The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mystery-of-when-to-stop-antidepressants-1457377316?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> There's a disconnect between what the meta-analysed randomized clinical trials are saying about antidepressants (that they are at best minimally effective relative to placebo) and what relapse rates suggest (that people relapse when withdrawn from antidepressants because the antidepressant was effectively treating the underlying depression).

This conflict is resolved when antidepressants are acknowledged as addictive. Long-term use of antidepressants creates a biochemical dependency that is only removed with long, slow tapering.

I've experienced this fact personally. When I first attempted to go off antidepressants, I did so at what I thought was a slow pace, but in fact turned out to be far too fast. My life completely fell apart. I was depressed, anxious, obsessive, worse than I had been in many years. I thought this proved that I really "had depression" (as a discrete illness) and needed the drugs, so I increased my dose back up to more or less the original level. Soon after doing this, my depression/anxiety/OCD went away, and I felt normal again.

But a few years later I tried getting off the drugs again, going much more slowly. And now I'm at the same point I was last time when things fell apart, and I'm doing fine. Overall this withdrawal (from 200mg Zoloft) will probably take me 3 or 4 years. (I'm down to 25mg now.)

I'm convinced that I'm succeeding now where I failed before simply because my previous approach was triggering horrible withdrawal effects, whereas my current slower approach does not.

One secret to successful antidepressant withdrawal: the rate of dose reductions needs to decrease as the overall dose decreases. So when I'm at 200mg maybe I decrease by 20mg in a month. But now that I'm at 25mg maybe I decrease by 2.5mg in a month. The rate of decrease should be proportional to the current dose.

Before I was decreasing in constant increments all the way down (200->150->100->50) but then I started going crazy.

Sorry this is so long. It's a favorite subject of mine ;-)

<comment><USER3> Interesting customer retention scheme Big Pharma has come up with. Find a pool of folks at risk for suicide, and then get them addicted to expensive chemicals that will exacerbate suicidal ideation if they try to quit.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/)

"The FDA requires two adequately conducted clinical trials showing a significant difference between drug and placebo. But there is a loophole: There is no limit to the number of trials that can be conducted in search of these two significant trials."

<comment><USER4> > Interesting customer retention scheme Big Pharma has come up with.

Yes, keeping the customer alive is indeed good for business.

<comment><USER5> Keeping the customer addicted is good for business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lexapro (Escitalopram) saved my life. I don't care what any meta-analysis says: years of diet, exercise, and meditation did 5% of what 1 month of Lexapro did for me. I will take it until I die.

<comment><USER7> Myself likewise. I don't wish to revisit the pit and wallow through the cognitive fog. An interesting aside: why do users of antidepressants feel the need to reduce their dose? It's a benign addiction, like moderate caffeine dependency. One reason is that there _is_ a trade-off; these drugs make us a little dull and less interesting to ourselves.

<comment><USER8> side effects.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough, I've been lucky. The only side-effect I've noticed over long-term use is a slight dullness. Some people suffer all kinds of weirdness.

<comment><USER9> The worst luck is experiencing side effects/personality change from the meds, but not being able to notice them _because_ of the medication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While SSRIs and SNRIs have been around for years and have shown questionable efficacy, opioids have been around for centuries and have shown to provide instant and effective relief to depression. Unfortunately, opioids have a side effect called "ruining your life". Based on this though, there's a new generation of antidepressants that target a completely different part of the brain. Essentially it's the depression blocking effects of opiods without the euphoria, so low to no addiction potential. alks-5461 is the one that will hit the market soon... hoping it's not too expensive. [http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2014/08/05/new- antidepressant-a...](http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2014/08/05/new- antidepressant-alks-5461-trials-2016-expected-availability)

<comment><USER10> And actually... if you have MDD, you might consider signing up: [https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT02218008?term=a...](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT02218008?term=alks-5461)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately, you cannot cite clinical trials as the sole means to determine individual patient relapse potential.

Many doctors, especially psychiatrists, use clinically-proven if-then-else type criteria tools created by professional psychiatrist bodies.

As your therapy progresses, depending on how you score with the criteria, the doctor will opt to:

\- Taper down and cease medication

\- Reduce medication dose and supplement with behavioral therapy

\- Stay on the current dose

\- Increase dose if your symptoms worsen

<comment><USER12> \- That one didn't seem to work (or was intolerable), try this one. (Continue to repeat cycle until something gives...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone know how to get around the paywall?

<comment><USER14> Google for "The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants" and click through there. Didn't work for me in 'incognito mode' but it did when running normally. YMMV.

<comment><USER8> I was totally unable to bypass it as well.

<comment> cat-dev-null Same here. Tried Chrome and FF in regular mode, all extensions off.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google and Yahoo Romania defaced - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Yahoo-Romania-Hacked-by-Algerian-Cybercriminal-310254.shtml

<comment><USER2> Wow...how noobish from both sites. Any person with access to search engines can learn how to do a DNS poisoning in a day. I would have expected some better protection mechanisms from such big-name services.</comment>


Study: Only 1 in 5 Workers is "Engaged" in Their Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com/article/147801/Study_Finds_Only_in_Global_Workers_Engaged_Senior_Managers_Key_to_Improvement A recent study of some 90,000 workers around the world found that only 21 percent of them are "engaged," or willing to go the extra mile to help their organizations succeed. <comment><USER3> the other 4/5 are doing just enough to keep their jobs. duh. what's the point in trying if there's really nothing in it for you? everyone knows that if you want a raise, you need to get another job.

<comment><USER4> That's not necessarily true - I've worked harder on volunteer projects than on fairly well-paying professional jobs.

I think it's more that when there's very little in it for you, your tolerance for bullshit is fairly low. So when there's little bullshit, you keep working hard even if salaries are fairly low. As soon as you start hitting bullshit, you give up and either find a new job or slack off.

This is probably why the study found that the organization has more of an effect on motivation than any personal or work-experience factors - <USER2> organizations keep bullshit to a minimum even if they don't pay their people all that much. Like Google.

It also explains why the documentation on nearly every open-source project sucks.</comment></comment>


Functions vs. Containers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@carimura/containers-vs-functions-51c879216b97 <comment><USER2> its _

<comment><AUTHOR> it is.

<comment><USER2> "can run and serve it is purpose by itself"

"as long as it gets it is required input."

"At it is core,"

"bring the architecture and it is benefits"</comment></comment></comment>


The "lagom" leader - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@alexewerlof/the-lagom-leader-7f0ee4aec360 <comment><USER2> >He wasn't insecure. His source of confidence came from within and he didn't need anyone's approval.

You can teach management. People can learn how to become great managers. You can't build great leaders. Leadership qualities are personality qualities.

All that said, I think there is something in Swedish workplace culture enables lagom leadership to succeed. When going gets tough, Swedes have 'fika'.</comment>


Google's Last MySpace Payment: $75 Million On June 20, 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/13/googles-last-myspace-payment-75-million-on-june-20-2010/ <comment><USER2> If google drops them, perhaps it will actually inspire them to fix some/all of their usability issues.

I still have a myspace account -- I just cant remember the last time I logged in. The last straw was advertisements that screamed at me on mouseover, the inability to perform simple tasks without 6 clicks, and the fact that you cant even login easily.

If they lose guaranteed revenue, perhaps they will have to address these issues, and more. I wonder if it is too late.</comment>


SEO Strategy that Works - <AUTHOR> http://ginzametrics.com/seo-strategy-that-works.html

<comment><USER2> SEO for games, social or otherwise, is almost always going to be challenging. Any idiot could rank the official Zynga site for Farmville or practically any query with "Farmville" in it. That doesn't really help, though.

1) To the extent that someone is actually searching for Farmville, it is because their business/media juggernaut already has succeeded in reaching that person. Everything after that is about filling transactional intent, which is much less complicated since Zynga has and always will have a total lock on transactions with their brand.

2) Game companies have a lot of difficulty getting non-branded queries to work as a distribution channel. Really, what would you type in to find Farmville prior to finding Farmville. "online farming game"? That's probably near the head of the distribution, and if you rank #1 for it that will get you a few dozen signups a month. That won't move the needle for Zynga. You also probably couldn't scale your way to meaningful numbers through X,000 pieces of content with each one converting a handful of people. So you either go with industrial scale generation and become Demand Media, or you go with the much surer viral/paid ad channels.

SEO is really, really good at answering specific needs your prospective customers know they have (Demand Media really, really gets this at a fundamental level). Games typically don't work like that, transactional/navigational queries aside.

Of possible note: there are quite a few publishers cashing in on Zynga's lackluster SEO efforts by creating pages responsive to queries like [farmville strategies], [farmville crops], and the like. Those get decent volume but wouldn't result in new account creation. Monetization seems to be a mix of affiliate products and generic backfill AdSense like, e.g., Evony.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. I agree that the SEO for games themselves is much harder, although I do know some companies doing quite well at it.

As you mention, there is opportunity for 3rd parties and this will increase as brands get further involved. I think it's all still new enough that the needs for (insert search term here) in the context of gaming have not yet been created, but I believe this will change over the next few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A hint I'll drop is that the "monetizability" of a niche for advertising isn't what you'd think.

For one thing, areas that everybody thinks are "monetizable" often have huge amounts of content chasing a small advertising spend, resulting in very low eCPM.

Then there are capricious factors that are very specific to the niche. You do better with a Chevy forum than a Cadillac forum because the real money is in ads for aftermarket parts -- Caddy enthusiasts like OEM parts, so nobody wants to advertise to them. (GM doesn't, since people on Caddy forums are already sold on the brand and know more about the next crop of Caddies coming out than the dealers do.)

Overall, web publishers cheat themselves out of ad revenue by choosing topics the way they do. If you threw a dart at the "encyclopedia of the situation" and picked a random topic you'd get better than average results!

Personally I'm delighted by the increasing use of behavioral targeting technology: I'm finding that behavioral targeting is greatly raising the revenue I get from my worst performing sites.

<comment><USER4> "Personally I'm delighted by the increasing use of behavioral targeting technology: I'm finding that behavioral targeting is greatly raising the revenue I get from my worst performing sites."

Can you please elaborate on that?

<comment><USER3> For a long time, Google ads were entirely contextual: they served up ads based on the content of your page.

Contextual ads work well on a site for which the text is predictive of what ads will make money; for instance, in the case of a car forum, you can figure out what kind of cars are being talked about, if they are fixing up drivers, if they are racing, whatever.

Contextual ads work poorly on sites (like Facebook) that aren't really about any topic in particular -- because the text isn't predictive of anything. Also, in some cases, you can predict accurately what ads are likely to make a profit, but the profit isn't much.

Behavioral ads to the rescue -- the ad network sticks a cookie on your and tracks your interests over the long term. Although contextual ads are (overall) better targeted, a network like Adsense that does both can guess which will perform best for a particular impression, raising earnings for publishers and the networks.

Behavioral ads take many forms, but my favorite form right now are ones that are integrated with the shopping process. For instance, if you spend some time on Zappos, you might find ads for Zappos on other sites that feature the sort of products you were looking at. (Right now I'm thinking about what the next Gamecube RPG I'm going to buy next, so it would be logical for AMZN to try to tempt me to close the deal)

Anyway, Google added behavioral targeting and third party ad networks a few months ago -- publishers don't need to do anything special to benefit... we just get bigger checks!

<comment><USER5> I like this both as a publisher and a consumer. (Privacy issues are real, of course, but I can browse in ptivate mode, via proxy, etc if I choose.)

<comment><USER6> A web proxy might hide your IP address from the original website, however I guess that Google uses cookies to keep track of you. This means a web proxy won't help your privacy, since Google would still have a big record of you, what you buy, what you browse, who you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> SEO seems to be an example of a zero-sum game. If everyone adopts the same strategy that "works", wouldn't it stop working?

<comment><USER8> It sort of depends how you look at it. From Google's point of view, good (white hat) SEO is more of an "everyone wins" game, because the more sites that do it, the better the search results get. Your site is returned only when it is relevant, and sites get the attention (ranking) that they actually deserve.

Of course, a lot of SEO is more focused on "get my ranking up, no matter what". In a world where everyone uses black hat techniques, it's AT BEST a zero sum game (more realistically, everyone loses, because search engines become useless and then everyone stops using them).</comment></comment>


New Rejection Reason From Apple May Have Major Implications  - <AUTHOR> http://readitlaterlist.com/blog/2010/08/version-2-2-rejected-new-rejection-reason-from-apple-may-have-major-implications/ <comment><USER2> The email is confusingly worded, but I think it's simply saying that

1\. you can't require account registration if the app does not provide account-specific functionality, and

2\. if your app has both account-specific and non-account-specific functionality, registration can only be required to access the former.

I'm going to agree with houseabsolute and chalk this up to a mistake. That is, the app reviewer mistakenly assumed the app did not have account-specific functionality, or exclusively account-specific functionality. There are far too many (major) apps that require an account to do anything for his interpretation to make sense.

I wouldn't put this sort of craziness past Apple, but reviewer error just seems far more likely.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the wording is poor here but this basically appears to boil down to 'you cannot ask for a bunch of personal information from users for no valid reason'. Which seems entirely reasonable and a good use of Apple's power to stop the harvesting of personal information. But lets not let that get in the way of a good outrage session.

<comment><USER4> > But lets not let that get in the way of a good outrage session.

I know it's an old argument and many people don't like to be reminded of it, but for some people, each an every one of these 'total platform rejections' represents an outrage.

<comment><USER4> Wow people are sensitive. Of course it's perfectly fine for the Apple apologists to rehash their justifications on each and every instance of this. But for somebody to reaffirm the basic problem with the app store model is deserving of censure. What a place of intelligent debate this is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've rejected Apple's ability to tell me what programming language I'm allowed to use (whether I'm kept back in the 80's in terms of language sophistication, for example) and I've rejected their ability to make me wait weeks only to hear an update has been rejected for some dumb random reason which they shouldn't care about at all. I've rejected a marketplace full of fart apps that somehow do meet with their approval, and I've rejected a marketplace full of dumb content which should never have been an app in the first place.

</rant>

<comment><USER6> Too bad you did not reject an urge to rant about the things you neither care about nor use them.

<comment><USER7> The poster of the parent comment is a published iPhone developer with substantial experience in delivering games and custom apps.

<http://synisma.com/iphone.html>

<comment><USER5> yes, thank you!

and I've sold non-iPhone software outside the App Store so I know what the alternatives are like. It is definitely a bigger challenge getting eyeballs but is better in most every other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can we please all wait for Apple to clarify before getting too excited at another reason to hate the app store?

As much as a sensationalist 'Apple are evil' might help promote your product only having one letter to go on and not waiting for a response for clarification is really lame journalism.

<comment><USER9> That sort of rational, reasoned approach has no place in a discussion like this. Clearly what this situation calls for is a knee jerk reaction based on limited information and pre-existing prejudices and I'm shocked that you could ever think otherwise.

<comment><USER10> Right. Let's not preemptively collect data points. Lets wait for Apple to clarify their mysterious positions _just because we asked them to_. I'm sure that will happen right away.

I don't see the OP as a "knee jerk reaction" but rather a warning to everyone else saying "hey, things might be changing again, stay alert".

<comment><USER9> And we should definitely take comments meant in jest as seriously as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't be better to have registration optional for syncing? You could still use Read It Later without registering but only on the current platform without syncing.

Ps: If you follow this thread of logic then Apple is right, a person doesn't need to register to use the basic features of the application.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems to probably be a benign mistake that will be rectified or clarified in the future.

<comment><USER13> I wish I had your confidence. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's face it: Apple will and can reject whatever they want for whatever reasons and you can do nothing about (except by abandoning the appstore).

I personally couldn't invest weeks of time in an app where i can't be sure whether it may be rejected for some stupid reason.

<comment><USER15> I have invested months confident that my app wouldn't be rejected for a stupid reason, and i was right.

Still not aware of any apps rejected for stupid reasons. However there ares a lot of stupid reasons spread as misinformation to make people think apple is urneqsosnable in their review process.

Apple is pretty reasonable, even in this situation here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In my experience, this is similar to the notice I got when they wanted the submission to include information for login without registration. A resubmit with a dumby account satisfied Apple in my case.

</comment><comment><USER17> Did you forget to give Apple a demo account for the reviewer to use?

</comment><comment><USER18> I am a newbie in this space. Is it better to build webapps for Twitter, facebook and Gmail like applications that rely heavily on the data to be downloaded? Is this the best route for web developers to take? I have seen sencha mobile and it looks great for cross device compatibility as well iphone/ipad/android.

<comment><USER19> Hi, being new I think it might be a good idea to tell you _why_ you're being downvoted. You're posting a comment that is a good question, but has nothing to do with this article. There are other places more suited for such questions (you can post it here as an "Ask HN" thread, but there are places that talk specifically about these kinds of issues which are even better).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> the situation got "fixed" at the second try [http://readitlaterlist.com/blog/2010/08/version-2-2-approved...](http://readitlaterlist.com/blog/2010/08/version-2-2-approved/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I haven't read all of the comments on this yet, but I can would venture to guess that Apple is planning on including their Safari 5 "Reader" functionality in iOS in the near future. Maybe this has something to do with it?

</comment><comment><USER22> This is obviously a mistake on Apple's part.

</comment><comment><USER23> this is my favorite ff addon,

and apple may be evil, but if they products are the best, the market will buy them, no matter what

</comment><comment><USER24> so every time an app gets refused we have to whine and blog about it? bloggers are becoming obnoxiously louder every day.

</comment><comment><USER25> Apple Store, the latest killer app !

</comment><comment><USER26> This developer is an idiot.

It's very simple. You can't make people register for no reason just to use an app. (e.g. just to harvest their information.)

Twitter, facebook, evernote, all have account features so they were approved. Apple was crystal clear explaining this.

The poster's muddled logic and inflamatory reaction shows me why Instapaper by Marco is a vastly superior product.

My guess is the author is using a fake controversy to drum up attention for his product. Astroturfing, methinks.

<comment><USER27> _> >This developer is an idiot.

>>It's very simple. You can't make people register for no reason just to use an app. (e.g. just to harvest their information.)

>>My guess is the author is using a fake controversy to drum up attention for his product. Astroturfing, methinks._

I think you're being unduly harsh on this developer.

"Read it later" is an instapaper-like app and it makes perfect sense for the app to need an account.

My understanding is that read-it-later collects no personal information other than their read-it-later username and password.

The app has been around for more than a year. The free version of read-it- later is ranked 22nd in productivity. I think that the developer is genuinely concerned about the rejection and don't see this as astroturfing.

Why do you suspect the developer of harvesting user information and astroturfing ?

 _[edit: The parent post was at 10 points around 40 minutes ago. Now it is at -4. That is really interesting :) ]_

<comment><USER28> It was at 6 when it was 3 minutes old, IIRC. (Or it might have been 3 at 6 minutes. What I do know is that I was struck by how oddly popular it was for a flamebaity comment from a new account.)

<comment><USER29> And now it is at -12, as you can see by looking at the total karma of -13 for this one-comment throwaway account. (Ha, I found an information disclosure vulnerability in the HN codebase ;-))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Want to Make Ethical Purchases? Stop Buying Illegal Drugs - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/opinion/want-to-make-ethical-purchases-stop-buying-illegal-drugs.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> "$500 [in cocaine use] buys a new AR-15 rifle [for a Mexican cartel]"

That calculation is a bit off. There are a few layers of transactions between the cartel supplier and the cocaine uses. These add markup.

"every time they buy illegal drugs they reward the cartels"

So, buy your weed local, direct from the farmer?</comment>


Show HN: Eyelid wipes for focusing at the computer – Beta Test - <AUTHOR> http://zinglab.co <comment> King-Aaron What happens when your 'special patented formula' ends up _in_ your eyes? This just sounds like an ethyl alcohol wipe for your eyes.

</comment><comment><USER2> "Safety of this product has not been determined"

No thanks. Nothing is worth risking my eyesight.</comment>


Show HN: ARA makes your Ansible playbooks easy to understand and troubleshoot - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3i8VPCanGo <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

OP and ARA author here, long time lurker but this time I had something I wanted to share!

We've just released a great new version of ARA and we're also celebrating it's first year anniversary with an AMA on Reddit over on /r/ansible: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ansible/comments/69gkpz/hi_ransible...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ansible/comments/69gkpz/hi_ransible_a_new_version_of_ara_ansible_run/)

So, what's ARA ?

ARA stands for Ansible Run Analysis and it is an Ansible callback plugin that records your playbook runs, wherever it is.

Whether you're running Ansible from your personal laptop or from a server, you basically just need to install ARA, configure Ansible to use ARA and you're good to go.

ARA organizes the data in a way to help you visualize, understand and troubleshoot what happened throughout your playbook.

Why ?

I'm part of the OpenStack engineering team at Red Hat and saying that we leverage Ansible a lot for means of deployment or continuous integration would be an understatement.

ARA helps us turn something like this ( yes, that's 33 000 lines of output ): [http://logs.openstack.org/25/462925/1/check/gate- openstack-a...](http://logs.openstack.org/25/462925/1/check/gate-openstack- ansible-openstack-ansible-ceph-ubuntu-xenial-nv/2228c1e/console.html)

Into a straightward and intuitive report: [http://logs.openstack.org/25/462925/1/check/gate- openstack-a...](http://logs.openstack.org/25/462925/1/check/gate-openstack- ansible-openstack-ansible-ceph-ubuntu-xenial-nv/2228c1e/logs/ara/)

I'm really passionate about the project and sincerely hope it can make your life using Ansible easier.

Let me know if you have any comments or questions !</comment>


Palio di Siena: The World's Wildest Horse Race (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cntraveller.com/recommended/culture/palio-di-siena-horse-race-italy <comment><USER2> My partner and I are Italians and she is a natural horsemanship/Parelli trainer and absolutely abhors the _Palio_ because she can point to multiple instances of cruelty to the animals and coercion. I myself am very wary of horses (bad fall when I was six, thirty years later I still refuse to get back in the saddle) but even I can now appreciate the difference between a relaxed, non-threatened horse and these poor creatures.

I'm not an animal rights activist by any measure, but just as many people now question the _corrida_ , I'm coming to the conclusion that is time to revise some traditions, such as this one.

</comment><comment><USER3> interesting trivia: this year, one of the horses "refused to run" (i.e. it was so nervous it was impossible to get it/him/her to stand at the line). Animal rights activists had a lot to say on that.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the Mongolian Derby should take the top spot in any list of the wildest horse races.

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

</comment><comment><USER5> There's disappointingly little about actual horse racing in the article.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but basically the Palio is _everything_ BUT the race.

It is all the before and the after that is much more interesting that the race itself.

In that the article is very well made.

<comment><USER2> That's an interesting statement actually, firstly because I (and almost everybody else) tend to agree, and secondly, because if one then segues to suggest that the horse-racing component be significantly modified or even removed, those same people recoil in horror and vehemently protect the centrality of the horse-racing component. This would seem to be somewhat paradoxical, but I have observed this often.

<comment><USER5> Winning the race is the whole point, everything else is overoptimization and overcomplication of the horse race, developed in hundreds of years and hundreds of runs. For instance, what would you celebrate about without racing?

<comment><USER6> It is like saying that (say) the Monopoly or Risk game revolve around throwing a coupe of dices (which is actually what they revolve around).

Still the actual dice throwing is the least interesting part.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Uber will pay $100M to settle class action lawsuits - <AUTHOR> https://news.fastcompany.com/uber-will-pay-100-million-to-settle-drivers-class-action-lawsuit-4004334 <comment><AUTHOR> If there are any public records about this settlement terms and conditions, please post</comment>


Ledger Live: A mobile companion app for Ledger hardware wallets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LedgerHQ/ledger-live-mobile <comment><USER2> Good to see Bluetooth in the new hardware. Lack of real mobile support for hardware wallets has been by far the biggest pain point for me. (With regard to the best possible physical security, I would have preferred NFC over Bluetooth, but the latter is alright for everyday use.)

<comment><USER3> AFAIK given the Ledger's on-screen confirmation process it really doesn't matter what's the medium of communication between the host machine and the device. It could as well be sent via unencrypted http routed through China, then Russia and then an NSA server all while your host device is heavily backdoored.

The supply chain attacks/evil maid attacks are a much bigger issue, as pointed out in other comments.

<comment><USER4> >> _It could as well be sent via unencrypted http routed through China, then Russia and then an NSA server all while your host device is heavily backdoored._

As much as we'd like to believe this is the case, MITM (network or host) allows for replacement of destination addresses that show up on your screen. Redirected/malicious destination addresses showing up on your host screen will be cryptographically verified with Ledger's on-screen confirmation, but will not prevent you from sending your cryptoassets to the "wrong" endpoint.

I think this is much more of a reality if your host device is "heavily backdoored" than unencrypted HTTP, but could happen in either case. Another attack vector was BGP & DNS hijacking, which happened to My Ether Wallet in April 2018[1][2].

[1] [https://qz.com/1261540/mew-ethereum-hack-the-internets- infra...](https://qz.com/1261540/mew-ethereum-hack-the-internets- infrastructure-was-compromised-to-target-myetherwallet/)

[2] [https://doublepulsar.com/hijack-of-amazons-internet- domain-s...](https://doublepulsar.com/hijack-of-amazons-internet-domain- service-used-to-reroute-web-traffic-for-two-hours-unnoticed-3a6f0dda6a6f)

<comment><USER5> Yes but the Ledger has its own screen that shows what you're actually signing. If you verify that, you're good.

There are a couple caveats. First, the Ledger Nano's screen is too small to display the entire address at once, so an attacker who knows where you might send money could generate an address that appears that same on the characters that display. (The Ledger Blue shows the full address but is getting discontinued.)

Secondly, if you're on Ethereum and using a multisig contract, the destination address is just the contract and the ETH amount is zero. The function parameters which define your actual request are just displayed by the Ledger as a warning that they exist.

I've suggested to Ledger that they come up with a way to import the json.abi and display the actual parameters on device, which is what desktop clients do. They thought it was doable but I haven't seen any suggestion of it happening.

<comment><USER6> Just for the record, the entire address for the transaction _is_ displayed on the screen, it just scrolls side to side. Generating another address that's similar enough to be confused easily would be prohibitively difficult at best.

<comment><USER5> Yes but the middle scrolls by pretty quickly. I once saw an article that did the math on the difficulty of making an address that matched on the easy-to- read parts of the address at beginning and end, and it amounted to less than a day's work on a modern PC. That's likely to work against most users.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't scroll quickly, it's very easy to read and verify, even for my beat up eyes.

I'd be very interested to see that math, because it's unlikely that's accurate. You can get a few characters at the beginning of the address relatively easily -- the rest is in heat death of the universe territory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought this was about ledger, the cli accounting tool. I thought ledger + hardware + wallet? Wow!

[https://ledger-cli.org/](https://ledger-cli.org/)

<comment><USER8> Me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My greatest concern with the Ledger hardware wallet has been making sure the device hasn't been tampered with during shipment. Fortunately they provide a script to check hardware integrity, it's probably a good idea to run it before doing anything with the device.

[https://support.ledger.com/hc/en- us/articles/115005321449](https://support.ledger.com/hc/en- us/articles/115005321449)

<comment><USER10> Note that this doesn't actually do anything to attest the safety of the device, as has been pointed out in a CCC talk recently. It attempts to confirm that the code running on another processor is legitimate by asking it to read its entire flash to a "HSM" chip, which is obviously simple to deceive by reading back something that is not the processors flash. I personally think that this is deceptive and counter productive.

<comment><USER11> Remote attestation implementations via HSMs will always remain subject to a confused-deputy problem, but they're still leaps and bounds better than pure software solutions. Any threat you can describe that involves a facade hardware UI is much easier to implement in software, meaning that attackers are more likely to invest resources in software attacks (like spraying bad Electrum servers into the pool) than hardware attacks (like modifying hardware wallets and setting up a storefront on eBay).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm still very much in favour of managing my own private keys in an encrypted database on my desktop/laptop. I feel like everyone is blindly trusting these devices, having been scared in to it by horror stories of malware lifting keys off machines.

I will eat my paper wallets if my meagre holdings are stolen from me like that.

<comment><USER13> I sort of agree with this.

One caveat is that laptops are commonly compromised and your security would depend on nobody stealing keys/passwords needed to access your database/password manager/whatever.

Having hardware token with paper backup, makes this harder. Having a lot of tokens creates a huge incentive for getting hacked.

If you have non trivial amounts of tokens under your control, you need to consider all the points of failure. Laptops get compromised in all sorts of ways and can be equipped with key loggers or worse. Unless you are a security expert, defending against a determined & skilled hacker is super hard. Most of us never get our setups audited by an expert and I'm afraid that a bog standard OS X/linux setup is probably only get you so far. Even if you turn on disk encryption and do all the rest of the things you are supposed to do.

So the advantage of a token is that it does not depend on your laptop being uncompromised and that it is a third party solution that can be scrutinized and audited. That being said, I'm not a big fan of having a proprietary software/hardware package and would prefer to trade in my ledger for a properly OSS platform. There are a few of these platforms but it is early days and I'd need it to support Stellar though. As far as I know, ledger is the only thing working with that. I own a few of those for this reason.

IMHO there's a big market opportunity for creating a secure, easy to use hardware token for ubikey/oauthn signins, managing blockchain wallets, and doing 2fa. Not impossible, but making open hardware/software platforms commercially is apparently still a big challenge. I'd buy several if the price and feature set were right . Assuming enough auditing/vetting has happened by people that are smarter than me, of course.

<comment><USER14> Founder of StellarGuard here, so sort of in the same realm. Just wondering what additional features you'd want out of such a hardware token. Would it need to do the actual signing of transactions on the device for you to feel secure with it, or would generic U2F (Yubikey) + signing on the software be sufficient, assuming we could do it securely?

<comment><USER13> Yes, that is the point. Basically you have to work under the assumption that your laptop may be compromised. So anything that exposes private keys to it is going to end up leaking those keys. With the ledger you approve transactions on the token. You configure it from a paper backup or by letting it generate a private key for you and you use it to sign transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ugh, I haven't even moved my existing crypto from cold storage to the original Ledger Nano sitting on my desk for a year.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not able to find the md5 signature for Ledger Live: would you please help me?

<comment><USER17> A mobile app managing cryptocurrency, but does not sign all their release, and don't even react the situation quickly. Apparently they have no clue what they are doing in terms of security.

Since they also use react native, and npm is notorious for being exploit to distribute malware. I have a brief look at the package.json. Seems to be a typical javascript project where developers tend to put one more dependency for a simple feature rather than implementing themselves. So, if one of the hobbyist project owner's key is compromised or hand over their orphan project to somebody malicious to manage their npm, then they are screwed. Although same could apply to other language which have package management, npm is the worst among those. Do they ensure the dependencies are signed before building the binary? And always use the last known good version for building new binary? I really doubt.

<comment><USER18> The repo has a yarn.lock file, which contains the hashes of all of the dependencies, so yarn verifies the dependencies match that at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder whether these apps cache sensitive information like account numbers and balances. I think they shouldn't.

<comment><USER3> Yes they do - you don't need to plug in your device to see your current balance, even after power cycling the host device.

That being said - there's virtually no privacy in most cryptocurrencies. Your Bitcoin/Ethereum/Ripple/... balance is fully public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> ledger is garbage and their software falls over if too many people are using it. Why do I know this? Their customer service literally told me that I cant access my wallet because too many people are trying to use the software. As a silly consequence I was not able to update the firmware.

I switched to a more open source solution for the hardware, and for mobile mycelium.

Ledger can suck a fat one.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is the hardware device required?</comment>


Facebook to Launch "Simplistic" Privacy Choices Soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/facebook-simple-privacy-choices/

<comment><USER2> Poor-choice-of-words fail. I know I'm being pedantic but there's a big difference between 'simple' and 'simplistic.'

This doesn't demonstrate much sensitivity on their part.

<comment><USER3> That's actually kinda funny. Choosing a more complex word to say they're making things less complex.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Enomic – A game of hacking heroes and villians - <AUTHOR> https://enomic.herokuapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> To get the game going, I will accept all pull requests that add to the heroes id file, so anybody can become a "hero" and approve code changes.

Looking forward to hearing what people think and answering any questions.

<comment><USER3> I'm having trouble generating key pairs with init.js. When I run it, it will generate a key that says "undefined" and throw ENOENT errors telling me to unlink the temporary .key and .pub files.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, my apologies! What OS and node/io version are you on?

The code is pretty minimal. You can throw some log statements in there to debug it yourself. Then commit the fix for others!

<comment><USER4> I opened an issue about this on Github and posted a workaround.

Now if only someone could accept my pull request :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well that didn't take long. We have an accidental villain who took over the whole commit process due to a bug in the original code: [https://github.com/enomic/enomic/issues/17](https://github.com/enomic/enomic/issues/17)

<comment><USER5> But we fixed it! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking about how to play this as a villain, without completely shitting all over the game and other participants.

<comment><USER7> Become a hero, and add a rule that allows for devil's advocates - <USER2> whose purpose is to make stronger heroes.

<comment><USER8> You mean minions.</comment></comment></comment>


Beethoven's audacious acts of musical risk-taking - <AUTHOR> https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/beethoven-wasnt-just-historys-greatest-composer-but-also-one-of-its-greatest-human-beings/ <comment><USER3> One of my favorite recordings, period, is the Charles Rosen treatments of Beethoven's late piano sonatas -- two of these pieces are mentioned in the article.

I'm not a musician, so I don't grasp it at the level of the author, but _wow_. They are dreamy, sublime, mesmerizing. I've been listening to them for 15 years and they are still a favorite. (Review: [https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/beethoven-late-piano- son...](https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/beethoven-late-piano-sonatas))

<comment><USER4> Didn't know Rosen made recordings - only knew him for "The Classical Style". Thank you for this tip!!

<comment><USER3> He also taught French at MIT, and wrote a series of essays for NYRoB ([https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/charles- rosen/](https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/charles-rosen/)). I met him through the essays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A great article! It's particularly cool to see that despite the author's adoration for Beethoven, he still points out some of his musical weaknesses, like counterpoint (we could also add opera).

I would highly recommend "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph" for anyone with the perseverance: [https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Anguish-Triumph-Jan- Swaffor...](https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Anguish-Triumph-Jan-Swafford- ebook/dp/B00E78IB3E)

<comment><USER6> It's funny that the author chose the Hammerklavier Sonata to hold aloft, which isn't that popular even though Beethoven considered it among his best works. Reading the score for the fugue for Hammerklavier Sonata and imagining it in your head, the harmonies (especially the weird trills) are not so jarring as they come out when played on a real piano.

Similarly, the syncopated harmonic rhythm in the final movement of the last Sonata #32 (opus 111) doesn't throw you off as much when you are reading the score and have the bar lines to reinforce where the measure boundaries fall.

I speculate that if Beethoven had been able to hear those pieces played aloud, he would have made adjustments to them. I hear similar glitches in much of late Beethoven, but those two sections from those two sonatas are the ones that stay with me the most.

<comment><USER7> Excellent lecture on the Hammerklavier by Andras Schiff which includes an amusing discussion of tempo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR5f8yAnGik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR5f8yAnGik)

<comment><USER8> Schiff is also controversial on the "Moonlight"[1]

> I don't know any other piece of music that has such a thick layer of false > tradition on it like this one.

As well as taking issue with the name - deriving from the poet Ludwig Rellstab which has "stuck like glue" \- he notes that the manuscript for the slow first movement, _adagio sostenuto_ (slowly and sustained), is marked _alla breve_ [2] meaning "count two in a bar" so that each beat counts for a pair of the famous triplets[3] - effectively doubling the tempo:

> If you would play it in this tempo that is usually played [ _plays a bar at > conventional speed_ ] you can have breakfast and lunch and dinner and the > poor pianist is still playing this first ...

Not content with this disruption of "Moonlight" convention, he relates that the manuscript writes _senza sordino_ , instructing the player to play the whole first movement "without the dampers".

Despite the protestations of his colleagues that "you cannot do it on the modern piano":

> I beg to differ. Why can't you do it on the modern piano? Have you tried it? > They said "No I haven't tried it. But you cannot do it!"

> It's an argument just not good enough. Beethoven is a great great enough > composer that you have to take him very seriously. [...] He wanted a very > special sound, that the harmonies swim together like in a wash and the > overtones are strengthening each other.

His solution to the "modern piano" problem is simple: just partially raise the dampers by pressing the pedal down "about a third".

All this might sound like a recipe for disaster, but his interpretation sounds wonderful!

A lot more follows, and I can also recommend his "Moonlight" masterclass[4] as a demonstration of the cogency of his position on the piece.

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW_Dv_GNQAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW_Dv_GNQAo)

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

3: [https://youtu.be/fW_Dv_GNQAo?t=282](https://youtu.be/fW_Dv_GNQAo?t=282)

4: [https://youtu.be/85KJkpbh_us?t=913](https://youtu.be/85KJkpbh_us?t=913)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Spotify playlist of top 5 recordings

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4yFp02cwPHkqHnUeZCLjR5?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4yFp02cwPHkqHnUeZCLjR5?si=wMxINC58SpuxTHk3NSJ3vg)

<comment><USER10> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article picks a "strangely thrilling Beethoven's Fifth — strange, because tiny details spring out of what sounds like a big band" recorded by Peter Eotvos.

This might also be said of the John Eliot Gardiner version[1] Performed on period instruments, which seems to expose detail, it flies through the first movement at the hard rockin' tempo of 108 bpm as per Beethoven's score - <USER2> refreshing change of pace if you're more used to lugubrious conventional performances.

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNtb- ly1I_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNtb-ly1I_k) (full performance)

</comment><comment><USER11> > (For what it's worth, I think the latter matched his level of inspiration > but not quite his achievement, though I wouldn't be saying that if > Beethoven, like Mozart, had died at 35.)

If "achievement" is to be read as influence, that's most likely due to Beethoven's compositional process being tractable and, therefore, imitable by mid- to late-period Romantic composers (and later, 20th century composers).

A young composer can be taught to take a motive (short pattern of intervals and rhythms) and transform it to accumulate a phrase of music that is greater than the sum of its parts. If you add to that the possibility to interrupt the flow with related melodic fragments so that the melody seems to "comment" upon itself, you already have a rich set of tools from which to create a dynamic section of music. It's unlikely it will sound anything as sophisticated as what Beethoven wrote. But it will likely be coherent.

Now compare that to this:

* learn to read, remember, improvise upon, and mash up all the musics of continental Europe

* when asked to write a piece, think of the most fitting styles and textures from what you learned (and sometimes, mash them up to make new ones), improvise some new content for that, and then write it down

* if you know your musicians, tailor the music specifically to any special skills or limitations (including yourself)

* put in various types of musical jokes to amuse yourself and the performers

So suppose you are a budding composer and want to express your support for universal human solidarity. Do you chose as your model music from a composer who masterfully employs Romantic irony for the singer to interrupt the symphony that was previously in progress (Beethoven's 9th) to sing about universal brotherhood?

Or do you choose the composer who masterfully mashed up three dances in three disparate time signatures showing how three different social classes could all make merry together in agreeable harmony (Mozart's Don Giovanni)?

Keep in mind that if you choose the latter you need to conduct and cue three different groups from the orchestra so they know when to start and can remain synchronized.

Given hundreds of years the musical legacy tends toward Beethoven more than Mozart for this reason. Still, I'd bet if you measured 9th Symphony references to Mozart's Requiem, the latter wouldn't be too far behind. Heck, Mozart died after writing only _eight measures_ of the Lacrimosa and I've heard that in at least 4 different Netflix shows this year.

<comment><USER12> It's not just the ease of imitation, it is also the inherent biases in the language. Regardless of the cleverness of mashing things up or musical jokes, there is always a degree of juvenility or frivolity to the concept itself that makes it less versatile to express certain serious ideas as straightforwardly within the wider cultural realm. The toolkit itself is limiting, and the invention less universally applicable because they are specialized clever tricks in each case. It's like the difference between Ramanujan and Einstein. Self-propagating influence _is_ a validation of either universality or foundational depth. Now, is inimitable cleverness done 1000 times a greater achievement? I'm not sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article opens by talking about the details of a bust (sculpture) of Beethoven, but oddly shows a sketch of Beethoven instead of the bust. This appears to be the item the article refers to: [https://twitter.com/holysmoke/status/1148316512710737921](https://twitter.com/holysmoke/status/1148316512710737921)

</comment><comment><USER14> Grosse Fuge. This piece is 100 years ahead, and almost 200 years old today. I can't figure out how he could envision it in his time. That kind of music is more like Shostakovich than the Beethoven we know.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmIr-7z3XdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmIr-7z3XdY)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting that the piece that immediately came to mind for me is not mentioned here: his _" Moonlight Sonata"_ [1]. I think this was also an immense risk at the time.

The risk payed off grandly. Moonlight Sonata could easily be a soundtrack for a 2020 movie (if everyone hadn't already known it).

It says on Wikipedia that the piece was popular already at the time, so maybe it was not such a big risk, but I have to say it sounds like (or maybe it inspired) contemporary piano music.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._14_(Beethoven...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._14_\(Beethoven\))

</comment><comment><USER16> If you're in London, the Barbican has a 'Beethoven Weekender' coming up: [https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/event/beethoven- we...](https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/event/beethoven-weekender- day-tickets)</comment>


Filmed Lecture of First-hand Account of the Liberation of Belsen Concentration Camp - <AUTHOR> http://uptone.blogspot.com/2008/10/filmed-lecture-of-first-hand-account-of.html <comment><USER2> Seeing as there are only three views so far, I'm guessing that either you posted this yourself or else you were at the lecture and know who posted the video files. If you can, maybe you can get these compressed and hosted on Google video as one big file. There is no reason for an eight minute video to be 70 megs, especially a lecture where video quality doesn't matter.</comment>