fail. They are experimental.

Anyway, Search/Adwords/Adsense are still growing. They're in sight of monetising Maps & Video. I think there's a lot of potential there. I don't think apps will ever be a golden goose, but maybe they'll pay for themselves & create a decent precedent for a "freemium" business model.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is essentially a great follow up to the RRW article. Tim O'Reilly says it right</comment>


College Students' Thesis Topics Are Hilarious, Depressing - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/31/lolmythesis_tumblr_college_students_summarize_their_thesis_in_one_sentence.html

<comment><USER2> _There was this Hittite king who might or might not have had a son, but definitely moved his seat of government from one place to another, and then his brother moved it back, and all 8 people who care are like "Why'd he do that? Tevs." \- Cuneiform Studies, University of Chicago_

Dead languages are great. Philology is great. This sounds like an great thesis.

Please do your part to ensure that Cuneiform Studies is property appreciated in the job market as a signal for "totally awesome".

<comment><USER3> Time for a little lesson in German! Indeed, unlike in the natural sciences, most of the existing work on many topics of ancient history is distributed over obscure texts in half a dozen different languages, located in libraries all over the world.

This is why it is so important that todays students of ancient history contribute not only to the analysis of recend discoveries, but also to the curation of existing knowledge. The question "what do we actually know?" is very valid here.

After all, we only have one history.

Oh, and for the German lesson that I promised: The person that wrote this article is a valid example of an "Armleuchter". (It is only an ad hominem if you know what the word means, so I think we're cool.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Techendo - A Tech Show - <AUTHOR>

Hi Everyone,
I've started a tech show called Techendo. It's just some startup guys from YC/Elsewhere that will be talking about things going on in the industry. It will be shot every other week and try to be as entertaining as possible while talking about tech and startup life.
I'd love to spotlight startups/projects, have guests on the show, and shoot some skits. It's still a work in progress, so if you want to help out or just give feedback, it would be great to have any help I can get.
Also, if you have topics you want us to talk about let me know.
Thanks for your help HN.
Check out our first episode here:
Techendo Episode 1 - Secret of the Droin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI <comment><USER2> Honestly... you guys lost me in the first few minutes. It's great you guys were having a good time and laughing and stumbling around (and that's probably why you did this video - to have a good time), but it didn't translate into something particularly watchable. The editing was also kind of jarring.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, we did this to have a good time and talk about some things that we wanted to talk about. We'll get better as time goes on. Sorry about the editing, that was all my fault. I'm still learning what works and what doesn't. Happy you checked us out. Let me know if you have anymore feedback you'd like to share. Thanks. :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI&t=0m0s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI&t=0m0s)

</comment><comment><USER3> This... Is... awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. :) We'll get better. It's a lot tougher than I thought to organize/shoot/edit a show like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What camera equipment are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> Canon Vixia HF S20: [http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/hi...](http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/high_definition_camcorders/vixia_hf_s20)

Canon Vixia HF10: [http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/fl...](http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/flash_memory_camcorders/vixia_hf10)

and the macbook pro built-in camera for the terrible third shot.

The audio is recorded with a Rode NTK Microphone: <http://www.rodemic.com/mics/ntk></comment></comment>


A Phone Company Run by Drug Traffickers - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wjwbmm/inside-the-phone-company-secretly-run-by-drug-traffickers <comment><USER2> The article does not explain in any way what the link is between MPC (the phone company) and the assassination.</comment>


Talking with Mikel Evins about the Lisp-based Newton OS from Apple - <AUTHOR> http://lispm.de/lisp-based-newton-os <comment><USER2> Mikel has many stories to tell and it would be great if he would tell more of them (publicly). We talk occasionally due to our shared interest and history with Dylan ([http://opendylan.org/](http://opendylan.org/)) and he's always got valuable points of view on things like development tools, frame-based knowledge systems, interactive development, and so on.

After his time on Dylan and the Lisp-based Newton at Apple, he went on to work on SK8 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SK8](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SK8)). If you dig around online, you can find the SK8 sources which were openly published at some point. They aren't that useful now given that they're written for Macintosh Common Lisp on the original Mac OS, but they're definitely interesting to read through.

These days, Mikel is still doing Common Lisp work, but he's also worked on his own language, Bard: [https://github.com/mikelevins/bard](https://github.com/mikelevins/bard) and he's slowly been working with us in the Open Dylan community to add support back for the old s-expression syntax.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=320646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=320646)

</comment><comment><USER4> The danger of listening to superficial programmers and their rejectionism: "I believe now that I was wrong: the infix syntax did not cause Dylan to succeed, and I find it distinctly inferior in practice to the s-expression syntax that I used for several years."

It's true, there is an advantage to mainstream appearance. But analysis suggests weighing tradeoffs: what are the disadvantages? Are there ways to minimize disadvantages while keeping advantages?

<comment><USER2> This is a subject that keeps coming up over the years in the Dylan community (and why, in part, Mikel is slowly working on an s-expression reader for the current compiler).

It is impossible to know what might have happened if Dylan had kept the s-expression syntax and how that syntax might have evolved. When the switch was made, the language didn't have all of the features that it soon had in the infix syntax. The macro system is just a single example of this. (And Dylan was one of, if not, the first infix language to have a macro system like it does. See [http://people.csail.mit.edu/jrb/Projects/dexprs.pdf](http://people.csail.mit.edu/jrb/Projects/dexprs.pdf) for a discussion of it and some extensions.)

In the s-expression syntax, you defined a new method by:

        (define-method odd? ...)

In the infix syntax, you do:

        define method odd? ...
          ...
        end;

However, you can supply adjectives as well, which weren't present in the s-expression syntax:

        define sealed inline method odd? ...
          ...
        end;

Personally, I don't really care if I'm using the infix syntax or an updated form of the s-expression syntax. But to deal with the features present in the infix syntax, it would have to be a somewhat modified version of the old s-expression syntax.

Given the history of the last 20+ years since Dylan was created, there are a lot of other things that could've been done differently in the syntax as well:

* Something more terse and compact.

* Not requiring semicolons.

* Using braces or whitespace instead of 'end' statements.

* Stuck with s-expressions since Lisp is more acceptable today (ala Clojure).

* <Your bikeshed here.>

One of the Dylan designers, David Moon, went on design (but not implement) a new language with some differing takes on the syntax: [http://users.rcn.com/david-moon/PLOT3/](http://users.rcn.com/david- moon/PLOT3/) ... it is interesting, but without an implementation.

There's also the question of whether Dylan failed due to the syntax. There were a lot of factors that led to Dylan not seeing the adoption that was desired:

* Java was a big factor.

* The financial troubles at Apple.

* The collapse of Harlequin. Harlequin had an implementation of Dylan that lives on today as Open Dylan, but had a very advanced IDE on Windows and a pretty solid foundation.

* The business model of Harlequin. Harlequin sold expensive commercial development tools. Lispworks lives on with that business model, but it can't be said to be a massive success.

* The team at CMU switched to Java and away from their Gwydion Dylan implementation. (This was partly due to research dollars.)

And the failings of the Apple Dylan product itself didn't help. It was late to market, buggy, slow, and lacked PowerPC support in the initial release.

Much of the above wasn't due to or related to the syntax.

Yet despite all of that, Dylan still has a special place in my heart and that of many others. We've put out new releases, fixed a lot of bugs, improved platform portability and more in the last few years. Now we're looking towards the future and considering potentially larger changes.

<comment><USER5> > Yet despite all of that, Dylan still has a special place in my heart and > that of many others.

Like mine. I haven't written a single line of Dylan code, but followed closely its history.

If languages like Dylan had managed to become mainstream, the programming world would be much better.

As it is, we are still trying to move away from the PDP model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mikel said that they could build the OS with only a team of 5-6 people, in 50-100k lines of code (excluding the code for the Kernel). I don't know much about OS implementation, but I find it quite impressive, and it seems a real shame that those efforts and technology were not reused somewhere else.

<comment><USER7> If Rob Pike is to be believed, the bulk of the effort in writing an OS goes into providing compatibility with the myriad externally-imposed standards that people depend on to get things done and run the programs they need to do so. From what I know of the Newton, it's almost like they tried as hard as possible to be incompatible with existing standards and established modes of computing. I guess it's not surprising, then, that they were able to do a lot with not much code; they completely skipped the hardest part.

<comment><USER8> >>externally-imposed standards

That is the crux of it. I've also seen teams build a complete stack - OS to App - in short order in similar fashion in the industrial embedded computing world .. it seems to be that a tight, motivated team, really can pull of extreme wonders when it works right for the specific, internally-agreed-/co- created feature set. The scale aspect is actually arbitrary; but if you have a group of people who are willing to complete the stack, full-system wise, the scale is a human factor, observed after application; i.e. its not inherent to the subject of software development that there is some dividing line between the 'difficulties' of the whole system development ethos, but rather a function of the differences, and/or similarities, of the people involved, doing something with 'the' technology .. which is after all little more than a social imposition in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I swear I have read a very similar article elsewhere that talked more about WHY the project got cancelled, but this line in the linked article stood out to me as a hint: "Size in RAM was about twice the size of the C++ version".

This is back when memory was actually expensive, so yeah that is pretty big.

<comment><USER2> Well, keep in mind this point as well:

        At the time, there was much frustration that Apple
        Cambridge spent so much time on their new development
        environment, and not as much as we wanted on making
        improvements to the Dylan runtime (for example, we hired
        Ken because we concluded that Cambridge would not get
        around to threads in time to matter to us). That said,
        I have nothing but respect for what Apple Cambridge
        accomplished.

Oliver Steele who was involved with the Dylan IDE on the Apple Cambridge team has said that they spent too much time on IDE features, if I recall correctly.

Given that, it is pretty likely that they lacked a tree-shaker to reduce executable sizes ([https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/pspFr...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/pspFr1XByZk)). It is also pretty unlikely that they'd spent enough time on reducing the memory usage and so on. (It is worth noting that even today, Open Dylan hasn't got a tree shaker.)

Bringing up a whole new ecosystem from scratch is hard work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am getting an "access forbidden" error :(

<comment><USER2> IIRC, the machine hosting this doesn't always have a lot of resources / bandwidth. I'm pretty sure that he used to discourage linking to stuff there for that sort of reason.

It works for me now at the moment though.

<comment><USER6> Well, it would be good if someone who can access to the website could dump a copy on pastebin.

<comment><USER2> [http://pastebin.com/0vcwKsjk](http://pastebin.com/0vcwKsjk)

<comment><USER6> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will contact tracing lead to a Chinese style social credit system? - <AUTHOR> From a strictly technical perspective, having society in western countries change to make contact tracing common place, is this setting the stage to make it much easier in the future to implement a social credit system as being used in some Asian countries? <comment><USER2> Not directly, no. Very indirectly? Maybe. But I think American style social credit will happen via corporations (eg. Facebook).</comment>


Show HN: You Rather - <AUTHOR> http://yourather.com

<comment><USER2> The small "next" button is annoying, took me a few seconds to realise how to get to the next, my natural reaction was "oh I have to sign up to vote on more?" only stuck around to see how the site worked and then realised there's a small next button below. Maybe change that? Some form of highlighting / pointing to the "next" button.

</comment><comment><USER3> do you know <http://www.rrrather.com/> ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Familiar with it. It's interesting how they break down by country and make pictures the focal point of choices. We opted to go for a rapid fire approach using HTML5 History API and local storage to allow quick cycling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's visually delicious.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think you should make the "OR" button turn into the REFRESH icon (like how browsers have it) so that you don't have to move the mouse all the way over to go to the next question.

Would definitely improve the experience

<comment><USER6> You can use your keyboard arrow keys to navigate too.

<comment><USER5> Left hand on left-side of keyboard

Right hand on mouse

By having to use arrow keys I have to move my hand over.

I know it seems like a nit-pick situation but majority of the site is driven with a mouse so I figured it only made sense.</comment></comment></comment>


From Selling Scoops of Ice Cream to Founding ZeroCater - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/06/how-i-started-zerocater?query=4664 <comment><USER3> Arram followed the advice I normally give people applying to startups for non- technical jobs that have no relevant experience: he prepared tremendously for his interview and actually came with real suggestions on things we should do, and visualized himself in the position. On paper, he wasn't someone we would have considered (his previous experience was as a security guard and ice cream scooper with no college degree). But, out of all the candidates, Arram was the only one who had prepared as if he had already gotten the job and was going over first steps.

We actually ended up hiring someone else as the community manager, but I was impressed with Arram and wanted to find a place for him at Justin.tv, so we created the "grab bag of unwanted tasks." While he fluctuated between doing those things well and sometimes not as well, he became a contributing member of the team.

Because we were paying Arram not so much, I told him he should start doing the lunch ordering for a few friends' companies for some side cash, and pretty soon after he came to me and told me he was quitting.

Out of all the people who have "graduated" from Justin.tv, I'm most proud of Arram. His drive to start a company is incredible, and he's done it despite the odds. Proud to say I'm an investor in ZeroCater and I think he's going to make me some money as well.

<comment><USER4> Reading inspiring stories like this makes me realize how much of entrepreneurship is about taking risks rather than hard work. Moving to another place with a few thousand dollars in your pocket, quitting a stable job without a firm idea in mind, figuring things out as you go.

There may have been dozens of well prepared and hard working candidates available that day, but probably none were out of job and interviewing for Justin.tv at the time Arram was. There are also always tons of people working at perfectly great jobs, but a very few of us have the gut to stop working and forge a company built on nothing but determination to succeed.

<comment><USER5> > taking risks rather than hard work.

it's both. and appetite for risk is not the belief that nothing bad will happen, it's the belief that you will be able to handle anything that happens, no matter how bad. it's being at peace with the fact that bad things will happen.

most people live their entire lives trying to avoid bad situations that don't exist in reality, but rather live in their imaginations. in my opinion they are completely delusional.

a lot of entrepreneurs have been totally broke or were poor in the past - <USER2> my mind, this is what allows them to continually take risks. they know exactly what it's like being broke and struggling, it's not a mystery. it has no power over them. they simply don't care if they end up going broke. they know what it is, and how to climb back out.

<comment><USER6> "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." - Mark Twain

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always chuckle when I hear "MVP" in the same sentence as a RoR/node.js stack, complicated monetization strategies and A/B testing.

A bank account and a Google Docs spreadsheet. _That's_ MVP.

<comment><USER4> Bang on. I would probably extend it to include the email-first startup strategy that was posted here by Sachin of Posterous fame a while ago. Since ZeroCater provides a physical service to companies and is located in SF Bay Area with a uniquely high density of companies it probably doesn't apply here, but I can imagine some form of a computerized sign up is needed for other MVPs.

<comment><USER8> _I can imagine some form of a computerized sign up is needed for other MVPs_

Believe it or not, services businesses did actually exist before CRM software and online signup forms. The SF Bay Area does not have a uniquely high density of companies. You can totally do spiritually-similar things to this.

A spiritually similar example: Appointment Reminder didn't actually exist in summer 2010, but I had a two-page demo of it set up. I got $400 out of an ATM when I went home to Chicago to visit, and just wandered around the Gold Coast/Magnificent Mile region of the city looking for every hair salon and massage therapy practice I could find. I asked them all if I they took walk- ins and, if so, could I have 30 minutes of the owner's time for whatever the rate was ($30 or so). In lieu of the shoulder massage/etc, I said "I'm interested in the massage therapy industry. Would you mind if we just chatted for half an hour about it?" And I asked about how they handled scheduling, appointments, no-shows, etc etc. I also did a demo of my two-page AR mini-app on the iPad and asked if they would be interested in buying it when it was ready.

I think only one person actually accepted my money for the interviews. I got five-ish "Please tell me when that is ready" out of a dozen or so conversations. No Bay Area or signup form required. (I put their emails in a paper notebook. And lost it prior to launch. Whoopsie.)

This was _mostly_ successful for me: it confirmed that there was a market willing to pay for AR without me needing to actually build it to demonstrate that. (My sampling technique, which found only massage therapists/hair salons, did sort of lead me off the rails as to who I'd eventually end up targeting for most of the business. D'oh.)

<comment><USER9> Who did you end up targeting?

<comment><USER8> That's a long story. Suffice it to say that I have more exterminators as clients than massage therapists -- apparently when a client forgetting an appointment means your three employees just drove 45 minutes to get locked out of a house that irks (and costs) more than just having to play Angry Birds until you get a walk-in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been in the Valley for around 15 years, and I'm not someone that revels in job perks. Sure everyone loves perks, but I prefer a great work environment, and interesting work, etc, over things like snacks, X-boxes, etc.

That being said, my current employer has Zerocater and I freaking love it more than any other perk in any job I've had. Sure, maybe 1 out of every 5 meals isn't a winner, but I still really really love it. I wouldn't come close to quitting my job if we couldn't afford Zerocater anymore, but I would be sorely disappointed, because the convenience of having food brought to us, the high quality, and the great amount of variety is something that I really appreciate.

<comment><USER11> Actually THIS is why I love HN, because it gives me access to data like this comment, which while anecdotal, helps me validate my idea. My guess is that most perks businesses offer mean NOTHING to their employees but that there are perks out there that would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not much of a sucker for inspirational stories, but this is one of the best I've read in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER13> I had zero idea of what that company was about and only clicked on it out of idle curiosity that it made the front of HN.

Seriously, that was one of the most inspirational things I have read.

In another thread, someone mentioned the idea of a "valuable problem." Find one of those to solve and you will make money. And _dahyum_ what that company solves _is_ a valuable problem and how he started was so low-tech that it should be _embarrassing_ to everyone who thinks they must have X-Y-and-Z to go.

Napoleon Hill said, "Start where you are with what you have." That guy did. And _killed_ it. Good for him!

</comment><comment><USER11> It occurred to me as I was writing another comment about how much I love ZeroCater that they might be the perfect fit for what I'm trying to build right now. I've started validating and getting Beta customers for a personalized perks program where people don't get a set group of company0wide perks, but instead get them personalized to what makes them a happier and more fulfilled person. I've been trying to figure out the catering problem, because I don't actually want to CREATE any perks, but instead partner with people that already fulfill things that would be considered perks. Catering is definitely the one I have the hardest time imagining managing.

Is this an appropriate place to ask if anyone thinks ZeroCater would be interested in being the fulfiller for catering for that system and/or they could ask Arram or the appropriate person what they think? (email = email@example.com)

<comment><USER14> That idea sounds exactly like BetterWorks, a Los Angeles-based company that shut down earlier this year. BetterWorks offered companies a way to offer customized perks on a per employee basis by giving each employee an "allowance" to use on whatever combination of perks they wanted.

The problem, in a nutshell, was that the idea didn't scale. They needed two sets of salespeople: one for the customers, and one for the perks providers. Customers were difficult to acquire because many were dubious about limited "perks" to a small set of providers. Obviously, this meant that BW needed a lot of perks providers. However, the perks providers were even harder to reach, as many of them had no need to try yet another customer outreach opportunty demanding X% for little to no work. Moreover, perks providers were frequently not the only providers in a particular area, so discounting competition eroded prices, lowering the income realized through this method of customer acquisition, and thus the benefit of using BW.

<comment><USER11> Yep, we're working on something similar to BetterWorks. I don't want to say publicly what I think about the way that company was run, but their failure is more validation for me (in that they were able to get the model to work at some scale, but not the scale they wanted) rather than a warning.

My idea is about creating and managing perks that CAN scale, and using auxiliary businesses to provide them. Since our perks are about things that make employees happy, tangible things are only one subset of the things we're going to offer, and all of those will be provided by large providers acting as partners. Only some select local businesses will be offered for very specific reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've heard some pretty terrible stories about the vegetarian options offered by ZeroCater. It seems that many times they give the omnivores a full meal and then the vegetarian meal is the same meal without the meat, meaning it contains virtually no protein.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I am sensitive to other people's preferences. Has the situation changed lately?

<comment><USER16> I am the lead developer at ZeroCater, was a vegetarian for 3 of the last 4 years, and I can honestly say I that never had access to vegetarian lunch options remotely close to the variety and quality we provide to our clients.

We currently offer 4335 vegetarian options from 190 vendors, ranging from a Quinoa Salad with Green Apple, Crumbled Gorgonzola Blue Cheese, Candied Walnut and Organic Baby Spinach to a Roasted Pepper and Mushroom Calzone or Green Chile Mac & Cheese.

Our most common complaint from vegetarians isn't the lack of options; it's that the omnivores took all of the vegetarian food before they got to it.

<comment><USER17> As a vegetarian fed by ZeroCater, it feels like a lot of the time the thinking goes something like 'we have 20 meat-eaters and 3 vegetarians - let's get 20 lamb/chicken shish kebaps and 3 vegetables ones!' It sucks to have to make a meal out of sides, and it seems like the meals are structured most of the time such that quinoa salad or mac & cheese are perceived as being sides. And I don't think the solution is to tell meat-eaters not to eat vegetables - everyone deserves them. Anyway, I have to be very aggressive about getting to the front of the line for food. Also, sometimes the vegetarian option is just lo mein or a green salad - it rarely meets what I would consider a minimal nutritional standard of ~10-20 grams of protein. I pack protein powder to supplement my lunch. To be fair though, it is tasty!

<comment><USER18> I'm curious, what's wrong with 20 meat/3 veg for these single-serve meals? Most meat-eaters wouldn't be happy being forced to eat the vegetarian option, that's bound to happen unless you provide more food than necessary. The rest of what you said only applies to a lunch not served in individual portions.

<comment><USER17> Because people help themselves to food, everyone takes like 1/2 meat and then the first six people take 1/2 veg as well. I agree, for single serving meals like sandwiches that are not easily dividable, it makes sense to only have a few vegetarian ones. But those meals are usually at least 60% not-meat for meat-eaters (bread, rice, veggies, whatever). Basically every other meal is not single serving, and the veggie entrees are seen as just another side. It's usually family style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very inspirational and fascinating account that is probably worth a movie and a book on entrepreneurship. Also reminds me of the trademill quote by Will Smith <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doqS35FfcUE>. One side note here is also the net risk Arram actually took. He is a single guy without dependents and health insurance to worry about. Without college degree and other specific skills he really had little to lose in terms of other lucrative job offers on hand, for example, compared to a Harvard PHD in CS with a wife and two children would have. That scenario ironically simplifies lot of complexities around for pursuing entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sounds like great execution, but one thing I find remarkable that of all the talk here of 'the internet is going to cut out out the middleman', and most business plans being build on that, this business is basically about adding a middle man where historically none existed (because of slim margins). Quite neat to see it work out so well - it seems a middle man can add value, even if that added value seems small at first sight.

</comment><comment><USER21> Thanks for sharing your story Arram. I'm going to be making this a required reading for my college students. Most of the time, young people are advised to find stability and to be level-headed about their goals, and in the process lose their passion. This is reminder that to succeed, you need to be bold, creative, and energetic.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just to throw my 2 cents here.

My brief but meaningful interaction with Arram and the team at ZeroCater was nothing short of exceptional. Exceptional care for their service and customer, exceptional determination and conviction. They are an intensely likeable people.

All the best Arram!

</comment><comment><USER23> Just for the record, I remember ZeroCater's demo day and it seemed like they were already off and running without needing to raise more money. At least that was the feeling I got when listening in the crowd.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is there a TechCrunch linky that actually works for poor souls stuck in the Android Ghetto? I would love to read this.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is the kind of article that keeps me coming back to HN. Great inspirational story!

</comment><comment><USER26> great story</comment>


Hookdoo – React to incoming webhooks with minimal setup - <AUTHOR> https://www.hookdoo.com <comment><USER2> Why shouldn't I just use my own implementation of a web hook handler ?

<comment><AUTHOR> By using hookdoo you can save your precious time and focus on getting stuff done instead of wasting time setting up the infrastructure.</comment></comment>


How to blog insightful - <AUTHOR> http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2010/03/how-to-blog-insightful-.html

<comment><USER2> OK, normally I wouldn't nitpick on grammar, but I don't think it's nitpicking when it's central to what's being said, and in fact the opening sentence:

 _This is a guide on how to blog insightful. Not insightfully. Because insightful isn't a writing style, it's a type of idea._

Insightfully is an adverb, insightful an adjective. You can blog insightfully. You can write insightful blog posts. But how do you blog insightful? To me, that makes the opening sentence of the post a confused jumble of words, which made me skim over what might otherwise have been a good read. Can someone please enlighten me as to what he's trying to express?

And just to drive the point home, let's modify it slightly. See if the following makes sense: This is a guide on how to wait patient. Not patiently. Because patient isn't a waiting style, it's a type of...

I went back and read the first few paragraphs properly. It seems that what he's trying to say is "how to increase the insight of your readers, instead of merely displaying your own insight". Maybe not a snappy opening line, but at least it can be understood. Please don't open your blog posts by re-defining common words. It detracts from your writing, which may otherwise be excellent.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/12rdq/saddam_die...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/12rdq/saddam_died_beautiful/c12sbn)

I was using that construction. That is, it's an adjective with 'ideas' as the implied noun, because I want to emphasize that it's the structure of the ideas underlying the writing that determine whether or not that writing is insightful.

edit: See also 'think different'.

<comment><USER2> Let's run with your Saddam example. When you say "He died beautiful", you mean that he was beautiful at the time of dying, but the dying is purely incidental to him being beautiful.

You could also say "He died insightful", which would mean that he was an insightful man at the time of dying, but the dying is once again incidental to him being insightful.

Now, logic breaks down when you say "He blogged insightful", but I'll analyse it anyway. Here you're saying that he was an insightful person, who happened to be blogging. But you're not relating his insight to the blogging at all, so it makes no sense to tell us that he was an insightful man at the time he happened to be blogging.

English isn't my first language, but I'm pretty sure the above is correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Writers can create value by _separating a model from intellectual or emotional baggage_ that may be tied to it. Or writers can destroy value by unnecessarily attaching baggage to an idea. (I found this article's unnecessary mentions of tired partisan issues like Fox News and Intelligent Design particularly grating and distracting.)

There are many good insights that people reject just because they come from the "wrong" political party, religion, or a person whose vocabulary is too stuffy or too crude. There are many bad models people accept because they come from the "right" party or religion or charismatic pitchman. HN readers might be inclined to take sides on an unrelated topic because of an author's position on vi/emacs. The point is, regardless of how valid the side argument is, the baggage it brings with it can distract from the core argument, or trigger unjustified agreement or disagreement.

Writers can create value by being careful not to involve such distractions when they're not directly relevant. Writers can also create value by removing such distractions from someone else's argument.

</comment><comment><USER4> is this hacker news or hater news? I think i'm in the wrong place.</comment>


DIY Virtual Reality Device and Opensource VR Dev Tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dodocase/diy-virtual-reality-open-source-future

<comment><USER2> If you don't already have one, get this. Way cheaper than oculus and it works (I have one at home). Search SBS video, upload to your phone and prepare to have your mind blown.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Project Creator here. Happy to answer anyones questions on this project. I will be around for the next couple of hours.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have one - found it to be an amazing and affordable way to experience VR.

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh god no, it's VRML, again ..</comment>


The False Promise Of Kickstarter | The New Republic - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/110225/the-false-promise-kickstarter?page=0,0 <comment><USER2> The author of the article alludes to, but doesn't pursue, another possible concern: the rise of Kickstarter-funded arts projects will lead to reduced interest in NEA and other government-endowed sponsorship, which will in turn lead to further budget cuts for these organizations. I'm in favor of the individual patronage model, but there should remain some funding for arts in the public interest.</comment>