Redditors share the way the world was 20 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/esid8/from_sex_to_phones_to_star_wars_what_would_older/

<comment><USER2> About twenty years ago I was trolling around the Internet explaining how Microsoft was going to screw over IBM and OS/2. I went by melling back then too:

<http://www.skytel.co.cr/advocacy/research/1991/0817.html>

And for hacking fun, I was enamored with Steve Jobs' NeXT computer. Among other things, I worked on the Tetris port:

<http://www.artizia.com/tetris/contributors.html>

A year later, I found my first developer job via the Internet and ended up in the NYC area. About a year out of college I bought a used 386 computer, got Linux running and a PPP connection, then I was back on the Internet.

Today, the Internet is just bigger and faster, while Steve's NeXT computer fits in your front shirt pocket.

</comment><comment><USER3> > We played _outside_ (there was nothing to do inside anyway)

Having happily spent hours playing with the dirt under a bush in my front yard with Star Wars action figures when I was young, lost in my imagination, aided by props, I lament the complete shift that has occurred for many kids. It's a sea change, and I was ecstatic recently when my toddler niece played in the dirt on my watch - only got caught because she got dirt on her cheeks - I hope she never loses that curiousity - her parents were away...

Now my nephews - my sister has successfully resisted the introduction of video games for at least six years - hope she can continue to fight. For when the video game console gets in, it will change expectations forever.

<comment><USER4> > my sister has successfully resisted the introduction of video games for at > least six years - hope she can continue to fight.

idk. I bought my son a Nintendo DS when he turned 3 (reward for potty training). I'm really glad I did as he's already showing off some cool mathematical and logical thinking ability. There's good games and bad games, plusses and minuses as with everything. I think the key is variety and moderation.

<comment><USER5> Where are you from? The US?

Is it normal to do potty training so late?

<comment><USER6> Talk about shaping the evidence to suit your hypothesis.

<comment><USER5> I don't know. I recently borrowed a book from a co-worker, a young mother, about potty-training. They talked about different approaches in different parts of the world. The author was American, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to cross-check what she wrote. (And most people on HN are from the US, that's why I assumed so.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 20 years ago today people were very scared about what was about to happen to the Middle East. This was about two weeks before the first Gulf War erupted, and a lot of people thought (correctly) that Iraq would try to drag Israel into it.

I remember two technological developments that year: I saw email for the first time at the Boston public broadcaster WGBH, and one of the larger American airlines installed phones in the backs of economy seats (I still see them every now and then, but don't think they work anymore). The calls were expensive as hell.

Some people had car phones, and "beepers" had spread out from professional occupations to youth culture (the Tribe Called Quest song "Sky Pager" references this) but I did not know anyone who had a mobile phone in the US in 1990. I saw my first mobile phone in London in 1991.

GUIs were very widespread on campuses, but there were still a surprising amount of command-line based software being used in the workplace. At one of my first jobs at a UK record label in 1991 they had me using Word Perfect (?) which involved green text on a black screen, and lots of keyboard shortcuts. Aside from the email example mentioned earlier, every business I dealt with in 1990-1991 used faxes or the post to send documents.

EDIT: added beeper/mobile phone/GUI/fax recollections

</comment><comment><USER8> A few odd couple short of 20 years ago, but nevertheless, Linux was a new wonder to me. Red Hat CDs came packaged with issues of a computer magazine. This was in India. 7 KB/sec was fast, and it lasted a burst or two per day. Was absolutely new to programing. Wrote a p2p service for sharing rpm packages, because downloading them from upstream was so slow. Wrote it in TCL, it went nowhere. But a few snippets of that code found its way into the tcl library.

Laser printers were a frightfully expensive piece of equipment and wasting toner bothered me. So went through ghostscript code to realize for the first time how beautiful code can truly be. Patched a part of the driver to handle economy mode.

Had it not been for FSF and open-source, I would perhaps have never learned programming. I did not major in CS, but for those who did, without FSF it would have been unaffordable.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hmm.. I'm not that old (I'm 23) and a lot of this stuff was also normal when I was a kid. I wonder if things are _that_ different for 8 year olds now (the stuff about being a kid and getting into trouble, I mean).

I had to dress up to go to church.

From the time I can remember forward, the rule was that I just had to be home...eventually. I couldn't actually spend the _night_ in the woods, but I could explore them to my heart's content.

I rode my bicycle _everywhere_. I rode my bike to school starting the summer of 4th grade, 3 miles each way down a highway and through town, but I didn't even get killed a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER10> _If you wanted to know something, there was no Google or Wikipedia. You might be able to find out a basic fact if you had a set of encyclopedias. But most information, from important stuff to basic trivia ("who was in that movie?") was not available unless you had a reference book or went to the library and really searched._

Rumors, lies, media manipulation, thwarted by a few seconds of research. If more people bothered, it would be a better world.

Off topic, but obligatory Monty Python piece <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo>

<comment><USER11> SEO and its opposite, Googlewash [1]. Writing on the Googlewashing episode in the New York Times, Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg warned [2] that:

The rankings give disproportionate weight to opinions of the activists and enthusiasts that may be at odds with the views of the larger public. It's as if the United Nations General Assembly made all its decisions by referring the question to whichever nation cares most about the issue: the Swiss get to rule on watchmaking, the Japanese on whaling.

That seems quite prophetic now. And there are links between gaming the system for political gain then and now. [3]

Oh, and the feedback loop [4].

[1] [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/04/03/antiwar_slogan_coine...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/04/03/antiwar_slogan_coined_repurposed/)

[2] <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/weekinreview/18NUNB.html>

[3] [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/28/web_politics_how_rea...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/28/web_politics_how_real/)

[4] [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/26/britannica_slaps_goo...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/26/britannica_slaps_google/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's the "20 years go" bit about? It's not in TFA's title.

Twenty years ago was (late) 1990, not $700 VCRs, no video games, or people kicked off of airplanes for wearing sweatpants.

</comment><comment><USER13> > No Facebook or email. Long distance calling was expensive... Sundays were > the days to call family and friends, because rates were cheaper.

I remember as a kid being told by my father to go play somewhere else, because I was bothering my mother who was on the phone _long distance._

Even when I went to college in 1999, I remember it being an issue since not everyone's cell plan featured long distance included, but everyone came with a cell phone that had a number local to their hometown. People would end up racking up long distance charges on their cell phones just to call a friend in the next building over.

Thought: mobile data charges are the next generation's "long distance" (or are at least headed that way).

<comment><USER14> Yes, I'm currently paying $15/Megabyte on my iPhone. Nobody in Vancouver (Virgin, Rogers, Bell, Telus) is willing to sell me a "Pay-as-you-go MiFi) for a reasonable rate (< $200) - so I ended up buying a rogers Rocket-Stick for $150 and putting data on it, one day at a time for $15 @ 1 Gigabyte/day (or $5 for 50 megabytes/day - how's that for a curve), connecting to it from my MacBook Air for all my data needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The original poster is talking about way more than 20 years ago, as far as I can tell. It looks like his items cover a range, going as far back as 40 or 50 years ago, up to about 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER14> " People lined up at banks on Fridays, to deposit their paychecks and withdraw cash for the weekend. If you ran out of cash over the weekend, too bad."

Not in 1990, that's for sure. Heck, in _1981_ we had ATMs all over my small town of Vernon, BC. Wikipedia (which _wasn't_ around in 1990, and I would sorely miss) tells me the first ATMs came into the United states around 1969 - and browsing through that article, the appear to be fairly common by 1975)

<comment><USER16> It was at least the early 90s before the first ATM showed up in the large central PA town I grew up in. I still remember waiting for the mail on Thursday for my dad's paycheck. My mom would sign his name and we'd go to the bank, same teller every week, and get $100 in cash and the rest into the checking account.

<comment><USER14> Okay, name the town with > 2000 people in the United States that didn't have an ATM until 1990. I'm genuinely curious as to how that came about.

<comment><USER16> It was Altoona, PA and in 1990 the population was somewhere in the 50,000 range. I'm not saying there were no ATMs just that I remember when they put the first one in at our bank. It was a big deal that they were giving out ATM cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Aww, I remember the outside.

Seriously though, I'm grateful to my brother who's kept my nephews on a strict time limit and filter when it comes to TV and video games. They play outside and put their amazing imaginations to use.

</comment><comment><USER18> You don't even have to be that old to remember most of that. Except for milk deliveries, well-dressed for airplane trips, and a few other things on there I remember how things were...

If you think about it, it's all before super cheap labor/parts from China, not just a technological gap.

One of my more earlier memories is standing in line for Star Wars. It went clear around a building or two and as a child it was the most spectacular thing to see that many people in a row.

Oh and I remember being given a nickel to buy a bagel. Damn I've gotten old :-(

</comment><comment><USER19> This article is mostly only relevant to people under 20.

In my opinion, the real generation gap begins close to the current age of 22. People 22 or younger very likely had the internet in Elementary schools, a computer before they entered middle school (probably with the internet), video systems with 3D accelerators, broadband before they got out of high school, and Wikipedia for the entirety of their college career, among other things.

<comment><USER16> I remember the day a 56kbps frame relay circuit was installed in our house in 1997. It was connected back to my dad's office and I could use it to access the Internet via their connection. It was amazing the day that I didn't have to dial anything.

I think I was the only person who was in my freshman college class in 1998 that knew you didn't need disk up to connect to the Internet. Sharing that single T1 with 2000 other students sucked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The nostalgia in this article really bothers me, in some ways. Maybe I'm just oversensitive, but it just seems like there's a lot of unacknowedged white male bias. Where are the women talking about how incredibly sexist everyday society was, or the black people talking about open, shameless racism?

I am about to take off on a plane so I don't have much else to say, but this was really bothering me.

<comment><USER21> > Where are the women talking about how incredibly sexist everyday society > was, or the black people talking about open, shameless racism?

Really?

How about today's white self-hatred? I lived in Japan for quite a time, and it is a breath of fresh air not to year people go on and on about how ashamed you should be because god gave you a white skin (and that all social ills of other groups are due to you).

<comment><USER20> I think that's orthogonal to my point. All I was saying was that many of the answers presented only a majority view of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, and that if you were to ask women and blacks what they thought, you might see some different answers.

Maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough, but I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out that you're only seeing one side of the story.

> year [sic] people go on and on about how ashamed you should be because god > gave you a white skin (and that all social ills of other groups are due to > you).

Also, maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong crowd, or don't watch enough CNN, but I have never experienced this in my life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> About 25 to 30 years ago:

\- I got my first computer: an Atari 400 computer with 16k of RAM and no storage, so I would write a program and then just turn it off. The OS and a BASIC interpreter also fit in that 16k so it wasn't hard to write a program that would be too big to fit into memory.

\- The APPLE ][ was a spark of pure genius. The first time I played with it, it changed my life. I would walk a couple miles to the computer store on weekends so I could work on one. (I rememeber the Lisa and then Macintosh coming out and somehow not being impressed.)

\- Software piracy was rampant. Software was sold through publishers, like books.

\- Elephant memory was the cool makers of floppy disks. I had this big poster in my room: [http://home.comcast.net/~kevin_d_clark/ems/ems-mag- ad-2-smal...](http://home.comcast.net/~kevin_d_clark/ems/ems-mag- ad-2-small.jpg)

\- My first modem was 300 baud. That was so slow, it took a second or so for each character to appear.

</comment><comment><USER23> 20 years ago today, I was getting ready to head back to my final semester of my undergrad in CompSci. I had just completed my last course that used the IBM 370 with Modula-2 (the base language for UND at the time). The Internet for me was mostly mailing lists and USENET. I so wanted a NeXT cube but there was no way I could afford it. My last papers were completed on a Mac SE/30. No class I had touched a GUI. The one class that had Lisp was a nightmare because the VAX had too little memory so the REPL became batch processing with 2 or more students working at the same time. The only computer I bought was an Atari 130xe to replace my old 400, and all it was used for was electronic fun with the joystick/paddle ports (or the occasional MULE game).

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm 17 and this makes me wonder what my generation will write about in 20 years. Pretty crazy how many things change in such a short period of time.

</comment><comment><USER25> No one mentioned burning ants with a magnifying glass.

</comment><comment><USER26> I made a database for my LP's (and maybe a CD or two) in Turbo Pascal on my dad's laptop. Yes, he had a laptop. It was a Compaq with a 386DX20 and a grayscale screen. I didn't really know any sorting algorithms so I came up with the world's worst bubblesort. I think it was O(n³), possibly O(n⁴).

Note: my memory is a bit fuzzy, this might have happened anywhere from 1990-1993.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One comment talks about "rewinding cassette tapes".

<comment><USER23> The "spin it using a pen" technique was the true winner.

<comment><USER27> Until you did one spin wrong and it would start spinning the other way :)

It's interesting though that the most common 6-sided pencil would fit perfectly for the cassettes. Had the hole been just a bit bigger or smaller and it wouldn't have worked.

I remember a friend in junior high using a pen to rewind to spare his walkman batteries…

<comment><USER23> We did it because Pioneer car stereos took forever to rewind. They went faster on fast forward then the rewind (so flip, ff, flip). I really wish I could get a transcript of the meeting that affected the rewind speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Almost everything in this discussion can be simulated by not having digital appliances: No instant communications, photos, information, banking, trade, or travel.

Basically:

You had to be more diligent when taking care of business; You had to be clean when going places (no pajamas on a plane); There was no bull __ __security theatre when travelling; There were fewer distractions for children.

</comment><comment><USER29> 20 years ago I was about 2 months old. I don't remember shit.</comment>


Mrjob: A Python 2.5+ package that helps you write and run Hadoop Streaming jobs - <AUTHOR> http://pythonhosted.org/mrjob/ <comment><USER2> Oh hey, I work on this. It's come up on HN before, sometimes with misinformation attached. I'm happy to answer questions.

<comment><USER3> You may want to actually link to the project GitHub on your "Contribute" page

<comment><USER2> Good point. [https://github.com/Yelp/mrjob/pull/677](https://github.com/Yelp/mrjob/pull/677)

(merged.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> MrJob is great. If you do not want to run full blown Hadoop and are not using Amazon, Gearman is also a great alternative.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know how this framework stacks up against Dumbo (Last.fm) and/or Pydoop? I've used Dumbo before and had great luck.

With Dumbo, the only problem is the lack of consolidated documentation. Much of the knowledge is lost in the maintainer's blog

<comment><USER6> (original author of mrjob here)

Steve's post is 100% correct. I originally wrote mrjob as an internal tool at yelp out of my frustration with using dumbo for multi-step jobs. Specifically, I found myself writing the same incantation of "wrap a mapper / reducer function with an encoding scheme" over and over again. I tried to add protocol support into dumbo (so you could specify that your job reads json, uses pickle for intermediate data, and writes thrift), but I had a hard time working with the dumbo codebase (disclaimer: I haven't looked at it since, so it might be easy to do this now). I also wanted to represent mappers and reducers as python generators, which makes writing memory-performant steps natural (eg you normally want to rely on the shuffle / sort to perform the hard work of aggregating by key). Finally, I wanted my jobs to be easy to test both from unittest and from the command line - debugging hadoop streaming jobs is way more of a pain in the ass than it should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would be nice to have something multilanguage for users of minority languages (Erlang, Haskell, or Lisp.)

<comment><USER2> It's actually pretty close. It's theoretically possible for mrjob to run a script written in any language as long as it supports a simple stdin/stdout protocol. We just don't have any users dedicated enough to implement that stuff.

Also, you can write a very small Python script that uses subprocess to call your script. That way you can still use mrjob to set up all your dependencies and handle AWS for you. If anyone is actually interested in that sort of thing, I'd be willing to write a tutorial.</comment></comment>


The Synthesizer Academy - <AUTHOR> http://synthesizeracademy.com/ <comment><USER2> I dunno, the classic Sound On Sound "synth secrets" covers all this and more, in a lot more detail IMO

[http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm](http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, a lot of this information is pretty low-value relative to the Sound On Sound stuff. What good is it to know the difference in how a square wave and triangle wave look, if you don't understand how they sound different and why you might prefer one to the other? The "synth secrets" series is much more technical and showing its age, but it's comprehensive.

<comment><USER4> It also helps to have a real or soft synth in front of you so you can tweak knobs and play around as you go If you don't have anything, my recommendation is ZynAddSubFX. It is an amazing free synth with enough knobs to do almost anything

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A fascinating read that I rarely see mentioned in these kind of threads is Rick Snoman's Dance Music Manual - for anyone interested in synths and their role in electronic music, it provides tons of information on the when/where/why/how various synth techniques became popular in different styles of dance music and gives good introductory information on how to take the raw synth components you can create in software or hardware (waveforms, filters, envelopes, etc) and turn them into the kinds of sounds common in various dance music genres.

The book is written with a slant towards the aspiring dance music producer, but, it should be plenty interesting for anyone who wants to have a bit more musical interest in synthesis beyond the purely mathematical angle.

<comment><USER6> I love that book, covers the whole chain of tools including samplers, sequencers, arpeggiators, DAWs etc. Also Shepard "Refining Sound" steps people thru oscillators, LFO's, envelope, filter/resonance and after effects. Great books.

Some other classic books are Welsh's Cookbooks (i think there are 2), and those by Miller Puckette (the guy who wrote Max), Martin Russ, Perry Cook, Allen Strange, Mark Jenkins, Mark Vail. I'm forgetting a few.

Or you could just buy a mopho/tetra, microbrute, bass station2, MS20 mini, ms2000, minilogue, sh201, jp8000 etc and start watching youtube tuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The hands down best way to learn about synthesis is Syntorial [http://syntorial.com](http://syntorial.com). It's paid but it's well worth it.

<comment><USER8> Syntorial looks like it will teach you how to use existing synthesis software, but won't be that useful if you want to write your own?

<comment><USER7> How do you want to write your own without understanding how synthesis works?

<comment><USER9> I hope he tries his hand at building an AM analogue synth.

<comment><USER10> I started on that journey about 18 months ago. It took me five months to have a useful software instrument, and I've spent the remaining time learning how to fab a suitable hardware controller.

Within the software, the hardest parts were understanding and controlling aliasing and getting a virtual ladder filter to perform well.

I already knew how to play piano, had a little music theory, and had spent a few hours playing with other people's analog synths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you like this I can recommend you to look into the raw audio format [1]. It is a very simple format but it helped me a lot to learn about digital audio.

Just take your fav programming language (I took PHP) and write some bits to a file:

      $file = fopen('output.s16', 'w');
      $amp = returnANiceSynthValue();
      fwrite($file, pack('s', $amp));

[1] [http://www.fmtz.com/misc/raw-audio-file- formats](http://www.fmtz.com/misc/raw-audio-file-formats)

</comment><comment><USER12> Yeah actually the csound manual not only has all this and more but csound is open source and free all the examples run right there in the browser thanks to asm.js and can be run locally, but this seems like a nice intro for synth beginners who may only have a hardware synth for reference.

<comment><USER13> i would be a great moment to post a link to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> thanks - this looks really good (as a producer - www.soundcloud.com/decklyn )

Bookmarked - will read!</comment>


Google spends $72 Million on Food - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/googles_ginormous_food_budget_7530_per_googler

<comment><USER2> I used to think spending outlandish sums on employees was a bit silly...until I actually did the math.

A lot of people choose to work at Google over working at Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Yahoo, etc. Let's face it, if you can get a job at Google, you can get a job at most of those other places. But, Google pays a lower salary than all of those places for the same position. The way they make Google a more attractive place to work is all of the _other_ non-salary compensation and the general vibe.

Even if they spend $30/day/employee on food (I was also shocked by the snack cost alone, which I've heard from folks inside Google...all those $3 juices and such add up fast), it's still not all that big of a deal compared to the thousands they don't spend on salary.

Likewise for the dual monitors, Steelcase Leap chairs, and the ergonomics team that Google employs to keep their employees sitting and working comfortably for longer hours.

All of this stuff probably comes close to making the cost per employee as high as Microsoft, Yahoo and Sun pay...and yet, Google still gets first pick of the best talent. And it's not because Google employees get to work on cooler stuff --they don't. A large percentage of Googlers work on really boring crap. Building tools to sell ads and scaling them out to a massive scale is probably not an exciting development job.

Everybody at this point is probably wondering why MS, Yahoo, and Sun don't just start doing all of the stuff that Google does, and make their workplace as cool and attractive as Google. They can't, of course, because they'd have to lower salaries for everyone in order to open the budget for it (or lock everyone into their current salary for the next couple of years and eat the losses until inflation catches up). And, of course, that would lead to a mass exodus...because nobody will accept a pay cut.

Say what you will about Google, but the whole food+massages+snacks+etc. thing is genius on a whole new scale from the recruiting and employee satisfaction perspective. And, since they make $1 million per employee (a number beaten only by Exxon and a few others) they can afford to spend a few grand each year shoveling food into their employees to keep them feeling fat and happy.

<comment><USER3> Don't know if it really makes sense for companies like MSFT to follow these tactics. Microsoft has around 80,000 employees compare to 16K employees at google. Besides, I think, average age of Microsoft employees is higher than google employees. Free food is not as lucrative for a middle age family man as compare to a new grad.

I heard from MSFT old timers that though Microsoft never had free food, they were quite lenient with food in their early days.

However, you have a point, in my opinion google has able to attract best tallent. Not sure how much free food accounts for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The statistic I heard was $20/day. And there have been cutbacks over the years -- one day they removed a lot of the more exotic snacks and replaced them with bigger bins of bulk cereals. Oh, the outrage on internal mailing lists that day!

Google's cafes are so efficient so I wonder how much the labor really adds to the cost. You have chefs and line workers that could work in a high-end restaurant, so salaries are higher, but it's all set up for maximum throughput, so perhaps that makes it cheap.

For example, at Yahoo's cafes, there's a lot of made-to-order stuff. You end up waiting up to 10 minutes sometimes, and there are lineups. Everything at Google is premade food done buffet style, or self-serve, like a sandwich bar. At Yahoo I have waited for a long time for someone else to make the sandwich, and sometimes that person doesn't speak English well enough for me to make her understand that no, I don't actually want meat in the sandwich.

The Google taqueria is made-to-order, but that is run like an assembly line and you add your own condiments at the end.

In the boldest move, Google does away with the checkout line too, which makes throughput incredibly fast. Finally, for whatever reason, Googlers are more conscientious about cleaning their plates before returning them to the cafe. Yahoo has the same sorts of prominently placed garbage cans, but nobody seems to use them.

The only reason that getting food at Google might take you more than 3 minutes are

a) lines -- a growing problem

b) indecision because everything looks so great.

Caveat: this is my experience circa 2005-6.

</comment><comment><USER5> The relevant statistic is not the aggregate they arrived at, but the per capita cost they started with. Even $30/day is incredibly cheap considering how much it boosts productivity. Not only do people stay at work longer if they can eat for free, but they _don't have to worry about food_ and can just focus on getting things done.

I had lunch at the Googleplex yesterday and thought, "All big companies should do this." Maybe small ones, too.

<comment><USER6> I feel a bit awkward for asking but I keep on seeing posts by people who have eaten lunch at Google, but how do you do that... Do you have to know someone there, just walk in, go on a tour?

<comment><USER7> mhartl is YC SFP'08 applicant. May be he is working out a deal with Google ;)

<comment><USER5> Close. I'm a WFP'08 founder.

<comment><USER7> Thats right, you said you are _launching_ in a week, not getting _selected_ in a week. My bad.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which iPad 2 should I get? - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/3716727900 <comment><USER2> I really thought that this would be a parody or joke about the ipad. I was sadly mistaken.

<comment><USER3> I'm still not sure if it's parody or not. Isn't this the same guy that goes on about the Paradox of Choice ruining Android?

 _Too Much Hardware Choice_

<http://www.marco.org/2730711751>

 _"People hate choosing between similar things. The more choice we have at the time of purchase, the more stress we feel making the choice, and the less satisfied we feel afterward because we're worried that we made the wrong choice."_</comment></comment>


Schema liberation with JSON and plv8 (and Postgres) - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/selenamarie/schema-liberation-with-json-and-plv8-and-postgres

<comment><USER2> Here's the dropbox link, since speakerdeck appears to be stalled processing the pdf: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/vc2oheabr5s1x11/schema%20liberatio...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/vc2oheabr5s1x11/schema%20liberation%20with%20json%20and%20plv8.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> "And, developer-friendly features make it incredibly easy to transform your existing, normalized schemas into liberated JSON ones!" Ugh

I love PostgreSQL, but now it seems infected with a strain of this NoSQL bullsh!t. The quote from the MongoDB documentation is telling, because it is junk, as is this 'liberation' of schema. PostgreSQL is sufficiently flexible and powerful to not need this abrogation of proper design to succeed, except in some imagined competition with 'noSQL' solutions.</comment>


Interactive Real-Time Volume Visualization in HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.my-ride-home.com/2011/01/volume-rendering-with-css-3d-transforms/

<comment><AUTHOR> Uses CSS3 transforms and a few lines of JavaScript to render a volumetric 128x128x128 dataset. Use the mouse (desktop) or touch (iOS) to manipulate rotation. Give a little time to load the dataset!

Successfully tested on Safari/OSX and iOS browsers. To my biggest surprise not working in Firefox and broken in Chrome.</comment>


Russian Propaganda, IRA and How to Hack Society Through Social Media - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/privateid-blog/information-warfare-russian-propaganda-ira-and-how-to-hack-society-through-social-media-edad2c878df6 <comment><USER2> It reads like "people are voting different than I would have. Clearly they are manipulated by evil powers", and suggests giving up privacy and trusting governments & corporations. No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> everyone on social media needs a license.</comment>


India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear - <AUTHOR> http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1023053 <comment><USER3> Something I noticed while in India myself, which may help explain (not excuse) _some_ of the behavior (please note I am not discounting the author's perspective at all):

I'm a little over 6 feet, blond hair and green eyes, and when I and my family were visiting India (Mumbai and a few other areas around Maharashtra), we got stared at really, really hard. Like everyone around us literally stopping on the street and doing nothing but stare.

It was unnerving, naturally, and I asked my brother and his (now) wife about it, since they had been living there for about a year. They told me, and I later observed for myself, that this type of looking and curiosity is part of how Indians generally are. It's very honest, very unapologetic, and once you get over the taboo of the stare, very disarming. It's not just visiting Westerners either - they stare at each other, watch each other honestly, will walk across the street to get a better look, and crowd around something interesting. I saw it constantly and eventually understood it as a lack of interpersonal barriers that arise in a highly individualistic society. Everything is shared because in a city of 15-20 million people, there's hardly any space apart. People in major metro areas understand some aspect of this but it's hard to really grasp unless you're there.

The problem, of course, arises when this lack of barriers combines with misogyny of the boldest type. Getting used to the constant stares is one thing for me, a man (and taller than most of my observers by a head), but for a woman it must be extra difficult to accept - and that's just the _stares_. The lack of respect for her space may be part of the collectivism that arises with incredible density, but the lack of respect for her body and humanity is not. It is rank and deep-seated sexism, and insitutionalized assault. There's a culture supporting this (which is not to say that Indians as a people do) and it needs to be dragged into the light of day and shot.

<comment><USER4> I agree with most of what you say. There's just one point I want add.

I have been to India and the US multiple times. If I judged the US, just based on my experiences living in downtown Detroit or Newark I would never visit the US ever again. Just thinking about the things I experienced gives me the shivers.

<comment><USER5> I have seen this culture of misogyny and treating women as sexual objects in almost all places in India I have lived in. Not trying to counter your point, just saying that this observation could have been written by a woman who spent her time in Kolkata/Chennai/Bangalore/Mumbai rather than in Pune. In fact Pune in some respects is much better than some of the cities I mentioned above.

<comment><USER4> I agree. But just a word of caution, if we are talking about misogyny and treating women as sexual objects, lets also talk about the porn industry(which today is as responsible for the existence of the internet, as advertising is for Google).

Is there a difference when the developed world spends countless hours objectifying women from the safety of their homes through technology?

<comment><USER6> Looking at pictures and movies of women voluntarily engaged in sex acts is in no way equivalent to groping them in the street, attempting to rape them or depersonalising them and treating them as objects.

It's just not.

<comment><USER7> Forgeting about the india comparison for a sec, there are degrees of 'voluntary.' There are no girls out there who think that they want to be in porn when they grow up.

<comment><USER8> I suspect that few people grow up wanting to be gas station attendants either. I grew up wanting to be a test pilot, that didn't work out but I am certainly in my current field entirely voluntarily.

<comment><USER7> As far as I know, there are no documentaries made about how it sucks to be a gas attendant.

<comment><USER8> Maybe that means it doesn't suck to be a gas attendant, or maybe that means everybody knows it sucks to be a gas attendant, or maybe that just means that nobody gives a shit about gas attendants at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an Indian, this makes me really really ashamed and sad and angry. I would apologize to her as an Indian.

To understand what is going on in Indian society, I recommend this book by Naipaul, written over 20 years ago, but still very relevant: "India, a million mutinies now" [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55676.India](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55676.India)

Basically India is in an utterly chaotic transition from an old established hierarchy where your caste and gender fixed your place in society to something that looks very different.

One part of the societal transition is that there is a vast horde of (mostly male) migrants to major cities in India and these men are absolutely not rooted in anything. They are away from their villages, their families, their social networks. For most of these young men, the social system, particularly gender roles, they experienced in the villages is very different from what they see in a big city. You put a lot of young men in that situation, they think anything goes, particularly when they see a foreigner or an urbanized Indian woman. They think of her not as a person, but as an object - but it is a different kind of objectification, where they feel inferior to the object, it is unattainable to them, so they act with cruelty and savagery. That is what is different between this form of objectification and normal patriarchal behavior which would try to be patronizing and protective towards women.

Those very same men, in their own village, would not do the same thing to a foreigner, because normal social restraints would apply. In a vast urban space, they feel the protection of anonymity and feel they can get away with anything.

The only short term solution, being tried in states like Tamil Nadu, is a massive increase in female police presence, both uniformed and plain-clothes police officers in public places in big cities. This does improve security for women where it has been tried (Chennai is an example of such a city). I hope her post serves us a wake-up call for the governments in India to think of measures like this.

<comment><USER10> Pretty spot on from my perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel bad for what happened to this poor woman, but it just goes to show you the disconnect between academic romanticization ("South Asian Studies" major at U. Chicago) and the cold hard light of reality. And that reality is that people flee these countries for a reason. People don't just decide to uproot their families and leave everything they know 10,000 miles in the rear view mirror for nothing.

What bugs me are people, largely motivated by financial interests, in my opinion, who downplay the massive cultural and social advantages we still enjoy in the west over places like India. We may be dealing with demographic challenges and sometimes sclerotic economics, but I'd take France in decline over any BRIC country on a supposed upswing any day of the week... But the almighty dollar is the most important thing, right? As long as there is money in doing business in India (or the Middle East), we can just chalk all this up to "cultural differences" that we must be "accommodating" of.

<comment><USER12> >people flee these countries for a reason ... massive cultural and social advantages

Woah, there's some serious ethnocentrism in your comment. I know 100s of people who have moved to the USA from India, including my parents, a lot of their friends, and a large number of friends and colleagues. These people tend to be very progressive for India and still very few think Western culture is objectively better than Indian culture. Almost none moved here for mostly cultural reasons. _Cultural preference is subjective, and people tend to prefer what they know and are comfortable with._

While a Westerner may criticize Indians for lacking a sense of personal space, many Indians believe Americans are socially cold and distant to one another. While we may criticize Indians for being misogynistic (edit: wrong word, I meant something more along the lines of patriarchal), many Indians criticize Americans for lacking a solid foundation of traditional values. Like anything else that's subjective, we perceive culture in a relative manner.

Yes, India has serious issues with the way women are treated and I won't defend this, but the West has and still is going through our own social issues.

<comment><USER13> Have you talked to the women? My wife is Indian as are many of our friends. The men all think wistfully about moving back to India. None of the women do.

People are skeptical of "American Culture" in large part because even after living here for years, they view it through the lens of how it was portrayed in Indian cinema. Regardless, the women all appreciate that in America they can safely go about their business in public, and in India they can't.

<comment><USER14> That's not culture so much as it is the side effect of culture merged with their current development state as a country. That is, if India's quality of living and development were advanced to that of the west, there probably wouldn't be anything objectively inferior culture-wise.

<comment><USER13> It is definitely culture. The US didn't start treating women reasonably on its own. It required a generation of women to protest in the streets until the culture and the law changed. This hasn't happened in India yet, but is hopefully now beginning. I wouldn't draw too many direct parallels between women in the pre-'60s US, and women in India since the respective traditions are so hugely different, but what has to happen to fix it is the same.

What I'm going to describe is a bit of a caricature, but it's true enough that it's the dominant theme of Indian soap operas. Traditionally in north India, women don't even eat with the rest of the family. They are expected to remain in the kitchen cooking and serving food until the meal is finished, when they eat whatever is left, alone. The woman only gains power in the family when she's the oldest person left alive, at which point the veneration for elders supersedes her subjugation. The stereotype is that at this point, she takes out the frustration of her years of abuse by ordering around her daughter-in- law.

<comment><USER14> But I still think it is societal development. Liberalism is a natural evolution as the quality of life and the society advances, and so the way woman are treated in India I believe is an effect of its development, not an effect of its culture.

Like you said, the US had the same stage. We used to be heavily racist and also oppressed women during an earlier stage of socio-economic development.

<comment><USER13> I don't think it's a useful model to suppose that there's some underlying "true culture" that doesn't change over time and that will be gradually revealed as their economy improves. Culture changes, and economic development is a catalyst for change. Whatever way people behave today, that is the culture today, and if they behave differently tomorrow, that will be the culture tomorrow. Right now, Indian culture subjugates women. In the future, it hopefully won't.

Liberalism might be an "inevitable" consequence of advancement from one stage to the next, but real people have to fight for it to make it inevitable. When they fight for it, they will be changing the culture, not revealing it in a more true form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I studied abroad in India in the late '90s as part of a group of undergrads from different universities. Every single woman in my group, and I mean 'every single woman in my group' was groped or innapropriately touched at least once during the one semester we were there. There were 3 Indian-American women in our group and they were not immune either. One instance I will never forget we were standing at a bus stop in the afternoon and someone just walked up and grabbed my friend's breast and disappeared into the crowd. We also had multiple instances of man/men climbing over the wall of our group house and stare into women's rooms.

It sucks. And I think western women travelling to India need to adjust their expectations. When a female friend of mine recently told me she was planning on travelling to India I asked her so many questions and got so up in her business she literally told me to chill out and stop worrying so much. I didn't stop bugging her until she promised to start her stay with some locals until she got better acquainted there.

I had an amazing time studying in India and have been back since. I would never tell someone to not go to India. But western women need to be aware that not everywhere is safe to travel without a male companion. Ideally travel with a husband, boyfriend or male friend and dress like the local women dress. Many western women will mistakenly wear underwear(choli or pavada) not-knowing they're supposed to wear a sari over it. Don't do that if you don't want to be groped.

As some people have pointed out it's not an Indian only problem.

</comment><comment><USER16> This behavior is the unfortunate effect of modernization and move into cities. India, is predominantly a rural society. Like many traditional socities in asia, morality is enforced by concepts of honor/shame/loss of face. So, you have individuals who behave appropriately with women in their local villages or towns. Your family will loose face if you behave inappropirately and you will be cut off from society. However these guys land in cities far from their local environs and suddendly all sense of morality goes out of the windows. Everyone around you is new so what does it matter, you can do some crime and move somewhere else. It must be noted that most of this criminal behavior is committed by recent entrants to cities.

That in itself is not new. Every society has this problem (of modernization) but India has an additional issue. The state (internal police, law etc.) has historically been very weak and continues to be so. Enforcing any laws is a huge problem so these cases keep getting compounded by the day. Some dude seems his neighbour get away with stuff and he gets emboldned to do the same.

<comment><USER17> Like most things Indian, all villages in India are not same. Depending upon location and consequently prevalent culture, in some places women call the shots and rampant abuse of women is pretty much not tolerated (typically those in north-eastern states). There are also those where women are treated as cattle, to be used and abused and have no rights whatsoever (example states being Haryana/some parts of UP/Bihar) - families do not lose face in these places if men behave inappropriately towards women, they lose face if the man doesn't beat up the woman "to put her in her rightful place".

So all villagers in the city do not act like boors, like most things people do, it depends on their upbringing and the culture of place/family they hail from.

Weak state is not a unique problem. Some south-east asian countries have far weaker/ineffective state, but this blatant objectification and abuse of women is not rampant there. Unfortunately, culture doesn't change overnight and lack of quality education contributes to lack of introspection/critical thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I grew up in India. In one of the major metros. And deterioration over the years was all too striking. I couldn't really put down finger on what snowballed it to such a state but materialism is definitely a big part of it.

As a 10 year old, I used to walk for kilometres in ridge areas all alone. At 12-13, I have ridden bicycle to the most reclusive parts of the neighbourhood. And thought of something awful happening was in nobody's mind. Any of these activities would be unthinkable now.

More and more people have poured into the cities. With political class elected by force and threats and educated being outnumbered and helpless by __democratic disguise __, I don 't know what can remedy the situation.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is an India you don't want to know about. This is it. We, Indians, have seen it. But we choose to ignore it, because, Mera Bharat Mahan (My India is Great)

<comment><USER20> It makes me hate other Indians though. Admit there's a problem, and work to fix it. Don't just brush it to the side and pretend it's not a big deal if you ignore it. All that's doing is putting a bandage on an open sore which is going to fester and make it harder to fix down the line.

<comment><USER21> > Admit there's a problem, and work to fix it.

You must be crazy. Its not like you do git pull india --rebase and everything's hunky dory from then on. Its 1.2 billion people. Beyond a certain threshold, systems are essentially unfixable. India has crossed that threshold a long, long time ago. You'd have a better chance if you just ran away & started a new community elsewhere - which is why there are little-indias everywhere - in seattle, silicon valley, new jersey, queens, austin,... Here's a list of top 20 little-indias: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_American#U.S._metropolit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_American#U.S._metropolitan_areas_with_large_Indian_American_populations)

All those little-indias are doing fine. Its the Big-india that has issues.

<comment><USER22> > Beyond a certain threshold, systems are essentially unfixable.

What a sad belief to hold, especially in the light of agents of such great change as Gandhi, Rosa Parks etc. Any system can be changed with the right impetus, although that's unlikely to happen soon in India. But things can't keep going as they are in the long run, it's just not a sustainable pattern for dense urban environments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the story that you actually WANT to hear if you are currently or might possibly in the future ever wish to travel to India. Having stayed in India until very recently, I can not only believe this but also think that the problem is a bit understated(!) if possible.

There are numerous reasons why but many vested interests have aligned to sweep misogyny & sexism that is deeply rooted in India under the carpet. Being stared at is one of the Least of your problems if you are a Caucasian woman by yourself in India.

As frustrating as it is to say for me - If you are a foreign (non-Indian) woman contemplating travel by yourself (or an all female group) to India - THINK LONG and HARD. All the spiritual retreat, Yoga, Taj Mahal, Lush green forests, Sandy Beaches in the country will fade from memory when something like this happens - and the chances of it are relatively high.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have so many things to say about this. I'm glad someone came out and wrote about how violating and disturbing living -- _actually living_ \-- in another country can be.

I'm happy this article is getting the attention it is.

I'm impressed and filled with respect for the author that she had the guts to write this out.

I'm depressed that people are shocked to the point of disbelief by the contents.

I am Indian, but grew up in the Middle East. I split my time perhaps 4:1 between the Middle East and India as I grew up -- enough that I knew what life was like there, but not enough that I could feel like I was part of it, or it was part of me.

When I came to college in the US, I had a culture shock of my own, but most of it was in the positive direction. A friend in college told me she was going to study away in India. I was genuinely worried for her safety and mental well- being to the point of trying to almost dissuade her from going. I was torn between trying to tell her she must go because of how amazing and enriching the culture and heritage of India will be - despite being an engineering student she cared deeply for the arts and culture - and that she's better off changing plans because of how terribly violated, discriminated against (in good ways and bad, but discrimination is bad in general), restricted and confused she will be. Especially because she was going to be a (very very, even among familiar culture) attractive, fair-skinned foreigner there.

In my malformed attempt to "prepare" her, I wound up telling her a lot from both sides, and she was a little flabbergasted at my deviations from the tourism industry pitch, but took me seriously. She ended up going, she ended up "having a great time" as she told me and her other friends, and she also told me at some point while she was there "I understand what you meant when you were telling me about this place." That was surprisingly it. She probably wasn't nearly as traumatized by her time there as the author of the essay, and I'm glad for her. But I'm doubly glad that people step outside of their national bubbles, experience culture and society around the world, and realize there's so much to fix that we never hear about, drowned in tourist attractions, exotic food pictures, and stories about politicians.

Globalization, rapid as it is, is miles from bringing about understanding of life in another part of the world from where you _live_ \- not tour.

</comment><comment><USER25> A few years ago while travelling in a sleeper class(the cheapest seats) on a long route train I met two British women hitch-hiking across India. Needless to say I was horrified and scared for them and gave the customary warnings I give to my sisters. They replied that they have already been told the same things before. One of them asked me, "How does the common citizen view them?" Thinking that they were not scared enough travelling across India, I replied, "Like animals in a zoo. They want to touch you. Some will admire and some will harass". A few minutes later, a young village woman sitting on the floor(probably without ticket) with a child in her arms asked me in Hindi to tell the British women, "They look very pretty". I did. In response I was requested to pass the same message back to the young woman(which I did not, her husband was already on to me). I continued my rant about how dangerous India is for woman to instill some fear in those poor devils. I am not sure I was successful.

</comment><comment><USER26> The problem I think is - The people at lowest rung of our society have very little moral values. The most important thing is to survive. Sure occasionally you meet a auto-rickshaw driver who did not try to charge you more, but by and large every one of them will try to take as much as they can.

I have been with some of the poor people (heck I come from poor background) of this country, took a trip in transport truck from Kolkata to Patna, stayed in cheapest hotels in Varanasi, was part of student group that tried to forcefully occupy a train only to get fired at (one guy got killed) and one thing that is clear as day to me is - the idea that "this is wrong" does not exist when what matters is - "Can I get away with this?"

The gap between middle class and lower class is HUGE. I don't know if there is any other democracy that has such wide gap of income between people. It Us vs Them. Rich and middle class get very little empathy from poor folks. Perhaps it is true other way round too.

<comment><USER27> I don't understand your logic, or what democracy has to do with the matter.

I am no expert on India, but I spent enough time there to observe a clear and disturbing trend in male behavior and I have spent enough time in other - developed and developing - countries to have appropriate context for comparison.

An easy place to start would be China, which exhibits some similar demographic issues, but you really never come across this type of behavior there.

<comment><USER26> There are two problems:

1\. Crime against women is specially high. Why is it high? Because - wheels of justice turn really slowly here and perpetrator has a good chance of escaping without punishment. From what I hear, Justice (or sometimes lack of it) is swift in China. That itself is a great deterrent.

2.If you go through all the recent rape cases reported in media, perpetrators are almost always - mostly uneducated and poor. For some it was just entertainment(The Delhi case) and in others just an idea that they can get away with it. There is also sad fact that for many Indian males - women are objects [of pleasure]. An stereotype often reinforced by B and C grade movies (guess who watches those movies).

<comment><USER5> What you forget are the rape cases that are not reported in the media or do not get the same attention in the international press - The rape of poor dalit(lower caste) women by upper caste men. In some cases its used as a tool for handing out punishment to the unfortunate girl's husband, brother or father.

India's middle class or upper class cannot be so easily exonerated. There are equally horrific stories of women being exploited by well connected and well educated individuals. Please look at [1] and [2]

A slight detour and some anecdotal evidence. I was once at a party in the Film Institute of India, Pune. Pune is one of the more metropolitan cities in India and the environment and the outlook inside FTII is more progressive than the rest of India or so you would think. A guy kept coming to my female Caucasian friends and offered them drugs. We ignored him for a while and now hurt by this he started calling all white women as whores who destroy the sanctity of the college and the nation. The worst part was the group of people around him who supported him.

The problem is at a much deeper level and its present in all stratas of our society.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suryanelli_rape_case](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suryanelli_rape_case) [2][http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?205638](http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?205638)

<comment><USER28> Thanks for posting -- that second link is considerably more depressing than the original article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am from India and I have lived in one of the major cities of India for most of my life. I agree this is a very real problem that barely gets noticed. In my opinion there are various reasons for such culture -

1\. Gender inequality, though there are many women breaking barriers and taking great strides in India, there is a huge population (urban and rural) that still considers women inferior to men.

2.In typical Indian culture, a son in a family is considered as the one that carries the family blood line forward where as a daughter is considered as a burden on the family. They are considered a burden on the family because the family has to pay an exorbitant dowry when the girl is married, this disgusting practice ruins lives but is unfortunately very prevalent even in rich and educated people.

3\. A huge population (mostly the poor and illiterate) consider girls to be destined to do be homemakers, so education for girls is a low priority.

4\. Societal pressures are enormous, many people/families of victims would wilfully push things such as harassment or rape under the rug to avoid the societal shame brought by being a victim. And, many of the few that make it through and go to the police for help are turned away or discouraged by the police to not lodge an official complaint reasoning that it would just bring about more shame to their family in the society. So, the cases that surface are just a fraction of what is actually going on. I believe these problems have always been there but just surfacing more frequently now.

5\. Most Indian marriages are arranged marriages and there is a huge problem of marital harassment and rape that never makes it out.

6\. The culture of arranged marriages coupled with the problem of premarital sex being a taboo in most of the country due to societal and religious reasons, mean that most men can be in their 20s or even late 20s have had very less or no interaction with the opposite sex. The lack of respect due to gender inequality adds to this problem.

There is part of the population that is well educated, informed, financially sound; that do not subscribe to this culture but the truth remains that India has a huge population and most of them are very poor, there is a huge urban and rural population that are very poor, illiterate and what I spoke about here are a big part of their belief systems and culture.

</comment><comment><USER27> having recently traveled in India for three weeks, I heard remarkably similar accounts all too frequently from groups of women travelers.

Even as a man, I was approached for sex several times while out running. It was gross.

Having traveled a fair amount, I have never personally experienced behavior consistently this revolting in other countries. The behavior of Indian men was easily the most dissappointing part of my time there.

<comment><USER30> This is slightly disturbing. If you're comfortable with it, could you elaborate on what happened to you? I have never heard of cases involving men.

<comment><USER31> Indian gay men will often ask foreigners for sex - it happened to me a number of times. I wasn't particularly disturbed when it happened, but I was curious why it happened so much to me.

I asked a couple of the guys who approached me and I got two answers. One is that I'm about a foot taller and more muscular than the vast majority of indian men, i.e. I'm pretty hot. The other is that if they approach an Indian, he might know people in their community which would result in their family finding out they are gay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was only in India for a month and I am not joking or exaggerating that the constant threat of sexual violence also gave me what people could call PTSD.

Even making eye contact with men was perceived as an invitation. I could do nothing right. I tried adopting local garb, covering, being a shadow basically. I wasnt even alone; I was with my boyfriend the whole time!

I dont know how to talk to people about my experiences there without sounding like a complete grump. I would never have been able to imagine how brutal India was for everyone, including women, without going. Thank goodness I could leave!

</comment><comment><USER33> It is stomach-churning, terrifying, and maddening to read this ...

<comment><USER34> Very much so... I don't think I can describe in words just how horrifying it was to read this. This is a country that my ancestors were from. It's hard to imagine it being so patriarchal and sexist as is described here.

But, as we see from the news, it is. It's hell.

And it's not going to change.

<comment><USER35> The "patriarchal and sexist" adjectives are presumably necessary but not in and of themselves sufficient. For instance, there have been plenty of sexist, patriarchal regimes in European history where behaviors such as the ones described would be considered gross affronts to basic morality by the Christian church (which was an empowered entity whose opinions carried some import).

(One could theoretically hope that gender-studies departments at various universities should find it productive to scrutinize the differences in these patriarchal, sexist regimes in order to understand the nature of the cultural differences which engendered these disparate results. Theoretically.)

<comment><USER36> Actually, in strong patriarchal societies, these sort of behaviours are NOT tolerated, mostly because women are assumed to always "belong" to someone else (be it her dad, husband, tutor... whatever), and when people DO try funny stuff, other men will put a end to it.

Societies where people start to feel entitled to have women, are the ones that unite several things at once: materialism, individualism, lack of women to marry, or lack of advantage in having a marriage.

Both sexes will always strive to have sex, that is part of being human, but when the "normal" way of having it get screwed, people find alternative ways...

Be it in a hedonistic society with lots of parties (usually those that have everything I mentioned, PLUS became matriarchal, those societies mimick perfectly matriarchal primates), or in a misoginistic society where women are viewed as prizes (on those that lost classic patriarchalist values, but retained the male dominance, like India since 15 years ago, or Saudi Arabia), and some has a bit of both...

<comment><USER37> "Actually, in strong patriarchal societies, these sort of behaviours are NOT tolerated, mostly because women are assumed to always "belong" to someone else (be it her dad, husband, tutor... whatever), and when people DO try funny stuff, other men will put a end to it."

This isn't actually true. There will always be women not recognized as "belonging" to a male (prostitutes, menial laborers, travelers, orphans etc.) or whose superintending male figure is not high enough status to enforce his "property rights."

Unless we are going into No True Scotsman territory, "strong patriarchal societies" \- however defined - do in fact tolerate these sort of behaviors in a great many contexts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It reminds me of a news about a western woman who hitchiked across China. I hope women's security in India will get better in the future.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/rachel-katz-hitchhiked- across...](http://www.businessinsider.com/rachel-katz-hitchhiked-across- china-2012-3)

<comment><USER39> Thank you so much for that link. It was the perfect antidote to the disturbing story of India's misogyny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why don't we hear this more often? I often hear stores about people traveling to India but I've never heard of this level of incessant public abuse.

And what about the people who were warning her to dress conservatively and not make eye contact? Did they know the extent of the abuse she was about to endure? Did they deliberately downplay it for some reason? Or did she experience unusually horrific treatment because of her appearance?

<comment><USER41> There has been a deluge of news reports about Indian rape culture during the past few months. If you haven't noticed, you haven't been paying attention. See, for several horrible examples: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/india-bus-gang- rape...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/india-bus-gang- rape_n_2329002.html)

<comment><USER40> I've heard those reports but I thought it was typical media sensationalism. A bad string of isolated cases overplayed perhaps.

When you talk about traveling you usually hear that kind of story from people. Don't go to [large country] because people get kidnapped there. Well, often it turns out there's one small section of one city in the entire country where that kind of news comes from.

Judging from this woman's story, she went through a multi city trip experiencing the same intense culturally acceptable public abuse everywhere she went. That's extremely different than random occasional problems. And why the _fuck_ would the University of Chicago send her into that shit?!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> India is really one of the worst places to be a woman. My coworker told me that the constant stress and vigilance needed when she went out would wear her out.

</comment><comment><USER43> How does one effect societal change to counter this? Poverty or the poverty gap isn't going away anytime soon in India. I don't necessarily think poverty is the problem in this case. It is an attitude that's all too pervasive among Indian men, even the well-educated ones and most have gotten away with it for decades. It will take an entire generation and perhaps more of education and cultural shift to change misogynistic attitudes and teach basic respect.

What does one do, present day, to start fixing the problem?

As a man who grew up in India but lives in the west now, I'm ashamed of this side of my home country.

The staring thing is uniquely Indian and I'd agree with devindotcom, most of the time, curiosity that is honest and harmless.

<comment><USER44> What about women in visible positions of power/authority? In Australia, male/female police duos are quite common. Could the same be useful in India? I think someone suggested elsewhere that this is being tried in Southern India.

Swift justice and brutal penalties, with cases being openly reported as a deterrence.

If many (generally poorer, rural) men are moving to cities, is there an issue of them being unable to find sexual partners of a similar status due to an imbalance in gender? Not sure how you would even begin to reasonably solve that problem in a short amount of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I write this as an Indian male in his 30s. India sucks for women. And north India especially has got really terrible over the last decade. Thankfully, the South still is relatively better but is also deteriorating.

What's even worse and what I absolutely _hate_ are the Indian men who wear BLINKERS and say nothing is wrong or say that this is the same situation everywhere. (NO ITS NOT). Or they try and beat their chests and say "you aren't patriotic", "you are being too negative about India". Simple statistics shows this. Even taking into account significant under-reporting percentages in the past, there is still a _massive_ increase in rapes, muggings, thefts etc over the last decade.

</comment><comment><USER46> It was upsetting reading that. I know they are shit places in the world. But reading this made if feel personal. It is hard to imagine how human dignity and lives can be insignificant. But in some places there are. You can get trampled to death easily, you can fall down and have a heart attack and the crowd will just jump over your body and continue on walking. Some will bend down and sift through you pocket as you lay unconscious.

</comment><comment><USER47> This post just makes me mad. While I am sorry that she had a bitter sweet experience, I also find her extremely unaware and unaccepting of a foreign culture.

It is only human to stare at some thing you don't see that often. May not be pleasant but to assume that her photo was being taken to be used in a pornographic sense is just, utter rubbish.

FYI: I have been stared at in the Midwest, in small town america and at times in the great epicenter of knowledge - that northeastern city called Boston. Look out for me in that next porno. Oh my.

Her imagination runs wild thereafter. I am sorry, I lived in India for 18 years and practically grew up there. I have never ever seen anyone disrespect or "jerk off" at a white person in public. Yes, they hassle you to make a quick buck or two but saying everyone chased her around the place is a wild goose chase around reality.

Sure, the media has done an amazing job of portraying India to be this sexually out of control state, and I agree it has its issues. It is only as bad as any other country in the world, really. Even the so called developed ones.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's a bit hypocritical to point at another country and say how bad it is over there, when the typical teenage boy in America watches his first porno clip at around 10 or 11 years old.

Granted we do not necessarily have as much of the kind of behavior the girl describes out in the open but it does exist behind closed doors, at frat parties, at high school parties, at office parties...

It's even worse in the fact that it is so hidden in America. The puritanism that this country exhibits publicly (abstinence only sex education strikes me as a prime example) is dramatically offset by the tremendous amount of sexual depravity and lewdness that occurs behind closed doors.

I'm not saying there aren't problems in India, but please don't be quick to draw the conclusion that we are so much more civilized. We are just better at hiding our own problems.

<comment><USER49> underage porn viewing is hardly the same as widespread acceptance of rape and sexual abuse

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Wow - what a completely and totally awful experience. Normally I tell people to take any and every opportunity to study abroad, but this makes me rethink that. Perhaps it's gender blinders that make this experience seem so unthinkable.

<comment><USER51> It's not like you need to go there... want to study abroad ? go to Europe, or China.

India is a sh*t hole , sorry ,there is no other word. ( and i've been there with my gf, she felt safer in Bangladesh...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The issue of women's safety in India has come up several times, and here's how I look at it. India is a very lawless country, and has always been so, and women have historically lived in seclusion. It's rare for women to walk around in lowly bazaars unescorted. It's certainly not something foreign women should do while in India. A good thumb rule for the safety of a particular location is to look for the presence of large numbers of Indian women. In India, there exists a large population of criminal and vagrant men, who would not think twice before perpetrating some monstrous deed on an innocent woman.

</comment><comment><USER53> Thinking about India really made me grow up in some ways. Mostly by disputing the idea that the whole world is progressing and 'getting better'.

Not saying India is particularly bad, but maybe the foreignness shocked me into noticing it.

<comment><USER28> India _is_ getting better -- it's just doing so slowly, unevenly, and from a low baseline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> If I'm going to India for 5 weeks with my gf, do you think we'd honestly have anything to worry about? I would assume having the guy alongside would tame things down a bit right?

<comment><USER23> Yes it would cool-off some of the more more aggressive creeps to some extent. Do not stray from the Known destinations (This is not the country to explore "untouched places" unless you are armed & willing to use violence defensively) and do not drink (alcohol/whatever else) with unknown folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is truly sad.

India is an amazing country, with some amazingly warm people. Unfortunately everything in the story is also very plausible, so as an Indian who is deeply ashamed that visitors to his country can face such an experience - <USER2> apologies.

It is Indian tradition to say that "The guest is akin to God". Hopefully every visitor to the country gets treated with the respect that people give their deities one day.

</comment><comment><USER56> Its 1/6 of the world population we are talking about. There is no known way to integrate Indian people and modern culture brewing there. Everyone has ideas and realizations but there is no solution to this problem. This is going to be a huge problem in some years and its going to effect every single one of us.

</comment><comment><USER57> What I don't understand is why anybody would think of India as a traveler's paradise? Because everything is cheap for a western person? Does one need a huge amount of ignorance to enjoy traveling among hordes of poor people? (Real question - I've never done such a thing)

<comment><USER5> Let me take a shot at answering this.

1\. India has a lot of beautiful and varied landscapes. There are mountains, lakes, forests , beautiful beaches , backwaters. I cannot do justice to the amazing places I have seen.

2\. Almost everyone speaks English. In some places, to make the tourists feel more comfortable people have learned Hebrew, French and German.

3\. Things are indeed cheap.

More controversially, I have also been told by travelers that the other reason India remains so popular is that drugs are incredibly easy to score, especially in some tourist spots.

The other thing is that a lot of tourists do not keep travelling among hordes of poor people. If they go to Goa, they hit the beaches directly where they meet other tourists and other people trying to sell exotic crap. If they go to the mountains they live surrounded by other tourists.

<comment><USER58> Worth mentioning also that India has one of the world's oldest and richest cultures.

It is hard to describe the feeling visiting some of these places, perhaps it's a bit like visiting Delphi or the Acropolis. My favorite was the Red Fort near the Taj Mahal.

It's a lot easier to describe the bad things about India than the good things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> This is crazy. I have traveled a lot and I have never even been close to having any of those things happening to me.

I hope this gets published and circulated widely because women need to realize how dangerous traveling can be.

I have known a few women who have not taken proper precautions.

It's sad, but reality.

</comment><comment><USER60> Am I the only one who thinks CNN should not be publishing this story.

It's not vetted in any way, which leads to issues with both it's accuracy and the safety of the author who admits to suicidal thoughts and is currently in a bad mental state.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is just indescribably terrible, I feel awful for women who have endured this torture.

As I was reading the article I couldn't help but think, "This woman is going to end up with PTSD", and sure enough she did. :(

</comment><comment><USER62> Wow, my sister-in-law lived in India for 6 months training people. She never experienced anything like this, apart from a few men politely asking her out. Is this phenomena a regional thing or something?

</comment><comment><USER63> I lived in India for awhile and had female friends go though a bit of what is described in the story it brings back situations I was in and I empathize.

But why is this on the front page of Hacker News?

</comment><comment><USER64> Could the controversial head scarf (or even the full on attire) be the only way women can preemptively protect themselves in such a "raw" environment?

<comment><USER65> The article does mention she covered up. Maybe just as much as an Indian women would generally, though, and not as far as that? That said, Indian women do seem to generally where long dresses that cover everything, compared to here in Cali where we are flooded with short shorts. There was even an article recently about panties on mannequins being against the law in some cities because it offends sensibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Indian government is useless. Somehow the country and people work, in-spite of non-functional government.

</comment><comment><USER67> This sort of thing, and much worse, happens in all countries where there is a strong ethos of sexual repression.

Let's take a glimpse at the Middle East for a moment.

Specifically Egypt.

And no this is not about the much publicized Lara Logan incident. Nor is it about several other subsequent incidents including other foreign journalists at around at the same time.

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/05/egypt-women- rap...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/05/egypt-women-rape-sexual- assault-tahrir-square)

Did you even so much as hear about the rape of a 22 year old Dutch journalist, just last month, in full public view, in the middle of Tahrir Square?

[http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/jul/02/jour...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/jul/02/journalist- safety-egypt)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtPQvhNqNFY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtPQvhNqNFY)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yua66_tlBG8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yua66_tlBG8)

 __ __(The videos, although free of nudity, are still disturbing. Exercise caution) __ __

How many Western news outlets covered the incident? I 'd be surprised if her fellow Dutch men and women ever learnt of the incident. Such is the nature of the phenomenon of self-enforced media blackouts in Western media, circa 2013.

The big difference in India is that the press is free (probably far more free than most places in the West and represents free-market capitalism at its most sharpest best, since the sheer number of media houses in India makes silencing any news story virtually impossible), people are free to express opinions and there is plenty of it, and there is no government authority to stage manage the "image of India" as other Asian and Middle Eastern countries do. Statistically India has something like 1.8 rapes per 100,000 people while peaceful Sweden has 78. India has 1.2 billion, a size much of the world cannot comprehend. Hence a noisy press combined with a large number of cases due to huge population results in perpetuation of stereotypes about whats really one sixth of humanity.

Yes, lots of work needs to be done in the country but the selective harpooning of countries that enjoy generous press freedoms (there are easily more newspapers and news channels in India than all of the rest of the world combined, by far) just goes to show how we choose to sanitize the stories from countries we want to portray in favorable light and vilify the ones we don't.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_channels_in_India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_channels_in_India)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_India)

</comment><comment><USER68> Why is this on Hacker news?

</comment><comment><USER69> As if such things never happens in US or other countries.

</comment><comment><USER70> At least they did not try to kidnap her as is common in some muslim countries.

</comment><comment><USER71> Now imagine a creative and free-thinking person on today's Internet and replace the men groping this woman with NSA agents prodding at our thoughts.

Edit: NSA, don't downvote this. lol :P</comment>


Ask HN: Modern, lightweight HTTP load testing tool? - <AUTHOR> Please recommend a HTTP load testing tool. <comment><USER2> It's not a direct answer, but I bookmarked [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733910) a while back which has quite a long list of tools.

A couple of weeks later I used one of the recommendations - [https://artillery.io/](https://artillery.io/) \- for automated load testing an API. Very happy with the results.

For websites I still use [https://loader.io/](https://loader.io/), it hasn't been updated in a while (last blog entry from 2015) so I see the risk Sendgrid might close it in the future. Also loader.io requires a proof (a file with a md5 hash) to be uploaded which was always additional work (on our API server which usually doesn't serve static files).

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://github.com/tsenart/vegeta](https://github.com/tsenart/vegeta)</comment>


How Battery-Powered Rides Could Transform Your Commute - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/article_email/how-battery-powered-rides-could-transform-your-commute-1463083534-lMyQjAxMTI2NjE0NDYxNzQ5Wj <comment><USER2> What about just you know pedaling, (for most commute under 2 miles obv)</comment>


Kelly Criterion in detail - <AUTHOR> http://www.elem.com/~btilly/kelly-criterion/ <comment><USER2> Understanding the Kelly criterion is essential for any investor. I first came across it years ago after I lost around $1500 "investing" in a leveraged paired share trade. I was right on the direction of the overall movement of the shares (one up, one down) yet I still lost money. At the time I could not understand how I could be both right and still lose money - then I learned about the Kelly criterion. It was the best $1500 investment I ever made.</comment>


Ask HN: What would anyone want to buy portal from facebook? - <AUTHOR> No offence to anyone at facebook. Its just that I donot get that how would the experience be any different from using a laptop or a mobile phone for making video calls? <comment><USER2> If we ignore the device is made by Facebook, it seems to be a decent product. According to a The Verge review the call quality is better compared to competing services.

Being a dedicated device it's also easier to use for non-technical people (I wouldn't trust elderly, non-technical people with a Windows laptop and Skype on it, but I'm pretty sure they would be able to use Portal just fine).</comment>


Ask HN: What is your productivity setup? - <AUTHOR> In the past few years, I have been struggling to get a strong productivity setup working. I realize everyone has their own personal choice of tools and services to make their daily life easier, and my hope is that you'll share it. Of course, there are several definitions of what might be considered "productive" so I offer this:
1. Handling email from various sources (personal, work, client emails, etc). Do you use Gmail for archiving? Outlook only? Other?
2. Handling development work between several languages and development suites. EDIT (for clarification): For example, running different development environments inside virtual machines or doing all dev related work in the host OS? (And consequently, having all dev related tools installed on the host OS such as visual studio, debuggers, compilers, multiple browsers, etc.)
3. Handling social websites, services, and IM.
4. Handling media, both local and remote (streaming via web or otherwise). Displaying media to a television.
5. Your backup solution. Offite? Local? To a web service?
6. In general, do you prefer cloud based services or doing everything locally? If local is your thing, how do you reconcile multiple machines (phone, desktop, laptop)?
Feel free to pick any or all of the above to share. I am highly interested in learning what software and services create the best productive experience for you.
Thanks Mike <comment> j-g-faustus This is what I am using for a one-person home office:

1\. Gmail for everything, two accounts (private and work). I found Outlook folders more convenient than Gmail tags, but Gmail is great at being accessible from everywhere and works well enough that setting up my own Outlook server seems a waste of time and money. I have no other archive than Gmail, but if something is especially important (like an order or contract) I save it to the hard drive as well.

2\. That's a kludge, I haven't really found a good general solution. I have a standard directory structure for projects, and use a central Mercurial versioning system to share code between computers. I use 3-4 editors/IDEs, generally based on which editor has best support for that particular language. At the moment I use NetBeans for JavaScript and Ruby, Xcode for Go and Objective-C, TextWrangler for configuration, scripts etc. and Emacs when on Linux. Builds are generally shell or Ruby scripts.

3\. Manually. IM is generally turned off, I enable it only for specific conversations by appointment. Leaving it on constantly gives too many interruptions to get anything done.

4\. I have a Mac mini hooked up to the TV and hi-fi to handle all media. A Linux server provides a few TB media storage. (But this is entertainment, I don't use media for anything related to productivity.)

5\. All locally. I use a software called CrashPlan which autobackups my two Apple laptops to a central Linux server. On the server rsnapshot runs as a cron job for daily/weekly/monthly backups to an external disk. I would like an offsite or web snapshot as well - I might consider something like Mozy.com for a small subset of the most important data.

6\. In general: Whatever is simplest and cheapest. For mail and calendar, that's cloud based (Gmail and Google calendar), which also takes care of reconciling. For code, documents and accounting, it's local. Code is shared through Mercurial, documents through a shared folder on the local network. Backups are local mostly due to cost.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is some great information. With regards to number 1, I've often considered setting up my own Exchange server to handle synchronization between desktop/laptop and phone. However while I do prefer Google for email, I've often found their calendar and tasks lacking due to the limited offline support. I find myself in many situations (classrooms, especially) where I am possibly without internet access and therefore cannot enter in appointments or tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> 1\. Currently I forward everything to a Gmail account and reply from the proper address using the "send mail as" feature. I use multiple labels and a long list of filters, some with many conditional clauses to sort email into the proper labels.

2\. I'm not entirely sure what you are asking.

3\. When on my laptop I use Pidgin to sign into all my IM services including Google Talk and Facebook. I use aliases and groups because most of my contacts are on multiple networks.

4\. A desktop computer hooked up to a TV and speakers acts as my media and server machine. I use MPD to play music remotely.

5\. I use Dropbox for backup of most documents and an external hard drive for everything else.

6\. I mostly prefer local services but I do occasionally connect to Dropbox to grab documents when away from one of my machines. I also forward SSH connections to my desktop through my router in case I need to transfer something else.

<comment><USER3> 6\. Same here but I'm rather using SpiderOak because it encrypts your content before sending it over the network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> org-mode, <http://orgmode.org/>

Nothing, and I am serious, nothing even touches this either for functionality nor simplicity.

Dennis Groves

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea of using a text-based editor for tasks and to do lists. I'm a fan of having full control of the organization of my files and documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In terms of keeping track of my events, I use twoschedule (<http://twoschedule.com>). It's sort of shameless plug because yes, I created, but I created it because it's how I wanted to organize because it works. I'm way too busy to use any sort of traditional calendaring application—I need to focus on what's important now and what will be important next. Twoschedule does this perfectly and it's done wonders for my organizational sanity.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Gmail + Kmail local archiving 2\. Still hesitating & jumping between Eclipse & Emacs 3\. Netvibes mainly 4\. PS3, though sync between gadgets still an issue (iPod, PS3, computers...), PC when PS3 not capable. Searching for better solutions. 5\. A full backup locally, else SpiderOak 6\. A mix of both ;)

I could also mail you more info on some points if you want to.

</comment><comment><USER6> Backup: Local and manual for important files. I have a paid account to Dropbox that I develop out of so everything else is backed up as I work.</comment>


Why aren't there any viruses that make animals stronger? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/msmjo/why_arent_there_any_virus_or_pathogens_that_make/ <comment><USER2> I recall reading once about viruses that would infect dying algal cells, repair UV damage and generally patch things together enough to assemble a new generation of viral capsids. The closest thing I could find with a quick search is this article about coral:

"Research on cyanophages and vibriophages has revealed that under certain conditions viruses have the potential to help symbiotic algae repair damaged PSII reactions centers, increase their nutrient uptake, survive heightened thermal stress, and fight off bacterial pathogens. Viruses that can perform such tasks could be highly advantageous to corals in periods of global warming and periods of heightened human disturbances.Cyanophages and Vibriophages, that are prevented from becoming solely cheaters that rob the coral algal symbiosis of the nutrients it produces, could be considered a third partner in the coral zooxanthellae symbiosis that helps keep the coral healthy and allows the symbiotic relationship to be maintained."

([http://sp11symbiosis.providence.wikispaces.net/Coral- Virus+S...](http://sp11symbiosis.providence.wikispaces.net/Coral- Virus+Symbiosis))</comment>