Busting Modern Hardware Myths (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/6/13/busting-4-modern-hardware-myths-are-memory-hdds-and-ssds-rea.html?

<comment><USER2> An important overall point that the article seems to be highlighting is that, in general (independent of these myths), developers are becoming less and less familiar with what the underlying system is doing. Or perhaps the more correct term is that developers are becoming more 'distant' \-- there are more layers of abstraction in the whole system than there have been in the past. At the top, programming languages themselves want to get more abstract to make the process of writing software more efficient and in some ways more automated. At the bottom, hardware needs to use clever design to hide performance limitations that we come up against.

The problem is that sometimes, these abstractions leak. Knowing that what you're seeing is one of those leaks is key to not go down the rabbit hole of, for example, chasing a bug that ends up being caused by a hardware failure (painful experience!). So you have to keep notice of those layers below those you're directly working with; while you don't have to live there, you shouldn't totally ignore their existence.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are any of these a surprise to anyone here?

I am not asking this rhetorically.

<comment><USER4> For me, the surprise was to learn that access time for L1 cache is 3 cycles. I thought it should be 1 cycle.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Actually 4 cycles for modern cpus. The access time of a cache depends mostly on it's size (wire delay and switching time for the access tree). This means that cache sizes are always tradeoffs between hit rate and access time. As cpus get better at hiding latency, the access latency is loosened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In Myth 4 SSDs, Thompson claims that:

"there's a limited number of times you can READ and ERASE a block" (emphasis mine)

My understanding is that ERASE cycles are what's limited; reading and writing are not destructive to the flash.

<comment><USER6> Supposedly MLC NAND is susceptible to data deterioration due to reads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have never heard of the myth that "HDDs provide random access". As far back as I can remember, HDDs were always the archetypal example for _non_ -random access storage media.

<comment><USER8> > _As far back as I can remember, HDDs were always the archetypal example for > non-random access storage media._

I'm pretty sure that's tape, not HDD.

<comment><USER7> > _I 'm pretty sure that's tape, not HDD._

Nope, I'm only 27.

<comment><USER9> It's less a matter of age than environment -- there are still plenty of places using lots of tape. (It's not like we're talking about vacuum tubes or core memory here...)

<comment><USER7> Clarification: I didn't mean to imply that tape is dead, but that during the 15 years that I've been programming, tape drives have only been used in enterprise-level backup systems, and are not used as "archetypal example" in articles intended for a more general audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Or: welcome to the memory mountain, enjoy your stay.</comment>


The Absolute Easiest Way to Debug Node.js – With VS Code - <AUTHOR> https://itnext.io/the-absolute-easiest-way-to-debug-node-js-with-vscode-2e02ef5b1bad <comment><USER2> The author linked to a post of mine for debugging Node with Chrome DevTools I agree that it's a little frustrating. But a few months ago, the `ndb` project launched with a phenomenally better user experience for this: [https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/ndb](https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/ndb)

It has child processes support, easy Ctrl-R hotkey to restart your node, breakpoints can be placed anywhere, and nice default blackboxing of node internals. Worth a spin.

<comment><USER3> Read the article and came back to mention `ndb`. Cannot emphasis how easy it is to debug with it.

If you're using node, do yourself a favor and `npx ndb` next time you wanna debug something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While VS Code is a great IDE, a lot of this article is simply untrue. Node has had an interactive debugger (and corresponding API) for years.

Prior to --inspect, --debugger gave developers the abilities to step through code and to jump into a REPL to examine and manipulate the application state. Beyond this, there were tools like node inspector([https://github.com/node- inspector/node-inspector](https://github.com/node-inspector/node-inspector)) which provided a chrome inspector-like tool.

On top of that, these tools adhere to the chrome debugger API ([https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools- protocol/](https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/)) which provides the ability to dump comprehensive data like the memory graph for those wishing to make profiling tools.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Unlike JavaScript in the browser, or Java with a powerful IDE like IntelliJ, > you can't just set breakpoints everywhere

I'm using IntelliJ to set breakpoints everywhere in a Node application at this very moment. It's super easy to set up, you just create a Node.js run configuration and hit the debug button.

<comment><USER6> How does this work with transpilation? Say I have typescript or a just different js than the end build, how does the debugger know which line to put the breakpoint on?

Does the run config need to be something more structured than "run this gulp command"?

<comment><USER7> Pretty sure all you need is source maps.

<comment><USER5> Yep, source maps do the trick.

<comment><USER6> late response, but i just got stop debugging for a typescript/node app set up in webstorm. far easier than i (and this article) had built it up to be. the sourcemap stuff was actually already taken care of, it was the addition of `$NODE_DEBUG_OPTION` to the `ts-node-dev` command that did the trick

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ROS distributes robot concerns across dozens of nodes on a robot, possibly thousands of nodes in a fleet. Many of these are Python. It's been a joy using vscode to connect to a live running robot and the master server and remote debug a bunch of nodes at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html](https://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is just highly biased. It's just as easy with IntelliJ and doesn't require any more fiddling around than this.

</comment><comment><USER11> Honest question: is there anyone here who uses Node that didn't figure this out themselves with VS Code or other editors in a few minutes? And then a lot of the info is (as already mentioned here as well) not true; this is nothing new nor special.

</comment><comment><USER12> is there a way to debug promises in any of these debuggers? i.e. get a promise to resolve when stopped at a breakpoint?

<comment><USER13> The "Smart Step" feature they added to the debugger a while back might be what you are looking for.

> [https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/vApril#_smart-code- > ste...](https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/vApril#_smart-code-stepping)

<comment><USER12> no this isn't it. i'm saying i want to be able to "run" a promise while stopped at breakpoint</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many of you use Windows for web development? - <AUTHOR> I am just curious because I've a general aversion towards using any Microsoft products for development. Is it just me or are there a significant number of you who dread the idea of doing web dev on Microsoft platform? <comment><USER2> I have had problems in the past with Windows. Every Rails tutorial I tried on Windows I would run in to problems. And spend hours trying to sort them out and find work arounds for windows specific issues.

Try the same tutorial on a Mac and it would just work. The time I save using a Mac is well worth any slight premium.

Actually my current windows laptop cost more than my macbook air. The air has more than enough power for developing web applications.

Both Windows and Mac have their fan boys/camps. I use both, but prefer Mac for development.

</comment><comment><USER3> The general, fuzzy, "I don't like it" sentiment will keep you from trying many new things. I once had the same aversion towards Rails, but forced myself to try it. I learned a lot in the process.

Give it a shot and see how you feel. Install VS Code on Linux and play around with ASP.NET MVC or WebAPI to see what it offers.

<comment><USER4> Whenever I have a general "I don't like it" sentiment I usually will give something a go until I have some concrete reasons for why "I don't like it". It's a pretty solid filtering mechanism for me and helps me explore new things and at the same time confirm or reject my initial reaction(s).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mostly Windows inside a Linux terminal, but these days I have so many VM's open it is tough to say. It's weird, I am a hardcore Linux enthusiast and use Linux as my home desktop, but I still use Windows as my work PC / laptop PC but most of them time am inside a VM, remote desktop VPS or Linux shell.

Edit: I know there are some languages that just suck on MS. RoR I've heard is horrible. I made 1 attempt at getting a good environment setup and failed miserably. Partly bc of the poor documentation, or should I say conflicting documentation.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have used Windows for the editing of web content since about 2000 or so. Before then all of my web work was in Unix, both sides, but Windows 2000 was the first version of Windows that was really any good.

Usually I use a Linux web server, but I have worked at places that use IIS and it is really not all bad. Microsoft had some very good ideas in ASP.NET that were compromised by a few mistakes, and if they had fixed the mistakes instead of creating a new MVC framework every year since then, it would be sweet.

Today I mostly code in Java or other JVM language, and can run a good test environment, if not everything on Windows but I deploy to Ubuntu Linux in the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER7> After moving to Azure Websites for hosting, I started developing my web app in Win10 and so far it has worked great for me. My app stack is -

* ReactJS * Flask * SQLAlchemy * SQL Azure

My dev tools are -

* Atom for JS dev * PyCharm for server side code * SQL Express for dev db

All the CLI tools for both React and Flask (and Python in general) work pretty well in Win10 PowerShell.

Note, my main dev environment is Ubuntu with scipy/scikit-learn in Python but I have always been pretty comfortable with Windows and PowerShell.

<comment><USER8> Have you looked into Python Tools for Visual Studio ([https://microsoft.github.io/PTVS/](https://microsoft.github.io/PTVS/))? If you haven't, it's well worth a shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've done a little bit of python and nodejs and quite a bit of java in Windows. It's pretty much all doable unless you rely on libraries that are linux only. Java was a little less painful than python and nodejs. Also, when I discovered ConEmu and started using that with msys git bash, development in Windows wasn't too terrible for nodejs. For python in Windows, I used the anaconda ecosystem, but I much rather prefer developing python on a linux machine.

</comment><comment><USER10> Which products are you thinking of in particular?</comment>


Ask HN: What's your preferred method of learning something completely new? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I like to have a useful goal. It helps me find purpose and complete the task. Then I might do some reading or other research to learn the basics. Then I try to do whatever it is. I evaluate how it went and do more research to make improvements.

For example, I want to grow mushrooms. First I start with a grow your own kit. Then I read a book by an expert. Then I bought mushroom plugs for logs. Now I built some equiptment, learned sterile techniques, and I am culturing mushrooms to create my own mushroom plugs.</comment>


Neither surgical nor cotton masks effectively filter SARS–CoV-2 during coughs - <AUTHOR> https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2764367/effectiveness-surgical-cotton-masks-blocking-sars-cov-2-controlled-comparison <comment><USER2> 4 samples of four people. Huge error bars eh?

I didn't see any mention of how long they waited between samples or how they otherwise cleared air between samples. They are talking about aerosols, not droplets, so that matters.</comment>


Sign in to AIM, MSN and ICQ using heysan! on your iPhone.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2007/07/13/heysan-a-lightweight-approach-to-iphone-im/ Show some digg love please: http://digg.com/apple/Heysan_A_lightweight_approach_to_iPhon... <comment><USER2> Heysan is now dedicated exclusively to mobile messaging? What happened to flash slide shows?

<comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33326>

<comment><USER2> That's too bad -- I thought Heysan was doing a much better job than Slide or its competitors.</comment></comment></comment>


A Programming Language for Games: Demo [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTqZNujQOlA <comment><USER2> A bit of context without even watching the video:

This dude nearly single-handedly made Braid, and is now working on a really cool 3D title that's well into its development.

<comment><USER3> For anyone interested in a bit of background about him and some other indie gaming greats, I highly recommend checking out "Indie Game the Movie" \- it's a documentary about the development process of Braid (Jonathan Blow), Fez (Phil Fish), and Super Meat Boy (Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes).

At about 10 USD it's a bit steeply priced, but I found it well worthwhile: [http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/](http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/)

<comment><USER2> I'll also join in recommending this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This talk is way too long and not very information dense. I jumped through it a little and liked what I saw, but I was wondering if anyone had a link to a white paper or an overview that could summarize the language features.

<comment><USER5> The story behind this is that Jon Blow is tired of making games in C and C++. He wants something better, but not necessarily something that is higher level. This demo goes over an initial prototype of the language. Shown are that he was able to relatively quickly get something up and working. The language operates well, but still has a lot of unknown things about it.

In the demo he shows the basic running of the language. Then he shows it's realistic to write games in the language by running a space invaders like game. He then also shows the power of using the language as the pre-processor (very lisp like) in that he is able to run arbitrary code during the compilation process, such as checking that your printf statements have the proper number of arguments, or having it so you need kill so many space invaders or your compile fails. He also showed that it runs on linux as well as windows.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like C++ with better syntax sugar. Is it really compiling already? That's impressive.

<comment><USER7> Yep! It compiles to C, and then the Windows C compiler takes over.

<comment><USER8> Why not use LLVM ?

<comment><USER9> Maybe because Windows reigns as development platform for game developers and LLVM still doesn't support it properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> personal plug: I've also been working on a programming language in my spare time, called "OWL"; My language is, coincidentally, also meant to be a cleaned up C++ for game development. It is an object-oriented systems language, without a garbage collector where it's most notable features are:

* classes are reference types to avoid slicing (but may still be stack allocated)

* classes are reference counted

* arrays are sized

* semicolons are optional

* tuples are first class types. (essentially acting as anonymous structs)

* basic one-way compatibility for importing C headers

The compiler can be found here: [https://github.com/bsurmanski/wlc](https://github.com/bsurmanski/wlc)

currently it compiles for both Linux and Windows, requiring LLVM as a dependency.

a game written in OWL for Ludum Dare 30 can be found here: [https://github.com/bsurmanski/ld30](https://github.com/bsurmanski/ld30)

</comment><comment><USER11> The way he feels about C++, highlighted in his first video[0], "this ship has taken us pretty far, but now it's done sailing", is pretty much the opposite of how I feel C++ is going to play out in the next few years. C++17 will no doubt be a make-or-break specification with regard to being surpassed by other languages, but with its critical mass of incumbency, and the rate at which tools and compilers are moving now (thanks Clang), I just don't see anything topping it in the near future. C++11/14 does feel like a different language to '03, and I've personally got no doubt that C++17 will feel better again. Promisingly, almost all of the work going in to the language atm is about making major strides in improving developer experience and reducing complexity.

The work Jonathon has put in to his language in such a short time is super- impressive, and the ideas and their implementation seems solid, but I think he's really underestimating the time frames required to get something like this up from the pioneering stage to production ... remember that C++ was compiling to C in _1983_. There are other interesting languages taking this approach even today. Vala and Nimrod both spring to mind. At the end of this third video he talks about modern pioneering spririt versus those from the heyday of the space race... well here we are 50 years later, and it turns out that space travel is still hard. I don't think programming is any different.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ&list=UUCuoqzrsHl...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ&list=UUCuoqzrsHlwv1YyPKLuMDUQ)

</comment><comment><USER12> Note that I haven't watched the whole video, just skipped through it. That said, not to be negative, but what does this language offer over Rust? If the goal is to create a new language with an emphasis on safety and fine-grained memory control, along with a nice module system and high-level constructs like easy first-class functions, it seems like Rust already covers that. What does the language offer that's new?

<comment><USER13> Blow wants to optimize for (developer) speed and simplicity over memory safety - roughly, "Go's simplicity, minus garbage collection" instead of what he calls "big idea" languages. Which I would never go for myself, but he's very adamant on this point; he dismisses most new ideas in PL theory entirely in favor of focusing on the engineering problem of smoothing out basic issues seen in his existing C++ development environment, where, to paraphrase him, "everything is junk and it demoralizes me". In that respect there's plenty we could learn from this project and its whole-process agenda, even if it isn't introducing sexy new methods. There are very few PL projects that aim only to work on boring everyday problems.

<comment><USER14> I don't think Blow is against big ideas as such -- his language has some big ideas on its own -- but he certainly seems to prefer familiarity and simplicity over mind-altering language-theoretical weirdness.

One aspect of familiarity, incidentally, is being able to hire junior devs. I see that as being a problem with Go -- and, in the future, Rust -- not to mention rocket-scientist languages like Haskell, Ocaml or even Scala, or indeed C++. Go is "simple", but not really that simple, not compared to Ruby or Python. (Of course, this might not be an issue for Blow, whose company is already using C++.)

While Blow was originally talking about safety not being a paramount issue, I believe he has mentioned ownership-lifecycle management, possibly something like Rust's borrowing, as being on his mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The fact that he since the last video came out he not only built the lexer, parser and C-translator for this, but that he also made a complete bytecode runtime blew my mind. This guy is one hell of a productive programmer!

<comment><USER15> Once you've done it once or twice, throwing together a simple programming language is actually just a weekend project, provided you have clear goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The defer keyword seems pretty cool.

I assume it creates a stack of calls to execute just before exiting scope. Personally I find it a cool little syntactic sugar.

<comment><USER17> Go has the same functionality, you should check it out. It's great, but I feel it's a "halfway solution": you open your file and then immediately add a `defer f.Close()` statement afterward, so you don't forget to close it in all exit paths of the function (i.e. early returns in branches), however you still need to remember to type the defer.

<comment><USER18> In functional languages you often see functions like with_file that use a closure to denote the file lifetime:

        with_file(fun file ->
            use_file(file)
        )

I wonder if there is a way to code something similar that works with "defer". This would free you from needing to "remember" to add the defer and would have the advantage of allowing you to use `return` and `break` statements which don't work if you wrap them inside an inner function.

The only thing I can think of is Python's with statement. Since its language syntax it allows for `return` and `break` but I wonder if there is a way to play nice with defer instead of requiring you to use another "block level" syntax construct for every file you use.

<comment><USER19> We used to do this in Rust, but have found RAII much better for this. Dealing with multiple resources open at once can quickly become painful. See [http://blog.skylight.io/rust-means-never-having-to-close- a-s...](http://blog.skylight.io/rust-means-never-having-to-close-a- socket/#facilitiesinotherlanguages)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I haven't watched the whole thing but does the language have a name?

lycos1: you are shadowbanned and have been for the last 3 or so years.

<comment><USER21> Looks like a language with no name :)

<comment><USER22> Maybe it's like Fortran: Proglanforgam.

<comment><USER17> Sounds like a pill to prolong orgasms...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Running code at compile time seems pretty powerful; mostly for tests.

<comment><USER24> Powerful, yes, for tests, I'm not so sure.

If it stops the compilation when a test breaks, that forces you to fix it, but it also would irritate the crap out of me, since I'd want to test the code changes before refactoring the tests (I'm not a fan of TDD, at least when it comes to fixing bugs in code; let me fix the bug, then figure out what, if any, test broke (if none, add a test for that bug). I can't imagine it's particularly useful in game development either, when there can be a huge disconnect between something seeming correct at the program logic level, but massively broken visually; writing a test to make sure that that animation is smooth isn't easily doable).

If it doesn't stop the compilation on breaking the tests...it's not really any different than any other continuous integration style tool (or even a make script that adds a call to test after compiling), except that the tests are being run as the code is compiled, forcing you to wait the extra time even when experimenting. And it's unclear what code is intended for tests, versus other uses of the facility (such as DSLs and language extensions).

<comment><USER25> The compiler currently bails upon encountering the first error, he said this was a feature, not a bug.

<comment><USER26> I guess that he considers this a feature for two reasons:

1) He's used to the atrociously poor error recovery of typical C++ compilers. You almost always get _different_ errors after you've fixed the first error.

2) His language's semantics enforce sequential compilation, such that it's not reasonably possible to continue evaluating in the face of many or most errors.

#1 is a consequence of not designing for error recovery from the beginning. He's going to run in to a problem when people want squiggly red underlines in their IDE.

As projects grow in size, #2 is going to breakdown quickly without a good separate compilation unit story.

<comment><USER27> Come on guys, think about it!

It is trivial to make your test routine log the error but return true so that the compiler doesn't stop.

<comment><USER26> I'm totally fine with #2, if you do have a good separate compilation unit story. I'm fact, it's how many lisps work, and it works out quite well.

However, I wasn't talking just about your compile time asserts for #1. There's also syntax errors, undefined identifiers, missing or extra arguments, etc, etc. That stuff is hard to get right if you want to report many independent errors. It gets much easier if you can change your language, so don't wait too long to take a swing at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I would also like to mention here some other platforms like Unity that makes games developing a whole lot easier.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am unsure of his rhetoric: "...everything we can do to move forward in games... (1:41)".

He is not a messiah, it's already happening, people are using C#, Scala, Python, Haxe, Elm, Rust, D, Haskell to move game programming forward. E.g. Minecraft was built in Java, not C++. Game programming of today are those thousands of small indie developers experimenting, not the several hundred of bigger traditional C++ projects making big bucks.

Besides, there is not much focus on parallelism and concurrency for a performance-oriented language. By the time it hits it's first stable release the 8-core smartphones will probably be quite common.

<comment><USER3> _> He is not a messiah, it's already happening_

That's a lot of negativity towards a guy who's said from the beginning he's just building a language that he wants to use himself. I don't think he's presented himself as "a messiah" in any way. He laid out some things that irk him in C/C++, and then he set out do make something that suits him better. These may not be the same things that are important to you (as demonstrated by your parallelism and concurrency criticism), but that's absolutely fine. People use different languages for different purposes and different tastes.

It worries me how makers are attacked here. " _oh, we don 't need that, X did the same thing ages ago_" " _why even bother if it doesn 't do X_" " _oh dear, please not yet another X, people should just stop_ " " _nobody needs X when we have Y1, Y2, Y3..._ "

That's some seriously bad attitude.

<comment><USER22> All I am saying is it's better to communicate along the lines of "let's also explore this way of building games" rather than "nobody is doing anything worth looking at, garbage collection is a no go, too much safety is bad and it's a first initiative ever just like the moon landing (which was kinda secondary to actually going to space first time anyway)".

But he is quite smart, so some arrogance could be forgiven. He is also not afraid to say some fair and true things out loud:

 _> "...the web is a giant pile, I don't want anything to do with it, it's all horrible; it's not an exaggeration, anything to do with web is like so broken and it's so nasty and it's so hard to do good things..."._

Maybe it's a correct attitude if we ever want to get rid of legacy crud like JavaScript and HTML...

<comment><USER3> _> let's also explore this way of building games_

That's what he said, isn't it? He also actively encouraged people to write their own languages which address what _they_ care about.

 _> nobody is doing anything worth looking at, garbage collection is a no go, too much safety is bad and it's a first initiative ever just like the moon landing (which was kinda secondary to actually going to space first time anyway)_

Those are his views, he needs those in order to make the new language. It's similar but not equal to your judgement of JavaScript and HTML. Those things are not bad per definition, they are just something you don't happen to like. The bigger theme here is that working with things that you don't like makes you unproductive.

So yeah, it does bother me a little when he says these things so emphatically, but they're still well distinguishable from global blanket judgements because they are expressed within the context of designing the new language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> (disclaimer: skimmed through the video) Would be interesting to know what specifically about certain advanced PL typesystems he found to be too bureaucratic and where that line is drawn in his language.

<comment><USER30> This is the third video in the series. Go to his youtube page to find the two videos previous to this where he talks about all that to death. Each video is between 1.5 and 2 hours. Also, keep in mind he's talking about a language specifically for game development. His requirements are highly specialized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Way too long for a video (2 hours!), this should be an article. Disappointing, not really a new language - more like syntax sugar for C. It looks to me like he's not solving a problem here but just having a lot of fun creating his own language (which I agree is a lot of fun).

And just to make sure I deserve all the ire I might get: we already have a language for making games and I don't even need to write what it is because you already know :) (and that's why you know it's true)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm not sure that a "programming language for games" would be a subset of a general purpose language. I can't think of an operation that a general purpose lang can do that I would not want to use in a game. In that case, how could you specialize for games? A game is kind of an abstract concept - it could be anything. Maybe try constructing a language that lets you choose a subset of its total functionality for your specific game, possibly through extensions. Haskell does that well.

<comment><USER10> I think the idea is that the language is focused towards games. Games generally have some inherent shared qualities, mainly that they need to be real time and the language should be minimal overhead. On the otherhand, a language focused on enterprise software would sacrifice speed and low overhead to instead add some safety features like a garbage collector.

Its not a language only for games, but it is a general purpose language where the main feature set is chosen to benefit professional game development.

<comment><USER32> Yes I agree that the games he's designing the Lang for have certain shared qualities, but IMHO those concerns are best dealt with using libraries or (E)DSLs in a host language. That way you can still support games like zork, which don't have to be real time - as well as games that transcend what the "game specific Lang" was designed for. I personally don't see why there is a distinction between "a game" and "an enterprise app" \- some enterprise apps need real time rendering and low overhead (unity, blender, arcgis, cad, etc). My point being - a language that is good at describing all games is good at describing all programs.

<comment><USER33> A language that tries to be good for describing all games, will end up not being good at describing any of them, because different types of programs require different tradeoffs

<comment><USER32> Exactly - and those trade offs will be handles at the library level.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


TV Privacy – Tracking on Free and Paid TV - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@carldawson/somethings-wrong-with-tv-9f4f68f22f70 <comment><USER2> Do not use devices that make money on the ads. Do not enable apps on a smart TV. My TVs are not connected. I use an AppleTV for anything I want to watch.</comment>


Regular Expression matching "A B C" iff "A+B=C" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9d768u/i_know_its_ridiculous_but_i_just_made_a_regex_in/ <comment><USER2> This is insane. Direct link to the regex: [https://regex101.com/r/YCTmCs/3](https://regex101.com/r/YCTmCs/3)</comment>


Like A Rock: New Concrete Could Last A Lifetime - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidescience.org/content/rock-new-concrete-could-last-lifetime/1614 <comment><USER2> "A lifetime", that doesn't seem very long... ?</comment>


Effects of Moderate-Intensity Endurance and High-Intensity Intermittent Training - b-man http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/effects-of-moderate-intensity-endurance-and-high-intensity-intermittent-training-on-anaerobic-capacity-and-vo2-max.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I am surprised to see a Lyle McDonald article on here. His stuff is always well worth reading if you have any interest in nutrition and training.

The high-intensity training fad he refers to in this article is probably better known to most people as 'crossfit'.</comment>


Show HN: quicktype converts JSON, TypeScript, GraphQL to types in 18 languages - <AUTHOR> https://app.quicktype.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, HN!

quicktype generates types and serializers from JSON, JSON Schema, TypeScript, and GraphQL queries, to help you use JSON type-safely in many languages: C#, Go, Rust, Crystal, C++, Objective-C, Java, TypeScript, JavaScript, JavaScript PropTypes, Flow, Swift, Kotlin, Elm, JSON Schema, Ruby, Dart, Python, Pike, and our latest language, Haskell.

quicktype has some remarkable features that differentiate it from other JSON converters:

 _Type inference_ : quicktype infers optionals, dates, UUIDs, enums, integers, and unions. It also infers maps (versus objects) using a Markov chain.

 _Careful naming_ : quicktype's naming system creates nice, legal, unique names for types and properties, handling reserved words and tricky corner cases (e.g. `{ "": "this is legal", "null": "so is this", "1;DROP TABLE users": "and this" }`).

 _Unions for heterogeneous data_ : JSON data is often heterogenous. quicktype infers this, and creates union types in languages that support them, or synthetic union types in languages that don't (e.g. try quicktyping `[0, "zero"]` as Swift and Go).

 _Type unification_. This works across multiple samples, so you can quicktype a directory of API data, for example, and unify types across all responses (e.g. you'll get just one `Customer` type, even if customer data occurs in many samples). You can also provide multiple samples for the same type for better coverage.

 _Marshalling code_ : In addition to types, quicktype generates functions for marshalling your types to and from JSON.

 _Supports dynamic languages_ : quicktype can add dynamic typechecks for JavaScript, TypeScript, Flow, Python, and Ruby.

 _Convenient CLI_ : Run `quicktype [https://blockchain.info/latestblock](https://blockchain.info/latestblock) -o LatestBlock.ts` to quicktype a Bitcoin API in TypeScript.

 _Private hosted app_ : [https://app.quicktype.io/](https://app.quicktype.io/) runs quicktype on the client, so servers never see your data (most JSON converters send your JSON to their server)

 _Typed input_ : Feed quicktype TypeScript or JSON Schema instead of JSON for better control over generated types.

 _Code quality_ : quicktype emits clean code

<comment><USER2> Hey, huge fan here!

It's really incredible to take a master type-definition in TS/JSON Schema and generate language bindings in every language. Especially from a JS/TS Node script as part of a build pipeline.

Or to start new type definitions by using API output/JSON files.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! Glad you like it.

I do the same workflow, where I generate types during build. I often generate them directly from the datasource (e.g. directly from the API). Then I get compile-time errors if the API changes.</comment></comment></comment>


Review What You Fork on Github - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/Review+What+You+Fork+on+GitHub

<comment><AUTHOR> Since submitting this, I've been looking around for a kind of "Hacker's Guide to Software Licenses", and haven't come up with anything. Does anyone have a good reference that lists out the more common licenses and explains in what situations a hacker should be cautious?

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia has some info that might be helpful:

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Attributes_of...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Attributes_of_some_free_software_licenses)

This article shows which licenses are GPL-compatible and/or allow you to link to code under a different license.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comparison_of...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_licenses)

<comment><USER3> The FSF's materials are a little geared towards the assumption that you're using the GPL, but they're no doubt a significant part of the source material for the Wikipedia articles.

<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One interesting thing is that not a single Github DMCA takedown notice so far deals with direct copyright infringement, nor do any of them specify which lines of code are infringing. I'm sure the more traditional copyright infringement happens on occasion, but we have yet to see any DMCA takedown notices as a result.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately it is too easy and in everyone's individual interest to advise others to be careful. But how big is the _actual risk_? I'd like to see examples of this actually being a problem. What has happened already, and what were the consequences?</comment></comment>


How to get yourself out of a funk - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/18/02/how-to-get-yourself-out-of-a-funk <comment><USER2> Good common sense stuff, but I had to laugh though when I saw the authors hidden comment explaining how he got out of his funk that day: "made my bed (I usually don't), meditated with Alto's Odyssey for 10 minutes, did the dishes, went through all my mail & paid my bills (a task I'd been putting off and dreading), did three other little tasks I'd been putting off, and took a long hot shower"

His bad day sounds like one of my best days.

<comment><USER3> basically "I immediately snapped out of it and did everything I didn't want to do" golly thanks I'll try and remember that one</comment></comment>


Aaron's Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/13/01/aarons-law/267247/

<comment><USER2> Aaron's Law: Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.</comment>


Show HN: Minimal MVC Framework for Unity3D - eduardo-costa https://bitbucket.org/eduardo_costa/thelab-unity-mvc/overview

<comment><AUTHOR> Related: a guy trying to fix the Unity3D's broken core - [http://t-machine.org](http://t-machine.org).

</comment><comment><USER2> You know that Unity3D is the domain name for the website and the engine is just called Unity. "MVC for Unity3D" makes no sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Twitter: [https://twitter.com/unity3d](https://twitter.com/unity3d)

Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D)

Youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/user/Unity3D](https://www.youtube.com/user/Unity3D)</comment></comment>


So, What Does "HREF" Stand For, Anyway? - <AUTHOR> http://tomayko.com/weblog/2008/03/09/wtf-is-an-href-anyway

<comment><USER2> I thought "hypertext reference" was common knowledge. Or was I the only one who read HTML books for fun back in the mid 90's?</comment>


Apple sues Samsung over Android: analysis and list of asserted property rights - <AUTHOR> http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/04/apple-sues-samsung-over-android-based.html

<comment><USER2> Not over Android, over the look of their OS and devices.

Apple do have the copyrights over their iOS and their iPhone designs. Samsung devices and their OS do look like iOS/iPhone, and thus the lawsuit.</comment>


Why did Quora choose Python (over PHP and others) for its development? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Quora-choose-Python-for-its-development

<comment><USER2> The python/ruby thing seems to be at an interesting point. Python as a language has a bigger mindshare but none of the python web stacks has close to the adoption that rails does.

As far as I can tell there seems to be a lot more peripheral innovation in the ruby camp though, particularly in testing tools. Are there python equivalents to rspec, cucumber, factory_girl/machinist, shoulda, passenger, haml, webrat etc?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure about the framework adoption thing, Django seems to be the major Python framework. I'm not saying there aren't others, but most newcomers to Python web dev quickly realize that Django is the name of the game.

<comment><USER2> Yeah Django is definitely the big player. It's interesting though that python is bigger than ruby but rails is bigger than django.

<comment><USER4> Django is arguably the most used Python web stack, but it's also a much more controversial choice than Rails is in the Ruby world. I hear "you'll outgrow Django really quickly" a lot; whether that's true or not I can't say since I've never used it. Also, there seems to be a lot more choices for web frameworks in the Python world: Django, Pylons, web.py, Tornado, Flask, CherryPy, Zope etc. I'm not sure if this is the case in the Ruby world. All I ever hear about are Rails and Sinatra.

<comment><USER5> > All I ever hear about are Rails and Sinatra.

I got two theories.

First theory.

Ruby allows developers to make really nice DSLs. (Domain Specific Languages) It makes sense to me that there would only be two major frameworks. Rails fills the need for a batteries-included framework and Sinatra is the a light weigh, nothing included framework. Both have expressive enough implementations that the community doesn't build their own frameworks.

Python doesn't make as pretty code for a DSL which makes it more likely to hit pain points in expressing what you want. Then you end up with a fragmented community around these different pain points.

Second theory.

People start using ruby because of rails. If rails is too heavy, they move to sinatra. Most of the people using ruby can't be bothered to write their own framework.

Most people using python learned python before web development. They are more experienced in the language and used to doing their own stuff. They try out different frameworks and if they get disgusted enough with them they create their own.

Disclaimer:

I'm a ruby guy. I used python for two years before learning ruby and then rails. These are only theories. I probably look at ruby more nicely than I should but I tried to be somewhat objective.

<comment><USER6> Can you explaint to me what all these little DSLs are useful for? I have heard this being presented as an advantage for Ruby before, but can't really think of many use cases for DSLs (apart from business rules).

<comment><USER7> > Can you explaint to me what all these little DSLs are useful for?

Writeability and readability. The ability to bring in domain experts which have no knowledge whatsoever in programming as well.

> but can't really think of many use cases for DSLs (apart from business > rules).

Any domain-specific knowledge/data may be encoded as a DSL, and benefit from it. The rules of your business, the URL mapping of your framework, the GUI layout of your application, the steps of your tests, ... In fact, they often are (in WPF, XAML is used as a GUI definition DSL; Ant is a domain-specific language for building applications, so is Make).

The great advantages of the likes of Ruby, however, is that you can build DSLs in the language itself (you don't have to build your own compiler and translator from DSL to language), which rids you of most of the complexity and limitations of usual DSLs, and lets power users realize that there is a full- blown general-purpose language under the DSL (and use that power when they need it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The biggest issues with Python are speed and the lack of typechecking._

Interesting that they took this bit of wisdom away from programming in _PHP_.

I say this because I've never heard anyone consider a lack of type-checking as an issue when considering Python. It's a feature. You either need type- checking or you don't. I suspect that the Quorum engineers didn't need type- checking, so I don't understand why the felt the need to consider it an "issue" with choosing Python.

Spare yourself this yammering rant. They chose Python because that's what everyone else at the company was cool with. End of story.

<comment><USER7> > You either need type-checking or you don't.

That's not really correct. In general, nobody _needs_ type checking (it's not like there's any actually done where it would be needed the most), but it's "free" error checking. Always nice to have.

But it is a feature to balance against others.

Anyway, considering how weak the type systems of "industry standard" languages are as opposed to Ada, or MLs, or Haskell, the common type-checking trope is mostly a huge joke.

<comment><USER8> Type checking has many benefits other than making assertions about value types. It can provide hints to the compiler and has proven useful in some models of parallel computation. It isn't simply "free error checking." One should be able to discriminate from problems that require type-checking.

It just seems that in most cases it isn't actually required.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We didn't want to take the risk of being on Mono [...] It's not clear how long funding will be around for that project"

Can anyone elaborate on that or point to some reading?

<comment><USER10> I guess they're implying that Mono ins't a money maker at Novell? Mono is great and all, but maintaining an entire development platform, along with IDE and and myriad of docs, strictly for internal use may be a bit too much for a company of their size.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My biggest problem with Django is that the entire data model layer is designed with relational database in mind (i.e. normalization and JOINs). Many of the new data stores (RDF stores, Google Data Store for App Engine, etc) are inheritantly non-relational.

<comment><USER11> start with web.py

then incrementally add code as you need it, how/where you need it, including how to persist

<comment><USER12> How have your experiences with web.py been? The disadvantages I saw with it are that it just doesn't have a really large community, plus there are features I just don't want to build myself. Django's built-in admin/ app, for example, or Pylon's error page.

<comment><USER11> I like starting web apps with web.py, and I like building what may end up being merely demoware or a narrow tech prototype using web.py. I think it excels at whipping up a dynamic Hello World web app in just a few lines of code, with no boilerplate directory tree or scriptage, and no messing around with external servers, and no external code dependencies. Add sqlite when need persistence. Add memcached when need caching. Grow and refactor as you go.

But if I'm _very_ confident it's going to become part of a long-lived dynamic web service with enough of the features Django provides anyway -- especially that awesome built-in admin UI -- then yes I start with Django. The mindshare/community factor is helpful too. I know there are other web frameworks which are decent but going with a big framework other than Django in the Python space today is a bit like going with FreeBSD rather than Linux when all you really need is some sort of free Unix. To pick Linux is to get a bigger ecosystem today and therefore probably also a longer supported future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Charlie Cheever's comment "Python data structures map well to JavaScript data structures" resonates with me. I'm building something in Erlang right now and having come from Python, it's just plain grating.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wait, you mean this was a serious question? Not a comedy routine?

<comment><USER15> Wait, you mean this was a serious comment? Not a comedy routine?

<comment><USER14> No, it was actually my idea of a comedy routine. Around here, attempts at being the forum comedy act are frowned upon and thus end up somewhat similar to masochism, but it's therapeutic in the end.

<comment><USER11> lately i'm trying to exercise my desire for humor over on Reddit rather than here, for the reasons you stated. Goes down better over there. Plus they have narwhales.

<comment><USER14> I'd give anything for a friendly narwhal right now.

<comment><USER14> Christ, some people here are fucking uptight. Quality comments are one thing, and HN has done a good job of keeping a quality community, but having a stick up your ass is a different matter.

<comment><USER11> yep I've been getting sick of it lately. I'm on to better things.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Programming sabbatical? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone taken a few months or years unpaid off work to study / hack at home to improve their programming?
I am thinking of doing it as there are not many chances to get significantly up-skilled in the work environment in my experience. And spare time projects etc. are in those  twilight hours after the commute, kids to bed etc and I am pretty tired by then.
Would anyone recommend it? <comment><USER2> I did it.

Would I recommend it? No, probably not.

I learned a lot. It was interesting and FUN. It has little to no practical application for me re-entering the workforce.

I ended up not going back to "work" but instead became a "consultant". Pay is great, hours are great, the bullshit is epic. As a result of "time off" and my "new lifestyle" I find myself NEEDING to start my own company & product at 40 with kids to support.

I can suggest doing it for ONE month with some assumptions:

* You don't stay at home

* You don't go someplace so exotic that you get distracted, think "cabin in the woods" or "house at the beach"

* You have a plan for what your going to TRY to do/learn

* That your partner is cool with you dumping the kids on them for 6 hours a day (study/work time) for at least 1/2 the week.

* That you can personally work "where ever, when ever" and your partner is OK with that as well. I know lots of folks that need a "bubble" to be productive, or who's relationship doesn't allow them to work that way.

<comment><USER3> Can you elaborate on the "bullshit is epic" part?

<comment><USER4> Consultant here,

The bullshit is epic. Examples:

\- The system has spark 1.4 installed on it, and the customer needs spark 1.6. But their support contact is with company Y, who have it in writing that the customer cannot deploy upgrades, they must be paid to do it. So now, a simple package upgrade, turns out to need 4 managers to sign it and schedule it, and have meetings about it, then authorize it, fit it into a billing period. And wait - why do we need this again? Can we schedule a meeting with Team B to ask why we need this? Oh they're not available until September, ok let's book a meeting on September 7th 4pm with 25 people to try and get some clarity.

of the 25 people, 12 will reject with no reason, 12 will accept and 1 (the actual person we need to talk to) is booked on holiday and isn't back for a month after that.

Now take all of this, and multiply it by 10 and apply it to every project.

<comment><USER3> Wow. That just gave me cancer. Why do you even do it?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open Source Guitar Effects Pedal - <AUTHOR> http://www.openstomp.com

<comment><USER2> I think it's a shame that this is targetted at the hacker-musician community, but the development environment is almost Windows only. (Written in C#, partially working under Mono on OS X, not tested under Linux.)

I suspect the vast majority of musician-hacker types don't use Windows.

Edit: I see that the Linux version is mostly held back by a third-party Windows-only tool, and a cross-platform replacement is under development. Awesome.

<comment><USER3> _I suspect the vast majority of musician-hacker types don't use Windows._

Since the death of the Amiga and Atari ST, virtually all pro digital music stuff is done on Macs.

But more musicians probably use Windows than use Linux.

<comment><USER4> That was true a decade ago but, starting around 2008 and forward, that's just not the case anymore. Macs are good and still popular but they are not what powers "virtually all pro digital music stuff" in 2012.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was super excited about this until I saw the price tag. $300 definitely puts it into that "I'm gonna think 2x about buying this" categories. Not to say I wouldn't drop the cash if musicians I respect like it and use it.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's very overpriced. This is a common problem with tools like this because it's a niche market; specialty gear tends to be much, more expensive than the mass-market equivalent, to the point of limiting sales. It needs to a) be $99, at which price it will fly out the door, or b) have MIDI, because keyboard nerds are much more used to this sort of technology and likely to make up the bulk of initial sales, or c) have a much, much larger library of pre-programmed DSP modules.

I used to work in this field, and though I don't want to run down the excellent achievement of this project, it's an untried brand and technology in an area with multiple mature competitors. The only really new thing here is that it's in a pedal rather than a desktop device aimed at keyboard users. (Well, video out _is_ novel - but Raspberry Pi has video out and costs $35.) For about $100 more you could pick up a used Nord Micro Modular, which would be _enormously_ more versatile: [http://www.clavia.se/nordmodular/Files/MicroModular_folder.p...](http://www.clavia.se/nordmodular/Files/MicroModular_folder.pdf) ...not to mention a wide variety of highly configurable guitar stage processors like this: [http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers- effects/line-6-pod...](http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers- effects/line-6-pod-x3-live-guitar-multi-effects-pedal) or <http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/adrenalinn-iii.html> ...

I agree with the comment above about trying to get Kickstarter funding and doing a larger production run with the resulting economies of scale. Starting high and waiting for sales to drive down the production cost is a poor strategy, and one that has caused many products/manufacturers in this market to go out of production/business. I love this kind of technology and want to like this product, but for $300 I could buy a lot more signal candy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will there be an option to order the hardware pre-built? I'd love to hack on some effects, but my resources are a little thin for putting together the hardware side of things at present.

</comment><comment><USER8> Whilst I applaud the effort, I think there needs to be PCB layouts and the like before this can be considered open source. At the moment the source code is there, and probably enough resources to give you a jump start on building your own, not detailed enough to build your own.

It's like me calling a program open source and ownly making the roadmap/initial spec publicly available.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/cusapps/Pro...](http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/cusapps/PropellerContest08/OpenStomp- Report.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have been waiting for this device for ten years! This is great.

But my experience with digital effects processors in the audio domain, both guitar and recording gear, is the gear's AD and DA converters are super important. The software and digital side is important too, but if those 44kHz, 20 bit converters do a poor job, the units audio will subtly suffer, and emotional content from the playing will be masked.

There's a huge difference in sound quality of digital units on the market.

I'm hoping with the nature of the unit, that I would get very high quality components across the board. Seeing as every patch developed is dependent on that quality, and that I'd probably buy only one of these, and that I'm willing to spend more than on a normal, non-programmable pedal, then the unit better be seriously high performing.

High quality balanced +4dBu line level ins and outs on a rack unit version of these. That would be the next unit to do. Or even AES/EBU digital ins and outs and a wordclock in!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is also available from Line 6, in a slightly different fashion. Line 6's solution would require more DSP programming knowledge. Open stomp looks analogous to a hardware version of Native Instruments Reaktor.

more info here: <http://line6.com/tcddk/>

<comment><USER10> I didn't know about this line6 offering. Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great to see the musician/hacker community is alive and well. I would like to see an tablet app for Rakarrak myself. <http://rakarrack.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm reminded of an Arduino-powered pedal on Instructables: <http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Guitar-Pedal/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Those who are sad it is windows based might be interested in resurrecting Justin Frankel's <http://www.cockos.com/jesusonic/>

</comment><comment><USER15> As a musician/developer who programs in Windows primarily and Linux only when I have too, this appeals to me. The price tag doesn't appeal to me however.

</comment><comment><USER7> Would also love an option for a premium four button pedal, and maybe a bit more memory or some kind of storage option (SD card reader?).</comment>


Swinging Atwood Machine (js physics simulation) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dllu.net/samjs/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a brilliant illustration of a consequence of conservation of angular momentum. Even if the spinning mass is made to be very small, it is enough to resist being pulled over by the falling mass. As the string gets shorter (small r) the angular velocity must increase and so does the tension in the string.

Energy shuffles between the rotational kinetic energy of the spinning mass and the potential energy of the vertically moving mass.

I don't quite fully understand all that is going on, but I find it amazing that we can learn physics from js simulations... who needs a big lab for experiments when there is the browser?

Props to @dllu for coding this.</comment>


Don't Miss the Wave of Consolidation - the Successful CEO's Most Important Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.exits.com/blog/how-exits-have-changed-part-4/?Hackernews

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you agree?</comment>


Fishing Habits of Northwoods' Wolves - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/12/22/678668772/the-secret-fishing-habits-of-northwoods-wolves <comment><USER2> Wow fishing and eating blueberries, very adaptable and intelligent.</comment>


XHamster Blocks North Carolina Over LGBT Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/porn-site-bans-north-carolina-users-due-to-states-anti-lgbt-laws_us_570bd057e4b0885fb50d9a92 <comment><USER2> I guess that's nice? Solidarity confronting blatant stupidity? But people who know use a VPN. And everyone other horny guy is going to move out of state? Use another service? Because sure as shit the bigoted state legislature would love to hear there's less porn being used. And the milquetoast governor is barely self aware...

</comment><comment><USER3> That'll show'em! You do you, XHamster. You do you.

Meanwhile, everyone else'll be doing themselves on some other service, of which there are a plethora.

Also, given the usual right-wing religious background of people who want to destroy LGBTQ rights, they'll be able to tout this as a victory.

</comment><comment><USER4> Works for me in Charlotte without any tricks on my phone anyway. whatismyipaddress.com knows I'm in Charlotte though whatismyip.com thinks I'm in Herndon, VA

<comment><USER4> Side note... I really hope this doesn't affect Google Fiber in Charlotte.</comment></comment>


Crowdfunding site dedicated to Anti-Aging research projects - <AUTHOR> https://www.lifespan.io/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting about our project! :)</comment>


Bill Nye wants NASA to take humans farther into space - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/bill-nye-wants-nasa-to-take-humans-farther-into-space/ <comment><USER2> Radiation is a thing so probably better to send robots first.</comment>


When sequencing makes genotyping obsolete (soon) - <AUTHOR> http://www.unz.com/gnxp/when-sequencing-makes-genotyping-obsolete-soon/ <comment><USER2> If you're interested in this, also have a look at the _slightly_ cheaper "Understand Your Genome" events Illumina puts on which include a full sequencing. They should be publishing a 2016 calendar soon, the catch being you have to sign up on their schedule rather than get clinical results right away.

[https://www.understandyourgenome.com/](https://www.understandyourgenome.com/) [http://www.illumina.com/company/events/understand-your- genom...](http://www.illumina.com/company/events/understand-your-genome.html)

When I was researching the cost of full-genome sequencing, there was also some competition from China, in trying to drive the cost down from five to seven thousand to just a thousand. So that might end up being an option.

Also, there's an online project at [http://ensembl.org/](http://ensembl.org/) to take a sequence and try to analyze it based on current data on the human genome so DIY approaches (skip the analysis, just give me the raw data at the best accuracy and cheapest price!) can be quite useful on their own. I too look forward to the day when it's less expensive to sequence, as that much data might help us notice patterns from multiple samples sooner... Or not. :)</comment>


Baltimore psychologist pioneers team using psychedelics as 'sacred' medicine - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/10/baltimore-psychologist-pioneers-team-using-psychedelics-as-sacred-medicine <comment><USER2> I also believe psychedelics can transform lives in a hugely positive way; since my first (and not last) experience with them last year my quality of life has been constantly improving and remains at an all time high.

That said I found this article extremely difficult to read because of constant references to religion and mysticism. There's a fine line between spirituality and religion and this article consistently falls on what I perceive to be the wrong side.

To anybody whose interest is piqued I give to you the same analogy that was given to me: Life is like running through the underbrush of a forest, using psychedelics is like climbing a nearby tree and seeing where you would like to go.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have had some interesting experiences, the most challenging being DMT.

It worked in the following way. During our daily lives, all inputs from out senses are filtered. I imagine that the brain filters the "raw steam" because it is way to much data to consistently process effectively. I think this is why you tend to notice things that have been moved in a room, even if you might not immediately know what it was that had moved. I believe that game programmers use these kind of visual screen drawing tricks all the time.

DMT gives you the ability to see the world without filters for a short period of time. At some point during that unfiltered view the brain can't take it anymore, and it reboots.

Both parts of this experience are both fascinating and terrifying. When you reboot, there is no you. No ego. It takes a while for the brain to work out what you are, before who you are, and then finally what the fuck just happened!

It's nickname is "the businessman's trip". There is no come down.

<comment><USER4> I've slowly begun to suspect that the filter and your ego are actually the same thing.

<comment><USER3> That's an interesting way of looking at it. I'd never considered that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm amazed they manage to write this article without mentioning Nixon's "most dangerous man in America", Timothy Leary... who apparently pre-dates William Richards in the therapeutic study of psychedelics.

        Garcia-Romeu described the model in simple terms:
        "Basically you give someone a really high dose and
        they have a really transformative experience. And
        you've prepared them for that and then after the
        fact, you help them integrate it and they get on
        with their lives."

This sounds pretty much like a re-run of the 1961 Concord Prison Experiment (but with hopefully fewer methodology issues).

There's a big question mark over Leary's science in my mind, but he's a fascinating character and would add a ton of colour to this kind of story.

</comment><comment><USER6> Psychedelics are #1 on the list of things I'm really curious about, but am too scared of to ever try for real.

<comment><USER7> Same here. I'd be afraid of "losing it".

<comment><USER8> If you consider it in terms of medicine. I would be afraid of performing any kind of surgery on myself, but I would be less afraid and ultimately trusting if a doctor did the same thing. If surgery is the wrong metaphor, how about theraphy or other forms of psychotherapy, mind change, anxiety reduction etc.

In other words, don't try it. The fear of insanity is probably a good fear if people think of doing it just for fun. But if the day comes when a doctor takes you in a trip, your fear will be less, and the doctor will know how to supervise you.

The key idea of this article is that research into psychedelics should be allowed and encouraged. Timothy Leary never advocated for people to try them for fun. Don't think of psychedelics as recreational things to try but as powerful medicine which needs trained professionals to administer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Psychedelics are a research area with significant untapped therapeutic potential, especially in difficult to treat diseases such as PTSD. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a leader in this field, with breakthrough studies on MDMA for PTSD in war veterans. For those interested in psychedelic research, check out maps.org or bibliography.maps.org.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't want my scientists talking about "sacred knowledge." To me that points to a problem with psychedelics.

<comment><USER11> Religious studies is a secular, academic discipline. Your concern over words like 'sacred' is a function of living in a cuture where apologists and evangelists dominate such language. It isn't a necessary indicator that there's a problem when such language is used.

Entheogen might mean 'generating god within' from a rather naive and reductionist translation of the greek, but in the field it has a more specific meaning relating to the use of a substance in a ritual context.

Entheogens, and using them in not-ritual contexts to try to replicate experiences reported by ritual participants, is interesting and broadly scientific. Religions are and have been wildly popular structures for guiding and interpreting subjective experiences, and in many cases the framework for pre-scientific medicine and mental health care. It is interesting to ask what kind of mental states they are better at generating and what effects those have.

To study that is not to admit that the religion has the right _story_ of _why_ those experiences arise and what they mean.

We can ask what the religious experience of 'transcendence' is and how it is induced and what is happening in the brain without buying into the idea that it is an experience of oneness with the infinity of the divine consciousness (or whatever story any particular user wants to tell). Such an explanation might be significant, without being true. In the same way one can study the stories and language and behavior of a pyramid scheme without giving credit to its claims.

If you've been bashed over the head with apologetics or evangelism, it can be hard to tune into the use of the language in a more rigorous context, but it has meaning and is not unscientific. Though there is, of course, room for an argument over how much any social science or field of psychology is 'real' science.

"Sacred knowledge" is neither meaningless, oxymoronic, nor mystical. Any more than a discussion of "Erotic knowledge" in the context of sex-research would be.

I'm reading this book at the moment, and so far it seems very good. Even the bit quoted about Jung is handled with more reasonableness than the article suggests (though I'm not sure I agree, yet).

<comment><USER10> Well, I'm very interested in religion, religious experiences, anthropology, and all this stuff.

That's different from a psychologist, in his role within the scientific medical community, talking about "sacred medicine" and "sacred knowledge."

I might read the book... but I'm still wary of scientists starting to use religious/mystical/visionary language.

<comment><USER11> > That's different from ... talking about "sacred medicine"

You seem to be doubling down on interpreting 'sacred' in that context as the scholar saying 'something I believe is supernatural'.

Social scientists studying religion should use religious language, and scientists studying experience are fine to use mystical and visionary language, if they are describing something emically: i.e. the subject reports mystic or visionary experience. Terms like that even have an etic use, to refer to the pattern of experiences that are described that way, where they often become specific terms of art.

You didn't seem to engage with my point that you are misunderstanding the term: it is triggering your 'woo' detector, which is giving a false positive in this case.

"Sacred medicine" is not a problematic term, if you are studying medicine practiced in a sacred context. I have a book on "Shamanic medicine" \- that doesn't indicate the author is a true believing shaman, just that they are the subject of his study. "Sacred knowledge" is a very good title for this book, because it is an attempt to look at what knowledge of psychoactive drugs is embedded into sacred frameworks cross-culturally, that can be reframed in a modern scientific context.

I think the misunderstanding is very understandable, because religious vested interests do a good job of preventing religious studies being widely known. Partly their concern is to keep sensible folks like you saying this kind of thing: words like 'sacred', 'mystic' and 'visionary' should not be used unless you are a believer.

<comment><USER10> Firstly I apologize for making semi-snide remarks without having read the book. It does seem interesting and I appreciate your comments.

But I think you misunderstand my concerns. I'm not really concerned with woo detectors. It's not that I think the word "sacred" implies some delusion or some new age nonsense. The concept of the sacred is indeed well established in theology and anthropology etc (I don't claim expertise in these subjects but I am somewhat familiar with what the word means).

There's no way to sincerely apply the word "sacred" while remaining in the sphere of secular discourse, as far as I can see. Scientists can study the function of sacrality, but I don't think science can make claims of sacrality.

Psychology is not religious studies... Maybe there is something about the framing I am missing here.

I think science is divorced from claims grounded in mystical insights. I think it cannot involve itself with normative/aesthetic/spiritual stuff like saying something is sacred.

And in any case, I do see problems with psychedelics and entheogebs related to all this. Namely how can we take the insights and thoughts and feelings that they tend to generate, and understand those things in a robustly secular way?

I don't have an answer. I've looked around. Lots of the people decades ago who got into the stuff, as far as I can tell, went kinda nuts. Like professor Tim Leary. Huge amounts of people end up in the meditation scene and go onto Buddhism or Advaita monism. That's fine for them—and I'm personally very interested in Buddhism, and to some extent a practitioner of the religion (taken refuge vows; meditate; love the culture; etc), and but still I'm not satisfied, from a scientific and psychological standpoint, with saying we need to bring in concepts of sacredness or mysticism.

That has to do with claims, arguments, reason, the public sphere, and the function of secular science.

I'm probably not expressing this very well.

<comment><USER11> > Scientists can study the function of sacrality, but I don't think science > can make claims of sacrality.

What's a claim of sacrality? A claim that a particular set of behavior is concerned with the sacred is, as your second paragraph implied, an unremarkable claim. No more impressive that claiming some behavior is religious, or ritualistic.

This is where I'm struggling to understand you. Something is sacred, in the context of religious studies, if it is something set apart by a community and held deliberately in contrast with profane activities (following the Durkheim kind of definition - the older definition of folks like Otto is well out of favour now). To identify that certain activities, knowledge, experience, or behavior is commonly sacred, is just an observation about how communities organise their worldviews.

In a certain sense, no discussion of religion can be secular, by definition (religious and secular are as slippery to define precisely as sacred and profane). But in the sense that you can do secular religious studies, I don't know why 'sacred' for you is a special kind of topic that can't be admitted to the rest of the field.

On the 'people studying this go weird' tack. Yup! Very true. I think this is an issue with religious studies generally, and lots of related fields (biblical criticism, say). The people who are attracted to a field are probably more likely to have some affinity for what they are studying, and sometimes language can get a little to 'emic' for my taste. One does have to be careful to distinguish between the views someone will advocate and the positions they want to put forward as a scientist, or a secular scholar. Though sometimes people will blur those boundaries. Mind you, I get the same feeling from scientists and scholars with strong ideological opinions generally, not just religious folks. But all that said, the term 'sacred' is not unscientific that I can see, or at least, no more than any other term used to describe human religious activity.

<comment><USER10> For some reason I read Durkheim's book on the origins of religion. Back then I was also reading stuff like William James on the variety of religious experience. Very interesting stuff, and they're both great scholars.

Durkheim of course discusses the sacred at great length, tracing it in the case of Polynesian tribes to the social concept of mana. (Just showing that I've read the book!)

The reason he was able to present this theory in a convincing way that advanced the state of the art in anthropology and sociology and religious studies, it seems to me, is that he was well-trained in the scientific method and scientific writing, so he was able to discuss it all on a scientific basis—that is, I suppose, separating the etic from the emic.

Again I'm simply curious about how the scientist in the article manages that... and I've seen a lot of people get into psychedelics and then kind of lose their ability to talk clearly from a scientific, secular, non-mystic perspective.

Maybe you'll see my point of view more clearly if I say that I have absolutely nothing against the mystic perspective—I just think the value of science lies in its refusal to really "go native." And I think religious studies and religious psychology etc is more fascinating the more it sticks to the scientific/philosophical project of secular explanation.

My initial knee-jerk reaction was about a psychologist publishing a book with the title "Sacred Knowledge." I am probably mistaken about this reaction... it was bolstered by the article's quotes about "sacred molecules" and empirical proof of Jung and excitement about some guy who saw dancing gods on a drug trip, fractal patterns, and so on.

I'm super interested in how we could, with philosophical and scientific rigor, discuss whatever is the actual content of "mystical consciousness." James's work was an empirical and mostly anecdotal study of life-changing mystical experiences, and I thought it was very interesting. I think there are some interesting aspects in Heideggerian phenomenology that would be relevant. Mildly interesting: the reason why those deep learning pictures look like LSD visuals.

If I were to start studying this stuff myself in any serious way, I would also probably be likely to "go native" or "go weird" or blur the emic/etic, etc.

Still, the whole project is very interesting, and kind of seems to represent the whole "Enlightenment project" in a way. Using secular science to treat and collaborate on things that previously was the realm of shamans and priests. Just, how does the scientist not become the priest, even after 100 doses of entheogens?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What I wonder about most is why people seem to have become more depressed than, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

Anyway, it will take a long time before the long-term effects of these psychedelics can be determined. And that is, if a consistent result can even be shown.</comment>


Google Drive Interface Leaked in Employee Presentation - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/04/19/google-drive-leaked/ <comment><USER2> Where is the interface?</comment>


The robots are coming to take your job away - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6931585.ece

<comment><USER2> Robots taking jobs is not a bad thing. It's a very good thing. It's briefly painful for the person who has to find a new job, but then the product is cheaper and better for everyone else. Forever.

Jobs don't disappear. They just change. The industrial revolution made cheap many products that had previously been expensive or required armies of laborers to produce. And then it made _available_ many more that had previously been unthinkable. A transition to a robot/information economy would have a similar effect; today's burger flipper is tomorrow's burger recipe artisan or perhaps robot maintainer/programmer, and can run a whole store by himself. And the cost and variety of gourmet food drops to about the cost of the ingredients.

<comment><USER3> I don't know why we even bother to try to explain this to people anymore. Don't you ever get sick of this sensationalist vibe in the Western press wrt computers and robots "taking away people's jobs", and subsequently repeating what you just said, time and time again? We should start taking a new approach to it.

Robots are going to take your jobs away suckers. And WE'RE the ones who are going to make them! Ah huahahahaha.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: The best way of Costumer Development - <AUTHOR>

Hello Guys,
I would like to know what you think are the best ways of doing the Costumer Development. Me and my co-founders we are going to do in 2 ways. The first one is a form, with questions about the product. This is good, I think. But do you guys know something better or more "fun"? The second way is doing a just a picture of what our service would be like, and ask people to use it. Anyway, I would like to know if you, guys, have something better to do this valuation. Link and blog posts are welcome. thank you.<p>Eduardo Rocha <comment><USER2> [http://vlaskovits.com/2010/08/if-youre-not-getting-out-of- th...](http://vlaskovits.com/2010/08/if-youre-not-getting-out-of-the-building- youre-not-doing-customer-development-and-lean-startups/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great link, thank you! Do you also recomend the patrick's book?

<comment><USER2> I haven't read the book yet, but I've heard good things about it. I plan to order a copy soon and read it, FWIW.</comment></comment></comment>


JustVined.com - <AUTHOR> http://justvined.com

<comment><USER2> I think I like the format of vinepeek.com better. The videos are already short (6 seconds) and its more engaging to hear whats going on in addition to watching just one video.

<comment><USER3> I prefer this one too (Y)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm on board with the Vine revolution. Two questions:

1\. When is there going to be an Android app?

2\. Where can I find an (Android) phone-or-tablet-friendly version of one of these websites?

</comment><comment><USER5> WARNING: May grind your computer to a halt.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool! I'd like to be able to see / comment on a video by clicking on it.

</comment><comment><USER7> This one is my favorite: <http://vine.co/v/bJn01Em7jej>

</comment><comment><USER8> my browser crashed. No I am not using IE.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this proof that we're living in the "ADD" generation?

</comment><comment><USER3> iframes, iframes everywhere...

</comment><comment><USER10> feels hectic.</comment>


Bangladeshis are making eco-friendly air conditioners from plastic bottles - <AUTHOR> http://impact4change.com/?p=2867 <comment><USER2> Can you imagine if they were to release this as open technology?</comment>


Show HN: NativeConnect 1.0 is available on the Mac App Store - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nativeconnect/id1409076030?ls=1 <comment><USER2> I was waiting for this for some time on macOS when it was announced and I came close to buying this. As soon as I saw the lifetime purchase price, at that point I'm wasn't quite sure I would purchase it at that price as an individual yet.

If it were discounted on release, then yes I would have purchased this. If it also supported Google Play at its original price then I would have happily purchased this today (Not sure if it would go through Apple's review process) and if I were part of a iOS shop team, then I would still buy it.

No question that this looks like a stunning native app for App Store Connect that was missing on macOS. At its original price for an individual it looks slightly too expensive for now.

<comment><AUTHOR> We believe this price is worth it if you "live" in the App Store Connect. Your feedback does matter however, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I am excited to announce that my native desktop client for the App Store Connect has passed the review in the Mac App Store.

This version is a one-time purchase and it's called the Indie Edition.

The direct sale version named Team Edition is subscription based and can be downloaded from the official website: [https://nativeconnect.app](https://nativeconnect.app)

If you're an Apple developer, please check it out. Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm definitely not the target market, but congrats for shipping. It's always good to see a _proper_ native app.

I find it quite puzzling that Apple themselves never built this/similar and included it as part of Xcode though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Stephen, much appreciated. Maybe they add something in Xcode 12!</comment></comment>


A judge wants to make patent trolling a first amendment issue - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/7/13199570/judge-patent-trolling-first-amendment-symantec <comment><USER2> I expected an odd argument about speech to the patent office in constructing an absurd patent and was pleasantly surprised that it was more thought out.

But the argument seems like it should equally end trade secrets and the various gag orders from the legal system over civil matters? Aren't these limiting your 1st amendment rights and of lower priority than those rights?</comment>


Reproducibility Crisis: The Plot Thickens - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/11/10/reproducibility-crisis-the-plot-thickens/ <comment><USER2> From my perspective as a former academic there is no simple solution here. We have created a system where the pressure to publish first and ask questions later is totally overwhelming. This is a cancer within science that will ultimately destroy public support for funding scientific research.

If we are going to solve this problem we need to reduce the pressure on scientists to publish at all costs. This publish-or-die thinking is driven by the extreme competition for grants and tenure tracked positions. Given I think it unlikely that the amount of money available for research is going to quadruple anytime soon (this is about the amount of money we would need to put into the system to get rid of the publish-at-all-costs mentality) what can be done?

1\. Break the link between publication and grant funding. We could move to a system where once you had proved that you could do research (say published a few papers) and could come up with a viable research idea that was doable assessed by a simple grant proposal, then you go into a pool and the grants allocated by lottery. We should aim to have 50% to 75% of all scientists in this pool. We then fund as many grants as we can given the money available.

2\. Spend some of the current research money on long-term fellowships (say 10 years) that are awarded in the same lottery way as grants.

3\. Drastically reduce PhD student training to get supply and demand back into line. e.g. make it such that a supervisor can not supervise more than one student at a time.

<comment><USER3> > We have created a system where the pressure to publish first and ask > questions later is totally overwhelming.

Why can't people simply publish negative results?

> Break the link between publication and grant funding.

Same answer - in fact give extra priority to those who publish lots of negative results.

<comment><USER4> > Why can't people simply publish negative results?

Mainly because it's not as interesting. For every positive result researchers find there are dozens of things they test that just don't work.

Imagine if the _first_ test of "romantic priming" didn't work. Would the researchers really bother trying to publish "Hypothesised romantic priming effect was just a wild hunch after all."? And would the journal accept it? No way.

Of course if you get a negative effect for an established "fact", as in this case it _can_ be published. But you have to be really really sure otherwise the reviewers will just say you did your experiment wrong.

<comment><USER5> > Mainly because it's not as interesting. For every positive result > researchers find there are dozens of things they test that just don't work.

That seems to be the core of the problem. Reality doesn't have a bias toward results that are interesting, humans do.

> Imagine if the first test of "romantic priming" didn't work. Would the > researchers really bother trying to publish "Hypothesised romantic priming > effect was just a wild hunch after all."? And would the journal accept it? > No way.

So maybe they should.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Need to start incentivising negative results, reproducing results and even finding no results at all. It should be possible to publish to some kind of database a data analysis with methods and data even if you don't find anything, because then maybe other scientists could look at it and say "ok, this seem to not yield any result, but I could try to change it" adn he either finds it ant publishes, or doesn't find and publish anyway, so we start to get a collection of results and be much more skeptical when one of 8 studies, for example, finds effect of p barely over 0.005.

<comment><USER7> Yes. If journals are biased against negative results, then governments should move in. Why do we need "journals" with the implication of a limited page count per issue anyway; in this digital age a database or wikipedia-style format should be able to host any number of results.

And it should not mater that some governments won't fund suchan initiative: all is needed is one, or a single benefactor, or maybe a tv-show à la Mythbusters. ResearchBusters would be a hell of a show!!

<comment><USER8> I recommend reading responses to other branches of the grandparent that address this.

I agree that if people do decent studies and get null results, it would be nice if the data became publicly available so further studies can be seen in the context of previous negative results.

But given the need for novelty in results, I wonder how much work actually duplicates work previously undertaken with a null result. I suspect it's much less than many people in this discussion are assuming.

And secondly, there's the issue of forcing people to do decent write-ups. Study results are useless without a very detailed description of both the experimental setup and the data collection/analysis procedures that were followed. Those write-ups take time and effort, and for an unpublishable result many researchers won't find the motivation. One could argue that funding agencies and institutional IRBs must force researchers to write much of this ahead of running the experiment. That might help a bit, but will still leave substantial holes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a direct result of "publish or perish," which basically gamifies academic advancement as a function of churning out publications. You get what you incentivize, and we wanted papers... we didn't say anything about correct reproducible results.

<comment><USER10> And reform will likewise be pursued as fast as congress reforms campaign finance. To many people have their livelihood invested in the castles they've built in the sky.

<comment><USER11> "their livelihood invested" \- somebody said that "you can't be a true scientist if you don't rejoice when your model fails". As you suggest, a researcher today can't afford that. The best of science is done when somebody is "playing" curiously and without being invested in the expected results. In today's academia you just can't do that, or very rarely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Man, that is a such a beautiful result. Ugly implications, but I love the analysis.

</comment><comment><USER13> There should be another level of blinding: one team writes the study design, then sends the design off to a separate neutral group of practitioners who implement the study and report all results, regardless of outcome.

It'd be a much more expensive way to do science. But if cost matters and avoiding meaningless results doesn't, we shouldn't run studies, we should just flip a coin on every question and save the hassle of pretending.

<comment><USER5> That would likely be completely counterproductive. There's no such thing as a separate neutral group of practitioners. More likely what will happen is it will have a chilling effect on what science gets done. The Kinsey studies, for example, got as far as they did largely because they were under the radar for a long time. Imagine if, instead, Kinsey sent his study design off to a "separate neutral group of practitioners". They would likely have exposed the nature of the study and Kinsey would likely have been fired.

<comment><USER13> > They would likely have exposed the nature of the study and Kinsey would > likely have been fired.

If you mean because the scientific community was reactionary and would have run him out, then that's a criticism of attitudes in the scientific community, not of the usefulness of extra layers of blind in studies.

Even so though, your characterization of the scientific community is a bit hyperbolic. Note that Kinsey gave many open discussions of his research area as early as 1935, and yet somehow retained his position in "swinging" Indiana.

> There's no such thing as a separate neutral group of practitioners.

I doubt that's knowable.

There are helpful degrees of neutrality, though, and you can eliminate certain specific sources of bias as they are identified. If there was no way to derive any objective results at all, then it wouldn't matter if we just flipped coins, because no studies would be worth anything.

Self-run studies are biased because significant results further a researcher's career. If you have some other team run studies without knowing the author, that team's bias is to establish its own credibility, which is orthogonal to just 'manufacture significant results.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could this also be explained by the "influence" experimenters had on their subjects? By influence I am supposing some kind of subtle cues... body language, or whatever. It also makes some sense that a smaller sample size (group of people) would be easier to influence.

</comment><comment><USER15> I totally want proof that their paper is reproducible.

</comment><comment><USER16> Psychology is not a science. Psychologists are not taught statistics in their curriculum. Why did anyone expect that they would come up with sound, statistically accurate results?

You can read any two psychology "textbooks" and get two differing opinions about how to address the same issues...

It's not a science folks. It's never been. It's always been an opinion-based practice, and this just proves the fraud being perpetrated on the people of this earth who trust these charlatans for help on matters ranging from personal mental health all the way to court "expert" testimony that can swing the decision of a judge or a jury one way or the other...

<comment><USER17> This reply is to anyone reading this that takes the parent post seriously - the scientific method is the best tool we have for gaining knowledge, and it is effective especially with difficult subject matter such as psychology. Psychology isn't just science, it's difficult science.

BTW the only statistics I know are what I was forced to learn studying psych (although I was a computer science major, which required none)

<comment><USER18> How can you do computer science without any stats? Don't you study machine learning?

<comment><USER19> Many of us are kind of old. Machine learning wasn't much of a thing in the 90s, and I think has only become popular in the last few years.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Congress is about to ban the government from offering free online tax filing - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/congress-is-about-to-ban-the-government-from-offering-free-online-tax-filing/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613725).</comment>