Lucid dreaming: Rise of a nocturnal hobby - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18277074 <comment><USER2> I practiced becoming lucid in dreams. This was a about five years ago. I was able to do it on a regular basis. I loved it. One of the greatest benefits was solving my 'day' problems in my sleep. Of course, it was fun and surreal.

One of the side effects was sleep paralysis. Eventually, I realized my energy level was dropping. Lucid dreaming was taking my rest away. I stopped. I prefer to let my body sleep normally now.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "One of the side effects was sleep paralysis"

That's interesting. For me lucid dreaming is more a side effect of sleep paralysis. I usually realise I am dreaming when I experience the symptoms of sleep paralysis and am then able to continue the dream (aware that it is a dream).

<comment><USER2> I would be lucid in a dream and want to wake up. I would force myself out of the dream. Then, I would experience sleep paralysis. Usually, the best option was to fall back asleep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wrote a blog post about my own lucid dreaming experiences a little while back[1].

People may also be interested in r/luciddreaming over on Reddit[2].

1\. <http://blog.binarybalance.com.au/2011/02/26/lucid-dreaming>

2\. <http://www.reddit.com/r/luciddreaming>

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the few times I'm actually qualified to comment on an article. Top comment by tokenadult has it all wrong. Sure you can do Wake Back to Bed ones or mess up your sleep cycle to do it but you certainly don't have to. I never did I lucid dream several times a week. It's much easier to just keep a dream journal and do realit checks while you're awake.

Second, there's no need for piles of studies on lucid dreaming. I never feel tired or anything like that after I have big lucid dreams. The opposite in fact. After a particularly emotional or powerful dream I feel alive! I feel exuberant and it's easier for me to get out of bed. It's a fantastic way to practice skills as well. I'm an MMA fighter and I have many many fighting dreams that feel perfectly fluid and natural. The pathways in my brain for fighting are being stimulated for hours at a time while I sleep. Sure it's not 1:1 with real life practice but the opponents in my dreams often do novel moves I have never been exposed to before and I have to come up with novel counter techniques. It's clear to me that lucid dreaming practice is helpful to real world skills.

Not to mention the entertainment value. My favorite most recent one was telekinetic powers. I made forks and knives fly across the room then when I wanted to test out more power I looked out the window and made a nice car sized chunk of earth come rippping out of the ground. It was fucking awesome.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article has a section on dream interpretation. This is bunk Freudian stuff. Even if it were true that dreams had meanings, it would be difficult to prove scientifically. Just a warning before people start attaching meaning to something where there is none.

</comment><comment><USER6> Back when I was in high school, I had to write a term paper and selected the topic of lucid dreaming. I probably put more effort into that paper than any other assignment in all my years of schooling. I went to the local college and looked up every article on the topic I could find. Stephen Laberge had a book out back then (1985) according to Wikipedia, but all I could get were various periodicals. I studiously practiced the techniques he was recommending at the time (waking after a dream, noting it in a journal, staying awake for 5 minutes, repeating the mantra as you fall back to sleep: 'the next time I dream, I will realize that I am dreaming'.

I was amazed at how well a little bit of consistent practice could bring out this ability. I don't recall any negative side effects as others here have mentioned, but then I was a teenager so who knows if I was really tuned-in to how it was effecting me.

I remember being especially entranced by the idea of tests subjects sending coded signals to the waking world through muscular contractions - but then _Dreamscape_ was a relatively new film at the time, so maybe that had something to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I spent some time in college thinking about/wanting to lucid dream. The techniques that I came to use were using a digital watch that I looked at frequently, and making a habit of turning on and off lights.

The idea is that in a dream, looking at a watch won't reveal a time; and turning off a light switch won't turn off the light. So you train yourself to do these things habitually with the idea that eventually you will do it in your dream, and have the knowledge that when something funny happens, you will know you are dreaming.

I was also advised to have in mind the things I wanted to do when I became lucid. I wanted to fly. So with that in mind, I got a cheap digital watch and started flickign on and off light switches.

It was a couple weeks later when I had my first lucid dream; I looked at my watch while at some type of fair; and noticed it was weird looking; which gave me this sort of _poof_ aha moment where I realized I was in a dream. Then I remembered I wanted to fly, so I made myself "fly" which this particular time ended up being me going straight up like I was on a very fast space elevator.

I had my second, much nicer only a couple nights later.

Since then I stopped putting any effort into it, but I have been a lucid dreamer pretty often ever since.

Very few of my dreams do I conciously take control, but the vast majority of them I am what I have come to call/think of as 'semi-lucid'. That is, part of the story line of the dream is that I am dreaming, it's essentially built into the plot, but I am still just a passive observer.

The most common exception to this is when I want to wake up from a dream because I have gotten myself into a shotty situation, so I will climb to the top of a building and jump off or do something else drastic to wake myself up.

Recently, I have had more and more double-layer dreams, or inception-esque dreams. Where I wake up from a dream, always semi-lucid, usually by my own will as I described above; only to go about being in another dream still.

Usually when truly wake from these I feel similar to how I do after coming out of a long meditation session. Uber uber focused; like my brain is on super drive and reality is crystal clear.

Anyway, I recommend learning to lucid dream to everyone. Especially with apps as it probably makes it even easier for the right people; but I had plenty of luck like I said by just checking my wrist watch.

The only true benefit other than the 'fun' factor is that I basically never have nightmares; as anything that is scary/bad is always met with a sense of lightness or calm, since my dream character knows he is dreaming.

<comment><USER8> I've only had one or two fully lucid dreams. In one I realised I was dreaming, I could not get myself to wake up. I was then convinced I should kill myself to wake up, but could not fully determine if I was sleeping or not, so why take the risk?

Unfortunately, clocks and text seem to work in my dreams. Another reality check is covering your mouth and nose and trying to breathe. Supposedly, this is a good test as in a dream you'll keep breathing. Plus, it's unobtrusive, unlike turning lights on and off at offices and other people's houses.

<comment><USER9> For me, the best unobtrusive reality-check, by far, has been checking gravity. Just by quickly changing my weight in a chair or rolling up a bit on the balls of my feet, I can see if my weight is there or I start to float a bit.

Checking global light level control (light switches) is, like you say, not unobtrusive. But I've tested, with moderate success, using more subtle lighting features. Window blinds, for example, typically have far more subtle shades of light and shadowing than gets rendered in my dream worlds. Paying a few seconds of focused attention to a window or lamp shade doesn't stand out in most social situations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I regularly experience sleep paralysis and find it very easy to go from that to lucid dreaming, especially as I can force myself into sleep paralysis (I discovered that it triggers when I am too warm at night). Personally the only benefit I've gotten from it is that it is fun to do occasionally.

<comment><USER10> If I eat before bed I experience the same thing. Didn't start happening till my senior year in college. Freaky, but fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm convinced I could operate some kind of (very sensitive) input device while lucid dreaming. I can touch type well so I'm thinking of making "keyboard gloves" or something to communicate from the other side. Though I should have a look - I can probably already order them on Kickstarter.

<comment><USER12> <http://xkcd.com/269/>

<comment><USER11> Internet rule: there is xkcd of it. But actually, I found mention of communicating via eye movement here: [http://daniel.erlacher.de/index.php/Time_required_for_motor_...](http://daniel.erlacher.de/index.php/Time_required_for_motor_activity_in_lucid_dreams)

But that's a bit too low bandwidth for me ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've tried lucid dreaming with limited success over the years. Here are a couple of relevant links:

\- RadioLab is a great podcast, they did a lucid dreaming episode: [http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab- blog/2012/jan/23/wake...](http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab- blog/2012/jan/23/wake-up-dream/)

\- After hearing said podcast, I wrote a quick twitter hack to occasionally ask if you're in a dream (one of the techniques): <https://twitter.com/#!/isdreaming>

</comment><comment><USER14> I've had a lot of lucid dreams in my life. I never did anything special as far as I know. I began having then fairly early, like 7-8 years old and I suspect it happened as a way to take control of and avoid nightmares. Gaining the ability to realize it's a dream and escape by flying was a great way to change nightmares to fun experiences where I gained confidence by deciding to tauntthese nightmares and fly off or whatever I wanted.

From my teens to my early thirties, I would say that more than 50% of my dreams were lucid and were more about fun with friends and showing off. With time, I even gained the ability to wake up on demand from my dream. My cue is that I can close my eyes in my dream and when I open them, I wake up in real life. With practice, I can even close my eyes again and get to sleep again to join back the dream if I do it fast enough. I sometimes was able to wake up and join back a dream this 2-3 times per dream.

Now at 40, lucid dream are much less frequent but happen from time to time.

By the way, I could never decide what to dream about before going to sleep (except joining back a dream). Then again, it never occurred to me it could be possible.

But, it always cool and a joy to experience. I suspect Neo go his idea to hack the Matric because of lucid dreaming!

Most people I talked to about this have trouble believing me it's possible. It's usually the few who experienced lucid dreams who believe me.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've heard a lot of claims about lucid dreaming among some young people I know well locally (some of whom post here from time to time). I don't get the impression that lucid dreaming is really as beneficial as they think it is. Some cases I know about from personal observation involve disturbing sleep cycles so much in pursuit of lucid dreams that the young people failed in work environments or crashed and burned in their university studies. Getting a normal amount of sleep (for you, that leaves you feeling rested when you wake up in the morning) is very important. It's a lot more important than what kind of dreams you have.

I read through the whole submitted article, and I didn't see any reporting on rigorous study of the waking state health or performance of long-term lucid dreamers. All we see in the article is anecdotes, summed up by

"For Hobson, the neuroscientist, the benefits of being able to achieve lucid dreaming are much simpler.

"'We don't really know if there are real psychological advantages, but I can tell you that it has huge entertainment value. It's like going to the movies and not paying for your ticket.'"

An issue to consider whenever participants on Hacker News discuss self-help strategies is how reliable the research base is. People who only use the University of Google Library to do research will often find websites by advocacy groups that are pushing a solution that may not have been tested. Fortunately, Google's own director of research, LISP hacker Peter Norvig, has written a guide to reading research reports

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

that reminds us all about what to look for when someone reports some new, amazing treatment. Check out whether lucid dreaming has really been well evaluated with sufficiently large sample sizes, control groups, and other marks of good research.

I think a writing intervention

[http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Faculty/Pennebaker/H...](http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Faculty/Pennebaker/Home2000/WritingandHealth.html)

may do more for many people in high-creativity careers than lucid dreaming. There is a better research base, by far, for the writing self-help than for lucid dreaming. Try it and see how it works.

I've always been able to enjoy interesting movie-like experiences by DAY- dreaming, and it's not explained here why anyone should alter their sleep cycle (which has known risks, up to and including psychotic symptoms) just to be entertained. A lot of researchers over the years have done a lot of research on human dreams in particular and sleep cycles more generally. Where is there any evidence that lucid dreaming is helpful rather than harmful, long-term?

Best wishes for much success in improving your personal insight and problem- solving.

<comment><USER16> I tried lucid dreaming and it was quite easy for me to control my dreams. But after I woke up, despite the fact that I had slept 8+ hours, I felt mentally exhausted. Physically I was fine, no yawning or anything, but mentally I felt like I hadn't slept. It was a weird disassociation of physical vs mental exhaustion.

I've tried it a few times and it's the same every time. To me the slightly more fun lucid dreams are not worth the exhausted feeling in the morning.

<comment><USER17> Fghh45sdfhr3, what did you dream lucidly?

When I could control my dreams I would probably just stop whatever my brain is trying to figure out and start a sex dream.

<comment><USER16> Flying, building a great world - much like creative Minecraft 10 years before it was invented. And yeah sex too, but that kept waking me up.

<comment><USER9> Fellow lucid dreamer here. I've tried some explorations of the interface between sleep and waking from within dreams. In my experience/opinion, sex dreams might tend to break up because they use the tactile sense a lot and vision not so much. That can lead to inadvertently paying attention/letting-in one's real-body proprioceptive sense channel or attempting to give motor commands out to one's real muscles (rather than sticking with the dream-sense channels and the more expectation-based moment to moment control of one's dream).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is subreddit for it: <http://www.reddit.com/r/luciddreaming>

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been able to get poor-quality "wake-induced lucid dreams" reasonably regularly lately by waking myself with an alarm 3 or 4 hours before my usual wakeup time, walking around for ten to thirty minutes so I won't immediately fall back to sleep and then getting back to bed and meditating while I wait to fall asleep. More often than not, I go straight into a dream state without the in-between stage of deep unconscious sleep, and remain lucid.

Amusingly, these types of lucid dreams are basically false awakenings with my brain still running on the assumption that I'm lying in my bed in my bedroom, so they kind of resemble the stereotypical astral projection. I'm guessing something like this is what's really going on with the people who claim they can astral project.

I'm not doing the thing all the time since it's hard to keep up a regular sleep cycle while doing it, and the dreams have so far mostly been too short to be much fun. Still, it's a nice proof-of-concept.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are the companies pushing the lucid dreaming glasses nowadays the same people that sold them in the old "Johnson-Smith Things You Never Knew Existed" catalogs when I was young? I distinctly remember wanting to buy those, but I always blew my money on the other stuff in the catalog (fake dog poop, a "Hoof Arted" t-shirt)

</comment><comment><USER21> I used to get them quite a lot a few years ago. First thing was usually white noise followed by the "lucid dream".

The funny thing is that when you put on a nicotine patch right before going to sleep the dreams become way more accurate. I guess it has something to do with dopamine. It's like having a lucid dream... in HD ;)

<comment><USER22> Modafinil definitely has a similiar effect, if you sleep when it's active..

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had lucid dreams fairly regularly during my teen years (I suspect due to some strangeness caused by sleep apnea). These days it's treated and I don't have these anymore. Though, for anyone interested I think it's totally worth trying to trigger it. It's an interesting experience.

<comment><USER11> I had lucid dreams as a teenager too, and completely forgot about it. Then about a year ago it happened again - and I remembered how cool it was.

I find I can nearly always do it if I wake up in the middle of the night then just think about it as I fall back asleep. I guess my subconscious then keeps a look out for weird stuff... "That elephant wasn't there when I looked a minute ago. Wait, elephant?! I'm dreaming!" Then it's flying time.

<comment><USER24> This is called a wake-initiated lucid dream. It is also possible to become lucid in the middle of a dream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wouldn't spend time trying to "cause" a lucid dream, I have enough goals to chase that affect my awake life.

But I have these dreams sometimes, it's always just fun. My two favorite things are to fly, and to make portals.

Yeah, portals like in computer games. You only decide that you wanna go somewhere else, and you let the passive part of your brain select that place.

I got this whole idea by reading an article about how to detect you're in a dream. It suggested you find a mirror and try to step through it, and that somehow turned into my portals.

That's the best thing about lucid dreaming, you can do whatever you want.

Now I don't have these dreams to often. When I realize I'm dreaming I'm too awake to have a realistic dream, so it's something between a dream and a day- dream or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER26> Lucid dreaming is the tip of a very big ice berg, one which may extend beyond the menial dimensions of spacetime, as we know it... A brash satement...? Perhaps, but I, Dr Rory Mac Sweeney, can only offer the melted ice of my memories from what I have seen in the oneiric paradigm and hope more people will take the time to elevate their opinion from material reductionism, through direct experience with open, yet skeptical mind This subject will gain more momentum in the coming months and we will all be facing bigger questions about our reality, I can be found on line and am happy to chat @R

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a question that I've had for quite a long time about lucid dreaming : is it possible to use the lucid dream time as a time to think deeply about things that usually require a lot of real world time but don't usually require access to real-world material?

For example (this list is completely non-exhaustive):

1\. figure out high-level software architectural design

2\. write the high-level plot of a novel

3\. think how to solve personal problems (personal relationships, etc.)

4\. come up with product marketing campaign ideas

etc.

I know this defeats the purpose of sleep itself, which is to completely let the brain to rest completely, but I'm genuinely wondering.

<comment><USER9> I've spent most of my attention in my LDs on poking at the nature of the simulation rather than on trying things like those. But somewhat relevant to your question, in my experience, the passage of time can go rather strangely in dreams. As one example of weirdness, if I start to do something like count to twenty, it would be rather easy for me to start counting, then have the dream kind of, almost or perhaps entirely imperceptibly, "skip", and I'm saying twenty with plenty of memories that I did the counting if I try to remember the middle, but never having actually done so--in whatever best sense that phrase works for dreams--. That is to say, memories seem to me like just another sense channel that the dream world can fake in realistic or shoddy fidelity as the case may be.

So how would you know if you really thought through designing some software "beginning to end" so to speak, actually considering sub-cases, instead of having just skipped to feeling like you did all that when really your dreamworld is just elaborating its first guess at a design on the fly as you look at one facet or another. Now in some cases, that distinction might not matter, in which case I'd say a LD might be what you are looking for. In other cases, it will matter, and I'd say dream worlds can be tricky (another important way here is that one's "criticality" is not usually up to par in dreams, normally glaring problems, omissions, strangeness can just glide by one's attention; one is usually better at this in LD but not anything like infallibly so).

Now the interpersonal relationship thing... that I have more directly tested. And instead of sitting and trying to use dream-time to ponder the matter, LDing provides a different sort of possibly useful trick; calling up simulation(s) of the person in question and chatting with them while their dispositions are somewhat under your control. Unless one gets a/the trickster wearing a them-mask instead, which is always a worry for me, but maybe not for you.

<comment><USER27> Memory integrity is definitely an important thing in order to get any decent result out of a supposedly productive lucid dream, but can't it be improved by "training" though? I remember reading through a lucid dreaming thread on Reddit, and they said you can actually train yourself and have increasingly stable lucid dreams overtime; I would think memory integrity is one huge part of the whole dream stability spectrum.

<comment><USER9> (Sorry for the lack of brevity.)

Well, I don't mean to paint anything as a strong defeater of the project. More of a hurdle, and perhaps not one that everyone would have; the nature of dreams is very individualized and varies so much with so many things. Mine are usually very visual, but if I'm doing a lot of programing for a few days, they become abstract and syntactic in ways I find it hard to recall clearly. Maybe I've trained my dream-recall to overuse spatial aspects as a crutch.

And I would think short and mid-term time contiguity amenable to training (one can certainly learn to spot the skips more readily). And the more common, persistent dream-stabilizing methods would be a good place to start (I find having one dream-hand constantly scratching at its palm, or the palm of the other dream-hand to be a pretty good, persistent I'm-in-a-dream- reminder/stabilizer). Apply one to stabilize the dream, and then keep doing it even with the dream largely stable while thinking through the problem. I didn't try that (when I noticed the time skipping, I started trying to figure out how to use them, like control the skipped interval, rather than reduce their frequency).

My worry is that "filling in what you attend to" is a pretty general thing/feature/mechanism across all the senses I've tested in dreams. Along with "one's expectations", it is near to the foundations of what I think dreams are made of (speaking internally that is; speaking externally, they are made of brain region activations and neuron spikes and such). So there may be a limit to how much one can reduce/corral it on each sense modality. Well exercised short-term memory will probably help with that on the memory channel, since it does on the visual/spatial one... like with objects persisting when you turn your back to them and then look again. But then the capacity limit to working memory comes into play.

And there seems to be only so much I can split my in-dream attention between maintaining awareness that I'm in a dream (so as to keep it stable) and giving room in my working memory for new dream developments/updates to take place. Which is somewhat weird, because if I just look out on a dream vista (or just some wood grain), the landscape can be amazingly complex and rich with shape and color. But the more or longer I control my attention and hold fixed the way the dreamworld is allowed to update (no random stuff insertions or location shifts), the less those richly productive, autonomous visual updates seem to even try. The dream gets duller, and the fewer things around the more unstable it gets. I seem to have to allow the dream production mechanisms some free reign of randomness to maintain the sensation-expectation feedback loop going with content.

But maybe all of this is a product of my outlook. I look for the limits of dreams like the rendering limits of a game-engine. So maybe my dreamworlds oblige me and provide all manner of limits built around the kinds of limits I expect our wet-ware simulated worlds to have. If so, sorry to have infected your dream-thinking with these things.

And heck, just thinking for a bit in a dream about the rough shape, the requirements a solution must have so as to setup some very strong expectations, and then skipping forward in time a bit (or expecting to find the solution in a drawer and opening the drawer) and looking over your subconscious' creative "fill it in as I look" solution could very well be a good tool for seeing possibilities you wouldn't arrive at through more straight-forward thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me of "Summer Dream Job."

<http://dresdencodak.com/2006/10/07/summer-dream-job/>

I had a semi-lucid dream once. I was flying after my then girlfriend. I knew I was dreaming, and I knew that I could will myself to fly as fast as I wanted. That's when I lost control, because my dream girlfriend just willed herself to fly faster than me. I willed so hard, I "broke" the dreamworld. Everything was flying apart as I woke.

</comment><comment><USER29> I almost always remember my dreams upon waking. Frequently I suddenly realized I was dreaming and would wake partly up. Usually I notice that my eyes are closed, like while I'm driving, and I'm afraid. Then I force my eyelids open and realize, "Stink, I was trying to sleep" :-)

But I never struggle with getting to sleep. I just concentrate on "nothing" and try really hard to not think about anything, and soon enough I'm asleep. For me it just takes discipline.

</comment><comment><USER30> There was a phase in my life not too long ago where I experienced lucid dreams and/or night terrors, granted I had a very bad diet and sleep cycle at the time.

After a couple of weeks it ended up taking a toll on me both physically & mentally, I would not recommend that anyone willingly pursue this type of sleeping/dreaming.

</comment><comment><USER31> The first I heard of lucid dreaming was this introduction to it in Steve Pavlina's podcast. Highly recommended for anyone with a passing interest:

[http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/01/stevepavlinacom- pod...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/01/stevepavlinacom- podcast-010-lucid-dreaming/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I occasionally have lucid dreams without trying to do so. They're almost always a lot of fun, basically the best sandbox game you can think of.

I've been pondering trying to trigger them, but I've been a bit spooked by suggestions that I'd have to try to learn tp distinguish dreams from reality.

<comment><USER24> I can distinguish any dream from reality, but the problem is that when I'm asleep I don't ask myself "Am I asleep?", I just continue following the dream's story. If I ever ask myself that question, or notice something isn't right (which is difficult in dreams, because what would be bizarre in reality will easily be considered normal by your brain in the dream) I will become lucid.

The article talks about flying. I often will fly in my dreams even if I am not lucid. When I am lucid, I am always able to fly.

One interesting thing you can do when you find yourself lucid dreaming is conducting experiments. You just have to remember what experiments you decided to conduct when you were awake or think of some on the spot. I found if you close your eyes and imagine something, it will be part of the world when you open them.

I found it is easier to become lucid when you are waking up, although by the time you are lucid you won't have much time left to do anything in the dream.

<comment><USER33> One thing to try (if it's worth it to you) is to get in the habit of checking if you're dreaming, even in waking life. Try to read printed text, or use an electronic device, and _really_ pay attention to whether it works the way you expect. It feels pretty silly to do this when you're awake, until you do it really thinking you're awake and realize you're actually dreaming.

You do need to be quite studious, though-- I've had dreams where I managed to convince myself that that shifting, swirling mass of words and characters probably says something in Russian.

One of my favorites is something I call the "five finger rule." This is a mnemonic for remembering how many fingers you have. Here's how it works: Hold out your hand. Now count your fingers, one at a time. One, two, three, four, five. Five fingers.

Any time you don't get five, you're probably asleep. Obviously this assumes you have five fingers per hand in waking life :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> absolutely worth trying; had two lucid dreams I can remember, one of which was flying over the Swiss alps. It was as real as real life gets, it's quite weird and amazing. Unfortunately didn't succeed yet. r/luciddreaming is good to follow, as some already said.

</comment><comment><USER35> While I've had a few "lucid" dreams in my life that I can remember, I'm skeptical of anyone who claims they can do this with some regularity. Don't forget, there's a comparable number of people who claim the ability to "astral travel".

When you wake up in the morning, how can you tell whether you were lucid dreaming or just _dreaming_ that you were lucid dreaming? I don't mean that distinction as a joke; in one case you have conscious control over the dream while in the other case you don't have conscious control but dream that you do.

<comment><USER36> >Don't forget, there's a comparable number of people who claim the ability to "astral travel".

That is a rather uncompelling argument. How many people claim to be able to do something has very little to do with whether or not that thing is possible. Many, many people claim to have been helped by homeopathic remedies, and none of them have. Relatively few people claim to be able to walk on their hands, but many of them can.

"Number of claims" is evidence, but it is such weak evidence that its effect on your beliefs should almost always be overwhelmed by the effect of your prior. The plausibility of astral projection and homeopathy is incredibly low, and the weak evidence given by "number of adherents" doesn't significantly budge the needle.

On the other hand, having had personal experience with lucid dreams, your appraisal of the plausibility of regular, practiced lucid dreaming should be rather high. If, then, you encounter even a dozen people who claim to have done this successfully, you should believe that is probably possible. That is, of course, unless you have some appropriately strong justification based on your understanding of neuroscience for why it should not be possible.

>When you wake up in the morning, how can you tell whether you were lucid dreaming or just dreaming that you were lucid dreaming? I don't mean that distinction as a joke; in one case you have conscious control over the dream while in the other case you don't have conscious control but dream that you do.

I don't think the distinction is meaningful. The part of your brain that perceives being in control is not the part of the brain that issues commands. So if we allow that it is possible to believe you have control over your actions without actually having control over your actions, then we must accept that this is in fact _always_ the case, even while we are awake. The belief that you are an atomic unit which simultaneously perceives and manipulates the world is a form of essentialism which we can pretty well rule out by now.

Edit: I should also add that "lucid dreaming" doesn't technically imply control; it just means you're aware that you're in a dream.

<comment><USER37> Pretty much any time I've become aware in a dream that I am dreaming, I wake up immediately. The one dream that I remember where I suddenly realized I was dreaming but didn't wake up went pretty awry. I became very confused in the dream trying to figure out if I was awake or not. It was disturbing.

<comment><USER36> >Pretty much any time I've become aware in a dream that I am dreaming, I wake up immediately.

Most, but not all of my experiences have been similar, although I actually suspect that in at least some cases I have not actually woken up, but have merely _dreamt_ that I woke up. At one point I "woke up" from a lucid dream to find myself in bed in the middle of the night, went back to sleep, and then was awoken moments later by my alarm and found that the sun was fully risen. Not conclusive, as I may have just slept dreamlessly in the interim (although that's uncommon after waking from a dream and going back to sleep), but suspicious.

Another time, I woke up immediately after realizing I was dreaming, looked around my room, and found that my dream had persisted and was visually composited over the real world around me. This was, of course, extremely disconcerting, and my solution was to close my eyes and go back to sleep. But looking back, it seems far more likely that I dreamt that entire experience, including the waking up and looking around, than that my brain actually had that kind of catastrophic system failure.

In any case, losing your grasp on lucid dreams is a common and frustrating problem, and people have gathered a few tricks for holding on. One that has sometimes worked for me is, when I feel things beginning to slip, rather than panicking, to spin gently in place with my eyes closed (although closing your eyes in a dream is not always

<comment><USER9> > "(although closing your eyes in a dream is not always"

I've been lucid dreaming for a good many years now. Losing visual sensations in a dream typically leads me to waking up. I attribute this to me being a rather visual learner/thinker while awake. Early on I tried the spinning- around trick, but it led to confusing visual-blurs and often me unintentionally sensing my real-body's proprioceptive channel, all leading to waking up.

My best dream-stabilizing trick so far has been to look at my dream hands and use one to scratch the palm of the other. That ties my visual perceptions to my dream-body's tactile sensations. Once I get a dream stabilized like this, I can just keep one hand scratching its own palm all the time, serving as a good, constant reminder that I'm still dreaming.

Or, if I'm flying/hovering, I just crash into something or the ground (the harder the better), also linking the visual to the tactile.

Just my personal experience, ymmv.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Huh, reading the comments here make me feel like a lucid dreaming wizard. I'd figured out all of these tricks and many more personal ones before I left highschool. It was the basis of more than one Informative forensics speech.

Can't say I use it for the "insight" that some comments talk about though, or that it affects my quality of rest or restedness.</comment>


Palantir will have a lockup period after its direct listing - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/21/sources-say-palantir-will-have-a-lockup-period-after-its-direct-listing/ <comment><USER2> I can't believe this article didn't get any traction. The fuck is the point of a direct listing if the employees can't immediately gain liquidity?</comment>


People of class drink alcohol  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/05/people-of-class-drink-alcohol/ <comment><USER2> Please note that some of the graphs there start with 50% as original y-axis. It creates an appearance of males drinking twice as much as females, for example.

<comment><USER3> I guess if you're the kind of person who likes looking at bars instead of reading the text that gives them meaning as well.

I think a floor set at number like 0.5 and with a linear scale is pretty reasonable for readability, unless you're a lout and ignore those little letters that tell you what things actually are.

<comment><USER4> WTF is the point of a graph if you have to read the fine print to avoid misinterpreting it? Why not just use a table? A graph is supposed to convey the relative magnitudes of the data points, not just their ranking. If I just wanted to show who drank more than whom I would just list them in order.

Looking at these graphs you'd think that: Almost nobody in the south drinks; The vast majority of blacks do not drink; Catholics are twice as likely to drink as Protestants.

And so on, when in fact these are all false conclusions. The real conclusion, which you would easily get from properly scaled graphs, is that _the majority of people drink across almost all demographic groups_.

If you blame me for drawing false conclusions from such graphs I blame the shitty fucking graphs for being misleading. I mean, they don't all even start at 50%. One starts at %40 and one at %0. Seriously, these graphs are garbage.

<comment><USER5> Er, so all graphs of temperature should start at absolute zero? It's absurd to expect all graphs to start at zero -- the point of a bar graph is to show relative comparisons, and the whole point of the labels on the axes is to relate the graph to an absolute scale. You even admit this, "[a] graph is supposed to convey the relative magnitudes of the data points" -- Exactly, and so the graph should be scaled in a way that efficiently conveys the _relative_ information. I apologize for the ad hominem, but this is just serious PEBKAC: you need to learn to read graphs. The mistaken conclusions you arrived at could have been avoided if you paid attention to the labels.

Yes, a poorly made graph can make a tiny effect look huge, e.g. if it was the case that 99% of people drank, and the graph was just plotting variation within the remaining 1%, that could be pretty misleading. This is _yet another_ reason that the consumers of information should pay attention to the labels and understand what the _real_ message is from the data. Don't expect the creators of the graph to present the data in the "fairest" way (whatever that is); instead it's our responsibility to think critically and make sure we understand what's really going on. The creator of the graph will naturally act to advance his own interests.

tl;dr: It's a mistake to consider the labels to be "fine print".

<comment><USER6> You are both missing the forest for the trees. Graph axes should scale in proportion to observed variance of the statistic being shown, automatically creating a "natural scale". The magnitude of the scale is of course proportional to the error in the measurement(s) you are showing, it has nothing to do with absolute numbers.

"The creator of the graph will naturally act to advance his own interests" -> "The biased creator of a graph with too much riding on his hypothesis will surreptitiously act to advance his own interests". People who do this are not worth listening to.

<comment><USER5> Fully agreed/conceded. I was addressing the graph consumer's point of view. There's definitely good practices the graph creator can follow to most effectively/honestly convey the information contained in the data.

<comment><USER7> When I see a graph that start's at some random point on the Y axis I assume the person is extremely biased and instantly ignore what they are saying. If I don't see error bars on data points I assume they have zero idea how accurate there information is.

Unfortunately I suspect that this approach is less common among the under educated because trying to create misleading charts is vary common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Australia, people of all classes drink like they have just crossed the Mojave desert, barefoot, after escaping Alcatraz.

<comment><USER9> According to this listing, Australia is not even in the top 20: Luxembourg, Ireland and Hungary seem to be the top three.

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

<comment><USER10> I'm wondering if the article in Wikipedia is really based on "alcohol consumption" and not Alcohol reported to be sold in the country?

There is a clear reason why Luxembourg is on top. The taxes on alcohol is (very) low in Luxembourg and a lot of people from the countries closed to Luxembourg (Belgium, France and Germany) are buying their alcohol there. We don't forget the travellers (Luxembourg is a crossroad in EU) making a stop in Luxembourg...

<comment><USER11> That explanation could work for Luxembourg. But Ireland?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article seems to be claiming that people with a larger vocabulary (as tested by a vocab test) are more likely to drink, not 'people of class'.

<comment><USER13> This article seems to be claiming that intelligence = class.

<comment><USER14> Actually, it's implicitly claiming that large vocabulary is the same as class.

<comment><USER15> Which may sound shocking, even offensive at first. However, the correlation between vocabulary and socio-economic class is a very concrete result of many other studies, such that it is a reasonable thing to leave implicit in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nah, they just score higher on a vocabulary test because they're articulating extra crisply.

Working in a public library is a good way to dispel illusions about drinking being classy, by the way. We could always tell when some of the veterans got their monthly checks...

Also: Bike thieves _do_ suck, and these graphs would send Tufte on a crying jag.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ironically, I learned a new word: 'confound' (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding> ). And then I realized that the last chart has confounds. Intelligence and vocabulary are correlated, but worth differentiating in this case.

A higher vocabulary is pretty strongly correlated with being well-read. I think we can trust that. And being well-read implies being exposed to different things (though it is by no means the only way to be exposed to different things -- i.e., those who are well-read [subset operator] those who are exposed to a wide variety of things.

But those who are exposed to a wide variety of things are highly correlated with those who wish to take risks _to be_ exposed to new things. And the latter group seems pretty well correlated with those who drink.

Note, intelligence only 'lurks' near vocabulary.

<comment><USER18> _being well-read implies being exposed to different things [...] But those who are exposed to a wide variety of things are highly correlated with those who wish to take risks to be exposed to new things_

I don't follow this reasoning. Being well-read implies being exposed to a lot of different books, not a lot of different activities. In my experience, people that read a lot are not people who take risks to be exposed to new things, precisely because they have rather intellectual hobbies and they have less free time due to reading a lot.

<comment><USER17> Good point. And I don't know how the vocabulary test was made. I think the monotonicity can be explained by, in general, people who read marginally more are marginally exposed to more things (even after to discounting for the important fact that there is less free time and they're more intellectual, etc.). But it's a very good point.

It seems like there are a lot of different factors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From another article: "In the 1998 to 2004 data, each point higher on the Wordsum test causes a $1,200 decrease in income." [<http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/07/higher_intellig.html>]

So where does "smartness" fit in? I hate to imply causation, but maybe:

"Wordsat smartness" -> annoying person who uses big words other people don't understand all the time -> social isolation -> less money -> alcohol!

Whew!

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't know about the word test scores but the rest of the demographic info doesn't look right. For instance, the second chart. The data suggests that statistically, the odds of a girl drinking are higher than an african-american drinking.

By the way, very very misleading graphs. I was totally shocked by going through them. I had to read the comments here to realize what was being shown.

</comment><comment><USER21> Apparently, here is the vocabulary test used at the GSS and referenced in the last graph:

[http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2010/04/gss-vocabulary- test....](http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2010/04/gss-vocabulary-test.html)

<comment><USER22> At first I was like, "Oh shit how can anyone not get a 10, these words are easy. Society is doomed!"

Then I saw how the choices were actually really strange for some of them. For example, "Emanate" is meant to be matched to "come", but that's a very poor match. Similarly "Space" matching to "room" is a tricky sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was curious where the data came from, since the article didn't really explain it. Here's the details:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Social_Survey>

</comment><comment><USER24> I thought this was a linkbait title, but it actually is the title of the original article.

One of many thoughts appropriate to this dubious claim: often, questions like, "Do you smoke pot?" or "Do you drink?" have more to do with identity than with the actual frequency of consumption.

I'd bet that people "of class"-- well-to-do, educated, liberal-- are more likely to say "yes" to the question, "Do you smoke pot?" However, a large number of such people are those who haven't smoked for 20 years-- those who wouldn't be averse to smoking pot if it came their way, but haven't looked for it or been near it in a long time. (I have no problem with people who use marijuana, but the fact is that to get regular access often requires association with "unclassy" characters, because most drug dealers are creepy and the process of asking for access is degrading.)

If you look at who is actually smoking pot, and weight by frequency of consumption, I'd guess that the correlation goes away. Same with alcohol.

</comment><comment><USER25> People always shoot the messenger for pointing this out, so I'll expect about a million downvotes for it, but in case you case didn't know it already GNXP is the cryptoracist camp along with Charles Murray and Steve Sailer. Seriously, check out some of the comments.

Okay, now you can downvote me.

<comment><USER26> In other words, we should dismiss a priori the possibility of any racial _correlates_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > I knew that blacks were more likely to be teetotalers, and expected that > women would be as well.

Is there anything scientific about this at all? The whole article sounds fishy.</comment>


J2EE Is Dead - Completely Dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/j2ee_is_dead_completely_dead <comment><USER3> copy pasta because the server is dead (completely dead) ;)

J2EE 1.4 or officially: "JSR 151: JavaTM 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition 1.4 (J2EE 1.4) Specification" was released at 24 Nov, 2003 and was designed to be used with JDK 1.4, J2EE 1.3 was released at 24 September 2001 and is more than 9 years old now. In JDK 1.4 there were no annotations available, so you had to configure everything with XML. J2EE 1.4 is more Configuration Over Convention, than the current - more reasonable opposite principle of Configuration by Exception or Convention over Configuration. If I read or hear "J2EE" I always have to think about xdoclet with about 50 lines of XML, a Home Interface, Remote Interface and an unrelated Bean class just to implement a helloWorld() method. ...with Java EE 6 a helloWorld() takes exactly one line of code - <USER2> it should be.

Even JDK 1.5 is End of Service Life and so officially dead for greenfield projects as well. Most of the J2EE 1.4 application servers were not even officially supported on JDK 1.5, so it is truly ancient technology. However: there is more interests in Java EE 6 - measured in number of session attendees at conferences, blog statistics, number of sold books :-) and project requests, than ever. What also amazed me was the result of my informal surveys after talks at various conferences (JAX, W-JAX, JavaOne and Devoxx). The majority of attendees do use Java EE 5. The minority is using J2EE 1.4. Even the number of Java EE 6 projects seems to be slightly higher, than J2EE. ...and Java EE 6 is only one year young... So J2EE is dead, but Java EE 6 rocks.

<comment> brown9-2 _I always have to think about xdoclet with about 50 lines of XML, a Home Interface, Remote Interface and an unrelated Bean class just to implement a helloWorld() method_

It amazes me that when people say "J2EE" they're really describing "EJB"

<comment><USER4> And not everyone was using xdoclet.

One lesson from that fiasco: Just because all the giants of the day are supporting something doesn't mean it's any good.

<comment><USER5> Struts comes to mind, possibly one of the worst web frameworks ever created.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So before anyone thinks he is referring to Java on the enterprise in general; he is not.

Java EE 6 is the current Java enterprise solution.

J2EE is the old, e.g. 1.4 or 1.5. Java EE 6 is far better, and technologies like JPA and JTA are quite powerful. There's also a lot less boilerplate code than before. As another poster said, Java EE 6 rocks for enterprise development, particularly with large teams.

<comment><USER7> I tried out Java EE6, I was impressed on the improvements they have made. Once you set it up correctly, you get quite a lot of stuff for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone else noticed this: when you Google for Java related stuff, Google's magic stops working, and you get into a sea of outdated and confusing pages from all kinds of sources.

Also, for most of those results, you'll get some horrible unusable web site, probably with serif fonts to compliment.

<comment><USER9> No, I never noticed that. It's weird how everyone in the startup community hates on java, when it's probably the most popular language in use today (source: SO tags) - far outstripping trendier languages like ruby, python, erlang, go, or this seemingly insatiable desire to re-write every framework in javascript.

It seems to me that the number of third-party OS libraries and frameworks available in java, both in terms of breadth and state-of-the art, far outstrips the resources available in other languages. It's virtually the default choice for enterprise systems, and a vast array of academic research is also java-based, resulting in a hugely rich eco-system.

I just don't understand why java is not better embraced or more widely adopted amongst the startup community.

<comment><USER10> There's a hell of a lot of stuff out there written in C as well, that integrate quite nicely with PHP, Python, Ruby and other 'trendy' languages.

Having GD embedded in PHP makes many image processing tasks far easier and less painful than trying to do stuff using Java image libraries (for example).

"It's virtually the default choice for enterprise systems" then "I just don't understand why java is not better embraced or more widely adopted amongst the startup community"

"Startups" and "enterprise systems" are, in many (most? all?) cases, _worlds_ apart in terms of needs.

I say this as someone who's done PHP for 14 years and Groovy/Grails for 3.

<comment><USER9> > "Startups" and "enterprise systems" are, in many (most? all?) cases, worlds > apart in terms of needs.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that they were; more that the wide adoption by both enterprise and academia has driven the development of a great number of world-class libraries and platforms in java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ok. Can we please, please, please, please stop proclaiming things dead.

In the past year i have read at least half a dozen articles proclaiming various technologies dead.

The Web, Grails, Java, Telephones, ect...

PS I declare that declaring preemptive postmortems to be dead!

</comment><comment><USER12> Sadly so is the web server.

Google Cache seems to have it, but it's overall rather thin: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fbn8cjc...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fbn8cjcBmukJ:blog.adam- bien.com/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk) Something along the lines the king is dead long live the king.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sigh, more sensationalist headlines that really have no content.

Unsurprisingly, old technology is old and new technology is new.

</comment><comment><USER14> Seems that link is completely dead.

Maybe it's getting DDoSed by a disorganised horde of anonymous pro J2EE teenagers.

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree, Java EE 6 is a huge improvement to older J2EE versions. I am going to spend some time next year helping a friend's company with a Java EE 6 project so I have recently spent a few evening brushing up on for a much improved platform. Not at all what I would consider to be _agile_ but solid infrastructure that saves time on projects that require many components, high level error handling, uniform messaging, etc., etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thank god for that. As a funny related story: a former boss once made me (told me to) give a talk about J2EE, and I had NO idea what I was talking about. I was a PHP developer. My first year employed on the web. I should have refused, but was too unexperienced. If you were there (Scotland 2001), apologies!

<comment><USER17> Wow! Sounds like a scene from a (nerdy) sitcom. What'd you do?

<comment><USER16> I gave the talk. Died a little inside that day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> J2EE is dead because Spring/Hibernate have replaced them because they are the lightweight transactional enterprise application framework that J2EE _never_ was.

We have come a long way from the Java Pet Store.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone show the one line hello world?

<comment><USER10> The author links to a page that's not accessible. The google cache shows this page: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3cGnLJF...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3cGnLJFTP3gJ:www.adam- bien.com/roller/abien/entry/simplest_possible_ejb_3_1+http://www.adam- bien.com/roller/abien/entry/simplest_possible_ejb_3_1&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

copy/paste from the link above

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

@Stateless

public class SimpleSample {

        public void doSomething() { /*business logic*/  }

}

How to compile:

You will need the the EJB 3.0 / 3.1 API in the classpath, or at least the @Stateless annotation.

How to deploy:

Just JAR the class and put the JAR into e.g: [glassfishv3-prelude-b23]\glassfish\domains\domain1\autodeploy

How to use:

e.g.:

import javax.ejb.EJB;

public class MyServlet extends HttpServlet{

@EJB

private SimpleSample sample;

}

And: there is no XML, strange configuration, libraries, additional frameworks or jars needed...

</comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

Looks a slight bit more than 1 line to me. Note: the page was linked to from another page indicating you can do 'hello world' in JEE6 in 'one line' of code. Java people have a funny way of counting lines sometimes.

<comment><USER5> He should have left out that "exactly". The main point is something he highlights at the beginning, J2EE was the triumph of configuration over convention, it had a lot of xml descriptors and interfaces/utility classes to be implemented (this caused by the some architectural decisions that remind me of CORBA). This stuff was usually auto-generated but you still often had to tweak these file manually. The polar opposite of modern web frameworks.</comment></comment>


Our latest game: Stunt Pilot 2 (beta) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rocksolidarcade.com/games/stuntpilot2/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Everyone,

We've just put out a beta version of our latest game, Stunt Pilot 2. We've added some community features to the game, with replays and levels that you can create and share.

We got some great feedback on the original game around 1.5 years ago on HN here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84191>

I'd love to know what everyone thinks of the game, especially the level editing + replay ability. We're going to update the website with rankings etc when we formally launch the game.

</comment><comment><USER2> Well, there goes half an hour of work time :)

Love the graphics, especially the animations. Found the game difficult initially but got the hang of it after a few games. Good fun.

Think I've found a bug on level 10(?) - the one with a tall column immediately before the exit. Anyway, I crashed during the level, but almost at the end, and it left me with no way to get to the exit except to waste a life flying into the tower to get it out of the way.

Oh, and I'm currently #3 with a score of 12,688. Great work guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much for trying it out!

It's a good point about the bombs, if you kill a trigger ring instead of flying through it some situations come up like that. I might make a trigger ring trigger everthing that is tied to it if you crash into it and take it out.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Fastest way to tranfer large files? - <AUTHOR> It's 2019 and I have fiber in two locations with computers that I need to transfer large files between quickly. What's the fastest way to do that?<p>G-Drive has always capped me around 15mb/s and then it still has to be downloaded.  Bittorrent Sync / Resilio doesn't want to go above 500kbps. <comment><USER2> SFTP, although you might be limited by the encryption's performance. If authentication & confidentiality aren't needed you can downgrade to a quicker (& less secure) cipher such as _arcfour_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Possibly GridFTP[1], UDT[2], or Tsunami[3]? Also consider the old adage: "Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the freeway."

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

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDP- based_Data_Transfer_Protoc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDP- based_Data_Transfer_Protocol)

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

<comment><AUTHOR> And today we drove hard drives to save 6 hours!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't you be speed limited by the lowest bandwidth equipment in the mix? Unless it's fiber (or equivalent bandwidth) from end to end you're not going to be able to go faster than what the slowest machine will process. If your outbound bandwidth is limited, you may want to compress files locally first, to save on transfer time. That being said, 64-bit scp will probably work fine? If there's no restrictions, making it a torrent would probably work as well, if you need to transfer them more passively.

<comment><AUTHOR> In this situation both points are on consumer fiber (AT&T). A 28 GB file takes roughly 1 hour to upload to G-Drive and 1-2 hours to download on the other side. Speeds caps out at 14 MB/s using most services like G-Drive, Dropbox, etc.

Multipart/chunking with S3 / Google Storage may yield faster results.

Bittorrent/Resilio Sync is extremely slow, sub 1MB/s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        rsync -P -e ssh <username>@<hostname>:/file/you/want/to/copy.txt ~/wherever/you/want/to/put/it

"-P" is to report progress and to not delete files that haven't been transferred completely (in case the connection drops out) and "-e ssh" is to transfer files over SSH.

<comment><AUTHOR> rsync is extremely slow in my experience, and from client to server a great tool, complex to go from client to client machine.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I second that. I usually need to download not so big (~1 GB) files from server. I am also looking for a faster way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you are serious about saturating your pipe as a business with some cash to spend, there is Aspera. My understanding is that they build their own protocol on top of UDP to avoid pesky behavior of TCP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aspera I have used for bigger TV / production work. The bill breaks the budgets for my freelance work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> if you can open any port on the receiver computer then I would go with nc.

Receiver: nc -q 1 -l -p $PORT | tar xv Sender: tar cv . | nc -q 1 $IP_ADDRESS $PORT

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://send.firefox.com](https://send.firefox.com) seems good

<comment><AUTHOR> We're trying to send 28GB files though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can copy chunks of the large files in parallel. Entire doable but needs thorough testing.

<comment><USER10> Actually, [https://www.sanger.ac.uk/science/tools/pcp-parallel- copy](https://www.sanger.ac.uk/science/tools/pcp-parallel-copy) seems to have an implementation- have not tried it myself.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tranfer? I would have a typo in the title.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pretend it is 1990...

FTP.</comment>


Apple Is Killing a Billion-Dollar Ad Industry with One Popup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/macoclock/apple-is-killing-a-billion-dollar-ad-industry-with-one-popup-2f83d182837f <comment><USER2> The title doesn't seem to be outrageous or click-baity enough, try this:

ADPOCALYPSE: The Ad-Industry HATES this COMPANY! YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT THEY DID NEXT!

There. Much better.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anybody confirm the details here? There is an API "Ad Click Attribution" coming to Safari, currently listed among the "experimental features" of Safari Technology Preview.

From what I remember about it, and also just the name, this seems to be intended to soften the blow on advertisers here.

This is Safari, not Apps, obviously, and I don't know this interacts wth in- app web views, or whatever methods they use to show ads.</comment>


Cost of Drawbacks - <AUTHOR> https://reflexio.debec.eu/cost-of-drawbacks <comment><AUTHOR> The article Principles for Better Design gathers insights on how to solve problems efficiently, but omits a crucial point: how to evaluate other people's designs. This article focuses on one aspect of assessing the credibility of a design.

Collaboration is essential in the development of great designs, not only because it engages competition, but also because, since everyone has a piece of reality, the combination of parts contributes to the resolution of a more complete reality.

"Knowledge is decentralized, so is reality"</comment>


Show HN: All Your Email SMS Voice Social Communications in One Place - <AUTHOR> http://www.sendsmart.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone who signs up from HN today gets a full featured demo account for free. Normally $599/mo.</comment>