The Gift - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-gift.html <comment><USER3> I've always found it interesting that we techies generally avoid reinventing the wheel in our work but feel compelled to reinvent it in matters of spiritually. We're not the first to experience these thoughts and feelings and certainly won't be the last.

I suspect much of the reason is that the users manuals and wikis that resulted from thousands of years of human wonderings have been so misunderstood and misappropriated for other purposes.

This post reminded me of the ancient Hebrew book of Koheleth, which was translated into the Greek Ecclesiastes. About a man who wondered about many of the same things Paul brought up. Like many of us, Koheleth tried all sort of strategies to find meaning and be happy: to be rich, to be learned, to have fun, etc.

In the end, all he could surmise was that each day was a gift and to make the most of it. Pretty good lesson, I think. Thanks, Paul, for the reminder.

<comment><USER4> Refreshing indeed to see a hacker talk about faith.

I was talking to a friend the other day that said the Devil had internet from the start; but it's only now that we see blogs pop up on faith. So thank you Paul for this.

Also, being the top post on HN is just the push I needed to write on my faith. Was initially afraid that it'd turn my readership away. So thank you once again for teaching me to not hold back.

As an Engineer, I'm finding that faith and logic can go hand-in-hand after all. The more I question my faith, the stronger it gets.

I'm also reminded of Dostoevsky's search. Who am I to argue with a _Great Thinker_ who spent years arguing against God's existence only to admit he was wrong in the end.

<comment><USER5> Your logic doesn't stand up here. Why should you trust dostoyevsky's subjective understanding of god anymore than your own? Besides, dostoyevsky's best asset was his imagination, not his capacity for logic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of people are complaining about the 'God' concept introduced in the latter half of the post. I think a lot of this is that people are pattern- matching 'God' with the huge amount of baggage that the term has rightfully accumulated.

I started reading the article in full (having read the criticism first), and soon realised that the god notion described doesn't really match anything in traditional religion, or anything that one would typically criticise. The god introduced doesn't seem to require anything tangible from the reader or anyone who believes in such a god. It requires no submission, suffering, organisation or decrees. It simply makes an offer. (and it very expressly makes that offer within a fable, not a description of reality)

The end paragraph is pretty hard to deny. You just needs to be careful not to associate your cached thoughts with the word 'God'. Essentially what the story concludes with is: love is a good thing; we should share it; and we should offer it to ourselves too[1].

This kind of love is most noticeable by its absence I think. After a couple of hard years, I recently looked back on the things that had been troubling me, and noticed that throughout it I had been very hard on myself, and very hard on others.

I think the god analogy as a source of love is one that is only useful to some people.

I'm sure that making physical world predictions based on the existence of any higher power is sure to result in predictions that aren't useful.

Regardless, the general point about love, suffering, loss, forgiveness and learning can be taken without changing personal beliefs, and without god. Equally, a very personal god who offers and requires only what Paul describes gives identical results.

As such I argue that the god described has no need to be excluded from this essay, or Hacker News. I urge those criticising it to read it again with strict mental effort on avoiding the 'god = bad' association that one leaps to out of past experience.

[1] (and it says this in an excellent way, and with more nuance than I describe, I know)

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly.

Perhaps I needed to manage the transition between the parts a little more smoothly to avoid losing people who have an allergic reaction to the g-word.

When things are difficult, talk of God inevitably arises from many good and well meaning people. The difficulty of course is that the God concept has so much ugly baggage attached to it. You can reject it outright, as so many here are eager to do, or you can embrace and nurture the good in it.

Alas, it's very tricky to navigate the waters between the dogmatic believers and the dogmatic unbelievers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

<comment><USER7> The problem about your post is that, due probably, yes, to a lack of transition between the two parts, the reader feels they have been played. We are incredibly moved by the first story, and when we are all soft with emotion and empathy, here comes a lecture about "false gods" and "true God".

What's worse, the second part rests on a mountain of assumptions that are never articulated, let alone justified: that God is good, that there is only one God (not zero, not many: exactly One), that there is absolute good and absolute evil in the world and that there is an ongoing fight between the two, etc.

But thanks for sharing anyway.

\- - -

PS: "dogmatic believers" vs "dogmatic unbelievers" puts superstition and reason on the same level; they are not.

<comment><USER8> If you can't consider that you might be wrong, its dogma, regardless of whether you believe in God, Allah, Einstein or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The issue is that so many crazy people use religious teachings as an excuse for their craziness and it hurts the whole thing, as it were. Mind you, crazy people use almost everything as a justification (and we're all a little crazy).

Personally, I liked his definition of religion and God, but then i subscribe to a religion which explicitly forbids talking about itself (which is probably the best part of it). When I say subscribe, I suppose that I mean take meaning and solace from.

Bear in mind that the actuality of a particular belief has little or nothing to do with its usefulness for living a life, so even if I (or the author, or you) are completely mistaken about our spiritual beliefs, then it makes no goddamn difference to our lives.

The only real difficulty is when one attempts to force said beliefs on someone else, and that's where all of the badness and evil that is rightfully associated with religion(s) seems to come from.

Incidentally, could you provide definitions of superstition and reason? Two very tricky concepts I find. Reason once said that of course the earth is flat, now it says of course it must be round, so which was superstition and which was reason?

To carry this analogy a little further, which of your beliefs (rational of course, like all human beliefs) are factually incorrect? I would bet that within 100 years, many of them will be proven to be so. Does that mean that you will be retconned into superstitiousness?

Incidentally, i think that you may have misinterpreted what the author meant with the false and true gods analogy (or at least you constructed a different meaning to mine) so I would humbly suggest that you perhaps try to read that part of the piece again (as will I).

<comment><USER9> > To carry this analogy a little further, which of your beliefs (rational of > course, like all human beliefs) are factually incorrect? I would bet that > within 100 years, many of them will be proven to be so. Does that mean that > you will be retconned into superstitiousness?

The difference between superstition and science/reason is not that one is true and the other is false. It's that only one claims to know absolute truth - superstition. Reason, in the context of science anyways, demands to be challenged and is open to change (it may take a long time, but it happens).

Thus, whereas reason allows for us to evolve our understanding about the world being flat, superstition in it's most extreme forms, demands that we limit our understanding to what's already written. For example, believing that the earth is 6000 years old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You're really good at these essays.

If you haven't already listened to it, you might like "What Is The Light", from "The Soft Bulletin" by The Flaming Lips. It's a bit on-the-nose but is basically a poetic encapsulation of what you just wrote; Wayne Coyne wrote many of the songs on that album while metabolizing the death of his father, and pulls it off without ever becoming funereal or morose.

I can't quite put my finger on why but have always felt that album --- basically one of the three best pop/rock albums of the last 20 years --- was uncannily resonant for (our yes yes lazily romanticized concept of) entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER11> Worth adding, that "yoshimi battles the pink robots" is an amazing album by the same band about a woman's battle with cancer, and love, and loss. It was just turned into an amazing play (technically an opera (rock opera!) since it's just the album being acted out on stage with very few words added) that is being performed at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego (The home to Tommy, Rent*, Jersey Boys, and many other breakthrough plays).

I saw the play, and it's really terrific, especially since almost everyone has a connection to cancer and loss. And the music is terrific.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a very nice and heartwarming piece -- especially the part where the OP can't board the helicopter and has to drive hundreds of miles alone, into the night, not knowing what might happen to his wife and their (yet unborn) daughter. Must have been a very long drive.

Like many others however I was a little surprised, and, yes, disappointed with the "God" part at the end. Is this what it was all about?

What does "God" has to do with any of this? Can't one love their children, their partners, their siblings, with all their hearts, and leave it at that...?

What is "the personification of all that is Good"? What is Good? (Good for you may be bad for someone else; absolute good is hard; historically, Gods have not been known to be good: they were jealous, mean creatures). And even admitting there would be some "absolute good", why would it need to be "personified"?

The finale reads a little like this: Gods other people believe in are "false Gods", and guess what? the God I believe in / custom built to my specs is the One True God.

This, for me, I'm sorry to say, ruined a perfect moment.

<comment><USER12> I also felt this was a great story ruined at the end. The author is talking about the terrorific (terror-filled) ride of his daughter's birth and young life, then flops over to a children's tale about one all-powerful being wanting more followers than a different all-powerful being.

What do these all-powerful beings have to do with his daughter and her struggle to live? What does it have to do with all of the doctors and nurses who cared for his daughter? Why thank this all-powerful being who did nothing for your child, but take for granted all of the people who worked to help her?

<comment><USER13> All I can say is that if you have a sick child who is suffering and in danger it is quite different to any kind of trouble you have experienced before. It is very hard to take this on your own shoulders. It helps a lot to have a feeling that there is something bigger out there. You don't have to call it God. But logic etc is of no help in this kind of situation as it is by definition out of your control. This is where all your established positions mean nothing. So whether it is true or not that there is something else I imagine that the feeling that there is is what helps many people keep it together when they would crumble if they felt there were only people and logic in the universe, there's nothing out there, we live, we die, we are just machines that are programmed to reproduce etc. Keeping it together at a time like this can be very important so you take whatever help you can get. And if you feel you got it then it would be untrue to yourself not to be grateful later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This was a really good post, but I'm going to be totally honest: my eye kept being drawn to an avatar of you holding (what appears to be) an assault rifle and smiling. It seems strange considering the topic.

Again, no offense is meant. Maybe its also due to recent events, but it seems odd.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is kind of weird. It's my FriendFeed pic from a few years ago. I just changed it to my current fb profile pic :)

thanks

<comment><USER14> Much better ... the post just went from good to great :)

<comment><USER15> Why does that change the article? He still likes guns!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >From my brother, I received a personal understanding of death, and a constant reminder to live my life as though it may end at any moment.

I'm not sure how to really ask this, but what does it mean to live your life as though it may end at any moment?

For example, does that literally mean to pursue today as if you could really be gone tomorrow? And if so, how?

Does it mean that if you really want to go sky diving you should do it soon (i.e. now)? If you've been thinking about moving to another place for a while, but just keep putting it off for semi-trivial reasons, should you just go and see what happens?

I've heard people say that they live each day as if it could be their last, but I'm not sure what that means, practically speaking.

There have been several things that I wish I'd done, looking back, but I didn't mostly out of fear.

The idea of living each day as if it could be your last has always intrigued me.

<comment><USER17> To me, it doesn't mean go skydiving or spend all your money and go partying every day.

It means stop living in fear, and stop distracting yourself with bullshit.

Lots of people are afraid of the shame of failure, the shame of rejection, etc. If you really were going to die tomorrow, it would strip away all the fear that you have of living with this burden.

I've been through some health scares and believe me, there is nothing more sobering than being in an MRI machine looking for a brain tumor. All the day- to-day bullshit that many people worry about, like "Why didn't I get that promotion" or "I really want that car" gets stripped away pretty quick, and the things that really matter surface immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really love the honesty of this piece. I also feel that the message about being thankful and forgiving is very important. Life is too short to hold on to anger, and too wonderful to wait to embrace its gifts.

</comment><comment><USER19> Thank you for a thoughtful and probing post. It is bold to write on a spiritual topic to this audience. I don't usually talk at length about spiritual matters, but everyone else here seems to be doing so and so I think it's appropriate.

I would like to talk about one idea you brought up: the idea that the Christian Gospel involves some sort of coercion. In particular, the little story you told about God vs. the devil.

This is what the gospel says. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16

We're sinking in quicksand. God reached out His hand to save us. But if we refuse, we will die. Does that make God a monster?

Indeed, if you refuse God's love, the consequences are not good. If you refuse my offer of a kidney transplant to you, the consequences are not good. Does that mean I'm raping you by offering to save your life?

Please do not blame God that there are people in hell. God doesn't use hell as an instrument of coercion. We sink into hell under the weight of our own evil. We put ourselves there. We wouldn't be happy in heaven, if we don't like God's rules here on earth.

But God loved us even though we could not repay him in the least. He is rich in mercy. God gave the world an unspeakably wonderful gift that we can never, ever repay. Jesus Christ took my hell upon himself. He took all the punishment I deserved on Himself. How can I repay that? That's the essence of unconditional love. And He offers this gift to you.

Christ is my brother, my friend. He died for me. He forgives my sins against Him and helps me every day with my pride and my bent toward sin. Do you realize this is not a game? He has seen what you wrote -- don't you think it hurts Him?

I'm genuinely confused why you insert such strong language in a thoughtful post about loving life and valuing the right things. If you disagree with the Gospel, feel free to say so. But why do you want to vilify the God I love, call Him "the devil," call Him a rapist? He is grieved by these remarks. I am grieved as well.

I will pray for you. You seem to be lashing out at God with the grief and difficulty you have experienced. That's an awful place to be in. I know from personal experience that my words are not able to help you, but God is able to help you. I hope that some day, you believe in Christ and come to understand that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. No one can go to God the Father except through Him.

<comment><USER20> I must admit, I am impressed by the sophistication of your argument. Still, not being well versed in Christian mythology, I have lots of questions.

For example, isn't god supposed to be all powerful, so that he created everything, including the devil, hell, and death? Would it cost him anything to simply make you not die - contrary to a human giving a kidney to another human, which indeed would be a high price to pay. Hasn't god, in fact, also created kidney disease? And what is the sins you are talking about? It sounds to me as if there are conditions for being granted eternal life after all, which practically amounts to coercion again.

Anyway, I really just felled compelled to reply because I thought your reasoning was not all that bad (for a religiously deluded person - sorry :-). I am willing to believe that at least you mean well.

<comment><USER21> This has been argued and discussed endlessly throughout the centuries, but the answer to your questions are: free will. For example, God didn't make "the devil", he made an angel who chose to go against God.

The "Eternal life" thing sounds like coercion when you think of it as "do this or you'll be tortured in hell" but the point is God lets you chose to be with him or to not be with him. If God is everything that is good, then there's not going to be a way to make a place that does not have him and yet is pleasant to be, right?

<comment><USER22> Yeah, this is about when you run into that whole "how can you have free will if god is supposed to be omnipotent" problem that's been dogging various religions for centuries...

<comment><USER21> Actually, philosophy passed that bit quite some time ago. Being omnipotent is not a problem for free will.

<comment><USER22> I can see why some people would want to think that. Humans are amazing at rationalizing their irrational emotional responses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Responding only to the theological coda, if you read this wiki page you will become enlightened.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism>

This particular belief system of unconditional love vs condemning judgment and promised reward, in the context of Christianity, was completely anticipated two thousand years ago. And then criticized.

Instead of reinventing the wheel in this way, you should consider following the grooves of people who have already carved the path. At least you will understand why they turned the way they did.

<comment><USER24> I don't think Paul was postulating the existence of multiple (competing?) gods; Marcionism isn't especially relevant to his discussion.

<comment><USER23> Marcion's program was to excise the judging Yahweh from what we now know as the New Testament, leaving only the loving, forgiving Jesus. It was born out of an apparent desire to edit the religion into something he found palatable.

My larger point is that the religion of unconditional love has already been invented, as has Paul's detour. An appreciation for this history would save a student from a lot of intellectual blind alleys.

And aptly, it is Marcion's failure to grapple with Christianity's continuity with Judaism, to appreciate the history and deal with its paradoxes, that led him into heresy. His heresy led him all the way to publishing a version of the Bible with the parts he didn't like cut out.

Paul's post here felt very similar to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would have loved to see this beautifully written, touching story without mentioning any form or idea of God.

<comment><USER10> Thank you, you just won me $20.

<comment><USER26> Who was stupid enough to take the opposite bet? Of course polluting an otherwise touching and thought-provoking essay with God Talk provokes moans from those of us, thankfully many, who have no wish to see it.

It's as if someone took a few beautiful pictures of picturesque landscapes and then in the last few shots the bottom of the photo included their stinky foot and some empty cans of Bud Light. You could make $20 predicting the moans about that, too.

<comment><USER10> So true. I bet he didn't even write his essay in the right text editor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Thank you for sharing this.

Words really can't express how this article made me feel... but it's rare for something I've read on HN to cause me to take a step back and reflect on what's important in life.

</comment><comment><USER28> "Death strips away everything that doesn't matter."

Extremely powerful sentence.

<comment><USER29> The birth of a child does something very similar, but in a joyful way. Wasted time (TV , useless relationships) becomes better moments. It's gradual unlike death were you can have a clean slate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Over the last couple years I've noticed a lot of successful businesses with unconditional love as the core value proposition. Nothing at anywhere near a global scale though. At the risk of coming across as being more cynical than usual, I think this is a space with a lot of opportunity.

<comment><USER31> * successful businesses with unconditional love as the core value proposition.*

examples please.

<comment><USER32> I don't know if this counts, When I first heard about zappos I admired their culture and saw some vidoes of Tony Hsieh on youtube. In a video he mentioned about the culture book of zappos. Then I sent him a email, asking I'm in India can I get one. In a few hours, his assistant replied on his behalf, I got the book in a few days by air mail.

I'm from India, never bought anything from them, It is possible I never will, but I've said this story to atleast 10 people after that. This is the positive side of unconditionally being kind to people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Statistically, there does not appear to be much of a genetic component to pancreatic cancer, but still, I worried. How much longer do I have? Could there be a tumor growing inside of me at this very moment?"

I lost my father to pancreatic cancer when I was only 18. Even though I'm only 20, this is something I constantly have in the back of my head. Although I don't live each day exactly like it's my last, I no longer stress out over small things and am a lot more questioning of the decisions I make. Death really does strip away everything doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a pity that there always has to happen something terrible for one to realise that life is a gift.

Then suddenly critisism of Islam. It doesn't make sense. Oh well. Why must there always be a good and a bad god?

<comment><USER34> Islam is not singled out. Mainstream Christianity insists on the existence of hell, for example: <http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2O.HTM>

I'm not competent to categorize other faiths.

<comment><USER35> I'm not an expert on this, but I've talked with someone who is and The Old Testament has basically a lot of violence and punishments while The New Testament is about love.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, and also Jesus saying that all the laws and codes from the old testament are still valid. Better put all the girls on the rag outside your home once a month, or god'll get real angry. You won't like him when he's angry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> When I was younger I did not have the experience of being offended by things said by others (much). Reading the essay brought up some emotions in me that I now identify as being "offended." The story mixes some poignant sharing of difficult life experience with what to me sounds like gibberish. Somehow the shape of the rhetoric is closed off. The jump from the personal/subjective experience to asserted universal truths feels manipulative manipulative to me. Blech

</comment><comment><USER37> What an amazingly insightful post. Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER38> Can unconditional love remove consequences?

I think that is one of the potential problems in discerning between the "true God(s)" and the "false god(s)".

Allow me to demonstrate what I mean.

When you say "If a God threatens to send you to hell for loving the wrong person, it's a false God." it seems to imply a couple of things that must be accepted apriori to the statement-

1\. That God stating what consequences will be for actions taken by us constitutes him ''threatening' rather than him explaining a cause and effect relationship. If I'm a genuine doctor and tell you that if you eat a certain piece of food that you will die or get sick I'm not threatening you. I'm simply pointing out the causality connected with an action to warn you.

2\. That for any given person their loving of any other given person can/will never genuinely harm them.

I don't know about you, but those conditions (which seem to be inherent to the view given here by Paul), are hard for me to accept just on mere assertion. I think that it is possible that two people loving each other, in certain contexts, can be detrimental to both of them. This whole 'love conquers all' thing depends very much on what you define 'love' to be. And, while I certainly can think of certain types of love that CAN AND SHOULD be universal, I can also think of types of love that can infringe on the previous types as well as carrying vast detrimental potential for all connected to them. Human connection, Human relations, intimacy, it all is very much a force of nature and, as such, has destructive potential.

The next statement I fully agree with--

"If a God tells you to coerce people into worshiping him, it's a false God." but it also presents it's own complexity.

As a father of 20 month old boy I run into situations all the time where there seems a thin line between guidance and coercion. In fact, throughout my life I've often found that many of the same principles that bind us in society, that make humanity work, are the very same ones that, without genuine love and genuine concern for the welfare of the person, are those which lead to things like Jonestown. Hence the shared root between "cult" and "culture." The very idea of turning earth (that is - to cultivate) implies applied force to direct natural processes to beneficial means. Who is benefiting is very much linked to the aim and not as much to the methods.

The means of trying to encourage people to commit to some actions so as to, in some way, improve the welfare of the aforementioned people can virtually always (in my experience) be seen in a coercive light by those wanting to see such coercion.

Yet if there is some true benevolent force, and a person knows about it, then is it not reasonable/logical, to expect said person to somehow convey access to that benevolent force's to others? Whether that's knowledge or some other beneficial thing?

Where then do you draw the line between those who are actively trying to convince others that they've found some true benevolent reality that can, and seeks, to help others? Certainly some things seem obvious. It can't be something that is telling untruths. But, and this should be obvious to virtually all parents out there I'd suppose, there are times when, for the welfare of a child, it seems wise to withhold at times information OR to even go along with implicit appearances.

An example I can think of would be where some things a parent has done prior to becoming a parent, say something like teenage-to-young-adult-years stupid kind of things. One doesn't generally go blurting those things out to a four or five year old when they ask some related innocent question.

"Genuine, unconditional love is a gift that must be freely given and freely accepted, with nothing expected in return. Love can not be delivered at gun point, or with the threat of eternal damnation. That's more like rape."

I have to say that this paragraph puts me in a light that I believe is a bit unique due to a personal experience.

I'm presently in Lima, Peru. Here I have to take all kind of precautions due to being a tall white guy with a gringo accent. Otherwise I stand a good chance of being mugged. I know this because of an attempted robbery I already lived through where I was physically assaulted.

That being said I've never felt hate here for being who I am. And I can say the same for virtually every where else I've been throughout my life, regardless of where or what context--with the exception of one place -- Santa Cruz, CA

If you want to feel hated, and I mean something on the verge of knowing some of the people hating you have lynch mob like ideas entering their mind, go walking down Pacific Ave in Downtown Santa Cruz as a "Mormon" (LDS) Missionary (I imagine it could be even worse now post Prop. 8).

For a land filled with hippiesque love and peace centric bumper-stickers and an intellectual heal the world, free love vibe all over I have NEVER felt so much hate or had so many people heckle and curse (most under their breath as we passed by but quite a few yelling loudly) me just for me being who I was. They knew nothing about me other than the fact that I had a well worn white shirt, a tie, and some slacks and a black lapel pin. They didn't know the missionary that was walking beside me was an intellectual Boston, MA native who converted in his early twenties. They didn't REALLY know much at all about me--but I was, in there eyes, someone who fit the very labels that Paul here associates with one who follows a "false god" and uses like methods to "rapists."

Their own certitude of the pretexts upon which they saw me seemed to render them incapable of unconditional love. Contrary to the way they might have seen it, I was not there to condemn them, nor to coerce them to anything, nor to tell them not love someone, nor to offer a mob-esque protection arrangement. But that's how they all saw it.

And so using a metric very similar to what Paul puts forward for a discernment between the 'gods' I was deemed and infidel worthy of being looked down upon, or even just ignored, because I happened to believe something that superficially could be made to look intolerant and even hateful when it was actually quite the opposite.

<comment><USER39> <quote> That being said I've never felt hate here for being who I am. And I can say the same for virtually every where else I've been throughout my life, regardless of where or what context--with the exception of one place -- Santa Cruz, CA </quote>

I was going to say that I found this entirely improbable, until:

<quote>

If you want to feel hated, and I mean something on the verge of knowing some of the people hating you have lynch mob like ideas entering their mind, go walking down Pacific Ave in Downtown Santa Cruz as a "Mormon" (LDS) Missionary (I imagine it could be even worse now post Prop. 8). </quote>

Yea no shit. Try walking down Main Street urban USA in your white sheet and clan outfit an see what kind of reaction you get.

If people were hating on you, and I have no problem believing that you may have been followed, harassed and even threatened, it is not because of you as a human, but you as a representative of an oppressive, smug, petty, abusive and racist proselytizing space ship fantasy land thy wants to impose your particular lunacy on the rights of others.

So yea, I can believe that Santa Cruz would not be best pleased with you.

May e if you'd offered to smoke pot with people there...

<comment><USER40> > _If people were hating on you, and I have no problem believing that you may > have been followed, harassed and even threatened, it is not because of you > as a human, but you as a representative of an oppressive, smug, petty, > abusive and racist proselytizing space ship fantasy land thy wants to impose > your particular lunacy on the rights of others._

Why? Why do you do this?

<comment><USER41> If you look at all my posts on religion on hacker news you will find that this exact response is the reason why we do not need them. Religion is divisive. A heartfelt post by a member of the LDS is quickly met by vitriol. Same as it ever was all across the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> C.S. Lewis wrote about unconditional love in The Four Loves.

"God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God - <USER2> buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves." ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves <http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/14816053-the-four-loves>

</comment><comment><USER43> I loved this post for its simplicity and practicality and also for its willingness to provoke thought.

It led me to begin thinking about a simple question: can one have unconditional love and still believe that an act is wrong or that the beloved can or should improve?

Since the concept of unconditional love is difficult (and important) to define, I will try to use the term as it was used in Paul's essay. In this essay, Paul first learned about unconditional love when contemplating his small, helpless child. She was doing nothing to earn love, but he loved her.

Now things are getting more difficult. What aspect of his daughter did he love? Certainly it wasn't her afflictions. That is, he never would have even considered that because he loved her in her helpless state she should be kept in that helpless state. Because he loved her, he wanted to do everything that he could to help her heal, grow, and thrive. Paul's unconditional love was for a being that could grow and change and overcome sickness. And because he loved that being he wanted to help her grow and change and live. Paul had a model of what was good (health) and he wanted with all his heart to see his daughter move toward what was good. That is what love is.

We can be sick mentally or spiritually. We can also grow mentally and spiritually. When someone has unconditional love for us they will want to see us heal and grow and thrive not only physically but also spiritually and mentally. That's what love is.

If that's what love is, then if remove from the lover any sense of what is sick or healthy, good or bad, then you cripple the lover and make them incapable of seeking the interests of the beloved. You cripple their ability to love.

So the answer to my question seems to be that not only is it possible to have unconditional love and still have a moral map that distinguishes between spiritual health and sickness, but that having such a map is the only way to love effectively.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's really heartwarming to read pieces like this in a place like HN. It remind us that, after all, we're people. We like techhnology, programming and, well, you know, the usual topics around here. But, in the end, like the article said, people matters. So much that everything else is noise. This is a lesson that that you probably won't learn on another person, but on yourself, because it's not tied to reason, but to a different, non-logic, part of the mind. That's why art and poetry repeat themselves over time.

Everyone has his/her moments of grief: don't let they come when it's too late. React as soon as you can: there's people around you that may not be there tomorrow, so take your time to enjoy their company and tell them you do so.

</comment><comment><USER45> Paul, thanks for sharing.

My son was also born prematurely. He's 2 and a half years old now and he's wonderful, but while reading your piece it gave me shivers down my spine, as I know exactly what you and your wife went through. Other people don't realize how awful this was. Personally I wanted to switch places with him, except there was nothing I could do except trusting the doctors and pray for miracles.

My son was indeed a true gift and speaking of spirituallity and death, personally I feel like a part of my soul was transposed in him and the odd thing is that I fear death less since he was born.

</comment><comment><USER46> Thanks for sharing such a personal experience Paul. This article resonated with me deeply. I also wonder about God and try to make sense of my own existence. Great post!

</comment><comment><USER47> That's one amazing girl you've got Paul, a bit late but congratulations!

One of my sons was born premature and I remember the hospital visits and the incubator all too clearly.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think there's another misconception here, or rather an incorrect conflation of two things: Unconditional love and the concept of Hell. The two are not mutually exclusive. Even though you love your child unconditionally that doesn't mean you'll never punish them.

Also the concept of God becomes substantially less abstract when you think of it (at least from the traditional monotheist perspective) as the "Creator" and the "Created".

<comment><USER22> Would you punish your unconditionally loved child by dropping them into a volcano for eating at red lobster? There's spankings, and then there's the whole mass murder/eternal damnation combo thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> There was a time in my life where I distrusted anything that smacked of spirituality. Everything had to be logical. I realized later that I was performing a hysterectomy on my soul. Without confronting, examining and reflecting on these experiences, you may as well be an automata. Thanks, Paul.

</comment><comment><USER50> "...born 100 days early."

It's interesting, according to Roe vs. Wade, a fetus is not supposed to be viable anytime before 91 days prior to the due date (3rd trimester).

As a programmer, nothing drives me more crazy than an arbitrarily chosen (and in this case, clearly incorrect) number, as a basis for critical decisions.

</comment><comment><USER51> one of the most powerful essays I've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER52> Would we interpret death differently if it happened "naturally" (as in old age)? [NB: This is a genuine thought that came to me after I read this (poignant) essay and I hope I am not being insensitive]

</comment><comment><USER53> Paul, thank you for taking the time to write this. I appreciate it.

</comment><comment><USER54> Wow - this was an incredible read. thank you!

</comment><comment><USER55> [http://sathyasaibaba.wordpress.com/category/unconditional- lo...](http://sathyasaibaba.wordpress.com/category/unconditional-love/)

I had to share that.

</comment><comment><USER56> Could note have said this better myself.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm going to avoid commenting on this essay beyond saying Paul, thank you very much for sharing it. I've been circling the drain for the last few weeks due to relentless problems in my personal life, and you've reminded me that there is something worth living for inside all of us.

Your essay was precisely what I needed. Though I don't know you, this piece has changed my life in a way that you'll probably never know, and I owe you a lot. I'm sure it's the same for many others. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for ignoring the haters who are bringing noise to you on the discussion of God.

</comment><comment><USER58> God's love is eternal and it is perfect, but it's not unconditional.

That's fair. That makes more sense than God loving an axe-wielding rapist as much as Mother Theresa.

<comment><AUTHOR> An axe-wielding rapist is mentally sick. I would still love my children, even if they had a horrible sickness. Love is not a reward.

<comment><USER58> All evil can't be blamed on mental illness Paul, but that kind of evil is certainly unfathomable by us.

Riveting article btw. Incredible what you have been through. I was happy to read your daughter is well!

<comment><USER59> Can you make the decision to be evil, or is evilness an inherent property of someone?

If evil is a decision, how could you make the decision to be evil? Deciding to be evil would itself be an evil act. It is an infinite regress.

If evil is built in, how could you possibly respect a god that punishes what it creates for being as it created it?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/01/72515?currentPage=all <comment><AUTHOR> Link to the complete story since some links are broken [http://rc.vc/files/docs/FBI_Cybercrook.pdf](http://rc.vc/files/docs/FBI_Cybercrook.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> Part 2: [http://archive.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/01/...](http://archive.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/01/72581)

Part 3: [http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/02/72...](http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/02/72585)

</comment><comment><USER3> Remove the ?currentPage=all from the URL to get the non-broken version of the link.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also known as "a snitch"</comment>


Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process (1961) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/lectures/Rotman_Summer_School_2013/thermo_computing_docs/Landauer_1961.pdf <comment><USER2> There's a plethora of air-gap malware studies from Ben-Gurion university [1], abused channels range from thermal, acoustic, optical, to classic TEMPEST.

The interesting thing is that there's no escape from such covert attacks, since machines are bound by the laws of physics that demand energy dissipation and generation of noise, heat, etc. If it leaks, then it computes.

[1]: [https://cyber.bgu.ac.il/air-gap/](https://cyber.bgu.ac.il/air-gap/)

<comment><USER3> Shouldn't that be the other way around? Plenty of things leak heat (like cooking dinner) that don't do any computation?

<comment><USER4> The quantum of action, which a layperson can consider as the smallest possible state change, is actually Planck's constant.

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

All energy refers to is an amount of state change that is occurring every second that some quantity of energy exists. That's why action has units Energy x Time. You can divide by time and you get Energy = Actions per Second, kinda like APM in Starcraft..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_\(physics\))

Principle of least action is really the principle of "least change."

In summary, computation is happening -- but most of the computation that energy does while held as mass/matter is cyclic processes (aging.) Not anything interesting, at least to me or you. Unless you like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An interesting paper in somewhat the opposite direction, but still building on Landauer's work is "Ultimate physical limits to computation":

[https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908043](https://arxiv.org/abs/quant- ph/9908043)

The end of the abstract:

> [...] quantitative bounds are put to the computational power of an `ultimate > laptop' with a mass of one kilogram confined to a volume of one liter.

<comment><USER6> That along with "on the computational capacity of the universe" was the paper that stopped me from ever taking Seth Loyd seriously again. Later finding out he was a creepy Epstein croney... well sometimes the universe makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, here's a question:

If heat dissipation is so fundamental to computation, why aren't we using the amount of required heat dissipation as the fundamental measure of complexity in quantum computing?

In particular, say I construct a box with a uniform _mixture_ of all quantum states on n qubits, and all the unitaries that can operate on those n qubits. how much heat do I have to dissipate in order to refine the state in my box to a "particular" quantum state and a "particular" unitary? There are some interesting, and recent, results about how quickly I can dissipate heat. In particular, T(t) is bounded from below by k*T(0)/t^7, where k is some constant.

Since the number of quantum computers you could want to build in that box is growing very fast with the size of your input, I suspect that your inability to throw away states in the process of constructing your computer very rapidly becomes the dominant effect in how long it takes to go from "which number do I want to factor" to actually getting the factors of that number.

<comment><USER6> One of the things they don't tell you about quantum computing is it's supposed to be reversible. Which, ceteris paribus, probably means they're not physical. Nobody likes to talk about that as it's terrible for funding.

You can build totally reversible computers using ordinary classical physics which ... in principle can be arranged to dissipate no heat (in practice they'll always dissipate heat). The problem is you're basically effectively dissipating the "heat" into a memory system which rapidly becomes practically infinite [1]. Imagine keeping around all the bits that got AND-gated away from .... I dunno, fitting GPT-3. Or even just inverting some big matrix. That's what you got to do for reversible computing: at the individual bit level mind you -many of the fundamental floating point operations are not themselves reversible, so they throw off more "heat" aka fill up memory cells with bits which allow you to reverse them.

Landauer, who is an underappreciated genius, wasn't aware of the reversible computing idea, or had too much sense to bother with it. There are others who attempt to defeat his very common sense idea with hand wavey adiabatic relaxation ideas, but I think they're all baloney. All of this is a barrel of monkeys to think about (not QC, which is dumb; the general reversible computing stuff); I recommend the seminal papers listed in the below wiki article if you have an afternoon to burn. Bennett, Toffoli and Vitanyi in particular are real fun to read.

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

<comment><USER7> These are interesting reads, and it seems that reversible computers suffer the same problem, physically. If I want to actually make a reversible computer, I still have to make the blank tape that it uses.

<comment><USER6> Precisely: and that issue (among many others) is the one ding dongs in "quantum information" sweep under the carpets and hope you don't notice. It's HUGELY OBVIOUS if you try to do it for an HP42 calculator tier computer. Somehow the mystification of adding entanglement to the mess pushes it off into "Hilbert space" and nobody notices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lighter, non-quantitative starting point [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing)

I thought of this when I learned about Rust 'moving' values could--in reversible computing hardware--have a zero thermodynamic lower bound.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sorry for offtopicness: submitter, could you please email firstname.lastname@example.com? I would like to send you a repost invite for another submission.</comment>


Hey Google, isn't this black-hat SEO? - <AUTHOR> https://serendipz.marketing/hey-google-isnt-this-black-hat-seo/ <comment><USER2> The majority of these tactics strike me as sleazy, but they almost exclusively work because search engines don't realize they're being gamed. And as search engines get better at recognizing these tactics (e.g. font size of 0), they stop working. The big search engines in 2019 are generally smart enough to ignore this stuff.

What concerns me more is when the search engines themselves are complicit in anti-user tactics.

One example is the loosening of restrictions, particularly by Google, around cloaking.

Google used to come down very hard on cloaking, where you show different content to a search engine's bot than you do to a visitor who arrives from a search engine.

The reason it used to disallow cloaking is because users hate it. Nobody wants to see a search result that appears to answer their query, only to find out when they arrive on the page that the content is inaccessible unless they pay for an expensive membership to the site.

But now Google indexes subscription and paywalled content [https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data- types/paywall...](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data- types/paywalled-content) and tries to make it seem like this isn't cloaking, but from a user's perspective, it totally is.

<comment><USER3> One little happy loophole this creates, however, is if you set your browser agent to be the GoogleBot's ID, it will immediately bypass most paywalls because it thinks its letting the crawler in.

</comment></comment><comment> martin-adams One thing I noticed not mentioned is whether it is possible for there to be a negative SEO attack on these agencies to try and get them blacklisted. I work for an e-commerce company and we've seen comment spam and all sorts linking back to us which we certainly didn't initiate. So black-hat SEO isn't always black and white.

<comment><USER4> Who knows. If you are concerned you could always "disavow" thru Google. Or just go to Fiverr and for $5 spam your competitors with bad links to level the playing field. It's all such a freaking joke these days

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a bunch of SEO tricks out there. Here's a simple one: donate to a bunch of well-known organizations and have them link to your website.

[https://www.pcmag.com/news/367640/how-a-vpn-review-site- domi...](https://www.pcmag.com/news/367640/how-a-vpn-review-site-dominated- google-search-with-a-scam)

<comment><USER6> Just like the lifeboat example in the article.

But yeah, there are definitely a few ways to get free links from large sites/organisations and influencers via tricks like this. Seen quite a few SEO companies sponsoring scholarships for much the same reason.

Expert roundups are another good example of that too. Ask a bunch of popular people about something on Twitter or what not, put the quotes into an article and then get them to link back to it/share it with their followers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not just "agencies".

[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en- us&q=3d+engine](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en-us&q=3d+engine)

Top hit is a half-assed Unity clone called "Falco 3D Engine", produced by the same company (person?) that churns out mounds of banner- and malware-stuffed free "games" of similar quality. It would appear that they somehow leverage their massive installation base from these games to force Google into ranking pages of their choice higher than they would naturally.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a moderator/admin on echojs. What's funny is that all the links are rel="nofollow" and still I delete 2-5 posts a day that are anything from outright spam to blogspam that is all unrelated and/or useless. The comment spam is even worse on most sites, and I'm not sure what the real solution might be.

With new legislation all over the world, particularly in the EU, it's going to be harder and harder to create content or let users interact. Which is moving ever away from the core of the internet's creation which is letting people make stuff. Sites want to be both publishers and platforms and are starting to actively censor. Even if I disagree with the content it's a really slippery slope and already starting to see a lot of unintended consequences.

It really feels like we're heading into the internet dark age.

<comment><USER4> Long live Gopher:// space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Relevant links:

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en)

[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport)

Obviously a top post on HN gets you more attention, and shames Google but for others, Googles does have a process in place.

Note: I have never used the process, an cannot vouch for it's legitimacy.

<comment><USER10> I've used it multiple times, never got a reply or saw a change. I believe it's mostly like the thumbs-down for comments on YouTube: the user feels like they did something but it has no actual meaning.

<comment><USER9> My theory? You can't automate the analysis of these reports (if they could, why didn't they catch it in the first place) so it basically goes into a "black hole" never to be addressed. I only base this wacky, baseless theory on Google's overall obsession with automation, which of course keeps staff low and profits high.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it certainly seems that way. It feels like you'll have a better chance "reporting" to Google by going viral on Twitter, HN etc, than by actually reporting it to Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are some odd things about this article:

1.) A .marketing tld is an odd choice for someone who claims to run an SEO (or any kind of ad) agency.

2.) The writer has gone to great lengths to hide most references to the names of some offending competitors...yet, they left full meta descriptions. In other cases, the author seemed to mock company names.

3.) The article is poorly written and rife with grammatical errors. English is tough and we didn't all grow up writing so, so it's in poor taste to point out another's writing issues. But, speaking as someone who is pretty good at SEO, at this point, the only 'trick' that works is to release and promote well written articles.

4.) Nothing in this is particularly black hat. Does anyone believe that setting a link's height to 0 actually works in 2019? And the rest of the tactics are par for the course in a sketchy industry.

Between those four things, I just can't trust the author. This article was hard to read, uninformative and ultimately serves as a horrible branding device. If an SEO is this poor at marketing him or herself, why??

<comment><USER12> > 1.) A .marketing tld is an odd choice for someone who claims to run an SEO > (or any kind of ad) agency.

One of the biggest SEO myths is that Google penalizes for these unusual TLDs. What's really going on is that a .com/.net/.org is likely to simply be older and more trusted than a .marketing, resulting in higher rankings.

All else equal there is _no_ difference to Google when it comes to the TLD.

<comment><USER11> Let's look at this particular domain. Serendipz.marketing. Serendipz.net and .org are both currently available.

Which would you trust more?

I have never seen any research that suggests that a vanity tld like .marketing is as trusted as a generic tld like .net or .org. I have, however, read troves of research that suggest the opposite - that vanity tlds are less trusted.

<comment><USER12> I think we're confusing 2 kinds of trust: personal trust in a business and Google's trust in a domain for SEO purposes.

For SEO purposes there is no downside to TLD:

> Overall, [Google's] systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com and > .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in > search.

[https://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they- handle...](https://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they-handle-the- new-top-level-domains-tlds-225671)

As far as personal trust goes, I remember that I am not the audience. Yes, .marketing seems weird to me, but I am not the owner of a small business looking for SEO services. Maybe it is impressive to them? Maybe they never notice the domain because they find the site by Googling and never type it themselves?

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry, but I'm not talking about whether Google trusts vanity tlds. I'm talking about consumers. I'll rephrase my last paragraph, though I don't know how to make it more clear.

I have never read one single piece of remotely credible research that suggests that consumers trust vanity tlds as much as a generic tld. However, I have read a lot of research that suggests the opposite - consumers trust generic tlds more than vanity.

Can you show me some credible research that says that small business owners are impressed by .marketing? Preferably research released by people who don't sell vanity tlds.

<comment><USER12> I have no research. But we're not exactly swimming in your research that there's a negative to a .marketing TLD either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is old news. This is old blackhat from 2005. Get with the new evil programs, writer. I'm up against what I can only describe as "company spam." Software company creates multiple llc's to market the same software product with slightly different names or names similar to legit companies. It works like a charm to clog up Google results. And if one gets dinged by Google, just crank up another company with a "headquarters" in Nevada.

</comment><comment><USER13> SEO is dead. Nothing matters anymore except personalized SERP.

</comment><comment><USER14> SEO is like ad-tech, a net negative to our society. There's no white-hat SEO, in the same way that there's no unintrusive ad tech.

<comment><USER15> Advertising is like hacking the free market and should be illegal. Not the best product wins, but the one with the largest advertising budget.

<comment><USER16> > Advertising is like hacking the free market and should be illegal. Not the > best product wins, but the one with the largest advertising budget.

Who decides what is the 'best' product? If advertising were illegal then how do people find out about products? Seems to me if advertising were illegal there would be no free market.

<comment><USER17> The same way I find out about non-advertised yogurt. I go to the grocery shop and choose one based on information displayed on the packaging (which you can count as advertisement if you are pedantic) and my needs. If it was good then I keep buying it and tell my friends and family about it. "Good wine needs no bush."

<comment><USER18> How do I then find out about new products? New ideas that myself or my friends don't know about? Do I rely on the creator's friends spreading the word until I see it? Word of mouth only works so well.

Also, the supermarket analogy falls short when the number of "products" is extremely large and you rely on search. Seems more like the equivalent of going to a very large supermarket in the dark with a flashlight.

<comment><USER19> Word of mouth. The same way you learn about all those other things you didn't want to know, like who dies in the newest Avenger flick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> snitches get stitches</comment>


Tips for/Review our online expense app? - <AUTHOR> http://www.snapexpense.com

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually not that new but we haven't really done much yet to try to promote it. That has to change!

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks cool. Taking pictures of receipts though... does that open up avenues for fraud?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. It's not any different from the paper based alternative. That risk is always there no matter what the medium.

SnapExpense has a basic fraud-detection feature that prevents duplicate images in the system.

<comment><USER2> I guess it just creates a sense of being less real/concrete. I don't know if other people see this too, but maybe doing more to reassure people that it's all quite concrete/traceable/permanent on the site would help? The FAQ is good, although perhaps for companies, instead of "you can download...", something like "we regularly send you a backup ..." might be a good measure?

Anyway, just a few notes.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Virtual coworking space - <AUTHOR> http://openhub.space/?play <comment><USER2> Nice demo. Could you change the background photo when things are toggled?

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't really get it? I tried toggling on things in the menu and nothing seemed to happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, what is your browser? Maybe you had the sound off?</comment></comment>


Steam spews credit card, personal info - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/25/steam_snafu/ <comment><AUTHOR> Would this have been caught by QA testing?</comment>


Hidden message in plain sight - <AUTHOR> security through obscurity - with a twist
example of hidden message in plain sight...
BACKUP FILES ARE AS FOLLOWS. LOCATE THE FILES AND YOU WILL FIND THE PATH SECURITY THROUGH OBSCURITY WITH A TWIST
localhost/backup/011YT1010001101111.zip localhost/backup/01110U00000100000.zip localhost/backup/01110W01101100101.zip localhost/backup/011000110UU1110010.zip localhost/backup/011001010111TW0100.zip localhost/backup/001000WW0001101W101.zip localhost/backup/0110010101110011.zip localhost/backup/01110011RA01100001.zip localhost/backup/0110011101AR100101.zip localhost/backup/0010000GS001101000.zip localhost/backup/01101001SS01100100.zip localhost/backup/0110010QQ001100101.zip localhost/backup/0110111000SD100000.zip localhost/backup/011010010110DW1110.zip localhost/backup/001000000111000DF0.zip localhost/backup/011AE0110001100001.zip localhost/backup/01101EE00101101110.zip localhost/backup/0010000GFD001110011.zip localhost/backup/01101001011UY00111.zip localhost/backup/0110100001110RE100.zip <comment><USER2> "top secret message hidden in plain sight"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> IF YOU GET IT, POST IT HERE!</comment>


Color Palettes - <AUTHOR> https://colorpalettes.com <comment><AUTHOR> Color Palettes is an open collection of beautiful color palettes founded on August 2018 by Html Colors founder Franco Maldonado. Color Palettes is a great resource for designers to find the right color combinations and also sharing theirs.</comment>


The largest public companies taking payroll loans meant for small businesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/21/large-public-companies-are-taking-small-businesses-payroll-loans.html <comment><USER2> If they are big in the sense of having a lot of employees then this is good news. If they are heavily capitalized low employee count businesses like a lot of tech startups, then that's a bad thing.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately I agree here. We're not out to save as many small businesses as possible, but jobs. If we want so save small businesses, we need to earmark more money for small businesses _only_ ; especially should this extend beyond April.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pure profit maximizing behavior is devoid of morals or conscious reflection, so this behavior isn't surprising. If the govt didn't want this to happen they wouldn't have allowed it to, it's not like they didn't see this coming.

<comment><USER5> edit: I'd argue that this isn't devoid of morality since it's literally a zero sum game, and the negative externalities are pretty clear. Making money at someone else's expense is definitely a moral quandary.</comment></comment>


Music Timeline - <AUTHOR> https://music-timeline.appspot.com/

<comment><USER2> I can't take this timeline seriously after reading some of the albums it has listed under the genres.</comment>


Gender Differences in Research Areas and Topics: An Analysis of Publications - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.01255 <comment><USER2> I will never understand why a gender difference is necessarily a negative thing. In some developing countries (Tunisia), females compose 60% of people in STEM fields, which is simply due to economic difficulties, STEM jobs pay more so that's where everyone wants to be. Following the same logic, less women in STEM means that they are prioritizing other things than their economic well-being which is taken care of (better life style in the developed world).

<comment><USER3> In which year did social forces that marginalized women in STEM fields become negligible?

They were obviously substantial in, say, 1963. And I think it's mostly accepted that such forces have become weaker over time. Now, how does one deduce when the work of reducing those marginalizing social forces is done?

Maybe its unreasonable for advocates of increasing representation of women in STEM to take their benchmark as equal representation. Maybe that's too naive.

But what alternative goal do people who say it is too naive provide? No matter which time period you choose, the same cohort makes the argument that representation in their era is just fine, or even overtuned. That's not honest disagreement.

One can come up with hypotheses to explain any distribution in any industry along any lines. That's not constructive.

<comment><USER4> Women have vastly more scholarship opportunities than men. The number of programs pushing women into STEM vastly outnumbers those doing the same for men. Every department openly pushes for equality. Women outnumber men in University, in high school graduation, and in college graduation. If the factor keeping the stem disparity in place is implicit bias, it is one of the strongest social forces ever to exist

<comment><USER3> > If the factor keeping the stem disparity in place is implicit bias, it is > one of the strongest social forces ever to exist

Gender? Yea. Gender may very well be the most powerful, persistent, and ancient of social forces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not trying to pick sides here, but the abstract seems to resonate with James Damore's hypothesis [1].

[1] [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles- Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Only insofar as Damore was partially basing his arguments on previous studies with similar results.

In my opinion, Damore's mistake wasn't collecting studies like this to support his point, but that he 1) didn't also collect their predicted effect sizes and 2) didn't collect studies on effects in the opposite direction and 3) didn't compare the so-obtained prediction with the situation at Google to see whether he had the full picture but 4) directly jumped to suggesting changes in the way Google does things while 5) tying himself to an unpopular political platform.

Then citing a bunch of studies in the opposite direction likewise without regard for effect sizes is an equal-effort response and you get a nice little flame war. The rest is politics.

I doubt that this submission will fare any better.

<comment><USER7> Damore's piece was fundamentally reactionary, responding to holes present in the diversity training program and the justifications presented for the diversity programs at Google. It is not nessasary to provide a complete account of a situtaion to point out flaws in an existing account. It is not nessasary to have a complete account in order to improve the existing account.

There are some really hard questions to answer here. We do not answer hard questions by locking ourselves in a room until we figure it all out and write up a paper to present to the world. We answer hard questions by making incremental progress and sharing and collaborating with that progress so we can work with others to find the answers.

Damore's mistake was thinking that the diversity advocates were interested in a good faith discussion, or evidence based policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gonna watch as this thread accumulates votes but nobody comments because of its unspeakable nature. It's slightly entertaining to watch SV from outside

</comment><comment><USER9> How much of this is cultural and how much of this biological? It is hard to know from aggregates across cultures.

If you stratify by different countries across a wide range of cultures you may be able to infer this from a linear model.

<comment> wu-ikkyu >How much of this is cultural and how much of this biological?

It would probably vary by job classification</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Twitter's monetization platform for 3rd party apps - <AUTHOR>

Twitter's job ad http://twitter.com/job.html?jvi=owUhVfwm,Job indicates that they're building a monetization platform and that they plan to make it available for 3rd party apps. <comment><AUTHOR> clickable url <http://twitter.com/job.html?jvi=owUhVfwm,Job></comment>


The importance of a good command line prompt - <AUTHOR> http://shiroyasha.io/the-importance-of-a-good-shell-prompt.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for the nice write up. I have a prompt spanned over two lines, with just a '$ ' on the second line so that you can have a very long first line (deep nested dir, long git branch name, timestamps, etc) without filling room for the actual command.

Another nice tip, which is not really related to this, is getting used to use `fc` (or CTRL+X E) to edit a command.</comment>


"Bionic" Contact Lens May Create Tiny Personal Displays - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080129-bionic-eye.html <comment><USER2> Not exactly a dup, but the same story was covered in uweek earlier. The YC discussion of that article is here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=100226></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup idea - <AUTHOR>

My idea is basically a class notes exchange and collaboration for students with some social features integrated. I can not find any good application that let students share their course notes and collaborate together to learn. What do you guys think and also how would you market this idea? <comment><USER2> Great idea ! But you are in front of lot of troubles :

* class are copyrighted to the teacher (or the school) in many crountries, you might have some law problems. * students are generally poor => free to use * students are genereally technology addict and know how to configure ads blockers. * be sponsored by universities

Ideas : * allow teacher to subscribe, and have a different interface to answer students' questions (students may discuss without teacher know, of course) * mobile app to study in transport * allow teacher to add optional exercice with correction (you do not want to be another online school and allows teacher grades their students)

<comment><AUTHOR> great idea :) but basically what I want is something to help students learn with friends and share their learning experience with friends, not really with their classmates because they can have friends at different schools. thx for the feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why ask a group of people who are not your target market? Who cares what 98% of the HN users think, they aren't going to use it.

We can all theorize. Unplug and go find out (talk to them, face to face) if the students feel the pain.

<comment><AUTHOR> I care about the feedback on HN because there are a lot of guys here that are very smart and can give good pointers and also there are a lot who have experience with different kinds of startups and again they give a lot of good advice

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm just throwing out some thoughts. How will this supply added value to e.g. the coursera forums and/or stackexchange sites?

<comment><AUTHOR> well basically what is the age of the stack users? i guess 20+...this will not really be only for students...think of it like stackexchange but just between my friends and it can be for highschool students too</comment></comment>


How Can Decision Making Be Improved? (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/08-102.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Favorite quote from the above paper: _Albert Einstein once said, "We can 't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."_ However, it is possible that the unconscious mental system can, in fact, do just that.

Related reading : Thinking fast & slow [1]

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel- Kahneman/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel- Kahneman/dp/0374533555/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting article. My company is actually trying to tackle the problem of how to make better group decisions within large organizations. You can check out our website at: paramountdecisions.com

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't read this. My poor eyes. Learn about LateX please.</comment>


RISC-V Foundation Trumpets Open-Source ISAs in Wake of Meltdown, Spectre - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/risc-v-not-vulnerable-meltdown-spectre-cpu-bugs,36231.html <comment><USER2> This article is a regurgitation of the press release from the RISC-V foundation. I submit that it is a better source for this story [https://riscv.org/2018/01/more-secure-world-risc-v- isa/](https://riscv.org/2018/01/more-secure-world-risc-v-isa/)

EDIT: I see that you submitted both. (Other one here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16089222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16089222)) I suggest deleting this one.</comment>


We Can Win Gamers over to Socialism - <AUTHOR> https://jacobinmag.com/2019/06/video-games-marx-at-the-arcade <comment><USER2> Please keep your petty party politics out of the last refuge most modern kids and adults have left. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Socialism/communism/statism are just ways for one small group to control another larger one. The idea has had disastrous consequences and left people dead and starving in many countries around the world where it's been (and is still being) tried.</comment>


Kitten – A statically typed, stack-based functional programming language - <AUTHOR> http://kittenlang.org/ <comment><USER2> Author of Kitten here, happy to answer any questions.

The site is pretty far out of date—it describes an older version of the language/compiler, so it's better to check out the GitHub repo[1]. I figure I'll send a pre-release announcement to all the stargazers, when the time is right.

One of my new year's resolutions is to work on Kitten every week this year, and release it before the end of the year. I'm also working on a short ebook ("Programming with Kitten") to serve as the standard tutorial.

I could really use help with all this—building and marketing a language is no small task. If you're interested in contributing, even if you're not familiar with Haskell or compilers, I'd be glad to help you get involved. :)

[1]: [https://github.com/evincarofautumn/kitten](https://github.com/evincarofautumn/kitten)

<comment><USER3> _> I figure I'll send a pre-release announcement to all the stargazers, when the time is right._

Completely tangential: how do you send a message to all stargazers?

<comment><USER2> Using the GitHub API, you can get the list of stargazers for a repo, then get the public email (if any) from each of their profiles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Factor was a big name in 'modern stack-based languages,' but of course it's pretty dynamic. I gave Factor a couple of dives a few years ago (after walking through jonesforth prior) and it felt surprisingly complete/mature (except for lack of package manager, of course).

Given its novelty, I think it'd be lovely if Kitten took a page from some other languages and had a "QuickStart" or "Crash Course" that consisted of side-by-side examples comparing Kitten to Forth or Factor, or even some other more common language like Javascript. (Ie, elixir-lang does this comparison with Erlang on its website, and it can be helpful).

<comment><USER2> Factor has been a good source of inspiration when designing Kitten, and I would recommend it to people who want to try a concatenative language _now_. Kitten is not usable for real-world stuff yet—but it's getting close, and eventually it should be a good alternative to Factor for those of us in the static-types camp.

I'm working on an updated tutorial, and I'll definitely include some comparisons to other languages that people are likely to know, say JavaScript and C. But I still need to find the right balance between illustrative comparisons and standalone descriptions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the concept of Factor and talked to the author awhile back who isn't actively involved anymore. My problem comes from the confusing doc and lack of beginner materials. Just because I can write a simple app in an imperative or OO context doesn't mean I can write functional nevermind efficient concatenative code without help.

<comment><USER2> I do hang out with Slava occasionally, and he's been helpful even if he's not that into concatenative programming anymore. For better or worse, the current Factor maintainers are focused more on language internals than onboarding new users. Concatenative/compositional programming does require a different way of thinking, which I think is easy to learn but hard to teach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood. Is concatenative programming not especially good for what he is currently interested in?

<comment><USER5> Last I heard, Slava was working on the Linux kernel at Google.

<comment><USER2> He's working on the Swift compiler at Apple these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty prestigious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kitten seems like a cool project. If I find some free time I might try to contribute something.

Somewhat relatedly, I've been fantasizing about a mobile friendly editor for source code, and it's struck me that concatenative languages can be nicely edited by moving tokens around, which should be quite doable on a smartphone.

Static typing would make it even better, since the editor could show type errors, predict input, and so on.

<comment><USER2> That is one of the goals of the project—the simple language structure and static types should let you do some interesting things with program visualisation and editing. Email me (username@gmail) if you'd like to chat about it—maybe we could build something cool together. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> \- What other programming-languages inspired this one?

\- What market is this language addressing? (ie. where should I "be using it"?)

\- What is the bus-factor?

\- How difficult is/was it to write/design your own programming language?

<comment><USER2> Kitten is inspired mainly by:

• Systems languages (C, C++)

• Functional languages (Haskell, OCaml)

• Concatenative languages (Cat, Factor, Joy, Forth)

As a functional language without GC, it's intended for mid-level applications where you might ordinarily reach for C++, but it remains to be seen how people might actually use it. It might be useful as a lightweight scripting language, or for writing low-level embedded code that _feels_ high-level.

The bus factor is currently very bad—people have contributed here and there over the years, but I'm pretty much the only core developer.

Building a language is as hard as you make it, basically. You can make a pretty good toy language in a weekend, or you can go all-in and try to create something innovative, elegant, versatile, stable, usable, and performant. That takes years, and it's a process of discovery with many false starts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad to see a successor for the defunct cat. I love the precision and concision you can achieve with this style of programming.

Cat was a big inspiration in Michelson, another concatenative, statically typed, functional programming language that we designed to run smart contract in Tezos.

[http://www.tezos.com/language.txt](http://www.tezos.com/language.txt)

<comment><USER2> I hadn't heard of it—that's very interesting, thanks. :)

It would be nice to use GADTs for Kitten's AST, but last time I tried, it made inference complicated, and I never figured out a good way to encode Kitten's permission system in Haskell types. Even just annotating Kitten types with their kinds (in the old compiler) was too cumbersome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Parentheses, tuples, for loops... my first impression is it doesn't look very concatenative.

<comment><USER2> The Levenshtein example isn't the best. It's also using an older version of the language with things like mixfix operators ("from()to(){}") which have since been removed.

Anyway, Kitten is concatenative at the term level (all terms denote functions, juxtaposition is composition) but not the token level as in Forth (e.g., "{" and "}" are not meaningful words on their own).

<comment><USER9> Interesting, I am curious as to why you are concatenative at the term level only. Is it trying to make syntax more palatable to ALGOL family programmers?

PS: I loved your "why concatenative programming matters" article

<comment><USER10> Sorry but I have to be negative here because I love Forth.

People tried to make Lisp/Scheme less 'prefix', and it didn't fly. People tried to make Forth less 'postfix', and it didn't fly.

The whole point of concatenative languages is the simple syntax and implementation.

I wrote a Forth dialect in C - actually I wrote many over the years because it's a refinement and adaptation process, but I'll talk about the one I'm currently using. Its core is a little less than 2K SLOC that compile into a ~30Kb (yes, kilobytes) (~60Kb for Windows 32bits) . It uses a very straightforward direct threaded scheme - something like ( _ip++)() - but that 's plenty fast already (think Lua-fast).

It's easy to modify because, well, I wrote it from top to bottom. At some point I wish I had separators for number and binary numbers. In an hour or so I could write things like 0b1010_1001. At one point I was tired to write _"test.4" load*. I hacked the interpreter so that when it sees a word that ends with ".4" it tries to load the file with that name. Very handy. At some point I wish I could embed my interpreter into a large embedded application to help with debugging. No problem either.

It's easy to extend. Need more accurate time stamps? Here you go:

        static void p_getms(void)
        {
    	struct timeval t;
    	gettimeofday(&t, NULL);
    	push(t.tv_usec/1000);
    	push(t.tv_sec);
        }

And then you add the function in an array to "register" it, like you do in Lua.

I can write bindings to libraries almost on-the-fly thanks to the braindead API which consists mainly in push() and pop(). No FFI required. It's also trivial to translate a piece of code from Forth to C when you need speed. I think it could even be automated.

THIS is what Forth is really about. I don't see the point of having people "think concatenative" if they don't have all this in return.

You want static typing? I can understand, because Forth is quite unforgiving and will segfault if you make a mistake and that can be annoying. Actually, when I started to write the interpreter I'm currently using, my plan was to write some kind of "linter" to help with that. However as an embedded systems programmer I'm pretty used to printf() debugging (it might be a bad habit) and Forth is pretty good at that because you can invoke a REPL very easily. So I have yet to find the motivation to write that Linter.

<comment><USER9> Clojure syntax looks like a cross between common lisp and javascript, but it manages to be the most popular lisp around by a country mile. On the one hand I find it distasteful, on the other hand it hasn't seemed to hurt adoption. I don't know if it drove adoption though - it's probably more likely due to the fact the inventor of the language is a charismatic and prolific speaker. But I digress...

I kind of agree with you. I don't think "softening" the syntax of a concatenative languages is going to help much, and is more likely to drive away the kind of PL dabblers who are interested in concatenative languages in the first place. The vast majority of programmers will never try anything that doesn't resemble ALGOL at least a bit. It's a lost cause to try and reel them in.

IMO, the best way for nice languages to thrive is to be simple enough that it's easy for a small number of people to maintain, and powerful enough that the implementation and standard library can be constructed in as few LOC as possible to minimize bugs. Being able to attach itself to an existing large ecosystem with a minimum of fuss (ie, embedable in C or Java interop) also seems to be a great trojan horse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The REPL stack for doing calculations looks interesting (you can find it in the tutorial link: [http://kittenlang.org/tutorial/](http://kittenlang.org/tutorial/)). I'll have to try it out though to see how well I like it.</comment>


Show HN: Self hosted kanban-like project / task management web app - <AUTHOR> https://www.iferapp.com

<comment><USER2> Site says 2013 in some places. No links to source, doesn't seem self-hostable at all.

<comment><USER3> Following the submitter's comments on another thread, apparently they're going to offer a self-hosted option "soon". We'll see.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are absolutely correct. iferapp.com is the free cloud based application - the self hosted version will come soon :) I just wanted to post it here and see if this is a good idea at all.

<comment><USER4> Then it's not "Show HN"; it's "Ask HN".

Besides, if you are thinking of opening it up for self hosting, what does it matter if the sample size of HN readers who seen your headline and click on it think it is a "good idea" or not?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Basho Luwak (large file support for Riak) - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/basho/luwak Luwak is a service layer on Riak that provides a simple, file-oriented abstraction for enormous objects. <comment><USER2> A very interesting development from the guys at Basho, who've been on a tear recently.

It looks to target the crowd who would have gone with MogileFS or something like it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the tippy top of the README: Luwak is a service layer on Riak that provides a simple, file-oriented abstraction for enormous objects.</comment>


The Cyber, a Secret Society on the Ethereum Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chevdor/thecyber-a-secret-society-on-the-ethereum-blockchain-4eaa47488514 <comment><AUTHOR> Got in to the second one today. Was a great learning experience! Only 5 people have gotten in to the second one since it launched.</comment>