News Corp to charge for all news websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/News-Corp-to-charge-for-all-news-websites-pd20090806-UMS5P?OpenDocument

<comment><USER2> I'm not going to suggest that pay walls are the best option for the newspapers. They probably aren't.

However, I do hope that, over time, people get more used to paying for things online. I think that a culture of paying for goods and services will promote a higher level of quality on the web.

TV is a great example. The ad-supported networks tend to milk TV shows for money long past their prime, while stations like HBO can insist on higher quality programming because that's what their customers pay for. I would bet that if there were a news network that didn't rely on advertising, it wouldn't be nearly as sensationalistic as the ad-supported ones and you wouldn't hear lines like, "a common household substance that can kill you on contact... tune in at 11."

Pay walls may turn out to be bad for the ailing newspapers, but I think it would be good for the web, in the long term.

<comment><USER3> It's become a cliche, but I sincerely believe that the lack of a decent micropayment system sabotaged any chance of that for-pay culture existing on the internet and prevented it from becoming the economic engine we once envisioned.

However, such phenomenal social progress has been made, and could only have been made, in that commercial vacuum, and there is more to come. It's not worth giving that up for the quick fix of a consumerized internet.

<comment><USER4> _It's become a cliche, but I sincerely believe that the lack of a decent micropayment system sabotaged any chance of that for-pay culture existing on the internet and prevented it from becoming the economic engine we once envisioned_

You mean micropayment for the Web. The Internet is fine and making a _lot_ of cash for everyone involved. It's quite the economic engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is so dumb I double-checked to make sure this article wasn't a hoax.

Here's the situation: news-gathering companies have looked at the economics of the situation and realized that either people need to start paying for news, or 95% of news-gathering companies will die.

They've taken this to mean "and so people will inevitably start paying for content", but the actual conclusion should be "inevitably 95% of news gathering companies will die".

Radically wider distribution via the Internet has rendered the hugely redundant newspaper business (one newspaper for every town? Really?) obsolete. Even video producers are not immune (how many live news feeds do I need, exactly? 20? 10?).

Murdoch and co. are just dinosaurs refusing to acknowledge that the light in the sky is a comet.

<comment><USER6> The real silly thing is that there is a market for in-depth news _analysis_. The problem is that they've chosen not to serve this market, and as they race to the bottom they only now realize that they can't compete with 6 billion potential eyewitness reporters working for free.

They gambled and lost.

Of course, just like the car companies I somehow get the feeling that somehow I'll have to pay for their strategic mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content, is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting," Mr Murdoch said.

I quite agree - but what does that have to do with News Corp?

Boom boom!

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone else foresee a move towards news where news is provided (via blogs, commentary, and (I'm sad to say) even tweets) by domain specialists? Programmers talking about the new Windows, investors talking about new mergers, etc.?

Does that not sound like an improvement?

I say let the news dinosaurs do whatever they want, I stopped paying attention to them for my news a long time ago anyway. People always have been and always will be excited to talk about what's important to them, even for free.

(I'll call it now, News 2.0 will be a buzzword soon, and that'll suck)

</comment><comment><USER7> In my dreamworld the changing economics of the news industry, and newspapers in particular, would cause media outlets to spend less space covering extremely low-bar "entertainment" stories, less time regurgitating stories without adding anything of value, and basically stop the unquestioning reporting of what some spokesperson, official or otherwise, wishes to appear in print.

The outlets that will survive, and probably even thrive, are those that provide indepth, insightful and investigative coverage into the events of the world. (As a bonus - these are the types of articles that ARE copyrightable!).

I mean why would I pay to read about celebrity reactions to Paula leaving American Idol* when I can go to one of a zillion other sites and read basically the same story for free?

(* This is currently on the front page of washingtonpost.com, I kid you not)

</comment><comment><USER9> They claim that the freely-available news sources are cannibalizing their ability to provide good journalism, but I find the free sources to be better than the sources considering charging online traffic. News aggregators, blogs, etc... I use them all the time. New York Times? Maybe once in a while, but they're often biased and overdramatic.

<comment><USER10> So where do you think the news aggregators are aggregating their news from?

<comment><USER9> I realize that somewhere somebody has to be doing the initial reporting, and that person needs to be paid, but with the amount of blogs and social networking that spreads news, I think it'll take a long time before a news aggregator can't supply a steady stream of decent news.

All I'm saying is that if that ever does become unreliable, then I would gladly pay for a service. But right now, the services that are considering charging aren't offering anything unique (with the exception of say, Wall Street Journal, that kind of thing (niche markets, a need for super reliability, etc...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Everything? I can't see them charging for The Sun and the News of the World in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER12> and people stopped reading their lies and the world became a better place.

</comment><comment><USER13> This just in...NewsCorp reports massive decreases in web traffic. Film at 11.

<comment><USER4> Eyeballs and traffic != money. They're going for more revenue at the expense of "shipping" less "units".

<comment><USER14> And if they pull it off every other site is going to follow suit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So this is what, FoxNews.com? Nobody that knows how to read or use a computer cares what Fox thinks, so this is not really a major loss.</comment>


Start-ups blossom in Tassie - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexandracain.com/2010/12/14/start-ups-blossom-in-tassie/

<comment><USER2> Tasmania is beautiful, but it is an economic backwater. Economically it is a mendicant state, relying almost entirely on mainland Australia to prop it up. Its biggest export earner is logging ... and its fastest growing political party is the Greens. Things do not bode well for the apple isle.</comment>


This Weekend's DDoS Attack and What's in a (C)Name? - <AUTHOR> https://www.netlify.com/blog/2016/01/12/this-weekends-ddos-attack-and-whats-in-a-cname/ <comment><USER2> CNAME discussions in this article are specific to their site. In general, you can load balance just as well with A or CNAME, apex or sub-domain. It's only when you get into artificial technical limitations set up by a hosting provider or CDN, that things get messy.

CNAME's guarentee the end users will always do at least 2 DNS lookups. Depending on their resolver config, this will mean they will likely hit 2 or more resolvers. This increases their chances of hitting a bad one and the DNS not resolving.

A records can be load balanced, have full fault tolerance and much more. The modern way to accomplish this is Anycast. Instead of relying on DNS for failover or load balancing, your IP is advertised in different parts of the internet and the traffic is sent to different datacenters, that each may have their own load balancers, caching devices, WAN accelerators, DDoS mitigation and more. In fact, nearly all major DNS providers are doing this today. While you may have 3 or 4 IP's in your zone, those IP's actually route to different places depending on the requestors location.

TL;DR: Summary, just use an A record for Apex or sub-domain, set a really high TTL so a DDoS of your DNS is less relevant and use Anycast to optimize your traffic routing, load balancing, latency to the end user and availability.

<comment><USER3> How accessible is anycast for most people? AFAIK, if you're ok with a third party seeing all your traffic, you can get behind Cloudflare's anycast or Google cloud load balancer (which does seem to offer TCP, so you don't have to let Google decrypt content); but I haven't seen this from many other providers.

It's not really something you can do yourself either, unless you have assigned IP space and BGP in multiple locations.

<comment><USER2> For non-commercial folks, there are a couple of VPS providers that provide Anycast support. I personally have not used them, so I can not speak to how easy they have made it to configure.

I agree with your concerns around letting a CDN see traffic. In my workplace, we are not allowed to pass dynamic traffic through CDN's for that very concern that our customers share with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [2016], and not really this weekend, just fyi.

</comment><comment><USER5> The main thing that I dislike with the no-www trend is that it is hierarchically wrong:

. is ICANN root

.com is VeriSign

example.com is Example Company LLC

www.example.com, subdivision.example.com, www2.example.com are all services, subdelegations and individual hosts within example.com

I realize this is a rapidly declining way to view the DNS but it is nevertheless the way it was designed.

<comment><USER6> its not hierarchically wrong; services never required their own subdomain - example.com is just as valid a host as www.example.com

sure it is helpful for organization, but when was the last time you used ssh.example.com?

<comment><USER5> Don't get me wrong - it's in no way illegal to use A/AAAA-pointers in your zone root.

RFC 1034[0] however, argues for a tree-based structure and lays emphasis on the value of branching. It being 'wrong' might have been too strong a description, how about it being 'improper'?

When I've seen SSH access being offered as a network service and not as a means to administrate other services on a network it's often been under names such as 'shell.example.com' \- not exactly your 'ssh' label but an approximation.

0\. [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1034](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1034)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cloudflare, among others, has a feature called "CNAME flattening" that resolves the CNAME to an IP and serves it up as an A record. It makes this articles point a non-issue, and in fact probably results in a faster DNS lookup. The only drawback is that it is unclear how often they refresh the value.

</comment><comment><USER8> Even without MX/TXT records, your apex will always have an SOA, which disqualifies it from using a CNAME(per RFC).

</comment><comment><USER9> > Because of this we strongly recommend that you always host your main site or > app on www or any other subdomain (app.example.com is perfectly fine as > well).

There is real, measurable value to no-www. To anyone here who owns a public website, do visitors mainly go to the www or no-www version of your site? (assuming you don't redirect) Are the short or long versions of your URLs shared more?

I would be willing to bet there is a strong inverse correlation between link size and likelihood of being clicked. Anecdotally, on my own site of about ~1k daily active users, the no-www urls were used almost exclusively. Using www to avoid the rare disaster of DoS is unwise.

<comment><USER7> > There is real, measurable value to no-www.

Citation needed.

> I would be willing to bet there is a strong inverse correlation between link > size and likelihood of being clicked.

4 extra characters (www.) is a pretty small fraction of the total link length most of the time, when people link to individual blog posts or what have you. I'd argue that readability of the link is far more important, and www does not harm that.

<comment><USER9> Citation isn't needed. If you read one sentence later in my comment you can see I asked readers to look at their logs to confirm my statement. The next sentence after is confirming with my own data that visitor of my site preferred the no-www.

The reason to not use www is in _your_ logs.

<comment><USER7> Just because _your_ users don't use www doesn't mean that there's any value there above if you had a www only site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you don't need load balancing and redirects (i.e. like most people you don't have huge load requirements) just use A records instead of CNAME records.

<comment><USER11> CNAME-based hosting is really common (SaaS, GitHub Pages, ReadTheDocs, ...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm also dealing with the cname problem. I considered their solution however if the server issuing the redirects from the apex to www happens to go down, people typing the apex domain will not be redirected. The only real solution seems to be to have all customers just use our DNS servers

<comment><USER3> If you always redirect to www, and always publish links with www, most of your inbound traffic will go to www; so it's not critical if occasionally the apex doesn't work. Some people will not load your page properly, but not too many.

If your site is already heavily linked to at the apex version (or you prefer the no-www hostname for a shorter url or esthetics), then it's likely to take forever for a switch -- in this case, your realistic option is to set the nameserver records for the whole domain to whomever you want to do DNS load balancing for the apex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have always used AWS Route53. I didn't even know that ALIAS records were not a standard thing.

</comment><comment><USER14> What DDoS mitigation service were you using? This is why you need a provider like Incapsula, that protects at the origin server & C-name. Many providers only protect at the level of the A name, so you can get this kind of hit.</comment>


An indepth runthrough of the Windows Executable (PE) File Format - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc301805.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> Part 2 can be found at: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/cc301808.aspx></comment>


Show HN: OpenSpace – showcase your open source projects on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/EverythingMe/openspace

<comment><AUTHOR> Some background - we (engineering at EverythingMe) wanted to turn our organization profile on GitHub into a showcase of our open source work, so we built this tool and open sourced it for other to use.

See it in action - [http://everythingme.github.io/](http://everythingme.github.io/)

Read more about it - [http://geeks.everything.me/2015/05/01/showcasing-your- open-s...](http://geeks.everything.me/2015/05/01/showcasing-your-open-source- projects-with-openspace/)</comment>


Tesla Parts Online Parts Catalog Now Available - <AUTHOR> https://epc.teslamotors.com/ <comment><USER2> Their prices are all "Contact Tesla." When I went to check how much a badge cost it was conspicuously removed =3

</comment><comment><USER3> Do they not test if their site works on mobile? Hint: it does not</comment>


Webkit browsers, for the first time, have a greater market share than Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201008-201108

<comment><USER2> Interesting, those stats are completely different from W3schools

<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>

<comment><AUTHOR> W3Schools are based only on their own site, so a very particular market (i.e. web-developers I'd guess) while Statcunter brings in stats from their embedded counter on millions of sites so might present a better overall view (not that any sampling will ever be perfect for this!)

Wikipedia actually has quite a nice overview with stats from various sources: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers> . It does look like it is a general trend - this is the transition period for Webkit replacing Gecko as the number 2 rendering engine on the web.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I actually used W3Schools as a reliable source to know browser usage stats.</comment></comment></comment>


Mathematical disasters - <AUTHOR> http://timesonline.typepad.com/schoolgate/2009/11/the-10-biggest-mathematical-disasters-in-the-world.html

<comment><USER2> The millenium bridge was not simply a case of a bridge designed in 2-d instead of 3-d (it would have had to be designed in 3-d to account for wind loading). It was a math error, but it was much more complicated - essentially, the slight sideways motion people imparted to the bridge while walking caused the bridge to sway slightly, which in turn caused the people to walk in step with it, creating a positive feedback loop.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article describes the superconducting supercollider as a forerunner to the LHC, however the SSC was designed to produce collisions with over 3x the energy of the LHC.

Also, I'm surprised the Ariane 5's first launch didn't make this list: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5_Flight_501>

Inertial guidance code and systems were reused from the Ariane 4, but the greater thrust of the Ariane 5 caused a 16-bit signed integer value to overflow resulting in a cascade of problems culminating in the loss of attitude control and destruction of the launch vehicle.</comment>


Show HN: Codesearch.xyz – web search and cross reference for any repository - <AUTHOR> https://codesearch.xyz <comment><AUTHOR> I've made a site that allows you to search and browse any Git repository. After entering URL, the site downloads and indexes the repository. The code browser allows you to click symbols to see definitions, perform searches using regular expressions etc.

codesearch.xyz is based on OpenGrok (in fact, you can view it as a hosted version of OpenGrok).</comment>


Ask HN: What to do when you hate your job, but you can't quit? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER4> From my angle:

1\. You CAN quit. - What would happen if you got fired tomorrow? The same thing would happen if you quit. OK so you might not have any savings and have kids etc i don't know but YOU CAN - unless you are being held hostage - <USER2> another matter.

2\. MAKE WAR - if you hate your job then drop everything and MAKE WAR with this situation. I mean as soon as you finish work you start building your CV and start applying for other jobs. But don't just leave work, go home and sit around moaning about how you hate your job. I would be putting in 5 hours a night for 4 weeks to land a new job. I would even try and do this while in work, buts thats me.

3\. Do something - if you become unemployed your now self-employed also - <USER3> a piece of paper, a pen and write down everything you can do. Start somewhere. I borrowed a friends lawnmower and mowed lawns for 4 days some years ago when i was on my arse just to make $200 for rent

But don't say can't. You can - thats the key.

People bitch and moan to me about their boss, he's this, he's that. It's just a job. Job's are risky. Get rid of the risk and work for yourself.

But take strength from knowing that you can do what you want. Quit if you have to. Your the boss of you.

<comment><USER5> +1 for "Your the boss of you." (Which should actually be, "You're the boss of you.")

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Apply for new jobs. 2\. Get an offer. 3\. Quit

<comment><USER7> Replace 1. Network</comment></comment>


Mountain View approves razing rent-controlled units for $1.5M homes - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/04/03/mountain-view-approves-razing-rent-controlled-units-for-homes-worth-1-5-million/ <comment><USER2> Just some casual observations from someone who doesn't know a lot about city planning, zoning laws, and other things like that but...

I have spent a lot of time in various cities in eastern Asia, namely Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei.

I was always amazed at how much more efficiently space was utilized. Dense, high-rise housing. Smaller apartments for single occupants. Vending machines and convenience stores near ubiquitous so one did not have to go far for basic necessities.

Also, the public transportation was wonderful. Whether subway, taxi, or bus one could get around without any need for a car.

I always wonder why our cities can't be "denser". Perhaps we are too used to our cars and driving everywhere? I'm sure there are a myriad other reasons though.

<comment><USER3> I live in Mt View, and I can tell you that a rallying cry of anti-development people is "Do you want Mt View to become Tokyo?"

There is a large contingent of people who own single family homes who want to keep things exactly as they are now. They vote in elections. The contingent of people who DO want development largely doesn't live here, so they don't vote. There is no constituency of people who will live here in 10 years when we have higher density!

<comment><USER4> A quick search indicates Mountain View has a population of 80k and Tokyo has a population of nearly 14 million.

SMH.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, Tokyo's density is only 3x that of Mt View:

Mt View: 2,300/km2

Tokyo: 6,224.66/km2

<comment><USER4> And everything I've heard indicates it has remarkably afffordable housing for a big city. A quick search turned up this article, for example:

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/lai...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/laissez- faire-in-tokyo.html)

Seems like "becoming Tokyo" would be an improvement. (But I still find the comparison hyperbolic and ridiculous. It sounds like a deluded scare tactic, frankly.)

<comment><USER5> This is an excellent video on the subject.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6SbFlZMbU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6SbFlZMbU)

Short answer: a decent house for a family can be had for about $400k in Tokyo and that's considered expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't seem they had a lot of choice in the matter:

"Since the project fully complied with the city's zoning code and met all the application requirements, City Attorney Jannie Quinn told council members Tuesday that it would be "very difficult" to "come up with a rationale to deny the project."

Quinn also informed the council that placing a moratorium on the demolition of rent-controlled apartments could put the city in a legal predicament due to the state's Ellis Act, which protects landlords who want to leave the rental market."

<comment><USER7> > Doesn't seem they had a lot of choice in the matter:

Nonsense. The restrictively zoned cities in the Bay Area are leaving a lot of value on the table in order to protect their squat neighborhoods. If Mountain View truly preferred tenant protections over protecting neighborhood character, I'm sure they could have made a win-win solution with the developer to provide replacement rent-controlled units in exchange for an upzoning, even late in the process.

<comment><USER8> Rent control is not a solution. Build more housing.

<comment><USER9> That was a part of yonran's proposal: offer the developer increased density (upzoning) in exchange for rent-controlled apartments in addition to the townhomes. It's a win-win-win-win all around: the developer gets to sell more units (for more profit), the existing tenants get to maintain their rent control (in exchange for disruption while their old building is demolished and rebuilt), new homeowners get additional supply of housing, and the city doesn't have to deal with the protests of any of these groups.

<comment><USER10> ... or just build enough new housing without having to introduce market- distorting artificial price controls

<comment><USER11> Agree 100%, but people need to move into places today and tomorrow and I get that rent control is not a long term solution, but in the long term we are all dead as the saying goes. When more housing exists, rent control can end. In the mean time, I pick market distortion over people out on their ass do to impossibly high rent.

<comment><USER12> Tricky part of this is rent control adds an entire new group that no longer cares about housing being built and is interested in the status quo (as well as making it less attractive to build new housing and rent it out).

I suspect if you put it in place it becomes politically impossible to end and even harder to build new housing.

<comment><USER11> I suppose I don't agree with the premise of your argument. Economic and market forces are only a part of the political decision making process, poor investments and low public good projects are pursued all the time as well as many good projects.

Getting things done in politics is about political will, organization, sacrifice and being determined to accomplish a cause, not really much to do with how good or bad of an idea it is.

The economic costs of rent control are real, but distributed and I think its difficult to make people resonate with that. I don't think it would have a significant effect on the viability of other projects one way or another.

<comment><USER12> I think you're being unfairly downvoted for disagreeing with me.

I generally agree with you, but would argue that in this case evidence suggests that building housing in the bay area is extremely difficult given the local government situation and how it leads to all local areas incentivized to not allow development while the larger group as a whole would benefit from it. This is why I tend to think the only way to fix this is at a higher level (like SB827) where you can avoid some of these affects by coordinating for the entire state.

I understand that this doesn't solve the issue of long term residents who can't afford current rent so I think reasonable people can disagree about this issue. I just tend to think that the negative affects of rent control outweigh that benefit.

The negatives being:

\- Creating a bimodal market where new comers have even more extreme rents to subsidize the rent controlled units

\- Landlords incentivized to do the absolute minimum maintenance because they want their tenants to move out so they can increase rent to market rates.

\- Developers less interested in building units if renting them will be market controlled and ROI is less certain.

\- People living in rent controlled units caring less about housing getting built.

Rent control seems to only help existing tenants - with high levels of immigration to the state it probably causes more problems overall.

I agree with your point that it's about political will, but I think rent control reduces some of that support for building housing (and creates a large contingent extremely in favor of never removing rent control).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's amazing how the politicians representing the people of the Bay Area don't possess egalitarian values. There's so much unused and undeveloped land available in the mountains yet the property is crazy expensive.

<comment><USER14> There's no need to develop any more open space. The south bay has plenty of dilapidated strip malls and empty parking lots that could be repurposed into high density housing.

<comment><USER15> The financial incentive that kept office buildings along 237 empty for decades need to go away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Construction is a major contributor to climate change. So, how does tearing down and then replacing with town homes of similar density fit into the city's climate change plan?

[https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/comdev/sustain/climate_ch...](https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/comdev/sustain/climate_change/default.asp)

</comment><comment><USER17> 1.5M for a brand new house in Mountain View ? That's a bargain.

/s

<comment><USER18> town house, not standalone house with a yard

<comment><USER19> It's odd that they would debase it like this. Even if getting the floor space means you have to build a place with 3 stories above and 2 basements below, that seems like a better plan. Being unattached from neighbors is highly desirable.

<comment><USER11> It's why I live in a less exciting and not as progressive geographic location. I could not afford to have a buffer space around my house in new york or california and for me I value my solitary personal home with yard and trees over some (really great) economic and cultural benefits that would come from living in other more expensive regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is only one solution to this problem. MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE.

These houses would cost less than half this amount in 99% of the country. So long as too many people insist on living in the same zip code, the problem is not solvable.

<comment><USER21> People like to make money via jobs. Those cheaper houses come with fewer appropriate jobs or jobs that pay less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Aren't all rentals in mountain view rent controlled?

<comment><USER23> Not sure about Mountain View but in SF its > 60%

[https://sf.curbed.com/2018/7/12/17565192/housing-needs- trend...](https://sf.curbed.com/2018/7/12/17565192/housing-needs-trends- report-rent-control-san-francisco)

It's a disastrous policy, and one of the main reasons SF housing is such a mess. Tenant laws also tend to incentivize booting everyone at once and converting to condos instead of renting units.

<comment><USER24> >disastrous policy

it's literally the only reason most of the remaining long time citizens who aren't wealthy can live there still

<comment><USER25> Rent control rewards the entrenched people who were lucky enough to find a unit early, at the expense of everyone who came later. The beneficiaries of this may not consider it that way, but it most certainly is a form of wealth for them. So I would argue that even they too, are wealthy.

The victims of rent control are everyone who is pushed out of the city -- or those who cannot move there -- because of how rent control makes building rental units unprofitable.

<comment><USER26> > Rent control rewards the entrenched people who were lucky enough to find a > unit early, at the expense of everyone who came later.

And market housing rewards well-paid, rich professionals at the expense of everyone who isn't pulling in a FAANG salary.

Neither is a 'fair' distribution of shelter - that much is true.

> The victims of rent control are everyone who is pushed out of the city -- or > those who cannot move there -- because of how rent control makes building > rental units unprofitable.

If you remove rent control tomorrow, there's going to be no shortage of immediate, acutely suffering victims of that political decision. Forgive me that I have more sympathy for those individuals, then some nebulous group of 'People who, for whatever reason, really want to move to SF, and can afford a $2,800 apartment, but not a $3,400 one, so they don't move to SF.'

<comment><USER10> News flash, in a capitalist society, scarce resources are more readily available to those with money than those without. Regarding "fair distribution of shelter", what do you consider fair? How do you allocate scarce resources in a fair manner? You make it sound like having an apartment in downtown SF is some sort of inalienable right.

<comment><USER11> News flash its no longer 1972 and criticism of capitalism is now allowed.

<comment><USER10> Great, let's hear that criticism and constructive alternative solutions to the vexing problem of fair allocation of scarce resources?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In Mountain View 1.5m homes are the rent controlled units. /s

</comment><comment><USER28> Rant:

I imagine that you, posting this story, or even some reading this thread, are doing so with the sentiment that "oh no, these unfortunate long time residents are being displaced", and that some cruel unfeeling capitalist society is allowing this travesty to happen. "How can we let big tech keep on doing this to our region??"

You, who are likely one of the many tech workers in the Bay Area, should be _cheering_ every development project like this. You should be cheering when cities start to free up housing and make it available to people who want to move here, or are already here and can't find anything affordable. Even if those people buying the houses are making "big tech salaries", you should be for it.

Stop being blinded by the symbolic cases of the anti-gentrification sentiment, that the elderly widow is being forced out of her home to make way for ungrateful young tech workers. For every 1 of those stories, there are 50 families trying to make a new life in the area, unable to find a house for less than $1M or $6000/month in rent.

For every 1 of those stories, there are 10 families that have lived here for 40 years, and are sitting on empty houses, maybe even 2nd houses that are underutilized. They're the rich ones.

For every person occupying a rent controlled home, that's one unit of housing unavailable to someone else, and moreover, one additional unit of competition and higher prices imposed on everyone else who needs to find a place to live. Few among us will ever get to have the benefit of a rent controlled apartment.

Everyone reading here has some degree of numeracy and literacy better than average. Think about the numbers, not symbols -- and don't let yourself fall into the trap of thinking that the news is good at reporting the deeper story.

And think about what kind of system you want to incentivize when you vote or support knee-jerk policies. How does a region / city renew itself and make sure that it doesn't stagnate and turn into a place only for those people who got there first, screw everyone who comes afterwards? By ensuring that people with rent-controlled housing never have to leave? By tying up development for decades?

I take the side of the majority who no one feels comfortable speaking up for. The thousands of young people and families who want to live, work, and be productive here. Not those who already got theirs and want to keep the rest out. Time for them to move on, and if they need a nudge, it's well past due.

<comment><USER29> I'm all for stoping the rent control, but I don't think anyone is happy they are going from 59 apartments to 55 townhouses. They should be increasing the density, not reducing it.</comment></comment>


Keyringless GnuPG - <AUTHOR> https://nullprogram.com/blog/2019/08/09/ <comment><USER2> I once built a simple interface around golang's implementation of pgp (golang.org/x/crypto/openpgp).

It does not require any database and just take three arguments:

$ ./pgp-verify USAGE: ./pgp-verify file signature publickeyring

It will also exit with 0 on success and 1 on failure, which makes it straight- forward to use in scripting.

<comment><USER2> Here is the link :) [https://github.com/Mic92/pgp- verify](https://github.com/Mic92/pgp-verify)</comment></comment>


Validating email addresses: A journey down RFC5321 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxX81WmXjPg&ab_channel=FOSDEM <comment><USER3> I wrote an RFC conforming email address validator. It worked perfectly on the test set. Then you start feeding it real life email addresses and you find out that lots of real addresses do not conform to the standard.

So then you have to mess it all up again and make it work so that it validates anything out there that _might_ be real, and in the process you will end up failing a lot of your test cases. Very frustrating.

<comment><USER4> Can you name some examples?

I too wrote one and found lots of addresses that were valid but unusable (try using a "jacques m"@example.com and see how far you get). But I can't remember any that were usable in the wild but invalid according to my parser.

<comment><USER3> It's been four years and I don't have access to the code or the testset (work for a customer), sorry. It would have been nice to have that bit open sourced though, jvde if you are reading this, hint!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some tips for email validation:

* Just say no to CFWS. CFWS is not legal in an email address, and anyone who tells you otherwise is incapable of reading the standards. CFWS is legal to insert in the written representation of the email address in RFC 5322 and RFC 5321, but it is not a structural part of the email address (you get the email address by deleting all such instances).

* Everything to the right of the @ is either a domain name, an IPv4 address literal embedded in [], or an IPv6 address literal prefixed with IPv6: and embedded in [] (e.g., [IPv6:::1]).

* Enclosing a localpart in quotes does not change the email address. Ergo, you can require that people not use quoted localparts if they don't have to. Actually, in general, you can probably require that people not have quoted localparts at all.

* The only characters truly forbidden from email addresses are C0 (and maybe C1, although the EAI specs are hazy about that). In practice, though, any character that requires quoting to access can probably be excluded from valid email addresses.

* Sending someone an email and telling them to confirm that they received it (e.g., by making the next step be triggered from a link in the email) is the only way to validate that an email address actually works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you clarify on what CFWS is? I found what the acronym stands for, but not what it actually _means_.

<comment><USER5> Comment-folded whitespace. It's the little things in parentheses (e.g., the timezone name is usually included in a comment in the Date: header). It's also the bane of anyone who has ever implemented an email message parser.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Our strategy, ensure there is a "@" and some text before and after the "@". We require email validation (click a link in an email) so if they enter in a bad email we catch it on the validation part anyhow.

<comment><USER7> I think this demonstrates _why_ we validate things. There are two reasons - <USER2> ensure the data is correct, and to catch errors that the user has made. On the face of it they sound the same but they're not. As far as your service is concerned a 'correct' email address is anything that looks a bit like an email address. As far as the user is concerned a correct email address is specifically _their_ email address. Your pattern works well enough for the first part but not the second.

Any validation pattern that caters for the user should be trying to catch instances where the user has entered their address incorrectly. That means validating things like the general pattern ('does it have a @'), checking the TLD ('is the TLD part of the domain in this huge array'), and catching weird characters ('did the user really mean to use a ®'). Even if the validation fails the user should be able to submit their address (this is client side after all; the user can just disable it), but they should be informed that it _appears_ there could be a reason to double check it first.

<comment><USER8> It's nearly impossible to validate against TLD since there are arbitrary TLDs now. I've always checked for firstname.lastname@example.com then you rely on a verification email. If you want to make sure they typed in _their_ email correctly, then make them type it in twice.

<comment><USER7> Your client side validation should be looking for warning signs rather than blocking the user though. You can use a distance algorithm (eg soundex) to check against a list of known TLDs and warn the user to check their address if it's _close_ to a known TLD but not an exact match. Anything that's not close to a known value should result in a different warning. Nothing should stop the user from submitting their value, but the form should try to help them get the right value the first time around. That's what client side validation is for. It is _not_ for blocking incorrect values (because it's trivial to get around it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone is interested in general MIME validation, not specifically email addresses, I wrote @ronomon/mime:

[https://github.com/ronomon/mime](https://github.com/ronomon/mime)

The source code has comments from the various RFCs inline. It's not just a question of reading and knowing the RFCs but also of interpreting them and balancing them.

The decoder will throw detailed exceptions which are designed to pinpoint where the message went wrong, and which RFCs were broken by the message.

It also does just-in-time decoding, and decodes only the properties you access. This is much more efficient if you only need a header or two to reject spam quickly as part of a front line defense.

Above all, most of the methods are extensively fuzz-tested against independent reference implementations.

</comment><comment><USER10> Domininc Sayers has written a fair amount on email address validation in the past and has a decent library of test cases which I have found useful in the past. [https://dominicsayers.wordpress.com/category/design/code/ema...](https://dominicsayers.wordpress.com/category/design/code/email- address-validation/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that, here's a link to the XML of the actual test cases:

[https://www.pastery.net/rnbakg/](https://www.pastery.net/rnbakg/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A comment from the presenter from Youtube:

Unfortunately, after I did some further investigation, it seems that some of the slides in my presentation here are wrong. I took some information from the "Email address" Wikipedia page, which turned out to have incorrect info, and in one I just misunderstood the rules (the "local@domain(comment)" part, which is invalid). I have since amended the presentation, but the general point of this video of how to do validation still stands.

<comment><AUTHOR> I made another comment yesterday, after more searching: The presentation is actually correct, as far as I can tell.

Yes, the standards are _that_ convoluted! There's even an "explanatory" RFC that's just wrong. I have edited the YouTube comment to point that out somewhat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem is that there are many email addresses that are valid but are likely just abusers. An email address entirely of * and 200 chars long is valid in the RFC, but clearly not a human.

I settled on < 100 chars and:

`^[\w\\.\\+\\-]+@[\w\\-]+\\.[\w\\-\\.]+$`

We'll see how it goes in production :)

<comment><USER13> What value does your system provide by limiting addresses to 100 characters and the given regex.

Why not just allow any input and validate the address by attempting to send to it. It's really the only way to tell if its a real address.

What abuse can a person bring on your system by having a 200 char email address? That should be nothing in terms of server load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think there's much point in spending lots of effort to validate the email for structural correctness because you can't anyways verify the email is really valid without sending a verification message (valid in the sense it works and belongs to the specific person).

</comment><comment><USER15> just don't validate names or email addresses

<comment><USER16> Yes, what is the point of validating them?

You don't know if they work anyway, until you successfully send email.

<comment><USER17> Why go to the point of trying to send an e-mail, have the user wait for a confirmation e-mail, ask for it again, wait again and then at some point find their mistake if you could have immediately prompted them fix their mistake as they put in user@gmailcom? Validation doesn't have to catch every mistake to be useful.

<comment><USER16> Ok, but then a very simple approach would do just fine, where you show a warning (instead of blocking the user).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Monty Python Puts Free Videos Online, Sells 23,000% More DVDs - <AUTHOR> http://i.gizmodo.com/5137827/monty-python-puts-free-videos-online-sells-23000-more-dvds <comment><USER2> "But when you're a bunch of pricks, people go to The Pirate Bay and think of you as the enemy, and then you don't get any money. Take notes, you idiots." v. funny indeed

<comment><USER3> Funny - and so true. There's a working business model online, and people who take advantage of it will most certainly benefit.

<comment><USER4> The MPAA & RIAA are all about distribution. They want to maintain a lock on content so they (the distributors) make money, not the artists.

<comment><USER3> I largely agree. I think they're on the decline now. I don't know if whatever follows them will be better, but I'd like to think there's at least a chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The real winner out of all of this, day in and day out, is Amazon.

<comment><USER6> I hate owning DVDs. I'd much prefer a file I control or open access to a streaming file I have unlimited authorization to watch.

Amazon won't win in the streaming / file space unless something changes.

<comment><USER5> I believe the sustainable model for media distribution is to micro-charge multiple time for the ability to timeshift and placeshift content. A convenience tax, so to speak. Physical mediums are antiquities in our digital device world.

Those eggheads over at YouTube/TiVo/Apple/Amazon/Microsoft surely must be working on something like this. I mean, how else do any of them justify their salaries?

<comment><USER3> I don't know if "antiquities" is quite the right word. There's always something to be gained from the existence of the physical format. With albums, for instance, there's the artwork and file quality that you can only achieve with records. (It's why new record players are still being made.) Books can achieve things that ebooks cannot. Same with paintings versus photographs, plays versus movies, DVDs versus digital downloads.

Better to say that the physical medium is no longer the only _existing_ medium. Where they once dominated, now they'll become niche like most mediums do once they're past cutting-edge. But antique suggests something that's over and done with, and incapable of advancing. On the contrary, I think that physical media will continue to innovate.

<comment><USER5> They will no longer be used as a means of distribution but rather products or art to appreciate on its own merits for the subculture of people that still obsess about something like that. Cultural artifacts of antiquities.

<comment><USER3> They said that about records how long ago? And yet every generation, new bands see fit to release records of their stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess this was a good way for Python to reach new and younger audiences that haven't seen their magic before.

On a side note I'm somewhat surprised to see gizmodo actually call the MPAA and RIAA "a bunch of pricks". Not that it isn't true.

<comment><USER3> Gizmodo is rarely formal. It's nice at times like this, less nice when they raise damaging rumors like they have in the past.

Monty Python shows yet again that they're not just funny, they're very bright and very business-savvy.

<comment><USER8> IIRC some of them (the pythons) met at Oxford. I think at least one may have a higher degree of some sort.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't at all be surprised if that was the case. Beyond degrees, though, they advanced comedy in a lot of ways. In two different parts of my life, Holy Grail and Life of Brian changed my attitude of what comedy was capable of doing. Gilliam's Brazil had a similar effect on me. And John Cleese was one of the best writers of his era. Still would be, though I'm not sure how much he writes nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Python language (funny that in this context, I can't just say "Python" on Hacker News) was named after this show.

<comment><USER10> So what you're saying is that Guido van Rossum bought most of those DVDs?

<comment><USER11> No. The Python programming language is a great advertisement for the show. Especially in areas in which it wasn't aired. I would have never heard of the show if GvR didn't name his language after it. Its said that its named after the TV series in every book about the language, on the website and in Wikipedia.

<comment><USER12> it doesn't help that Python's interactive console is named Idle <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDLE_(Python)> and they have an IDE named Eric <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Python_IDE>

<comment><USER8> Also spam and eggs are common metasyntatic variables, and references to the pythons in comments is encouraged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wish people wouldn't say 23,000% when it would be more comprehensible to say 230 x. It's a bit like those submissions to other news sites where they would say 23,000.00% to make the number look _even_ bigger.

/hobby horse

<comment><USER14> 23000% actually means *231

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> just like everything in life, this will only pay off for the first few. Right now people are willing to pay to reward the artists who are willing to tell the RIAA/MPAA to piss off...but once everyone starts doing it, it'll revert to just the natural sales to the fans etc.

<comment><USER16> I honestly don't think the average, non-technical, sub-intellectual person puts that much thought into these things.

What is happening here seems pretty clear to me:

People are looking for entertainment, they are finding some on YouTube, they see an ad for more of the same enjoyment, they whip out their credit cards and pay for it.

If this story happened in a college dorm room and the entertainment-seeker's roommate had them all on DVD already, he would have said "Here, watch mine." If he had them all on his hard drive, he would have said "here, plug in my external".

It seems like people are simply following the path of least resistance.

<comment><USER17> > It seems like people are simply following the path of least resistance.

I agree 100%, and any discussion of online piracy that does not include this concept is horribly, horribly incomplete.

<comment><USER8> It's the itunes model all over again.

People want media in easy-to-consume form. They want it easy to browse and get.

Most will pay a nominal sum for it. Some will not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know if many people realise it, but the use of the term 'spam' came from a Monty Python sketch originally. It's not too difficult to correlate what they meant: You can have whatever you want, as long as it's with spam.

<comment><USER3> Spam was a physical food product originating in 1937, before the Pythons existed. Stood for "Shoulder of Pork and Ham". It was a popular product before Monty Python made their joke about it.

<comment><USER18> My point was that the Python sketch _based on the tinned food_ turned into the e-mail SPAM meme. The sketch was the basis of the e-mail term, in other words, in computing folklore, by saying that e-mail SPAM comes with everything. I'm not sure if Wikipedia lists it, but you can find this meme explained.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Y'know, Monty Python is special, people love them, and their pitch asks for support. Not everyone who gave up their goods in HQ would see a 230x improvement in sales. So this isn't a good test of the 'give it all away' idea.

</comment><comment><USER20> When I first scanned this headline I thought it was something about a storefront running on Python selling a whole lot of movies.

But, hey, Monty Python > Python.

</comment><comment><USER18> If I'm not mistaken, the copyright holders aren't Cleese & co - I'd have thought it was the BBC, payed for via the TV license in the 1960's.</comment>


Weight Training Is the Best Exercise for Bone Strength - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/4803697/bodybuilding-strength-training/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits <comment> throwaway-1209 I had really bad lower back pain years ago. Started going to the gym and doing weight training. Went from not being able to deadlift 80 lbs without pain to 495lbs for 3 reps. No back pain now. I also recommend "Starting Strength" by Mark Ripptoe. It works. I wish I could convince my wife to do back squats and deadlifts. She's also having back problems but she's stubbornly refusing to do anything about them.

<comment><USER2> I have the complete opposite experience. I messed up my lower back doing t-bars after a long break from the gym (very stupid I know) and haven't been able to workout much at all for almost a year now. I'd definitely suggest consulting with a personal trainer before seriously considering weight training. It's getting better now and I slowly start training my back again, but holy crap it's been very painful 6 months.

<comment><USER3> For somebody who is new to weightlifting and not terribly frail, it is almost impossible to get injured if you just start with an empty bar and then progressively add 5lbs each session.

<comment><USER4> 5 lbs each session quickly gets you to a pretty heavy weight, and you may not have proper form—I did this and I got to a point where if I continued the same way I would have almost certainly messed up my back doing deadlifts. I'd temper this advice with the warning that once it starts feeling pretty heavy (and long before that as well!), you should definitely get advice on your form, be it from a trainer or friends.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more with your advice, but I'll just point out: once you hit weights where you can injure yourself, you're by definition no longer new to weightlifting. Plus you've already reaped most of the health benefits that being stronger bestow. Beyond that, you're no longer lifting for health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Julian Shapiro (a HN member) wrote a great free guide called _How to Build Muscle_ [0] that's a nice resource for anyone new to weight training.

0\. [https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro](https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for posting this. I read part of the first page and already I'm getting sucked in.

The first thing that surprised me was him saying it is a myth that machine exercises are less effective than barbell ones. That's surprising to me.

<comment><USER7> > The first thing that surprised me was him saying it is a myth that machine > exercises are less effective than barbell ones. That's surprising to me.

Depends on the definition of "effective". Since the eBook is titled "How to Build Muscle", then yeah, machines are just as effective as free weights.

But in terms of building "strength" (picking up random heavy objects), machines will make life a lot more difficult than it has to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Going to the gym is the 2nd best thing you can do for your body, besides quitting smoking; if you don't smoke, you should focus on the gym" -Some guy on youtube

I always seen the gym as an investment into health as opposed to losing weight or getting fit, although those are nice secondary results.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) before I became a software developer, and I would just like to emphasize that the benefits mentioned can be realized from some pretty simple exercise routines. The keys are to perform them consistently and to progressively increase the training load so that you are constantly providing a stimulus that your body must adapt to.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've always viewed weight-training like brushing teeth: spend a small amount of time each day for big payoffs in the long run. Now to be fair, I optimized for this by putting a squat rack in my basement along with second-hand weights.

<comment><USER6> When you say _small amount of time_ , what exactly are you talking about? Have you seen any payoffs yet?

<comment><USER10> My philosophy has always been, if I'm [in the gym/in the basement] longer than 45 minutes working out, I'm doing it wrong. For me personally this counts warm-up sets.

I have seen payoffs, mentally almost more than physically. Without going into details, I've been in a legal battle for a while (nothing criminal) and lifting is a great way to blow off steam.

Physically, if you "eat right" you see results very quickly at first, and then more slowly as time goes on. Diet is the most important part if you're looking for physical results. You could lift with proper form for years and years, following every program under the sun. If your diet sucks, you're wasting your time if aesthetics if your goal.

If you'd like example of quick results, r/fitness is full of em. This one for example, this fellow seems to have made a whole lot of progress in what he claims is 60 days: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/6gpsxr/well_i_gues...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/6gpsxr/well_i_guess_i_cant_blame_genetics_anymore/)

<comment><USER11> 45 minutes? Are you incorporating stretching and mobility work into that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Personal anecdote: I used to get wrist and back pains a few years ago. The two big changes which I attribute to completely getting rid of these issue was 1) Switching to a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and 2) Regular weight training 3 times a week.

I also find weight training really helps me deal with stress. I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER13> For back pain, yes weight training definitely helped me too.

For wrist and elbow pain from computer use, however, weight training made it worse for me. At that time I did a bit of googling and for RSI seems like rest and stopping the repetitive motions is best. The exercises irritate the same nerves. To solve the issue, I switch to a trackball instead of a mouse. (To be clear, weight training was miraculous to me when I first started, but for RSI, fix the cause)

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately very many people casually lump a huge range of maladies under the umbrella of "RSI" and treat them as if they all have the same root cause and the same remedy. Wrist/arm pain could be carpal-tunnel syndrome, or it could be tendonitis, or it could be any of a bunch of other things all of which are technically "RSI". For some, strength training can certainly help; for others, as in your case, it may do more harm than help.

<comment><USER12> I totally agree. I never actually went to a Dr to get my wrist pain looked into so I don't know 100% that it was RSI. I just kind of assumed that it was based on RSI being an occupational hazard for many tech folks.

Changing my keyboard got rid of the immediate pain I had been experiencing for months. I started weight lifting at around the same time. The only reason I attribute lifting as being part of the solution is that I went back to typing on my laptop again after 6 months.

I now do quite a lot of typing on my laptop (90% of the software I write) and I no longer have any pain in my wrists.

This advise is probably not for everyone, I just offer it up as an interesting anecdote. If you have persistant wrist pain, its probably best to go see a specialist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Paul-ish > If all that isn't convincing enough to turn you onto weights, perhaps this > is: maintaining strength later in life "seems to be one of the best > predictors of survival," says Peterson. "When we add strength...almost every > health outcome improves."

This sort of thing is repeated a lot, but isn't this just a correlation? We don't know which way it goes. Maybe sick people get weaker, rather than weak people get sicker. That makes just as much sense.

<comment><USER15> The docs seem fairly certain the direction it flows is weakness leads to sickness. Apparently something to do with muscle tissue vs insulin response. Lower muscle tissue leads to lower BMR which leads to obesity related issues and insulin resistance issues. Its almost too trivial to point out the orthopedic issues like weak back muscles leading to back problems. Also the accidental injury issue is trivial obvious; when I was younger working on a home improvement project I dropped a solid wood (not hollow core) door and then caught it, wrenching my back, obviously if my arms were stronger I wouldn't have dropped the door to begin with, and if my back had been stronger (I had been taking a break from lifting) then my back wouldn't have been as messed up.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15107011?report=abstract](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15107011?report=abstract)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm in my mid 50s and haven't been in a gym in almost 4 months after being religious about weight training for 40 years. I really don't care if I ever do another workout in my life, but I know the importance of weight bearing exercise so I guess I will go back eventually.

<comment><USER17> Why?

<comment><USER18> Because he knows the importance of weight bearing exercise

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those curious to get started, Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe is the gold standard in beginners programming. [http://startingstrength.com/](http://startingstrength.com/)

It takes you through the basic compound exercises and talks about some important concepts in weight training, highly recommend it.

I worked on this basic program that requires you to go to the gym 3 times a week and basic linear progression got me up to a 400lbs squat for reps at the age of 28. It took about 18 months to get there.

My biggest regret is that I stopped going to the gym, if you do start, please keep going. It's better to go and do something easy than to undo the habit.

<comment><USER20> There's no consensus that Starting Strength is the gold standard. Other popular programs are StrongLifts and now a variant on Greyskull LP [1].

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/iLhAJBl_d.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/iLhAJBl_d.jpg)

<comment><USER21> None of those are meaningfully different. At core, they're all the same program:

1\. Basic compound lifts

2\. Linear progression

3\. 3x5 (StrongLifts also switches to 3x5 once the weights get heavy)

There are some differences, but they're pretty minor and people nitpicking them for beginners are mostly wasting time because it really doesn't matter that much.

<comment><USER22> They're meaningfully different in how they approach failure.

StrongLifts is worse off in this regard for the reason that they teach reducing volume once you start running into plateaus in order to artificially progress. "Benching that lift too hard? Well cut out 40% of the volume and keep going!"

Starting Strength fails in teaches the idea of deloading by dropping weight then taking a run at it without changing any of the training methodology which is arguably a reason for the "spinning the wheels" approach you see from several lifters who claim to run the program for months on end upwards and beyond a year. It's also seen as a less ideal program for its poor split on upper/lower volume and really benefits from accessory lifts thrown in when the lifter is capable.... but at that point you might as well just run a better program.

They're _decent_ programs in that they get a untrained individual to put up enough weight to get themselves out of a horribly weak position but they don't teach anything meaningful for long term. Other programs achieve the necessary linear progression that is capable during your noob gains without having stupid programming quirks that lifters need to unlearn when they move onto intermediate programs.

<comment><USER23> Starting Strength is a _starting_ programme for _strength_ development.

It's not a lifetime lifting regime.

That's ... not made entirley clear, though Rippe does address this.

<comment><USER24> its literally 50% of the name.

programs not called perpetuity strength or elite strength or bodybuilders delight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Blatant self-promotion. I just finished initial development of a web app [1] for tracking your reps, and have just submitted an iOS / Watch app to the App Store (currently in review).

[1] [https://www.rikerapp.com](https://www.rikerapp.com)

</comment><comment><USER26> I had my DEXA test a couple months ago and found out I have 3.5x the bone density of others my age due to my heavy weightlifting. It's probably why I've had 3 motorcycle crashes and never broke a single bone. Furthermore, the technician told me that I will probably never have problems with osteoporosis as a result!

TL;DR - keep your squats low and your standards high

</comment><comment><USER27> It's surprising that no one has mentioned Body by Science[1], SuperSlow from Ken Hutchins, Arthur Jones and Nautilus, and other research based programs from the last forty years. Free weights can be very dangerous as you approach muscle failure, and all sorts of momentum, breath holding, etc. are problematic. Unless hypertrophy and/or bad time management are your goals, I prefer the system of deep muscle inroading in 12 minutes a week, and then I work on sport skills, not building muscle mass, the rest of the week. I have a median genotype, not the genetic makeup of a muscle magazine.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Strength- Traini...](https://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Strength- Training/dp/0071597174) "Body by Science: A Research Based Program for Strength Training, Body building, and Complete Fitness in 12 Minutes a Week"

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdJFbjWHEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdJFbjWHEU)

[3] [http://techzinglive.com/page/1500/268-tz-interview-dr- doug-m...](http://techzinglive.com/page/1500/268-tz-interview-dr-doug-mcguff- body-by-science)

</comment><comment><USER28> perhaps the best exercise for bone strength, but is it the best thing you can do for your bones?

assuming a moderately active lifestyle (e.g. an hour of brisk walking a day), we're skeptical that exercise has any significant advantage, if any, compared to improved nutrition and non-exercise lifestyle changes (more and better quality sleep, better friendships, etc.).

that being said, exercise certainly isn't bad.

<comment><USER29> Brisk walking [every day even] doesn't qualify as a moderately active lifestyle, sorry.

If it doesn't raise your heart rate to at least 100+, it's nearly useless as an exercise. Sure, you'll burn slightly more calories than sitting at a desk, but the benefits are nowhere near actual exercise.

> more and better quality sleep, better friendships, etc.

Sleep quality generally improves with exercise, as long as you're still getting 8 hours. Better friendships are completely orthogonal to exercise/weightlifting.

<comment><USER30> Isn't such perspective limited?

My parents are 67 and 65 years old; I would say say that daily brisk walking is possibly much more suitable for them (their body) in comparison to weightlifting -- irrespective of your personal definition of "exercise". And I'm damn sure their heart rate easily exceeds 100+ if that's the main variable to control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Weight training is like magic for me. I've slipped into some bad habits over time and am struggling my way slowly out of them and back into training. The difference when I'm training is crazy. It supercharges my body and lifts my mood from all the extra hormones and so on. Recently I had had a weird pain in my back for months every time I breathed in, and it disappeared with a single back workout! I now wonder whether something was out of alignment and the weighted stretching pulled everything back into place. Certainly seemed that way. I've been banging on about weight training to anyone that will listen for years!

My special tip: get some cheap bulk whey concentrate (cheaper than isolate and not really that much more calorific in the wider scheme of things) and bang down enough protein shakes to get your protein up to a reasonable level. I used to do 1 gram per pound of bodyweight per day, but looking back I think that was excessive. You also have to make sure you drink plenty of water whilst on a high protein diet, and obviously don't go into it if you have any history of kidney trouble. But seriously though - training vs training + protein is incomparable. Combine the two and watch your muscles expand.

</comment><comment><USER32> huh huh uhh huhuhuh uhhhh huhuhuhuhuhhh.</comment>


A few drawings about Linux - <AUTHOR> https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/11/10/a-few-drawings-about-linux/ <comment><USER2> The file/syscall abstraction breaks down when we want to do something as simple as copy and pasting from a spreadsheet to a text editor. This is not a slide that should be surrounded by happy people!

<comment><USER3> I opened LibreOffice Calc and pasted spreadsheet it into Writer window without a problem. :-/ I even able to edit it.

<comment><USER4> Well sure, I would hope so- if copying and pasting from one LibreOffice application to another didn't work that would be an even worse state of affairs.

<comment><USER3> Yep, pasting from Google spreadsheet into Notepad does not work. Hope is lost. :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Comparing Windows to Linux. I find Linux much more simpler. Is this by design? Why does Windows seem much more complicated and complex? Compare the Windows API to Linux API.

<comment><USER6> I think there's many reasons for this, but the top couple are imo:

\- Linux trusts their users to know what they are doing. They do not build layers of abstractions to make things "easy". These abstractions create complexity and just get in the way, especially if you know what you're doing technically.

\- There is significant influence on the technical decisions by nontechnical people for business, personal, and political goals. Quarterly profits are the main motivator for Windows development. If it turned out that abandoning Windows would make Microsoft more money, they would do it. With Linux, the incentive is to have a "good" operating system. Money is important in the sense that it keeps Linux dev healthy, but making money is not the primary objective of the project.

\- Because money is the main motivator, Windows is beholden to the people with the most cash. Often this is large enterprise organizations which make poor technical decisions. Microsoft in turn, must provide support for these technical decisions, forcing Microsoft itself to make poor technical decisions. I'm sure Windows developers would love if everyone stopped using old crufty tech from 2001, but since there's a lot of money riding on that tech, the show must go on.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that money is the problem here. Most Linux development is also money driven and most kernel developers nowadays are doing it to pay their bills. In a way, money can be a confirmation, to some degree, that you are actually providing value to someone.

In my opinion, the key is that Linux is libre software.

Windows has to deal with lots of old drivers and userland software that are arcane binary blobs. In the Linux world, most software running on it is libre and the community can evolve it to work with newer systems. This is specially true for drivers, since most drivers are GPL and kept in the kernel source tree. This promotes a healthier relationship between the companies and individuals involved where, through shared ownership, everybody is on the same boat.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but why does windows have to deal with old drivers and userland software? Because they are paid to do so! It is a business, if they didn't make money on it, they wouldn't do it.

On Linux, if no one wants to maintain the old driver, it doesn't get maintained and the manufacturer does it or people stop using it and use something else. Poof no more old driver!

Agreed on libre software, wouldn't be possible without that of course. But I think money has had a large impact as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These are amazing! So descriptive and easy to remember, I love learning stuff this way, thanks for making them!

</comment><comment><USER9> Note that hard disks are not aware of files. Files are a file system construct.

Your disk is like... music disks. You seek to a position, read... and when you read the position advances.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another signal that can't be caught is SIGSTOP

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought I knew a thing or two about linux, but I had no idea about /proc. Neat!</comment>


Mr. Big (Police procedure) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Big_(police_procedure) <comment><USER2> How is this not entrapment?

<comment><USER3> It seems that none of the tasks given are illegal - as IANAL, I have no idea how a cover story, e.g. "you are ferrying laundered money" would affect this.

<comment><USER2> Even "seducing" them to join a criminal organization in the first place? I don't know, the whole thing seems shady and to violate the spirit of the law if not the letter of it.

<comment><USER3> A fake criminal organization. But yeah, definitely not in the spirit of the law, even though it could be technically legal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Useful online tool determines if men are talking too much - <AUTHOR> http://www.avclub.com/article/useful-online-tool-determines-if-men-are-talking-t-240158 <comment><USER2> Geez, this is rather sexist towards men:

'If you have never thought to yourself "gee, there certainly are a lot of men speaking right now," then you are probably a man who is speaking right now, and you should maybe consider letting a woman speak.'

In other words of you don't see a problem in your particular environment, then you are automatically a problem man that just needs to shut up, facts be damned.</comment>


How FarmVille Scales to Harvest 75 Million Players a Month - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/2/8/how-farmville-scales-to-harvest-75-million-players-a-month.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HighScalability+%28High+Scalability%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> They use _cache components_ to scale their writes, since they have so many writes. I assume this means that instead of hitting disk for every write, data in the cache is updated instead, and asynchronously saved to disk. Really, this pattern should be generalized, in some sort of memcached extension/fork or something.

<comment><USER3> MySQL has this in the form of the startup option innodb_txn_commit. It performs all writes to memory and flushes them to disk in 1-second batches. It's a good way to scale up to 000's of writes per second per machine.

<comment><USER2> Nice, but when you're scaling to such a large size, you probably want to go NoSQL, unless you use MySQL as a key-value store (which I've heard of some people do).

Another thing: Many applications, can get away with updating to disk much less often, say every 30 seconds or even longer if appropriate. When a machine fails then, you lose 30 seconds worth of updates stored in that machine's RAM, which may be fine. For some applications, you could probably stand losing even a few minutes of updates on a failure, while gaining huge decreases in loads on disk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you could buffer writes. Tokyo Cabinet does this for instance as does Redis. There was an article on the mysql performance blog about Tokyo and how fsync()ing at 1Hz didn't adversely affect performance; there are other issues with TC but that's not my point.

I suppose a system where data _could_ be lost if buffered in RAM for up to 30s could replicate to other hosts in the cluster with the (perhaps naïve) intuition that the probability of > 1 hosts going down within the same 30s interval is low -- "someone's got the data somewhere!". Of course, if they are on the same source of power... :)

One could use a consistent hashing scheme as employed in Riak and others for read operations in such a setup and thus be a bit more fault-tolerant (hand waving a bit).

This is without any hard-earned experience with this other than reading... Thoughts?

<comment><USER2> I have no hard-earned experience with this myself. I've just been thinking about it myself a lot because I have a potentially write-intensive application in the works, and I'm anticipating aperformance issues with writes (but I should probably find out if it actually is an issue). My goal is to squeezing as much performance as I can from as few machines - I'm poor.

To explain my use case.. I'm basically storing a graph in MongoDB, which is a document/object based database. Reads would consist of enumerating a node's edges. Writes would be adding nodes/edges and updating edge weights. It would perform best on reads if I just had one contiguous object for each node, holding information about all nodes connected to it, as well as edge weights. But since some nodes may have too many connected nodes, they are divided in the database by the page they would show up on in the application, as ranked by edge weight. So an object with id 'node1page1' holds information about the top 10 ranked connecting nodes.

Now, if that made any sense, the problem: Edge weights change according to votes from users. So when a weight changes, ranks change, and I've structured things in such a way that the computation of ranks is basically pushed to the write rather than the read. So when someone checks 'node1page2' and votes a node on page 2 up, the corresponding edge weight changes and may require that node's information to be shifted to 'node1page1', while the lowest edge on 'node1page1' is to be shifted to 'node1page2'.

So what's happened here is that while I've made reads fast by requiring just a lookup, writes become complicated. And here's where the buffering of writes comes in. Perhaps I'm overthinking all this, but like I said, I'm poor.

Replication in-memory would definitely be useful, especially for a larger cluster with some spare capacity. You'd probably have good power redundancy when running a large cluster, so single machine failures would be much more common than a total cluster failure I'd think (no hard data here, but seems reasonable enough). So I don't think it's all that naive to believe that generally more than one host would not go down within 30s.

Even if the whole cluster does go down, you should only be doing this with low-value data. In my application's case, losing 30 seconds of votes is no big deal at all, I'd be much more concerned with getting the machine(s) back up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the same low-cost-seeking mode as you, self-funding a teeny "startup" for iPhone services (along with 1000s of other developers) including multiplayer gaming (along with 10s of others developers).

While I can get good dedicated server deals they are still too expensive to me. So I'm diving in deep to learn how to create a almost pure scale-out solution based on a larger (than dedicated) number of VPS instances. Something like

        inexpensive+commodity+more ≥ expensive+powerful+fewer

I really want to be able to have a script that watches load and dynamically adds more capacity. I'm not a fan of calling this "cloud" based but the ideas are pretty similar.

Good luck with your project! BTW, have you looked at Neo4j (which is a graph database that seems to get high marks)?

<comment><USER2> Good luck to you too! You've got an interesting approach to scaling, hope it works out (cheaply).

Yes, I've looked at Neo4j, and I would've tried that if it weren't for this (from their home page):

 _Neo4j is released under a dual free software/commercial license model (which basically means that it's "open source" but if you're interested in using it in commercially, then you must buy a commercial license)._

Thus MongoDB. I just heard of Riak the other day, and might check that out too since it has the concept of links built in. I'm also still early enough in the work that I can afford to switch still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wish there was more data offered!

Request-response, XHR, long-polling, "COMET" (blarg, I hate that moniker) when talking to the backend?

<comment><USER4> Isn't FarmVille a Flash game? If so, it presumably uses Flash XML sockets instead of Comet-style browser hacks.

<comment><USER5> We use AMF protocol as XML is slow to parse on the client

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing that. What are you using on the backend to handle all of those AMF connections? I'm not intimate with AMF but it seems there are at least 10 server implementations that support AMF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He said that they're using LAMP. I'd like to hear more about how they deal with schema updates and how they model their data in general.

<comment><USER7> As far as I know they... don't. MySQL is used more as a persistent store for bits, not as a relational database.</comment></comment>


Better slow than sorry – VirtualBox 3D acceleration considered harmful - <AUTHOR> https://phoenhex.re/2018-07-27/better-slow-than-sorry <comment><USER3> *VirtualBox considered harmful

Oracle recently started hunting our company for licenses due to the fact that the VB guest additions software phones home. Fail on us for not considering the license on the guest additions outside of the VirtualBox software.

Bye bye Vagrant! Time for a new workflow!

<comment><USER4> Every now and then I think my company is paranoid for having a blanket policy of never using a single thing from Oracle (even to extent of rejecting anything using BerkeleyDB, and only using OpenJDK) then I see things like this and it makes sense.

I wonder when Oracle poisoned this well (Fortune 100).

<comment><USER5> Ive been recommending that same thing for a while. Microsoft, too, if you can get away with it. It's why I won't build stuff on .NET and Java. They were already big on patent suits, BS licensing, and Business Software Alliance looking for snitches. Then, Oracle went for API's are under copyright ruling. Then, I _definitely_ wasn't gonna touch Oracle software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Personally, I consider it beneficial, as I'd want my games and software (that hasn't been ported to my OS of choice, but I still trust) to run as fast as possible. Not fully sandboxed != "harmful" to everyone.

Maybe "VirtualBox 3D acceleration not fully sandboxed" would be a more accurate, less sensationalist title?

</comment><comment><USER7> 3D acceleration has its own issues aside from the security concerns. [https://askubuntu.com/questions/1035410/ubuntu-18-04-gnome-h...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1035410/ubuntu-18-04-gnome- hangs-on-virtualbox-with-3d-acceleration-enabled)

<comment><USER8> Oh woops, I accidentally duplicated that question without realizing it a few weeks ago: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/458034/fullscreen-m...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/458034/fullscreen- mode-in-apps-causes-gnome-shell-to-hit-80-100-cpu-even-after-closin)

Took me ages to figure out it was virtual box that was the issue, not gnome or vscode. A shame, I liked my VM in Windows set up. Now I had to suffer through installing Ubuntu natively on a gen3 Thinkpad x1 yoga which has been a new class of nightmare thanks to Lenovo nuking critical sleep functionality:[https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/X1-Carbon- Gen-...](https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/X1-Carbon-Gen-6-cannot- enter-deep-sleep-S3-state-aka-Suspend-to/td-p/3998182/page/19)

Getting my tools _just like I like them_ always has such an exhausting spin-up time.

<comment><USER9> I've been pleasantly surprised with how well Linux subshell for Windows has been working

<comment><USER7> This will work but then you have to find a system to test on, I like to have my dev vm as close to production as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I ask this in sincerity; in Linux land, what is a good alternative to VirtualBox? Are there any that can do proper 3D acceleration to play games at a reasonable speed?

<comment><USER11> On linux you could try QEMU/KVM with GPU passthrough - install virtmanager for GUI. Easy with a desktop, difficult to do, but possible on Optimus laptops with - so you need the right kind of integrated and dedicated GPU there - <USER2> this guide [https://gist.github.com/Misairu-G/616f7b2756c488148b7309addc...](https://gist.github.com/Misairu-G/616f7b2756c488148b7309addc940b28). Easy, but expensive route for a laptop, on a more modern laptop, would be to attach a eGPU enclosure via thunderbolt and share/passthrough that to your VM.

If you are considering doing your VM's on a server then it's worth a look at Unraid too - it uses QEMU/KVM under the hood but has some other advantages too.

Edit: you are likely to lose a little GPU 2-3% due to vm overhead, but GPU passthrough is as close to native as you are going to get. I've happily run a high end VR headset via a Windows VM running on Unraid in the past.

<comment><USER12> I had a similar setup about a year back.

Running a Ubuntu Host with KVM, passing through an NVIDIA 970 to a Windows host. Yea...the GPU performance was fast, but everything else was so slow compared to running native. I think my biggest issue was with disk R/W, especially when memory pressure went up from the VM the system bogged down to a halt. After that, my biggest problems were with the fact that after the Windows host turned off, the GPU was stuck in the weird state where you can't reset it ( I know its a feature™ from Nvidia) and the Keyboard / Mouse would flake since I would attach the whole USB root to the VM as well.

In the end just decided to install back Windows and not have to deal with it.

<comment><USER13> QEMU recently got multi-threaded I/O. It used to be single threaded and that caused a lot of performance issues.

<comment><USER14> By recently do you mean 2 to 3 years ago with a simple toggle?

Say hello to distributions not providing latest releases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If this worries you go ahead and disable WebGL too.

<comment><USER16> Frankly, might not be such a bad idea.

[https://www.contextis.com/blog/webgl-more-webgl-security- fla...](https://www.contextis.com/blog/webgl-more-webgl-security-flaws) etc

<comment><USER17> tl;dr

> However, to enable this impressive breakthrough in online technology, web > browsers (currently Chrome and Firefox) have had to expose low level parts > of their operating systems which previously could not be directly accessed > by potentially malicious web pages, thus creating a number of potential > security vulnerabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > One could argue that technically this component might not be considered > attack surface in VirtualBox, due to the big warning put out in the > documentation recommending against its use ...

Yes, that was my reaction.

<comment><USER18> The current situation seems perfectly fine to me. In reality, lots of people are using VirtualBox for completely trusted virtual machines so why not allow 3D acceleration for that use case?

<comment><USER17> Can a VM with Internet connectivity be considered "completely trusted"?

<comment><USER18> As much as a host with Internet connectivity can be considered "completely trusted".

<comment><USER19> I would have thought that vms allow the system to reset back to a known clean state, so you can freely allow it to perform malicious actions such as installing unknown wares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If u do not need 3D, I strongly suggest moving to lxd. Using in kernel security and it is very light. Couple it to zfs and it runs 100 containers for a measily 15 GB RAM.

<comment><USER14> In kernel insecurity you mean. Lxd escape is trivial, might not use a container anyway if security is the goal.

Xen with driver domains and (only just started) similar support in KVM is about the kit reasonable thing from security point of view. Maybe VMware but that cannot be studied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The only valid safety model is airgapped computers, stripped of any networking equipment, fed data only using dedicated thumbdrives coming from another computer running a different OS

VM are a problem waiting to happen.

<comment><USER22> Considering all of the issues with usb, you'd be better off using floppy disks or optical drives for data transfer to this hypothetical 'secure' system.

> VM are a problem waiting to happen.

Something something security threat model and personal risk tolerance...

<comment> white-flame RS232 would probably be usable and convenient for said hypothetical setup as well. Don't run PPP or anything; manually initiate transfers on both sides.

<comment><USER23> You can pop a box over serial if that serial connection allows you to execute arbitrary code. Buffer overflows happen in surprising places.

<comment><USER24> Of course. But the baseline stack of hardware and software for RS232 is (or at least can be) significantly simpler. USB and Ethernet are nightmares by comparison, and that's before considering the additional protocols that invariably sit between those low-level transports and your application.

For a project idea I've been considering how to attach a sensitive (but powerful) machine to the network with the smallest possible interface (in terms of code exposure). RS232 is probably the simplest yet still functional without getting into niche hardware standards.

On balance I think USB might be worse than Ethernet[2] or even Ethernet+TCP/IP just because typical network stacks have probably seen more scrutiny than USB stacks. But at the end of the day I know I'm going to want to use something like seL4 to protect the application from the transport stack(s). And even then you still have to worry about the hardware. There's a real dilemma in choosing the simplest hardware that is still viable in terms of performance, support (including ease of porting or writing drivers), and long-term availability.

[1] Assuming a simple ethernet controller with all the fancy features disabled or, ideally, not even present.

<comment><USER23> Remember that someone found out how to exploit the Nintendo NES using only the official _controller_ just by pressing buttons at very specific times.

[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/01/pokemon-plays- twitch-...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/01/pokemon-plays-twitch-how-a- robot-got-irc-running-on-an-unmodified-snes/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nix, the purely functional build system - <AUTHOR> http://www.boronine.com/2018/02/02/Nix/ <comment><USER2> The "purely functional" part goes out of the window with the introduction of post-install scripts.</comment>


Do People Really Think Earth Might Be Flat? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/do-people-really-think-earth-might-be-flat/ <comment><USER3> The survey question asked was not whether people currently believe the earth is flat. They asked, "Have you always believed it is round?" Those are not the same question, and people could be answering based on childhood/pre-school beliefs. Unless they dig deeper, it is hard to say why people gave a negative answer.

<comment><USER4> I agree, the question was just badly worded. I would answer "other" to "I have always believed the world is round." Like everyone I began in ignorance and only later was educated enough to "believe the world is round." The world looks flat at first glance. It is a surprise that the world is a sphere. It's a great lesson for all of us to review first impressions in light of other evidence.

<comment><USER5> Also, pedantically, the true shape is more accurately an oblate spheroid.

<comment><USER6> I would call an oblate spheroid "round".

<comment><USER7> I'd also call a pancake round. Terminology is important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> YouGov said that lots of millennials think the world is flat. But when Scientific American asked for the poll data, it didn't make sense – and YouGov didn't want to talk about it.

<comment><USER9> Bravo. Full summary in two sentences!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The New Yorker had a good piece about people who attend the annual flat earth convention: [https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for- life-...](https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-life-on-a- flat-earth)

>> He described the modern flat-Earth community as a confluence of three strains of thought. "There's the conspiratorial," he said. "It's like, 'That's kind of weird with the moon landing. Maybe I'll look into it. What else could they be lying about?' " The second is "the scientific-minded," people who "just want to go out and do the experiments." The third, Davidson said, "is the spiritual—people that want to say, 'Wait a minute, what would happen if I took the Bible literally?' " In style and substance, the flat-Earth movement is a close cousin of creationism.

</comment><comment><USER11> "The earth is flat (p > 0.05): significance thresholds and the crisis of unreplicable research"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502092/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502092/)

<comment><USER12> Great link. In finance, people make trading decisions even when p is .15

<comment><USER13> So if they roll a six they go for it?

<comment><USER12> The point is that nothing is certain, and you take educated risks with appropriate management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems to me they should interview a bunch of the people who gave each answer and ask they why they believe as they do. Without that we are just speculating. In fact, we might find out that for many the answer they gave to the survey didn't even mean what it seems to.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here are a couple of images I was given by an Aerospace Engineer recently. I don't know if he was trolling me or not, so I provide them without further comment.

[https://imgur.com/a/GoEzEdl](https://imgur.com/a/GoEzEdl)

[https://imgur.com/a/zZS3nti](https://imgur.com/a/zZS3nti)

<comment><USER16> The first one:

If you zoom in close enough, the horizon looks flat. (Alternatively, the plane is not high enough for the earth to look round with that focal length)

The second one:

All that matters is that Mercury isn't in the line between the Sun and the Earth. Take a look here [0] to see that there are times when Mercury's orbit would be visible from Earth.

Even then, I'm not sure why the Earth being flat would have anything to do with Mercury's visibility, since it would still be visible even if the Earth were flat.

[0] [http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680Fa09/Yoon/EMAT%206690/Fir...](http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680Fa09/Yoon/EMAT%206690/First%20Task/3rd%20page%20-%20find%20orbit%20mercury/plotorbitmercury.html)

<comment><USER17> > Even then, I'm not sure why the Earth being flat would have anything to do > with Mercury's visibility, since it would still be visible even if the Earth > were flat.

They're trying to imply that a spherical Earth would prevent a visible Mercury at night. It's still nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At least The Man Will Never Fly Society knows the Earth is round - <USER2> the Greyhound buses would fall off the edge.

<comment><USER13> That's not true at all, the Earth could be toroidal, which allows for a flat embedding.

<comment><USER19> Maybe it's worth mentioning that this flat embedding is a consequence of the Nash embedding theorem. The same Nash as in the Nash equilibrium, or in A Beautiful Mind.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My guess is definitely _Why, then, are younger people more likely to be uncertain or ambivalent? Perhaps they are more likely to offer frivolous or ironic responses, as Earther's Brian Kahn suggests..._

I think the concept of honestly answering pollsters was in decline before the Millenials came around. The idea that a statistically singifcant fraction reacted along the lines of, "why are you asking me such a stupid question, yeah sure, I have doubts, hehehehe..." seems plausible.

<comment><USER21> Yeah - I remember in the 90s loads of people put their religion as Jedi in the UK census.

People just like to take the piss.</comment></comment>