It's official: Fez 2 has been cancelled - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/27/4563350/fez-2-canceled-phil-fish-confirms <comment><USER2> I truly feel sorry for Phil Fish. He may have said some silly things in the past, but literally EVERY time something news-worthy about him comes up, the internet explodes with thousands of vitriolic comments about how much of a dick he is. Just look at the comments on Reddit, RPS, or any mainstream news site. They're abhorrent. This has been going on in full-force pretty much since GDC12, when the "Japanese games" incident happened.

Fish asked on Twitter for people to please stop treating him like this a few months ago. It's only gotten worse since then. At this point, it's clear that this stuff is weighing on him pretty heavily. I don't think anyone deserves to be treated like this, regardless of how they handle their online presence. I mean, it's basically cyber-bullying at this point. I wish people would realize that there's another person on the other end of the line who is actually suffering because of their comments.

(Hoping to get this in before the Fish-bashing inevitably starts here as well.)

<comment><USER3> I don't understand people who say "I'm pirating his game because he's a dick". If you like the game, buy it. If you don't like him, don't play his game. You can't have your cake and eat it.

I pirated the game, played 10 minutes and then bought it, even though Fish may be a dick (I don't know if he is). I enjoyed the 10 minutes, so I should buy the game.

<comment><USER4> That's just basic rationalization at work.

What I find more interesting are the folks who would take offense to the latter option as well. Choosing not to buy a game based on an opinion of the creator will quickly draw the ire of its fans.

The gaming community, more than any other I've been a part of has a tendency to confuse self-worth and identity with the products they buy.

<comment><USER5> > The gaming community, more than any other I've been a part of has a tendency > to confuse self-worth and identity with the products they buy.

I really like this quote, it puts solid words to a feeling I've had for some time.

COD vs BF is a great example. BF players' feeling of self-worth is largely based around not being COD players, or so it seems if you browse some forums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Link to the video that is the main cause why the game was cancelled: ( Marcus Beers rant starts at about 1:50 )

[http://www.gametrailers.com/full- episodes/roj70m/invisible-w...](http://www.gametrailers.com/full- episodes/roj70m/invisible-walls-everything-and-the-kit)

And a great quote from the forums, that summarizes the situation pretty well:

>>Hey indies give us clickbait consolewar bullshit comments on demand, or else we'll publicly insult you on video. Meanwhile we'll throw softball questions at any developer working at a major 3rd party because we can't lose access to that previous ad revenue and review copies.

What a fucking joke.<<

<comment><USER7> That's a terrible video; it's unprofessional at the least.

The comments are [http://polytroncorporation.com/fez-ii- cancelled](http://polytroncorporation.com/fez-ii-cancelled) just make me sad.

Stuff like this is one the reason that the internet makes me sad. Instead of emotions being private, they spread like a virus; fortunately (I hope), phil has a lot of money to weather this.

<comment><USER8> Don't get upset at the comments. They almost surely trolling from [https://boards.4chan.org/v/](https://boards.4chan.org/v/) (NSFW). Look at, e.g., [https://boards.4chan.org/v/res/202172198](https://boards.4chan.org/v/res/202172198).

<comment><USER9> Yes. It's very sad that /v/ has it in for Fish. I thoroughly enjoyed Fez, and IMO it's up there with some of the best.

He might be a bit of a dick, but so was Steve Jobs. Interesting how Jobs is reveared and yet Fish is despised—perhaps it has to do with the "maturity" of the respective "fan clubs".

<comment><USER10> Trust me, a lot of people dislike Steve Jobs immensely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On this topic my thoughts are divided. Phil Fish didn't deserve to be covered in vitriol and repeatedly flamed and insulted as he did. He is a dedicated, hard working and creative individual that has enriched the gaming with Fez, which is a oh so wonderful and delightful puzzle game. I love that game to bits.

That said, I definitely see how he could have triggered all the ire that is directed at him. He is as a previously commenter rightly noted, well known for engaging in similarly rude and insulting mouthing-off matches. So it's a bad combination of being able to dish out insults but not take any.

While I do have some sympathy for him, I tend to disassociate him from his work, simply because of his 'persona'.

<comment><USER4> I tend agree with you.

I see the behavior of Fish and his detractor as symptoms of the same cocky entitlement and nastiness that is so terribly common gaming culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Phil Fish spends as much time trolling for headlines as he does making games. Please don't encourage him.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't really feel sorry for Phil. People are being mean to him? Yes, definitely. But the other way around is well known to be done. Phil is usually, put mildly, blunt when talking about other people. Guess it's just karma.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm curious how this divide even occurred. Why have we even decided to decide whether to like or hate this guy?

<comment><USER15> There was an incident a while back where Phil Fish was on a panel and was asked a question by a Japanese game developer. The question was prefaced by saying many indie games are inspired by older Japanese games, and the game developer asked what Fish thought of modern Japanese games.

Fish's response was "Your games just suck." It was an incredibly rude response. A lot of people don't like Fish since that incident.

It doesn't help that he's incredibly sensitive and rude in his public comments (that is, he seems to be able to hand out criticism, but not accept it with grace.)

<comment><USER14> Okay I watched the video. The response was rude perhaps, but also blunt and honest. It wasn't attack against that person, or even Japanese games in general. It was an attack against a specific type of game genre that is allegedly prevalent in Japan.

At maximum I would call this a social faux pas. Certainly not something deserving of bullying.

If I were asking the question, I would actually value that response. Here's someone who is willing to be honest with me instead of using generic political speak.

<comment><USER15> Yeah I believe that's what started it, but I think what rubs people the wrong way is that here is this guy that (as you say) is bluntly honest — to the point of being rude — to people. Yet when people are bluntly honest with him, he reacts very negatively.

Edit: You say "bullying," but I would suggest that he maintains his online persona in such a way as to generate controversy. He comes off as very abrasive, even annoying, at times. I felt that he specifically tries to spur such reactions with his comments.

<comment><USER14> I'm kind of disgusted by the overuse of the word "bullying". But look at some of these comments: [http://polytroncorporation.com/fez-ii- cancelled](http://polytroncorporation.com/fez-ii-cancelled)

"Cry me a river, Fishy-boy. No one cared for FEZ, no one cares for FEZ II and no one cares for the cancellation."

"Get lost you waste of talent. Shitbag telling others to kill themselves, you dont deserve your fame, money or attention."

"Good. I hope that you never come back"

"You are an embarrassment."

"Good news. Stop making games please."

I've scrolled 0.1% down the page but I'll stop there.

<comment><USER15> For comparison, look at tweets to Call of Duty developer @DavidVonderhaar from angry players because gun stats were changed:

[http://gamerfury.tumblr.com](http://gamerfury.tumblr.com)

Doesn't excuse this behaviour at all. But Phil Fish is not the only one who has to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> True definition of rage quit. Game over.

</comment><comment><USER17> I feel really sorry for him. On the other hand, I'm hoping this means we'll see linux and mac ports of the original game sooner rather than later :D

</comment><comment><USER18> He runs off with the money just like that? Was it kickstarted?

<comment><USER11> Umm, no. He just announced it afaik.

He probably means "I'll take all the FEZ money and I'm going home". It's the proverbial kid taking his ball home.</comment></comment>


Disqus: Support Via Twitter Works - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/04/28/twitter-brand-management/

<comment><USER2> Someone please make Twitter Alerts, just like Google Alerts,

YOu would think that you would get Tweets about your brand via Google Alerts, but that does not seem to be the case. Searching Google yes, but they are not indexed for long. Also, with a Twitter Alert service it needs to be instantaneous!

</comment><comment><USER3> After meeting with Daniel and Jason, they are just outright on the ball. Good job on winning the war one blogger at a time.

<comment><USER4> Seconded. They are the best example of how to do customer support right I've ever met. I love going to Daniel's page on Disqus and seeing all the threads he's active on, it's really inspiring.</comment></comment>


Google drops "don't be evil" for "do the right thing–follow the law" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/651179328902791168 <comment><USER2> I hate to Godwin this thread right out of the gate but say Google is in 1930's Germany as the Nazis came to power, so they persecute jews or look the other way as many corporations did in Nazi Germany? This was legal and the "right" thing to do back then and most people did it.

How about a current issue; mass surveillance and supporting a police state? Could be legal depending on what your definition of is is, to quote one weasel.

Go along to get along the pragmatists always say. "Don't be evil" was a cheap, easy slogan when you are a college kid but now that you are all grown up with responsibilities and mortgages (and dividends) to be paid, compromising with evil doesn't seem so bad.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm glad they've abandoned the negative proposition of "Don't be evil" though I would be happier if the new precept were simply, "Do the right thing", Spike Lee notwithstanding.</comment>


The Good Idea Lottery - <AUTHOR> http://jiaaro.com/the-good-idea-lottery

<comment><USER2> This article really resonated with me - I have been trying an idea-a-day experiment for the past couple of months and the key to this is, as you put:

"Most of your ideas will suck, but that's fine. Just write them all down. Every. Single. Stinking. Idea."

This has led to some areas I never even considered exploring before, based on ideas that at first glance seemed to be absolute garbage.

I even created an internal tool to help me write these ideas since writing on a notepad wasn't cutting it - shameless plug: it's at www.255ideas.com and is free to use.</comment>


Here's a new way to learn coding tools and concepts right when you need them - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/heres-a-new-way-to-learn-coding-tools-and-concepts-right-when-you-need-them-ee82d15c576d <comment><USER2> I am an Infrastructure Engineer and I am being 'pushed' more and more towards manipulating things with scripts and the like. I really appreciate the layout and delivery that you are using. As an added bonus, your Stack Overflow parody was Spot On; that is seriously how I see it more often than not. And that Wikipedia article. I looked up that word. The pronunciation guide didn't help a whack. Good stuff. Thanks for the post and laughs.

Edit:: added 'parody' so that sentence made some sort of sense.</comment>


Hiring great software developers: T-R-U-S-T - <AUTHOR> http://blog.10clouds.com/hiring-great-software-developers-t-r-u-s-t/

<comment><USER2> > Many people imagine that making a product with a software company or with a > freelancer is a similar process to buying a car.

Bad analogies are bad. One doesn't buy a ready and finished item. One buys _time_ spent on building something -- hence it's a _service_.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook? - <AUTHOR> After reading a lot about G+ fail[1], I am really interested to know, will we see full replacement to Facebook in near(10-50years) future or when someone from this community at this time will be alive when full replacement happens? (like orkut -> fb, myspace->fb,...)<p>[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9990919 <comment><USER2> There were full replacements for Compuserve, Prodigy, The Well, TheGlobe, AOL, geocities, friendster, myspace and yes facebook too. They're no Google. They are a walled garden like AOL but won't be around as long as AOL, which, unbelieveably is still kicking -> [http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=aol&ql=1](http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=aol&ql=1) after their $165 billion dollar deal -> [http://fortune.com/2015/01/10/15-years-later-lessons-from- th...](http://fortune.com/2015/01/10/15-years-later-lessons-from-the-failed- aol-time-warner-merger/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ten to fifty years is a long time to project into the future .... I think there will not be so much a replacement social media web site to Facebook as 1) fragmentation of the social media space. 2) the waning of social media as the predominant focus of personal computing. I would go out on limb and say that software agents will be the next big thing. That is applications that know a lot about you and do things on your behalf without your direct intervention. Less interaction, not more. I think the proliferation of web APIs and big data, make software agents more viable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess Zapier and IFTTT already started the way for software agents. If we call them Agent 1.0, how do you see Agent 2.0?

<comment><USER3> I don't know much about Zapier but IFTTT seems to me to be more like the infra-structure for software agents. IFTTT you are still creating recipes. I would like to say that Agent 2.0 would look like the Knowledge Navigator of the Apple videos ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0)). Many moons ago, I remember seeing this video in a graduate computer science course on CHI and freaking out. Now the question is what does Agent 1.0 look like?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think they have enough users that they don't have to worry too much about a replacement. Instagram is pretty close conceptually to Facebook, but most people don't use it as a direct substitute. One thing way in the future I could see hurting them is when my generation --the first generation of users that used Facebook regularly start dying. If I'm an old man and I'm on Facebook seeing daily updates on people I used to know dying, I will probably stop using Facebook altogether to avoid terminal depression, but might just be me. However, if they can keep on-boarding the younger generations, they could probably survive that, assuming their isn't a hipper substitute by then offering users immortality.

</comment><comment><USER5> Humans have a stubborn habit of assuming what they experience _right now_ is the steady state future of the universe. It helps our meat selves cope with inevitable futures so we quickly believe things will always be the same from now on. (Also see: housing prices will always go up, my stock prices will always go up, i'm healthy so X doesn't matter to me, etc.)

But, facebook is a fad that will be torn down and replaced one day. If facebook is still around in 50 years, we have failed humanity by letting such a violation of privacy and invasion of decency survive into an even more modern era.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think there will come a time when Facebook is replaced. I don't, however, think it's going to come as an obvious social networking site.

Let's back up a bit to what Facebook was in its nascent days: a place to go and see what others were doing. The quality of the content was high relative to what the users wanted. Someone else here on HN posted within the last week or so a link to Reed's Law (Reed's homepage: [http://www.reed.com/dpr/](http://www.reed.com/dpr/)) which basically outlines how social networking groups become more useful. So, the question that someone is going to have to answer to beat Facebook is, 'How can I create something that is providing a large number of people with higher quality content than Facebook?'

Personally, I think it's going to be a Trojan Horse (in the historical sense, not the malicious program sense) that does this. Something that allows users to join (probably using their Facebook account to log in and register), and then facilitates sharing high quality information with others. The first iteration may not be an obvious threat to Facebook, but it's coming. I honestly believe it's going to come from the healthcare space, and probably in about 10 years. Full disclosure: I applied to the YC Fellowship with an idea of how to do this from healthcare, although it's not as obvious from the application, that's the end goal.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why would you still use FB today? There are better photo sharing apps, there are better messenging apps, there are better broadcasting apps. The fact that FB monolithically encloses these is only relevant on a desktop browser.

FBs biggest strength is it's market share, the fact that you can be reasonably assured that you _can_ look up that girl from that party on it.

But that strength is waning, especially in the sub 20s who are strangely rediscovering what sharing on the internet used to be. We have yikyak instead of IRC for community based anon-chat. We have whatsapp and wechat instead of AIM for non-anon chat. We have tumblr instead of geocities for free expression front walls.

Kind of funny how far people think we've come and how innovative these new apps are. It's all just a rehash wrapped up in pretty colors with trendy logos.

It was cool for about 5 years, then people started realizing that maybe it wasn't a good idea to have your smoking cyph posting pictured of bongs on your biometric profile that you got pressured into sharing with the boss and mom. No clue what happened to that early 90s generation. The late 90s are way more savvy.

<comment><USER8> I (begrudgingly) use Facebook today precisely because of that market share. I agree that there are services that perform the tasks of Facebook more competently (or at least ones that I personally like better) but due to how it's set up, it doesn't do me a lot of good if just about everyone I want to communicate with (in the manner of social/sharing networks at least) is on Facebook.

Facebook managed to grab a huge share of the potential userbase that previous and subsequent services have not. I might like Google+ better for sharing links and photos with friends and family but Facebook is the one that finally got _everyone_ to sign up. There's probably a good portion of Facebook that just won't bother switching to any similar service no matter how much nicer they make the interface or features because it's just too much "friction" for them.

And unlike email where you can host your own or choose from loads of providers, there's not a common protocol that allows you to use a different social sharing service and still communicate with everyone on Facebook. It's not like when I switched my personal email to Gmail in the mid-2000's and could continue to email the same friends and family even though most of them weren't interested in changing providers for more storage. They kept their @aol.com or @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com addresses and I could still send and receive emails.

I honestly don't think anyone's gonna upset this by building a "better Facebook" at this point. If Facebook falls by the wayside I think it will be because the current social-media-type activities are replaced by something else entirely.

Nobody's going to pull up their stakes for some new Facebook+ and maintain two accounts/profiles since half of their contacts don't want to bother. But when more of that sharing and communication starts taking place on a different style of service, whatever form that may take, people will start using FB less and less until it becomes more of a hassle to maintain your account than to leave it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not anytime soon. And if there is, it will be something with most focus on mobile and phone numbers. That's why Facebook is already on top of that with Instagram and Whatsapp. Facebook might be in this for the long haul, esp with the stuff they can also do with Oculus.

<comment><USER10> It's possible that unlike Instagram and Whatsapp, the next hot new app that's popular with young people will be bought by a competitor of Facebook's rather than Facebook - or will just refuse to be bought by anybody and challenge Facebook on their own terms.

It's also possible that open social platforms like Diaspora will start attracting away some of Facebook's more privacy-oriented users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What you have to take into account when guesstimating this is, that while Facebook has a lock-in, many of the obstacles it had are fading away. I am thinking of mainly these two:

1\. The typical mom in twenty years will be much easier to get on a new web-/app-platform than the current typical mom.

2\. Internationalization beyond the US and Western Europe is becoming easier.

</comment><comment><USER12> FB is also struggling... it is not any more this one point of social media. Many young people are not even on FB. This is why e.g. WhatsApp is so critical for FB.

</comment><comment><USER13> App.net, Diaspora, Google+ etc. have tried and failed. I don't see any competitor in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER14> Facebook's weakness is China and Russia.

Sorry guys, but it's true.

Facebook aligned itself too much with one particular nation state and not that there is anything wrong with that ( hell it may even be "morally right" ), it is just that it doesn't work for business.

Businesses right now can be truly global phenomena, much like harking back to the imperial days or Spanish or British companies ( like Swire's and P&O ) companies that had broad interests all around the world.

The most important trait of a global venture ?

Work with everybody.

When companies align themselves politically, they fail to truly engage a global marketplace.

Companies actual political aspect is to be like a reconciling diplomat between disputing parties, it does not behoove them to engage the same disputes as nation states and politics do, they can do a great benefit to themselves, to nations and to people by simply being truly global, rather than narrowly nation state.

Oh, and in 50 - 100 years, it's all going to be "giant corporations" anyway. The period now is just a period of transition, as government's projection of power is shifting toward being executed by corporations.

Companies that hold fast to the past -- nations and borders and such, and refuse to work with everybody for political reasons, are not going to make out. Dying breed.

Of course the insane fake lefty moralists will pretend moral righteousness and champion google's to block itself in China. "So righteous" \-- yet really, the best way to serve human rights is to actually serve the people, wherever they are. Had Google been less political and more open to working with the Chinese they could have been a force there.

Same for FB. China is never going to go, "Come in come in, your intelligence agencies are welcome to the comings and goings of our citizens, we therefore embrace your FB"

The Chinese are practical. FB could have worked with them, had it been less political. So could have Google.

Now they missed their chances, swapping results for the fake payoff of a misguided sense of righteousness.

Well ... dying breed. That's what dying breeds do...make choices that don't work, and lead to their extinction.

The best way to create a global harmony is to create global companies.

Of course the fake lefties will pretend no one is allowed to do that, and pretend that they're right by saying others are wrong. Yet this just leads to morally bad outcomes that belie the very causes the fake lefties pretend to support, a contradiction that cuts to the core of the fake left paradox.

If you want more info about the fake left, go read Zizek's piece on the morally corrupt fake left championing of Islamist criminal apologism.

Companies are unavoidably political. It's just that it works for them, and for their customers, and for governments, when they choose to exercise that politics in a way that "works with everybody."</comment>


Starting with Roles and Passions instead of Orgchart and Job Descriptions - <AUTHOR> http://notepad.thomasknoll.info/enjoying-a-chill-sunday-afternoon-creating-roles-and-passions-process-format-for-the-primeloop-team#.UziACH8jXIv.hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious what questions would come to your mind if your company decided to implement something like this?</comment>


TED talks for IT pros - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9181220/8_must_see_TED_talks_for_IT_pros

<comment><USER2> Direct links:

John Underkoffler on gesture-based computing: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/872>

Gary Flake on extreme data visualization: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/783>

Jane McGonigal on how gamers can save the world: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/799>

Stephen Wolfram on creating a computational theory of the universe: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/843>

Pranav Mistry on a gesture-based interface that goes everywhere: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/685>

Eric Topol on wireless tech in medicine: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/772>

Tim Berners-Lee on making the world's data open source: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/788>

Ray Kurzweil on machines that think and grow: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/560>

\---

Edited to add: I just made a simple script to download the hi-res videos. Available here: <http://bitbucket.org/johannes/tedget/wiki/Home>

Then just run `./tedget 872 783 799 843 685 772 788 560`. (Please be nice with the good people at TED and only download what you need)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in the process of watching all of them .. very few I skip. great topics great speakers!

<comment><USER4> I would swap snake oil salesman Kurzweil for Clay Shirky's institutions vs collaboration:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPQViNNOAkw>

<comment><USER5> He has recently gotten a lot of heat for some of his recent comments. But calling him a snake oil salesman hardly seems fitting, as he has heavily contributed to the AI field (in OCR, pattern recognition, and speech recognition if I recall correctly). Sure, the guy is a whack job (the stuff about medicine comes to mind), but he's one smart whack job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks. These look great, I just came across the first one before.</comment>


Why are you still deploying overnight? - <AUTHOR> http://briancrescimanno.com/2011/09/29/why-are-you-still-deploying-overnight/

<comment><USER2> I have to completely disagree with this author. Even if you're confident in your code, send your best people to work on it, are able to rollout a phased deployment and have the capability for quick rollback in overnight or off-peak deployment is preferable. If ever there was anything to happen unless people affected by it the better. Why put the strain of peak traffic and bandwidth up against a brand-new deployment?

<comment><USER3> You make a good point. So does the article.

What I was wondering while reading the article: when will it become common that there is no peak or off-peak time? There are some businesses there now, but at some point there will be no such thing for most businesses.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point that I honestly didn't think to bring up in the article directly--thought I did mention that for businesses operating globally, the notion of "overnight" becomes meaningless.

I think the first commenter took the notion a bit far; I didn't mean to imply that we should be deploying during your absolute busiest hours. However, I think deploying overnight is a bad idea--and, moreover, I think it's dangerous to assume that simply "avoiding your customers" is a scalable, long-term solution for deployment.

<comment><USER2> you're right, "avoiding your customers" is not a scalable long-term solution for deployment. As businesses, big or small become more global this will become a bigger problem. As I'm sitting here reading this I see a potential for new business. We need to find some way to filter traffic. Think about two different versions of the website existing at the same address and in front of the website sits a fork (like a fork in the road) that splits incoming traffic into two groups. As traffic comes in a portion, say 20% is then the diverted to your brand-new deployment while the rest, 80% is directed to your older site. It's almost like having an semi-open beta in regards to the new deployment. It will be tested in real time under real circumstances. Then as bugs get ironed out you can increase the ratio from 80 – 20 gradually until all traffic is now being fed into the brand-new live site. so who wants to co- found this with me? we might be able to make it in time for the next round of Y Combinator!

by the way I didn't think you were saying that you should deploy during your busiest time, I just met all things being equal, the should definitely look for "off-peak" times to rollout new deployments. But we both seem to agree that the long-term solution. Globalization is going to make off-peak times a thing of the past. Hence see my solution above, we can get ahead of it and make some money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure there's a ton of money to be made; solutions like what you're describing already exist and are in use at mature development shops that understand that they don't have to be afraid to roll out new code at 9:30 am.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Quantum Computing Explained Simply - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchtrack.co/guide/485/quantum-computing-explained-for-beginners---part-1 <comment><USER2> This isn't a particularly good introduction to quantum computing. The fact that we can't scale down transistors into the quantum realm doesn't have much to do with the real motivation behind making quantum computers. The real motivation for making a quantum computer is that it allows us to perform algorithms that exploit the quantum behaviour of qubits.

To give a concrete example of this, there is a basic quantum logic gate called a Hadamard gate. This takes a qubit in the state |0> and transforms it into a qubit in the state (|0> \+ |1>)/sqrt(2). The resultant state is what is known as a superposition state - namely a superposition of both the |0> and |1> states. You can think of the |0> and |1> states as being analogous to the 0 and 1 states of a traditional bit. What this means is that when the qubit is measured (read queried) it will return a value of 0 or 1 with equal probability.

The point I'm making is that this is radically different to traditional computing and isn't simply just the next step along in 'valve transistor -> semiconductor -> ?'

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I put this guide together and I'm really glad you brought this point up. When I thought of creating this guide, I wanted to make it really easy for beginners to graduate level by level up to quantum gates, which inspired me to instead break the information down in a series.

This Part-1 guide in the series is mean't to educate even complete noobs from how a basic computer works and how we have reached the limits of making them any more powerful. While you are accurate when you say Quantum algorithms can help us exploit the quantum behaviour of qubits, we are particularly interested and motivated to utilize them because we can exponentially increase our computing power.

I have another follow-up guide coming that would take the readers a few more levels up very soon.

<comment><USER3> > we are particularly interested and motivated to utilize [quantum computers] > because we can exponentially increase our computing power.

On _some_ problems.

Quantum computers are --- to the best of our knowledge --- exponentially faster at computing some things (e.g. discrete log and factoring), quadratically faster at others (e.g. NP-complete problems), and no better than classical computers at others.

(I assume you know this since you're writing an article on quantum computers, but want to clarify for others.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I kind of knew that people might associate the increment in computing power with that required in their daily computing needs like watching Youtube videos for example; for the same reason I made sure to explicitly mention in the Introduction, that - "it [Quantum Computers] promises tremendous computing power enough to help us solve some really tough mathematical problems that are holding back our progress in a number of fields."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are doing slides, then I'd strive to avoid scrolling. Either you scroll or your swipe, but doing both is kind of difficult. But I like the idea of small contained slides of content and graphs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me in on your experience. :) We totally believe that when information around a topic is broken down into bite-sized slide-like chapters its much less overwhelming to consume than everything dumped on a single page.

We are trying to give the authors an ability to contain the contents of a single slide within user view. Our editor is freshly released, so hopefully a future release soon enough would let educators do that and with some interaction features as well.

<comment><USER5> Is the slide software available online, e.g. github? I've been looking for something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> We built the editing tool for our users who would like to create Searchtrack guides to break down and express their knowledge. Unfortunately, it's not an open-source software. You can however request an invite to access it after signing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was pretty short. But I thought people working on quantum computers were trying to understand the Wave function, and then see if they can make the Wave function do the calculations. In the case the world was a simulation, this is like accessing the computing power of the Simulation Computer of the world.

<comment><USER7> It was short because this article doesn't explain quantum computers. A better title is "Why we can make smaller transistors?" Quantum computers don't use transistors.

And quantum computers are not about understanding The Wave or hacking the word simulator. Another commenter post this link, that is a good initial introduction [http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3](http://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/the-talk-3)

(Anyway, to really understand what is quantum mechanics and quantum computers, you need a lot of algebra. Don't trust explanations without algebra.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is that no one has referenced "The Talk"?

[http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3](http://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/the-talk-3)

</comment><comment><USER9> Wont't graphene transistors be the way forward? Does anyone have any info on this?</comment>


How Latest Snowden Leak Is Headache for White House - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/02/20/how-latest-snowden-leak-is-headache-for-white-house/?mod=WSJ_article_EditorsPicks_0 <comment><USER2> > "It's hard for me to imagine that there are a lot of technology executives > that are out there that are in a position of saying that they hope that > people who wish harm to this country will be able to use their technology to > do so,"

What horseshit!

Calling out the government for blatantly overreaching the constitutional authority it claims grants its power isn't even a little bit the same as hoping terrorists choose _your_ technology to harm people. That claim is not only intellectually dishonest, but it distorts the discourse to utter nonsense (which is precisely why they frame it like they do).

<comment><USER3> This whole story is pitched in the most dialectic terms - you're either with us, or against us.

But this fails to indicate there is a third way - we can use technology to make peace far more readily and easily than we use it to make war. I've got more Syrian, Iranian, and Libyan friends than ever before - and it would not be possible without technology being used to overcome cultural barriers to understanding.

Yet the hatred and vitriol still flows. We are expected to be nationalist/patriot members of society, but when we personally make the decision to extend that society beyond the artificial borders constructed by the state to which we grant sovereign control, obviously _someone_ is going to lose out. In the case of technology being used peacefully, its those who profit from war machines - military-industrial producers of hate and violence - who we must stand up to. Until such a time as the Western public is dissolved of its subservience to thugs and criminals - those who run the military-industrial establishment which corrupts all of humankind - we will continue to be oppressed between two forks of the same argument.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.

This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

[http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html](http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html)

Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism itself.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/europe-24385999](http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/europe-24385999)

</comment><comment><USER5> I use Gemalto, and not just in my cell phone. The cyber-war the While House is waging on the tech community is ill advised. If anyone at in the federal government is smart enough to read hacker-news I hope they see that they're attacking the wrong people.

<comment><USER6> Can I ask you a serious question? I don't condone the government hacking at all and find it atrocious but...How is this any different than China, Russia, Israel, UK, Germany, etc. who all try to breach tech companies to gain information? I agree that this is very illegal but at the same time I also question making the US the villain when every country is trying to do the same thing. Companies should invest in security to prevent these things from all actors whether they be hacked for profits or government backed.

<comment><USER3> Its different in that America pitches itself as a land of freedom, equality, liberty. This is no longer true at all - you cannot have liberty, egality, freedom, if you cannot trust your own lines of communication - and because of the heinous apparatus constructed by the Five-Eyes nations (its not just the US, its also its disgusting partners) you no longer have true freedom, liberty, egality. These repressive dictators have granted themselves the only freedom to communicate safely, they have granted themselves full liberty over the right to alter others' communication, and they are well and truly on their way to creating an imbalance of power guaranteed to enslave us all.

You simply _cannot_ trust your own communications any more. What you write, may not be what others read. If you're a journalist or a rising author, or perhaps just a leader of opinion in a broad public base, you can no longer trust that your communications will not be tampered with, altered, intercepted, interfered with. Of course this has _always_ been the case, except that in the last 2 decades of Internet ascendency, we've all been relatively hopeful that the world is changing because our lines of communication are open wider. Alas, this is no longer the case. All hope has been dashed by the Five-Eyes oppression designed to reign in their own citizens - not find terrorists, but rather give these heinous organs of repression the ability to interfere in any industry they choose, with any person they sight, for any reason whatsoever. What was once a dream of hope is now an incredible nightmare, and America - loudest of all the arrogant Western nations claiming moral high ground, proud proclaimer of its own exceptionalism, can no longer do so. The fact is: there _IS_ no difference, any more, between the oppression felt by the Chinese, or that now enacted on any member of the Five-Eyes state.

The door has been slammed shut on freedom, equality, liberty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "...there are opportunities for the private sector and the federal > government to coordinate and to cooperate on these efforts, both to keep the > country safe, but also to protect our civil liberties."

Sure. Corporations often cooperate with the hackers caught climbing around their systems. "I see you've already taken my keys. Perhaps we can come to some sort of key-sharing arrangement?"

<comment><USER8> Remember when they shut down all domestic airliner manufacture after those private sector company's products were misused back on 9/11?

Oh, that's right, politicians and government bureaucrats care about being able to fly easily - it's just _your_ privacy they don't give a damn about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076351)</comment>


The Rise and Fall of Thinking Machines (1995) - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/magazine/19950915/2622.html <comment><USER2> Wow, what a way to waste money and time.

Build a machine that no-one could program and refuse to build machines that you could build because it was not your dream machine.

If instead they had built the machines people wanted and could program they would have made enough profit to also build their dream machine and learn how to program it.</comment>


British Airways IT engineer blamed for outage - <AUTHOR> http://beta.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11868636 <comment><USER2> There's so much wrong with this picture. It's also an alarming trend where organisations are singling out employees for blame (also thinking VW). Were they entirely to blame? Did management put them under pressure to deliver quickly? Were they correctly trained?

Also, this kind of pokes massive holes in their DR processes!

<comment><USER3> > Were they entirely to blame?

Of course not. If they've made a mistake, someone designed the system that allows this mistake to be made, and to have such consequences. Blaming a person is an enormous lack of ethics and responsibility on BA side - as a whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "It appears that alternative power sources including batteries and a diesel generator may also have failed."

So yeah, its was all down to the fault of one single person. Sure :)

<comment><USER5> if it were the fault of a single person, that'd be the cto then?</comment></comment>


The Joy of Coding: Observable - <AUTHOR> https://www.software-artist.com/joy-of-coding-observable/ <comment><USER2> I find it a bit strange that the post lists both LISP and Python as "truly elegant software system[s]". To me Python is a super-pragmatic language that sacrifices intellectual elegance to allow people (even, but not necessarily) without a CS/Math background to "get stuff done". I also wonder how software "artists" should be different from other artists. For example, in music, there are great teams of artists, like Lennon/McCartney.

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell "Elegant" means "I like it, and believe that my aesthetic preferences are a universal law of humanity"

<comment><USER4> Nah, there's a property of elegance that appears similar in mechanical engineering, typography, maths, poetry and a bunch of other places. I don't know exactly what it is, but I think it maps closely to "the minimum number of moving parts necessary to complete the task"

<comment><USER5> Somewhat similar, I always thought of elegance as the minimum complexity required. However, truly elegant solutions are sometimes counter-intuitive or 'hidden' beneath a few layers of detail, but once understood _feel_ "obvious." That "oh man that's _smooth_ " feeling is often the first step for me to think of something as elegant, and separates 'good solutions' from truly elegant ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a real gem: [https://www.darworms.com/](https://www.darworms.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> "an engineer codes what someone else thinks they want" seems a fairly damning indictment of our industry although I think the author meant it tongue-in- cheek.

Lack of ownership of responsibility is still quite a big roadblock for many companies.

<comment><USER8> All the while I was consulting I never met a client who knew what they needed until you started putting something in front of them.

Some of them had already produced detailed requirements documents but those documents never really represented the reality.

<comment><USER9> The industry is also full of so many stories of a developer trying to say "Thinking ahead, I don't think you want X because it won't do what you really want which is Y", getting nothing but "Just do X, that's what we researched and PMed into all these requirements documents" to only be followed by complaints of "Why doesn't this do Y? That's what we really need." when presented with "finished" software based on the requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anybody know where to sign up to the 'Monday Morning Tickler' as mentioned in the post?

<comment><USER11> from his blog:

        If you would like to receive a weekly puzzle from me - called the Monday Morning Tickler - all you gotta do is send a request to:

        email@example.com (RJ Mical)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a direct link to the Tickler Puzzle Four of a Kind notebook discussed within: [https://observablehq.com/@dmaynard/tickler-puzzle-four- of-a-...](https://observablehq.com/@dmaynard/tickler-puzzle-four-of-a-kind)

</comment><comment><USER12> There must be something wrong with me, but I don't get the Observable (the fact that its name is the same as that of a primitive in functional reactive programming, as in rxjs, with which it has nothing to do, doesn't help either).

Observable seems to be a cross between Jupiter notebooks and plain old javascript, but sufficienly different from either to feel uncannily bizarre. Those imports in the bottom of a notebook! And I am still not sure whether it has access to the whole node_modules ecosystem or not (since it has to run in the browser and doesn't seem to involve a transpiler). I remember looking at some notebooks that involved React and thinking to myself that they felt plain wrong.

<comment><USER13> That's pretty unfair. Once you spend a little time to understand its concepts, it becomes second nature, and it's really a joy to use.

The fact you can reorder cells in any way you want (and import cells from other notebooks) is the whole point — this way you can build narratives with code, embedding important bits in the story while leaving out fluff like imports at the bottom. Maybe you just haven't seen notebooks that take good advantage of this, but I'll shamelessly plug mine as an example: [https://observablehq.com/@mourner/martin-real-time-rtin- terr...](https://observablehq.com/@mourner/martin-real-time-rtin-terrain-mesh)

You do have access to nearly the whole NPM ecosystem. Most useful packages either provide a browser build in their package (which gets picked up automatically), or you can use [https://bundle.run/](https://bundle.run/) to produce a browser bundle for any Node package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> here's a js brute-force for question 1 and 3:

        const cards = [...Array(13).keys()];
        const standardDeck = Array(4).fill().reduce((acc, v) => {
          return acc.concat(cards);
        }, []);

        const makeShuffledDeck = () => {
          const deckInst = standardDeck.slice();
          const shuffledDeck = [];
          while (deckInst.length) {
            const removeIdx = Math.floor(Math.random() * deckInst.length);
            shuffledDeck.push(deckInst[removeIdx]);
            deckInst.splice(removeIdx, 1);
          }

          return shuffledDeck;
        };

        const numDrawsNeeded = () => {
          const counts = Array(13).fill(0);
          const deck = makeShuffledDeck();

          while (deck.length) {
            const card = deck.pop()
            if (++counts[card] === 4) {
              return standardDeck.length - deck.length;
            }
          }

          throw "Drew all cards, but never found 4 of a kind.";
        };

        // average
        const numTrials = 10000;
        console.log([...Array(numTrials)].map(numDrawsNeeded).reduce((acc, v) => {
          return acc + v;
        }, 0) / numTrials);

        /*
        // max
        const numTrials = 10000;
        console.log([...Array(numTrials)].map(numDrawsNeeded).reduce((acc, v) => {
          return Math.max(acc, v);
        }, 0));
        */

</comment><comment><USER15> In case anyone's interested, [https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1unwERXC1CWvAXpVs9Ue...](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1unwERXC1CWvAXpVs9UenduVr44NhDQFB) contains the exact answer (via a very simple brute force mechanism of simply trying every possibility).

</comment><comment><USER16> Wait till you try out Mathematica!

</comment><comment><USER17> This is great. Reminds me of Bret Victor's work.

</comment><comment><USER18> Every step is observable in [The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow]([https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow))

</comment><comment><USER19> love the blog!

</comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't work in FF mobile...

</comment><comment><USER21> This article (starting with its nonsense title and domain) gets bogged down in pretentious philosophy instead of focusing on what this actually does.

"magic notebook" "thinking with code" "visionary software artist"

It's a javascript notebook by the way

<comment><USER22> I was looking for a list of the Maynard's laws mentioned in the article. Turns out the author is called Maynard and he just made them up on the spot.

<comment><USER23> When you have a resume like this [https://www.software- artist.com/me/](https://www.software-artist.com/me/) you can make up any laws you want as far as I am concerned.

He worked for Engelbart! Worked on ARPANet! Was sending email in 1975! And is still coding! What an inspiration. Very cool blog.

<comment><USER24> I too read his bio and thought the same thing. As I read it, it reminded me of "The Music Scholar" routine by Scharpling and Wurster [0], where a radio caller personally witnessed like the entire history of '70's rock.

Engelbart, Xerox Parc, EA, Silicon Graphics, and Google Maps? Yeah, he can call out his own laws.

0: [https://youtu.be/Z75qsaak9Po](https://youtu.be/Z75qsaak9Po)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should my banking app be trying to reach an EC2 address? - <AUTHOR> My Android banking app is trying to reach ec2-184-73-222-185.compute-1.amazonaws.com. Should it be doing so? I would have thought it would target api.bank.com or something similar... <comment><USER2> it would be strange, but not impossible and certainly suspect practice. You could proxy through your own vpn and then log the requests and take a look at what it's doing...

</comment><comment><USER3> May be your bank shipped a staging build :o</comment>


Getting Started in Game Development - <AUTHOR> https://www.startmakinggames.com/ <comment><USER2> I have a theory that one should start by tracing all famous video games in history and making them one by one, in chronological term. Maybe skip the text adventures and start from arcade games.</comment>


Ask HN: Self-hosted news aggregator that supports Google Reader exports - <AUTHOR> I've been making do with Feedbin since Google Reader shut down a few years ago. It has been working fine for me - but I am getting a bit restless to implement something on my own server.<p>Is anyone still using Fever? Any other recommendations? <comment><USER2> i've liked newsblur, but i'm using samuel clay's site. i do not know how much of a bear self-hosting it is, but it is available.

[https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur](https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It looks interesting - might give it a try in a VM.</comment></comment>


Union Square Ventures has made a substantial investment in Tucows - <AUTHOR> https://www.usv.com/blog/tucows <comment><USER2> [http://whatyearisit.info/img/what_year_is_it.jpg](http://whatyearisit.info/img/what_year_is_it.jpg)</comment>


Rasmus on the 31st and relative items in date strings - <AUTHOR>

Very entertaining. Must happen alot :)

    It's the 31st of the month. Before filing a
    bug about relative dates in PHP, please read
    http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Relative-items-in-date-strings.html#SEC125
    #php
 <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to the read:

[http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Relative- it...](http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Relative-items-in- date-strings.html#SEC125)</comment>


Surgeon general urges public to stop buying face masks amid coronavirus outbreak - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/surgeon-general-urges-the-public-to-stop-buying-face-masks/ <comment><USER2> > "Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!" the surgeon general, Jerome M. > Adams, said in a tweet on Saturday morning. "They are NOT effective in > preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care > providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our > communities at risk!"

So do they help prevent catching coronavirus or don't they?

<comment><USER3> Mostly it doesn't matter for normal people - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22456037](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22456037)

I think the main benefit might come from mask that you stop touching your face. But for that you don't need fancy mask..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problems of the bureaucracies' (health care providers, in this case) poor planning and decision making are not my problem. If I choose to buy face masks for my family, I am not taking it away from a sick person. I would rather prevent getting the coronavirus myself than worry about hospital or healthcare industry's lack of planning.

<comment><USER5> If there's a limited supply and new stock isn't being added at the same rate of current stock depletion it becomes a zero-sum game... so you quite literally are.</comment></comment>


Costco names Citi, Visa as new credit card partners after AmEx deal ends - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-costco-visa-20150302-story.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder if this affects the deal Costco reached with MasterCard in Canada. When the Amex deal fell through they made a deal with MasterCard to issue their own Costco-branded MasterCard. In Canada at least, that was the main reason people had an Amex card. Smart move by MasterCard and Now Visa in the US to nab that contract up as soon as it fell through.</comment>


Video game back end company PlayFab raises $7.4M in latest funding round - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/27/gaming-backend-technology-company-playfab-raises-7-4m-in-latest-funding-round/

<comment><USER2> Congrats to the PlayFab team!</comment>


Work-Life Balance Is For Losers, Not Closers - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidshaywitz/2012/10/08/silicon-valley-work-life-balance-is-for-losers-not-closers/

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I think that if people stopped debating whether work-life balancing is good or wimpy or necessary or just for losers, they'd free up enough time to have a decent work-life balance.</comment>


Cardboard bikes - <AUTHOR> http://www.greenprophet.com/2012/07/israeli-bike-made-of-cardboard-makes-cycling-even-greener/

<comment><USER2> From the video: "It's strong. It's durable. It's cheap. What I like about it most? It's made out of cardboard!"

I wonder; is it light?</comment>


Study shows female brain responds to porn the same as male brain - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-07-female-brain-porn-male.html <comment><AUTHOR> Study: [https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/07/09/1904975116](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/07/09/1904975116)

</comment><comment><USER2> with a boner?</comment>


Possible vulnerability in TrueCrypt 5.1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.heise-online.co.uk/security/Possible-vulnerability-in-TrueCrypt-5-1--/news/110308

<comment><USER2> This vulnerability exists in all programs that save their passwords in memory and on all OSs, the system doesn't even have to hibernate for the vulnerability to happen, it's enough that the password gets transfered to cache.

If you want to expose the password, just ignore the program, consume a ton of memory from the machine and the password will be written into the cache as the machine scrambles to shift less frequently used memory to the cache.</comment>


Google Introduces A New Language to Replace English - <AUTHOR> http://tatiyants.com/?p=1229 BREAKING NEWS: Google just announced a brand new language called Zoom aimed to replace English. Here's a quote from the official announcement:<p>"With Go, we were able to create a better C++. With Dart, we re-imagined JavaScript. With Zoom, we are finally rethinking the English language." <comment><USER2> This has to be a joke right?

<comment><USER3> Its a VERY VERY early april fools. Frownyface. Would have been a good one.</comment></comment>


Humanitarian Highlight 9/13: Helpful Handouts - <AUTHOR> Happy Thursday everyone! We are back with another Humanitarian Highlight for you to enjoy. This week we came across credit unions providing helpful handouts to the people in their communities. Check it out!
Meriwest CU donated $10,000 to 2nd Harvest Food Bank.
S.F. Police CU collected canned food items for distribution to the St. Anthony Foundation.
Marshall Community CU donated school supplies to local teachers.
Tarrant County's CU held a bake sale with all proceeds going to Alliance for Children.
Tower FCU donated 130 school supply-filled back packs to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Annapolis & Ann Arundel County.
Nassau Financial FCU donated 557lbs of non-perishable food items to support local families in need.
Zeal CU delivered 80 backpacks stuffed with school supplies to Volunteers of America.
Thanks for taking the time to appreciate these awesome acts of kindness. Check out past Humanitarian Highlights here, and for any questions about any of our products & services, email us or call 1-800-537-9598. <comment><USER2> I don't trust the submission. New account and a minute later submitted OP an obscure CreditUnionSpanishDocuments with link shortener.</comment>


Hiring a Star Web Designer - <AUTHOR> http://ourdoings.com/2008-02-12#news.yc20080530 <comment><AUTHOR> Resubmitted in response to

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204130> "What to do if you are a good developer but no designer?"</comment>


Father's homemade machine helps disabled son to walk (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15695991

<comment><USER2> My son has cerebral palsy and I can see the immediate benefit that a machine like this would bring to him. We are currently using a similar harness on a regular treadmill, but this therapy doesn't help him learn that he needs to raise his feet and move them in a circular motion forward and then set them down again - seeing how the machine handles this using the same idea as an elliptical trainer immediately opened my eyes to the deficiencies in the approach we're using in the modern clinic we're attending. I would love to be able to help fund the development and manufacture of these devices in some way.

<comment><USER3> You can always use kickstarter.com to fund projects like this one.

<comment><USER4> At the moment only US residents can create projects on Kickstarter. It's going to be awesome when they expand to other countries.

<comment><USER5> Someone could do it on his behalf, no?

<comment><USER3> There is also indiegogo.com which I believe is available to anybody in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It goes to show that a man's love knows no boundaries of current science and technology. Innovation driven by determination can change fates. One of the best dads ever.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, THIS is hacking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish more hackers would invest their time and energies in this kind of projects. Inspiring.

<comment><USER9> I wish the HN readers would take on projects as a group. There are enough technical people that as a group would could actually accomplish a lot. I guess the trick is to find the right problems to crowdsource.

<comment><USER10> _I guess the trick is to find the right problems to crowdsource._

Crowdsource that part, as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the kind of entrepreneur I hope to be someday. A man on a mission, fixing something close to his heart. Just awesome.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have literally never seen a single video on that BBC site, on any of my machines. It just keeps loading. Is it just me?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there are 2 reasons videos from the BBC don't load.

The first, which I'm almost certain stops the loading, is having your Flash privacy settings to never store any information. I have mine set to ask me when a new site wants to store information, but I can't set it to "No. Don't ask me again" on the BBC because if I do then the videos never load. I have to hit the "Deny" button when it prompts me, which it does, annoyingly, multiple times throughout a single video.

The second possible reason could be blocking of ad servers, but I'm not sure about this one.

<comment><USER12> Ugh, what a stupid implementation. I'll give it a shot, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is so much inspiration here.

</comment><comment><USER14> A father's love, creativity and the hunger to fix what is broken. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER15> Incredibly inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that a mechanic was able to accomplish something that first world medical industry said couldn't be done?

It just goes to show that if you have a disease, condition or injury, life threatening or not. It pays to self diagnose and be your own doctor. We can specialize more in our specific problem than an entire industry devoted to the body of all problems.

<comment><USER17> I think my key take-away would have been: the closer you are to the problem the better your solution can be.

I would venture to guess current therapies were developed by health professions and engineers at arms length to intended patients (via books and maybe some user-testing in constrained environments).

This solution was inspired and developed by a father who is involved with the health problem every day for long periods of time in real world situations. That provided a much better view of the problem space.

I am not sure if self diagnosing is a great idea or what I would identify as a key take-away. But accepting solutions blindly could be.

<comment><USER18> Indeed...it's really difficult (in time measures) for doctors or physicians to reach a level of familiarity with the patient on par with the relationship the patient has with his/her family, friends, etc. This inability to do so often leads to oversights.

True story.

My ex-gf started experiencing cardiac arrests in college, which is rare for individuals of her age. Of course, her parents took her to some of the top physicians in the U.S. as well as in London and they all claimed she needed a very risky surgery for her heart. The arrests were scarring her heart tissue and any new arrest could permanently damage the organ further.

The doctors knew that she would experience these arrests when she became extremely emotional or stressed out, yet couldn't pinpoint exactly what the problem was. They simply thought she had an unnaturally fast heartbeat, which led to the arrests. As her bf, I had taken her on amazing dates and watched horror movies with her, so I knew that I had put her through various emotional stages (complete with crazy fast hearbeats) without her ever experiencing an arrest.

Luckily at the time, I was studying Endocrinology in college, so I proposed that there might be particular hormones in her system that weren't being flushed out of her body...which is very dangerous because the hormones can continually innervate vital organs; in my gf's case, her heart.

Sure enough they found that her body wasn't producing the correct enzymes to degrade the hormones and so she began a regimen of artificial hormones. I am proud to say that in the 4 years since she has been on the treatment, she has been perfectly normal! And all without any damn surgery.

I'm not a medical professional, but I knew my gf in and out. I think that the medical world would greatly benefit if there was some sort of greater collaboration between patient and doctor. Doctors are so busy that they don't have time to really understand the patient outside of the ailment at hand. At the same time, I understand how busy doctors are and how detached they must remain in order to maintain objectivity and professionalism.

<comment><USER19> I'm going thru something similar right now with a loved one and my experience is the same. Patient-Doctor (or in our case Patient Party-Doctor) rapport is the most important thing to a better outcome. Doctors are far more willing to listen and work with you when you can establish 1) you have objective goals in mind and 2) you've done your homework.

Thanks for telling your story.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


C# single linq expression raytracer using Y-combinator [2007] - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lukeh/archive/2007/10/01/taking-linq-to-objects-to-extremes-a-fully-linqified-raytracer.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> There's an explanation of the Y-combinator (with examples in C#) linked from this article at

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/madst/archive/2007/05/11/recursive-l...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/madst/archive/2007/05/11/recursive- lambda-expressions.aspx)

It's not easy to follow, but thought others might be interested.</comment>


Tech Recruiters that Pay to Contact you Through Email - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting up a website called http://www.ubercapable.com/professionals.html, for passive tech professionals that want a buffer between them and recruiters or people who are looking for tech co-founders. It's currently in beta and active.
The way it works is when you sign up we create an email address for you. And when anyone emails you at this email address they will have to pay certain price to reach you. We will then send you a notification in which you could accept or deny this request
When you accept this request we will link you and requester up to engage in conversation with them and the money they paid to talk will be waiting for you. <comment><USER2> I sincerely can't see anyone paying for this service. Sure you're solving a problem for tech people but you're not solving any problem for recruiters, the people you want to actually pay for the service.

<comment><USER3> Yes this is exact problem I see in this idea. But at the same time don't recruiters already pay $1500/mo to merely call/email passive professionals on sites like Dice and Monster with no results?

Maybe this site needs to place emphasis on the problem of getting experienced professionals. Monster and Dice don't help at all when it comes to getting passive professionals.

<comment><USER2> Recruiters don't. Recruitment companies do. Companies that are notoriously slow adopters. They rarely shell out for niche services.

<comment><USER3> Also very true. These guys will definitely have to pound the payment to drum up staffing agency business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent idea - charging per email should cut out most of the spam. I have no plans to leave my current employer anytime soon, but I'd certainly at least consider it if the right opportunity came along so I keep a profile on Stack Overflow Careers. Charging recruiters should produce even lower volume and higher quality "head-hunts" than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly but this email address can be used also for people that try to contact you for advice. I know when I go to meetups people who have THIS GREAT BUSINESS IDEA feel the need to present to me with no validation and try to bring me to their team. This email will be given to them and produce higher quality requests being sent in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So this is like LinkedIn Inmail except I get paid instead of LinkedIn? lol

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly lol</comment></comment>


Mascara: ECMAScript 4 → Classic Javascript translator - <AUTHOR> http://ecmascript4.com/

<comment><USER2> The ECMAScript 4 support is only part of the goal of the project. Another part is to check integrity in existing classic JavaScript by performing static analysis. For example, inheritance through prototypes or other JavaScript patterns can (at least to a certain extent) be statically inferred, which allows us to catch a number of errors.

One idea I have been toying with, is to allow type annotations in comments on existing JavaScript, eg.

        /* type Point = {x : int, y: int}; */
        var p /* : Point */ = {x: 10, y: 100};

Ugly, yes, but might be a viable path for developers who are not ready to jump ship to ES4, but still would like better integrity checks. I believe this becomes more desirable the large the code base.</comment>


Javascript Pointers - <AUTHOR> http://forrst.com/posts/Javascript_Pointers-9q3 <comment><USER2> What this article taught me is that some javascript programmers do not understand pointers.

Considering how hard we have fought to liberate programmers from pointers, I am having mixed feelings about this lesson. One the one hand, what a paradise we live in that this person can imagine these sterile, useless contrivances are pointers. On the other hand, experience bij.

<comment><USER3> What I would give for that comments section to be pubic...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is either bad satire, or a bad idea.

<comment><USER5> Are we ruling out good satire? Because, I mean... wow.

<comment><USER4> I've done my time helping people out on various fora, mostly comp.lang.python, and seen this sort of thing in reality. If it's satire, the tipoff is too small. I've seen "stupider" (or "beginninger" or some other term, if it makes you fell better, I haven't got a good one).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Next up: malloc

Ok - now I'm convinced it is a joke. Dry humor, indeed.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's a joke. We don't have much context to go on. I get the feeling the author was just exploring/experimenting. Implementing "pointers" and some sort of malloc in javascript probably has very little practical application, but the author may learn a bit more about how memory works. Maybe that is his real goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Psh, Cappuccino had this over a year ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1233681>

<comment><USER9> yes, that's where I got the idea from, I just wanted to make the usage a bit nicer

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The "free" function as written won't work.

When using Object.defineProperty if "configurable" is not set, the default is false (at least in Firefox, I don't recall what the spec says but I think it's just toBoolean whatever calling [[getownproperty]] "configurable" on the description object is, which would default to false), meaning the property cannot be deleted (or redefined).

(I'd also note not all browsers support defineProperty)

I'd also note to readers that the "delete" operator just removes a property name from an objects own property list, and has little to do with garbage collection directly. In this case I think the goal is to get rid of the closure created which handles the property, which I think would work (if the previous error is fixed), but I'm not familiar enough with JS engine internals to know.

I would probably just redefine the property to be "null". Once the property is null'd out, there's probably not much benefit to also removing the property from the property list.

With it null'd out as opposed to deleted you'd also not have to worry about an Object up the prototype chain punching through, and might be desirable in other ways.

Also note that this will not necessarily free up whatever was stored in the "pointer". I don't think that was the author's intention, but I just wanted to make that clear to readers.

If you did: var foo = {}; foo = $(foo); bar = $[foo]; $.free(foo);

The object created on the first line would not be garbage collected after free is called because bar now contains a reference to it.

If your goal was to clear up whatever was stored in "val" as well as the closure itself, you'd have to first set the property to null (to take care of "val"), and then redefine the property to null (to take care of the closure).

Of course, the biggest problem here is that this is pointless.

They are storing the value in a closure, but since they just expose the closure with get and set methods, they could just skip it all and us an Array.

<comment><USER9> Yes I suppose `configurable` should be enabled. The reason I used delete instead of setting to null is that null is considered just as important a value as any other and if you had an outrageous number of nulls, it could consume a noticeable amount of memory.

`free` only releases the data stored in the global pointer object, not the original variable itself, that's not possible.

I don't know how many time's I've had to say this, but this was never intended to actually be used, just as a proof of concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes you really do just want to pass a value by reference. It turns out that most of the time you want to do this the variable already is an object or array already, nevertheless there are cases where this would be desirable, so it's not a bad idea when used carefully.

Having said that, malloc is a bad idea and completely unnecessary, and a nicer way to do the functionality might be to do:

        function pmk(val)     { return { v: val }; }
        function pget(p)      { return p.v;        }
        function pset(p, val) { return p.v = val;  }

Doesn't need free'ing, at the minimal expense of creating one object per "pointer".

Neither of the solutions give you an "address of" type behaviour though :(

</comment><comment><USER12> There are real references in JavaScript - when you pass objects. This case is completely ignored. I want to get the same pointer when it's the same object, even if the properties have changed. This is stubborn. I have solved this problem in a library - and you need to add the id to the object itself. Anyway, explicit pointers are pretty "pointless" in JavaScript and should only used for recursion detection.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's nothing wrong with this. It's a high level implementation of a memory system. The memory locations are represented as a JSON object: { 1: "some data", 2: "foo" ... }

It's not really needed in JavaScript but I remember implementing something similar in C for school.

<comment><USER10> Hey, sorry to be pedantic but this is one of my pet peeves.

"JSON" is a way to serialize data to in a string. It's based on Javascript's object literal syntax.

JSON has absolutely nothing to do with this article.

What you mean is the memory locations are stored in an Object (or if you want to be specific about the language "a Javascript Object)

If you want to refer to Javascript's handy way of creating objects like so: var x = {};

That is an "object literal" (which also has little to do with the article)

I'd also note that there is something wrong with this as they could get the same behavior (only faster, smaller, and cross-browser) by just using an Array.

<comment><USER11> I appreciate your enthusiasm for correctness, but if I'm reading correctly, the essence of sktrdie's comment was trying to counter the group think that the idea of the article is in some way "bad", "satirical", or "wrong".

It may be that I only ever merit to use this pattern once every 10,000 lines, but that in no way makes the idea of calling with reference over primitive values incorrect. Readers should understand the difference between rare and never.

<comment><USER10> > he essence of sktrdie's comment

Sure, however the first part of my comment is not intended to address the essence of their comment, so it has no bearing. What they said is incorrect, and in fact a common mistake and I wanted to correct it.

However, I'd also note that what sktrdie is describing is an _Array_ (in Javascript an Array is just an object with numbers for property names and some helper methods).

As far as I can see there is absolutely zero benefit (and many drawbacks) in using the technique outline in the OP article as opposed to just using an Array.

You could get the same result by simply using an Array directly...or if you want to get fancy, add a few simple helper methods.

In this way (and perhaps others) the article is "bad" and "wrong".

<comment><USER11> Okay, great, you're absolutely right that an Array would have been a better choice of data structure, albeit marginally better.

That was not my qualm, and neither does it seem to be the qualm of other commenters on this page. Of course, I'm having to second-guess the reasons of other commenters because they were disinclined to note them, but am simply contesting the notion that the article is satirically bad.

<comment><USER10> > marginally better.

I'm not so sure.

As written it's wasteful of resources and not cross-browser. (also not entirely functional)

All the stuff with the closure and defineProperty is basically pointless....

In the end what they have is an object with numbers for properties, and they are sticking values in those properties. That's an array.

All the hoops they jump through don't do anything except heat up the processor and waste resources, with nothing in return for that.

Consider this code which does the same thing:

      var $ = function(val) {
          var addr = $.mem.length;
          $.mem[ addr ] = val;
          return addr;
      }
      $.mem = [];

      var foo = "foo";
       foo = $( foo );
       console.log( foo )  // 0
       console.log( $.mem[foo] ) // "foo"

This code accomplishes the same thing but is much faster, leaner, simpler, and cross-browser.

I'd also say that all of this doesn't really do much to inform one about "pointers". Learning about the link between pointers and arrays in certain other languages might be helpful for some JS developers, but there's none of that here. Here is just a roundabout array implementation that doesn't really teach the reader anything.

I'm not going to spit on the efforts of someone who is trying to learn something, or be condescending about it (at least not intentionally)....but I think it's necessary to point this sort of thing out so everyone walks away the wiser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The only problem I see with this approach is the Javascript-interpreter seeing through your pointer system and holding a reference to the object pointed to - which defeats the purpose of creating a possibility to segfault...

<comment><USER15> You can still have a null pointer exception.

<comment><USER14> That's not half as exciting as to write into the raw, uncharted territory of your virtual address space...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wrote this post, and am alarmed by the publicity it's getting and the controversy it's causing. I NEVER meant this to be used to solve any problem, nor to be used in a real life situation at all. I didn't mean this as a joke or as satire. I wrote the as a PROOF OF CONCEPT, just to show some capabilities of javascript.

</comment><comment><USER16> It has to be a joke. Its just a closure.

</comment><comment><USER17> There are other solutions: [http://brandon.pulpexplosion.com/index.php/2010/05/javascrip...](http://brandon.pulpexplosion.com/index.php/2010/05/javascript- pointers/)

<comment><USER2> What problem does this solve? What problem do either of these ideas solve? Is the question, "What is the best way to troll programmers on the internet?"

<comment><USER17> I wish it was the case...</comment></comment></comment>


You thought that "This should never happen was bad"? search – eval($_GET) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=eval%28%24_GET%29&type=Code&ref=searchresults <comment><USER2> Actually I thought "This should never happen" was good. This is pretty bad, though.

<comment><USER3> Yea, it's people throwing in checks for cases that should never happen, but probably have saved a lot of money and time for people who were running those products.

This is just horrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thankfully, most of these I've seen in the first four pages are for things marked as a web shell, or a security scanner, etc, so it's purposeful and not meant for serious webapp use.

Still, kind of scary to see. It's like a listening netcat piping to bash in a loop. Sure there should be a firewall in front...

<comment><USER3> If you're going to be doing any of these, there should at least be some form of authentication within the project.

Leaving this open is just hoping someone runs "rm -rf /"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like the vast majority are from forks of PHP Vulnerability Hunter, and a few more are from other vulnerability tests. So I guess this isn't actually that common?

</comment><comment><USER6> Also bad

[https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=include%28%24_GET...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=include%28%24_GET%29&type=Code&ref=searchresults)

There is a simple Google search that allows you to find thousands of websites that do this. Which I won't put since it essential gives you a list of websites ripe for take over.

<comment><USER7> Should be "include($_GET" (with quotes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Aren't those almost all "php-vulnerability-hunter – ArbitraryPhpGet.php" ? That seems like, well, not so bad.

</comment><comment><USER9> Try looking for database connections too.

<comment><USER10> [https://github.com/search?p=2&q=mysql_connect+root+NOT+local...](https://github.com/search?p=2&q=mysql_connect+root+NOT+localhost+NOT+%22127.0.0.1%22+NOT+%22192.168%22&ref=searchresults&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Years ago I worked on a web app that had a "hidden" page that would do something like:

      SQL.exec($_GET['sql'])

Was used for support to be able to access customer data to be able to reproduce bugs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not familiar with PHP. Can someone explain this to a newbie?

<comment><USER13> The function eval[1] evaluates a string as code. The special variable $_GET[2] contains HTTP GET variables, which may be freely set by a remote user.

So if your PHP file executes eval($_GET['code']), then arbitrary folks can submit whatever code they want as a parameter -- as in /index.php?code=blah -- and have your webserver run it for them.

[1] [http://php.net/manual/en/function.eval.php](http://php.net/manual/en/function.eval.php) [2] [http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.get.php](http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.get.php)</comment></comment>


Intel Core I7-9550U 9th Gen Core Flagship Low-Power Mobile CPU Leaked - <AUTHOR> https://hothardware.com/news/intel-core-i7-9550u-9th-gen-core-low-power-mobile-cpu-leaked <comment><USER2> am i the only one who couldnt exactly get that from the title? is this a trend?</comment>


The world is 'running out of sand': the rise of the sand mafia - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-11/illegal-sand-trade-india-mafia-murders-vince-beiser/11779570 <comment><USER2> Until recently I did not realize how severe this was.

The main reason is China. In 2010 they used more concrete than all of the United States from 1900 - 2000. Mind boggling. Since concrete is essentially 25% sand or gravel this makes a big dent.

A small but interesting cause of China using so much concrete is the intricacies behind GDP calculation. Essentially building a skyscraper and tearing it down both count towards GDP. Thus if any province is behind on the GDP numbers you will see a rush of construction followed by a rush of demolition...completely pointless.

Also some have commented on the destruction of Uyghur cemeteries by the Chinese as if it's some Nazi cultural extermination campaign. While I get the comparison it's really about the gravel in the end. Gravestone robbery is actually a pretty significant worldwide problem, as they can be usually ground up and sold for a quite a bit. This is the motive in Xinjiang for the Chinese.

Supposedly China is also pushing cremation because the ash can be used for treating acidic soil but also as a substitute for sand in concrete.</comment>


Boys trapped in Thai cave were drugged for risky rescue dives - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-thai-cave-rescue-boys-drugged-unconscious-20190403-story.html <comment><USER2> This was discussed in depth in the long 1/25/19 article re the rescue: [https://www.macleans.ca/thai-cave-rescue- heroes/](https://www.macleans.ca/thai-cave-rescue-heroes/) (Previously [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19030307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19030307))

> A word about sedation. A word, too, about Dr. Harry.

> Anaesthesiology requires more training than most branches of medicine; there > is always some risk that when a patient is put under, he or she will never > wake up. When the patient is a child, the risks are greater. When the child > is yanked along underwater for hours through a dark, cold cave, the risks > are incalculable—no one has ever done anything like this before.

> Dr. Harry believes the risks of sedating the children beat the risks of not > sedating the children. The lead divers believe the same, and the Thais > believe the experts know best. The children cannot dive; the children will > panic; the children will drown their rescuers and themselves. That is why > Dr. Harry is going to do this: inject 12 kids with a sedative so powerful it > will knock them out cold.

> Ketamine: a horse tranquilizer, an operating-room drug, a soon-to-be cave- > rescue pharmaceutical product in its early testing stages on rock-entombed > human minors.

> If only it were so simple. The children's drugs will need to be topped up > with half-doses along the way. Dr. Harry cannot dive every child out > himself, but the divers are not medical doctors. Dr. Harry must give a dozen > cave hobbyists and small-business owners a crash course in do-it-yourself > anaesthesiology.

> If anyone dies—and many divers think they will be lucky to save two or three > of the kids—Dr. Harry will bear much of the burden. He is not licensed to > practice medicine in Thailand, let alone teach other foreigners to practice. > Though Thailand and Australia have offered some assurance that he won't > suffer legal consequences for his young patients' probable deaths, a > conscience and a name are not so easily protected.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad Thailand and Australia offered (albeit if only verbal) protection. This is one of those circumstances were typical regulations just don't make sense and need to be shortcut for a clear emergency.

Edit: To add, all parties in this emergency agree it was necessary, so they didn't do anything without consent.

<comment><USER4> I strongly agree. This video of a cave diver describing a near death experience adds a little color to what's at stake: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=or92IMcLoIc](https://youtube.com/watch?v=or92IMcLoIc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone who has been a diver immediately understands why this was necessary. The last thing you want is your diver partner panicking underwater, which can happen even with certified divers. An uncertified diver in a cave is a massive liability to your own safety.

<comment><USER6> How common is it for divers to start panicking underwater? It surprises me that that's even a thing. Like, if the thought of skydiving scares you, you're probably not going to try it; so I would guess the danger of the practice itself would self-select for people who are not prone to that type of anxiety.

edit: ah yeah. potentially stupid question. obviously if something starts going wrong, even the most level headed people may panic.

<comment><USER7> I'm a relatively newbie diver (only 80 dives), but there have been a few times where something unexpected or new happens that can send you into at least a mild panic. Recognizing this panic and how to recover is the critical thing.

A most recent example was on my last trip I tried UV-light diving, which is when you only use UV-light with a filter on your mask to protect your eyes. You get to see some incredible new things. The divemaster stressed how important the filter was to protect your eyes. During the dive the filter on my mask came off. As instructed, I immediately closed my eyes and Waited for the divemaster to notice and tap me to let me know they had switched back to white light and it was safe to reopen my eyes. That half minute felt like an eternity.

A number of unusual situations can trigger a panic. Primary regulator failure, your mask being knocked off, unexpected fauna behavior, becoming lost, losing your group or your buddy, unexpected currents. All of this is covered in the training/certification, but not all training is equal, adequate, or regularly revisited.

<comment><USER8> Can you tell me more about the UV light diving? A cursory search doesn't seem to show up anything about the dive mask filter you mentioned. From what I found, it looks like the lights are similar to regular low-power UV-A black lights that are not a hazard to skin or eyes.

What was the model of dive light used? Was is a long-wave light like those in tanning beds or disinfecting lamps? I would imagine that any light unsafe for your eyes would also be damaging to the coral and fish.

<comment><USER7> I think you're right. I don't recall the specific equipment, we were visiting and only did a short training before. Now I've read more on it and I do feel (sheepishly) misinformed. The light may have been way less damaging than we were told. Thinking on it, I wouldn't have put it past the divemaster to troll us that way.

First, the kind of diving is more commonly referred to fluorescent diving and it doesn't use UV light, its blue (440-480nm) light. Second the filters were yellow light filters to remove the remaining light so that it didn't overwhelm the blue and you could see the fluorescence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: it's been known for awhile that the kids were probably drugged (not necessarily with ketamine), but the news hook is that there's a new study today. I'd link to the study but there's a subscriber wall: [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1900831](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1900831)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, this was reported in real time while it was happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> While an interesting read for sure, I'm not sure why people are surprised by this? Given the context, the boys are already at an elevated risk for panicking, seems like a cut and dry solution that worked as intended?

I don't view drugs as "scary" or "bad". They're tools, if used correctly they can effectively do what you need them to. There's risks with these tools of course, and those need to be considered, but in the end they're just tools. (Not talking about miss-using drugs, only talking about approved usage by professionals)

<comment><USER10> Many medical practitioners have very strong love/hate relationship with anesthesia drugs. Any patient under anesthesia requires very careful monitoring and will often have unexplained drops in blood pressure and body temperature. Usually patients first have a blood test done (out of whack liver values mean the drugs might not metabolize and the patient will never wake up) and other vitals taken, such as temperature and blood pressure.

Ketamine is much less risky than propofol, but I'm sure any doctor would understand the dangers of putting kids that young under that are already in a health danger zone and having them not be monitored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >It had a brief career as a party drug known as "Special K."

brief? the author must not party very much.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Harris told reporters that all of the rescued children "needed re-sedation > at different times on the way out."

Crazy. Definitely not an easy job.

<comment><USER13> The worst case turns out not to be one of the children, it was the coach. He wasn't under and caused a few problems, turns out they hadn't adjusted the dose for his increased body weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think I'd want the same treatment!

</comment><comment><USER15> News from a year ago...</comment>