Is a Hard Life Inherited? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-is-a-hard-life-inherited.html?ref=opinion <comment><USER3> I'm not sure if most of the commentators here are joking or just being too subtly sarcastic, but truly the best _predictor_ of a person's success is the success of his parents during his formative years. It's not a hard-coded rule, but it's statistics: if, given two persons of equal age, gender and health, you would have to bet how they turn out, your best bet would be to look at their parents and assume the same will happen to them, and _not_ to give them an IQ test and draw a conclusion from there (on average, everyone has an average IQ).

So, yes, while there are always exceptions, poor families will mostly yield people who will _not_ move away from poverty.

It is as unreasonable to say to those people "move out and get a better job" as to say to a clinically depressed person "oh cheer up, it's all in your head": no, such problems are actually not the problems of attitude and positive thinking, but have external causes and factors (i.e. external to the mind).

One example of such a factor _could_ be poor work habits learned from their parents - but still it's a trait derived from those particular parents. Unless the person sees or learns about "better" work habits somehow, he will in all probability not conclude that is one of his problems all by himself.

<comment><USER4> But at what point do we draw the line of responsibility? There are many examples of poor/struggling people that made the best of what they had and made sure that their children had a good start in life.

Yes, my parents were poor and struggling. But they pushed through, made sacrifices and made sure that me and my sister had a good start in life. Free from the burdens that they bore.

To me, the line of responsibility does not cross over a generational boundary. All these individuals that have rough and tough childhoods, are responsible for their own actions. And they're also responsible for not ruining an innocent's or unborn's future by bringing them into this world, and then abandoning them by not doing their best to break the cycle of violence, poverty and lack of education.

<comment><USER5> You were lucky enough to have parents who pushed through and made sacrifices. Not everyone is so lucky. That is exactly the point the article is making. You're blaming the children for having inadequate parents.

<comment><USER4> > _" You're blaming the children for having inadequate parents."_

Of course not. I'm blaming the children for having inadequate parents _and forcing_ the same on to their own children! Quite a big difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From an European (Belgian, if you're interested) perspective, it's borderline shocking that these questions are so hotly debated.

When I contrast the image I get by consuming American media and what I witness here, the contrast is astonishing. Social mobility seems to be much more prevalent here than in the states. Of course, the gap between "poors" and "rich" is much smaller. But I can legitimately say that everyone here has a chance to make it. It might be harder for some, but it's rare to really have your head under the water, as I've heard happens often to poor people in the states (too many accounts, both from traditional and social media, too discount as pure fancy).

It's shocking that education is not a right. Here, it costs less than half a month salary to get tuition for a year; and the level is good besides (w.r.t. the states, not saying it couldn't be better).

And in the end? The quality of life is I believe the same here as in most well off places in the states. But the people at the bottom suffer less. That's a win in my book.

<comment><USER7> These are all good points, but it's also important to realize that American and European populations are very different in regards to constituency (you touched on this a bit with your point about the rich-poor gap). So a simple drop-in-place European substitute isn't likely to be as effective as it might seem.

That's not to say that things don't need to change or that they have to be this way, but I think it will require more than simply copying Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm going to post a recent Onion article. It shares some of my thoughts on the subject matter far more eloquently than my own words ever could.

"White Male Privilege Squandered On Job At Best Buy

HAMILTON, OH—Despite being the beneficiary of numerous societal advantages and having faced little to no major adversity throughout his life, local man Travis Benton has spent the last four years squandering his white male privilege on a sales floor job at Best Buy, sources confirmed Tuesday. "You can get by with a regular HDMI cable, but if you're looking at a length longer than 10 feet, I'd go with a gold-tipped one," said the man dressed in a bright blue polo shirt and pin-on name tag as he continued to fritter away such innate life advantages as greater access to higher education, leniency from the justice system, and favorable treatment from other white males who lead and make hiring decisions at a disproportionately high number of American companies. "The AudioQuest gold-tip is actually the cable I use in my own home entertainment center and it provides excellent audio and video clarity, plus it comes with a full five-year warranty, unlike the 90-day warranty of a bargain brand. For your money, you're not going to find a better cable." At press time, the man born into the world's most affluent and privileged socioeconomic group was spending his 15-minute break silently consuming a sleeve of Donettes purchased out of a vending machine."

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-male-privilege- squand...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-male-privilege-squandered- on-job-at-best-buy,35835/)

<comment><USER9> > _I 'm going to post a recent Onion article. It shares some of my thoughts on > the subject matter far more eloquently than my own words ever could._

Eloquent or not, I thought that the supplied article was irresponsible and lacked substance.

I sincerely hope that the given name "Travis Benton", is a pseudonym (and that photograph is not of him). If a potential employer has perused this article, it could effect his chances of gaining more suitable or substantial employment.

The article has possibly put "Mr. Benton" at a serious disadvantage in life. If a similar article was published about me I would call up the editor and shoot hell-fire down the phone.

<comment><USER10> The Onion is a satire site...

<comment><USER9> I wasn't aware of that, cheers.

EDIT: This indicates that the original comment [0] is quite opaque.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8160323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8160323)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Many successful people will resent contributing to the welfare of the not-so- successful regardless of who is to blame for the misfortune of the latter. It's yet another instance of the tribal mentality dividing people into "us" and "them". We generally find it easier to empathize with those who are like us and perceived to belong to the same group.

I used to think tribal divisions are characteristic of the earlier stages of human development. I don't think that's actually true. Humans everywhere live in tribes. In the developed countries people have simply found other characteristics than ethnicity to peek at in our tribal membership classifiers.

<comment><USER4> " _Many successful people will resent contributing to the welfare of the not- so-successful regardless of who is to blame for the misfortune of the latter. It 's yet another instance of the tribal mentality dividing people into "us" and "them"._"

Yes, but you should take care to not attribute their definitions of "us" and "them", with the ones _you_ imagine they do. It's all too-popular to assume that they mean "us, wealthy" and "them, lazy entitled leeches".

It could just as well mean something a little more genuine such as "us, hardworking" and "them, mooching off the state/our hardwork".

I'm not saying it's either. But I find that people regularly attribute very mean, hateful and prejudiced motivations to the rich, privileged or those they don't like. Most of the time, it's simply implied in the comments.

<comment> qu4z-2 I like that the "them" in both cases is "lazy". The "us" group, on the other hand, nicely changes from "wealthy" to, essentially, "deservedly wealthy". I'm fairly certain they believe the latter, but is it so surprising that from the outside people see the former?

Your point stands, though. I seriously doubt anyone's being deliberately mean or hateful. They just genuinely believe that they succeeded on their own merits.

I also think that most definitions of "us" and "them" are usually after-the- fact justifications for including/excluding people from a group. The groups form, then the criteria arise, not vice versa. But I have nothing to back that up. It's just something worth considering when seeing the categorisations people discriminate based on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am again reminded of this article:

 _4 Things Politicians Will Never Understand About Poor People_

[http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will- never-...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never- understand-about-poor-people/)

(When I posted the same link before, it generated a large number of responses: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6383275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6383275))

</comment><comment><USER13> Having the right connections helps as well. No matter what your skill set is, if you know people who know people through your school, social group, church etc. it makes opportunities easier to come by.

In addition, if you look, think and talk like the people who can help you get ahead you are more likely to be given the opportunity. On the other hand, if you look, think and talk like people disliked by those who can help you get ahead... well, you have your work cut out for you.

Sure, in a perfect world it is all about hard work and skills. And certainly some find ways around the system or beat the odds. But for the most part, I don't think it is disputable that a hard life is largely heritable. What can/should we do to change this? I don't know that we can and maybe we should but I'm not sure about that. Sometimes there are cultural reasons those who are ahead are ahead. We certainly don't want to lower everything to the lowest common denominator (see the public school system for an example of how not to do things.....).

</comment><comment><USER14> _ONE delusion common among America's successful people is that they triumphed just because of hard work and intelligence._

The ability to work hard (conscientiousness) and intelligence are also heritable to a significant degree. The central supposed conflict between inherited privilege and innate qualities simply doesn't exist because our qualities are inherited[1].

This always surprises me when I read about privilege and related subjects, the fixation on race, sex and, as in this case, class. I can name at least five factors that matter much more for your life outcomes:

1\. conscientiousness,

2\. being born in or able to move to the first world,

3\. intelligence,

4\. conscientiousness again,

5\. and looks (face symmetry, height).

OK, I cheated a little but conscientiousness really matters a lot. I highly doubt music classes, or library card would crack the top 100. Maybe as a correlate for educated (ie. likely intelligent) parents.

Those used to be heavily influenced by class due to widespread malnutrition but this is now gone from the western world. Which is why we see diminishing returns from investments in education, or any intervention, really.

Let's take truancy and suspension as an example since it was mentioned in the story. Is suspension responsible for kids' later poor educational outcomes? Unlikely[2]:

 _while suspension is strongly associated with educational outcomes, the relationship is unlikely to be causal, but rather stems from differences in the characteristics of those suspended compared to those not suspended. Moreover, there is no evidence that suspension is associated with larger educational penalties for young people from disadvantaged family backgrounds compared to those from more advantaged family backgrounds_

Even in the west you can simply be unlucky but as a society we're bumping against the limits of who we are. I'm not saying that the usual "get married, stay married, take care of your kids, don't inject H, crime doesn't pay" is not a good advice but let's not forget that we're just a bunch of clever apes and perhaps should ease up on the hubris that somehow we should be able to better manage never before seen levels of complexity ("Hey, here are a few steps I came up with!").

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880)

[2] [http://ftp.iza.org/dp7794.pdf](http://ftp.iza.org/dp7794.pdf)

<comment><USER15> FWIW: I have intelligence and conscientiousness. What I don't have is physical stamina and mental focus. I was one of the trop three students of my graduating high school class. I have yet to have a successful paid career (I was a homemaker for a long time and full time mom and I was successful at those things but I am now divorced).

One of the things that middle and upper class kids get is good medical care, good nutrition, early intervention for speech problems and endless other things which make it possible for them do sustained work of the sort that pays money. I actually grew up with a lot of advantages. My misfortune is largely being born with the wrong genes as I have a serious genetic disorder. Because I am smart, hard working, and have a long list of other "virtues"/resources, my situation is gradually improving. But it has definitely been a very long haul and an uphill climb -- made all the harder by the fact that many people who are already successful do not take me very seriously. This has helped to keep doors closed for me in ways which I find enormously frustrating.

<comment><USER16> Hang in there! I'd say you've had a successful 1st career as a mom - <USER2> that's no easy task!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The message I get from these articles is if you have failed at life it wasn't because of your own decisions.

What motivation is there to do any better?

Because to me the real issue is if a person finds themselves in a less than ideal situation that they look for ways to improve rather than waiting on all of us to figure out how to change the system.

<comment> qu4z-2 Sometimes you're so busy looking for ways to survive that improvement doesn't really even enter into it. Also, I'd imagine the whole "being poor sucks" would provide motivation to do better. Finally your embedded assumption that somehow being "motivated to do better" will fix the problem (ie it's their fault).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Yet many are oblivious of their own advantages, and of other people's > disadvantages. The result is [...] partly explaining the hostility to state > expansion of Medicaid, to long-term unemployment benefits, or to raising the > minimum wage to keep up with inflation.

I don't think hostility to the expansion of social welfare programs depends much on one's stance in the debate about the relative importance of different factors of success in life.

The causation runs the other way. It's convenient and pleasant for the successful to think their success is of their own making. It's convenient and extenuating for the less successful to attribute their failures to external factors. We internalize success and externalize failure.

Both arguments are self-serving simplifications of a surely more complex reality.

<comment><USER18> It's not just convenient and pleasant: just like everyone, those who are successful recognize the impact of their own decisions and behavior on a moment to moment basis. They succeed when they try hard, forego immediate pleasure for delayed gratification, and in a disciplined way execute on a particular plan.

When the wealthy and successful criticize others for not behaving similarly, they are externalizing their own personal internal heuristic/narrative that they use to compel _themselves_ to take responsibility for the way they spend their time.

In other words, it's not just _convenient_ to take responsibility for one's own success: it's extremely helpful to one's own psychology to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > But the essential starting point is empathy.

This is great, but even if it's not true, you can approach the issue from a completely selfish, cold-hearted point of view and still arrive at similar conclusions. Poverty is a drain on every aspect of society. If we (the privileged) can figure out how to minimize it, think how much better a place the world would be for ourselves and our children. How much safer would the streets be, how much less tax money would be sucked into prisons, law enforcement, medicare, or various other forms of welfare, how many fewer broken families and unwanted children there would be to contend with.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am reminded of PG's essay on income inequality. Worth reading if you haven't: [http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html)

<comment><USER6> I haven't read this particular essay, but I've read those on wealth and income inequality from Hackers & Painters, and those seems rather similar from what I've skimmed.

PG makes a good point when he says that inequality is not intrinsically bad. It's not bad if the quality of life of both the poor and the rich increase. The fact is that it has been shown that the quality of life of the poor has in fact decreased. In this context, the rise of inequality doesn't seem agreeable.

Especially when you consider the source of this inequality: entrepreneurs are not out to eat the poor people's lunch; but if the crisis has shown anything, it's that greed at multiple strategic points in the system (esp. the banking system) had very bad consequences for the people ground by the wheels of said system.

I think it's useful to keep in mind the time at which those essays were written (first half of the 2000s), when such opinion may have been easier to form. I'm curious to know if PG would write the same today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What about the middle class thing where EVERYONE thinks they're middle class? If you ask some one who makes 30k they'll say they're middle class. If you ask some one who makes 130k they'll say the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, the country with an alternative social order has been destroyed. No need to worry about the working class now.

</comment><comment><USER23> Raise the minimum wage to increase inflation.. Stupid

</comment><comment><USER24> Isn't success in the United States better explained by hard work and intelligence?

You can lower the cost of being _unsuccessful_ by expanding the availability of health care for the poor, increasing long-term unemployment benefits or raising the minimum wage, but the middle class doesn't rely on these programs for its success.

<comment><USER25> >You can lower the cost of being unsuccessful by expanding the availability of health care for the poor, increasing long-term unemployment benefits or raising the minimum wage, but the middle class doesn't rely on these programs for their success.

If you are trying to pitch a safety net as a tool to help people create private-sector success, the angle that you would take is that without a safety net, a single failure can take a long time to recover from. Like being able to crash in mom's basement. If you have a place to sleep, shower, and get career advice and/or interview leads, your periods of unemployment are going to be easier to recover from.

I know after 2001, I made a bad choice; I quit a job when so many of my compatriots were getting fired. I ended up crashing at my parent's place for a while, and pretty quickly got an interview (and a job) through one of my dad's contacts. Imagine how much longer it would have taken me to get back on my feet if instead I became homeless.

Of course, I don't have any good ideas on how the government could replicate that sort of thing for people with parents that are unable or unwilling to contribute spare bedrooms and industry contacts- I'm just giving an example of how a safety net can contribute to long-term success and not just make failure less painful.

Health care, I think, is actually easier to sell on these grounds. It's going to be way more difficult to be successful if you are sick, and especially if you have only an average earning potential, a big medical bill early on can pretty easily take that average income and, say, prevent you from buying a house or otherwise throw up a big obstacle to living your average life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I hate the argument that boils down success to just being lucky. A person's success in life is due to many things like environment, opportunity, intelligence, and work ethic. Positive increases in those things are going to increase the odds of success, so I do agree with the rest of the author's arguments that the poor are at a disadvantage usually coming from a bad environment and an area that lacks much opportunity. Unfortunately the US government seems to be geared to taking care of the old rather than enriching the lives of the young.

<comment><USER27> I agree. There are hundreds of millions of people born into the American middle class. There are tens of millions of people born into the "global 1%". On average, the richer are going to better, because you average out all other factors, like work ethic. So if I'm "floating" through life, putting in the average work into everything I do, I think it's pretty obvious that I'm going to benefit from having rich parents to save me from the random pitfalls that I may fall into.

However, the huge problem that I have with these arguments is that so many successful people are statistical outliers, in terms of hard work, natural talent, ect. They aren't going to follow the average behavior. Lionel Messi is not a good soccer player just because he got lucky. There were millions of people brought up with the same means, but through whatever personal work ethic he has, he's become one of the biggest statistical outliers in soccer. Sure, you could make the case that for "soft skill jobs" like CEO, luck comes into play quite a bit, but for someone like Mark Zuckerberg, he simply would not have gotten lucky if he didn't lock himself in his room and code for 6 hours a day at Phillips Exeter (which is something he actually did, he was very asocial, at least at Exeter). In the end, I think for the same reason OKCupid's match percentage is nearly useless in terms of finding a "soulmate", I think you can't really attribute average statistics to explain why someone was successful, they are both going to be outliers, "black swan events" to borrow from Nassim Taleb.

<comment><USER18> It is certainly true that productively developing a valuable skill set will set you apart from the vast majority. With a few helpful insights, the right attitude, and an ability to quickly overcome obstacles, you will be an exceptional person, without a doubt. If you assign credit for success to a person's attitude and perseverance, then certainly "luck" had little to do with it.

Where things get dicey is when you ask the next set of "whys". I.e., "why does this person have such a helpful attitude? why do they have such perseverance?". To what do we attribute _these_ qualities? If it's genes, then it's luck (you can't take credit for your genes). If it's parenting, then it's luck (you can't take credit for your parenting).

Perhaps it's neither genes, nor parenting, but instead "spirit" or "will". So, whence these qualities? The person's "soul"? Something immaterial? Anyone who provides these kinds of answers is necessarily endorsing brain-mind dualism, which (near as anyone can tell) is almost surely false.

Does this mean that everyone can disclaim personal responsibility for their actions? Surely not. Choosing to believe in one's own agency in turn empowers one's own agency. But everyone's believing in a fiction, no matter how necessary or adaptive this fiction happens to be, doesn't render it true.

<comment><USER26> You are taking the concept of luck to a place where it has no meaning. Everyone alive is lucky Earth exists, that it did not get wiped out by an asteroid, that the climate is habitable, etc. In a world where everything is determined by just luck, the countries with the most people would have the most successful people. We can clearly see that is not true, the world's richest list is not dominated by the Chinese and Indians even though they contain a vast amount of the world's population.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Quitting Your Job to Chase Your Dream Is a Terrible Idea - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/life-learning/why-quitting-your-job-to-chase-your-dream-is-a-terrible-idea-a3269e281eda#.f4ixagsxs <comment><USER2> The author might benefit from knowing that the "10,000 Hour Rule" has basically been debunked[1]. Even K. Anders Ericsson, on whose work the concept is based and whom the author cites, has said it's wildly misunderstood and misapplied.

      > It has to be deliberate, dedicated time spent focusing on improvement.

Staying in your current job generally won't create that kind of feedback loop. Stretching your boundaries in a new position very well might. I would certainly never say that everyone should run out and join startups, but "take your time building the skills" sounds like an excuse for being too conservative.

[1] [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule- not...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-not- real-180952410/?no-ist)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I never really spent any time specifically learning, but just by getting deep into the thing I'm working on with a secondary focus on learning is all it took. Deliberate, dedicated learning like what's being described here just sounds like a recipe to learn at a shallow level, rather than using self motivation and interest as a tool to learn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All of my jobs have been meat grinders that left no room for outside work and had contracts which explicitly forbade any such. Before I started to plan seriously for independent work my corporate benefactors quit me. Such experiences are actually quite common and make this article seem trite.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bill Gates quit Harvard to chase his dream of building microcomputer software. Steve jobs quit reed collage then Atari and Steve Wozniak quit HP to chase their dream of the integrated personal computer. The google guys were phd candidstes that left to commercialize their search engine technology. What is this guy talking about?</comment>


David Hauser, Co-Founder of Grasshopper Group, Shares his Startup Story - <AUTHOR> http://www.foundora.com/2010/11/01/david-hauser-co-founder-grasshopper-group-shares-his-startup-story/

<comment><AUTHOR> Excerpts:

* One of the key benefits of being bootstrapped is that you would spend, whatever you have pretty carefully and would most likely make right financial decisions.

* when your startup name is easy to say and type, it becomes a lot easier for Word of Mouth Referral.

* Culture really comes from the entrepreneur articulating and promoting their core purpose and core values and then hiring, training, and firing around them.

* Never launch a freemium pricing model until a company is profitable and it can become a paid advertising channel.</comment>


Music That Makes You Dumb - <AUTHOR> http://musicthatmakesyoudumb.virgil.gr/

<comment><USER2> I love charts like this, but I don't believe in them because they use something arbitrary like SAT score. I'd hate to live in a world where people were judged by SAT scores; the people within my SAT range are very frequently less interesting than people with scores much lower than me. (I had a score 1510, which places me in the range along with "people whose lives are so miserable they will willingly take SAT prep courses".)

The most interesting correlation is the one between the slightly edgier rock groups and low SAT scores. I know many bright people who are into the edgier scenes, and most of them are the sorts of people who took the SATs too hungover to read the tests in front of them. So the test only works if you're willing to say that everybody puts equal effort into the SATs.

I also think it's hilarious that "classic rocks" includes Queen, AC/DC, Elton John, and Bob Dylan. When your category is that diverse, it's essentially meaningless. I similarly like that Beethoven is the only composer held separate from "classical."

</comment><comment><USER3> Seeing all electronic music lumped together as "Techno" makes me angry. 1310 (740 math).</comment>


JSMESS Achieves a Hero's Death - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4864 <comment><USER2> If you just want something to manage your game library, you can use my project, Start9.io ([http://start9.io](http://start9.io)). We currently support GB, GBC & GBA games, and I plan to add SNES support as soon as I can spare some time.

As for the emularity project, I can only advise you to use my Virtjs devices* in order to give modularity to your users at virtually no cost.

The Emscripten SDL implementation is nice, but not easy enough to interact with when it comes to an actual project rather than a proof of concept. Good luck!

* [https://github.com/arcanis/virtjs](https://github.com/arcanis/virtjs)</comment>


Show HN: I rendered the Go gopher using Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fogleman/pt/blob/master/README.md

<comment><USER2> The code is really nice and clean [1], great job for someone's first Go project! I think it's a great example of how Go's simple and clean language design can lead more people to write high quality, readable code.

Question, I see you're using your own Vector and Matrix types and methods. Have you considered using an existing vector math library like mathgl [2]? Nothing wrong with your decision, I just wanted to hear your thoughts.

[1] [http://gotools.org/github.com/fogleman/pt/pt](http://gotools.org/github.com/fogleman/pt/pt)

[2] [http://godoc.org/github.com/go- gl/mathgl/mgl64](http://godoc.org/github.com/go-gl/mathgl/mgl64)

</comment><comment><USER3> Fogleman, you are an incredible developer. I hope to one day have your motivation for side projects like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What do rendering times in Go look like, compared to a similar C implementation?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have anything to compare to, but Go seems quite fast. I would guess no worse than 2x C in this case, but I'm pulling that number out of my butt.

Actually I was originally going to write this in C but it started to be a PITA and I had the spontaneous idea that maybe Go would be the right choice for this (never used it before). It totally was. No way I would've had this level of results so quickly in C.

Being a big fan of Python and C, Go seems like a really good middle ground. Really happy to have learned it.

<comment><USER5> As someone trying to learn the basics of rendering, I was really pleased to see your project pop up on the github explore email today. It's very easy to follow, even for a non-Go programmer like me.

Performance question from a no-Go programmer though - does returning objects from functions incur a cost? For example "func Reflect() Ray {}" or "func Add() Vector" \- do they create a new object on the heap? If so is that an issue in Go?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually tried changing all of my Rays to *Rays, passing pointers instead of values, and it made no significant difference in rendering times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, the quality is impressive. I had no time to look at the code, but what are your inputs?

Do you read a file that contains anything you need to render, if so, can you produce said file with another 3D software?

<comment><AUTHOR> The gopher is loaded from an OBJ file. The floor and back wall are cubes added programmatically.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Disclaimer: This is my first time using Go."

"Hello World" wasn't challenging enough for you then!

Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not very often I can look at a library and easily follow the code. I may spend a couple afternoons reading it just to understand how this works. Very nice.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was surprised at how little code it takes to generate the gopher, using your library, that's cool.

I started generating the gopher locally abd let it go through one iteration, taking 4:34, until I realized it takes 1000 iterations to fully render :) I killed it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't take 1000, that's just a giant number I put in. You can stop whenever you want (acceptable noise levels)

You can also reduce the resolution.

<comment><USER9> Good to know. How many iterations did you use to generate the images on github?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of them rendered on the order of ~30 minutes. The gopher I ran overnight, although it really only needed about 2 hours to get really good quality. Keep in mind these durations are for large resolutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How big is the binary? I had to ask since you linked to the site of iq, the guy who wrote the insanely awesome Elevated 4k demo [1] and several other nice 4k procedurally-generated graphics [2].

[1] [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938)

[2] [http://www.iquilezles.org/prods/index.htm](http://www.iquilezles.org/prods/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER11> Looking at your code makes me wish I could have used Go instead of c++/glut for my graphics course projects back in school.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm getting runtime errors when trying to run the example locally, and compile errors for others (e.g. suzanne.go, 'not enough arguments in call'). Was there a recent update that broke the code?

</comment><comment><USER13> This is very nice. I wonder how hard it would be to turn this into a network renderer (I suppose farming out sections to other machines is challenging with path tracing, but may be wrong).

<comment><AUTHOR> Path tracing is extremely parallelizable.

<comment><USER13> Well, then... Any good network-transparent channel libraries for Go? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always looked go as a programming language to develop systems and tools but , this is very interesting . Would be interesting in a benchmark results of rendering with other languages .

</comment><comment><USER15> Every time I see the Go gopher I think of Gopher[0] immediately.

[0][https://tools.ietf.org/search/rfc1436](https://tools.ietf.org/search/rfc1436)

</comment><comment><USER16> Very lovely.

The only reason I'm commenting is to point it might have been easier for users if you linked to the project homepage rather than the readme file itself.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here he is from another angle: [http://i.imgur.com/oOnadne.png](http://i.imgur.com/oOnadne.png)

</comment><comment><USER17> Initially I saw the title expecting ascii art. Then I saw the amount of points, and clicked the link and I was supremely impressed.

</comment><comment><USER18> How many rays/sec are you getting per core? What kind of acceleration structure? How many primitives in the scene?

<comment><AUTHOR> Using a k-d tree. The gopher has 50,000 triangles. I'm not currently computing rays/sec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Disclaimer: This is my first time using Go.

Is it your first time writing a path tracer? Because this is pretty awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > import "github.com/fogleman/pt/pt"

How does this work?

<comment><USER21> Use `go get github.com/fogleman/pt/pt` and the code will be downloaded to $GOPATH/src/github.com/fogleman/pt/pt. Go imports are all absolute paths from $GOROOT or $GOPATH.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very nice work!

</comment><comment><USER23> Fogleman,any plans to rewrite craft in go?</comment>


The Art of Thinking Clearly Under Great Pressure - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/your-money/04wealth.html

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit long-winded but has some great lines:

 _Being clutch is the ability to do what you can do under normal conditions under extreme pressure._

 _He was wrestling with something that inhibited clear thinking much more — and causes people across a range of professions to choke under pressure. "The biggest problem for me was pride," he admitted._</comment>


2d Barcodes come to Vaccines - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Cook-Childrens-Health-Care-bw-285646236.html?x=0&.v=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft developing a mobile app to allow consumers to scan them:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/familyhealthguy/archive/2011/10/12/a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/familyhealthguy/archive/2011/10/12/another- win-for-real-folks-2d-barcodes-on-vaccines.aspx)</comment>


Distributed computing in Lisp. Again - <AUTHOR> http://13-49.blogspot.com/2009/09/distributed-computing-in-lisp-again.html

<comment><USER2> He should have added his library to Cliki:

<http://www.cliki.net/Distributed>

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool to see another lisp with remote stuff. I've been doing distributed computing with newLISP for 4 years now. [http://www.h-i-r.net/2009/07/network- programming-and-distrib...](http://www.h-i-r.net/2009/07/network-programming- and-distributed.html)</comment>


Ex-MS engineer convicted of 18 felonies after stealing $10M in digital currency - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2020/ex-microsoft-engineer-convicted-18-felonies-stealing-10m-digital-currency/ <comment><USER2> Key points:

>>Volodymyr Kvashuk, a 25-year-old software developer and Ukrainian citizen who worked for Microsoft from 2016 to 2018, took advantage of a testing program for Microsoft's online retail sales platform. He made test accounts to obtain "currency stored value" such as Microsoft gift cards and then resold them online.

>>Kvashuk will be sentenced June 1 in U.S District Court and faces up to 20 years in prison.

Ouch.

<comment><USER3> I was amazed that that _long_ list of charges only results in a 20-year maximum.

<comment><USER4> I hope he gets the maximum to teach/deter others to not utilize their position, talents in a wrong way. He lived in a free country, smarter than millions, yet he betrayed the trust of his employer and the country that embraces him. I am an immigrant from Thailand, grateful to the opportunity this country giving me every single minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The PDF of the complaint with some details is at [https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/07/17/us_v_kvashuk.pdf](https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/07/17/us_v_kvashuk.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> > he stole $10 million worth of ... gift cards ... and then resold them online > ... [for] about $2.8 million.

He sold stolen goods for about 28% of their retail value. Is Microsoft is able to cancel the cards if they haven't been spent?

<comment><USER5> Yes, and they did cancel $1.8m worth of them. $8.3m has been redeeemed.

<comment><USER7> Seconded. Based on my previous jobs working in retail fraud, most retailers are able to track and cancel gift cards when they can confirm them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> looks like he was concealing his tracks pretty well. Other than spending extravagantly, I wonder where he screwed up?

<comment><USER9> He did not conceal his tracks. He would pop up on IRS radar just for moving a lot of bitcoin. I owned some bitcoin and was a bit worried because many exchanges were forced by the government to release information of people, coinbase for example. Even, if he did not use one of those exchanges, depositing large amounts of cash and buying 1 mil lakefront property will raise some eyebrows.

On his tax returns he said bitcoins were a gift from a relative....unless his relative is ultra rich, no uncle is just going to gift you 3 million bucks. Plus, I am pretty sure you need to present documentation, the IRS will not just take your word for it. Honestly, any deposit over I think 10k is reported to the IRS by the banks, and IRS knows how much this guy is making, what he owns, etc.

Crypto currencies are not really as anonymous as supporters would like you to believe, and IRS will crush this guy.

<comment><USER10> The IRS really doesn't care where the money came from if it is reported. The money that he received was reported on his tax returns, so the IRS would not look further at this, as long as the numbers matched up.

In this case it appears that the IRS was brought in to it to correlate the individual's finances with the expected windfall, rather than instigating the investigation. That is, the investigators (in MS and law enforcement) knew who did it, and they were gathering further evidence.

<comment><USER9> You are correct the IRS doesn't but the US government does. This would fall under suspicious activity.

"Under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), financial institutions are required to assist U.S. government agencies in detecting and preventing money laundering, such as:

Keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, File reports of cash transactions exceeding $10,000 (daily aggregate amount), and Report suspicious activity that might signal criminal activity (e.g., money laundering, tax evasion)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any way to exchange bitcoin for cash anonymously? Burner phone with in-person Craigslist arranged trades (where you hope the other person isn't FBI)?

<comment><USER12> There are a few p2p exchanges like localbitcoins or Bisq where some anonymity can be achieved. But those type of trades don't scale far without risk.</comment></comment>


AboutLife, Focused on Personal Finance, Debuts With $3M in Funding From Kleiner - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/30/aboutlife-focused-on-personal-finance-debuts-with-3-million-in-funding-from-kleiner/ <comment><USER2> Nice!</comment>


Ask HN: Review my tech job hunting service - <AUTHOR> http://www.realtechjobs.com/

<comment><USER2> From the employer's perspective: In your FAQs, you mention that there are no refunds. I'd urge you to reconsider. I worked on LinkedIn Jobs when it first launched. Initially, traffic was low and some postings didn't get a single applicant. For these users, we ended up extending the listings for free and IIRC even gave refunds or credits when someone simply couldn't fill a position after trying repeatedly. The problem is that when your site is small, it's a high risk for a prospective employer to post to it. Knowing that you can get your money back if things don't work out really helps. Money-back guarantees are a great marketing feature.

IMO, $75 is a high price for a site w/o a track record of effectiveness. It's hard to put that much into a posting on a site that gets... tens of hits per day? hundreds? When one can pay twice that to post to LinkedIn or HotJobs or some other portal where you can literally get 1000 times more views. Also, I think Craigslist jobs are still free in many places, and that's something you're competing against as well. I'd start really low.. maybe $20-25 to post. Assuming you get some traction, get a few testimonials that you can feature on the site to raise its perceived value, then you can start to slowly raise prices. (as an aside, LinkedIn did this too. Job posting started at ~$50 and slowly moved up to their current price of ~$200 as the value of the site became more clear and demonstrable to potential employers)

From the jobseeker's point of view: You're making people sign up to view details for a posting. IMO, that's too aggressive. You want people to become really engaged first and find jobs that they want to apply to, and then ask for them to create an account at that point. If you ask too early, many people will just abandon the site.

More comments:

\- Not sure what a provider is? Is that someone who provides labor or someone who provides jobs?

\- The UI is really simple. At first, I thought it was a little too simple, but after a few minutes it grew on me =).

\- I can't figure out if you're screening job applicants and job postings, or just job postings.

\- Is there a specific problem you're trying to solve that you don't think is currently addressed by other job sites?

\- The trick to a successful job site is to get a huge base of jobseekers. If every posting gets 100 views and 5 applications of which 1-2 are good, employers will gladly pay to post on your site. Try to come up with ways to get jobseekers to visit your site often -- job hunting tips, rss feeds, etc

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought more and more on the no-refund stance, and I believe you are correct -- I'll add a clause allowing them, perhaps up to 15 days from listing close (45 from listing purchase/approval).

As for pricing, you're correct again -- $75 (or anything, really) is a great deal to ask for a site with no track record. Even your "tens of hits" is overestimating at the moment.... I don't, however, want to set a low price and then raise it -- that's always irked me in any situation. Perhaps making new listings free during the beta test (a month or two)?

I'll certainly reconsider requiring users to register. I DO want employers to feel safe in that they won't see ALL of the spam that comes with an open site, but maybe an option to only allow members to apply? Tier II jobs will retain the requirement, as they're for premium members exclusively (they're screened by the staff and pay a fee), but Tier I would be fine.

For your other comments: \- I'll make the delineation between employer and provider (or at least the definition or nomenclature of a provider) more clear).

\- Glad the UI grew on you -- it did me, too! :)

\- All jobs posted are screened for compliance with our Acceptable Use standards (basically nothing offensive or harmful). All PREMIUM members will be screened for access to the premium features (before being asked to pay, of course) -- basically, we'll check portfolios and references.

\- The problem we're trying to solve is too high a cost and/or too little value (for both employers AND providers). A listing can run, as you mentioned, $200-$300 dollars (which I believe is a bit excessive). The employer can be inundated with crap applicants -- we allow peer reviews and screen premium members. The providers can be inundated with jobs with minuscule pay -- we have minimum budgets.

I reckon I oughta make all of that more clear.... :)

Thank you for your detailed analysis, particularly having worked where you have. I truly appreciate it!

\- John

<comment><USER2> A few more pricing possibilities:

\- The StackOverflow careers approach: a posting costs $X until some date, then $Y after. Y >> X. This is similar to your free beta idea.

\- Charge per applicant. Maybe $10 to post, first application you receive is free, then $10 per application until you reach $100 (or some other level). This is nice because you no longer need refunds (poster only loses $10 if no one applies), and also as the site becomes more useful, postings cost more =).

Re: spam prevention -- I agree with you. Letting anyone view but only letting registered users apply is a good approach.

Re: your motivation -- nice. Reference and portfolio checking are pretty useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd suggest including the differences in the $75 vs $150 tiers without having to submit a job. Would be kind of nice to know what you get for what money, or how much you'll be charged before you've given all the info away. Other than that, I kinda like the design of it, would prefer a country/state/city type dropdowns for location instead of just a "location" entry (but allow a textbox for like, zipcode).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll definitely find a place to (simply) explain the differences between Tiers/purchase prices.

I'll consider your thoughts on the location search; at a minimum, I'll add an "auto-suggest" type feature to help narrow your search.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate any advice given at all. I'm a programmer, not a designer, so don't expect a whole lot outta me in that department.

I'd like to know what you think of the a) usability of the service and b) ideology behind the pricing, restrictions on budget, etc.

Thanks a million!

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the color scheme, but I think that there isn't enough contrast between the colors. It all sort of blends together and becomes gray.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll try to tweak those colors, then -- it already looks different between my own monitors. Thanks!

\- John</comment></comment>


HTML5 data attributes, how to use them and why - mite-mitreski http://blog.mitemitreski.com/2012/06/html-5-data-attributes-how-to-use-it.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is nice and all, but I've yet to find a _reason_ to use data attributes rather than just storing the same data in a js variable. I'd love to be enlightened.

<comment> mite-mitreski When you store the data in the js variable it does not have the semantic link with the HTML element that describes something. The idea here is build up your markup to be as meaningful as possible</comment></comment>


First almost fully-formed human brain grown in lab, researchers claim - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/18/first-almost-fully-formed-human-brain-grown-in-lab-researchers-claim

<comment><USER2> > The ethical concerns were non-existent, said Anand. "We don't have any > sensory stimuli entering the brain. This brain is not thinking in any way."

I'm sure this brain isn't conscious, but how do they know that? Is "sensory stimuli" a prerequisite for consciousness? I don't know what it could be thinking about ("hm, the vibe is really ... numb here") but do we know the prerequisites for consciousness?

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is misleading (or linkbait (or false)). From the article:

> _Though not conscious the miniature brain, which resembles that of a five- > week-old foetus, [...]_

> _The brain, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, [...]_

If confirmed, it is bigger and it has more structure than the previous attempts, but it's not "almost fully-formed".</comment>


Ask HN: India tech industry, discrimination to ones without tier1 college degree - <AUTHOR> Why the Indian tech industry is so ignoring and stereotyped towards people without a degree from tier1 college? It has become impossible these days to even get a SE or developer role interview if you don't have a tier 1 college degree in India. More and more job postings these days specifically mention tier1 college degree as a requirement. Its seems no matter what the degree matters the most because there are many instances I personally know of people with tier 1 degrees getting an interview than another guy even of the other guy has way better open source contribution and projects. Why is such high level of discrimination prevalent in Indian tech industry? <comment><USER2> It is generally impossible to interview each an every candidate for a position. Recruiters will try and narrows the field by using easy filters. Numerical and categorical filters are easy to implement (especially if this is an automated process). For e.g. CGPA, Academic Pedigree... are easy to check for.

Recruiters are typically not techies and cannot evaluate open source contributions / other projects. As harsh as this sounds, there is an over supply of engineers in India with a marked difference in quality of teaching in tier 1 as compared to tier 2. Companies expect this difference to be reflected in candidates. Of course there are expcetion to the above, but, most companies will not pay to spend to much time giving a fair evaluation to every candidate on an individual basis.

Legally speaking they can do this on candidate attributes except race, gender, ethnicity (anything where right to equality will apply). Right to equality does not apply on academic backgrounds, i.e, people do not have a right to be treated equally in the labor market regardless of educational background. As far as I know there is no precedence going against this.

<comment><AUTHOR> The hard truth. It seems like nothing other than the college you went to matters in this industry. Atleast everyone should know about this situation so that people with passion and skill opting for engg from low tier college because they couldn't get into top ones won't waste their life

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is not really limited to India - having a Stanford degree opens up a lot of doors in Silicon Valley.

The unfortunate truth is that people don't really know how to properly hire and identify talent, so we end up using signaling like education. Having a tier-1 degree doesn't always mean you're good - but statistically its a reasonable indicator. That doesn't mean its the only indicator but its one that is 'easy'.

I studied at IIT - a lot of my peers were brilliant but couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. Many have gone on to success, but not a lot in the tech industry on the technical side so I can see both sides of it.

For the record - we are actively hiring (details in profile) and we hardly look at your degree qualifications. Your Github profile is more interesting - and your in-person and phone interviews and work samples are generally much more informative than anything on paper.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right its the most practical way. But companies these days are acting like it's the only indicator

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Consider it a blessing. Apart from the few success stories, most tier1 college graduates take the safe route of unsatisfying mass recruitment, do an MBA and end up in less technical jobs.

Unlike in the past since the advent of the internet, resources available to a random student is almost as good as that available to someone from a tier1 college.

There are plenty of small companies/startups where one could have a much better long term career. Outside the glamours jobs, plenty of niche area like manufacturing/defence/... software has much more real world impact and long term value than social media/marketing/finance.

ISRO's wonderful engineering team is built almost entirely of graduates from tier3 colleges.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hope you won't take it wrong sense but don't think not getting opportunity and being stereotyped because not part of cream layer is that much of a blessing :) By the way the all the requirement of tier1 degree were found in startup job ads not just in big tech company jobs. Regarding the resource availability you are right but the problem is not about becoming skilled instead no one is ready to accept your skills if you don't have a tier1 college degree</comment></comment>


Dietary Supplement Use During Chemotherapy and Survival Outcomes of Patients - <AUTHOR> https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/JCO.19.01203?journalCode=jco <comment><USER2> Don't have access to the full paper, but it seems like this study was based on asking patients whether they were taking supplements, as opposed to administering placebo/supplements and measuring the outcome. I would imagine that the worse your cancer is, the more likely you are to try things like supplements and whatnot. Did they manage to control for this?

<comment><USER3> > "...were queried on their use of supplements at registration and during > treatment..."

My concern as well. Self-reported is a red flag. Not necessarily fatal but it obviously has an unpredictable affect on the data collected.

<comment><USER4> I suspect that if you're the type to take a bunch of individual vitamin supplements then you know exactly what you're taking and how much, much more so than if you're taking a multivitamin every morning washed down with your coffee. There's also no reason to be lying about that to your doctor.

<comment><USER5> The issue isn't that the patient is lying or doesn't know; the issue is that the patient is taking supplements or not for a reason that is itself correlated with the other side of our analysis: someone who is taking vitamins might be more desperate, or might have more money (and so be living in very different conditions or have less stress), or might be more likely to be doing other random "maybe this will help?" things that are also random effects you aren't asking about, or might be better at doing anything at all on a routine (including other medical steps), or might be more able to get up and walk/drive to take/buy vitamins, or might be experiencing a different level of digestive effects from their chemotherapy. The reason why we use controlled randomized trials is because they just fully solve this correlation analysis issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My impression is that lumped as a (extremely broad and diverse) whole that OTC supplements, when studied rigorously in humans in vivo, have generally not been found to be terribly effective for most maladies. Many have been often found to have poor quality control, often adulterated with other substances, provided in poorly bioavailable forms, or sometimes not actually containing the substance they claim to contain.

As a whole they generally get a bad rap in medical school and among physicians.

So I wonder if this study reflects a tendency of some patients to disregard or be less adherent to the treatment plan recommended by their oncologists, who seem unlikely to recommend dietary supplements that lack large supporting RTCs.

Or perhaps, as mentioned, if they didn't properly control for severity of disease, it is not uncommon for a provider to give a "sure, why not" when a patient with severe / terminal disease is interested in an unconventional but low cost and likely low harm intervention.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, antioxidants prevent damage to cells, so while that's normally helpful, it directly works against things like Chemotherapy which are actively trying to kill cells.

If I understand correctly, it looks like this is just evidence corroborating the existing stance?

<comment><USER8> The problem with antioxidant supplements is that they don't necessarily work well with metabolism.

After the antioxidant hype and supplement boom yielded no health benefits, there have been multiple large studies showing no effect or negative effects. They can remove benefits from physical exercise and increase cancer risk. Vitamin C can remove benefits from exercise.

Overall the risks and benefits are small, but basically they are all useless. If studies show benefits, it can be because some of the subjects suffered from deficiency. You should take them only to treat vitamin deficiency or increased need. Taking more and more of the good stuff is not automatically better.

<comment><USER9> While all that may or may not be true, that is irrelevant to this study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bad title (lumping together all supplements) when they are specifically talking about antioxidant supplements.

<comment><USER11> They also looked at vitamin B, iron, and multivitamins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Peter Attia talks about this indirectly, where he's been to some chemo floors and observed patients taking "healthy" drinks and supplements that are mixed as a milkshake of sugar and carbs.

Problem is a number of the cancer cells can only live on glucose. The other pathways for energy are broken/nonexistent, and so consumption of sugary drinks directly feeds fuel to these type of cells.

Strange how the field hasn't connected the dots yet.

1\. Prove the cancer cells of X type can only feed on glucose

2\. If so, don't ingest glucose.

Radical science here folks

<comment><USER13> Do you have evidence beyond indirect second hand anecdotes that might support your hypothesis?

<comment><USER14> This is not new information. And it's been shown to be efficacious. The problem is patient adherence. Chemo is something that so long as the patient shows up you can administer it and they can go back home. A glucose free diet could only be adhered to on an in-patient basis. Which most patient / healthcare systems cannot afford.

There have also been studies showing efficacy of a compound which down regulates Glut1 in order to cut off glycolysis in cancer cells which rely solely on it for energy production.

<comment><USER15> > _A glucose free diet could only be adhered to on an in-patient basis._

That's not true, the Keto diet is a big fad and it only works if your diet is basically glucose free.

<comment><USER16> I have doubts about a couple of the assumptions implicit in this statement.

\- The "Keto" diet particularly works. Last time I checked, the research suggested it worked about as well as any other elimination diet, or vanilla CR.

\- The reason it works. Given that it works about as well as any other elimination diet, it's probably important for practitioners to adhere strictly, rather than continuing to consume the foods that made them fat; but successfully avoiding carbohydrate intake enough to trigger some particular level of ketosis is probably not a part of how it "works".

<comment><USER15> Neither of those assumptions were implicit in the statement. The keto diet is simply evidence that glucose elimination is possible for some people without an inpatient treatment. The context of this discussion is glucose elimination for cancer, not weight loss.

<comment><USER16> (There is a fad that people attempt to do X) + (the observable result is orthogonal to whether they successfully did X) => not very strong evidence that doing X is achievable

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of statistical and methodological crimes being committed here.

"Patients... were queried on their use of supplements at registration and during treatment".

Hazard ratios.

The blender approach of looking at all the reported vitamins at once, and picking anything that looks significant.

People with the money to buy supplements take supplements...so this runs right into the health/wealth correlation.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are such varied supplements out there that this title feels vague. The study focused on antioxidants.

Browse the top results of a search for "cancer supplements" and look at their ingredients. You'll find the majority were not included in this study.

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems just as likely that sicker patients tend to take more supplements.

</comment><comment><USER20> I come from decades in the healthcare field (and published). Honestly? I would take with a grain of salt pretty much anything i see published these days.

A. Friend 1, follows the MDs orders to the T. Is dead in 6 months.

B. Friend B. MDs you have 6 months to live. Get your affairs in order. It's hopeless. Friend B? Fuck that, I feel great.

Friend B? Alive and running off to a yoga class. 14 years later. Healthy as can B. As he says, Chinese medicine. Just do your homework.

Food for thought ... :-)</comment>


Electric Mini Cooper SE review – lots of fun for not a lot of money - <AUTHOR> https://ww.electrek.co/2020/01/28/electric-mini-cooper-se-review-first-drive-fun/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand this car. 110 mile range and 7 second 0-60 for $30Kish? This is basically a Nissan Leaf when the target customer is going to be strongly looking at a Model 3 instead. Pretty disappointing, despite the author's overexuberance.</comment>


I'm a CEO – Here's how I decide whether to give you a raise or lay you off - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3064513/lessons-learned/im-a-ceo-heres-how-i-decide-whether-to-give-you-a-raise-or-lay-you-off <comment><USER2> the problem I see with that is there a lot of people that follow directions well(Bill). Was Bill ever told to go off script? or maybe someone has a different supervisor that yelled at him for going off script.

Another problem is management doesn't realize half of the employees of 5 years ideas came originally from Bill but, Bill is introverted.

Not saying that's the case all the time, but I've seen management make assumptions because most hard workers don't brag about their accomplishments.</comment>


Kubernetes Deployer HTTP API (k8s-deployer) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/psyhomb/k8s-deployer <comment><AUTHOR> With this simple HTTP API you can easily deploy services on Kubernetes and register them in the Consul service catalog, eventually all the services will dynamically end up on Traefik load balancer if proper configuration is provided.</comment>


Why David Cameron's war on internet porn doesn't make sense - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/21/david-cameron-war-internet-porn

<comment><USER3> > "We – children and adults alike – need to learn about the damaging > psychological, social and physical effects of online porn."

Let me tell you where the real damage comes form... Parents and holier-than- though leaders traumatizing children by constantly telling them to be ashamed of their bodies and sexuality. Children aren't generally interested in porn. They see it, say "eeewww" and move on. There are no "effects" until the adult in the room freaks out.

<comment><USER4> whilst I strongly disagree with the filtering, it's utter bs, it's also untrue that porn isn't having an affect on younger generations.

The real thing that needs to be happening is an honest and frank discussion about sex and sexuality, which is a pretty tall ask in the UK as we're quite prudish in some respects. We'd rather legislate against smut then talk about it.

As to the affect that I alluded to. When children get their sex education from porn, you get teenage boys thinking that anal's the norm. This isn't just a theoretical, this is something I know teacher friends have had to deal with in school, getting approached for help by teenage girls having to cope with this kind of thing.

Also, I've no idea where you get the idea that children aren't interested in porn. Perhaps not when they're 7, but when they're 12 or 14 they definitely are.

<comment><USER5> Most 14 year old boys would have watched porn. Some of them might regularly watch porn. Amongst my friends I can't think of anyone negatively influenced or affected by this. No big deal.

<comment><USER6> How old are you? I'm 29, and also recall that when I was in my teenage years we all saw various bits of pornography- magazines, a few extremely slow loading web pages, but nothing like what is available today.

As nemof described, a lot of porn today is much more extreme than that, and could give teenagers a very skewed sense of "normal" sex. I'm not advocating filtering internet content, but I think it's at least worth discussing what effect this might be having on teenagers today, and not just dismissing it with "my [entirely different] situation was fine".

<comment><USER7> And movies give a skewed sense of how the real world works. And advertisements tell you you're ugly and need to buy products to become prettier. These things affect children too, probably way more than porn. Should we ban those too or at least be able to opt out of those?

<comment><USER6> _Should we ban those too or at least be able to opt out of those?_

Sigh. Stop being hyperbolic. I said in my post that I am not advocating blocking them, but having a conversation about the effects they have.

So, to answer you, yes- I think we should talk to our teenagers about advertising and movies too. Thing is, we already often do that, but sexual stuff tends to be discussed a lot less.

<comment><USER8> Hyperbole? I would _love_ the ability to opt out of advertising. Or maybe bans on advertising in public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I honestly have no problems wit this as long as the default is unfiltered, and any blocks and filters are opt in. No reason this cant be a tick box in the router. Just an option for parents if they want it.

I have 6 kids. My two daughters have suffered grooming attempts online. No one can stop grooming online. I would never filter. No point.

Camoron is pandering to the anti gay marriage lobby and the Daily Wail nut jobs, while distracting from his disastrous policies of austerity.

<comment><USER6> _I honestly have no problems wit this as long as the default is unfiltered, and any blocks and filters are opt in_

But we already have that in the form of installable software that blocks online smut. It baffles me that the government thinks they have a place to get involved here.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but mucking around with software, on each machine, is a lot harder and more daunting than a simple tick box at the router. Harder to manage too. Easier for the kids to get round or just destroy. Most concerned families are not geeks. They need it simple.

If the gov want a simple tick box opt in on the routers, I cant possibly see a problem with that.

Note: I am uber liberal on this. I would never tick the box. But I only speak for me, I understand the net and have my own views on porn etc. How ever, I dont seek to impose my liberal views on others. I simply want us all to have a reasonable choice, that we make our selves. I want "wet" parents to have their option, so that I can have mine. Their freedom to chose is as important as mine.

<comment><USER6> Will all parents have the same views on what "porn" is? Will they agree with the government?

I'm normally very far from a Libertarian but I get very hesitant whenever the government weighs in on issues of personal taste. They can't get it right by definition, because there is no consensus on what is "right". For example, see the debate over the ".xxx" domain name, which failed because no-one could agree on what belonged on there.

<comment><USER9> Well, they are your parents and its their house, and you have to obey their rules. So, um, tough. When you are grown up, have your own place, set your own rules. And lets see in 20 years how you parent your own kids....

I know what you are saying. I was a kid once too. My mum stopped me doing all sorts of things. Apparently, that is parenting.

Also, you miss understand my point. I am not saying the government can say what should be allowed or not. I am saying there should be a base level filter that parent can use if wanted.

If the government start telling me, an adult, what I can and cannot see, I'd be very much against that. All I am saying is make it possible for parents to chose. As I said, I would chose to NOT filter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > the war on online porn

Is there a version of Godwin's law that applies to declaring war on things? Something like "by declaring war on something that is not a country or other similar political enemy, the delcaree and his/her organization automatically loses said war?"

</comment><comment><USER11> Tor. This whole thing is pointless because of Tor.

I don't think anyone is stupid enough to think this will work, not even that smug faced fop in downing street who somehow managed to luck his way into running my country.

So in reality, this is just a thinly veiled attempt to get people's names onto a list to be used against them at a later date.

I think we should brace ourselves for an avalanche of this Neo-Puritan fuckwittery.

<comment><USER12> Tor is the last resort. Things like this should not be happening in the first place. Just accepting whatever they do and moving on to some work-around is not a battle you can sustain and why should you have to?

Not to mention 99% of population can't be bothered or get their head around things like Tor. We are blinded by our hacker skills and constantly over- estimate the ability of the general population and under-estimate their unwillingness of learning technical things and their fear of technology.

<comment><USER13> If things like Tor were the only way to get porn online, I truly believe that a large portion of the population would bother. (And then the Tor network would collapse under the load)

<comment><USER14> What a great way to raise awareness and to motivate young people to take an interest in their network technology and privacy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice way to try and Jedi mind trick it. It's a ridiculous idea that has so many flaws that'll cause it to fall apart in large exposure, add on the fact that ISPs will require a new set of processes and administration and kick the cost back onto customers, which always helps drive internet usage when people who can barely afford it now won't be able to afford it at all.

Anyone vaguely intelligent enough to search 'hide connection' will be able to find out how to setup a VPN pretty damn quickly, thus rendering it moot. Unless using a VPN becomes an act of suspicion and puts you under monitoring, because surely you must have something to hide then. Next up, a war on curtains.

<comment><USER16> I suspect this is a distraction to direct the public's attention away from PRISM and the NSA controversy.

<comment><USER17> Your comment makes it difficult to tell whether or not you realize the UK and USA are different countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This isn't the impression that the campaign website[0] gives - see the "Our Plans" section. It sounds as if new customers will be opted in by default, and existing customers will be enabled, and then have to disable the filter.

[0]: [http://protectingourchildren.co.uk/](http://protectingourchildren.co.uk/)

<comment><USER19> Aw, that's cute. Just 65 tweets and 7 Facebook likes, not exactly the most successful social media campaign...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Soon you will be required to have a title, register your computer annually and be insured against liabilities just to surf the net.

<comment><USER9> Oh man. Never thought about that before. I think you might have a point. Like a TV licence for a MAC address. What a revenue earner. Evil, but logical, and possible.

FFS, keep this idea quiet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Dear All,

I am emailing to ask for some specific action which the prime minister plans to announce shortly. This follows a meeting yesterday at No 10 yesterday to discuss a range of child internet safety issues including parental controls and filters. The prime minister would like to make some further specific requests of industry and his office have asked us to ask you when you could deliver the following actions.

1\. Implementing browser intercept

I understand that Talk Talk will be trialling a "browser intercept" to force existing customers to choose either to proceed with parental controls (pre- ticked), choose their own settings or turn them off completely. The prime minister wants to announce that by the end of the year, every household with a broadband internet connection will have had to make a decision to "opt-out" of installing filters. Will the other three ISPs consider making a commitment to adopting this approach - even before it has been trialled?

2\. Age-verification systems/closed-loop

The prime minister expects customers to be required to prove their age/identity before any changes to the filters are made. I understand that you will all be implementing "closed-loop" systems which will notify account holders of any changes that are made to the filters and that you have robust systems in place but please could you all confirm the precise information that is required to enable customer to access, set-up and change their filters?

3\. Awareness campaign for parents

I understand that it was agreed at Claire Perry's meeting a few weeks ago that Talk Talk, BT and others would undertake some further research to establish what the focus of the campaign should be. The prime minister would like to be able to announce a collective financial commitment from industry to fund this campaign. I know that it will be challenging for you to commit to an unknown campaign but please can you indicate what sum you will pledge to this work that the PM can announce.

4\. Using the phrase "default-on" instead of "active-choice +"

The prime minister believes that there is much more that we can all do to improve how we communicate the current position on parental internet controls and that there is a need for a simplified message to reassure parents and the public more generally. Without changing what you will be offering (ie active- choice +), the prime minister would like to be able to refer to your solutions are "default-on" as people will have to make a choice not to have the filters (by unticking the box). Can you consider how to include this language (or similar) in the screens that begin the set-up process? For example, "this connection includes family-friendly filters as default [or as standard] - <USER2> you do not want to install this protection please un-tick the box" (obviously not intended to be drafting). Would you be able to commit to including "default-on" or similar language both in the set-up screen and public messaging?

We are all aware of the really excellent work that you are doing and but there are a number of specific areas that the prime minister thinks need further immediate action. You are likely to receive a further message from colleagues in DCMS and the Home Office regarding tackling illegal images but given the short deadline for this work we thought it better to give you some time to work on these issues in the meantime. I need to report back to No 10 by the end of the week on these points so I would be grateful if you could consider this request as a matter of urgency and respond by midday Friday.

Apologies for the very tight deadline and grateful for your help with this work."

They should have signed it "Sir Humphrey Appleby".

<comment><USER21> I had to check that that was a real letter.

<comment><USER20> According to the BBC news it is, at least that's where I copied it from. It does read like satire though - Jim Hacker News, perhaps.

<comment><USER22> You think it was a co-incidence that a previous prime ministers (Margaret Thatcher) favourite show was "Yes, Minister"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> David Cameron just reignited the new wave of interest to online porn of all sorts. Way to go!</comment>


Show HN: Addict – a Python dict whos values can be get and set using attributes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mewwts/addict <comment><USER3> I think you could implement it like this:

      from collections import defaultdict

      class D(defaultdict):

          def __init__(self):
              super(D, self).__init__(D)

          __getattr__ = defaultdict.__getitem__
          __setattr__ = defaultdict.__setitem__
          __repr__ = dict.__repr__

<comment><USER4> Almost, he is also converting ordinary dicts that get added as items to his own Dict class to enable you to keep using this syntax further down the tree, so you'd need a small wrapper around __setitem__.

But yes, the idea of storing everything twice (once as an item and once as an attribute) just so you can unconditionally add defaults in __getattr__ is… bizarre and will break things horribly as soon as you accidentally do something like:

        myDict['get'] = 'foo'

<comment><USER3> > Almost, he is also converting ordinary dicts that get added as items to his > own Dict class

You are right I dind't notice that before. But looking at the code it seems that the only permitted values are dict and str?!

> But yes, the idea of storing everything twice (once as an item and once as > an attribute) I don't get that, you don't store things twice and nothing > breaks, at least with the example code I wrote above. Try:

      >>> a=D()
      >>> a.lol = 2
      >>> a['get'] = 'foo'
      >>> a
      {'get': 'foo', 'lol': 1}
      >>> vars(a)
      {}

<comment><USER4> The only permitted _keys_ are str, and the rest are silently ignored. This is another bug in his implementation (only the first line should be indented, but both are).

Your code is fine - you're not storing everything twice, but he is (in _set_both()).

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the best things about the Python ecosystem is the acceptance and idealization of "Pythonic" solutions. While I acknowledge and praise the authors effort in making this complete and correct, the aim itself is misguided because it is grossly unpythonic. I reject it and hope it does not see significant use.

<comment><USER6> The problem with "Pythonic" is that it's poorly-defined. There seems to be a consensus on some things, and a wide disagreement on others.

You're welcome to your opinion, but I don't think it's productive to wield the phrases "pythonic" and "unpythonic" as if they represent an objective truth. If you have a problem with the library (and there are a few angles you could take), say that instead of denouncing the library as blasphemy.

<comment><USER7> I have never seen anyone saying that pythonic refers to some objective truth. It refers to subjective but real concepts as clarity, simplicity, explicit- ness, etc. There is also one thing that is not really pythonic but still important, it's reliability. Here addict is not reliable because it is unclear what happens when you call "addict.get" or other dict built-in methods like keys, items, etc. Something is reliable when it works equally for all values in the value space. dict['x'] is reliable because it works the same even if you replace 'x' by 'get' (or any other immutable value).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree, some measure should be made to avoid overriding methods. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This doesn't even come close to correctly implementing the MutableMapping interface in a way that makes sense for the expected behaviour. The biggest problem I see is that it's not at all clear how methods like __iter__, key/value (and the view variants) and has_key should behave. Honestly, I'd homebrew a nested defaultdict(defaultdict) every time because at least I know what it'll do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid input, but a nested defaultdict won't let me recursively define items: a.b.c.d.e = 2 as far as I can tell?

<comment><USER8> It does recursive access but not attribute access. The problem I see is that attribute access is only part of the problem you're attempting to solve. That's a nice feature but a pretty well known problem (check out the self.__dict__ = self trick) with fairly clear behaviour mimicking the usual dict.

The surprising bit that would stop me dropping this in any real code is that as an end user, it's not immediately clear how the mapping interface should apply to this class. It's all implementation defined but it's not actually defined in the implementation. e.g., Does my Dict() have the key 'a.b.c'? Nope, it only has 'a' and the other keys are managed through some magic. Same.applies to iteration, it might be reasonable to assume that'd be a depth first terminating node iterator but it would actually just iterate the top level of the main Dict instance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, the code is quite immature. However, your example is a bit off. If you do my_dict.a.b.c = 2, your Dict will only have the key 'a', as it generates nested Dicts. Hopefully you would not expect it to have 'a.b.c' as a key, as imho that would be a bit weird. Needless to say there's a bunch of stuff to figure out, so feel free to submit an issue or PR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, author of addict here. Would appreciate immensely if you would file issues of problems you find. It's a very new project, that I cooked up after work hours this week, and any input is good input! Thanks.

<comment><USER9> I like .attribute syntax as much as the next developer but the mutate-on-get behaviour strikes me as... undesirable.

<comment><USER10> He is explicitly copying the behaviour of the standard library defaultdict here. One clear motivation is thus:

Suppose I have an empty defaultdict(list). I do the following:

        d = defaultdict(list)
        l = d['foo']

According to no-mutate-on-get semantics, we now have an empty list, and d is still empty. So what happens if I do:

        l.append('bar')

You might expect the dict to now be populated with {'foo': ['bar']}. However, the dict has no way of knowing (without a large amount of additional tricks) whether the new list that it previously returned had been later modified. So what would actually happen would be nothing, d would remain empty. Worse, now your behaviour is different depending on whether or not the 'foo' key was already present (if it was, you would've gotten a reference to the actual value and mutated it, and d would have changed as a result).

As I see it, there are only two sane solutions to this problem: Either immediately store every generated value so any subsequent mutation is saved (the solution used here)...or require that your default values be immutable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aaron Swartz did something like this years ago, except it's ultra simple and doesn't include any of the weird recursive stuff, in his web.py: the Storage class.

[https://github.com/webpy/webpy/blob/master/web/utils.py#L52](https://github.com/webpy/webpy/blob/master/web/utils.py#L52)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I need the recursive stuff, though!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So I've made some changes over the day. Some issues still stand, but as some people pointed out it was unnecessary to store both attributes and items. Now the get and set attribute simply calls get and set items. If you find the time, feel free to add an issue along with you HN comment :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> A pleasure to see the Python community adopting Rubys drug-related naming schemes.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, something professional, maybe?

<comment><USER14> Can I ask why you would want it to be "professional" and who deemed this not "professional"? I mean, the language's name is derived from Monty Python - <USER2> don't think anyone would consider that "professional". Hackers are notoriously clever and comical - shouldn't our work reflect our culture?

"Professional", to me, is boring - it's what the pointy haired boss wants you to be because anything remotely outside of the box doesn't conform to their risk-averse norms.

<comment><USER13> Harmless jokes are one thing. Hard drugs are another. What if someone was recovering from their life being almost destroyed by heroin?

<comment><USER14> Then they have bigger and tougher problems than worrying about a hacker who created a python library thats adds to dicts - ADDICT. Seriously, are we supposed to censor ourselves on the off chance that someone is a recovering addict? Should we ask the flask developers to rename their web framework to ensure that it doesn't trigger an alcoholic to relapse?

You can be empathetic towards those who struggle with addiction and use the word in a witty or comical fashion. The two are not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER13> But what if it's used in a company? It's not nice for the company to force an employee to use this.

We're talking one line in a description (and possibly the name, though that's less impactful). Changing it doesn't change the programme. Why do some people get _so_ sensitive about something so trivial and not want to change it?

<comment><USER14> It's not nice for a company to force an employee to use a library that may or may not offend them but it is nice to ask the person who created that library to change their work to conform to the company for which they likely do not work? That sounds a bit self-centered.

"Why do some people get so sensitive about something so trivial and not want to change it?"

You're joking, right? You're sensitive about the name of something you didn't create and want it changed but it would be wrong for the author to not want to change it because you're sensitive about it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys. Relax. I made up the "better than heroin"-part in a flash. Was not trying to be offensive, I just liked it since it worked well with 'addict'!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's funny, I'm working on something similar for Javascript: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/xs.js](https://www.npmjs.com/package/xs.js)

<comment><USER16> What if a key has a space?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use some similar classes in my projects.

It always has frustrated me to see that attribute- and dictionary access is so similar but still different. Of course in most cases, there are some good reasons to have it different -- but sometimes there are also good reasons to generalize access to some important values.

So, we have duck typing and car typing. And both together we have a duck-car, because it quacks like a duck and runs like a car.

</comment><comment><USER18> This looks like something I really wish was just baked into the language. I think there is a reason it isn't, like in JavaScript, and that is because Python isn't as weakly typed, and encourages explicitness. So, I wouldn't use it and would discourage everyone working with me from using this.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://github.com/pjkundert/cpppo/blob/master/dotdict.py](https://github.com/pjkundert/cpppo/blob/master/dotdict.py)

Quite complete attribute accessible dict, with iteration by full-depth keys. Very useful for human readable output.

</comment><comment><USER20> this is an idea that I've seen used many times in the past. One of the first refs I saw to this mashup of the keys of a dict and the values in __dict__ was on Activestate in 2006 or so. There are also multiple versions on Stackoverflow.

I'm reminded of the web designer example here ([https://gist.github.com/fmeyer/289467](https://gist.github.com/fmeyer/289467)) line 89.

I know that people use github for many things, including tracking their config files, etc. However, this seems to be a post by the owner of the repo. Would you ever, I mean _ever_ be happy if someone required this sort of 'library' as a dependency in a project? I know I would not.

<comment><USER20> An example that you should try: d = addict() d['__dict__'] = None

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been using a similar thing I call Struct for ages, as part of my utils package:

[https://github.com/rcarmo/python- utils/blob/master/core.py](https://github.com/rcarmo/python- utils/blob/master/core.py)

Can't really see this as newsworthy, sorry.

Edited to add: didn't mean to sound mean (if you'll pardon the pun), just factual. There are ActiveState recipes out there for this sort of thing since the beginning of time... Also, check my other comments for thoughts on syntax and immutability.

<comment><USER22> Does that last sentence contribute anything?

"Neat, I did something similar here: [link]" communicates the same information. If it's not newsworthy it'll fall off the front page and that'll be that.

I'm sure you didn't mean to be hurtful, but `Show HN` posts almost always end up with a broad, critical top comment. Constructive criticism is great but "this is trivial" just seems discouraging.

<comment><USER21> Didn't mean to come across as mean, merely factual.

There are plenty of similar implementations around, in fact, and this is the kind of thing I've also seen as part of ActiveState recipes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hey, this looks super useful. Thanks for posting!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man, glad you like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I thought AdDict would be a dictionary whose values automap to Google Adsense ;)

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe consider creating a pull request against the standard python library. This is really nice. This feels like it belongs in the collections module alongside defaultdict.

<comment><USER26> No it really shouldn't. The usage is highly problematic because of naming conflicts and the implicit default behavior. This causes more problems than it's worth.

<comment><USER25> I'm not suggesting that it override the default dictionary behavior, but that it would be nice to have the option of using javascript-like object syntax by importing some special dict class. This library is really young, but I've always thought this sort of feature would be nice syntactic sugar, particularly for configuration objects. I find myself using namedtuples for this sort of thing, but it would be nice to have the option of using an ad-hoc data structure like this that's inherently trivial to serialize.

<comment><USER26> > but that it would be nice to have the option of using javascript-like object > syntax by importing some special dict class

It's dangerous to use because it needs recursive collapsing to a regular dict otherwise it's not safe to pass to many APIs. So yeah, it should definitely not exist in the standard library.

<comment><USER25> If you are Armin, I want to take a moment to say I love your work. This ruby- like dict class probably doesnt belong in the std python lib, but it is nice to have in pypi because of the syntactic sugar. No denying that it is kind of a leaky abstraction, one might even say a hack, but it has the potential to be useful for concisely expressing nested key-value objects, as long as the object instantiation is explicit so a reader would immediately know what they're working with. It's really easy to implement something like this by inheriting from dict and setting some magic methods, but I feel like I find myself implementing Struct classes like this for myself because it can be more elegant sometimes than nested dicts. If the python community agrees on the correct semantics for a defaultdict-like object with __getattr__ and __settattr__ implementations, it might be more elegant than the status-quo for ad-hoc objects: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2827623/python-create- obj...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2827623/python-create-object-and- add-attributes-to-it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> why do people keep insisting on inventing this ugly and pointless 'solution'? too much Javascript?

just use `mydict.setdefault()` and `defaultdict` and give up on the whole attr access thing. it's a dict

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the example on the README should make it pretty clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> *whose values

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :-)</comment></comment>


High school expels student for tweeting f-word - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57404826-71/high-school-expels-student-for-tweeting-f-word/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not even original. This has been tweeted by that celebrity (comedian) who starred in the movie Bewitched. his names is Will Ferrell</comment>


Best Programming Language to Use for Open Source Voting System - <AUTHOR>

I want to know what programming language the HN community would pick if they were going to create an Open Source voting system (most likely an API)? I want to choose a language that lots of people know so that they can contribute but one that is robust enough to be used by a government. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I would think that you'd want to write it in a language such that it could be easily verified as doing what it's supposed to.

What do you mean by "robust enough to be used by a government"?

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

This is something I am also interested in working on. Contact me at zoharj@you know where.com</comment>


Facebook Now Valued at $65 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/03/03/facebook-65-billion/

<comment><USER2> Wasn't it just supposedly at like $70b a few weeks ago?</comment>


Finally, You can auto-renew your free ssl certs even if you are using cPanel - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/3w8yfk/finally_you_can_automatically_renew_your_free_ssl/ <comment><AUTHOR> I been making steady improvements. It is feature complete but needs refactoring... Any suggestions?

[https://bitbucket.org/webstandardcss/lets-encrypt-for- cpanel...](https://bitbucket.org/webstandardcss/lets-encrypt-for-cpanel- centos-6.x)</comment>