The CIA's 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html <comment><USER2> Reminds me of Total Resistance[0], written for the Swiss population in case of occupation by Warsaw Pact forces.

Besides the sections on guerrilla warfare tactics, there's also section civil disobedience. Generally this involves workers acting as incompetently as possible:

" _Employees in plants and shops

Work slowly. Turn out poor quality goods and produce many rejects. Take a break often. Treat machinery, installations and engines carelessly. Cause excessive waste. Use excessive quantities of water, power, fuel and grease. Take excessive sick leave._"

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_\(book\))

<comment><USER3> The Czech people were already one step ahead of this manual. According to Madeleine Albright's book Prague Winter, the Czech factory workers during the WWII occupation by Nazi Germany worked hard at personal peril to ensure that the goods they made for the German war effort were not up to their usually excellent standards of workmanship (excerpt: Or the message found in the casing of an unexploded bomb from Czech factory workers:"Don't be afraid," it said, "The bombs we make will never explode." [1]). Best book I have read in a while albeit a very sad read.

[1] [http://www.aspeninstitute.cz/en/article/0-2012-like-a- czech-...](http://www.aspeninstitute.cz/en/article/0-2012-like-a-czech-film/)

<comment><USER4> I can't help but find myself wondering - did they write that in every bomb? Wouldn't that be incredibly risky? Also, how did they know that that particular bomb was made by Czech factory workers (was the message in Czech?) And why did they think to cut the case open? As far as I'm aware that was not normal bomb disposal procedure.

I had a Google and found a few more facts:

      * This anecdote comes from Dagmar Simova, Albright's first cousin, who was 12
      * The bomb landed in London, during the Blitz
      * It is implied this particular bomb landed in their neighborhood

What are the odds, that this very singular message throwing the Czechs in a good light, should be discovered through an unusual procedure on a perfectly normal bomb (among thousands) that happened to land in the neighborhood of non other than the cousin of future-famous Czech-American Madeline Albright?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The CIA did not exist in 1944. It was still OSS: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services)

<comment><USER6> That's mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER7> It would be clearer if the title were changed.

<comment><USER8> Not really since nobody knows what OSS is.

<comment><USER7> So something factually incorrect is preferable? And is it not possible to simply expand the acronym? E.g.

"The Office of Strategic Services' 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual (2015)"

<comment><USER9> From the article:

"Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions."

Are you a secret CIA saboteur?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great, now I have to assume that my team has been infiltrated by a bunch of CIA agents...

<comment><USER11> ...and we have to assume you are a master agent leading a crack team of saboteurs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A copy of the whole manual on gutenberg.org[0]

[0][http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.htm...](http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.html)

<comment><USER13> pdf: [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page- images/26184-image...](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page- images/26184-images.pdf)

<comment><USER14> >Don't use anonymizers, open proxies, VPNs, or TOR to access Project Gutenberg. This includes the Google proxies that are used by Chrome.

>Don't access Project Gutenberg from hosted servers.

Wow, fuck that.

<comment><USER15> The Tor restriction is pretty bad.

The hosted servers one I can rather understand and sympathise with, having been woken out of a sound sleep at 3am one too many times result of some hosted-space bot hammering our site and driving us offline.

A policy to institute CIDR-wide firewall rules on first sight tends to ensure sound sleep. Fairness be fucked.

(Vastly better tools for dealing with DoS would be a huge benefit generally, and much as I love Tor, it's really messing up with the Old Way of Resolving Asshats. I haet haet haet Cloudflare's incompetence, but understand why they do what they do. I'm not saying they've got the right answer though -- but again, that problem is hard.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Read the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless, Kafkaesque Guide to Subverting Any Organization with "Purposeful Stupidity" (1944)

Looks like they took advantage of the theory that "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grey%27s%20La...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grey%27s%20Law)

<comment><USER17> The corollary being: if your boss doesn't understand what you do, he's always going to assume you're deliberately sabotaging him. And for most of us, our boss doesn't understand what we do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Valeris: Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threated by automation flung their wooden shoes called sabots into the machines to stop them. Hence the word sabotage.

Uhura: We are experiencing technical malfunction. All backup systems inoperative.

Chekov: Excellent-I mean, too bad.

<comment><USER19> Wasn't Valeris the vulcan woman who turned out to be evil at the end?

<comment><USER20> Evil is subjective. She wasn't on the side of The Federation.

<comment><USER21> > She wasn't on the side of The Federation

She wasn't on the side of peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire; her and her co-conspirators within the Federation would surely see themselves as on the side of the Federation, and the pro-peace group as not being on the side of the Federation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I recently saw a great blog series about sabotage and how to defeat it in the context of projects. Sabotage often happens for personal and political reasons and he lays out clear ways to defeat it.

[https://coding.abel.nu/series/project- saboteurs/](https://coding.abel.nu/series/project-saboteurs/)

It is a great read.

</comment><comment><USER23> I remember a lot of this stuff on the Internet before the internet of books turned into the internet of videos. Oh and 9/11 had an impact.

<comment><USER24> I agree, fortunately we still have:

[http://cryptome.org/](http://cryptome.org/)

<comment><USER25> This is a complete treasure trove. Going through a select few documents and it is immediately clear to me that there is immense value (and insight) to be extracted for this. Well, there goes the rest of my day.

<comment><USER26> Cryptome is one of those precious places that are so far from the mainstream, they make institutional counter-culture types squeamish. Some of the material is just paranoia, some is stuff that the mainstream (even the "alt" scene) would rather go LALALACANTHEARYOU even though it's true, and some is hard documentation of popular controversies... The owner IIRC is also a fervent gun-lover (which makes sense, from an American anti-government point of view).

Cryptome is one of those places that continuously test the letter and the spirit of freedom-of-expression laws, a canary of sort, but also a gateway to the rabbit hole of crazy conspiracy theories, and a remnant of the anarchist Internet that was. One day it will go away and we will miss it.

<comment><USER27> Loompanics Unlimited[1] would have been obliterated well before Cryptome existed if there was any risk at all.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Internet trolls are sometimes way more sophisticated than this

<comment><USER27> You may be interested in this companion piece: [https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum- spies.htm](https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> converted to plain text chapter "(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production"

[https://gist.github.com/sigsergv/4ef7760bce859c67e298](https://gist.github.com/sigsergv/4ef7760bce859c67e298)

</comment><comment><USER30> Now I'm not sure but that would make a great videogame. Just to exorcise reality.

<comment><USER31> Ooh, I like that, something with a theme of being stuck in some soulless bureaucracy with goals that you morally disagree with, kind of along the same lines as Papers Please.

<comment><USER32> Depending on how you choose to play it, Papers Please can be that game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What to do when you realize your CEO is masterfully implementing the "processes" described in the handbook? I left ... any similar experiences?

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm amused by the CIA's use of the metric system in the manual. If only the rest of the US would follow ...

<comment><USER35> Even if they didn't otherwise use metric, it would make sense for them to use it here since the ultimate goal was to have the metric-using citizens of Axis- occupied countries carry out the sabotage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I can swear someone got a copy in 1945, changed the cover to disguise it using some title like "Modern management", and since then it has been used as inspiration tho many management books and guides.

It's incredible how those "tips" from the end of the article resemble some public/private companies that I've worked on.

</comment><comment><USER37> Is this document tongue in cheek?

<comment><USER38> No.

Sabotage is a useful technique in wartime. The CIA (the the OSS) investigated something like 15,000 supposed acts of sabotage in the US during WWII. (I don't think they found any that were actual sabotage).

They'd want to promote sabotage in Axis countries, and to prevent sabotage- like activity in allied countries, as much as possible.

<comment><USER39> The OSS would have been carrying out operations overseas. The FBI would have been investigating sabotage or suspicions of sabotage in the US. The Germans actually landed some agents in the US with plants to blow up this and that, but they were all caught before they could do anything.

You could argue that perfectly loyal American tank and torpedo designers accomplished a lot more than any Axis agent could have hoped for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This sounds like an manager's handbook today.

<comment><USER41> _make sure you hold daily all hands on deck meetings where everyone is required to listen to what everyone else was doing the last 24 hours._

 _require all work to be logged in the proper system so that any exceptional productivity will be tempered by time spent updating tickets_

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The complete guide to success in government.

<comment><USER43> You think it's just government? Have you worked much in the private sector?

<comment><USER42> More efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm not sure the CIA document supports this article. He seems to be talking about incompetence while the article is about sabotage

<comment><USER45> Plausible deniability is a huge factor in convert operations.

If the target can't prove something is intentional, it compounds the damage done, manages risks, etc.

<comment><USER15> Targeting trust is among the most disruptive attacks you can make.

Take movies with unreliable narrators (say, "Gur Hfhny Fhfcrpgf") as an example. Who or what _can_ you trust?</comment></comment></comment>


Exercise by club swinging in the 19th century - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/eastern-sports-and-western-bodies <comment><USER2> Of course the fitness industry has already rediscovered these clubs and sells stylish items under the 'functional fitness' category. But the more 'functional' a workout gets, the more one could wish there was real, physical work to be done, the kind of work that reveals muscular deficiencies despite regular gym workouts (often hand strength and endurance when working overhead) and gives a different sense of accomplishment and satisfaction: shelves built, home improved, practical skills acquired.

<comment><USER3> There's a reason we try to automate repetitive manual labor - it's dangerous and detriment to long term health. The whole of human existence has been a long march towards minimizing labour though we've definitely overshot to the point where disease of affluence has become our foremost public health challenge. That said, cultivating fitness in modern society should focus on the least amount of labour for maximum individual and public health benefits. An hour of strength training, some cardio per week to build individual durability and cardiovascular health is probably the most sensible prescription. A common anecdote between people who deadlift 600lbs and build houses for a living is how much pain they live with in later life.

On the topic of clubs, these are surprisingly good prehab tools for shoulder health.

<comment><USER4> An hour per week isn't going to cut it. More regular physical activity is needed to keep the body and mind in good shape. In speaking with cardiologists, minimum 30 minutes a day. Obviously if you're strength training and lifting heavy you're going above and beyond, so this is a loose recommendation for people who don't. The body acclimatizes to "moderate intensity" quickly when you put it to the test.

Let's not toss the baby out with the bathwater. Awhile back on HN there was an article with a doctor who "prescribes" deadlifting, and I'll butcher the quote but he says: "I would rather prescribe them an increase in deadlifting weight than an increased dose of blood pressure pills".

Leisure is good. Finding a breath of fresh air in physical activity is better.

<comment><USER3> I think an hour a week is sufficient.

For me the guideline for general population should be basically intermediate strength standards like the prescriptions by NASA, which are hilariously low but calibrated to maximize muscle retention, mission capability and most significantly reduce injury. Mission capability for gen pop is just to have enough muscle so you don't shatter your hips during a bad fall or injure yourself on rudimentary tasks (carrying your kids) that lead to expensive long term care.

The NASA standard was something like bodyweight squats for 6-10s that most people should be able to cultivate quickly and maintain with minimal effort. The difference in space is they have to exercise for 2 hours a day to maintain muscle mass, but on earth you can crack out BW or 1.5xBW squats/deadlift and insipidly low bench/ohp for homework 3x10s in 30m sessions twice a week to maintain. The bar is exceedingly low. Of course that varies depending on genetics, but it's one of those situations where pareto principle comes into play.

Cardio vascular health is different, but mostly it's a balance between NEAT, actual cardio and maintaining a healthy BMI, while strength training maintains an useful amount of muscle mass. Barbell Medicine podcast has a lot of good info on strength training + rehabilitation. It's geared towards the powerlifting crowd, but along your point, one of the broader prescriptions is that frequently movement and exercise is better at healing than pills or other medical interventions, but movement is very infrequently prescribed.

<comment><USER5> The minimum of 30 minutes is for lower intensity exercise. Like taking a walk.

You can get pretty fit on two to three hours of barbell exercises a week like you describe. But it still helps to add a walk about every day to stay sane.

And lowering the amount of time spent sitting on your butt seems to have a separate and independent effect from exercise.

<comment><USER3> I'm suggesting 2x30m of fullbody compound exercises twice a week for general population. Push/Pull/Legs using the least stressful lift variations per individual anthropometry for 3x10,8,6 reps with 2-3 minute rest is enough for most people to get 80% of where they need to be be if done consistently over time. Some sort of cardio for heart health. Low intensity (NEAT) activity + diet to manage weight to healthy BMI range. It's not training where you maximize personal potential, more exercise / going through the motions of the minimal routine for maximum benefit. It's not even designed to get people "fit" but just healthy enough to be preventative against diseases of affluence or common trauma like hip fractures that burdens health care and have disproportionate impact on quality of life. Also pour research into steroids, any low effort magic pill that enables people to retain lean mass later in life with minimal side affects.

<comment><USER5> Yes.

Lots of exercise regimes work to produce that kind of minimal level of fitness.

At this level for the general population the challenge is to get people to stick to it, not so much exactly which exercise regime they are doing.

VR games like Beat Saber might offer a reasonable chance to get people moving. Even the original Wii Sports had people get off their couch for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FYI, these are referring to the indian clubs from the indian subcontinent. In india, they were mainly used by wrestlers in a wrestling sport called Pehlwani : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pehlwani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pehlwani)

Indian clubs used : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_club)

</comment><comment><USER7> As a kid I watched wrestling and remember the Iron Sheik doing some strange things with what looked like giant rolling pins.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MycGlTq8Bb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MycGlTq8Bb4)

Only recently did I learn (episode on JRE) how difficult it is and how much strength it required.

<comment><USER8> God I miss old school pro wrestling. Hilarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Wisconsin there are still auditoriums named Turner Hall in some towns. Monroe is one, and when I was a kid I always wondered who "Mr. Turner" was who it was named after. My dad finally told me it used to be a gymnastics club, and the members were called "turners".

<comment><USER9> That comes from the German-speaking settlements/immigrants in Wisconsin. In German the verb turnen is to exercise or do gymnastics. And a Turnhalle is a place you go to do that.

<comment><USER5> Turnhalle is still the common name for school gyms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a former crossfitter: we did this, but we replaced the club with really expensive boutique sledgehammers in neon colors with mean-sounding names.

Like the Rogue "Warhammer": [https://www.roguefitness.com/sisu-war- hammer](https://www.roguefitness.com/sisu-war-hammer)

Or this Hannuman prop: [https://www.onnit.com/quad- mace/](https://www.onnit.com/quad-mace/)

<comment><USER11> Why former?

<comment><USER10> I moved to a smaller town and there's only local one box which is populated with the town's supply of douchebags. It's hit or miss: sometimes a crossfit gym is a fun bunch of people, other times it's a bunch of head-butting-brahs that make the whole experience awful.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Cross-fit is a franchise system, and they don't have much centralized QC. So it's very hit and miss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If anyone is interested in this type of exercise, you may want to check out Scott Sonnon and his club bell work outs. The company is called RMAX, and the programs are called "circular strength training". I am not affiliated, but I knew someone who was a big fan and customer.

My friend was really into it many years ago (he has since become less active). He taught me a few basic things, and I really enjoyed the workouts.

Fair warning — RMAX is a typical modern workout marketing company — you will get lots of e-mail, so you might want to make a unique e-mail address for any products you buy. Some folks sound like cultists when they talk about him and his workouts, although that may be more their issue than his. All that said, the materials I read seemed to have some historical references (India, Iran, lots of strongmen around the world, etc., but I didn't check the accuracy). The workouts were very good for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> This type of club swinging is still practiced (and advanced!) by jugglers and flow artists - see for example the first 30 seconds of this performance by Kyle Johnson: [https://youtu.be/7yoY6JI-RGo](https://youtu.be/7yoY6JI-RGo)

<comment><USER14> Also artistic gymnastics, it's one of the props used in the Olympics. I have an old pair of the gymnastics ones and they are deadly, feels like lead weights inside the plastic! I'm told by a gymnast friend that the newer ones have a soft rubber coating

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here in Germany, we still had those clubs in our school gymnasium.

I have never seen them used, and somehow assumed they were for bowling or something silly like that. But it's interesting that they never really went away!

It's not like they were leftovers from ye olde time. Someone, at some point, ordered x amounts of clubs for the school gymnasium because they'd be part of the basic equipment. Similar to these ubitiquous blue mats and the wooden horsey thingys of which there were always more than anyone wood ever need.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Vanderbilt's private gym in the Biltmore mansion (1895) has these:

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a8/e8/6d/a8e86d890a40c77cb4ba...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a8/e8/6d/a8e86d890a40c77cb4bad49e1107d69a.jpg)

Also it has a swimming pool in the basement before chlorine- the entire pool would be filled before use and drained afterwards. Heated of course. Also they had a bowling alley..

</comment><comment><USER17> The muscular Christianity thing is fascinating. Modern threads of it show up in the football world where certain players or coaches are ostentatious about their religion. Comes from that time(I have a few books about it).

I've worked a fair bit with kettlebells and some with the mace bell (an stripped down gada), but never the 2h indian clubs. Curious about any experience reports people have of them - what they really do for you vs other weight tools.

<comment><USER18> I'd love to know what books! With the stay-at-home order I've got a lot more reading time haha

<comment><USER17> [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801058473/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801058473/)

Here's one book directly targeting the subject. But I know that some of my other titles treat it en passant as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In Iran there is a tradition that runs to the present day of swinging heavy clubs, often to chanting, called zirkhuneh (house of strength).

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahlevani_and_zoorkhaneh_ritua...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahlevani_and_zoorkhaneh_rituals)

</comment><comment><USER20> Inspired by Stephenson's _Cryptonomicon_ , I do Aikido sword kata with a 2cm x 30cm steel bar. I move rather slowly, and don't put much momentum into the bar. So the practice forces good form, in addition to maintaining strength.

Edit: Yes, _Snow Crash_.

<comment><USER21> How heavy is the bar? I use a short suburi bokken; about 60cm, roughly 1.5kg. Perfect for one handed practice in tight places.

<comment><USER20> Oops, I was brain dead yesterday.

It's 90 cm long, and weighs about 2.1 kg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Using clubs of various sizes has been pretty common in the Japanese martial arts for centuries as well. Mostly as a strength building tool.

Here's a littly YT video of an example using particularly large specimen .. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=KnbaTYX2jE4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=KnbaTYX2jE4)

</comment><comment><USER22> Strongman type workouts still use these today (typically in steel), along with maces. You can buy them from the sort of suppliers that sell to crossfit gyms and the like, e.g., [https://www.onnit.com/onnit-steel- clubs/](https://www.onnit.com/onnit-steel-clubs/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Get a 20lb sledge and ~400lb tractor tire. Alternate flipping the tire and using the sledgehammer on it. Almost better than any gym workout (it's what I'm doing right now while my gym is closed). Your forearms will be so sore the next day you'll barely be able to type (at least for the first few weeks).

<comment><USER24> How would one acquire a 400 pound tractor tire?

<comment><USER23> There are places that sell used tractor tires

[https://www.ntstiresupply.com/what-we-offer/products- supplie...](https://www.ntstiresupply.com/what-we-offer/products- supplies/tires/agricultural-tires/used-tractor-tires)

Where to keep it is a completely different matter (it's quite obvious that if you don't have the room for a home gym my advice is not useful for you).

<comment><USER25> You know, it just occurred to me that, despite growing up on a farm, I can remember very few _used_ tractor tires; one was a raised bed and the other a sandbox.

Probably has something to do with a lack of vehicle inspections for farm equipment.

<comment><USER23> i would bet the reason is the same that you very rarely see used car tires: when you get new tires they take your old tires and restore them (to the extent that they can) and then resell them. so most people never keep their old tires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For more on the Newark Athlete of the opening: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/25/edison- labs-18...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/25/edison-labs-1891)

</comment><comment><USER27> This is still quite common in parts of India, where wrestlers train for old- fashioned "kushti" matches in a "vyayamshaala". It literally means "exercise school", and is basically a gym.

<comment><USER28> The Dutch word for doing gymnastics is "turnen".

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Created these awhile back. They worked pretty well and you can add sand for more weight. [https://youtu.be/PQKsyqQPRpc](https://youtu.be/PQKsyqQPRpc)

</comment><comment><USER30> I was expecting this to be about vigorous dancing at nightlife establishments and I wanted to know what 19th century nightclubs were like.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've used these on occasion. They are an amazing way to get rid of shoulder pain with very little exercise and are very convenient.

</comment><comment><USER32> Reminds me of colorguard/winterguard.

<comment><USER33> Reminds me of [http://www.shovelglove.com/](http://www.shovelglove.com/)

<comment><USER34> Well that explains what the hell my upstairs neighbors are doing every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's still all the rage! They are portable too. Perfect for a digital nomad!

</comment><comment><USER36> When _swinger 's club_ referred to something else.

</comment><comment><USER37> Excitedly read title of article. Disappointed upon discovering it's not that type of club, nor that type of swinging.</comment>


Introducing vLine link: Free, simple WebRTC video chat - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vline.com/post/63563738439/introducing-vline-link-free-simple-webrtc-video-chat

<comment> wc- I am in the process of evaluating options for embedded video chat in a webapp, vLine looks like another potential option (tokbox or OpenTok was the other service I had looked at) so I guess it's time to make some demos. My main points of comparison so far are ease of implementation and pricing.

The developer docs seem pretty easy to read so far, the nodejs example is nice. I'm impressed!

Edit - after some quick testing of the vLine video app, things seem to work fine in chrome, Firefox (stable and aurora) weren't showing online users, and safari (to my surprise because as far as I know safari doesn't support webrtc) showed users and chat worked but didn't support video calls.

Anyone know if Apple/Safari is planning to support WebRTC, or are they still sitting on the sidelines?

<comment><USER2> Glad you like it!

We're always excited to see the new things that people build with our platform. The goal for our developer platform is to enable massive parallel experimentation with WebRTC so that people can create applications that are completely new and different from anything that exists today. We believe that by abstracting out the global server backend (and browser differences, etc.) from WebRTC there is a much larger market of developers that can build amazing things involving communication than ever before while only using JavaScript.

If you need any help along the way, don't be shy to contact us (@vlineinc, email@example.com, [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/vline](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/vline))

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems nice but turns out to be the worst kind of service: instead of offering the marketed video chat, clicking 'go'displays a big advertisement for google chrome. I really hate those 'free' product that try to push chrome on you.

So I tried again in firefox (because I value privacy too much to ever install google products), and now I have a box with "connecting to room..." accompanied by a sad attempt to give away my data to google analytics and that's it.

So much for "copy. paste. video chat.", more like "relinquish your privacy to google, do that again, copy, paste, hope this will work".

I'm sure I'm happy web browsers are getting the ability to control webcams and watch as your surf the web.

<comment><USER2> Sorry you had a bad experience. It does work in Firefox, although there are bugs in the current stable version (which is why we are encouraging Chrome). Specifically, two nasty ones are audio echo ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=916331](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=916331)) and audio latency (up to 10 seconds: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=785584](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=785584)).

What version of Firefox are you using? What OS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been looking for software to video chat without being locked in an ecosystem (especially Google Hangouts), and WebRTC seems to do the trick just fine while being completely decentralized. I just tried vLine and the quality is pretty good compared to Skype for example. Thank you vLine. :)

By the way, is HD video not supported or is the problem from my side?

<comment><USER2> HD is supported, but we haven't enabled it yet for vLine link. We're waiting until we can do a better job detecting whether both ends can handle the HD stream, since the current WebRTC code doesn't do a great job of CPU load feedback (e.g., sending a 720p HD stream to a low-powered machine).

If you want to try out HD, register for a developer account at [https://vline.com/developer/](https://vline.com/developer/) and try the "Web Client". There is a drop-down menu on the "Video Call" button that lets you select HD (make sure to also choose that when you answer. The other option is to try GitTogether, which is just our Web Client with a GitHub login: [https://gittogether.com](https://gittogether.com).

<comment><USER4> What might be a good idea is allowing HD and disabling it by default, letting people choose if they want it or not.

I tried GitTogether and HD worked like a charm. The only problem is that resolution doesn't scale to the Internet speed, which means HD all the time but at low frame rate. However, the service is awesome and has a bright future in my opinion. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Couldn't see from the article, does it support more than 2 computers on the video chat, aka Hangouts style?

<comment><USER2> Yes, it supports multiple people -- we probably should have mentioned that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have experience with self-hosted FOSS solutions for WebRTC based plugin-free video chat?

<comment><USER2> We're going to be covering a WebRTC codelab (written by Sam Dutton at Google) at the SF HTML5 WebRTC Hack Day ([http://www.meetup.com/sfhtml5/events/139666482/](http://www.meetup.com/sfhtml5/events/139666482/)) tomorrow:

[https://bitbucket.org/webrtc/codelab](https://bitbucket.org/webrtc/codelab)

Another good set of WebRTC resources: [https://github.com/muaz-khan/WebRTC- Experiment](https://github.com/muaz-khan/WebRTC-Experiment)

For STUN/TURN, you'll probably want to take a look at this server: [https://code.google.com/p/rfc5766-turn- server/](https://code.google.com/p/rfc5766-turn-server/)</comment></comment>


Diary of an African Cryptocurrency Miner - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2017-11-03/diary-of-an-african-cryptocurrency-miner <comment><USER2> Crypto currencies definitely are a great alternative to local currencies in third world countries. I'm from one of those, lived through hyperinflation that wiped out my parents savings and left them with nothing at the end, watched the entire industries and countries get decimated bc they wouldn't agree on which local currency to trade in, people work and get paid in money that is worthless next month. Whatever helps people in those places is great!

<comment><USER3> I suppose I'd have two questions about this.

One is what proportion of ordinary people could actually get access to bitcoins in third world nations.

Another is whether bitcoin mining will wind-up being a way to launder money and access to energy in the third world - we often hear about oil, diamonds and minerals being taken during conflicts in third world nations. If someone could turn oil into wealth with nothing more than an Internet connection and a portable server-farm, a whole range of abuses might be possible. It's been claim bitcoin mining in China can be a way to subvert currency controls already.

<comment><USER4> All you need to get access to bitcoin anywhere in the world is a <$40 smartphone and an account on localbitcoins.com.

<comment><USER5> Sort of. Some places have very limited coverage on LBC. I've gone through my old ads ($50 BTC!) and in Guatemala it is still sparse. There's a bit of money pitching it on Facebook groups and grabbing a 5-10%+ markup nickle and diming it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Non-AMP link: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-03/diary- of-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-03/diary-of-an- african-cryptocurrency-miner)

<comment><USER7> This should have been the post link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was talking with a friend about where all the money for ICOS was coming from. Well anyone in the world can invest in your startup with no national or legal restrictions. No accredited investor checking, no IRS backup withholding for foreign nationals, no international wire transfer fees, no currency controls, no anti-money laundering procedures, etc. People like this Kenyan guy who has never had a bank account is who is investing in ICOs.

<comment><USER8> Except that paying into ICO is not investing, more like donating, with very little legal action if anything goes not as expected (e.g. the ICO "founder" parting with all of the money).

<comment><USER9> That donation becomes "speculation" if the token received from donating (i.e paying a price for a token) becomes tradable to other people.

Of course it is a questionable medium to speculating in, since there is no real mechanism holding the ICO-offerer to any obligation to deliver what they say they will deliver.

At least with a traditional stock market that is slightly more regulated, transparent, etc, we can reasonably expect that everyone from Apple to Zapos will attempt to deliver on what they say they will, with theoretical criminal charges being the price to pay for those who deliberately defraud investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't the writers think we need to know whether his really small mining operation is profitable?

<comment><USER11> Good question..... I wonder why they skipped it. They mentioned electric bills , and skipped internet data plan.

From the little know I have not seen mining via Wi-Fi. I know of a country where everybody is using Wi-Fi, is it possible to mine in such a place?

<comment><USER12> Mining doesn't need to send much data, so it shouldn't matter at all whether you use wi-fi or dialup etc.

<comment><USER11> Please could recommend one (Wi-Fi) rig machine ?

<comment><USER13> Normally you use a computer, so _all of those_ if you add a wifi adapter. If you have some kind of ethernet-only machine then use an external device (like another computer, or a router, or a raspberry pi) to turn wifi into ethernet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> He would be better off reducing the electric money and buying coins

<comment><USER15> Historically, the data shows that this is the right answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> as everyone knows, mining bitcoin has slim profit margins, due to hardware, electricity, increasing difficulty, etc.

So could mining an altcoin offer higher returns? I'm skeptical because if a coin is too profitable, people will mine the crap out of it and then dump it, sending the price plunging.

Since June, most alt coins have lagged bitcoin..there are simply too many of them and no differentiation. With very few exceptions, anything an altcoin does so does bitcoin.

<comment><USER17> This description has it backwards. When an altcoin is profitable, many people mine it, which sends the difficulty of mining skyrocketing. Remember that for most coins, the daily production is fixed. So when more people mine, it just gets harder to mine it. This means that the profit goes down, but the price of the coin is not necessarily affected.

It's also not really true that Bitcoin does everything that altcoins do. It's just that most of what altcoins try doesn't seem to matter much in the market, with obvious exceptions for stronger anonymity (xmr, zec) or smart contracts (eth).

<comment><USER18> This depends very much on whether the underlying algorithm is ASIC-resistant or not. The lessons learned from the BTC mining power laws prove that coins that allow for ASICs to be developed and come online will see the trajectory you have outlined. Less so for ASIC-resistant coins like XMR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What about the Internet in Africa? What about unreliable electricity. What about power outs? How will the miners cope?

<comment><AUTHOR> A normal UPS should buy enough time to shut everything down in an orderly fashion and provide enough charge to run for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hashgraph is the future, not Blockchain/Bitcoin

</comment><comment><USER21> This makes it pretty clear that the 419 scammers are onto the cryptocurrency thing. I wonder if the smart/big money is still riding this bubble.

<comment><USER22> Exactly what do 419 scammers have to do with Kenian who has worked hard to learn programming, was a top developer for Git awards and is learning about cryptocurrencies?

<comment><USER23> I guess a lot of people aren't at all familiar with Africas geography. I mean the whole article is called "Diary of an __African __Cryptocurrency Miner ", presumably because Kenya was too specific and obscure for their target audience. If your mental map of a continent is largely "here be dragons", I guess it's easy to associate Nigerian scammers with Kenyan cryptocurrency miners, who live some 3500km and several international borders away.

It's not limited to Africa though. I'm from New Zealand, and I've had Europeans ask if I visit Japan a lot, because I'm so close (I'm about as close to Japan as Germany is). I've had Americans ask if I was ok when they heard news that tropical cyclones were hitting Queensland (I'm as far from Queensland as a Jamaican is from Ohio). And the hemisphere thing stumps so many people. Usually they just constantly forget that the seasons are reversed, but I've had one educated, multilingual gentleman from east Asia ask me if North and South mean the same thing in the southern hemisphere, or if they have opposite meanings.

<comment><USER24> To be fair, New Zealand is about 1 AU from everything, so it's especially difficult for a lot of us non-kiwis to grasp. :) A relative and I were just discussing this the other day: he was convinced Australia was further south than you until I got out my phone, I think because he was confusing New Zealand with New Guinea. I've noticed we do tend to heavily associate you with Australia in the States, too, so the Queensland question doesn't surprise me. Most Americans probably mentally conflate Tasmania and NZ.

To your point, I could probably name most African countries but not place them exactly from memory, particularly in the interior and on the western coast. Niger is hot news in the U.S. right now, and we had a week or so of everyone collectively figuring out not only that it's distinct from Nigeria but also proper pronunciation, simply because we don't think about Africa much (which is lame, I agree). _Legislators_ were surprised we had troops in Niger, which should really say a lot.

Geography education is already iffy in a number of places, and I imagine ubiquitous digital maps are going to exacerbate that problem the same way we are already losing the ability to memorize phone numbers. John Oliver has been having fun with this by highlighting the wrong country as a recurring gag on his show.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


9 reasons to start using C++11 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cpprocks.com/2012/05/07/9-reasons-to-start-using-c11/

<comment><USER2> Pretty much everything in C++11 sounds extremely cool and useful. It seems like the committee did their homework; from what I can see all of the new features are well-designed and thought through. Lots of things that were verbose or inefficient before are fixed, and as a result the language will be more expressive.

But I just have this nagging worry that C++ is going to collapse under its own weight. C++ was already the most complicated language in common use IMO (except possibly Perl); with C++11 there are more keywords, more constructs, more variations. I just hope this doesn't make C++ seem totally unapproachable to beginners, or too hard to keep up with for people who are already using it.

<comment><USER3> I'd have liked better ptr features. The auto-cleanup is good. Is it flexible enough to do other things like: auto-close (a file ptr); auto-deref (a ref- counted thing); auto-unlock (a critical section) etc?

<comment><USER4> All of these can be done in a class's destructor, which is called when the object is deleted, e.g. when a shared_ptr's ref-count reaches 0 (i.e. there are no references to it left). To express observation (and break cycles) there is weak_ptr, and to express ownership there is unique_ptr.

IMO the new pointer stuff is excellent, and relieves the large majority of the memory management burden.

<comment><USER5> There are some boost macros which will run clean up code at the end of the scope if you prefer. They are not pretty. But they work. (This is a life saver in a long function with multiple exit points)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I would like to see is a (convincing) list of why use C++ (in new projects) at all.

In my opinion (and experience) when you need the performance advantages of C++, you are usually within the domain where C is good enough (and perhaps a better choice for its simplicity). When you need the features of C++, you are probably better off with something like Python (not specifically, but in the same "league").

Seeing how easy it is to use a higher-level language combined with C for critical sections, I just don't see the point of C++ anymore.

Disclaimer: I don't really like C++. The only pleasant experience I had with it involved ignoring the STL completely and using Qt (<http://qt.nokia.com/>). I like C though.

<comment><USER7> C is good and simple but C is not expressive. There are a whole hosts of situation where code has to be duplicated or slightly modified. For instance, it's really hard to do good generic data structures in C without ending up with casts everywhere. Polymorphism is even worse.

For me, that really is the edge that C++ holds over C.

<comment><USER6> Like the old saying, "you can write cobol in any language".

Polymorphism and "good generic data structures" (in the sense you are implying) are not a necessary requirement of elegant and maintainable code. It is part of the problem that programmers have taken OO concepts as the end-all of good code, and must apply those concepts everywhere even if that means implementing them from scratch at the cost of (unnecessary) complexity.

Large systems have been written in C. Many large open-source projects use C. There is no evidence that these are less maintainable (in general) because of language choices.

Some of these graft OO concepts onto C. GTK is noticeable for this (although it doesn't seem to be too bad for application developers, I'm afraid for those tasked to maintain the libraries themselves).

Procedural programming is not a sin (if "procedural programming" exists at all today, as most of the simplest object concepts have become common practice and are now though as an integral part of it).

<comment><USER8> _Like the old saying, "you can write cobol in any language"._

As far as I know, there is no such 'old saying'.

However, _The determined Real Programmer can write FORTRAN programs in any language._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Of course, if you are a C++ programmer, you should migrate to C++11 as soon as possible.

But do not forget that the improvements given by C++11 do not void all the reasons to not use C++ at all. Avoid C++ if you can.

<comment><USER10> As has been said a million times, C++ covers applications that are not really suited for any other language. This applies to C as well.

As much as newer languages come about, in the end, you are working with a Von Neumann machine, of which both C and C++ are well suited for.

The only problem with C++ as far as I can tell is that you need to know a lot, not to make mistakes. There are too many ways to do things, that if you don't know what you are doing, you are probably going to do things wrong. However, once you _do_ know, and use libraries like Boost, I think it is difficult to come up with a reason why not to use C++ for lower level programming, with performance requirements.

<comment><USER9> The problem is that the prerequisite does not apply only to you, but also to all your team. It is ok to use C++ for lower level programming with performance requirements if all the development team knows very very well C++. Even if you fill these conditions during initial development of a project, during the maintenance years, you always happen to have a not so well educated developer. C++ use is a very narrow market.

<comment><USER10> Code practices and code reviews help with getting beginners up to speed and not clutter the code base. If you remove all experienced developers with inexperienced ones? Surely this will cause problems in any language.

Also, I'll have to disagree with C++ being a narrow market. Just the market where C/C++ is almost required (high performance or low level) is large enough as it is.

Then there is the discussion of which language is _more_ suited for a given task when you are doing higher level stuff that doesn't have high performance requirements. It might be wasted resources to put people with high knowledge of C/C++ to that kind of tasks. As for the language itself, in terms of productivity; _if_ the developers are experienced, I don't see any problem with it. With help from Boost and/or Qt, it is as easy as writing python (almost, sometimes :) ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately as the number of new projects involving C++ keeps going down, the fields in which C++ jobs are available are getting narrower every year.

Almost all middleware is now written in Java. C# took over the frontend development on Windows. New openings in C++ seem limited to quant fields (bank backends on linux) and driver development.

<comment><USER12> And Games. AAA game dev (for PC and Console) is almost entirely C++, with some embedded scripting languages (normally Lua, for performance reasons).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the reasons I like C++ is that it lets you throw away type safety and still maintain it through abstraction. This sounds awful, so let me explain.

In one project, I implemented an EDSL for performing a destructuring bind on a string (CFG production, actually). The types of the components of the pattern determined what the pattern would actually match.

This was all done in a previous version of C++, so I didn't have variadic templates available. I also didn't want to heap allocate the internals of patterns.

What I did was to store an array of void pointers and a function pointer as private fields within a pattern class. When constructing the pattern, pointers to the things to which parts of the string to be bound were put into the array, thus throwing away their types. BUT, the function pointer pointed to a static method in of a class template, which only operated on the array of void pointers in a type-safe way, precisely because it was compiled with the knowledge of the types.

I use this type of subversion when appropriate, and it's often a very convenient solution to an otherwise tricky problem. Such a thing would either not be possible--or be incredibly inconvenient--in C. It's often very useful to treat different stuff uniformly, knowing that your abstractions can maintain type safety.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is there a resource somewhere listing which compilers support which features of C++11? Or do all major compilers already support the new standard?

Portability is probably the main reason I'm concerned about switching my codebase to the new standard...

<comment><USER15> C++11 support in common compilers: <http://wiki.apache.org/stdcxx/C++0xCompilerSupport>

<comment><USER14> Thanks to you both, that what I was looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> C++ is very much a mixed bag but the new features in the C++11 standard do help a lot. The "auto" keyword and range-based for loops alone have decluttered my code quite a bit.

The new smart pointers make me nervous after the auto_ptr fiasco but they seem to be working fine in my code so far.

I'm looking forward to trying out the lambdas as soon as they hit in XCode.

<comment><USER10> The BOOST_FOREACH has helped declutter my code a lot as well. After getting used to it, I feel it expresses intent better than a for loop with auto begin- end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> 3 questions before moving to C++11

\- which architectures is the author discussing when he talks about performance gains, what are the ISA requirements and numbers?

\- what compilers are supporting it?

\- why is it good to have "magic" happening in the background? E.g. reason 4 is not something I'd promote.

<comment><USER18> I can answer 2 and 3

2\. Apache maintains a list of which compilers support what. <http://wiki.apache.org/stdcxx/C%2B%2B0xCompilerSupport>

3\. The auto keyword isn't supposed to be magic. Rather it's for catching complex types that aren't easily to discover, such as the returns of template functions and iterators, and making it easier on the programmer by not forcing the typing out of long types. The type is resolved at runtime (as best as I am able to tell) and can help clean up some of the messiness of template programming.

<comment><USER19> No, the type implied by an auto declaration is resolved at compile time.

<comment><USER18> DOH! My mistake! Thanks for the catch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a long time C++ / C programmer I love every feature here... except one. I really abhor the new auto keyword. Perhaps it's personal taste (I also dislike the "Var" in JS). It really seems to make the code harder to follow with only minimal advantages (that I can see / use/ etc).

<comment><USER21> While I understand the reason for auto, and see the benefit in less typing, etc, I still do it the old-fashioned waytoo. I prefer be explicit.

</comment></comment><comment> johnx123-up Any good IDE and references?</comment>


Swift 4.1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://swift.org/blog/swift-4-1-released/ <comment><USER2> Is "server side Swift" becoming less niche? I'm not clear on why it isn't competing more with Go and Rust.

<comment><USER3> My impression has been that Swift is still very much seen as an "Apple" language, rather than a cross platform one. Another issue is that there are some operations that lead to crashes if they detect illegal behavior, in the name of providing safety and consistency. Some feel that this kind of behavior is counterproductive in a server environment because it would lead to the server keeling over if something goes wrong.

<comment><USER4> Tooling outside of Mac I imagine is lacking as well. I also asume libraries outside of Mac too? Strong standard libraries make languages easier to adopt. Go had a web server out of the box removing the whole "which web library do I use?" element out of the equation.

<comment><USER3> Swift on Linux has access to a substantial portion of Foundation as well as any other C libraries, such as libc.

<comment><USER5> There are a lot mismatches.

For example, I reported a bug about CFRunLoopMode, where the original C-based CF used a comparison of pointer address to determine the equality of two run mode names. The original C version actually compared using the identity rather than equality as the commonModes was defined as a static CFStringRef (CONST_STRING_DECL(kCFRunLoopCommonModes, "kCFRunLoopCommonModes")). Of course this is an optimization for speed on Mac but this is, unfortunately, not supported in Swift and its replication of CF, because in Swift it has to be a public static String. As for today you cannot use commonModes in Linux.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately Apple still considers (Core)Foundation to be outside the auspices of Swift Evolution, which makes getting issues like these fixed much harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be helpful if Apple did a review of the sample code in the developer's library and fix all the software that won't even compile anymore. It doesn't help people trying to learn this language if the sample code won't work.

<comment><USER7> > Swift 4.1 is a minor language release. It is source compatible with Swift > 4.0.

Nothing should break?

<comment><USER3> A lot of sample code is still Swift 1 or 2 code, which is not source compatible.

<comment><USER8> Am I the only one who finds the rapid source incompatibilities problematic? Like maybe a language shouldn't move so fast or be better nailed down before production.

<comment><USER9> You have two choices: bake the language fully before release, or push out what you have and get the community involved.

I'd argue the second option is almost universally better.

<comment><USER8> Reasoning about effect aside, I walked away from an iOS project (personal) primarily because the language moved so fast it lot me.

<comment><USER7> Swift changed less between 3 and 4 than between 1.0 and 1.1.

The last two years or so have been fine for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've got a couple dozen small Swift 4 examples on Github for anyone looking for sample code:

[https://github.com/melling/ios_topics/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/melling/ios_topics/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER11> RE: Server side Swift

Linux is second class citizen as far as Swift is concerned for sure. I had to jump through a few hoops to make sure my library works on both Linux and iOS.

Just tried v4.1 and everything compiled cleanly:

[http://pdfjet.com/swift/PDFjet- Swift-2018-03-30.zip](http://pdfjet.com/swift/PDFjet-Swift-2018-03-30.zip)

BSD licensed code, 100% written in Swift (I went through the trouble of writing the compression code in Swift since the compression classes were missing from the Linux distribution and some older versions of iOS ) - give it a try.

<comment><USER12> Would it make sense to link to a Github or Gitlab repo so people can view the source code before downloading?

<comment><USER11> Yes - it would make a lot of sense. I have been planning to do it, however being Mercurial user complicates things a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know if anyone who can edit the blog is reading this, but the link to "SE-0186 Remove ownership keyword support in protocols" is wrong, it should point to [https://github.com/apple/swift- evolution/blob/master/proposa...](https://github.com/apple/swift- evolution/blob/master/proposals/0186-remove-ownership-keyword-support-in- protocols.md)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the heads up. It should be taken care of now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't quite understand why they are putting specifics like detecting the iOS simulator in the core language.

<comment><USER16> They want functionality that is similar to the C preprocessor's _#if_ , but different in that they want to require both branches to syntax check.

They also want to locally evaluate the equivalent of such _#if_ expressions (in contrast, in C, _#if X_ requires preprocessing the file. That can mean reading dozens of header files, and is dependent on compiler flags)

I think this is a pragmatic way to accomplish that. It restricts you to conditions that Apple has deemed useful, but makes it easier to write good tooling.</comment></comment>


Everything You Know About the Blockchain Is Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://degoes.net/articles/blockchain-myths <comment><USER2> Myth 1: Calling everything a myth proves you are right.</comment>


Russian mil. hacked US voting SW company, spearphished 122 election officials - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2017/06/05/nyet.html <comment><USER2> How legit does this seem to people? It appears to be the scenario many dreaded: phishing, TFA, MITM.

But then they only have their google accounts... not sure what the vector would be to the voting machines or their code, but having email dirt on employees could be powerful leverage.</comment>


A Falcon 9 will pop the top off at Max-Q - <AUTHOR> https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2020-01-14-Issue-47/ <comment><USER2> Wow. I'm definitely adding this website to my weekly read. It is succinct, provides sources, hasn't succumbed to 'space hyperbole', and minimal.</comment>


Fitter, happier, and other fantasies of modern life - <AUTHOR> https://slightlymarxistfounder.com/2018/03/10/fitter-happier-more-productive/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me that the author is missing the core problem here. The problem isn't trying to improve oneself, but tying your self-worth to the success (or failure) of these improvement efforts, or hoping for magic habits like IF or polyphasic sleeping or a specific schedule to fix your life.

I don't stress about not achieving personal goals immediately, as long as I'm making progress, or at least learning. My diet, for example, is pretty much a model of what many people would ideally like to eat. I didn't do this by going cold turkey, but rather by a decade of trying without judging myself for each failure.

By contrast, I've failed pretty hard at trying to wake up earlier over the last decade: instead of forcing myself to do so, I've made sure that my time commitments allow for it. It turns out this was a pretty great way to handle it, as I just found out I've had a sleep disorder for pretty much my entire life. Now that I've addressed it, waking up earlier has become a lot more feasible. If I had pushed myself and judged myself for failing the way the author does, I feel like I would've failed at both those endeavors.

<comment><USER3> I had a similar experience, I couldn't get myself to exercise, at all. So one day I told myself I don't have to do any more than one. One situp, one pushup, etc... whatever I wanted for my routine. This was easy to start, easy to maintain, and fantastically simple to overcome the mental block to do it.

I started 3 months ago and I am still not great at exercising, I do 2 minutes at a time at most. And I'd do this a couple times a day. But no excuses allowed because it's too dang easy to do, and I sound like a tiny baby complaining about one single pushup.

Within a couple weeks of doing this, my sleep improved. I fell asleep a lot easier, and woke up more refreshed. There's a freedom you get when you can truly say "something is better than nothing", and then stick to it.

A number of times I have literally done one single pushup for my workout. :P And it's just fine.

Edit: Actual routine (2 min) 20 pushups (maybe), 20 squats (maybe), halfass jumping jack things (30 secs?), 20 crunches (maybe), 20 stupid looking back crunches (not a real thing, but I like them), swing my arms around (monkey exercise?), twist my next (feels good). I attempted a pullup multiple times a day,finally after 2 weeks of this, I did a full pullup!

Today I did 2 pushups. :)

<comment><USER4> I recommend doing negatives (jumping up to the pullup bar off a box or something and lowering yourself down steadily) to rapidly improve your pullups. You can quickly get to being able to do one after never having been able to, or in your case, you should be able to get from 1 pull/chin up to 3-4 fairly quickly.

Good luck, and keep up the good work

<comment><USER3> I like that idea, I will try it. I did get up to 4 though, but I am not trying. :P I am doing the absolute minimum that I can handle. I don't break a sweat even, and my breathing is barely elevated. (part of goals, not to over do it)

Also, another rule I have, if it hurts, I stop. Period. So one day I did a few squats, my knee felt funny on one, a little pain on the next. I stopped. The next day it was fine and I did 20 squats again.

Thanks for the suggestion.

<comment><USER5> Regarding the pain, a few years ago I injured my lower back. Recently I haven't really been paying much attention to it, and even just bending down to pick something up caused a little pain in my back and knees.

A month ago I went to a health spa and within a few days all my pain was gone. I wasn't doing very strenuous excercises, but the important thing was I was doing something every day and using most of my muscles - it was basically aerobics designed for middle-age people.

My point is firstly that pain can be caused just because you aren't using the muscles. Muscles get stiff if not used and that inturn can cause more problems (I believe most of my back injury was caused by tight hamstrings).

And secondly it's often easy to fix, you don't need to be deadlifting 300lbs and spending 3 hours in a gym, just some simple excercises you can do at home is enough. I wouldn't even worry about how many you can do or whether your form is perfect (within reason), just using the muscles is the important part - especially for most of us who are at a desk for 9+ hours a day.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the note, it's good to know it's not a fluke to have these methods work out.

It's almost comical how rarely I've heard the kind of advice for light exercise. It's almost always "you have to get your heart rate up to 120 bpm for 30 min or you are wasting your time!" bah. "you need to do 200 reps or you're wasting your time!" double bah.

I run a totally lame mile run a few times a week, and I like my exercising, I make it easy and mostly enjoyable, and it's turned my life around.

I agree with the sore muscle thing, I had my acheles tendon hurt really bad when running. So I had to stop for a month. But when I started to run again, it still hurt, I was worried.

Here's the really dumb part. My TV/movie based medical knowledge told me that I may have to work through some pain (ie, like in physical therapy) to get my ankle back to normal. It was healed, just not in shape, or some such dumb thing. And it worked! (yah for the movie about the hurt army soldier who had to get his legs working again! and the stubborn nurse that wouldn't let him quit!)

Remember in old british movies/tv they would go out on a "constitutional"? (I thought that was so uptight and funny when I was younger)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm of the belief that all those stories about CEOs who wake up at 4:30 AM, hit the gym, and have another notch in their belt by 7 AM are not products of their routine, but rather that their routines are products of themselves. One can't usurp those lifestyles without changing their unique set of circumstances up to that point, their genetics, their gut bacteria, or any of a plethora of other factors. Being someone is like being a planet, forged by chance from matter swirling around after chaotically exploding into the universe. Dialogue on the Internet is narrowing our perceptions of what it means to be an individual, and that's not really a good thing, IMO.

<comment><USER7> As someone who gets up early and works out, I have noticed that the discipline required to make it to the gym early carries through the rest of my life. The flip side is when I start being lazy in one area of my life it permeates to other areas.

<comment><USER8> On the other hand, willpower has been shown in multiple studies to be a limited resource[1], so on days where I force myself to wake up early, I end up making caving and bad decisions later in the day, like eating a bag of doritos.

[1][https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower-limited- resource.pd...](https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower-limited-resource.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Baumeister's ego depletion experiments failed to replicate spectacularly. On phone now, so you'll need to google yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I always wonder is why strive for productivity at all? I see all these self-help blog posts about boosting productivity, getting more out of your day, etc. They all seem to eschew the virtues of productivity in lieu of hedonism. Can't we have both? Or is the problem moderation? If we don't balance productivity with enjoyment and relaxation we oscillate from each extreme. I confess I've been a bit obsessed with self-help books and websites. With that said, when I compare my more productive self to my time-wasting, hedonistic side, I prefer to have a mix of both. Striving for the extreme hacks to maximize time to be more productive seem pointless if you aren't having fun or enjoying yourself. Strive for achievement sure, but also enjoy life.

<comment> your-nanny If increasing my productivity doesn't increase my salary, but decreases my happiness, then why indeed?

<comment><USER3> This is an interesting idea. (Office Space interview with the "Bobs" comes to mind) Would you say that your experience fits with the idea that many people are more productive because of recognition from their manager/boss is more valuable than money? (within reasonable parameters)

<comment> your-nanny F&#k recognition. That whole thing is just a brainhack scam by management types to avoid paying people for the monetary value they produce.

People generally crave social validation, but very few will pay for it. Yet, that is exactly what that proposal entails: reduced salary in exchange for (forced/insincere) validation and recognition by management. The only difference is that the latter is the passive choice.

<comment><USER3> The only reason I thought to ask was data presented years ago that said people will only be motivated by money so far... But would you work in a place for lots of money where they treated you poorly?

I generally agree that corporate head-honchoes will bilk anyone they can for every penny they can...

<comment> your-nanny I don't disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm afraid the author has fallen into a very dangerous trap of modernity, that of adding things to improve one's life. You should try the other side of the coin as well. Taking stuff out. Especially junk that is served daily. Mainstream media, endless shows, social media, porn ( if you have that problem ). Replace it with real stuff: walking, meeting with friends etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> didn't read the article closely, but i'm sick of people getting memed into caring about things like intermittent fasting and honey vinegar drinks (???) and mindfulness meditation apps.

It seems like people are unable to focus on the big picture stuff that actually matters (don't get fat, sleep enough, have enough money to not be broke, have good relationships with family and friends, managing stress effectively, etc.). So they get obsessed with these random things nobody gives a fuck about and fail at the big picture stuff.

<comment><USER3> I find that these things _can_ go hand in hand. Being physically healthy won't make you nicer, but if you are healthy, it's easier to have more patience (as one example of a complimentary benefit).

I am nicer and more forgiving when I don't have a sore throat or a migraine. And when I have more energy, I can play with kids instead of taking a nap.

<comment><USER13> I think it's a very analogous situation with wealth, actually. "More money won't make you a better person," but if you're broke and desperate you're more likely to do something shifty to survive. Likewise, being physically healthy and getting enough sleep won't "make you a better person" but if you're sick and chronically sleep-deprived it sure can make you behave like a prick.

<comment><USER3> > _...but if you 're sick and chronically sleep-deprived it sure can make you > behave like a prick._

Or make it _harder_ to not behave like a prick?

<comment><USER13> It moves your setpoint for prick/nonprick behaviour changeover along the scale?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm sympathetic to the point being made, but I think the target (i.e., root cause) is wrong.

People trying to improve their lives is not a bad thing, whether that is getting more exercise or trying to be more mindful. That's not actually the problem. On the whole, a given person would live better if they could magically add exercising 3 times a week to their life. The problem is, really, lack of empathy. The problem is that we blame the person for not doing so, instead of their situation. We blanket request that this person achieves this, but not for their benefit, but for ours...

People in the world are actually in very different phases of life, and some phases are simply worse than others. People don't all start out at the same exact point so that it takes them all the same amount of resources to reach exercising 3 days a week, for example. People have very different backgrounds. This is often ignored, so the whole idea of self-improvement tends to just not take into account the general _ugliness_ and _messiness_ of the world. Then, people brought up in such a world, comparing themselves to expectations born out of refusing to see the ugly world, will of course feel inadequate. And what this tends to do is squeeze out the people who don't feel welcome and generating an elite of sorts. "Live fitter, happier, more productive" does not have a very diverse audience...

Another problem is that modern living simply has more information and tasks to keep track of. The pure amount, after a while, takes a toll that's very hard to directly calculate. But there's a very big difference between stress of having to do 2-3 things, but having little control over other long term things, vs having (theoretical) control of most facets of your life but that resulting in 20-30 things to keep track of. Having so much control creates this impression that everything is your fault, resulting in nearly an endless source of guilt if you don't nip it in the bud.

Of course people turn to productivity apps and hacks - they have more to manage and are overloaded! Many people end up unable to manage the process automatically so they, understandably, use various tools to help.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was reminded of Gilbreth's (yes, that Gilbreth of "I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it") observation of so called expertise. We are often seduced by the display of intensity and effort, as judging effectiveness much harder and less apparent.

"Gilbreth noted was that the so-called expert factory workers are often the most wasteful of their motions and strength. Because of their energy and ability to work at high speed, such men may be able to produce a large quantity of good work, and thus qualify as experts, but they tire themselves out of all proportion to the amount of work done."

</comment><comment><USER16> The biggest culprit is unregulated modern business, it feeds us rubbish food through mass marketing, which leads to crappy guts and depression, stress through aggresive worklife and focus on quick success. The underlying emotions are greed and gluttony.

<comment><USER17> I think you're ignoring the many positives in this.

What would happen to the change-your-life-in-24-hours book segment of the economy; the fad-diet book industry; the people who claim authorship of the books; the photographers who sell their images to a middleman to license to the publisher; the publishers that print them.

And when the books don't work because there's an entire industry devoted to feeding consumers misinformation and convincing them that the low-effort obvious things they can do (moving your diet as far away as possible from what the processed food industry is selling and becoming more active) won't work unless you're deeply abnormal in some way, the situation is beneficial to the healthcare industry that benefits from prescribing antidepressants and treating obesity-related diseases.

The wealth-creators of these industries are creating jobs in growing sectors of the economy. If you fix the real underlying problems, people will be out of their livelihoods.

<comment><USER3> Just to clarify (I am dense) this is a sarcastic post, right? (please forgive my stupidity if you are being serious, and if not, for wrecking your joke)

<comment><USER17> Definitely not fully serious, so I'm pleased you questioned it. There was no stupidity on your part and no joke to ruin.

I was simply attempting to construct an argument that can be made before somebody else did so. It's not something I agree with, and I suspect few could agree with it as being overall good with the examples I used, but the economic upsides do seem, to first order, to be undoubtedly real.

It's really more like an adaptation of the Parable of the Broken Window [0]. The problem is that for each commercial party involved, any fixing of the root cause makes things worse for them and those they employ. In other words, this is an area where pandering to business interests will never fix the root problem, because economic improvement for a host of industries requires people getting worse.

Politicians don't generally want to put those that elected them out of work. And yet sometimes the alternative is shortening or worsening the lives of others. The thing is nobody will associate the shortened life expectancy or the worsened state of being with the decision-makers but they will if their action causes the loss of their jobs.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window)

<comment><USER3> Good to know I am not losing touch with reality. Normally I'd ignore your comment or add a real response... but I just couldn't figure out which was the right way to go with it. ha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I have learned about living so far: Exercise regularly. Sleep well. Eat well. Make time to relax e.g. meditation. That's pretty much it.

Getting up very early sounds like an absolutely terrible idea, and I would never recommend it to anyone. You're just going to be sleep deprived, and sleep deprived people make dumb decisions and work slowly.

<comment><USER19> I am a sleep deprived person, and I agree with your sentiments wholeheartedly. I am experimenting with sleep reduction for a longstanding and difficult affective issue--it works!

It also makes me feel dumb; and judging by things I've written recently, I am trading misery for intelligence, at least in certain areas. Misery, it's worth pointing out, can lower an individual's cognitive abilities.

Side note: I agree about food and exercise. I knew, from past experience, that I need to pay careful attention to what I eat and how I exert myself.

I just couldn't seem to get going. I have no rational explanation, but there you have it.

So far, the sleep-restriction experiment, consisting of one night per week without sleep, is showing favorable results. I know I'm coming off as a dullard more than I usually do, but I'm not clawing my face off worrying about it. Oh, and it seemed to lift whatever was preventing me from improving my diet and activity levels. I wish I had a better solution, or that I had some innate drive to just _do_ the things I strongly believe beneficial simply because doing beneficial things is rational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Poor guy. He's only just started his long journey into a postmodern nihilist breakdown.

Once you realize that every core belief you once held was manufactured by a corporation/religion/government in an effort to empower that agency, then life really begins.

<comment><USER21> Very interesting. Can you suggest somewhere to learn more?

<comment><USER22> Not to be flippant but try introspection.

Why do you believe or desire the things you do? Be honest with yourself and try to keep in mind at all times the role of moral/social pressure. Think about history and the different forms of status and normality that came before.

Go ahead and read books by great thinkers but don't let that be everything. The most valuable form of learning is when you can untether yourself from appeals to authority in conversation and speak intelligently about your own conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting that Thom is supposed to be quite embarrassed by Fitter Happier these days and reportedly it's one of the only statements he wishes he could take back.

<comment><USER24> That's interesting, got a source? Also though I wouldn't wish regret on anyone, probably helpful to aspiring artists to know that everyone makes mistakes.

<comment><USER23> Not really I'm afraid - can't remember what interview I read it in, but you can probably find something with a bit of creative googling.

<comment><USER25> It's in here, seems to be from interviews in Humo and Q magazine (never heard of the former, remember the latter from the 90s):

[http://diffuser.fm/radiohead-fitter-happier/](http://diffuser.fm/radiohead- fitter-happier/)

 _" I'm not standing behind the lyrics any more. Sometimes your ideas get entangled with other ideas and then you have to apologise for the original idea because it doesn't make sense any more. That's what happened with 'Fitter Happier.' Now, I listen to the piano part."_

The ending line is pretty harsh on people who just want to improve their lives ("A pig in a cage on antibiotics"), I've always had mixed feelings about the song when I've heard it when trying to fix a (perceived?) problem in my life.

It's a a bit of a childish view on adults, every lyric writer will look back on his teenage/early 20s thoughts and see that growing older has suddenly made you understand your elders and cringe at how ridiculous your views actually were when you're young, immortal and carefree. When it turns out youth doesn't last, we all die and mummy and daddy stop paying at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A modern version of this song would replace 'Eating well, no more microwave dinners and saturated fats' with 'Eating well, no more processed foods and refined sugars'

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks like the actual title of this piece is "Fitter, happier, more productive... and other fantasies of millennial life."

That has a bit of a different implication.

How many older-than-millennial folks feel this same pressure?

<comment><USER28> > How many older-than-millennial folks feel this same pressure?

IDK, I think my generation are the ones who took up the mantle and crammed this stuff down the youngsters' throats. I'd imagine that most marketing agencies are run by folks my age who came up through the ranks while the millennials were in their formative years and they grew up being brainwashed by the hippies who took over the education system after their revolution failed.

Growing up though, it was perfectly acceptable to be a slacker with plenty of role models on TV and in the movies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was really hoping for more Marxism.

</comment><comment><USER30> Probably some of this stuff does work. The real problem is that changing your life is really difficult. Mainly because there is inertia in your environment. People expect you to act and think how you have done in the past, your job expects you to show up at a specific time, think a certain way. The bar you frequent has a set of emotions associated with it. So does the coffee shop. And so it all snowballs, and you try to break free but the memories are everywhere

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder how much nurture vs. nature plays apart of how much exercise you enjoy/do?

I go to the gym twice a week and have done so for years. My mom in her 70s still exercises weekly as she has done since as far as i can remember. I have other active friends whose parents were the same while my inactive friends parents were and are inactive.

personally sitting around vs. hiking or climbing a mountain or swimming laps would drive me crazy. Theres so much to experience and enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe just start being responsible adult who sees broader would be good start.

Seeing through yoga pants marketing trick is not enough. You have to look further. You want perfect models in books, like 4 a.m. waking up CEO. Because we all know it is hard to change or become like model from a book. But you still can be better 5% than yourself a week ago by trying to do it.

Responsible adult should know those are only perfect guidelines. You also know no one will buy book that will tell him how to be 5% better. Why would I read story of my neighbor who lifts 5kg more on the gym? How would it motivate me to even try to get better?

Whole pop culture and pop science is about creating perfect vision of life. If we achieve 5% of that we will be a lot better.</comment>


Show HN: CasePlum – Custom-printed iPhone 6 Cases (Passive Income Idea) - <AUTHOR> http://www.caseplum.com Hey guys, made this site in 2-3 weeks, just in time for the iPhone 6 launch. Thought it'd be an interesting passive/side income idea, which I know is a popular topic on HN.
Apologies if its buggy or doesn't support certain browsers/screen sizes. Trying to be lean develop it
Also, since the community here is great and has provided excellent feedback before, here's a $10 off coupon just for you guys: HNthirty.
Any tips on how to market it? I'll happily share numbers with the community if it goes anywhere. <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, made this site in 2-3 weeks, just in time for the iPhone 6 launch. Thought it'd be an interesting passive/side income idea, which I know is a popular topic on HN.

Apologies if its buggy or doesn't support certain browsers/screen sizes. Trying to be lean develop it

Also, since the community here is great and has provided excellent feedback before, here's a $10 off coupon just for you guys: HNthirty.

Questions/Feedback?

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool idea!

Maybe your sample page should have family pictures under Christmas tree before the holiday season, Picture of loving couples before valentines day, etc.

Perfect as gifts.</comment>


Ridescore: Grading US Cities on Car Service Regulations - <AUTHOR> http://www.ridescore.org/

<comment><USER2> From the same think tank that brought you: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather- gang/pos...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather- gang/post/heartland-institute-launches-campaign-linking-terrorism-murder-and- global-warming-belief/2012/05/04/gIQAJJ3Q1T_blog.html)</comment>


A small python utility to read Firefox and chrome's bookmarks and history - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfgEO42HA5Y&feature=youtu.be

<comment><USER2> You probably get more responses if you link the repo as a Show HN:-post</comment>


Show HN: Integration with an OAuth2 OIDC provider as a standalone service - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oslokommune/gatekeeper <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I have been lurking HN for years, and thought I'd finally try to submit/contribute something.

I'll answer any questions.

TLDR; A service which handles the OAuth2 Integration with _some_ provider so you don't have to implement it in your frontend(s)</comment>


Pinterest acquires Jelly - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jelly.co/big-news-pinterest-acquires-jelly-1ef68d36480d#.124dj0fbi <comment><USER2> I wonder how this fits into Pintrest's other businesses? Is this just an attempt to diversify?</comment>