Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/twitter-posts-surprise-sales-gain-monthly-user-growth-stagnates <comment><USER2> I'm still amazed how bad the Twitter.com UI is. The fact stuff like Hootsuite,tweetdeck and a zillion similar tools exist to effectively make twitter usable if you follow more than a dozen people is crazy.

There is a whole bunch of innovation waiting to happen: for instance Twitter could build a community around creating and sharing 'lists' for just about any topic. I wanted to make a 'list' for every Canadian MP but man that's a lot of work and surely someone has done it already but I have no clue how to find that 'list'.

<comment><USER3> >I'm still amazed how bad the Twitter.com UI is.

Yes, I have been complaining about this sporadically for a while. I mean, I once tweeted that you have to do a headstand to read the tweets in chronological order [1], and even, the text will be upside down ... :) Some time later, I think they have made some changes to that, for certain cases at least, e.g. for a thread consisting of a tweet and replies to it. But in a sense that makes things even more confusing, because now you have to sometimes read things chronologically (a tweet and its replies), and sometimes in reverse (the rest)!

Jokes apart, there are multiple issues with the UI.

[1] Yes, I know there may be a technical reason for the problem, but has anyone at Twitter tried working on a solution?.

<comment><USER4> It would be interesting to play with a left-to-right timeline for any tweet replies or conversations. It would leave the standard timeline alone, but allow users to scroll right to deep dive into specific conversations.

<comment><USER5> How would you limit the horizontal scrolling to only one conversation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been very active on Twitter in the past 2 years and not due to Trump or other controversies.

A lot of developers I want to follow are active on Twitter.

So it might be due to Trump, don't know, but I'm glad it's going well for them.

<comment><USER7> Twitter has become so bloated with advertisements and "artificial" trending topics that its nearly useless.

<comment><USER8> Corollary: Twitter is so useful that it seems to be thriving despite being bloated with advertisements and "artificial" trending topics

<comment><USER9> Things can thrive without being very useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the last two years I've seen a large migration of digital artists off of traditional gallery sites (Deviantart, Artstation, etc) to Twitter as their "gallery". The same thing happened with Tumblr circa 2012-2014, but even those folks are moving to twitter instead of using a dedicated site designed for showcasing art.

I've never had a Twitter account because I'd much rather see ostatus and decentralized networks succeed, and Twitter has never offered anything meaningful in the past, but if this trend continues I'll be stuck signing up there just like I did with Tumblr not to use it as a social network but as a media consumption platform (as was mentioned in the article, video is also growing). Its also similar to how musicians were nigh forced to start using Youtube as their primary jumping off point over Bandcamp and Soundcloud because that was where the eyeballs were.

What kind of backwards world would it be if artists, musicians, animators, etc are all using Twitter as their primary distribution platform just because of the network effects. Same reason Tumblr took off in those circles. It doesn't matter if the UI is lacking even the barest support for effective navigation of media, its all about social bridging and getting into feeds. In my experience about 80% of artists and writers that use Tumblr have their creative works inaccessible because they are buried under a mountain of reblogs and non-content filler posts with limited to no means to filter or navigate them.

I'd hope this trend doesn't continue, but it almost certainly will. Those making a living for themselves through online media are doing so via network effects and memes. Get a breakout success, get into peoples "feeds", and spread through casual retweets and reblogs. Its never about discovery or wanting to _find_ them, its them getting randomly referred to you through the hive mind, and that creates a handful of wildly successful winners and a sea of equally competent and capable creators that never gain any traction.

<comment><USER11> The trend certainly will continue, if only because that's how it's always worked - even before twitter, or even the internet. TV, radio, newspapers, publishers, etc. have always had this power - you had to market yourself to enough people for someone with influence in one of the aforementioned medias to consider you worthy and propel you to visibility and success.

One might even say that the current state of affairs, or trend, is preferable because it's not some small group of people acting as gatekeepers, but instead it's "the hivemind" as you've put it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Twitter loves Trump.

It's not just twitter... the whole profit center around online communities is based on active communities. Most topics are cyclical - once the Superbowl is over, it's hard to keep a football community active. Only so many people are interested in the draft, in coaching changes, etc.

But throw in some controversy and all of a sudden everything lights up again.

The problem, or _a_ problem, is that people can only handle so much controversy. They have lives to lead. They _need_ to be happy. But as more and more profit centers are tied to active online communities, and as people who run those communities strive to keep people active, and since controversy is as easy a tool to use as there is in the toolbox... Well the end result is that online interaction shifts from being something that brings people together into something unhealthy.

Don't get me wrong, Twitter is a great tool for getting up to the moment information out there and for consuming it. I just wonder what there bottom line would look like if Trumps Tweets weren't making headlines 3 times a week.

The social health issue is one for all companies that compete in the social media space to figure out.

<comment><USER13> >Twitter loves Trump.

Hidden camera investigations[1] into Twitter employees suggest otherwise.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64gTjdUrDFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64gTjdUrDFQ)

<comment><USER14> Seems like a lot of out of context clips to push a narrative, standard project veritas stuff.

Like the clip about banning certain groups of people: the engineer says "it's going to ban a certain way of talking". You might take from this based on the video that he's talking about inadvertently banning right-leaning users. Well, what if he's talking about banning racism or messages that use ((subtle dog- whistles)) instead of overt racism?

Also, not many people like Trump, especially not in left-leaning areas (like where Twitter is based). Are employees not allowed to voice their dislike of a very dislikable man, while drinking at a social event?

<comment><USER13> If you watched the whole thing you'd see the context of each interview.

<comment><USER14> I did, and it's just longer out of context videos that cut off at convenient points:

> Journalist: "Would you say the algorithms block liberal or conservative > users?"

> Engineer: "I would say the majority of it are for Republicans, because they > are all from Russia and wanted Trump to win"

> Journalist: "So you would mostly just get rid of Conservatives?"

> Engineer: "Yes"

> Immediate cut.

Woah, what a compelling argument. The guy is saying they are using machine learning to block Russian bots masquerading as American conservatives that are influencing the narrative in favor of Trump (that totally don't exist btw because we love Russia now and they would _never_ attempt to meddle in any other countries elections). The video attempts to twist that into him saying they block conservatives.

This study is an interesting read: [http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/polarization- partisansh...](http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/polarization-partisanship- and-junk-news/)

And an associated news article: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/018/feb/06/sharing- fa...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/018/feb/06/sharing-fake-news-us- rightwing-study-trump-university-of-oxford)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Rediscovered Twitter for blockchain news.

Why: Subreddits for different tokens/currencies end up being echochambers (but still good resources as long you follow multiple subs). HN rarely shows blockchain stuff and the upvoted ones are often just anti crypto.

Following 30-50 crypto influencers on Twitter provides a good mix.

<comment><USER16> Can you recommend some good crypto influencers to follow?

<comment><USER15> A good while controversial start is Ian Balina @diaryofamademan (ICO heavy content) and then just follow founders from various cryptos (Vitalik from Ethereum, Jed from Stellar). Then just add all the people mentioned people retweet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Confession: when I open up twitter, the thing that excites me most is when I see that patio11 has tweeted. His stuff is just an absolute must-read for me. He uses twitter almost like a blog, which is different than most other people I follow.

Some people use twitter like it's facebook, some people use it merely as a pointer to other content, some people use it to argue, some people use it to interact with major brands / corporations. I'm not sure if this is a strength or a weakness of the platform.

I guess the important thing is that it's getting used.

<comment><USER18> _He uses twitter almost like a blog_

Yep, and I'm more than a little disappointed in myself about that. Something about the form factor of writing there and the perceived "well it doesn't have to be shippable, it's just twitter" quality bar lets me keep up a habit of writing there almost daily while I struggle "sitting down to write essays" even on a monthly basis.

<comment><USER19> Also, discoverability. Blogs have UI with mostly O(1) access to any article. Twitter and Facebook are O(n) - the older a post, the more difficult is to find it.

I like your tweets too, btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I said a while back they were optimising their algorithm for rage and that The Donald would be good for business. I think they are probably still buy because I suspect they will be bought - such a feature of the Internet it is hard to imagine a conversation, TV show or live event without it.

<comment><USER21> Are you active on Twitter? I'm not saying you're not, I'm just genuinely curious on what other's filter bubble experience looks like. For me most of what I see is related to state and local politics, and policy wonk issues. But I've also managed to curate my feed. Except for when something really big happens, my feed honestly does not feel to be full of rage. I wonder if your interactions send some kind of signal to Twitter that rage Tweets are what keep you most engaged?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Twitter is the world's news paper now. I think, as world newspaper, it is worth it's value.

<comment><USER23> It's not a 'news paper', it's a street corner in medieval Europe lined with 'prophets' all spewing shit in an attempt to attract followers.

<comment><USER24> Your comparison is inapt. One tweet in your timeline can not drown out other tweets.

<comment><USER23> I never said that, nor do I think that was implied.

<comment><USER24> You did. There is no concept of "volume" on Twitter in the way that a passerby in Medieval Wherever would miss some information over other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's amazing how tech companies and unicorns are valued. If they are losing, the public market or VC's cover their a __es and their value stays neutral, and first signs of profit send the stocks to the moon.

That is also the behaviour of crypto, but in this case the stocks aren't overvalued to start with, as decades of inflation have done to stocks.

Looking from another side, in crypto we haven't developed a sound investing framework yet, other than the usual github/reddit/social/TA checks, possibly because we are dealing with a protocol, not a product.

The interesting thing here, and maybe a somewhat contrarian position to take in the Twitter case, is that they're not a tech company, but a _protocol_ company. And their value can't be measured with a number, they're essentially playing the same field as TCP or IRC, which value we haven't measured.

I would be buying $TWTR stock, if it weren't for cryptos like VEN, GVT or REQ which may be equivalent to investing in Twitter _in the seed phase_. Actually, this line of thought is really interesting, I may write something longer and more coherent about this stuff.

<comment><USER26> How is Twitter a protocol company? Protocol implies open standards, like IRC or SMTP... The only place I can tweet is Twitter.

<comment><USER27> Agreed. Social companies like Facebook and Twitter started out with open APIs, but closed them as they grew more successful precisely because they don't want to be protocols.

I don't like that, but I get it. The money is in owning the user experience. And it's hard enough to continuously improve your user experience when all the people making that software work for one company. I think one of the reasons email and IRC are losing out to things like Facebook and Slack is that it's nearly impossible to make those things broadly better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Twitters advertising flow is messed up

Promote Tweet -> Give card details -> Lets see what can do and cost $

Should be

Promote Tweet -> Lets see what can do and cost $ -> Give card details

<comment><USER29> Are they able to check your card balance?

<comment><USER28> No; but twitter will likely get a better conversion rate if they tell people what it is they are buying and the cost, prior to handing over their payment details

<comment><USER30> Seems like this way they filter out the looky-loos and narrow the gap between seeing the price and making a purchase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Revenue in the recent period rose 2 percent from a year earlier to $731.6 > million, buoyed by data-licensing sales and video advertising.

I understand video advertising and if Twitter turns their attention to this area (after dipping their toes on Vine and Periscope) Youtube and Twitch may get a competitor. Now what does "data-licensing sales" means in this context? User data?

<comment><USER32> Twitter acquired a company called Gnip back in 2014[1]. This company built a SaaS business off licensing Twitter's firehose of tweets, in various forms, to various industries. For example, my company, which provides real-time web/content analytics to high-traffic websites, licenses Gnip's real-time API of tweets so that we can do analytics on those tweets and embed them inside our customer-facing products. That revenue ends up counted in Twitter's data licensing sales. Other popular use cases include PR media monitoring systems (e.g. Brandwatch), news alerting (e.g. Dataminr), and even finance (e.g. Bloomberg licenses Twitter data for its terminal[2]).

I wrote about that data licensing business here:

[https://muckhacker.com/the-twitter-growth- conundrum-8339eda1...](https://muckhacker.com/the-twitter-growth- conundrum-8339eda162a4)

Even though Twitter isn't growing DAUs quickly (and possibly will never do so), it is actually a pretty diversified business. It has a multi-hundred- million ARR SaaS business embedded inside a multi-hundred-million user consumer destination site, which primarily monetizes through a billion-dollar self-service advertising business.

[1]: [https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/15/twitter-acquires- longtime-...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/15/twitter-acquires-longtime- partner-and-social-data-analytics-provider-gnip/)

[2]: [https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2015/bloomberg- twi...](https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2015/bloomberg-twitter- data.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think the boost comes from ICO-related ads. Especially as Facebook just banned them.

<comment><USER34> Wow all these posts and youre the only person to mention this. I find that really strange.

Of course twitter has just landed a dumptruck load of cryptocurrency ad revenue.

Now the question is will they ban it for the same reasons facebook did given how key it is to profitability?

<comment><USER33> I highly doubt they will ban cryptocurrencies from their ad-platform when they can barely stay afloat. I speculate Facebook did so only because they're under pressure plus Zuckerberg said he's looking into the blockchain. I wouldn't be surprised if they'll monetize Messenger or WhatsApp with (the speculation it self of) a token in 2019/2020, akin to Telegram. Messaging-based apps are notoriously hard to monetize and Zuckerberg has said on earning's calls that he's unsatisfied with Messenger's progress in terms of monetization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This seems fair, as a consumer. I follow a few very good computer scientists and entrepreneurs on Twitter and the things they post are of high value to me. I don't mind the ads or the web app.

I favor reading books and academic papers over random web browsing, but some time spent on Twitter, HN, and a few Reddit subs-Reddit's keeps me up to date, tech-news wise.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if the premium tier of the API has contributed towards this?

<comment><USER37> No just cut back on stock options aka a paycut for the staff.

<comment><USER38> A further quarter of a billion dollars in stock options per quarter is insane when stacked against a $15-$20b market cap. Practically no sustaining public companies operate like that, with that scale of constant dilution.

<comment><USER27> It'll be interesting to see what that does to their hiring and retention, though. They are competing for people with Facebook, Google, etc. They weren't previously giving out those options to be nice.

<comment><USER37> And instead of paper options they will have to increase real $ - part of the problem for them is the way options are treated from an accounting perspective when in fact not all options get exercised.

<comment><USER39> So why not hand out RSUs instead?

<comment><USER27> I think Twitter was actually already giving out RSUs, not options. But either one dilutes the investor share of the company, which will push stock price down.

<comment><USER37> I think the problem is that appears on the accounts

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So Twitter has finally given up on building for the avg person and begun creating more tools to make life easier for advertisers (ie big money) and they're suddenly more profitable. Shocker!!

<comment><USER41> Revenue was up 2%. The rest is cost cutting.

[https://www.recode.net/2018/2/8/16991140/twitter- profit-q4-2...](https://www.recode.net/2018/2/8/16991140/twitter- profit-q4-2018-earnings-revenue-cuts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This excellently shows the problem with how value is currently assessed in the social media landscape. The "In case you missed it" algorithm-based organization of tweets and the focus on video to "increase engagement" at any cost are same reasons why there has been a widespread backlash against Facebook. On the other hand, building your feed from the ground up granularly is one of the larger differences between Twitter and Facebook.

<comment><USER43> Whenever I see, "In case you missed it," I read it as, "Now you have to decide if checking for new tweets is worth re-reading a half dozen tweets you've already seen."

So far, the answer is usually yes. I follow a lot of good people and the fear of missing something is real. But it's not 100% yes and I don't think the trend line looks good for Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Whisper rumor is that $TWTR is shopping itself for an acquisition. With $DIS / FOX likely suitor. $30 stock price would place market cap approx $25B.

Twitter Could Easily Be Acquired In 2018

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4135256-twitter-easily- acqu...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4135256-twitter-easily- acquired-2018)

<comment><USER38> It's not a whisper rumor. That speculation has been extremely rampant for years at this point.

<comment><USER45> Last time they were shopping, there was a huge influx of fake users, almost as though all fraud detection checks were disabled.

This time is different, or is it. Just how much of their new revenue is due to fake users, ad fraud, and automation?

<comment><USER38> They don't have any new revenue. Sales were only up 2%.

What changed is their expenses.

Negative $167m to positive $91m in net income, year over year for the quarter. That's nearly entirely from adjusting their expenses down. Dorsey is turning Twitter into the profit machine it should have always been by properly adjusting its expenses to the size of the business (rather than the size they hoped it would become years ago).

<comment><USER46> They are generating about 600 mil in free cash flow. Their revenues aren't growing. Other than acquisition there is no way to justify a 24 billion dollar valuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Glad to see twitter doing good financially. Out of all the social media platforms I use, it is by far the best.

</comment><comment><USER48> Oh good, I'm just down 17% on my TWTR holdings now.

</comment><comment><USER49> Systematic outrage and Trump can be successfully monetized. Damn, I always had the silent hope that Twitter wouldn't not reach this point.

</comment><comment><USER50> Would love to see how they solve the problem of third party markets for twitter followers.

</comment><comment><USER51> note that they slashed spending as well. Given all of the talk of regulation I don't think they are out of the woods yet. If increased regulation does happen it will have an enormous effect on the business.

</comment><comment><USER52> Bloomberg claiming they know why the stock rose. You could cite any reason

<comment><USER53> Are you saying the giant move in the stock directly after they announced earnings is not related to the earnings?

<comment><USER52> It's always supply and demand, maybe demand rose as a result, or supply decreased as a result, but to claim that an earnings report directly correlates to valuation is like claiming that measuring the temperature of the sea affects the water level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I will still stay away from it

<comment><USER55> ive been in for some time, wish i bought more during the 50% off sale</comment></comment>


The transformation of the porn industry under coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/otilliasteadman/coronavirus-amateur-porn-onlyfans <comment><USER2> This was actually really interesting to me!

It feels like they're saying basically now people are doing the whole thing themselves (soup to um, nuts, as it were). Directing, lighting, shooting, and being in the films. It seems like these are great skills to learn and differentiators! I wonder if this might inspire a new generation of not only porn making but film making as some of these people may eventually end up doing other things?

The ending of "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse" (filmed during the shooting of Apocalypse Now, 1979):

Francis Ford Coppola: To me, the great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff have come out, and some... just people who normally wouldn't make movies are going to be making them. And you know, suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart, you know, and make a beautiful film with her little father's camera recorder. And for once, the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever. And it will really become an art form. That's my opinion.

<comment><USER3> While movies aren't being produced by "little fat girls in Ohio", the internet and digital cameras made "Vloggers" possible. The predicted outcome wasn't met exactly but 40 years later people are making their own video productions for millions of viewers online. It was a very good prediction.

<comment><USER4> Except for the fact that no masterpieces were created this way...

<comment><USER5> So what? Perhaps the overprofessionalization of activity is winding down.

People used to enjoy singing together, amateur productions, and local amateur sports. Those things have not vanished, of course, but are significantly lower volume, having been replaced by purchasing the work of professionals.

There's nothing wrong with high quality professional product, but something else was lost in the process. If the pendulum moves back a bit many people may enjoy life more.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Everyone is making music at home now. Will the music industry survive?"

"Everyone is making software at home now. Will the software industry survive?"

Yes, these industries survive - they just changed. The market just has new competition at lower price points, which improves competition and forces the higher end producers to invest more rather than keeping so much profit.

On the low end, if you wanted to build this stuff yourself and go direct to market, you can - but then you always could. This kind of event just means there's MORE competition on the low end, which also forces low end producers to up their content quality (or go for more niche subject matters) if they want to attract an audience long term.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have absolutely no problem with porn. But as Louis CK said, you could alphabetize the world's cumulative porn collection from A-Z and sit a newborn baby down and push the play button, by the time he's dead at 100 he wouldn't have even gotten through the anal category. So if porn has to pause for a while I thing we can survive.

<comment><USER8> Porn video quality increases a lot year to year. There are probably multiple lifetimes worth of 90s porn out there and I bet almost no one watches it now besides as a curiosity.

It's not just video quality either but style. I've noticed that a lot of modern porn tries to have an amateur aesthetic but with high technical proficiency. Compare that to old professional porn where they were still trying to go for some kind of "hollywood of porn" style.

I'm sure tastes will continue to change and this generation's porn will lack the novelty future generations crave.

<comment><USER9> 4k isn't necessarily a bonus in that world.

<comment><USER8> I dont even mean 4k. Just simple 720/1080p quality amateur porn is a huge step up from what we had 5 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes.

Many years ago the internet allowed anyone to post their own websites, blogs, and comments on forums. Sites like Buzzfeed quickly blurted out "Oh noes, now that anyone can publish, will the publishing industry survive?" As we all know, the publishing industry was forced to change (and because it didn't, it has suffered mightily) but proper news sources still hold their value.

Just because I can make a porn video at home doesn't mean anyone will want to watch it. Pro models, proper lighting equipment, video editing equipment, and production knowledge all have value because the amateur stuff is mostly horrible.

The rare gem will be noticed. There are a few citizen blogs out there that are very much worth watching. The crappo ones faded into obscurity.

In the meantime, just like crappo publishing houses that refused to adapt and were pushed out of business, the pro porn industry will be forced to up its game. A good thing.

<comment><USER11> > Sites like Buzzfeed quickly blurted out "Oh noes, now that anyone can > publish, will the publishing industry survive?"

...

Wait, Buzzfeed, which was founded, as a website, in 2006, was concerned about the rise of blogs, personal websites, and forums, all of which were going into decline by 2006 with the coming of social media? Buzzfeed didn't even employ journalists til 2010 or so.

<comment><USER12> The parent comment is pretty obviously ill-informed for anyone who has any familiarity with/adjacency to the print journalism/publishing industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes, the industry will survive. You can skip the article.

</comment><comment><USER14> We shouldn't accept Porn being freely available online. Instead, we should require all sites to charge for content, minimum $5/month, with 10% of that being collected as sales tax.

Sites that do not comply will be blocked.

This will ensure that children cannot access them, and allow people to control their pornography addictions.

<comment><USER15> I don't agree with the downvotes because I feel you presented a point that's worthy of debate.

> This will ensure that children cannot access them

A. Kids will just steal their parents credit cards or logins.

B. The responsibility for raising children is the parents and not credit card companies. Things that make people better parents will work far better, like creating economic systems that don't require two parents to work and be unavailable to their children.

> and allow people to control their pornography addictions.

A. $5 a month won't work. People continue to smoke and cigarette packs are generally more expensive than that per pack.

B. Why should those who are not addicted pay for those who are?

<comment><USER14> A: Stealing a credit card is an order of magnitude more difficult than just getting a mobile phone and typing 'pornhub.com' into the address bar.

B: How do you police something which is so easy to access? We expect Governments and businesses to police access to drugs, why not for pornography? Why don't we require ISPs to provide free DNS-level blocking for residential broadband and mobile phone services?

It is not reasonable to expect every single parent to manually install blocking apps on all phones and devices that children have access to. This is something that should be managed centrally by ISPs, enforced by Government regulation.

C. $5 a month is an order of magnitude more expensive than free, and forces people to confront their addiction if it has a real price.

D. Disabling access to free porn would be a boon for the Porn industry who could focus on quality content rather than spectacle and exploitation.

<comment><USER16> B. I'm not in favor of governments policing drugs the way they've been going about it and I'm even less in favor of them having the power to censor the Internet.

I'd rather my kids, even at 9 and 11, stumble across pornography than grow up in a world where the government decides which sites are allowed to be in DNS.

C. No addict will be slowed by $60/yr price tag for their addiction. You're not forcing anyone to confront their addiction in any meaningful way.

D. I'm not in favor of protectionist rackets even for businesses that I think should be allowed to operate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Gross.</comment>


Ask HN: Music listeners.. why do you listen music today? - <AUTHOR> This question is specific to music listeners who have listened to music for 15+ actively knowing they love listening music.<p>Why do you listen to music today? (Anything concrete in your mind about music now?) <comment><USER2> I listen to music when coding to stay focused and keep up the tempo, stay motivated.

I enjoy listening to music while driving, some new stuff, but mainly favorite songs that were a soundtrack to my high school and university days.

It's still fun listening to favorites and discovering new bands.

I was in a band in college too and still play at home so it's fun discovering new songs to learn/techniques.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great queation. I guess I just enjoy the creative potential of recorded music, and take an active interest in seeking out tracks that are sonically progressive or further the canon of a certain (sub)genre.

This probably stems from a belief I have that music is the most mystical and powerful container of information and cultural communication that we have.

</comment><comment><USER4> I listen to music to experience a feeling or to bring forward the emotions I may be experiencing but not confronting. I listen to music to drown out emotions, moods, or thoughts sometimes as well. Lastly, I listen to music to help me focus. I have ADD and the background music helps me by providing a mild distraction.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a musician, I like to listen and appreciate the technique, passion or effort spent in making the music. Depends on my mood!

</comment><comment> ha-shine It depends on my mood. When I am in the gym, I mainly listen to music to get pumped. When I am coding, I do it to get more focus. Sometimes I do it after pulling all-nighter and too sleepy to read useless corporate emails. It does the trick.

</comment><comment><USER6> Aesthetics mainly</comment>


Short Term Thinking vs Long Term Thinking - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/03/short-term-thinking-vs-long-term-thinking.html

<comment><USER2> I've spent a lot of time recently wondering about short-term vs long-term thinking. In politics, I've heard people say that the important decisions are all "long-term", which they define as 2-3 years (Canada). In technology and science, "long-term" seems to also mean 2-3 years for so many people (the author of this article excluded, obviously). The Apple/Samsung/Google blog posts that dominate tech media almost all reek of this thinking.

It's very bizarre. In these domains, why is the prevailing thinking not that "short-term" = 2-3 years, and "long-term" = 20-30-500 years? I think the world would be a significantly better place is more people thought about what the world will look like, and how their actions will affect it, 50 years out.

<comment><USER3> Neither politics nor economics enable long-term thinking structurally.

"Long-term" is useless in economics since everything depends on your next earning call(s). If your figures are bad, you will probably let go, and there is no way to ensure continuity, since there can be no assurance that your successor(s) won't "pivot", as it is so nicely described here.

"Long-term" is equally useless in politics, were the next election date replaces your next earning call. You can _promise_ all sorts of things that are supposed to happen after the next election, however, there is no way to ensure continuity. Your political successor(s) _might_ continue, or they might not, instead reversing your policies and decisions. (edit: A good example is the UK's David Cameron right now, who _promises_ a EU-referendum _once_ he gets re-elected (and really, it should be _if_ ). Will he be elected? We will have to wait and see.)

Both our political and economic systems discourage long-term planning and thinking by focusing on short-sighted goals in the interest of present interests (be they stockholders' interests or politician's interests). Both systems are geared towards cementing one's own position of power (whether through money or policymaking), and long-term thinking is not particularly useful for that, simply because the further into the future the projected plans reach, the more uncertain they become.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure AAPL's selloff has less to do with long term thinking and more with retail investors/hedgies who rode the wave seeing the stock go down and decide the party's over, it's just time to get out and take profits. Rinse, repeat. AAPL's current valuation is absurdly pessimistic of the company's future prospects.

<comment><USER5> I sold my apple stock when I heard about the iPad mini. To me its an indication that there's no more radical innovation at Apple. They're going to try to ride on their past successes. I'm sure some new things will come out in the next few years, and i'm sure they'll make a billion dollars doing it, but they won't have that "Steve jobs" touch that made people want to wait outside in cold weather for days in advance to buy them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How the hell did this make it to the front-page of HackerNews?

TLDR; (Last paragraph of the article) "So my feeling is that Google is playing the long game in mobile while Apple is missing the cloud piece and Samsung is just a hardware player at this point. And the stock market understands that."

Really...

<comment><USER7> What part of that seems crazy to you? It seems pretty clear, concise and true to me...

<comment><USER8> It all seemed reasonable enough to me, except for the fact that after talking about long-term thinking so much he posted a graph of a 24 month period, and for more than half of that Google and Apple were very close in value, contradicting what he said.

<comment><USER9> look at the last six months of the chart

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> re: "You can change handsets pretty easily when all your data is in the cloud."

True enough. I was up and running in minutes when I upgraded an old Droid to a Samsung S III. I just had to install the couple of apps I use and logon to my Google account, then wait a few minutes. Everything was there.

</comment><comment><USER11> This reads to me like the classic market share pitch--if you get a big enough user group, you're bound to get rich someday. A lot of Internet companies have thought this way in the past. Only a few of them have actually made it happen.

Google has made a ton of money from search, but never made much money from maps or Gmail on the desktop, despite massive market share. I don't see any specifics that explain why it will be different on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER12> America is short term thinking, China is long term thinking.</comment>


Show HN: my weekend project, a "framework" for IRC apps/bots - <AUTHOR>

This is a little project I've been working on for a while in order to better learn Python. Although IRC may not exactly be the most exciting medium, I still find it to be fun and useful, this interest lead me to writing a bot. In doing this I realized that what would actually be more interesting would be if I had a framework. There may already be such a thing, certainly there are IRC libraries, but I don't know if they're well-suited to deploying bots. At any rate if for no other reason than the fact that I am relatively new to programming and eager to learn I decided to build a framework. The API is heavily influenced by Flask and other similar frameworks. It's fairly easy to write a simple bot and the framework will do things like reload the bot source on the fly as changes are made, attempt to reconnect when the connection is lost, and dispatch plugins in a threaded manner. I'd love to read any feedback! :) Here's the project on GitHub --> https://github.com/maxcountryman/irctk <comment><USER2> Why is it called irctk if it doesn't use Tk??

I recommend you hot-reload code. My IRC bot is a humble 150LOC split over two files. The basic bot logic to connect to a network lives in the script I run. That bot object sets its handler to an object imported from the second script, checking that second script's mtime regularly and if changed, reloads that module and re-sets the handler object.

It lets me change bot behavior on the fly without disconnecting, which is a pretty important thing to do if you don't want to be guilty of JOIN/PART spam.

      def set_handler(self, reloaded=False):
          self.handler = pigbot_handler.PigBotHandler(self, reloaded)
          self.handler_mtime = os.stat(self.handler_file).st_mtime

      def start_timer(self):
          self.timer = threading.Timer(1, self.check_handler_file)
          self.timer.start()

      def check_handler_file(self):
          if (os.path.exists(self.handler_file)):
              mtime = os.stat(self.handler_file).st_mtime
              if mtime > self.handler_mtime:
                  self.log('pigbot_handler changed, reloading ...')
                  reload(pigbot_handler)
                  self.handler_mtime = mtime
                  self.set_handler(reloaded=True)
          self.start_timer()

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. TK == ToolKit a la libraries such as Werkzeug (toolbox)

2\. It already does this. See the description. :)

<comment><USER2> I was looking at the example code, where bot logic and the run() was defined in the same module. That can't be reloaded.

The reloader looks like it works for "plugins." It all seems unnecessarily complex to me.

Also, your handlers should be provided with the channel in which the command was triggered. That doesn't seem to be set in the context dict that is passed to commands.

Another thing is that the bot model is very restrictive, as I've often seen with this sort of tool: You have events and commands, and that's it. It looks like the case of "try and match this regex, and do something with the result" would be possible, but made overly complex.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure what you mean when you say it can't be reloaded. In fact the only part of the code that cannot be hot-loaded is the socket connection (although this can be achieved if done properly) but because everything is decoupled, it's simple to reload even the framework itself, on the fly. And of course, the application written with the framework is wholly reloadable. This works just as Flask does and is in fact modeled after it.

Edit: I'm not sure why you think it would be restrictive, the entire line is available, it's conveniently parsed, and you're free to attach plugins to commands and hooks (what else do you want to attach them to, that's pretty much the extent of what happens with IRC). Regex? No problem: attach a function to an IRC command (this is the event decorator) and check the line for your patterns (context.line). If it seems too complicated to you or for your application, that's fine, as I said, this was a project I did for my own edification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <https://github.com/maxcountryman/irctk>

Just a clarification, IrcTK is not itself a bot, it's a framework for writing IRC applications or bots. So this is different from say Supybot or some other bot that was written as a self-contained application in that instead of writing plugins for those bots with IrcTK you import the framework and write your own bot (essentially a set of plugins as either commands or events).

</comment><comment><USER3> This past weekend I did something similar, but to learn about the new WinRT/Metro stuff in Windows 8. My github project is at: <https://github.com/patm1987/PuxIrc>

</comment><comment><USER4> Try Phenny. I wrote a module for Phenny that captures URLs and tweets them to our channel friends. Pretty easy to learn and extend:

<http://inamidst.com/phenny/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks cool, I tried my hand at this not too long ago if you're interedted in comparing notes: <https://github.com/coleifer/irc/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh interesting. I'm looking at it now. How are you handling plugin dispatching? Are the plugins threaded?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Check out supybot.</comment>


Sidepact: Start a company with a full-time job (applications close Wednesday) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sidepact.com/#2019 <comment><USER2> So how did you solved the IP ownership issues?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello there! I assume you're referring to IP ownership issues between participants of the program, but please correct me if I'm mistaken.

Finding potential co-founders is hard, hopefully Sidepact makes that process easier. If you find somebody to team up with, having open conversations early in the relationship and establishing ownership stakes for each team member is key. We know each team has a different makeup and unique formation.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the answer. I meant IP between the employer of the engineer (her full time job) and the side project. Most companies have very rigid IP ownership, which basically forbid R&D engineers from doing any meaningful side projects.

Is the engineer expected to ask its full time employer for permission to engage in this side project?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question, and I'll preface my answer with the fact that I'm not a lawyer and this subject is nuanced with much more eloquent threads on Hacker News on this topic. One of the speakers at Sidepact 2018 was a lawyer who also gave great answers to this question and its many sibling questions.

My summary: working on something that is not related to your current company's product while on your own time on your own equipment is ideal. And yes, if you work at a Mega-Corp or very extensive R&D shop, this is tricky since your company may have lots of products.

In my personal case, I worked at a small startup that had a focused product. I started my project at Sidepact in a completely unrelated area and informed my manager months before I left to give them time to hire, onboard, and prepare for my departure. They even let me work part-time for a month so I wouldn't go straight to no paycheck :) Not everybody is as fortunate to work at a company like this though, so each person has a different approach.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hate Mail from Third Graders - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pluto/mail-nf.html

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1129357></comment>


The Incredible Growth of Python Language - <AUTHOR> http://stacktrender.com/post/st/the-incredible-growth-of-python-stack-overflow-blog <comment><USER2> Discussion from a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15186025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15186025)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there are network effects.

Years ago, I was mostly interesting in Ruby/Rails because my friends in SF were interested in it and so I wanted to learn from them. There were also a ton of articles on HN that popped up.

But as soon as I became interested in Data Science/ML, I wanted to immerse myself in as many tutorials/projects as possible. As it so happens, a lot of books/tutorials I've read are in Python, so I figured why not. I really appreciate the simplicity of the language and the fact that so many interesting libraries are available.

I find it quite a beautiful language to try to learn.

</comment><comment><USER4> IMO python and its popularity is somewhat split between a scripting language, maybe a R alternative, with a data science focus on one hand. On the other hand is python as a web dev language with Django and flask as the popular frameworks.

We're looking to hire on the web Dev side [0]. We do get a number of people who have more of a scripting focus, but limited web Dev experience. I think some of that comes because of the online MOOC phenomenon and the proliferation of python courses that are really python scripting (not python web dev) courses.

I'm curious what the HN community thinks of my hypothesis of that split and if the "incredible growth" is one-sided as a scripting language.

[0] [https://www.simplelegal.com/careers?gh_jid=678936](https://www.simplelegal.com/careers?gh_jid=678936)

</comment><comment><USER5> Why not link to the original article?

[https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/09/06/incredible-growth- pyth...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/09/06/incredible-growth-python)

<comment><AUTHOR> No special reason. I found it on this aggregator and though about sharing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is not just because it attracts beginners, it is also because it is a good tool for a lot of tasks where you can trade some performances for ease of use.

I think a lot of the recent growth is due to theano/keras, the most popular deep learning platform out there. It also attracts more and more data scientists, now that distributions like Anaconda make it 'easy' to install on windows.

<comment><USER7> Also, everything had to be redocumented and reanswered for python 3. I wouldn't be surprised if people had to look up their issue repeatedly on stack overflow until they finally find help.

Every top answer in python seems to be dating back to 2009 (python 2.1), quite a few are completely broken code nowadays (blame the breaking change in the standard API).

<comment><USER8> Python 2.1 was from 2001 -- did you mean 2.6.1?

<comment><USER7> I see answers as far as python 2.1. Assume the linux distributions and the business users were always a few years behind the trunk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be interesting to collect data to see how many continued using python from prototype to production. Python would definetly help to build MVP, when in production where actual concurrency matters; very few like Instagram have built robust python based architectures.

Btw, achieving decent concurrency in python is quite straightforward. Understanding of Greenlets, Gevent, uvloop Cython etc. could prevent headache in future.</comment>


Your Body Wasn't Built To Last: A Lesson From Human Mortality Rates (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2012/01/09/your-body-wasn%E2%80%99t-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414176)

</comment><comment><USER3> The article addresses Gompertz' law: the probability of dying in any given year increases exponentially with age (older people have ever higher death rates). This is an _EMPIRICAL FACT_. As you live longer, this probability accumulates exponentially, so the probability of being alive falls super- exponentially: p(being alive) = a _exp(-exp(b_ t)).

I'm pretty sure there ain't nothing you can do about this. Why not? Because evolution built it pretty strongly into our genes. Here's how I see it: if an organism arose which had this "death gene" turned off, it would not adapt to sudden changes in the environment. It might be susceptible to a novel infectious agent which wipes out the whole species. Thus evolution tends to weed out immortal or very long-lived organisms.

Don't forget how natural selection works. It's not single creatures that adapt; it's about whole species. The only way for a species to adapt is for some of its individuals to die and be replaced by their offspring which differ genetically from their parents.

Evolution needs death to work. Hence death is built-in.

Look at this scary graph (with a logarithmic y axis!):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_of_mortality#/media/File:USGompertzCurve.svg)

and then tell me that medical advances will do anything to make you live to 200. Go on, I dare ya.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure that makes any sense. If there are sudden changes in the environment then the less fit animals will die off without any need for a death gene. If there aren't any changes in the environment then there's no need for animals to die off. Evolution works just fine with prokaryotes which don't really get old in the sense that we do.

Also technology allows us to do many things that aren't allowed for by our evolution, like flying to the Moon. Evolution isn't an all-powerful force but something that works strictly through variation and selection. If we find the physical process that cause aging and how to stop them then there's nothing evolution can do to stop us.

<comment><USER3> Granted, sudden changes to the environment would kill off the less fit individuals. So I'll change my argument a bit:

Suppose you've overcome infant mortality, and have also solved the problem of adult mortality, so all subsequent people are immortal. Suppose moreover that young adults insist on having more than zero children (that's likely to continue, you'll agree). Now you've got a population that won't stop growing. Resources are finite, and there will be mass starvation.

What are your options in such a scenario? Should you kill off old people, kill off young people, or prevent all future babies?

Suppose you prevent all future babies. Then you end up with no more sex, no more genetic variability, and now the whole species might be susceptible to a sudden environmental change.

So my argument is that old people must die to make room for genetically- different young people. Without natural death, there will be less room for evolutionary adaptation.

<comment><USER4> The question you're asking there is one of human morality and politics rather than evolution or technological feasibility. I'll tell you what solution evolution "wants" to pick: population increase, starvation, and may the fittest win. Obviously that's not something you or I would want but it's why _evolution_ doesn't have any problem with creatures living indefinitely.

<comment><USER3> Well, I wasn't trying to make a moral argument, although I guess the way I phrased things might suggest otherwise. Heck, I just have this strong intuition that there's a countdown timer inside us, which will lead us inexorably to death. Maybe I can't argue convincingly for it, but I feel there have to be evolutionary reasons for why such a timer must exist, and the idea of making room for young organisms seemed like a fruitful way towards an explanation.

So here's a last and final argument for such a countdown timer: there are no immortal species in nature. That's more of an "existence proof" than a "constructive proof", but it does strongly argue that there is a reason why death is necessary (without providing the reason, for I can't think of one that will persuade you).

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Organis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Organisms)

There are actually a few immortal or extremely long-lived species in nature. Evolution still acts upon them because there are other selection forces at work, like not being eaten by predators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ahh, yes, the fallacy of using history to predict the future, with math. This is a fun kind of math problem, but it completely ignores a huge wildcard, namely, human ingenuity and technology. These kinds of predictions have been toppled many times before simply because they aren't about reality (biological or physical properties), rather they are just calculations about ethereal things. Sometimes mathematics maps on to the physical world in startling good ways (the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics"), but biology isn't physics, and human life span is as much social and technological as it is biological. Of course, history is probably our best tool to make such estimations (we don't have any better guides)... until it isn't (that day some new wonder drug is invented, or some new artificial body, etc)

<comment><USER7> > The fallacy of using history to predict the future, with math.

You say that as if we have anything aside from the past that we can use to make predictions.

<comment><USER8> You can look at the mechanics of the thing you're studying and make predictions based on what's possible.

Like if you were watching the development of the space program you could make a prediction about when we'd get to the moon, without just looking at the historical top speed of airplanes we'd built before.

<comment><USER9> Yes but that's still using the past. All we have to work with, in order to formulate scientific theories, are correlations and patterns detected at some point in the past.

Of course, some correlations and patterns are much stronger than others, and we can be more confident in the predictions they yield.

So really the fallacy is about using too weak a model to predict the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All religious aspects aside, it's amazing that this was documented back to at least 2nd century BCE to within 2.5 years or so.

"... they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years." [https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Genesis%206%3A3](https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Genesis%206%3A3)

... with the longest living person in modern times documented as being 122 yrs, 164 days: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment)

<comment><USER11> The Bible isn't a good prediction of age.

      Seth lives to be 912 years of age.  (Gensis 5:8 )
      Enosh lived to be 905 years of age. (Gensis 5:11)
      Reu had a son at 32 then lived another 207 years living to be 239 years of age. (Gensis 11:20-21)
      Abraham lived to be 175 years of age (Gensis 25:7)

Also the passage you noted, Gensis 6:3, is often seen as referring to the amount of time from when God determined to destroy mankind to when God sent a global flood and not the lifetime of humans mandated by God.

<comment><USER12> Actually, the Jewish tradition is that Moses lived 120 years, and that, after him, 120 years was the approximate cap on human life. Many Jewish well- wishings end with something like "may you live until one hundred and twenty".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Ignoring, of course, the upward shift in the lifetime distribution that will result from future medical advances."

<comment><USER14> Have we made even a single advancement that can increase the age to which humans are capable of living?

We've made lots of progress on stuff that kills us early, but I can't think of anything that makes our bodies actually last longer.

<comment><USER15> You can have all the organ replacement you want. Once your drive train (feet/ankles/knees/hips, which ultimately impact on your spine) is shot, all you're gonna want to do is lie in bed.

<comment><USER4> Given things like hip replacements and anti-inflammatory drugs it might be that we're better at keeping people mobile in advanced old age then we are at keeping them alive.

<comment><USER15> Report back when you have first hand experience with that hip. I think you'll be unpleasantly surprised.

There's a lot of chicken counting going on when the future is discussed. We have very effective pain medicines right now that many people can't have because of their potential for abuse.

I wouldn't count on anything until you see actual meds on the market that some group of "We Know What's Best For You" people hasn't declared evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You know, I'm okay with this body not lasting. I'm not too terribly fond of it anyway.

I just want a good and working migration plan.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I second that. In most religious belief your soul or some part of you lives on. And some people think you can contact them with seances and that the spirits can influence what happens here. I don't see why we can't build an electronic version of that in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In terms of mechanisms for aging I think Nick Lane has some pretty good arguments that it mostly has to do with evolution in your body's population of mitochondria. The evidence with the unexpectedly long lives of hummingbirds is at least suggestive.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1483179/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1483179/)

</comment><comment><USER18> But if you multiply that 0.000001% by 7 billion people, what do you get?

<comment><USER19> It's not phrased as a "probability that an individual human will live to 130", but as a "probability that any human will live to 130" (although I'm not sure whether that's the calculation that the original author intended to do or whether it was correct).

... but I think it was (if you assume the unlimited validity of that law as ages increase, and its validity to everyone in the population), because I tried to use that formula and my bc crashed (!), the first time I've ever seen that. It was trying to compute e to the power of

-1196855871164164755229127183619028619603176.29243358214210581124

which was the probability of a particular individual surviving to 130 according to the formula. That is a super-small number, which dwarfs the human population of 7 billion, so probably the original author _did_ mean to say the thing about anyone-ever, and was probably correct within these assumptions about exponentials and their applicability.

<comment><USER20> So someone like Lazarus Long has a (very small) chance to exist.

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

<comment><USER19> Well, the formula is defined for a probability of living to _any_ age -- it gives some positive probability no matter what you put in.

But the probability of living to age 130 under this formula is already so low as to be hard to visualize.

I think this formula is a bit off at the high end because I evaluated it for 120 -- an age that at least one person _has_ lived to -- and also got a probability suggesting that this would never have happened in human history. But it seems like the formula is still pretty close for almost all of the population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't remember where I originally picked this up, but I recall reading that generally, for warm-blooded mammals, there is a pretty strong correlation between resting heart rate and lifespan. Except that humans are a huge outlier.

Ah, here's the graph, possibly not from the most reputable source, but it's what the googles found me first [http://www.runnersworld.com/sweat- science/how-many-heart-bea...](http://www.runnersworld.com/sweat-science/how- many-heart-beats-do-we-get)

I do sometimes wonder if the delaying of child-rearing has some effect on lifespan. Historically, it's not uncommon to find mothers and fathers in their mid teens, and adulthood was commonly understood to start at something like 16 or 18. In western countries, we're deferring child-rearing into the late twenties, early thirties, and full adulthood keeps creeping upwards as well.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm 99.999999% certain I would not want to live that long.

<comment><USER23> Really? All I can think about is how to not die. The thought terrifies me. It got to a point where it's my main motivator in what I do. I used to be lazy and play video games all day and when I realized how finite and easy destructible our lives are, I get crazy scared and work like crazy so I don't waste my time. There's so much I want to learn and do. The only problem is the limit of time.

Death is incredibly terrifying. I don't understand it and I don't want to, I just want to live. Forever preferably.

<comment><USER24> I would be quite interested in understanding why people find death terrifying. I'm likely in a minority, but I look forward to death. That doesn't mean I'm suicidal. It means that I view death as an important moment in my life, one that will force me to measure whether I'm satisfied with the way I lived my life. I'll no doubt have regrets, but I'll have smiles too. I could say that being a person of faith may influence my looking forward to death, but I imagine that even if I wasn't a person of faith, I'd still have a similar mindset. I am very curious why people would want to live forever on this earth. It seems like it'd become quite dreary and boring, especially if I gradually lose control over all my normal physical and mental functions.

<comment><USER25> > I could say that being a person of faith may influence my looking forward to > death

Rather heavily, yes. For the sake of argument, to put yourself into someone else's position and understand it, consider how differently you might feel about death if it simply meant a permanent cessation of consciousness. No more thinking, ever; you're permanently and irrecoverably gone. Not "floating in a black void" nothingness, but "there is no you anymore" nothingness.

Alternatively, if your faith includes the concept of a soul, imagine a soul being irrevocably _destroyed_ ; it didn't go anywhere, it was just lost.

That might make it clearer why many people find death both terrifying and horrific, no matter whether it occurs at 20 or 120.

> I am very curious why people would want to live forever on this earth. It > seems like it'd become quite dreary and boring,

I find it easy enough to imagine a few billion years worth of possibilities. There's always more to learn, to see, and to think. Even if you'd seen the entire universe, other people are a literally endless supply of novelty.

And if you can't imagine an eternity of life interacting with other people in happiness, _how exactly do you envision an afterlife_?

> especially if I gradually lose control over all my normal physical and > mental functions.

Living forever doesn't mean becoming increasingly decrepit. The same processes that create a hard stop at 120 are what make a 100-year-old systematically less healthy than a 25-year-old, and they require the same fixes. Anything that would successfully keep you alive forever must necessarily keep you free of age-related health complications forever.

<comment><USER24> _Alternatively, if your faith includes the concept of a soul, imagine a soul being irrevocably destroyed; it didn 't go anywhere, it was just lost._

Yes, I'm trying to imagine that, and I don't see why it's such a big issue. This seems so contradictory to what people claim their philosophies to be. It's like the environment. People cry about how we're destroying the earth, but they're not actually worried about the earth. They're worried about themselves. It's like how Ian Malcolm comments derisively in _The Lost World_ that humans may not survive, but the earth would be just find. Somewhere some microbes would survive underneath all the dirt blasted everywhere in the apocalypse, and life would start again. I can understand the concept of ceasing to exist. I have not had anyone be able to explain to me why that makes that person so afraid, other than the fact that _it just does_.

 _And if you can 't imagine an eternity of life interacting with other people in happiness, how exactly do you envision an afterlife?_

Hehe, well, I think that's the key point, isn't it? You're talking about interacting with other people in happiness for eternity. I specifically said "forever on this earth", not "forever, period". I don't think you can achieve what you're talking about on this earth. We've had centuries of modern civilization to figure out how to stop both large-scale wars and petty relationship spats, and it's debatable whether we'll reach a level that has no pain. Yes, we've gotten better, especially if you read some of the literature on the topic, but age-old problems remain and I find no reason to think that they'll one day disappear.

 _Living forever doesn 't mean becoming increasingly decrepit. The same processes that create a hard stop at 120 are what make a 100-year-old systematically less healthy than a 25-year-old, and they require the same fixes. Anything that would successfully keep you alive forever must necessarily keep you free of age-related health complications forever._

I actually deal with my worries about this issue in a comment below. I think people go about this subject very selfishly without thinking of the greater consequences.

<comment><USER25> > I can understand the concept of ceasing to exist. I have not had anyone be > able to explain to me why that makes that person so afraid, other than the > fact that it just does.

Hard to explain (surprising to even _have_ to explain), but it seems worth a shot. Consider a degenerative mental disease like Alzheimer's; does the idea of suffering from that, or someone in your family suffering from that, bother you? Why? If the disease robbed you/them of all sense of self, including any part of you/them that would be bothered by it, does that mean there's no harm done because you/they are no longer aware of it? Assuming you find that concept as horrific as I do, then a more permanent loss of any "sense of self" should be quite analogous.

Both are horrifying atrocities. Both need to stop. And I don't understand how the latter can seem any _less_ horrific than the former. Yet far more attention is paid to the former, while a hundred and fifty thousand people die every day.

> You're talking about interacting with other people in happiness for > eternity. I specifically said "forever on this earth", not "forever, > period". I don't think you can achieve what you're talking about on this > earth. We've had centuries of modern civilization to figure out how to stop > both large-scale wars and petty relationship spats, and it's debatable > whether we'll reach a level that has no pain. Yes, we've gotten better, > especially if you read some of the literature on the topic, but age-old > problems remain and I find no reason to think that they'll one day > disappear.

Fixing mortality is one of many things that needs to happen. Given all the time in the world, I'm quite confident we can fix the various lesser problems (and next to mortality, everything is a lesser problem). Fixing scarcity would go a long way. AI (or something very much like it) seems like the surest path, though it requires a great deal of care to get right.

And I don't see why we should be limited to "this earth", or "this universe" if it turns out there are others. Forever is a very long time.

I have hope. And more importantly, I'm working towards those goals.

> I actually deal with my worries about this issue in a comment below. I think > people go about this subject very selfishly without thinking of the greater > consequences.

If you're referring to your comment about economic disparity making longevity a privilege: probably, but not for long. It's too important not to make universally available. And to be explicitly clear: I don't think _anyone_ should die; I'm not just worried about myself or those I care about (though I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about them _more_ ). But I think it's entirely possible to build a world in which _nobody_ dies.

That itself may lead to problems, but they'll be problems worth having and worth solving, and we'll have plenty of time to solve them.

<comment><USER24> _Hard to explain (surprising to even have to explain), but it seems worth a shot. Consider a degenerative mental disease like Alzheimer 's; does the idea of suffering from that, or someone in your family suffering from that, bother you? Why? If the disease robbed you/them of all sense of self, including any part of you/them that would be bothered by it, does that mean there's no harm done because you/they are no longer aware of it? Assuming you find that concept as horrific as I do, then a more permanent loss of any "sense of self" should be quite analogous._

I like that you're actually trying to answer my question instead of being dismissive about it. Unfortunately, I'd say it's difficult to compare Alzheimer's with cessation of existence in this manner. One is the process of losing your sense of self. I agree that must be extremely frightening. Losing control of yourself is no doubt hard.

However, in discussing death, I am referring to the result, not the process. The process of suffering leading to death can horrific, especially if disease is the cause. The end result of not existing, I am not able to put in the same sentence like you do. Even after carefully reading your explanation, it seems to me that you've done a masterful job explaining why the process is horrifying. But I already agree with that. You haven't been able to explain to me why the result after the process is over is so scary.

It may be possible we'd just end up going in circles about this, which would be too bad. I am seriously waiting for someone to explain to me in a manner that I can understand why cessation of existence is so terrifying to them.

edit addendum: Questions regarding scarcity and whether it can be resolved even with new technology and expansion to other galaxies unfortunately cannot be easily resolved until it happens. That being said, I have little faith that humanity can have that Star Trek epiphany. We have enough food to end world hunger today. The problem is distribution and individuals willing to sacrifice for the greater good. This is true for both third world nations that experience famine and inner city slums in the first world. The political will simply isn't there. Don't get me wrong, I really do wish I could think better of humanity.

<comment><USER25> > I like that you're actually trying to answer my question instead of being > dismissive about it.

And I appreciate that you're attempting to understand another point of view. Thank you.

> One is the process of losing your sense of self. I agree that must be > extremely frightening. Losing control of yourself is no doubt hard.

There's a difference here between what I'm talking about and what you're talking about, and it's a critically important one: there's a big difference between "losing control of yourself" and "losing yourself". I mentioned degenerative mental disorders specifically because that's a case where you're not still "in there" somewhere. I'm talking about the case where there's no "you" left. You are your mind; if your mind is gone, there's no "you" anymore.

The distinction is important for people who would equate that entirely with death. You thought I was talking about the process, but I'm very much talking about the end result.

It would be as if you'd said "well, the part of a degenerative mental disease where you're forgetting everything you are is horrible, but once you're done forgetting everything you are, and forgetting that there was even something to forget, what's wrong with that?".

> However, in discussing death, I am referring to the result, not the process.

So am I. The process varies depending on how you die. The result is always the same: no more you. The suffering is nothing compared to the non-existence at the end; suffering can be lived through and gotten past, but death cannot. (This point of view is rather diametrically opposed to the one that views death as a potential "end to suffering".)

> You haven't been able to explain to me why the result after the process is > over is so scary.

Fear isn't a required component, though it's certainly a healthy reaction (same as if something large and hungry is running at you: danger, thing to avoid, fight against it or flee from it). The key point is that it's a horrible atrocity for anyone to die. One less mind in the world; one less light in the darkness; one less set of unique experiences; one sentient being annihilated forever.

For what it's worth, part of the reason I find this question hard to answer is not because I find it complicated, but because I find it very simple; it's as if you asked "why is 1 > 0?". To which the answer is "because that's how we define 1 and 0". Why is life better than death? Because life _is_ , and death _isn 't_. But if you found that answer convincing, you'd already be convinced; there's a difference in fundamental value systems here.

> Questions regarding scarcity and whether it can be resolved even with new > technology and expansion to other galaxies unfortunately cannot be easily > resolved until it happens. That being said, I have little faith that > humanity can have that Star Trek epiphany.

I very much doubt the future will look like Star Trek; I think we can do much better, though fiction certainly provides some useful inspiration. How soon we can get there is another question entirely.

I want to make this world better, because 1) wanting to do so is a required first step to make it happen, and 2) if you start from the premise that it's the only one we've got, then we have to make the most of it. I personally feel that mortality and death is the biggest evil in the world, and the one worth spending the most effort to fight first, but it certainly isn't the last one, and when we're done with it we shouldn't hang up our tools and rest.

For a bit of writing I find particularly inspiring on this topic, see [http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html](http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html) ; it's a transparent allegory, but one I find quite compelling.

> I really do wish I could think better of humanity.

You're part of humanity. What are you, personally, doing to solve the problem? Blaming "political will" is one thing, but large-scale apathy is at least as big a roadblock to solving issues on that scale.

The first step to solving a problem is to decide it needs solving. And deciding that it can't be solved makes it harder to solve.

<comment><USER24> _For what it 's worth, part of the reason I find this question hard to answer is not because I find it complicated, but because I find it very simple; it's as if you asked "why is 1 > 0?". To which the answer is "because that's how we define 1 and 0". Why is life better than death? Because life is, and death isn't. But if you found that answer convincing, you'd already be convinced; there's a difference in fundamental value systems here._

You do a very good job of making me see that it's coming down to a difference in axiomatic statements of belief; there's not much deeper to go in splitting the atom. Once we get to that point, I guess there's not much else to say except make your choice and live with it.

 _You 're part of humanity. What are you, personally, doing to solve the problem? Blaming "political will" is one thing, but large-scale apathy is at least as big a roadblock to solving issues on that scale.

The first step to solving a problem is to decide it needs solving. And deciding that it can't be solved makes it harder to solve._

I don't agree that I have this perspective. However, the method I have in solving these problems are very integrated with my faith. I've personally concluded that we live in a broken and fallen world and are incapable of fixing it, but a higher power exists who can fix us. However, I won't try to have that discussion here. Certainly, I do things within my power to make things better. While I'm not a gamechanger like Elon Musk, I personally volunteer however I can in areas of poverty around the world, broken families, etc.

But thank you for the discussion. It was enlightening.

<comment><USER25> I had hoped that it wouldn't come down to axioms. I'm still curious to hear your response to the question from my previous comment:

It would be as if you'd said "well, the part of a degenerative mental disease where you're forgetting everything you are is horrible, but once you're done forgetting everything you are, and forgetting that there was even something to forget, what's wrong with that?".

That's the part I'm most curious about. I realize that you don't personally believe death is a transition to non-existence, but you also acknowledged that others did feel that way, and you wondered how even given that basis one might feel horrified by that non-existence (rather than the process leading to it). Given that, if the above doesn't explain it, I don't think I understand where you're coming from.

Or are you saying that that now makes sense, and the remaining axiomatic disagreement is about non-existence itself?

> However, the method I have in solving these problems are very integrated > with my faith. I've personally concluded that we live in a broken and fallen > world and are incapable of fixing it, but a higher power exists who can fix > us. However, I won't try to have that discussion here.

Neither will I, and I appreciate you separating the discussion from that. However, I would ask that you consider the possibility of the two not being incompatible: believing in an afterlife is not incompatible with trying to make _this_ life as good as possible, and even if you believe it can't be made perfect, that doesn't stop it from getting asymptotically better. The phrase "pray to God but keep rowing to shore" comes to mind, as well as "God helps those who help themselves". I'm not bothered when others have faith; it does bother me, though, when faith in a higher power causes people to give up on humanity. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

In any case, I do very much appreciate the opportunity for a discussion with someone who, despite having a very different point of view, was willing to discuss things in reasonable terms and make an effort to understand a differing point of view.

<comment><USER24> _Or are you saying that that now makes sense, and the remaining axiomatic disagreement is about non-existence itself?_

I'm sorry to say that I have no idea what you're talking about up to this point. But it doesn't seem to matter, as I think we agree that the axiomatic disagreement is about whether non-existence itself is something to fear (at least, I think we agree on what we're disagreeing about).

 _However, I would ask that you consider the possibility of the two not being incompatible: believing in an afterlife is not incompatible with trying to make this life as good as possible, and even if you believe it can 't be made perfect, that doesn't stop it from getting asymptotically better. .... I'm not bothered when others have faith; it does bother me, though, when faith in a higher power causes people to give up on humanity. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good._

I think you're misunderstanding me still on where I stand on this. I think it's my responsibility to do what I can to improve things here where I am, both in my community and on my entire planet. Admittedly, that's also integrated with my faith, and it's certainly not an ideal I wish to discard (which in turn makes the idea that my faith makes me wish to discard that ideal all the more ludicrous).

Let me be clear. I have given up on humanity's ability to fix itself. I have not given up on a higher power's ability to change individual humans into people who can make this world a better place. And that includes everything from being more charitable, empathetic, and forgiving every day to having motive and drive to throw away personal riches and futures for a lifetime of thankless service in the trenches of fighting poverty, corruption, unjust war, and more. Not all of us can be Bill Gates and set up a foundation that can really make a difference. But I do believe that everything starts in the hearts of individual people. Unfortunately many people are too petty, selfish, or jaded to care, despite the rare amazing stories of real selflessness. The higher power I believe gives me back hope for people to change.

Sorry for the late reply. :)

<comment><USER25> [This is probably getting a bit deep in the thread for HN; happy to continue via private mail. See my profile.]

> I think we agree that the axiomatic disagreement is about whether non- > existence itself is something to fear (at least, I think we agree on what > we're disagreeing about).

While that's something we disagree on, I don't think that's the root of the axiomatic difference; that's why I'm curious. Earlier in the thread, you said:

> I can understand the concept of ceasing to exist. I have not had anyone be > able to explain to me why that makes that person so afraid, other than the > fact that it just does.

That's one step removed from any underlying difference in values or axioms. Axiomatically, we clearly disagree on _whether_ death equates to non- existence, but your statement above seems to suggest you're interested in understanding where other people are coming from despite that: why, assuming that premise, someone might find such non-existence horrifying. To which I'd provided an answer in the form of an analogy to degenerative mental diseases, and never got a response to that.

That's the part I'm curious about: I don't understand a mindset that can find a degenerative mental disorder horrifying (which I'm assuming you agree with) without finding the end result horrifying as well. I'm genuinely curious to understand that.

> Let me be clear. I have given up on humanity's ability to fix itself. I have > not given up on a higher power's ability to change individual humans into > people who can make this world a better place. [...]

Sounds like we're talking about similar things but fundamentally disagreeing over attribution, then. Or possibly definition of terms, because I have no idea what you mean by "humanity" if you don't mean "humans", since you're subsequently talking about "individual humans" / "individual people" making the world a better place.

<comment><USER24> I think we're about at the conclusion anyway because roadblocks in our minds are making us go in circles.

 _That 's the part I'm curious about: I don't understand a mindset that can find a degenerative mental disorder horrifying (which I'm assuming you agree with) without finding the end result horrifying as well. I'm genuinely curious to understand that._

This is a fundamental thing we can't seem to make each other understand in terms of why we differ. The process is horrifying to me, but the result is a conclusion that does not horrify me. The phrase "rest in peace" comes to mind here, which I posit many people are willing to say about those who have passed away, whether or not the speaker believes in an afterlife or higher power. Yet they cannot think this way for themselves. I have no theory for this except that perhaps those people are unable to make peace with their end and/or themselves, which is unfortunately a circular argument. I'm not saying that's the case for you. I'm simply saying I can't come up with a better answer, and nobody's been able to explain it to me except that they're afraid because they're afraid.

So to recap, I am saying yes, the process is horrifying, but the end result (death and actual non-existence, not just senility) is what it is and doesn't have to be horrifying. And I believe you are saying that since the process is horrifying, the end result is also necessarily horrifying. I do not see the If A Then B logical path that necessity necessitates for your statements to become acceptable to me.

But if you believe there's a way to break the circle of our discussion, you of course are welcome to email me also. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel For me, death is just another fact of life but I don't think dying from old age will be one of those facts that will be around for much longer (in terms of a century). Yet diseases, accidents, and murder will still be there to cut life short to be sure.

I just think it's odd that there's a great many essays on the matter of death where people argue it's preferable to accept it than to fight it even if it's futile. I'd rather go out with a bang than a whimper. At least then I know I tried and I didn't let death off too easy.

</comment><comment><USER26> "So...you're saying theres a chance!"

</comment><comment><USER27> In other words, John Citizen statistically won't live to age 130. Someone who is better off health wise and is less of a risk taker than the average American - I bet given a lifetime of modern day medicine or better, you've got a great shot at 130.

<comment><USER28> The key is 'or better'. And no, even with the best modern (as in today) medicine you have no chance of 130. The convergence of accruing damage along with DNA that is not optimized for such long life puts a lot of pressure on the older body. It is very likely that the solution to the age 'problem' will occur at a much younger age with genetic manipulation to avoid or prolong the issues that occur at old age. The question then becomes, if you manipulate your DNA, are you human, or a human subspecies?

<comment><USER25> > The question then becomes, if you manipulate your DNA, are you human, or a > human subspecies?

That doesn't seem like a particularly interesting question. It wouldn't change the conclusion that humans can't naturally live past 120. And that conclusion itself becomes unimportant if we can reliably work around it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Also ignoring animals that do have indefinite natural lifespans...

<comment><USER28> Eh, might as well compare apples and oranges and expect it to describe a banana.

Most animals that live well over 100 years have a very low metabolism. For example turtles and tortoises. Other living organisms that have biological immortality are generally simple creatures. As in all the components of the creature can be replaced and the creature doesn't change in function. Fish, for example can live hundreds of years, but their biology is considerably different than a mammals. That said, whales and alligators can have extremely long lives. It may be that water acts as sunblock and reduces the amount of UV damage allowing life to continue much longer than most land animals.

<comment><USER29> Right, but it puts a lie to many of the theories that involve mortality being an inevitable result of biological chemistry -- e.g. that cells can only divide so many times before they MUST die.

The reality is that for just about every aging related failure mode, there is an example of some animal somewhere that is able to fix or otherwise defend against that very form of damage, a proof by example that such damage is not inevitable or irreversible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That title is literally the dumbest sentence in the entire article, which is an outlier in an otherwise interesting piece.

<comment><USER30> We reverted the submission title from "99.999999% certainty that no human will ever live to the age of 130" to the article's.</comment></comment>


NYT, July 1997. Computer needs another century or two to defeat Go champion - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/29/science/to-test-a-powerful-computer-play-an-ancient-game.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11324202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11324202)

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like this is a useless insight, as at the time (and now) few writers for the NYT have a firm grasp of how computers work and will advance. Coupled with the fact fewer still (at the time) knew what Moore's law was, they basically are just guessing.

<comment><USER4> Well yeah... That's the insight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please don't rewrite story titles to single out the detail you think is important. That's editorializing, and it's against the rules here.

If you want to say what you consider important about an article, you can do so by adding a comment to the thread.

</comment><comment><USER6> Haha, to anyone who would want to dispel the latest AI hype, tough luck! A pop-science journalist made some ill-informed prediction 20 years ago, so your arguments are invalid.</comment>


You knew the old Mozilla, meet the new Mozilla - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ascher.ca/2011/12/19/you-knew-the-old-mozilla-meet-the-new-mozilla/

<comment><USER2> This is entirely the wrong priority.

      I've been speaking to app & website developers about BrowserID
      and Apps for a few weeks, and the feedback has been great —
      webdevs & entrepreneurs are very aware of the dangers of relying
      on Facebook, Google, or Apple as the bridges to distribution or users.

I think the dangers of "relying on Facebook" et al are thoroughly outweighed by the effects of those entities taking the web hostage, transforming it into an oligarchy with inappropriate influence on the government as well as the daily web surfing activities of their users.

What we need from you, Mozilla, is not "a better way to sign in", or better support for whatever your vision of a web app store is. We need Web Intents (<http://webintents.org/>), or your iteration of it. We need you to create a kick-ass UI for this. We need you to help take back the web before it succumbs to mega corporations entirely. Please, Mozilla, have the foresight to recognize what's really at stake here.

<comment><USER3> Mozilla is contributing to the Web Intents standardization and implementation effort, and in fact Mozilla's Open Web Apps project and Web Intents are being designed to work together and to benefit each other greatly (just as BrowserID and Open Web Apps are being designed to benefit each other).

To be more concrete: When a web page uses an intent like "upload a photo", Firefox will check to see if any of your "apps" support that intent. For example, if Flickr has an OWA app and you have already installed it, then Firefox will instantly ask if you want to choose one of your Flickr photos to upload. If you click an intent that the browser doesn't already have a handler for, it can offer to install an app from the web to handle the intent.

Open Web Apps is part of the infrastructure to turn Web Intents from a low- level API into a complete user experience. And BrowserID is also part of that integrated experience. (In the full vision for BrowserID where the browser manages your identities, you can do things like install an app and be "logged in" instantly without creating an account or typing a password.)

<comment><USER2> I just hope Web Intents makes it into the actual release - and in a way that is usable by normal users. Seems to me this should be a priority, instead of putting all that effort into yet another single sign-on fantasy.

If this happens as part of a large integrated experience as you promised that's fine, but I fear that you are taking on too much, going for a complex and over-engineered package that may never be ready or actually usable, instead of concentrating on this one single important thing which really needs to get done.

<comment><USER4> I used to share your skepticism about single sign-on. I'm actually quite bullish about BrowserID because it uses concepts that both users and websites are very familiar with (email, 'validated email addresses'), and works it in a flow that feels very much like facebook connect. It's really neat rather than overengineered IMO (and I can say that because I didn't do any of the engineering ;-).

Similarly, the apps project is a lot about recognizing what mobile apps did well, and filling in the gaps in the web (stores, receipts, APIs) that will make it possible for people to translate their mobile appdev skills into the broader web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen announcements for Firefox 9 all day. However, when I go to the website I only see 8.

      http://mozilla.com

<comment><USER6> For me, <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/> shows a download for Firefox 9.0 for Linux i686 English (US).

<comment><USER7> It's FF8 for Windows.

<comment><USER4> IIRC, there's a windows-specific bug that was discovered at the last minute. They're fixing it & respinning.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why no HN merchandise? - <AUTHOR> I for one would love to wear an HN t-shirt. Can somebody make this happen? <comment><USER2> It's an anonymous counter culture against, which stands strong with a simple website while other sites bloat with; JavaScript, Ads and other monetisation techniques to sell out their content.... Like selling T-shirts...

</comment><comment><USER3> It's nice that you feel that way, but it would be too much work.</comment>


What tech/software resources would you recommend for a non-technical founder? - <AUTHOR> I've run a SaaS company for far too long without a good understanding of the technical side of things. I'm looking to catch up on that and develop an understanding of how things are structured and what's possible from our tech team.
I'm not necessarily looking to actually code anything myself (at least for our company) but while doing research before posting this I found some intro stuff that had me doing basic things in a few minutes that was kinda fun.
This article, for example, gave me a better understanding of how everything is organized: http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/11/01/6-things-you-need-to-learn-to-build-your-own-prototype/
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Please don't misunderstand when I say this: your own tech team is best positioned to help you with this. Be humble/open throughout the whole process. Maybe start with the junior most dev and move on/up. Pretend you're a noob tech intern. It is up to you how deep you want to go based on what you learn from them, you can always ask for books/articles to educate yourself better on specific areas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, this is really good advice I hadn't really considered

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In case it helps our SaaS is built with Rails</comment>


When Evidence Says No, but Doctors Say Yes - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/when-evidence-says-no-but-doctors-say-yes <comment><USER2> Sometimes medicine helps patients, sometimes the medical-industrial complex makes work for itself. I took a lot of medicaid patients to & from doctor appointments where nothing much was accomplished.

> In 2012, Brown had coauthored a paper that examined every randomized > clinical trial that compared stent implantation with more conservative forms > of treatment, and he found that _stents for stable patients prevent zero > heart attacks and extend the lives of patients a grand total of not at all._ > In general, Brown says, _"nobody that's not having a heart attack needs a > stent."_ [...] Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of stable patients receive > stents annually, and one in 50 will suffer a serious complication or die as > a result of the implantation procedure. [emphasis added]

<comment><AUTHOR> _sometimes the medical-industrial complex makes work for itself._

Indeed. The article also discusses a lot of other factors that feed into ineffective treatments. Expectations of patients, poorly done research, the difficulty of combining treatment with statistically valid trials, doctors not keeping up with research, doctors not being particularly willing to follow the results of research they do read, and on and on.</comment></comment>


HSBC banks on blockchain to finesse forex trades - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/60d5a48c-17fa-11e9-9e64-d150b3105d21 <comment><USER2> Behind paywall. Do not even have a summary. Is it public or inter-bank or inter-customer? Otherwise why blockchain not just an internal dB?</comment>