Screens Are Bad for Young Brains - <AUTHOR> https://parentology.com/its-official-screens-are-bad-for-young-brains/ <comment><USER2> The last three years of being a parent have left me disenchanted with experts. I don't believe they have any idea what they're talking about and don't think they're capable of converting their research into practical advice that does good.

I watched first hand the harm that was done by the medical community obsessing over "breast feeding is best and formula feeding is basically admission of failure." That experience left me so untrusting that the medical community isn't just on their n'th generation of, "everyone before us had it wrong, our advice is finally the right advice."

Do you know what damage you can do when you convert some study, full of error bars and reproducibility concerns into a blanket statement? You fuck with struggling parents who just need a few hours of their evening to be quiet so that they can do chores and maybe watch an episode of Netflix. Not everyone has the luxury of a stay-at-home mom or plenty of free time or money to throw at problems like meals and transportation. You pile onto that barely-getting- by-near-crisis-where-alcohol-at-night-sounds-like-a-great-idea yet another negative factor: you get to feel like a shitty parent about the screen-based remedy that works.

It ticks me off that this junk ends up on social media because it undermines the things that _actually_ have a real lasting effect on raising children. Build lifestyle habits that enable you to be happy, sleep well, and spend time with your kids. Even if that means hours of tablet time on weeknights or a quick to make meal that isn't the healthiest.

I blame this ass-backwards non-holistic look modern medicine likes to take on problems like these. They did the study on breast vs. bottle feeding and found real measurable results (I do indeed believe the results are valid), but they never found a way to quantify what practical harm they cause to parents who get judgy nurses and a birthing room full of "Breast is Best" posters, who eventually spend nights weeping over their inability to feed their child, constantly feeling like they're a failed parent because they used formula or a tablet.

So !@#$ you Parentology. With these articles you're doing a kind of harm that you're systemically incapable of measuring. I hope people much smarter and more articulate than me take up this banner.

<comment><USER3> You seem to have a serious grudge about breast feeding vs. formula. I am sorry that was so traumatic for you. But it seems to me that this is much more to do with "new (yuppie) parent culture" than with the medical establishment or research community.

Having spent a bunch of time around new parents, my observation is that most of them are way too hyped up about trivial threats. If a breast-feeding mother drinks a glass of wine once every few days the risk to the baby is trivial. If the baby sleeps in the same bed with the mother the risk to the baby is trivial, unless the mother is an a severe alcoholic or high on drugs. If the baby plays with many types of toys marked "ages 3+" while the parents are sitting watching, the risk to the baby is trivial. If the baby climbs up on a play structure marked "ages 4–7" while the parents are standing watching, the risk of permanent injury is trivial. If a 2-year-old walks around barefoot on the sidewalk, the risks are trivial. Etc.

The same kind of tendencies bring us the anti-vax movement, a rush to sanitize all surfaces in the home, excessive fears about kidnapping, theatrical demonstrations of disgust near smokers outside on the sidewalk, and so on.

New parents' (and people's in our society more generally) risk assessment and concept of hygiene is excessively black–and–white.

But this is not the fault of "modern medicine".

<comment><USER4> It's most definitely the medical establishment.

There are similar issues with the "back to sleep" campaign - the risk of SIDS apparently is indeed Slightly lower for babies sleeping on their back, but it is only very slightly lower, and some babies will not sleep on their back unless they are exhausted which causes other non trivial issues. If you actually look into the "back to sleep" study data, it is much, much weaker than proponents imply it is.

And yet, every nurse in the hospital kept telling us with religious fervor to not even think of letting the baby fall asleep on their stomach. I was so impressed that I was sure the evidence was overwhelming. But after a week with a hardly sleeping newborn (relatively speaking), I decided to look into it myself. You should to, rather than trust the "experts". (Or a random internet post like mine, for that matter)

<comment><USER5> I would be interested in seeing a data set for the risk of SIDS from cosleeping (even on the baby's back) vs. the risk of various other problems from indescribably exhausted parents and a baby who will scream bloody murder for hours and hours and hours and hours if you try to get them to sleep alone in a crib.

Also, not to be all hippie but would we not have evolved to want to be held as infants? What species just leaves its young to sleep without physical contact?

<comment><USER6> I'm leery of co-sleeping mostly because it seems to be highly correlated with kids who have bad sleep habits and keep waking up their parents constantly (don't worry how you'll know, they'll tell you) well into their toddler years, and beyond. And I'm pretty sure the co-sleeping is a big part of the cause (can't get used to waking up mom & dad for entertainment every time your natural sleep cycle wakes you up a smidge if they're not there to wake up and start giving you attention instantly).

But like anything else, fuck, if it's working for you and the risk is very low, do what you need to do. I avoided it because I kept seeing hellish outcomes but if that's not what's happening for you, go for it.

<comment><USER7> My wife and I coslept (and often still cosleep) with both of our children. They both sleep through the night without issue.

Our oldest goes to sleep early and will insist on going to sleep when she feels tired and will wake up with me in the morning. Our youngest fights sleep until exhaustion and prefers to sleep in (until 9-10am if allowed). They have been raised exactly the same way.

We take way too much credit for our children's sleep habits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Some of the kids experienced parents reading often to them, and little > screen time. Other kids who'd had lots of screen time (more than one hour > per day, the max recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) > and the WHO) throughout early childhood.

If this description is accurate (and I haven't gone to the source and I'll admit that popular media descriptions of scientific studies are often quite bad), the study experimental group seems likely to differ from the control group in two ways (parental reading time and screen time), and the one which _isn 't_ screen time is already known to have a significant effect of exactly the type being attributed to screen time. Which would make the study useless for drawing conclusions about screen time. It's quite possible for children to have parents reading to them often _and_ more than an hour a day of screen time.

> If more screen time leads to less white matter development (as the study > cautiously indicates), the results might be truly detrimental.

So, even with it's conclusion on screen time taken at face value (which it looks like to shouldn'tbe), the study indicates an effect which, if true, "might be truly detrimental", but the headline is the total clickbait: "IT'S OFFICIAL: SCREENS ARE BAD FOR YOUNG BRAINS".

<comment><USER9> > It's quite possible for children to have parents reading to them often and > more than an hour a day of screen time.

I wonder if this is the case? I think you're quite right about the fact that it's more likely the time with parents than the screentime. But I don't think there will ever really be a chance to study kids whose time with parents and time with screens differs.

My kids are pretty young, but because they're in bed so early there just isn't enough time in the day for them to have dinner, a story and even an hour of TV after pre-school. I suspect that's the case for most kids of two working parents.

<comment><USER10> I was born in 89. Until I turned 9 or 10, one of my parents would read to me every night, and I had over an hour of screen time just about every day too.

That was probably not as common back then, since it was hard to get an hour in unless you were really into computers and happened to have one.

Today, it's hard to find a parent who will read to their kid every night. Who will read them good stuff like poetry, the classics, Greek mythology, etc., Not Harry Potter or whatever. It's also hard to find a kid today who isn't exposed to at least an hour of screen time. And that's not time being social or productive like screens meant for kids like me - it's time for them to be pacified by some crap manufactured by Netflix.

The people here trying to apologize for their parenting choices and accusing the stats of having a twisted ulterior motive, are making some puzzling remarks. Haven't these people not realized how much harder it is today to be a good parent than it was in prior eras? They should have thought of that before breeding children.

Obviously the way screens are utilized today is going to warp kids brains in some difficult to measure ways. But better parenting would probably offset that tremendously.

<comment><USER11> It's harder to be a good parent in the sense that the bar has been raised much higher. Go ask your parents' generation how much time their parents spent with them. Then compare to what's seen as the minimum now.

<comment><USER12> Oh man, the time use surveys in the US are amazing here. I can't find the data or remember specifics, but the amount of time both moms and dads spend parenting has gone WAY since the 60s, even as family size as plummeted.

<comment><USER11> Edit: I assumed you meant to write "way down" but now realize you probably meant up... original comment below.

That's interesting! I'm mainly going by my mother's recollections of her childhood in 1950's rural Finland, but in her words: "We kids didn't spend time with our parents. It would have been embarrassing!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are many meta-studies demonstrating that repeatedly for the past 20 years. TV is bad for children. Video games are bad. Phones are bad, and tablets, and consoles, and computers. It's bad for their mood, their IQ, their sleep, it gives them obesity, ADHD, it's bad any way you look at it; it's even bad when the parents are watching the phone instead of interacting with their children...

Here's one meta study:

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article- abst...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article- abstract/2751330)

"This study suggests that education and public health professionals should consider screen media use supervision and reduction as strategies to improve the academic success of children and adolescents."

here's another one:

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263708644_Media_Use...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263708644_Media_Use_and_ADHD- Related_Behaviors_in_Children_and_Adolescents_A_Meta-Analysis)

"Our results indicated a small significant relationship between media use and ADHD-related behaviors."

<comment><USER14> Honest question: why don't you include books as a media?

<comment><USER3> From what I can tell, listening to books read aloud is by far the most effective and efficient way to promote child language development. Listening comprehension is a foundational prerequisite for most kinds of intellectual work.

In comparison watching videos, playing tablet games, etc. comes nowhere close.

The differences are (1) the language in books read aloud is more often tailored to the child's comprehension level, because parents can figure out whether books are too easy or too hard; (2) the range of grammar, vocabulary, styles, ideas, etc. is much wider in books than most kids get from other kinds of media; (3) the book is not a fixed medium but also has a live interpreter who can define or skip difficult words, repeat sentences rephrased a different way, answer questions, ask questions, go back to cross-reference earlier parts of the book, point specific things out in the illustrations, etc.

Anecdotally, the preschool kids around me whose parents read to them for 1+ hours/day seem to end up advancing about twice as fast in their language skills as their peers. YMMV.

<comment><USER14> Yes I heard this too. Frankly something doesn't click for me, I can't say what exactly. The brain is far, far more complex than that, we can't boil "child language development" down to "read them 1+ hour/day" and "limit screen time".

<comment><USER3> It's not that reading is literally the only possible way to get the same kind of linguistic input to the child. I'm sure listening to an expert storyteller, watching a puppet show or play, listening to someone reciting poetry, having a thoughtful conversation with an adult while looking at some wordless artwork, singing songs together, etc. can be similarly stimulating.

The thing is: it's hard to find actors for a play in the child's bedroom at night. It's hard for parent to come up with 200 different well-plotted stories at the appropriate level with visual props. Etc. But after 2 years of daily practice I can read a picture book decently (including funny voices, etc.) while half-asleep and consciously thinking about something unrelated with half my attention.

The kind of logical reasoning, grammatical variety, vocabulary, etc. used in books is not literally impossible to imitate with some other medium. It's just a lot more work and in practice not really done.

<comment><USER14> Don't take it personally, you're fully entitled to have your own thought on this subject. But to me it looks like you are putting really too much importance on bedtime readings (or at least you are citing studies and trends that says so).

Because, I don't know if you have children, I do (8 and 6): you can't read them a different book every evening for 1h. Even for more than 5 minutes.

You just can't. Life is messy, there's no place for such idealistic hobbies.

That's why I can't relate to those "advice" (too use kind words), I just don't think they are relayed by real parents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I continue to be surprised by the scope of these studies. Has nobody figured out that the screens are incidental and it is the content difference that matters? Listening to several hours of inane audio books every day is unlikely to be any better for a child's development.

Interaction. Competition. Surprise. These are the keys, not the lack of blinken lights

<comment><USER16> Pedagogy is hard, but I am inclined to agree.

But it's really easy to put a kid in front of some cartoon and forget about them, they'll re-watch the same thing over and over and over, lacking interaction, competition and surprise. So "screen time" is probably a good enough proxy for "passive screen time", which would be bad by your definition too.

<comment><USER15> Yes of course it's important to note that screens are huge enablers of passive consumption.

But the way we name things is important. Calling it passive consumption yields all sorts of interesting questions. Is the sickness of Facebook/Instagram any different from that of Netflix/YouTube? How about than Fox news? Does it actually matter what age you are? How much is bad? Does live theater count? What about a concert?

Parents deserve the nuanced result/questions when deciding what is right for their children and selves (if indeed my supposition is correct ish). Calling it screen time is lazy science until it is shown to be unique to screens (which would be an immense surprise to me)

<comment><USER17> I would have thought Facebook contained interaction, competition, and surprise, for better or worse.

<comment><USER15> Only if you're publishing a lot. I think most users mostly just scroll through their feed.

Nonetheless I see your point. Perhaps there is an interesting distinction! Maybe worth investigating, and not particularly suggested by a 'screens are bad' line of thinking

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A more skeptical interpretation of the paper (worth a read): [https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to- study-...](https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-on- screen-use-and-white-brain-matter-in-children/)

<comment><USER19> > 5\. The abstract reports the study found significant associations between > language scores and the ScreenQ, giving the impression that these are > robust, whereas the main text notes that these associations are no longer > significant when household income was included as a covariate. Since many > readers only read the abstract, this is misleading.

I think "misleading" is a generous way of putting it, frankly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Decades of twin studies, consistently replicated across dozens of large-scale studies, have found that family environment explains effectively 0% of the variance in adult IQ. In contrast, genetic heritability explains well over 50% of the cross-sectional population variance[1].

 _Always_ keep this indisputably true fact in mind when reading association studies like the one in the link. In fact one simple exercise is to imagine a close analogy between intelligence and height. After all, the structure of adult IQ inheritance closely matches that of adult height[2].

Imagine if you read a study that found that kids whose parents frequently played basketball were several inches taller. Would you conclude that basketball _causally_ increases height? Of course not. Given what we know about the highly genetic hereditary nature of height, there's a much more logical conclusion. Tall parents pass along their genes and tend to have tall kids. Tall people are more likely to play basketball. Therefore basketball players are more likely to have tall children.

When you have highly genetically inherited traits like IQ or height, association studies can find all sorts of superficially compelling ways to supposedly improve the trait. However all of these findings are basically worthless unless we control for genetics, for example by pairing siblings.

[1] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104160800...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608007000982) [2] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-of- human...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-of-human- height/)

<comment><USER21> And as we all know, IQ is a perfect measure of mental capability and the only thing that really matters in the end. Self-confidence, ambition, passion, knowledge - that's just balderdash!

<comment><USER20> Twin studies on personality factors[1] find that genetic heritability explains 40-50% of the cross-sectional variance in adults, while the impact of family environment is non-significant. All of those factors you listed show a nearly identical genetic pre-disposition as IQ itself.

[1] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6494....](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1996.tb00522.x)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What if they are video chatting with a relative? Is that bad because it is a screen?

If you are going to make an exception for such things (as they usually do), you really need to step back and look at the whole idea of lumping all things screen based as a single entity, "screen time."

Is it possible that the real problem isn't that it is in a screen, but it is the type of content, the passiveness vs. interactivity, the intentionally addictive nature of games and video content, etc? And maybe the likely correllation between kids who spend a lot of time on screens, and parents who aren't very interested in interacting with their kids.

</comment><comment><USER23> — _What other tools for creativity and learning do you arbitrarily limit? Do you have a hard rule on "paper time"?_ ¹

1\. [http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/06/30/quantification](http://penny- arcade.com/comic/2014/06/30/quantification)

Related blog posts:

[http://penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/30/quantification](http://penny- arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/30/quantification)

[http://penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/30/screen-time](http://penny- arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/30/screen-time)

</comment><comment><USER24> It's like once people have children something flips in their brains and they become unable to think rationally about perceived dangers.

Screens are not bad. Screens display things. What is on the screen and how the child is interacting with that defines what is good or bad. Screens just are.

And re: this study, when I was a kid in the 90s I used my screens to read books (and still do). It's not either or when it comes to books and screens.

<comment><USER17> Do you think the AAP recommends a limit of one hour of screen time because parents are unable to think rationally?

I personally am a little skeptical that these studies have no confounding factors, but I don't think it's fair to blame parents for what doctors, researchers, and clickbait authors are saying.

<comment><USER24> There's few groups more in the thrall of the irrational desires of parents than the American Academy of Pediatrics.

<comment><USER17> I don't understand the incentives or mechanism here. Let's assume you are correct, and parents irrationally fear screens (and many other things). Then what, the AAP issues guidelines based on what parents already fear? Then they conduct studies and what? Fudge the results? I'm having trouble connecting the dots.

If it's anything like this, it still seems like doctors are more guilty than parents. They're supposed to be the experts.

<comment><USER22> Here's a theory. The parents don't irrationally fear screens on their own, but they are very susceptible to being told to fear them especially by a seemingly credible source. Now that they fear them, they are grateful to the organization that warned them. Grateful parents are key to funding.

Organizations (and doctors, as you note) have a real incentive to conveying to parents things that parents subsequently find to be valuable, "action item" information. In other words, they are biased toward making themselves seem important.

I don't think they necessarily "fudge" the results, but they can certainly avoid going out of their way to think of how such results might be biased toward "useful data".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > The review of 33 studies concluded reading from screens had a negative > effect on reading performance as opposed to reading an actual book. Even > stranger was that students had a more realistic assessment of their own > skills when reading a paper document. This only held true for non-fiction > reading material, leading the Hechinger Report to remark, "go ahead and read > Jane Austen on a Kindle."

So non-fiction screen time is bad?

It's studies like these that get parents like me to get all riled up but with no answers. I should start a research that tests if too much media consumption by parents leads to erratic child development.

<comment><USER26> This smells of p-hacking. Split along enough dimensions and one of them will look barely significant under the wrong model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> 5 kids here, ages 1-8, with the school aged ones at or near the top of their class reading-wise.

Basic points on how we use technology: -totally disable the internet before the age of 6 -find all the interesting ABC / Songs / etc. that are interesting and download them locally (ssyoutube) -Always differentiate between the activities, i.e. are they consuming, creating, or playing with content?

On the last point, it is interesting that the kids will sometimes not want to play the iPad if they aren't allowed to watch 'shows' Once it becomes another toy, instead of an addictive consumer-driven device, it gets used just like the other things in the house.

Can answer questions if there are any>

<comment><USER28> Why did you have so many kids and so close together in age? Or are they adopted?

Are you able to work or are you a stay at home mom?

If you work, does your company or government provide assistance/aid?

I hear people with 1 or 2 kids struggling, I don't think I've met any with 5 kids so young.

<comment><USER26> 2 years between kids is quite common. Sometimes you get a multiple and sometimes "the last one" isn't a "one".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The full text of the study is behind a paywall [1], but from the abstract we can see that:

\- It's 47 participants (out of 69 recruited)

\- The only other variables controlled for are household income and age

The study's conclusion itself says:

> The findings suggest further study is needed, particularly during the rapid > early stages of brain development.

So we should all be interested in the results of that future study, but at this point nobody can really make a strong claim one way or the other.

1: [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article- abst...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article- abstract/2754101)

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't quite understand where people are finding the time to let their kids watch over 1 hour of TV (much less read to them) each day.

My wife and I work a standard 8 hour day. Kids wake up at 700. We leave for daycare/work by 800. Arrive at work by 9. Work until 6pm. Pick up kids. Get home by 7pm. Prepare and eat dinner. Bedtime routine starts at 8pm.

This leaves zero hours of dedicated kid time during the work week.

<comment><USER31> I'm not the one to get between a man and his daily routine especially when it comes to family so please take this as a curious question.

How bad would it be to move the kids bedtime one hour later and have an hour or a half hour of reading time with them before bed?

<comment><USER32> Depends on the kid but my sample size of two says very bad. If they don't get at least 12 hours they're a mess the next day and it starts a horrible cycle of not enough rest leading to it being hard to sleep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I raised my kids without cable or broadcast tv, and they had limited access to computer games. However I did have a tv, later a digital projector and we would watch vhs tapes and dvds. They had a tandy 102 they could play with as much as they wanted. I think the problem is not so much screens, but a screen activity without a defined beginning and end, and in isolation. I had a lot of fun watching star trek, etc with my kids. Later as teenagers there was streaming etc, and at that point well they are just like me. The only kind of hard thing is when they felt kind of left out, like not knowing the shows other kids were talking about, or the games etc. I know it's not a easy choice for everyone to make, but at least for me I think it was a pretty good one. I more or less grew up watching tv every night, and what can I say, I know the lyrics to many tv sitcoms. It didn't wreck my life or anything, but it certainly didn't help it.

</comment><comment><USER34> "It's a small study" \-- likely to be dominated by noise rather than effects.

<comment><USER35> There is also a selection effect where small studies with boring results don't get articles written.

<comment><USER36> Absolutely it's called publication bias.

Also studies who's results challenge the prevailing bias are much less likely to get published.

[https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...](https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Our kids would definitely be worse off without screens. We don't have time to give them their ideal levels and kinds stimulation, and screens are a tool which helps their parents' sanity. Us, as their parents being driven insane would adversely affect these children. One of them has special needs and the other 2 crave constant input. Overall screens are the lesser evil, and they're all doing just fine. It's all contextual and this article is nowhere near holistic enough.

<comment><USER26> Why can't the two provide input for each other? How did our grandparents with 8 kids do it?

<comment><USER37> Context is everything

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Yeah and TV will make you blind and videogames will give you epilepsy.. I heard so much nonsense when something new gets wide adoption, stop forcing the old world into your kids

<comment><USER39> Do you think that raising a child in front of a TV is a good idea?

<comment><USER40> Eh, in moderation it's fine. My kids get a couple hours of screen time a day, maybe even a little more sometimes. Both are at the top of their respective classes in school.

But I've also been careful to keep them aware of the consequences of their various choices (screen time, junk food, etc) and they self-regulate pretty effectively. Although my daughter is currently addicted to fantasy novels and I may need to help her dial that back a little so she gets enough sleep at night :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's been obvious for years that the kids who are sitting silently through 3 hour weddings glued to their iPads are not developing any of the skills like creating fun, making friends, or being disciplined on proper conduct. It's great for the parents though, but if you give a kid an iPad you should be aware that you're damaging their brain, the same way that ice cream damages their health (that doesn't mean kids should never have iPads or ice cream).

<comment><USER17> Letting your kid stare at an iPad for 3 hours at a wedding is damaging their brains? This is a bold claim and requires evidence. The article is talking about daily screen time, not the occasional one-off.

<comment><USER41> No, having a kid who you've never bothered to socialize because using the iPad is easier is damaging their brains. My kids are much more disruptive at adult social events than their iPad-addled peers, but 100x better-behaved than those kids would be if you took away their iPads. Sadly, the expected standard of behavior is tending towards the iPad zombies, it's mostly the older generation who sees my kids' petty transgressions as "kids being kids."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Yeah, but they're bad for my brain as an adult. Video games and Netflix occupy 90% of my free time, which I would rather spend on hobbies, family, or exercise. But I am habituated.

<comment><USER26> Cancel Pause Netflix justbfor a month. It's super easy to go back if you don't like it. Or make a gym-only rule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This article is absolutely incorrect.

Go to the source journal article (Not CNN, it also is blatantly incorrect), it does not say what they claim.

What this article claims is phenomenal. Why would you trust parentology.com with a discovery that would win a noble prize?

To me, if you trust this article and use it to justify "Screens Are Bad for Young Brains" you clearly are not looking at the evidence. And that to me means you are not thinking at a low level what's best for a child. That's bad parenting.

</comment><comment><USER44> How do they account for the correlation that kids on screens are the ones that have less parental involvement?

</comment><comment><USER45> They've been saying this since the computer revolution started back in 1976.</comment>


GYST: Get Your Shit Together - <AUTHOR> https://www.gyst.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> GYST is an online service to help get your shit together one step at a time, starting with your will, living will/advance directive and life insurance. Find reviews of online will making services, hassle free life insurance quotes and free and affordable answers to legal questions. GYST makes it easy with checklists, guides and weekly nudges to keep you on track. Come on, let's GYST!</comment>


Designer News - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in design and would love to learn more.  I've recently come across Designer News and it looks interesting but it's by invite only.  Are there other hacker news type sites for design or are there channels I need to go through to get an invitation that are open to me as a non-designer? <comment><USER2> I suggest <http://sidebar.io/></comment>


The Meteor Packaging System – Understanding Versioning - <AUTHOR> https://meteorhacks.com/meteor-packaging-system-understanding-versioning.html

<comment><USER2> Any packaging system worth using will have support for semver extensions; it pains me that too many systems (including this one) don't appear to.

For example, "1.2.3+myfix1" should be valid, and "1.2.3+myfix2" should be considered a later version than "1.2.3" \-- and both should pass any dependency declaration against which version 1.2.3 would pass.

If anyone can think of other workable solutions that lessen the pain of parallel development and local branching, I'd love to hear them.</comment>


40 things I have learned before turning 40 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/life-tips/a72ad8b4e33d

<comment><USER2> Although the language is wobbly sometimes, there's quite a lot of candid thought and experience in this list.

</comment><comment><USER3> Queer, Thought provoking...looking forward to : 50 things I have learned before turning 50

</comment><comment><USER4> Uncomfortable, yet so true. Great read! Kudos!!</comment>


Straw bale houses go on sale in UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31156579

<comment><USER2> The article mentions misconceptions about fire resistance, but then doesn't list fire resistance as one of the things that they tested.

Misleadingly, they compare the energy efficiency of this construction technique against existing homes, not against the current standard for new homes.

And there is no mention of the cost difference; not even in the section entitled "Building with straw - the figures".

I feel that the journalist could have done far better here.

</comment><comment><USER3> We have had straw roofs for centuries. I am failing to see the "new" in this.

<comment><USER4> The difference is, despite straw bales being an excellent building material (especially with regards to heat and sound insulation, cost & carbon), that has indeed been used for at least a hundred years, there's a huge amount of resistance to it's use from both the conservative building industry and the general public.

Evidenced by the tedious 'three little pigs' hook used by the journalist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I looked into straw bale houses years ago. I even saw them being built in an El Paso, Texas subdivision and walked around the construction.

They do have some advantages, but the thing that caused me to loose interest was the possibility of water damage and mould. One leaky pipe and your wall is done.</comment>


Ubuntu One Hits The One Million Users Mark – Upgrades Free Plan To 5 GB - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/07/31/ubuntu-one-one-million-users/

<comment><USER2> spam. Directly go to <http://voices.canonical.com/ubuntuone/?p=1023> instead

I think it was discussed earlier anyways.

<comment><USER3> OP's account does nothing but post *zor.com spam.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dkd903>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Too bad the Windows client isn't usable. It just takes 100% of the CPU all the time. It seems like an easy bug to avoid, but it's been there for months.

<comment><USER5> So does the Linux client... Well memory more than cpu, uses more than my 8gb.

<comment><USER6> necessary comment about the lack of a mac client (which is kind of strange since there is an iOS one, and it seems quite a lot of code could be shared?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looking good. I was curious about encryption of stored data (e.g. Wuala does, Dropbox doesn't). There's a straight answer in the FAQ, [https://one.ubuntu.com/help/faq/are-my-files-stored-on- the-s...](https://one.ubuntu.com/help/faq/are-my-files-stored-on-the-server- encrypted/) :

 _Are my files stored on the server encrypted?_

 _No. If you are interested in having your files encrypted both on your local machine and in the cloud, you could use something like Ubuntu's Encrypted Home Directory feature, and only synchronize your $HOME/.Private folder._</comment>


He was part of Amazon's hiring spree. 2 weeks later, he was dead - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-05-27/la-fi-tn-amazon-worker-dead-hiring-wave <comment><USER2> Repost of flagged post from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23330146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23330146)</comment>


Facebook Will Shut Down Its Spyware VPN App Onavo - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/21/facebook-removes-onavo/ <comment><USER2> Quotes from the article, with my emphasis in italics:

> Facebook will end its unpaid market research programs and _proactively_ take > its Onavo VPN app off the Google Play store in the wake of backlash > following TechCrunch's investigation about Onavo code being used in a > Facebook Research app the sucked up data about teens.

> Facebook has also _ceased to recruit new users_ for the Facebook Research > app that still runs on Android but was forced off of iOS by Apple after we > reported on how it violated Apple's Enterprise Certificate program for > employee-only apps. Existing Facebook Research app studies will continue to > run, though.

> To preempt any more scandals around Onavo and the Facebook Research app and > _avoid Google stepping in to forcibly block the apps,_ Facebook is now > taking Onavo off the Play Store and stopping recruitment of Research > testers.

It's a very weird use of "proactively" in this context. Facebook doesn't seem to be acting quick either. Given that Google hasn't yet done anything on this app on the Play Store (after all this while), that's not a serious threat.

Facebook is just being Facebook here, doing some minimal changes to fend off criticism while it continues with its dubious practices wherever it hasn't been caught and shamed multiple times yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> > A Facebook spokesperson claimed in a statement that "there was nothing > 'secret' about this", yet it had threatened legal action if users publicly > discussed the Research program.

Will wonders never cease?

<comment><USER4> The cavalier attitude says to me that this company is still a start up at heart. Early-stage companies often break a lot of rules that's how you get big. Facebook is just still doing it.

<comment><USER5> This "it's ok to act immorally and illegally when you're a startup" attitude has to die in a fire.

<comment><USER6> Problem is governments never really acted aside from the US congressional hearings. While this is happening, Facebook's profits are up.

There's really nothing compelling Zuck and Facebook to act morally and legally.

<comment><USER7> The EU had a hearing as well. The UK had one after that and Zucc didn't show. I guess the other EU members are satisfied to know that FB doesn't give enough of a shit to actually show up when asked to show up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They supposedly shutdown Onavo on the iPhone.... only to just resubmit it under another name.

Accordingly I'm a bit skeptical about how much of a shutdown happens here.

<comment><USER9> I thought that fell under "unpaid market research programs" which is also shutting down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a shame because I used Onavo before it was acquired and back in the days of limited mobile data plans it really reduced my bills. I didn't trust FB so ditched it right after they got bought (feeling validated!).

However it got me thinking. What if FB and others went to the popular VPN services (like ExpressVPN) and said 'here's $xxx million - could you share aggregate data about visits to our competitors'. How many would go for it?

<comment><USER11> A lot of these VPN services already sell their data to 3rd parties.

<comment><USER12> Including governments- who sometimes own them via secret service blackfunds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Postponed for PR, renamed for the internal use, soon standard for all products.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this the second time they've done this whole vpn thing? What's stopping them from rebranding it again and reselling it under a different name only to be caught again so they then say "we're gonna stop" and then rinse and repeat.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm disappointed that Google was fine with Onavo being in the Play Store and it took Facebook (!) itself to actually remove the app.

<comment><USER15> I would much rather Google allow this and let users decide than the opposite.

<comment><USER16> It's trivial to install Google-unlisted software, so users can decide either way.

<comment><USER15> It isn't trivial. I don't think my parents will ever be able to install software that Google doesn't like on their phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Don't believe a word they are saying.

</comment><comment><USER18> The circus with the relaunches under different names reminds of how _the agencies_ similarly scramble to split and rename their, ahem, initiatives whenever the public gets too noisy. Or how the very same thing happens to unpopular bills.

</comment><comment><USER19> So, what are they going to call this spyware going forward?</comment>


Air India repatriation flight crash-lands, at least 17 killed - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-crash/air-india-repatriation-flight-crash-lands-at-least-17-killed-idUSKCN2532G1 <comment><USER2> On the same day another tragedy happened in the same state.

[https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2020/aug/07/f...](https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2020/aug/07/five- dead-80-feared-trapped-under-debris-after-massive-landslide-in-keralas- munnar-2180307.HTML)

<comment><USER3> bad link

<comment><USER2> Sorry. Keyboard automatically capitalized 'html'

[https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2020/aug/07/1...](https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2020/aug/07/17-dead- more-than-75-feared-trapped-after-massive-landslide-in-keralas-munnar-pm-modi- announces-rs-2-2180307.html)</comment></comment></comment>


How light therapy can treat disorders from depression to Alzheimer's disease - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/19/illusions/take-light-not-drugs-hd <comment><USER2> My mother died of dementia (and other things naturally) a few months ago (her condition was diagnosed as Alzheimer's at one point but who can tell really).

I find it annoying when such and such an effect is describing as "treating Alzheimers" when there no cures for dementia and not real understand of most forms. All there are is combinations of drugs, therapies, and procedures that may make the person's life easier and more pleasant.

It's ironic that drug companies must use the more modest "helps relieve the symptoms of" language when talking of cold medicine but yet the hardly accurate term "treating Alzheimer's" is tossed around an awful lot.

<comment><USER3> I know someone who had cancer in their skull. The cancer is now removed, but there is some scaring and loss of feeling (i.e., nerve damage), loss of hearing, etc. Recently there was a scare that the cancer had returned (luckily it had not, but it was something caused by the earlier treatment that required further surgery). Was the cancer treated?

A treatment is not necessarily a cure, and something that can make a persons life easier and more pleasant is still a positive outcome.

<comment><USER2> I think a treatment is generally understood to be an intervention that addresses the "root cause" cause of condition. Anti-viral medications might or might not treat a cold but it would a treatment. An antihistamine is considered to be something that only addresses and relieves symptoms. I think the distinction between these approaches is pretty well recognized and by that token your friend received treatment.

Aspirin for a headache caused by the cancer in contrast, wouldn't be consider a treatment. We know there are real treatments for cancer so most people would be appalled by someone only getting aspirin or only getting pain-killer (unless things had gotten too advanced). Thus, I don't think there's really much confusion here except for some effort wade and make confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Vancouver gets downright dreary in November - maybe I can convince my co- workers that a natural light-mo-tron would be a good office purchase.

<comment><USER5> Vancouverite here!

5000 IU of Vitamin D3 every morning works like magic for me.

Good luck getting that in Canaduh in one pill; ordered from the States.

<comment><USER6> Just curious, why ingest an amount that is so far beyond the recommended daily dosage for vitamin D (which is, I think, less than 1K IU a day?

<comment><USER5> There is a now a growing belief that the recommendations for D3 are ridiculously conservative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about getting outside? The days are shorter and there is less light but we get outdoors far less than previous generations. That will be a contributor to light deprivation and S.A.D.

There's nothing inherently wrong with winter. If you're willing to make time for a lightbox in the morning, you can make time for a lunchtime stroll and get outdoors at the weekend.

<comment><USER8> A lunchtime stroll is good too, but part of the point here is that the timing of the light is important with respect to circadian rhythm. As a northern latitude dweller, I leave the house in darkness and return in darkness. Bright light in the morning with my coffee kickstarts that circadian pattern at a time that I couldn't otherwise get light in winter months.

Hibernation during winter might be natural in some sense, but it doesn't fit well with modern living. I'm outside about as much as one can and still do computer-oriented work. I also, rain or shine, put in 50-100 miles per week on my bicycle in commuting / errands, which means that I get a decent baseline of exercise. But, that still doesn't cut it. It's light therapy or relocation for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So how would one go about building one's own lightbox? I grew up in a sunny area, and can feel the effects of SAD. Having a lightbox to improve the mood would be helpful.

<comment><USER10> Go on Amazon, and buy a full spectrum cfl. Just put it in a normal lamp, or jury rig a reflective box with cardboard and flat white paint. Total cost: $30.

<comment><USER11> How close to full-spectrum are those new "daylight" LED bulbs?

<comment><USER12> They have almost no reds which is the dominant power of the solar spectrum or any other black body. But aiui this discussion is about UV not IR and you can make LEDs with impressive UV output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could wandering virtual sunny landscapes in something like Oculus Rift be a reasonable substitute for a light box?

<comment><USER14> IIRC, no. You need to get/see UV in order for your pineal gland to stop producing melatonin (what makes you sleepy). That is why most light therapy boxes say that they're "full spectrum" \- they emit UV in addition to visible light.

<comment><USER15> Do you have a source for this? I'm just curious because while it sounds reasonable, a quick inspection of the light boxes on Amazon shows that many of them advertise that they filter out nearly all UV light.

<comment><USER14> my guess is that you're looking at general "light boxes" (for photo shoots). Look on amazon for "happy lamps".

[http://www.amazon.com/Verilux-VT01WW1-HappyLight-Compact- Ene...](http://www.amazon.com/Verilux-VT01WW1-HappyLight-Compact- Energy/dp/B00761HREI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I appreciate the idea behind light therapy, and I do believe it has its uses. But as far as battling seasonal mood changes, I wonder if meditation and positive affirmations would be just as effective, if not more so? There's a line in that article, "He can feel the effects when he falls off the light box wagon, as he did recently during a particularly busy time at work." By using meditation and affirmations, one could never "fall off the wagon." My hope is that research centers focus their efforts on energy healing and meditation because I know there would be massive breakthroughs in unifying spirituality, science, and medicine.

<comment><USER8> Well, there have been some studies that have claimed benefits from meditation for some forms of depression. However, this article was focused on conditions believed to be influenced by circadian rhythm. Light unambiguously has an effect on circadian rhythm, whereas meditation, maybe not so much.</comment></comment>


Steam for linux testapp thingy - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/butl8/steam_for_linux_testapp_thingy/

<comment><USER2> Looks like Valve is definitely going towards multi-platform support. While the Linux version doesn't do anything as of yet, one commenter got the OS X version running after somebody pointed out that both <http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_osx> and [http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_lin...](http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux) are valid URLs. Both clients download updates, and the OS X version pops up the new, unreleased Steam application and everything. However, it appears to be in closed beta, since he was kicked off after trying to log in (see [http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/butl8/steam_for_linux...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/butl8/steam_for_linux_testapp_thingy/c0opa13))

</comment><comment><USER3> FWIW, I've had success running Steam under Wine. Have only tried CounterStrike:Source but it works reasonably well.

<comment><USER4> Football Manager and CS Source work as long as you don't run it with an extended desktop over 2 screens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Valve, if you are reading this, ROCK ON!!!</comment>


Cooking Has Become a Lost Art - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-cooking-has-become-a-lost-art-1501498800?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> The google re-direct trick no longer works for me, so I can't read the article, even in Incognito mode.</comment>


The Art of Riding the Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/the-art-of-riding-the-bubble/

<comment><USER2> Like most articles about bubblenomics, this one misses the real point.

When the financial system becomes dominated by bubbles, it is unable to allocate capital effectively. You get a "lost generation" of businesses which could have used capital more profitably than the ones who did get funded.

Like anyone else who shirks their job, capitalists who participate in bubbles ultimately won't get paid for the labor that they're not doing.

Worse than that, it's quite possible that more financial capital exists than there is actual demand for investment. In that case, capital should be rerouted towards taxes or higher wages for workers: perhaps we'd be better off with a lower national debt and if Joe Sixpack is better paid, businesses can compete to offer him new and better products and services, creating new opportunities for businesses to succeed and wealth to "trickle up".

</comment><comment><USER3> > But if all you're doing is asking whether there is a Bubble, the Bubble is > probably not here, yet.

Correction: by the time you're asking whether there is a bubble, the bubble is already getting ready to burst.

<comment><USER4> Situations where "If you have to ask, the answer is yes" are truly a horrible thing. A lot of people forget to trust their gut instincts and try to ride something that is ultimately unridable.

So what's a guy to do in a bubble anyway? Starting a company sure sounds like it might work out pretty well, but the problem is the bubble will likely burst before you manage to bail. Going about your everyday life like nothing's happening will likely leave you with feelings similar to coding away in a basement with a beautiful day just out the window ...

<comment><USER3> You've hit on the real problem with bubble analysis: for most people most of the time, knowing we're in a bubble doesn't actually help you decide what to do about it, since we don't know when the bubble will burst.

It's a great idea to invest during the frothy phase of a bubble - _as long as you cash out before the crash_. The trick - the risk - is predicting when that's going to happen.

I realized we were in a housing bubble back in 2004, but aside from sighing when friends bought houses as "investment vehicles", I wasn't able to put my realization to much use. I was right about what was going to happen but dead wrong about _when_ : the bubble ended up inflating for another four years, time during which I could have cheerfully flipped properties at great profit had I been able to know in advance when the market was going to peak.

Back in the late 1990s, I remember watching people buy Nortel shares at $100+ per share and thinking they were absolutely nuts - but some of those people sold at the right time and still came out ahead (while others saw their investments collapse to pennies on the dollar).

In both cases, knowing we were in a bubble gave me no competitive advantage.

<comment><USER5> Anybody ever tried applying the Kelly Criterion to investing in a bubble? That is, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion> with the "fraction of bankroll" being the amount of your portfolio invested in the bubble? That way, you could rebalance regularly to avoid subjecting an undue amount of your retirement fund to the riskiest parts of the market, but still reap some of the benefits.

<comment><USER6> Kelly criterion has nothing to do with bubbles (it says nothing about timings, and the main challenge of bubbles is timing). Also, Kelly criterion uses odds received and probability of winning, and you don't have anything like that in the stock market, bubble or no bubble.

<comment><USER5> The Kelly Criterion is for making repeated bets on similar offered odds and probability of winning. Admittedly, it's harder to calculate your probability of winning in a stock market bubble than it is at the roulette wheel; but you can still do your best and use that number.

If the rest wasn't clear, your offered odds are the delta in stock price minus the transaction costs.

<comment><USER6> Neither the (future) stock price delta nor the probability of movement is known to you in advance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The answer to your concerns about riding the bubble is not to ride it. Momentum investing has always been riskier than growth investing. There are no Momentum Warren Buffets.

However, at the moment, VC is obsessed with Momentum, and that's really the point of the post. That will change eventually.

Cheers,

BW

</comment><comment><USER8> From the point of view of investors and entrepreneurs looking to cash out before the crash, I agree that riding the bubble is risky business. However for entrepreneurs with a solid business plan that involves long term revenues and growth, the business can be largely immune to bubble vagaries while still being able to take advantage of readily available investment capital during a bubble.</comment>


The Shell Haters Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://shellhaters.heroku.com

<comment><USER2> A very attractive and well justified rant. But others, with far more experience but much less aesthetic sense have been barking up that tree for 30 years.

In fact, it's thanks to the lousiness of the Unix shell that we have Perl and TCL, and their progeny, Python and Ruby.

People who need intellectual closure should try SCSH, which unifies the disparate worlds of procedure, builtin, operator, command, socket, file, pipe, process, thread and system call into one coherent construct: function.

<http://www.scsh.net/index.html>

Take a look at the manual as well. The quality of technical writing and presentation are the norm in _that_ neck of the woods. Suckage shouldn't be the status-quo. Worse is not better. Evolve!

<comment><USER3> Lousiness of the unix shell? The shell is beautiful and useful and not in any way lousy. It's not supposed to be a programming language, in fact, the only places it's used as such are places where it's unreasonable to expect a system will have anything else (autoconf and friends).

When's the last time you used perl, tcl, python, ruby, or anything _but_ the shell as an interactive prompt to invoke other programs?

If I may:

        filter ()
        {
            read p && echo $p || exit
            while read x; do
                if [ `expr $x % $p` != 0 ]; then
                    echo $x
                fi
            done | filter
        }

<comment><USER2> You managed to cherry-pick the few Good Parts.

Question for you: what is the syntax for declaring a variable, initializing the variable, referencing the variable later, and assigning the value of that variable to another variable? ;-)

Now that I have refreshed your memory, do you still insist it's not lousy?

For the innocent bystanders, here is how those steps are:

      set var         # just creating the variable .. easy
                      # but set is a configurable command!
                      #  see your "sh" variety man for more info

      set var=value   # no space on either side of '='!
                      # 'value' can only be one word string,
                      #     number or character.
                      #     because single characters are
                      #      ubiquitous in nature ..
                      #       chars chars, everywhere
                      # if you want a multiword string, use ()
                      #   or "a raw string with spaces"
                      #   unless you want $ not to be expanded
                      #     then use 'raw constant string'
                      #   and if you want to run a program and
                      #     insert its output into the string ..
                      #     use "`program`"
                      # did I say you can't put spaces around =?

      # eskooz me, I am just dereferencing var
      set newvar=$var # need a magic syntax, it's teh C ptr
                      # unless you want the *whole* value
                      #   then you use ($var) or was it $(var)?
                      #   again, ask your sh variety manpage
                      #     I love portability
                      # if $var isn't bound, use $?var to test
                      #   we said 'set' is a command above
                      #   so using unbound var is ..
                      #     dependant (sic) on settings

      # if var contains multiple words (why is that a unit
      #   of input neway?) you can index it and count elements
      # with $#var and $var[i] respectively; we made everything
      # an external command or built in, but LENGTH and INDEX
      # need to be special syntax, because they're more vital
      # than goddamn assignment (which is fine being a builtin)

<comment><USER4> Again, it is not a programming language. The shell is designed to do things you think about for less than 10 seconds. If you're trying to reference a variable you used earlier, that's not what it's for. You don't store things in the shell. You create very quick and dirty statements to make data look cleaner.

<comment><USER2> I actually agree with you. If all you use the shell for is to launch programs, do basic job control and redirect I/O and do some basic pipelines, then you should be fine.

But keep in mind that 10s shell solutions becomes week long problems the moment you save them into a file. I have complex commands, either stored in a function or grepped from my history ;-) but my initial response was to the author, and anyone who laments the shell's shortcomings for anything more "industrial" than a one liner. I was strictly answering the premise in the fifth panel:

<http://shellhaters.heroku.com/#5>

"Also, Programming Language"

That it's not. Use your favorite language for your N-liners, for N > 1.

<comment><USER5> One-off scripts never are. You reuse them and tweak them for slightly different scenarios, then figure, I'll make it a parameter. Then something goes wrong and you add some error checking. Then you show it to someone else or put it in a cron job or whatever and you write some documentation.

Before you know it, your little script is no only a permanent fixture, but other people are relying on it, or its output, or reusing one of its functions. I've seen 10-line file mungers end up as 1000-line batch jobs.

Don Stewart at Galois even advocates using Haskell for what was traditionally done with shell scripts [http://www.scribd.com/doc/36045849/Practical-Haskell- Program...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/36045849/Practical-Haskell-Programming- scripting-with-types)

<comment><USER3> Well, this is how we got stuck with autoconf (of course, then some genius decided m4 was a good idea). Interestingly, sh (at least, the common intersection of all the shells) is a good choice for a language that needs to bootstrap, since pretty much every unix machine has an implementation installed somewhere by default. The way they used it was a little wonky, and if we could go back in time I'd probably suggest generating the configure script from a better language than m4, but it's not the worst of all possible worlds.

That is a cool link, thanks for sharing! Somewhere there's a similar article with OCaml that I never got all the way through, though maybe it was more about systems programming than system administration (so, replacing C, not sh).

<comment><USER6> 'Unix system programming in Objective Caml' sounds like what you were thinking of.

<http://ocamlunix.forge.ocamlcore.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's hard to get the point of this presentation seeing only the slides. Would you mind sharing some background information?

<comment><USER8> Same. FWIW, here are all the clickable links in the presentation:

<http://opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/>

<http://shellhaters.heroku.com/posix>

<http://twitter.com/rtomayko>

<http://github.com/rtomayko>

<http://man.cx/>

<comment><USER9> That doesn't really clarify much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a way this can be designed so that I won't have to click 'back' in my browser 70 times after viewing?

<comment><USER11> Last time someone posted an HTML5 presentation, people complained that the back button didn't work. I guess they really can't win.

<comment><USER12> Sure they can: post a PDF instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Since it's supposed to navigate like a manpage/less, it would be clever if j and k worked the way they do in less.

</comment><comment><USER14> Clicking on this broke my iphone's Safari.

<comment><USER15> You can't click, and there are no next/previous/etc. links. You have to hit space to advance to the next slide.

I discovered this after much pain trying to view it on my phone, subsequently trying to view it in Firefox, then (suspecting it was Webkit-centric), Arora, and I couldn't get past the first slide. I viewed it in w3m, now suspecting Javascript oddness was at fault, and was presented with a list of keystrokes (helpfully hidden by the Javascript that runs when you hit the page). In fact, it doesn't even load the slides (which are all formatted text--HTML! The thing browsers are for viewing!) until the Javascript runs.

From a quick glance at the source, it appears the culprit is some atrocity called "showoff", apparently. It would actually be easier to figure out how to view Powerpoint slides on my phone than it was to figure out how to view this thing.

<comment><USER16> > You have to hit space to advance to the next slide.

BRILLIANT design.

/sarcasm

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> .. and this is also required reading (while we are on the topic..)

<http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER18> Thank you Ryan. This will explain to all my script-kiddie-friends why I hate shells with the burning passion of a thousand suns.</comment>


Bitcoin against Ebola (tldr: donate Bitcoin to ebola affected people with low fee) - <AUTHOR> https://bitcoinagainstebola.org/

<comment><USER2> Just post a Bitcoin address already.

This requires signup which completely defeats the object of Bitcoin donations and leads me to the conclusion that this site is a thinly veiled attempt to attract users to Beam.

I know only this because I genuinely tried to donate.

Am I missing something or are you?</comment>


1984 - <AUTHOR> https://bubbl.in/book/nineteen-eighty-four-by-george-orwell/1 <comment><USER2> My favorite quote from 1984:

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."</comment>


The $12 "Gongkai" Phone (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107 <comment><USER2> I'm less interested by the phone and more by the idea of "a unique innovation ecosystem evolved with little western influence, thanks to political, language, and cultural isolation." ... "gongkai isn't a totally lawless free- for-all. It's a network of ideas, spread peer-to-peer, with certain rules to enforce sharing and to prevent leeching. It's very different from Western IP concepts, but I'm trying to have an open mind about it."

Any suggestions WRT other writing about this sphere?

<comment><USER3> I'm fascinated by it too. Though it does seem to conveniently ignore that this is probably made possible by stealing IP to get started.

Nevertheless, it's interesting to consider other mechanisms for technological evolution.

<comment><USER4> Infringe is a more suitable word for IP than steal, since nothing is physically taken. The real question (and the thing which should force self reflection on western ip laws) is if companies are incentivized to invest in developing new ip without laws to create monopolies for the new tech. Maybe open source software is a similar model (copyright vs patents).

<comment><USER5> You could physically steal plans, drawings, or documentation describing inventions or technology. Infringe isn't necessarily the best term here when the technology in question isn't necessarily covered by copyright, but likely a mixture of patents or trade secrets.

In these areas of, shall we say, 'loose' IP enforcement, I don't think you've seen any instances of really transformational increases in technology, but rather incremental improvements. Evolution rather than revolution, if you will. I don't think you'd see major changes without strong IP law enforcement. While there can be some rapid improvements in existing tech, with lax IP enforcement, how much new tech could you really expect? We'd end up stuck in a local minima.

<comment><USER4> Steal implies a loss of the physical good: if I steal your car, I get a car and you lose your car. If I steal your money you lose that quantity of cash. If I steal your idea... what have you lost? The opportunity to make money? But it's not like I took your idea and wiped the memory from your brain.

So steal I don't think is the right word.

As far as technology, software is relatively IP lax and innovative, which lets us mix and remix from a common knowledge pool. Imagine how much slower software development would be if we all had to pay royalties to knuth for using an if statement, royalties for using any encryption, or any algorithm which was, after all, non-obvious before it was invented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8646781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8646781)

<comment> ezequiel-garzon Thanks! In turn, from 2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5703946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5703946)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The downside this approach to IP that is community based as opposed to legalistic is the culture of hazing it comes with. To learn about this I recommend listening to "Business and Fucking in China" by Sinica.

[https://m.soundcloud.com/chinafile/sinica-podcast- business-a...](https://m.soundcloud.com/chinafile/sinica-podcast-business-and- fcking-in-china)

</comment><comment><USER8> Since this was 5 yrs ago, now there are regular phones that are similar if not a little more polished concepts.

[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Uniwa-AEKU-C6-Mobile- Phone-G...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Uniwa-AEKU-C6-Mobile-Phone-GSM- Bluetooth-Kid-Pocket-Vibration-Card-Small-Mini-Button-Russian- Keyboard/32918800489.html)

I think this makes a lot of sense for some uses, kids, when you want to be tech-less.

</comment><comment><USER9> ah, blast from the past! this has to be one of my top favorite HN submissions of all time, I recall 5 years ago when I first saw it posted here I was amazed. It'd be interesting to see a 2018 "Gonkai" phone.

<comment><USER10> If you search AliExpress for "mini phone" you'll find plenty. Looks like the price hasn't changed much:

[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Arrival-Ultra-Thin- AIEK-...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Arrival-Ultra-Thin-AIEK- AEKU-C6-1-0-Card-Phone-Bluetooth-2-0-Calender-Alarm/32702911721.html)

It's amusing to see some of them advertised as being "low radiation", presumably to appeal to the health quacks, but all that phrase connotes in my mind is "bad reception".

Edit: a look inside reveals not much has changed from the one in the article, only the casing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h8Ca- yzKuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h8Ca-yzKuc)

<comment><USER11> Have you used these? Any good for receiving and making phone calls?

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't trust the battery

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> amiga-workbench I bought a slightly fancier one of these earlier this year, if I could get rid of the rancid boot sound it would be perfect. [http://mos6581.com/pictures/vaio/nanophone.jpg](http://mos6581.com/pictures/vaio/nanophone.jpg)

<comment><USER13> Does it do sms? How's the battery life? I might get one...

<comment> amiga-workbench Yeah, it does SMS just fine. I had to charge it up every 2-3 days though and I'm not a heavy user at all. I call for the odd taxi a few times a week and that's it.

Be warned, it charges via its 3.5mm jack. It comes with two USB adapters for you to charge and read its internal storage.

<comment><USER13> Woah. Charging through the headphone jack? That's pretty weird (and cool).

<comment><USER14> The iPod shuffle did it:

[https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MC003AM/A/apple-ipod- shuf...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MC003AM/A/apple-ipod-shuffle-usb- cable)

I used non-Apple headphones with one and ended up with a nice black scorch mark and broken iPod, I guess because a bit of sweat got in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A few weeks ago I tried to find the cheapest phone I could on amazon. I think it was $14, including shipping.

I can only assume the battery life and reception are terrible. It got bad reviews. But if you're someone who burns through burner phones, or might do in a pinch.

<comment><USER16> In Europe you can buy a mobile phone on Amazon for about 10,- € where the battery lasts for about two weeks and making calls works well. The manufacturer is called Wiko. Very convenient for children who constantly lose their mobile phones...

<comment><USER17> Do you have any link?

<comment><USER18> I assume he is talking about the Wiko Lubi 5

Here for example on Amazon Germany

[https://www.amazon.de/Wiko-Lubi5-Telefono-Movil-Blanco- wei%C...](https://www.amazon.de/Wiko-Lubi5-Telefono-Movil-Blanco- wei%C3%9F/dp/B07CDM6QXR)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Need an update for 2018...

<comment><USER20> there you go: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BlfAMitMf4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BlfAMitMf4)

<comment><USER19> credit card phones. $15! wild.

<comment><USER20> Indeed!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Please Criticize my Fitness Site That Tracks User-Generated Data - <AUTHOR> http://funniestlift.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my second go at trying to make something useful in my trek on becoming a web developer.

My previous submission: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=902571></comment>


Why is there no C11 hype? - <AUTHOR>

C++11 is gaining a traction, and a lot of hype. Why not C? Is there no one using C? <comment><USER2> While projects like linux(kernel) or gcc compiler still use c98 as their default standard. why would it? Also M$ in its IDE doesn't care that much about c99.</comment>


How my Data Toolset evolved in 2012: scale/speed/unlocking new data types - <AUTHOR> http://practicalquant.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-my-big-data-toolset-evolved-in-2012.html

<comment><USER2> A valuable resource.</comment>


LEGO Universe ending in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.shacknews.com/article/70952/lego-universe-ending-in-2012

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great kid friendly game that kids and parents really like. It's been out for barely a year. LEGO brass are not giving it a chance.

For any of you developers who worked on LEGO Universe (and reading this), my kids and theirs friends really love what you created. Thanks!</comment>


Usenet, what have you become? (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2012/08/28/usenet-what-have-you-become/ <comment><USER2> I am a former usenet user. I used it first for actual discussion threads (like HN!) but later for binary content. I tried it again a couple years ago and the commons are being abused. An example of it is password-protected binary content that requires going to a website to get the password which of course requires additional actions like viewing an ad or signing up for a large number of mailing lists (with embedded referral codes). There are indexers that help find content that does not suffer from this problem but they come and go.

I still would like to use usenet for that content I can't get on Netflix/Amazon/HBO/Redbox but the effort required is too much -- I'll settle for watching something else. I also feel better about actual paying for the content I consume. I have my fingers crossed that we'll see more and more of the unstreamable content come to streaming providers.

<comment><USER3> There are Usenet indexers that filter out password-protected archives and provide well-organized listings of high-quality binaries.

<comment><USER2> > There are indexers that help find content that does not suffer from this > problem but they come and go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fact is, it is now confusing for most end users. I tried explaining usenet the other day, and people just can't wrap their head around something other than "a web page" or "an app."

Not only is it a different protocol, but it is a different interface as well.

But I realize this post was meant more towards Usenet's intended audience. I know for me, I really started migrating away from Usenet around 2005-06 when the SPAM got so bad I could barely sift through my daily posts.

<comment><USER5> could you explain here?

<comment><USER6> A surprising number of people aren't able to separate the concepts of "the internet" and "the world wide web". When you try to explain that USENET is a whole separate entity from the web, running along side it on the Internet, their eyes tend to glaze over.

<comment><USER7> More than anything else, that's because most people don't care about the fussy details of the term "world wide web".

"It's online but not a web page" won't glaze over many eyes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Usenet is also usable for backups. Normally you would upload a huge encrypted RAR.

Some time ago i built a tool where you can store files/folders incrementally on Usenet with encryption, parity etc. I put much effort into this. It was possible to restore a directory tree by a unique ID (which you could write on some piece of paper) that securely resolves to a chain which links to meta/raw blocks via Message-IDs and you could mount the whole thing with OSXFuse. The ID was reusable after updates to the tree, so incremental backups worked without a new ID.

I thought this would be a nice alternative use for binaries on Usenet instead of piracy stuff. But I never released it because I think that it would lead to pollution of the Usenet network.

Is anyone interested in this? Or maybe somebody has an idea on how to use this without polluting the network? Would love to hear some thoughts about this!

<comment><USER9> I wonder if you could convince cperciva (Tarsnap) to exploit Usenet as an encrypted block store (as a cheaper alternative to S3).

> I thought this would be a nice alternative use for binaries on Usenet > instead of piracy stuff. But I never released it because I think that it > would lead to pollution of the Usenet network.

> Is anyone interested in this? Or maybe somebody has an idea on how to use > this without polluting the network?

No way around it, it's absolutely an abuse of the network. That being said, so is the piracy on the binary subgroups. I think the end use would be small enough to not materially affect the binary NNTP hosts anyway.

<comment><USER8> Not sure about being the middleman yet. What if the big Usenet providers decide to delete data or we violate their non-business-usage policies? But on the other hand it's really cheap indeed! We can cancel our Usenet subscription and renew it when the data is needed. So I thought it's maybe better to cut out the middleman by giving the software away.

About the abuse: I imagined that the method could be used like some unlimited- disk-space-providers which had to get rid of that plan because the users used it as advertised.

Of course, apart from that, anyone can write such software. So it's maybe just a matter of time? Though I couldn't find any other solutions besides RAR archives.

The Usenet can be used as a key-value store with handicaps. And stuff can be built on top of that.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand how you could use newsgroups for storage, except in a "I don't care about data loss" kind of way. I haven't used USENET in decades, but NNTP is a messaging protocol it says nothing about storage AFAIK. I do recall that back in the day, messages in busy newsgroups would expire rather quickly (probably due to limited storage on my news server at the time). So if I post a message containing my backup to a binary newsgroup, what assurance do I have that I will be able to get it back?

<comment><USER9> Commercial binary NNTP providers have basically infinite retention at this point, if your content doesn't generate DMCA takedown requests. E.g. [http://www.news.astraweb.com/](http://www.news.astraweb.com/) $10/mo gets you 2660 days (>7 years) of retention, growing at roughly one day per day. (Four years ago, 3 years of retention was common.) There are also pay-by-download- in-GB a la carte plans that would be good for backup-only use (because upload is free).

Even if it isn't infinite, you can download and repost every 7 years if you care about having backups for longer than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > You get one thing – [release day availability]

I'd bet it's not zero days, but one stop shopping. So the consumer saves the overhead of wondering, "wait, is this on Hulu? Netflix? Amazon? iPlayer?" The entire catalog is in one place.

I think Netflix and Amazon are getting to the point where their catalogs are deeper than usenet.

Of course, most film junkie's "essential 100" lists will still probably hit somewhere less than 10% representation on Netflix: [http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/films-on-spike- lees-...](http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/films-on-spike-lees-list-of- essentials-that-are-streaming-on-netflix)

Still an availability problem though.

<comment><USER10> Netflix (and probably Amazon too -- I have Prime but the UI for the video service is so bad I normally don't bother with it) is falling into the cable model of hundreds of channels but nothing to watch. More often than not I will spend 15-20 minutes browsing Netflix to find something interesting that I haven't already watched, and end up just switching it off because there's not much there.

<comment><USER12> It's the same as opening the fridge, finding nothing you want, and going back a bit later with lower standards.

It's not that there is nothing there, your standards just need adjusted before you can appreciate what is there.

I guess the same can be applied to cable, but you have to _really_ lower those standards to appreciate dozens of home shopping networks, reality TV and infomercials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's still "eternal-september.org", which offers the non-binary USENET groups. The "comp.lang" hierarchy is still widely used, and the main discussions of changes to the C and C++ standard are still on USENET.

There is almost no spam.

<comment><USER14> One of these web-server setup fails again. The site is only accessible with the www. sub-domain: [http://www.eternal-september.org/](http://www.eternal- september.org/)

<comment><USER15> [http://eternal-september.org](http://eternal-september.org) works fine in my browser.

<comment><USER14> Not in Chrome. I just get "ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the past 3 years on usenet, something has changed though. Perhaps in response to this article and/or the others talking about it.

Some studios are getting drastically faster at getting their content pulled within minutes of nzb's appearing on the index sites. It's not as if its difficult to scan the groups and topics and issue take-down's on posts to the NSP's.

<comment><USER17> This. Some shows seem impossible to get via usenet and I end up looking for torrents anyway. (Also some shows seem not popular enough, so again torrents to the rescue). Which still is a major PITA as I never looked into something like SickBeard but for torrents. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER18> Yeah, some networks (HBO) are extremely vigilant. If you don't have some kind of always-on device scanning for releases you'll be too late.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _$20-35 US Dollars a month for Giganews usenet_

Can be found cheaper though, like 1/4th of that price, if you're happy with less retention (1600 days instead of 4000 or so) and a download speed limit (never found this a problem, background downloading during the night or day still means you can watch shows same day or day after if you're into that).

</comment><comment><USER19> I was a loyal giganews user for 10+ years. Then the content creators started getting content pulled very quickly, sometimes within days of upload, and the whole thing started becoming a huge hassle.

By this point I was making enough money that $30 a month split between a few streaming services and a few bucks occasionally for a movie on amazon prime wasn't a big deal. It feels good to pay for quality. But as a young kid, who wanted to experience so many types of media and no means to pay, usenet was the best.

Piracy is the perfect thing for kids interested in computers to use. It's complex, you need to figure stuff out, takes a lot of time (which kids have), and the reward for doing so is free content. But once you get old and are time-poor and have the money, it's not really needed anymore.

<comment><USER20> Piracy still has the better catalog; until not long ago, you couldn't even watch Star Wars online.

<comment><USER21>
        telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's very interesting. I wonder if, three years later, there would be a script to set this all up on a Raspberry Pi to run automatically.

(If not, I wonder if I should? Sounds at least like a fun weekend project.)

In any case I think Popcorn Time still works well, and if not, there's always regular torrenting.

<comment><USER23> A script like that would be completely feasible, but wouldn't that make it more popular? Isn't it's difficulty to set up what's keeping it under the radar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442826)

</comment><comment><USER25> FWIW, nzbget ([http://nzbget.net](http://nzbget.net)) is considered better than SABnzbd nowadays.

<comment><USER26> SABnzbd is so slow I don't know why anyone would want to use it

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So, today's desktops and high-speed internet connections are more than enough to just have personal Usenet servers instead of subscribing to somebody else's (or having your ISP shut down there's), anybody know what it would take to do this for real?

(after all I remember having access to full Usenet servers being served off ancient computers hooked into a T-1)

<comment><USER28> Sure, if you have the bandwidth and hard drive space to mirror 25+ TB of new content a day...

<comment><USER29> Text only should be doable. All of Reddit is less than a terabyte.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't agree with the claims that Usenet is dead, or that it isn't used for actual discussion anymore. I am subscribed to many newsgroups and most of them are very active. They work in all regards like mailing lists: you will find support lists for programming languages or software, announcement lists, and discussion groups about humanities, politics and many other subjects you might be interested in. People who ask questions actually get answers.

There is spam, yes, but almost all of it is in newsgroups that receive no messages other than spam, and there is no point in subscribing to these newsgroups in the first place. You can filter the rest away with SpamAssassin or Bogofilter.

You can get free access from news.solani.org or www.eternal-september.org to the non-binary newsgroups, where all the interesting discussion happens. Any client like Gnus or Thunderbird can do.

</comment><comment><USER31> There are now a lot of encrypted or hashed uploads. And to get the content you need to pay for an indexer.

</comment><comment><USER32> Cost per month: $10 for usenet access with SSL support $3 for VPN anonymity $100 for 150mbps internet access $15 for electricity to run a 24/7 box

Total per month - $128 to have things literally on demand.

How much do you pay your cable or satellite company?

EDIT:

I should say that the box does cost money, but usually can be piece together with old equipment.</comment>