Medical Anarchy - <AUTHOR> http://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/medical-anarchy/ <comment><USER2> > The AMA, which is little more than a union for doctors, doesn't allow any > policy changes that threaten to increase competition and reduce their > monopoly profits

That's like saying that Comcast/Time Warner are a "union for Internet users".

If the AMA were "little more than a union for doctors", doctors would have a lot more respect for it, instead of the great contempt that they currently do.

If anything, you could argue that, because power follows the money, the AMA is an advocate for the insurance companies that the doctors are beholden to (essentially every doctor in the country must pay their fees to the AMA in order to process billing, because the AMA has a monpoly on that[0]). One of the big disadvantages of dissociating with the AMA (yes, a provider _can_ do this) is losing the ability to use these insurance codes.

I don't think that that characterization is quite fair either, but it's a lot more correct than saying that the AMA is a union for doctors.

If you want to know more about CPT codes and billing, my startup[1] works with hospitals and outpatient providers to handle the billing process - I am happy to tell you far more about CPT codes than you ever wanted to know. :)

[0] The AMA owns and controls the CPT codes - the billing codes that payers use. The providers don't always pay them _directly_ (especially if they're not independent practitioners), but they do end up paying them in the end.

[1] [https://www.boardrounds.com/](https://www.boardrounds.com/) (plugging shamelessly because it's relevant).

<comment><USER3> > _" That's like saying that Comcast/Time Warner are a "union for Internet > users"."_

Comcast and Time Warner are most comparable to hospital chains in the medical context (or perhaps insurers, depending on what parameters you choose for the comparison).

> _" If the AMA were "little more than a union for doctors", doctors would > have a lot more respect for it, instead of the great contempt that they > currently do."_

Many rank-and-file union members hold their organizations in contempt.

> _" If anything, the AMA is an advocate for the insurance companies that the > doctors are beholden to"_

The AMA's members are physicians, and other medical personnel; you may look at the AMA as a union, lobbying group, or a professional association, but it is certainly not advocating for the interests of the insurers.[1]

[1] [http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/membership/faqs.page](http://www.ama- assn.org/ama/pub/membership/faqs.page)?

<comment><USER2> > The AMA's members are physicians, and other medical personnel; you may look > at the AMA as a union, lobbying group, or a professional association, but it > is certainly not advocating for the interests of the insurers.[1]

Explicitly, certainly not. But in some ways they do end up empowering insurers (whether intentionally or corruption of their original intent).

(And by the way, I didn't mean that this was the case either; just that it was a slightly less ludicrous interpretation than the original statement.)

<comment><USER3> I think you are right that the AMA often ends up helping insurers in a number of ways, much like the California prisons guards' union which has interests that coincide with those of the prisons.[1] The way I look at industry-wide unions, they act as a tool for the companies to collude without direct communication.

[1] [http://www.policymic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the- snake-h...](http://www.policymic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-how- california-s-prison-guards-subvert-democracy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm quite torn about this. In some ways, it seems massively irresponsible, but framed another way, it makes some sense.

I think it's important to distinguish here between "screw experts they don't know anything" and "I've taken your professional opinion into account, and will be making my decision." The second has a long, long history in anarchist thought:

      > Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In
      > the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning
      > houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the
      > engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a
      > savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to
      > impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the
      > respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge,
      > reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not
      > content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I
      > consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me
      > the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special
      > questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the
      > sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any
      > person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to
      > the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a
      > stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
      >
      > - Bakunin, "What is Authority" http://www.panarchy.org/bakunin/authority.1871.html

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Time for a reality check.

Okay, so I like the idea of CoinMD. It's a nice way for people with medical knowledge to get paid for their tips, but so far that's really about it. It's just yet another forum for medical advice, but with a gimmick. It's not even an original gimmick. The whole "integrate Bitcoin into everything" appears to be motivated by more of a cargo cult to appear modern and countercultural than anything rational.

However, it does offer an alternative payment system and in this case it works, so I won't complain about that.

But can we please let go of these childish fantasies that Bitcoin will overthrow all government and usher us into an anarchist utopia of voluntaryism and global human liberation? Those kinds of libertarian/anarchist pipe dreams were excusable during the very beginning of Bitcoin, when the protocol was still being sharpened and everyone was enthusiastic about this new idea.

I don't know what kind of world the author lives in where he thinks people posting textual descriptions of their conditions on the Internet, backed by a digital currency, will revamp the healthcare system into an anarcho-capitalist institution and turn government irrelevant? What bullshit. Do I seriously need to explain that writing about your condition isn't enough to get diagnosed with _anything_ beyond the most rudimentary of advice ("This might be that, but I'm not sure. Go see a doctor and try this herb in the meantime to see if it stops.")?

Bitcoin will not render government irrelevant. You see, the thing is that even if the concept of Bitcoin theoretically can allow financial independence from the state, it's completely meaningless when your ecosystem is a mess. The Bitcoin ecosystem, as we have witnessed so many times, is absolute chaotic mayhem that can ironically only be controlled through state regulation, which many hardcore Bitcoiners are advocating for.

Homeschooling is opting out of the state? Uh, last I checked, homeschooling requires one to be registered with the state, as well as offer vigorous and regular checks with it to ensure you're in line.

The Silk Road isn't any different from your standard drug dealing market, only it's online and just as volatile and unreliable as the physical thing.

Look, Bitcoin is certainly capable of great things, but these here are just naive pipe dreams.

<comment><USER5> So, do you think that if enough people want to peacefully live without government interference at all (e.g. without a government) they don't deserve to do so and they don't deserve, for example, to be sold a piece of land to completely secede from state?

<comment><USER2> That's a very loaded (but easy) question.

In the United States, we fought an entire war over the question of whether or not a state had the authority to secede from the federal government (the Union). The seceding states lost that fight.

It would be very hard to argue that individuals have that right when the states do not.

You may wish that it were different, but the fact is that individuals do _not_ have this right, according to virtually any constitutional interpretation since the mid-19th century.

<comment><USER6> >In the United States, we fought an entire war over the question of whether or not a state had the authority to secede from the federal government (the Union). The seceding states lost that fight.

So wars decide what is right and what is wrong?

<comment><USER7> It's not about right and wrong, it's about what you can and can't do. If you do something and the US decides to go to war with you over it, you are SOL.

Philosphers may claim you have a natural right to buy and consume drugs the US government considers illegal, since you aren't harming others; you can then scream about your natrual rights from prison all you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Disclosure: I'm currently attending medical school in New York.

It seems incredibly irresponsible for a doctor to prescribe things based on an internet conversation without a physical exam. You can't auscultate (listen to with a stethoscope), visually inspect, run labs, do basic imaging, etc. over an anonymous internet forum, which are basic facilities that anybody should expect a doctor in the US to utilize. It is plainly evident, once you become involved in clinical encounters, that you discover things on exam that the patient didn't know about, forgot to tell you, or wouldn't be able to find themselves. These findings are often critical for diagnosis. Telling the patient to take a certain drug without that data is dangerous and irresponsible.

You could certainly offer general "advice", but this will never be a substitute for seeing a doctor. Perhaps interfaces with video and sound are able to up the bandwidth of internet medicine but currently there is still too wide of a gap between that and actually laying hands on the patient.

I was not surprised to find that this is exactly what the linked document of related policies by state medical boards states for New York ([http://www.fsmb.org/pdf/InternetPrescribing- law&policylangua...](http://www.fsmb.org/pdf/InternetPrescribing- law&policylanguage.pdf)):

 _Section 80.63 of the controlled substance regulations requires a practitioner to physically examine a patient prior to initially prescribing a controlled substance. Issuing a prescription for a controlled substance solely on the basis of a questionnaire or other medical history submitted to a practitioner over the Internet does not meet the requirement of a physical examination or establish a legitimate practitioner-patient relationship and is not a valid prescription._

I cannot find anything controversial about that. I am all for forums linking doctors to talk to more patients, even for payment, but keep the "MD" out of the name because this is not a true substitute for seeing a doctor.

<comment><USER9> I think attempts like this are symptoms of something really badly broken. It obviously isn't a good solution, but for anyone to even be thinking of seriously implementing it speaks volumes.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but it is a symptom of the medical system being badly broken or a symptom of how we think about these kinds of problems being badly broken...?

Come to think of it, it's both!

<comment><USER9> If you take the concept of business and profit out of medical services and try instead to have a culture of medicine as public service, then ideas such as confidentiality and care become more commonplace.

I am not meaning this as a particularly anti-capitalist view, but I think there are areas of human existence where profit making should be excluded. For certain things, like fire departments, that battle was won long ago, and thankfully we are not in the days of ancient Rome where you would have to argue prices with Marcus Crassus before your house fire was put out. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Rome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Rome)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is for real? Am I missing something? Sure, people want a diagnosis and other services from an unregulated, anonymous doctor with a reputation built by what? Amazon-like reviews? Come on!

<comment><USER5> That's not like that at all. As far as I understand all answers doctors give are open to the public on the site, so everyone else on the internet, including other doctors, can read them and say if it's a good answer or a bad answer. I imagine if this sites starts issuing bad advice, no one would want to go there. However, as of right now, it appears you are wrong and answers are getting paid for by willing customers.

Now, this idea may be far from perfect. But comparing it to the existing system while having a blind faith in it is wrong. In our existing system patients don't have many options of checking what their doctor tells them; they are referred to doctors by other doctors and very often have no way of checking on the reputation (% of successful operations this doctor conducted, for instance). The current system is very inflexible and not consumer oriented at all. Consumer interests are sacrificed in the name of their supposed safety, without first giving said consumers options to decide what they actually want and consider safe.

<comment><USER11> I am not referring to CoinMD so much but this paragraph...

"Imagine a future where renegade doctors shun licensing laws and practice medicine over the internet. They build up a reputation around an anonymous identity. Use public key cryptography to sign their diagnosis, reassuring the patient that it really came from them. It's not hard to imagine this would create a demand for anonymous accreditation agencies. These agencies could issue exams and then use their digital signature to sign the credentials of doctors who pass the exam. Patients pay for these services in anonymous currency ― Bitcoin ― and pay fraction of the price they would pay to the government enforced monopoly."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So they are hoping people will make medical decisions based on advice from an anonymous doctor whose credentials you cannot verify and who does not have prescribing ability? Is this serious?

</comment><comment><USER13> I think an even better example of potential crypto-anarchist success is legal advice. It could work largely the same as the medical service this article describes, but legal advice fits better than medical advice.

</comment><comment><USER14> Another interesting thing to do is having a high quality medical expert system(Watson), running outside the u.s.(say africa[1]) with people who we're taught how to use it(even doctors), with access to video communication with the patient, with access to his test results - administer advice to him.

Assuming good , mostly automated process and a good expert system - this could be a way to offer highly accurate second opinion.

And it would be a perfectly legal service from the provider side.

[1]This could be used locally in the country, which is a nice way to augment/start a country medical system

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm bothered that this article seems to believe that the rise in homeschooling (in large part by unqualified parents using low-quality textbooks and ill- considered strategies) is another example of people 'opting out' of some particular brand of oppression by the State, and that doing so will increase supply, or something?

As far as I'm concerned, students have a right to a high quality education because without one their future will be a trainwreck. Just because they're largely minors doesn't, to me, mean that their parents have the right to deny them a future in favor of whatever their personal reasons may be. Yes, this is an infringement on the 'rights' of parents, but I don't think parents have the right to treat children like property in the first place.

And yes, there are some parents who do a great job homeschooling; I'm sure of it. I've just never met them, and I was extensively involved in local homeschooling programs back in my home town, so I interacted with dozens of homeschooling families, hundreds of homeschooled kids, and visited some of the organized conventions and programs that involved thousands more. Too many of these people simply aren't qualified to teach a child from the beginning up to college age, even if they may have the legal freedom to do it.

As it relates to the article's premise: I also think individuals have a right to reasonable health because it is integral to their future. A nation full of sick people is going to be a nation with low productivity and a high tax burden from running things like emergency rooms. It is in our best interest to offer everyone affordable access to some basic minimum level of health care, and to do so in the cheapest possible manner. The author seems to believe that a comparison shopping website for doctors will deliver affordable health care to everyone, but I think he ignores a few essential issues that could make it impossible for such a website to deliver good results:

a) Even now, many people who need health care do not have regular access to the internet. This is in part due to the huge stretches of rural America, but it is also due to the fact that we have a huge homeless population and a huge low-income population, both of whom may not even be able to afford the equipment necessary to get on the internet. You certainly aren't going to propose giving them free equipment and internet access so they can go buy health care on a website.

b) It is arguably impossible to comparison shop for essential health care. You don't have the time to waste on it and you are emotionally/mentally compromised by the stress of your impending doom. To a degree, this is correct - you should be prioritizing your own well-being. It should be the responsibility of everyone else in the system to try and keep costs for this essential care to a minimum; instead, a profit-driven health system tries to maximize profit off this essential care, and deny claims to as many dying people as possible. Introducing more profit motive into this system does not seem like it will fix anything.

c) Medical practice over the internet without licenses is simply a recipe for disaster. I am willing to accept that a licensed doctor could perhaps perform a subset of their duties over the internet; I occasionally email my doctor instead of visiting them in person when I need minor adjustments to medicine doses, and that is fine - both sides are fully informed and no corners are being cut. However, if you're not even going to license them to verify that they meet the basest standards of medical competence, you'd be mad to also let them practice without ever seeing a patient in person. It's just a bad idea. We have enough issues with malpractice and patients being sold treatments they don't need as things are; removing licensing and medical standards will make this worse as both of those problems can be increased by a profit motive.

d) Comparison shopping for long-term health care seems nearly impossible since in many cases, if you discover the care you are getting is suboptimal, it is too late to switch - whether because of pre-existing conditions, or because the care is ongoing and transferring to another provider would put you at risk. You can't trivially ask to have your dying father moved to an intensive care unit across town just to save a couple thousand dollars, even if you CAN do it.

<comment><USER16> > As far as I'm concerned, students have a right to a high quality education > because without one their future will be a trainwreck. Just because they're > largely minors doesn't, to me, mean that their parents have the right to > deny them a future in favor of whatever their personal reasons may be.

Sounds like the solution is to: 1) Define what a "high quality education" means in terms that it is objectively measurable whether one is being provided to a child, 2) Assure that children, regardless of education venue (home, private, or public school) are receiving it.

 _Assuming_ that certain venues do provide a "high quality education" and that other venues do not -- in any direction -- doesn't seem particularly useful if that is a genuine concern rather than a superficial rationalization.

<comment><USER15> The point is not that homeschooling provides a lower quality education than public schools (though I would argue that, on average, it does) - the point is that homeschooling is being done by unqualified people using unverified, quickly-considered techniques, while public schooling is at least largely done by people who got teaching certifications and their methods get public scrutiny.

To me, the amount of criticism public schools receive is an indicator of their worthiness - people are able to inspect the education and intervene directly if they feel it is inadequate, and the government has the ability to provide useful oversight and assist in setting standards. I'm sure there are many cases where this centralization is to children's detriment, but at least it is a largely transparent system.

In comparison, the only real transparency provided into a homeschooled child's education is when they start college and have to find out whether they really learned enough essential skills and information to be able to compete in a real educational environment. If the answer is 'no', it's too late to do anything.

Objective measurements would be great, and so would more rigorous enforcement. Historically, homeschooling groups are against both.

<comment><USER13> > the point is that homeschooling is being done by unqualified people using > unverified, quickly-considered techniques, while public schooling is at > least largely done by people who got teaching certifications and their > methods get public scrutiny.

But still, you're assuming that unqualified (according to whose qualifications?) people using unverified (by whom?) techniques are worse on average than public schools.

It's not easy to agree on what objective measurements comprise "good schooling," but I think most people will agree that homeschooling and public schooling both vary wildly in quality if we were to agree upon some objective measurements. It's not fair to implement policies for either type of schooling based solely on the _worst_ examples of that type of schooling.

<comment><USER15> I think it's reasonable to assume that unless anyone has proven the contrary, which they haven't. If you were replacing a public school with a private school, I'd agree that it is unwise to assume the private school is worse. We're talking about replacing an entire school staff with a couple overworked parents, though.

Many arguments in favor of homeschooling are about parents' religious freedom or about how the public school system has failed the children, and in both cases this does nothing to demonstrate that the parents are going to do a better job.

I do agree that objective measurements would allow this stuff to be considered rationally, but historically it's really hard to come up with useful objective measurements due to all of the different pressures involved.

<comment><USER13> > I think it's reasonable to assume that unless anyone has proven the > contrary, which they haven't.

I disagree. I think it could go either way, as I have no real scientifically valid evidence either way, but I think the burden of proof is on the party advocating using violence to prevent the other party from doing what it wants.

> Many arguments in favor of homeschooling are about parents' religious > freedom or about how the public school system has failed the children, and > in both cases this does nothing to demonstrate that the parents are going to > do a better job.

True, but it also does nothing to demonstrate that the parents are going to do a worse job.

<comment><USER15> Who said anything about violence? I think it's a pretty absurd leap to go from me expressing a negative opinion on homeschooling directly to me seemingly dispatching SWAT teams to round up homeschoolers.

<comment><USER13> How then would you implement a policy that prohibits parents from homeschooling if they don't meet certain qualifications?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You'd want that your physician has more training than just having read some WebMD articles. How can you be sure?

What about liability in case they're wrong? A coworker lost a relative last year because the doctor missed an obvious case of septic infection. How do you take an anonymous physician to court for a mistake like this? Hard to pay restitution when the injured party dies.

<comment><USER18> Punishment is just one way of ensuring doctors pay attention. And as many people find out, it doesn't actually work simply because doctors make mistakes anyway.

Now, for a price $10 I don't think anyone should expect any kind of liability. It's advice. If someone gives you a $10 take it as such and go see another doctor for $100 if you're unsure. To my understanding CoinMD simply provides what market needs: cheap accessible advice of reasonable quality. If you could sue doctors there, prices wouldn't be as low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I stopped reading when the author implied that the U.S healthcare systems woes were due to supply and demand. This is a shallow view of a completely broken system. The supply and demand ratio is comparable to that of other wealthy nations, yet almost every other wealthy nation has kept their health care industry in check.

<comment><USER20> this

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> MD = Monopoly on Drugs</comment>


Caching MySQL queries - <AUTHOR>

Hi. memcached is not really good for MySQL. Then, what is a good way or practice to cache MySQL queries? Do you recommend any reading on caching? <comment><USER2> The easiest way is to use MySQL's own query cache. Increasing its size yields wonderful results.

On linux, edit my.cnf and add the following:

      [mysqld]
      ...
      query_cache_type=1
      query_cache_limit=1M
      query_cache_size=128M # or more - depends on you total  available RAM
      key_buffer=128M # or more

Note that you'll need to restart mysql to make these changes count

</comment><comment><USER3> The biggest thing you need to sort out when caching is exactly how well synced your cache needs to be.

Once you've written fresh data to the database, is it okay for you to keep receiving stale data in response to later queries?

If you've got multiple web servers, do they all have to return the same data, or is it okay if some lag behind the others?

If you're happy to serve stale (versus some tunable time metric) data inconsistently across different servers, then just find a database client library that does client-side result set caching (ADODB for PHP will do this, either in the filesystem or against memcache) and run with it.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/31...](http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3110171) <http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/query-cache-how.html> [http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2008/01/29/how-mysql- que...](http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2008/01/29/how-mysql-query-cache- works-with-transactions/)

</comment><comment><USER5> What do you mean memcached is not good for MySQL?

<comment><USER6> He's probably wanting to cache entire result sets instead of individual objects so he's running into problems wanting to expire lots of duplicate data when the db gets updated. Seems to be common misuse of Memcached when people first try it.

Memcached is perfectly fine to use with MySql, just don't cache query results directly, cache the individual rows so there's only ever one copy of that row cached. You can then update the cache when you update the db. If you need to cache queries, cache just the keys for the result of the query and use them to go back and fetch the cached rows individually from Memcached. Use a multi get for faster retrieval.

Memcached is a distributed object cache, keep each object in it only once and you won't need to expire stuff. You could also use the object version as part of the cache key which will auto expire older version by making all the clients look for the newer version. Old versions will be pushed out naturally as newer version fill up the cache.

<comment><USER7> MySQL has it's own query cache, if that is what he means he should just increase the query cache size really.</comment></comment></comment>


OpenBSD IPSec backdoor allegations: triple $100 bounty - <AUTHOR> http://maycontaintracesofbolts.blogspot.com/2010/12/openbsd-ipsec-backdoor-allegations.html

<comment><USER2> Nobody who is readily capable of finding such a flaw --- which probably doesn't exist, but let's stipulate that it does --- would bid as little as $300 an hour for this work.

</comment><comment><USER3> the idea of finding an fbi-sponsored, 10-year old backdoor in a notoriously secure operating system installed in many government and corporate networks around the world sounded pretty boring to me, but now that there's a whole hundred dollars on the line, i'll _surely_ be working day and night to find it!

</comment><comment><USER4> From the comments, it looks like it's up to around $3900 now.

<comment><USER2> At this rate, you might get a reasonable audit after 25 continuous days of contributions.

<comment><USER5> Reasonable audits of this type and scope typically take about a work week to complete?

<comment><USER2> I was thinking more like 3 weeks.

<comment><USER5> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you knew of a flaw like this, you could probably get more than $300 for it.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's time to break out my 7 monitor, swordfish hacking code and roll up my sleeves. I've got mouths to feed.

<comment><USER8> I realise that you are joking, but if you have seven monitors and can't feed your family your priorities need readjusting. :)</comment></comment>


Credit card balance notifications for software developers - <AUTHOR> https://peterdemin.github.io/kibitzr-banks.html <comment><AUTHOR> Once I configured checks for all my banks, I started to spend less and visit online bank accounts only to make transfers.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I keep focused? - <AUTHOR> I´m at a point in my life where I know that I want to pursue a programming related future but I cannot seem to focus on keeping on the same track.
I have been following the tech community and been around computers my whole life and even though I have some experience programming every time I choose to start learning X language (i.e. not creating simple programs but to reach a point where I would be able to consider myself a proficient developer) I soon change my mind because Y seems to be more fun/efficient/demanded/functional/whatever reason and start procrastinating one more time.
Have you been in a similar situation? If so I´d love to hear some recommendations as I truly believe this is what I want to do for a living.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I've been there. Especially in the beginning of this year. I forced my self to finish a JavaScript and Jquery book without stopping to change. Great, now I can make better (or slower) web pages and know JS - big deal. The purpose was to sit, and really learn all the core aspects of a given language.

This is mainly a matter of self discipline. This term I'm taking a C++ course at college. Skimming the book for the class, I already feel far more confident with the material knowing another language.

After learning one language I would suggest using that new skill set to reproduce some traditional software applications (Calendar, Calculator, Text Editor, ...). Additionally it would be wise to test how well you can read other peoples code in that language. It took me about 2.5 months to be able to work with JavaScript and the DOM effectively.

Also consider that compilation, weak/strong typing, data types, variable assignment, for and while loops, if statements and logical/comparison operators, and OOP exist in most languages. I found the key is understanding these topics in one language. Beyond that it's a matter of adjusting to the syntax in other languages.

Overall, find a strongly rated book on language ______ thoroughly complete the material, make sure you understand it. Write some applications with it. Make the time to do all of this. A line of code a day, or 20... Read about the language with the bias towards learning. Drive yourself towards self learning all the time. If all this seems like shitty chore most of the time, re-think choosing programming as your career. Oh, and you have to love fixing broken logic all the time.

Best of luck to you! Let me know how it all works out @nickersfpdx

</comment><comment><USER3> I know exactly how you feel. It started when I devoted a bunch of time to learning Fireworks (before Adobe got it) because it was a web tool, whereas Photoshop was a photo tool. Well lo and behold PS became the industry standard for "web design" :smh:

Then I started to try to get serious about programming and took a course on what was sure to be the next big language: Adobe Flex. "What?" you may ask... Exactly.

So I understand your fear man, because I've done it. Unless you're programming for fun and friends, I'm going to assume it's for making money.

With that aim in mind I started doing a bunch of searches across employment and freelance sites comparing number of programmers in X language VS number of Jobs for programmers in X language.

You'll see a few rise to the top really fast. For me, Javascript is my baby at the moment. Seems like the way of the future (even though its super old in internet years) but who knows...

I'd look at the job boards and get a feel not just for what's hot and rising, but what has staying power, a need, and a decent pay scale.

That's my two cents. Have fun!

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been there and often am there. The problem for me is that I consume too much irrelevant and useless content. Browsing reddit, HN and other sites, reading many news stories and blog posts, all of this impacts how much actual work I can do and how much I can learn that is really relevant to my work. So to be more productive you have to select what you think is important to read and realize you can only read so much in a day until your brain says "stop".

But to achieve productivity you have to learn discipline. Motivation doesn't last and there are no "tricks" or shortcuts to being productive if you want long-term benefits. As Jim Rohn said "suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret".

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, I've gone through this transition, as have several colleagues. 1) Start blocking tech news sites you visit during the day (TechCrunch, hacker news, etc). View these once per a day or preferably once a week. You'll find you're able to concentrate on what you're working on and will stop being distracted by the newest shiny language, library, framework etc. Next find done real world use for your programming. It may be hard to grasp some concepts until they're grounded with a problem you're facing.</comment>


How high school students start thinking about code - <AUTHOR> http://computinged.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/how-high-school-students-start-thinking-about-code/ <comment><USER2> "He hadn't quite internalized left-hand side vs. right-hand side." This is noteworthy.

In mathematics, equality is symmetric (a=b is the same as b=a).

In programming, variable assignment is asymmetric (a=b is not the same as b=a).

Some programming languages recognize this but get the change wrong by changing the equality operator to == or === and always preferring assignment to be =. Some get it right, e.g., := as assignment.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but don't overlook the "Let x =" syntax of mathematics. Programming has just dropped the "let". So, really there is a choice to be made about how to resolve that ambiguity in a language parser. Visual Basic has the nice case of A = B = C setting A equal to the boolean expression B = C.

<comment><USER4> Let in mathematics doesn't really work that way. It's more general.

"Let <boolean expression>" means that the world gets set up so that the boolean expression is true.

Examples:

Let x=4

Let epsilon>0

Let a in A

There's very interesting work on providing an iteration construct like this in a programming language.

<http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Projects/jmatch/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would like to see someone take one thousand twelve year olds, stratify them and randomly split them up into groups of two hundred for the summer and teach each group basic programming using five different languages: Python, Basic, Scheme, and a couple more, then at the end, perform some type of objective programming skills evaluation to determine which language really is the best for beginning learners.

<comment><USER6> I tried that with just two kids using PLT Scheme and Javascript. The biggest hurdle is convincing them that software is useful outside the development environment; we wrote apps for the desktop/GUI, console, and MySpace. Kids then tried to customize everything, including system utilities, Open Office, and their own 3rd party games. It was baffling how much they expected from their programming tools; they demanded full integration between compiler and whatever else they were running on their system. They don't understand that some software is extensible (The Dr. Scheme IDE) and others are not (Minesweeper, Bejeweled.), but that was mainly my fault because I did some magic behind the scenes and put their javascript "commands" in the firefox toolbar.

My nephews kept thinking of functions, operators, and special forms (conditionals and iteration) as "objects". They wanted to put "title", "value" and "callback" on the "wrong" objects. For example, they could bind a callback to a button and have it popup when it was clicked; they want to attach a similar callback to a block of code and have it fired when the block was executed (a trivial problem to fix; just call your callback from the body of the code block, but they wanted to use call-back syntax.)

I am sure they would have loved Squeak, but I didn't have the time to learn it on time; my previous experience with Smalltalk has been brief, mainly with GST and theoretic uses of Self.

Kids are a tougher crowd to please than programmers with some "training", because children have not yet accepted whatever limitations imposed at us by "industry". They want the Ideal.

<comment><USER7> _they demanded full integration between compiler and whatever else they were running on their system_

Which is what _everyone_ should be demanding. What's the point of software that you can't program yourself?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had a similar experience when helping a friend with a bug in his code from an introductory programming course at my alma mater. The programming assignment involved manipulation of an array of data in C, and there was a counter variable involved to keep track of which element of the array was currently being manipulated.

He understood that there was a relationship between the array and the counter variable, but he took the relationship to far. He thought that the counter variable needed to _represent_ the element of the array, and so he was assigning the value of the particular element in the array to the counter variable. In his mind, the counter variable didn't just provide the element number to look for; it _was_ the element he was looking for, or at least it needed to become so.

Both this, and the color example provided by the author, demonstrate how many implied relationships we depend on within the programs we write, and how many people believe that those relationships to be explicitly stated or else the compiler won't _understand_ what we mean.

I don't think I was able to get my friend to really understand what was going on and why we couldn't just 'tell' the computer to 'relate' these two things for us. It was a level of such naive concreteness that his mind just fought against descending to. I wonder how someone might educate people in thinking at this level? The optimist in me says it might be possible; the pessimist suggests that it might be in the same realm as trying to get people to understand pointers and recursion, which enough people I've read suggest is extremely hard for some (many?) people to understand.

<comment><USER7> This is where variable names help. I wouldn't call it a "counter", I would instead call it an "index" or "position". Then you have a separate variable called "element" for the specific element of the array, or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to read that. I've always found it hard to explain programming language problems, because I internalized so many conventions so long ago. It can be a challenge to plumb your memory and list all the interesting bits.

</comment><comment><USER10> 7th grade, TI-BASIC. That's what got it started for me. The book that came with the TI-83 had a little chapter on the built-in language and I ran with it. No student with any knowledge of algebra and symbolic mathematics should be making these errors (shown in the article) with named arguments though...that's just weird. Who sees "0 = x" in class?

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the flashback. I wonder how many HN members got started on their TI-83. I remember even the most remedial users figuring out how to store enough data to cheat in pre-calc. IMO, the language is less relevant, it just takes a project.

<comment><USER12> The first real applications I ever wrote were TI-Basic apps I wrote for my TI-89 back in Algebra class.

I remember coding them directly with the keyboard on the calculator. I wrote all kinds of things, things to help me solve things, solve equations, geometry solvers, games. It was a blast, and I think that's what got me interested in programming.

Thanks TI! Maybe Middle Schools should work on developing an introductory programming curriculum to introduce kinds to the idea of programming. It's probably more important then most things middle schoolers are learning, especially considering I probably spent so much of my time in math class programming my calculator.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook confirms 419m users' phone numbers exposed in latest privacy lapse - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/04/facebook-users-phone-numbers-privacy-lapse <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20880576](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20880576)</comment>


Ask HN: What's your biggest pain point when hiring developers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Money, the FAANG companies have dried up the senior pool so the only developers are available are mid junior or graduates. Hiring is hard.

<comment><USER3> There are experienced people who aren't terribly interested in "big-N" companies. Think about what you can offer _other_ than money.

Private offices and/or remote working? More influence over technology choice? A more individualistic style of working, where you're allowed to take a non- trivial problem and disappear on your own for a few weeks? Those would all be big draws for me. I'm sure there are other positive ways to differentiate your culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> training and on boarding are the two biggest challenges that influence the consideration of who we hire.</comment>


In Defense of Learning Code the Hard Way - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/in-defense-of-learning-code-the-hard-way <comment><USER2> The moment I understood pointers, It felt like you discovered an entire world, tied by logic, pure as crystal. Learning C++ helped me a lot to understand oriented object programming and manual memory managing. Now, I am a web developer doing some JavaScript.

I think the weakest point of JavaScript online programming courses is the lack of algorithms. You end up to do a lot of DOM manipulations, apply some CSS and that's it you are ready to get a job. But you don't really know how to translate your mental concepts into code.

<comment><USER3> I love the new languages like Go, Rust, Clojure, Node, ... but learning C on Unix has taught me more about computers than any of the (new) stuff I picked up in the past 10 years combined.

Debugging with gdb, strace, valgrind, lsof, ... and learning about low level system calls will teach you a great deal about how a program works, where it's resources are used and how to eliminate it's bottlenecks. What is a heap, stack or static memory? How does memory management or garbage-collection work on a modern OS? What is IPC and how do the individual system calls function & require as input? ...</comment></comment>


Silk Road Update: Federal Prosecutors File Separate Forfeiture Complaint - <AUTHOR> http://www.popehat.com/2013/10/10/silk-road-update-federal-prosecutors-file-separate-forfeiture-complaint/

<comment><USER2> Question for someone who understands BTC better than I:

This seems to be the first case where a massive number of BTC were seized by police. Since BTC is a consensus algorithm, what would happen if 51% of BTC users wanted to take those BTC away from the FBI and give them to someone else (or perhaps nobody, just remove them from existence and deflate the BTC) how feasible would that be?

<comment><USER3> The only thing consensus can do is use hashing power to vote on using a chain made of blocks which is has already been determined to be mathematically consistent by enormous amounts of hashing power OR to roll back that chain and continue it from an old spot.

The only way to pull that money back from the US Gov would be to roll back all transactions and block creation up to the point they took control of those bitcoins. But doing so would be catastrophic- so you would never get miners to agree on that.

<comment><USER4> Miners could simply refuse to process future blocks which contain spends of these bitcoins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Background information: The real awesome part of forfeiture is when the government wants to seize your hotel and sell it because sometimes drug dealers might have used it. [http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/28/motel-caswell- owners-defea...](http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/28/motel-caswell-owners- defeat-federal-forf)

Other victim classes include "driving while brown, with cash" \- e.g. [http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture- racket](http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture-racket)

(Disclaimer. Links to politically motivated Libertarian magazine website, since I knew it would be easy to find there. Interested parties may conduct corroborating research on their own time.)

<comment><USER6> Keyword: might

They don't even have to have provided any evidence that crimes occurred on the property in question, just that there is _reasonable_ suspicion.

There are a lot of penalties and procedures surrounding "just in case" solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >The forfeiture complaint is considerably more blunt about the feds' position that the entire Silk Road enterprise is inherently criminal

What a bunch of horseshit on part of the feds, while the market was overwhelmingly populated with drugs I know for a fact that there were sellers who only sold things like laptops, flash drives pre-loaded with anonymity software, and DVDs of tails and such.

<comment><USER8> Edit: intslack has fixed the quotation :-)

What are you quoting from?

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's a direct quote, I couldn't find it - but I'm assuming he's speaking of the fact that the feds are treating all transactions as criminal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > What if some of those Bitcoins are yours, not Ulbrichts? What if Silk Road > is holding some of your Bitcoins as part of some transaction? Why, all you > have to do is show up and make a claim for them — in a case in which the > government is saying that all or substantially all of the transactions > through Silk Road are federal crimes. Bring a toothbrush.

Seems to answer the question of 'what happens to all the bitcoins' pretty readily. Interesting discussion of forfeiture law and "in rem" suits at the bottom, worth reading.

<comment><USER11> You can't just say depositing money on a site is a crime, there were plenty of non-illegal things bought and sold at the Silk Road. Plus evidence of intending to one day maybe buy something illegal is not evidence of having bought something illegal.

Tangentially related, in the cases where the USG seized offshore gambling sites, they returned deposits to the players, even though playing there was ostensibly illegal.

Granted offshore gambling is a little murkier than buying heroin in terms of legality, but see paragraph #1. Having funds at/on TSR is not a crime.

<comment><USER12> This is such a flimsy argument that I don't get why anyone bothers. I suppose heavy-arms dealers should keep a pack of Twinkies with them at every sale. Somehow it reminds me if the old myth that a cop has to tell you they're a cop if you ask.

<comment><USER11> Not really. I have yet to see anything that would make depositing money on TSR an illegal act or proof of intent to commit illegal activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The IP addresses listed are interesting: Latvia, Romania, Iceland, and New York, USA.</comment>


Former Mozilla CTO detained at US border and denied a lawyer - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-cto-detained-at-us-border-and-denied-a-lawyer/ <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558161)</comment>


Browser and TOR/Proxy/VPN: Not Very Private - <AUTHOR> http://www.eggplant.pro/blog/browser-not-private/ <comment><AUTHOR> Kind of "duh" stuff for HN, but might be useful to the layman.</comment>


Diff Dropbox previous versions easily from Google Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.willshouse.com/2011/09/18/diff-previous-versions-with-dropbox-and-google-chrome/

<comment><USER2> This looks like a great tool. I plan on testing it out. I've been used to using SVN to diff changes but I have some websites in Dropbox that I haven't yet put into an SVN repository so this would help a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what I use it for. On big projects I use github and tower. But on smaller projects or for just general diffing things in the dropbox this is pretty amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why does it need access to all websites in addition to dropbox? Seems odd.

<comment><AUTHOR> The extension says it needs:

1) Your data on dropbox.com and www.dropbox.com

2) All data on your computer and the websites you visit

#1 is obvious. I think it needs #2 so it can save a copy of the older version to disk and then launch the diff tool. If you want to check out the extension before installing it, see [http://superuser.com/questions/337172/how-do-you- do-examine-...](http://superuser.com/questions/337172/how-do-you-do-examine-a- google-chrome-extension-before-installing-it)

<comment><USER4> Just for good measure: If you don't want to install an extension to inspect another extension all chrome extensions are just zip files so if you download the extension you can just unzip and see the contents.</comment></comment></comment>


An Open Letter to The Economist - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4486

<comment><USER2> wouldn't that be better as just a good old-fashioned _letter_ to the economist?</comment>


Ask HN: Elm-like JavaScript framework? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
A company hired me to to add a major feature to an existing product. I'm free to choose whatever front-end framework I like, but I'm not sure introducing a new (functional) language in this organization would be a good idea.
I'm impressed by elm's simplicity, and I'd like to structure this feature in a similar fashion. Do any of you know of existing frameworks which implement this approach?
I'd prefer light frameworks over heavier ones.
Thanks a lot! <comment><AUTHOR> Came across:

\- [https://bitbucket.org/jdubray/star- javascript](https://bitbucket.org/jdubray/star-javascript)

\- [https://github.com/mozilla/reflex](https://github.com/mozilla/reflex)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The Choo framework looks promising! [https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/choo](https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/choo)

</comment><comment><USER2> React - Redux should work decently well for you</comment>


Docker has raised $92M in new funding - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/15/docker-has-raised-92-million-in-new-funding/ <comment><AUTHOR> Is Docker really worth a 1B plus valuation, given the services already available from the big 3 cloud providers?</comment>


How to write a cold-email - <AUTHOR> http://hippoland.tumblr.com/post/47116935549/how-to-write-a-cold-email

<comment> D-Train Good article, and thanks for the share. I write a lot of cold emails, and everytime I compose a new one, I wonder how to write it better. Though, I've been writing cold emails a bit more like 8-10 sentences...

I wonder what thoughts are there about including some "extras" below the signature? That is, I'll include some pictures of my company's app or some testimonials below my signature to potentially help with intriguing the reader. And I start with pictures because pictures are naturally more engaging than words.

Any thoughts??</comment>


Ask HN: Have I burnt out and what should I do? - burnout-thrw Hello HN, I'm a fairly active member of the HN community but, as usual with this kind of post, I'm posting with a throwaway to avoid being labelled "damaged goods".
For the past few months, I've found it harder and harder to be motivated at work. I've known that I have had things to do, yet instead of doing them I will browse the internet, do other projects or even just sit there doing nothing. I open terminals, long files or emails - just so I can seem busy.
In my spare time, I contribute a lot to open-source and I work on a lot of projects in my spare time - I don't think I'm just being lazy as I will work hard in my spare time. I just can't bring myself to work hard at my job.
It's becoming more and more stressful as I am unable to complete projects that need to be done. I have a few that are urgent now but I keep putting them off, making up excuses, etc. I've just had yet another given to me. This time with a 3 week deadline. It's stuff I know that I can do and there's more than enough time, but I just can't bring myself to do it.
Most days I go home thinking to myself "I literally did nothing today". It's depressing and I'm really starting to hate work.
Is this burnout or just laziness and how can I tell? What should I do? Should I try and get better or just quit and hope for success at a new position? What if it happens again (I've been fine for the past year or so since I joined my present company, it has just been these past months)? Finally, does anyone else have any experience with burn-out and how did you get over it? <comment><AUTHOR> Personally, I'd say check the usual suspects first. Check your personal life first. Oftentimes, is something is out of whack in one place, it carries over to almost every other part of your life.

I think the most telling part about your story is "I'd say in the whole organisation there are only 2 people, plus myself, who actually care about writing good code". You either care about your job or you don't. It sounds like you do, but almost no one else in your organization does. That sucks. Do you say to yourself, "I hate my job, but love working with my co-workers?" If so, get out! It's hard and it's scary, but you need to. Trust me.

There are a lot of things you can do to care less about your job and find fulfillment elsewhere, but I advise against it. I want no part in turning someone into the kind of employee that doesn't really give a shit about what they do for a living.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER2> I relate to everything you said, and I've also read a lot of these posts on burnout. Everyone has the same list of symptoms, and the same mentality.

The unsuccessful seem to be the ones who do nothing, and wait to become unburnt out. I've been applying for a lot of jobs recently, and it's gone very well. I'm likely to have a few offers in the next couple weeks, but I find myself completely dissatisfied with the thought of taking another job. I'm nervous I'll be in the exact same situation after a week, or even the first day, of a new job.

The answer seems clear though, if you still like your job take a long vacation and come back. If you don't, quit your job and take the same vacation. Find a new job after.

That's such an easy thing to say though -- I know because I'm sitting here, still employed, and not fucking off to Australia for 6 months to learn to surf and relax. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER3> You are not motivated. Find something that motivates you. It sounds/reads like your current job may not be it -- or may not be sufficient, even if it's not deficient as work / a job.

Pay close attention to your physical health. Lack of physical well being can sap focus and energy as quick as anything else. If you're not exercising, do so. It doesn't matter so much what, as long as you enjoy and/or engage in doing it.

Pay attention to your personal life. (You have one, don't you?) Many jobs cannot meet all aspects of most people's personal needs.

With respect to the latter two, it's difficult to build solid work on top of a shaky foundation.

P.S. This represents a few suggestions. It's simplistic, not comprehensive. After all, I don't know you from Adam/Eve.

</comment><comment><USER4> From what I have witnessed over the years your feeling could be caused by really various factors. If you want some advice from the crowd here you probably need to provide some more details - at least about your professional situation e.g. big company or small? good management or not? good team or not? interesting project or not?

The optimistic scenario is: maybe you got bored with your current job? Some people just need changes.

<comment> burnout-thrw 50 or so employees. We're a digital agency. My team is great and so are the rest of my co-workers. Management is a joke. The projects are fun - however, that's the problem. We're rarely working on projects. We're usually fixing bugs in this horrible codebase we have or tacking on features onto the horrible code. I'd say in the whole organisation there are only 2 people, plus myself, who actually care about writing good code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You need a vacation.

Unplug yourself for two weeks. Travel a bit. Sit back and relax. Stop thinking about work.

Then come back and start working on your momentum again.

<comment><USER6> I was told to do this by HR after complaining of similar symptoms, citing that I would be 'completely refreshed' afterwards. Two weeks later, I didn't want to come back. Six months and multiple random days off to balance work/life later, I still didn't feel any different.

This is burned out, not overworked. Overworked leads to burn out, but so does not being heard out by the executives. Their inability to take the OP's experience and recommendations seriously (which is what they're doing by continuing down a path that won't work for them) is going to ruin them.

I'd suggest citing this as the reason for resignation despite their clout, because while they have connections, they don't have the foresight to do business effectively in this industry. Offer (again) any suggestions you have, see if they are interested in going another route to salvage you, otherwise take the steps you need to move along.

<comment><USER5> Good point.

I agree with what you say. The fact that he may not want to return to work is good. That means he can move on to better things.

I've been there. Not wanting to go back made me realize that I needed to move on.

Yes, it is tough. But I'm sure he will overcome this.

Good luck!</comment></comment></comment>


PHP.net beta site a new look - <AUTHOR> http://www.php.net/ <comment><USER2> woah, new beta site for php.net looks just like the old one. Thats awesome, then we dont have to learn the site structure again!

But no really, clicking the thing to get the new look, does nothing.

<comment><USER3> Refresh the page and it should work.</comment></comment>


C++11, random distributions, and Swift - <AUTHOR> https://www.fast.ai/2019/01/13/swift-random/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty happy with how this new project turned out - I was able to wrap C++11's random distribution library in a way to feels like idiomatic Swift code. Although Swift doesn't support C++ directly, creating a C API as shown here wasn't as troublesome as I expected.

Feedback welcome! I'd be particularly interested to hear of any success stories from people that have used frameworks that can automatically wrap a C++ with a pure C API.</comment>


Cambridge/Boston's Deluxe Co-Working Facility - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/03/06/tech-tour-cambridge-innovation-center

<comment><AUTHOR> As the article says it's like being at (but not "working at") a big company. The co-working space has an open table format that I like, but I also carry my office (laptop/papers/mouse/headphones) in a laptop bag. The community is a nice mix of people, slightly biased around 30-ish and self employed.

If you are in the area, you should at least check it out. You need to make an appointment, but the sales pitch was minimal. Those who end up here didn't need much of a pitch.</comment>


Project Oberon Emulator in JavaScript and Java - <AUTHOR> http://schierlm.github.io/OberonEmulator/ <comment> david-given For me, on Chrome Linux, typing into the editors is a bit problematic because pressing BACKSPACE navigates away from the emulator.

There was a copy of Oberon for Linux bundled on my original Infomagic CD set back in the 90s. I played with it a bit, but without documentation there wasn't much I could do, and it was closed source and so doomed to die.

To me, Oberon looks like the Wirth version of Kay's Smalltalk system, where they both developed an all-in-one GUI system, from scratch, with completely different philosophies. It be interesting to do a detailed comparison of how they differ and why...

<comment><USER2> There was a link to a paper giving a retrospective on Oberon on HN some days ago, and that made me want to play around with it. After trying an older now unsupoorted variant from the ETH site which segfaulted, I downloaded Oberon Linux Revival ([http://oberon.wikidot.com/](http://oberon.wikidot.com/)), and it worked for me. All files are kept in a single directory, and this includes the complete source (.Mod files), so you can browse these from Linux after dealing with the line endings (e.g. convert \r to \n using tr). There's no native Linux source, everything is written in Oberon. X11 is surprisingly accessed using the wire protocol directly.

Actually, about half of the Oberon system must even be compiled first (using the "recipe" in OLR.Gadgets.Tool) before these programs can be used in Oberon. There's also documentation in form of a "book" (Desktops.OpenDoc Book.Tool) which explains the system on various levels, including the Oberon language.

The font size turned out to be too small on my screen (because the bitmapped screen fonts where made for different hardware), and the fonts are hardlinked from the documents, so I shuffled the *.Scr.Fnt files about two sizes down and everything was readable. I also replaced Default.Pal with Light.Pal for better contrast. You can use the OWEIGHT and OHEIGHT environment variables to set the window size.

All in all, the "TUI" (textual user interface) is really nice. There are indeed similarities with Smalltalk, Emacs, or the Plan 9 ACME system philosophy (which is probably not surprising, all of those take a "integrated modifiable system for coders" approach).

<comment> david-given Hmm, that crashes for me --- SIGBUS shortly after trying to mmap .Xauthority?

I wonder how much RAM it needs. Would this make a useful tiny operating system for homebrew computers, I wonder?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pressing backspace in the emulator navigates backwards (in page history) which makes this impossible to use/play with.

<comment><USER4> It seems to be fine in Firefox 40.0.2 on Windows. Edit: Although I find I cannot use the mouse pointer at the far right of the canvas, for example to click the boxes which I assume are "close pane".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> had never heard of this. and i do follow osnews cult. the UI reminds me of plan9

<comment><USER6> Should be the other way about as Oberon came before Plan9.

<comment><USER7> Is it documented that p9 took inspiration from Oberon ? even if it seems obvious.

<comment><USER8> Yes, Oberon is referenced here: [http://research.swtch.com/acme.pdf](http://research.swtch.com/acme.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: "Dropbox for Wi-Fi" - <AUTHOR> http://www.instabridge.com Since the server just went down: Since the site is having problems: Vimeo video: http://vimeo.com/54228044 Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instabridg... Blog: http://blog.instabridge.com/ <comment><USER2> Dropbox for Wi-Fi? I haven't even gotten past the first page of instabridge and I already think the tag-line is more confusing then explanatory.

Do you anything that has to do with shared cloud storage or collaboration? If not, just don't compare to Dropbox just to try to seem disruptive or give yourself an 'air' of success even before launch.

Also: Frontpage explains nothing about what the service does. I would try boiling it down to a few short bullets or an effective one-liner instead of leaning on people knowing what dropbox does and somehow apply it to your model.

<comment><USER3> DropBox for wifi, as in, I have access on all my devices and can assign/revoke permissions with friends. Maybe Airbnb of Wifi is better?

Also, the homepage summed it up for me nicely.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to write AirBnb for Wi-Fi initially. But our product manager stopped me. A sad day for the world.

Samuel - if you are reading this, look what you have done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Niklas from Instabridge here. To expand a bit on the "X for Y" description: Instabridge makes it easy to sync wifi credentials across different devices, share credentials with friends, and revoke access. The Dropbox analogy has been proven to be an effective one-sentence way of giving people an idea of what Instabridge is about, but of course there are differences between wifi access and file storage, so that's as far as it can be stretched.

Apart from trying to solve the usability issues with wifi, we also support sharing of hotspots with the entire Instabridge community. This is intended for cafés, restaurants, and so on.

We've had a short beta run in the Nordics, and launched globally a couple of days ago at LAUNCH 2013 (where we won the "Best International Startup" prize. Yay, us!). I'm a long time HN reader and have seen many "Show HN" posts during the years. I'm really eager to read what you guys have to say, both the good and the bad.

<comment><USER4> Hey Niklas, thanks for sharing your startup with us! It looks great and it's absolutely a service I'd like to use. Maybe it's more like a "social network for wifi passwords" but whatever ;)

Here's the thing though: my Android phone doesn't need this, it's got 3G and that's generally enough so I don't go through the hassle of turning on the battery-sucking WiFi just so it can notify me of new emails a bit faster.

What _does_ need an app like this is my laptop. Any plans for OS X / Windows / Linux clients?

<comment><AUTHOR> OS X, Windows, Linux: Yes, yes and yes!

Now we say that we sync passwords that's only between Android devices. I think the real killer is when we make an app your laptop that sync via bluetooth from your phone.

Great that your 3G is working so well, for some reason I always have really bad coverage and am constantly asking for the Wi-Fi password.

<comment><USER4> Bluetooth sync would be fine, as long as the laptop itself would be allowed to keep those entries stored until next sync.

> Great that your 3G is working so well

Where are you at? I'm mostly running around in Germany, UK, and well-connected parts of Asia so that's probably where my bias comes from ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I read "Dropbox for Wi-Fi" I thought the app would be something like a shared folder between clients in a local Wi-Fi network.

"Couple your Wi-Fi passwords to your FB account and easily share them with friends" would have been a clearer description for me.

I really like the idea, though. I sincerely hope it will catch on.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps "Google Docs for Wi-Fi" would be a better analogy for the invitation system?

Edit: "Social Wi-Fi" or "social Wi-Fi sharing" would probably be the best thing to call this instead of "X for Wi-Fi" (if it weren't for the existence of <http://www.socialwifi.net/>).

<comment><USER7> I'm still a bit confused about what it does, "share your passwords securely through facebook"?

EDIT: read the about page, maybe "Share your wifi password securely with your facebook friends" or "Never have to ask for a wifi password from your facebook friends"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be awesome if you guys took this to the next step: let me share my wifi to all my Facebook friends (or for some people anyone) as long as they have signed up to share their wifi with me as well.

(Great idea. I also don't like the tagline.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can do that already, sorta. Play around with it and let me know if it's what you imagined or if there's anything we should add.

<comment><USER8> The sorta part is a small problem. It makes my life easier if you have the gaming built in. (Also it might help your viral spread).

I will definitely play with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sorry, but "Dropbox for WiFi" pretty immediately invokes a product like Apple's AirDrop feature, where one can--to quote from Apple's site[1]--"[d]rag and drop a file to send it wirelessly to someone on the same network."

This is exactly what I expected to see the app do--ad hoc file sharing between devices on the same network.

You have chosen a poor descriptor.

[1]: <http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/#sharing>

<comment><USER10> Also thought the same thing. Assumed it was going to be AirDrop for Windows and/or Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since the site is having problems:

Vimeo video: <http://vimeo.com/54228044>

Android app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instabridg...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instabridge.android)

Blog (which seems to be working): <http://blog.instabridge.com/>

And text-only Google cache the above came from, which has a couple other links, but not much to show: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.ins...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.instabridge.com&hl=en&strip=1)

<comment><USER12> Those are some truly nasty app permissions. They should at least explain why they feel a need for them (yes, I can see why they would want many of them but at the very least they should explain it).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, we did our best to keep the app permissions at a bare minimum. But I guess you can say we failed. As soon as you start doing anything interesting you want a lot of permissions.

But good point. I'll update the Google Play description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The video was more explanatory than anything. Great job with it. I'll be waiting for the iPhone version. I'm not sure if you can access the Wi-Fi settings through the SDK on iPhone, but it looks like they've done it on Android. Cool app!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm glad you like it! iOS is unfortunately a bit restricted on the Wi- Fi front. Hopefully Apple will open it up in the future.

<comment><USER14> Even a copy and paste of the password would be useful, like 1Password does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool app, I like the idea of it. I installed it and went through the verification process in the app and two problems: first, the verification text message it sent to me was auto-populated into the box (I suspect this to be some debug code that got shipped accidentally). Second, it couldn't actually connect to my Wifi using my password despite entering it multiple times, even resetting my router's wifi password.

<comment><AUTHOR> The auto population is actually supposed to be a feature. We shamelessly looked at what WhatsApp did and did the same thing ourselves.

Ouch on the router passwords. Any chance I could get you to send an email to niklas a.t. instabridge dot com with your name and type of router?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great job on the video.. seems pretty professionally done and explained the purpose of the app with clarity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! It's a lot of work behind it, all done on a scrappy startup budget. Bonus points if anyone can spot all the references to HN/Reddit related stuff in it.

<comment><USER17> Very nice, I could only spot OAG. How did you handle the music?

As for the product, there are a couple of things that aren't clear; do you actually end up connecting directly to your friends' wifi, or are you routed through their phone? IE can I turn my phone's wifi off and they are still able to access my network? It also comes across that my friends' friends will automatically get access to my network.. don't like that. I imagine it's probably configurable, but that's not made clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, we should probably clarify that then. Everything is routed to their home/office router. Once you've given access your phone is out of the equation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The "Don't have an Android phone?" link brings you to an early access signup page. Can this be used on a device besides Android? While I have a droid and really like the idea, it doesn't help me if all of my friends (all of them iPhone users) are unable to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We can do iOS. The user experience would not be as nice as on Android, we'd need to work with profiles but it's definitely doable.

Invite your friends and as soon as we release the iOS version we'll let your friends now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am super interested in this, and I think it is a fantastic idea. One critical problem (for me): I don't use Facebook. I look forward to seeing the address book integration, or even better, G+.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use the address book too! No Facebook required.

<comment><USER19> I could have sworn I saw that address book integration was upcoming (not available now). My mistake! Thanks for the heads up. That said, G+ sign in would still be cool. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dropbox for Wi-Fi seems a more confusing description that just "Wi-Fi password sync".

This happens out of the box on Windows 8 (when tied to a Microsoft account) and freaked me out a little when it first happened. Took a work tablet home for some testing and found it connected to my Wi-Fi automatically. Had me hunting for security problems before I realised what had happened.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I think that's a great move by Microsoft. Let's hope they Instabridge enable it too so that's it's just as easy to share it with your friends!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I agree you need to get rid of the "Dropbox for Wi-Fi" tagline, that is one hell of a well done promo video.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! It's a lot of work put into it, all with a scrappy startup budget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice to see an explanation video that isn't just stick figures and animation. It was really slick - informative, humorous, and on brand (love that your socks match your brand's colour).

Agree that dropbox for wi-fi is confusing. Why not something like 'easy wi-fi sharing' or the like.

PS - where was this filmed? Geneva?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you noticed the socks! It's all filmed in Stockholm, Sweden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I prefer WifiPass: <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.movile.wp>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool app! Why do you prefer it? Any special feature you feel that Instabridge is missing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm a little confused on how you keep the password private. Can't an Android user just go to Settings->Wifi and look at the current network password?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, but it's available in plain text if you root the phone. That's why we only suggest you share with people you trust.

There are a bunch of stuff we could do to prevent even that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For Android: <http://blog.qr4.nl/QR-Code-WiFi.aspx>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really cool. Would be cool to do the same thing with NFC now that most phones have it.

<comment><USER25> I think this one might do it... [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.jessechen....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.jessechen.instawifi)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think this is awesome..but I have almost no friends with android. Do you guys have a timeline for the iOS port?

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm guessing you can still see the password in wpa_supplicant at least when connected to the network ?

</comment><comment><USER28> Loved the video - funny, a little cute, and not overdone. Great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! It's a lot of work behind it, all done on a scrappy startup budget. Kudos if you can spot all the references to HN/Reddit related stuff in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> While the name is confusing, the concept is pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER30> how about "browsing patterns of strangers get attributed to your network connection"</comment>


Reactotron – CLI and OS X app for inspecting React Native and JS apps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/reactotron/reactotron <comment><USER2> I've been doing react web and native apps for a while. Why do I want this exactly? Seems like a lot of stuff that's almost competing with my ide stuff but not quite useful enough to switch off?

Not attacking, just want some perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally legit concerns.

For me, I have visibilty issues into my apps when they grow. The ability to query your redux state tree for answers at any time without logging is helpful for me.

Same with API calls... wait what did I just send? Thats not right!

The subscribe feature allows you to keep an eye on subsets of your state tree as they change.

Its all about focusing. Which is my achillies heel.

What kind of tools are you using for this now?

Cheers man. Appreciate the honest feedback.

<comment><USER3> If you're using Chrome, I highly recommend the Redux DevTools extension. You'll have insight into your state, actions and even a timeline. With a little extra work (less than Reactotron) you'll get it working in React Native as well. I find it quite helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 for Redux DevTools! Its great! The guy who wrote it is much smarter than me. :)

Reactotron has a slightly broader scope (read: not as feature complete with redux - eg, no time travel debugging). I do have things like api monitoring, logging, error tracking with source maps, and benchmarking.

I couldnt quite fit that in my demo gif. It took 11 takes to get what I settled on. I could use some improvement with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What did you use for the CLI UI? It looks really nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Blessed. It does a lot. Theres also a contrib repo for it that does graphs, a grid sytem, maps (if you can believe it), etc.

Problem is, colorizing the code can be cpu heavy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me, one of the big drawbacks this has when compared to Redux logger middleware is that I can't inspect each object associated with a given action. Being able to watch my state mutate and look at it after the fact has been a great boon.

<comment><AUTHOR> The new App supports this when you subscribe to paths in your state tree. It'll tell you: of the keys you're tracking, heres the adds, edits, and deletes. At mutation time.

Redux logger indeed shows you all this info. My goal with this is not to show you everything, but just what matters.

Debugging is a very personal thing. Hell, I remember using MessageBeep() in the 90's to help me debug. Whatever works!

<comment><USER5> Excellent, didn't know about the update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am curious of the use of React to build desktop apps. Can anyone give me an overview?

<comment><USER7> Have a look to Electron [http://electron.atom.io/](http://electron.atom.io/) it provides the APIs to the host OS, then about the React part maybe using one of the popular boilerplates [https://github.com/chentsulin/electron-react- boilerplate](https://github.com/chentsulin/electron-react-boilerplate)

<comment><USER6> I am sorry, I meant to ask if React is as fast as writing applications in other langs like C/Java/Python/Go.

I hear that JS is slow, plus I use a lot of apps based on electron and they are a bit slow, VSCode is a remarkable exception to that norm.

<comment><USER3> React _Native_ uses native OS components, meaning they'll render fast. But if you want to do heavy computing you may get frame drops. Some bundled components are partially native and partially custom, so you'll still need to be mindful of how you work with them.

There's a section in the React Native documentation dedicated to explaining this and I think it does a good job of it: [https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/performance.htm...](https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/performance.html)

In my opinion, for many use cases you'll be able to write an app that really feels native an performs very well. If you need more performance or other custom stuff you are also able to integrate your own native components (e.g. Swift/Objective-C, etc.) into React Native.

<comment><USER6> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This kind of tool would be very nice when integrated into IDEA, maybe using a plugin?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm team Atom and considered a plugin for that. However my Vim friends would have killed me, so I went Electron instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks interesting! Nice to see some solid open source tooling emerging for React.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. There's lots of action going on right now in the tools space.

For React Native there's Redux Dev Tools, Deco, Ignite, Exponent, and this to name a few. All active, interesting, and open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey skellock, I see you're using AVA for testing. As an AVA team member, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I absolutely adore AVA. Two way dependency tracking is underhyped.

You've done amazing work. Thank you.

<comment><USER11> Though off topic. Could you explain a bit more on what you mean by "two way dependency tracking" ? Something along the lines of why that is useful and how ava helps in this would be really helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> In watch mode, most testing frameworks can detect that you saved your test file and re-run it.

With AVA, if you save the file your test is targeting, it will re-run your test.

And every other test targeting it.

And every other test that has a nested dependency on it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Only Argument You Will Ever Need Against PHP - <AUTHOR> https://doriantaylor.com/the-only-argument-you-will-ever-need-against-php <comment><USER2> "Expertise arbitrage" is what pays my mortgage and keeps my kids fed. I don't see a need to complain about this, personally.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your article vents about the frustration of working on someone else's code, when you have the advantage of hindsight and something that works at least somewhat. That has nothing to do with PHP. I think you should examine your assumptions.

> ...in 20 years, I've never encountered a situation in which I needed > something PHP does that something else didn't.

Fine, but just a few paragraphs later you actually describe what PHP does that other things don't: allows less experienced/skilled programmers to get something to work quickly and deploy it easily. That actually has tremendous value to a lot of businesses.

> ...mopping up some hacked or otherwise messed up doo-dad or other, because > the person who put it there couldn't.

Maybe the person who put it there just ranks way below you in terms of skill. Or maybe they had budget and time constraints and an anxious customer in a hurry to get something working on a $10/month shared hosting setup.

> I feel injured by this. I feel robbed.

With all respect, grow up. If you take code this personally -- especially someone else's code -- you show an immature and elitist attitude toward your profession.

> This kind of expertise arbitrage, where the skill level you need to set > something up initially is nowhere near the skill level you need to fix it > when it breaks, is pervasive in the software industry...

Yes, the entire profession of programming rests on what you call expertise arbitrage. It may derive from the difference between my expertise and my client's, or my expertise and the previous developer. We make money from the arbitrage. If you don't like that kind of work don't take on those jobs.

> If an attacker can smuggle a PHP file onto your document root, then they can > execute it. If they can do that, then they own you. This attack vector > cannot be eliminated. If you use PHP, you will always be fighting it. > Forever.

If someone can smuggle a file into your document root or anywhere else on your server, you have a problem no matter what language. You can mitigate this risk easily with well-understood practices for PHP and server configuration. I have worked mostly with PHP for almost 20 years and have actually never seen this happen, though I have found sites that could allow it (and I fixed the problem easily). No one is constantly fighting this problem forever.

> Once again, this situation is not unique to PHP, it's just that PHP is where > you're most likely to see it. This issue also isn't strictly about document > roots, but more about the level of control over what code gets executed. > It's the difference between a default-deny policy and default-allow.

People who work with web apps see more problems with PHP because PHP dominates the web application space by a very wide margin. The last time I saw a web app with huge security holes (200 failures in an automated security audit) it was Ruby/Rails, not PHP.

> PHP web apps can be made to run outside the document root just like > anything else, and indeed this is how modern MVC frameworks operate. > Sure they can, but then you obviate the point of using it. If you aren't > going to be plunking files into your document root for immediate > execution, you may as well use some other stack.

Sure. You miss an even more important reason for choosing PHP: the relatively mature library/frameworks available, and the huge number of PHP programmers relative to other web-ready languages. If I sell my client on a Haskell or Smalltalk solution because I hate PHP, I may have done my client a serious disservice because they will have a harder time finding someone capable of working on that. Or maybe you mean Java or Node.js or .Net, all of which have their own security and deployment issues.

> What kind of jobs though? Mopping-up jobs, of course. Moreover, on the other > side of that job is an employer, who is more than happy to take advantage of > all this competition. If you aren't working at Facebook, the Wikimedia > Foundation, Automattic or Acquia, it's probably worth asking yourself, dear > PHP developer, if you are being played.

Nope. First, 90% of programming amounts to what you call "mopping up" and what the rest of us call maintenance and enhancement. Limiting yourself to green- fields projects in your preferred language won't lead to employment for most programmers. And you misunderstand how competition for jobs works -- PHP developers can and do make just as much as people working with other stacks.

> Expertise arbitrage, though, irrespective of its substrate, is very real and > very much a liability. This to me makes one's choice of stack more than just > a matter of taste: it's an object of organizational design.

What does that even mean?

> And if that isn't good enough, I can tell you from experience that banning > PHP will eliminate aeons of monotonous tweezing out of Russian dick-pill > spam.

No, it won't. Banning open email relays would help with that particular problem, but that has nothing to do with PHP. Programmers will always vary greatly in skill level and we will always have a lot of low-quality software running in production. Get over yourself.</comment>


Facebook just released this new open source JavaScript engine - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-just-released-a-new-open-source-javascript-engine/ <comment><USER2> >"...Hermes is not aimed at browsers or, for example, how Node.js on the server side"

Very confusing sentence..

>"We're not trying to compete in the browser space or the server space. Hermes could in theory could be for those kinds of use cases, that's never been our goal."

The article ends here, could anyone explain what the _goal_ of Hermes is? It's great that Hermes is more efficient for React applications, but how am I going to deliver my React applications with Hermes? If facebook's goal isn't to "compete in the browser space or the server space" how do they plan to get people using Hermes?

<comment><USER3> React Native runs on a JavaScript runtime with a FFI to integrate with native iOS and Android APIs

Hermes is basically a replacement for the (current) default React Native runtime which is designed to work a lot faster in that particular scenario.</comment></comment>


Don't let your online learning go unnoticed, track it smartly for real success - <AUTHOR> https://www.engrip.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> How many of you think that you need a tool to document your online learning to make it more rewarding?</comment>


Show HN: 3D globe of world air traffic - <AUTHOR> https://maps.blueshift.io/air-traffic-globe/ <comment><USER2> Still doesn't work on Firefox, very impressive on Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing it out. What operating system are you using? Firefox works OK for me on Windows 10.

<comment><USER2> 51.0.1 (64-bit) running on Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS.</comment></comment></comment>


Filming 100-Megapixel Aerials Over New York - <AUTHOR> http://www.phfx.com/articles/Filming100MegapixelLargeFormatAerialsOverNewYork/ <comment><AUTHOR> See the 8K movie at youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN3uF3990Q0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN3uF3990Q0)

<comment><USER3> For the daytime shots especially, I see lots of weird aliasing artifacts on the buildings. Is it like that for everyone, or is that just a sideeffect of watching a 4320p video on a 1440p monitor?

<comment><USER4> It's aliasing. You don't see it on stuff filmed with most consumer cameras because they have an anti aliasing filter over the sensor. If you want maximum resolution, you remove that filter. They could have removed it in post but again it would reduce the effective resolution.

<comment><USER5> That's incorrect. You're thinking of a low pass filter, for which the Red supports a variety of filters that you can switch. What the parent most likely is seeing is bad nearest-neighbor downscaling (e.g bad selection of downscaling algorithm).

<comment><USER6> Maybe photo vs film terminology? On my canon 5DSr, it is definitely the physical antialiasing filter that is removed to allow improved sharpness per pixel at the expense of greater risk of moire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet the ultra-high resolution video looks somehow artificial and like it's rendered instead of filmed because of all the sharpness that is not normally seen by the eye because of focusing.

<comment><USER8> It's how sensor and post-processing play together. You probably won't enjoy the look that is coming straight out of camera (ordinary and ugly), so an artistic license is applied in "cooking" colors, noise removal, sharpening, remapping of light dynamic range etc. to make it look better. If you do pro photography, you might be amused how much artificial some photos look straight out of camera, especially if you are using off-camera flashes; sometimes you get candy-like photos with accentuated edges that look unnatural, but that comes straight out of camera in the RAW file already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Probably a false positive but this site triggered my anti-virus (Malwarebytes)

<comment><USER10> same here

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty rad setup! I love this kind of marriage of technology and art! Very nice work! Thanks for an inspiration!

Did you think about doing the same above Kīlauea these days?

</comment><comment><USER11> That video is crazy. It looks surreal on my 4k monitor.

</comment><comment><USER12> So whats the target audience? Who wants this video?

Who can even play it?

<comment><USER13> > So whats the target audience? Who wants this video?

I imagine that downsampled and tweaked to seem even more vivid, this is the sort of thing that appeals to television manufacturers so that they have cool demo videos to play in a loop in the shop.

<comment><USER14> My TV at home plays long aerial shots like this of Dubai and Hong Kong when there's no signal. It's actually quite pleasant.

<comment><USER15> Same, via my Apple TV. Sometimes I enjoy just sitting and watching it in silence!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hope to watch this one day on my own monitor, or at least any 8k capable screen.

</comment><comment><USER17> The cameras used are absolutely insane...

<comment><USER18> for anyone interested...[http://www.red.com/store/products/dsmc2-brain/710-0303](http://www.red.com/store/products/dsmc2-brain/710-0303)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a neat camera, but it's really unfortunate that you can't put industry- standard cinema glass on it (eg, Master Prime, Summilux, Cooke etc).

Spending all that money on body and rigging, then having to use a Tokina or Sigma lens is kind of ridiculous.

<comment><USER20> Mounts are changeable to PL, Leica, PV, EF, Nikon on those Reds.

<comment><USER5> Correct. Master Primes, Cookes and Leica Summilux are all PL-mount, with which the Red is completely compatible. Seeing such a bullshit attack as the top comment is really unfortunate.

<comment><USER19> > "bullshit attack"

There are currently only 2 lenses made specifically for this sensor - <USER2> Tokina and the Schneider Xenon.

<comment><USER21> Cool story bro.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps you should walk away from this thread. You're only humiliating yourself further.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>