Why I am no longer a skeptic - <AUTHOR> http://plover.net/~bonds/nolongeraskeptic.html

<comment><USER3> >rom his writings, I gather that Dawkins would be content to live in a world where gentle Anglican vicars presided over their bored, civilised congregations in England's vales and hills, while the British Empire did its dirty work elsewhere, in places like Kenya, India, and West Cork. He saves his real ire for the creeds of the unruly natives — all those nasty Muslims and Catholics and tribalists who don't know their place.

Islam gets called out more often _because it does more damage_. Most of the English CofE faithful, I suspect, don't actually believe in their religion; they attend the services and get on with their lives. They're not preaching the evils of condoms or calling for the lynching of those who criticised them or, yes it has to be said, undertaking terrorism in the name of their religion.

>This is not the place to describe the many problems and hypocrisies of neoliberalism. Suffice it to say that I do not believe that liberal democracy, which condemns the majority of the world's population to varying degrees of slavery, is a perfect system. I do not believe that the metaphors of liberal democracy allow us a perfect view of reality. And therefore I do not believe in the primacy of the scientific method as a source of knowledge. It might be the best we've got, but when it comes to human advancement — including the advance of science itself — other sources of knowledge can be just as useful, and often more important.

Simply untrue. Indeed the scientific method may be only the best we've got rather than perfect, but that still makes it the best we've got. "other sources of knowledge" - like what, mysticism? are _less useful_.

>What's more, skeptics never acknowledge that racial science was defeated by political ideology, and not by science itself. In fact, there was nothing that could have defeated it within the empirical framework of racial scientists. Their racist experiments confirmed their racist hypotheses based on their racist observations. But while the science supported them, politics, in the aftermath of World War 2 and the Holocaust, did not. After 1945, racial science became politically unacceptable in western liberal democracies, and remains so in spite of the various attempts to revive it. It was not disproved by the scientific method; instead, the political ideologies behind racial science were discarded, and replaced by new ones that did not accommodate it.

Which is a bad thing, because it makes it very hard to be confident we know the truth about racial matters. Racist "science" is unscientific, but so too is politically correct "science"; which is more harmful is indeed a matter of politics, because both are simply expressions of politics. Neither is founded in science or skepticism.

>Cheating people out of their money is one thing, but cheating them out of their lives is quite another. To read some skeptic takes on alternative medicine, you'd think only heart disease rivalled it as a killer. It's true that alternative medicine is not going to cure anyone of serious illness, but it's also generally true that the terminally ill only turn to it when real medicine has given up hope on them.

Generally, but not exclusively. People really do die because they looked to "alternative medicine" rather than medicine; the fact that most people who use "alternative medicine" don't does not really excuse this.

<comment><USER4> > Islam gets called out more often _because it does more damage_.

This is shortsighted. I personally think all religious belief is harmful, but in the sweep of history, Islam has a record of much more tolerance than Christianity, to name just one other religion.

Over long periods of time, Islamic cities and countries were much more tolerant of other religions than Christian cities and countries. Christianity has, and deserves, a reputation for being utterly intolerant of other religions.

This is not to excuse the excesses of Islam, when and where they took place, and I personally think the world would be a better place without religion. But it's simply inaccurate to describe Islam as doing more damage from a historical perspective.

I speak as someone who tried to open a Planned Parenthood clinic in a rural area (where it was really needed), was threatened with death more often than I care to remember, and who saw clinics and doctor's offices set on fire with depressing regularity. But this can't compare to the Inquisition, a time when Christianity displayed its true colors.

<comment><USER5> Dawkins' main problem with your criticism of Christianity would probably be that it is too short...

As other comments have noted, he has criticized Christianity more than Islam.

For a less well known counter example, this is from a not so extreme Muslim country (a few friends are from Bangladesh, so I read up a bit).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vested_Property_Act_%28Banglade...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vested_Property_Act_%28Bangladesh%29)

>> It is officially estimated that about 75% of all Hindu lands in Bangladesh have been seized by using this act

Edit: I have to ask -- why do left wing people have much less problems with the quite common Muslim antisemitism, than with Nazi antisemitism? Most of the arguments (except for the religious ones) and sources were copied from the nazis. It is even written in official(!) media in the Muslim world.

<comment><USER6> _I have to ask -- why do left wing people have much less problems with the quite common Muslim antisemitism, than with Nazi antisemitism?_

Israel, and more specifically the Israel-Paletine conflict. The Left tend to side with the people they perceive as weak in a conflict, and while during Nazi rule they were persecuted and killed by the millions, they're now the more powerful side. Being close allies with the US doesn't help.

This is, at least, what I see from knowing well a bunch of Southern European left-wing people, from social-democracts to communists.

<comment><USER5> Are you really claiming that left wing idealists accept racist hate propaganda -- as long as it is from a billion of people that seems "weaker" than five millions of people?

(I am not arguing, I have no better explanation for this craziness myself.)

<comment><USER3> The biggest problem with leftist thought is its tendency to degenerate into paternalism. It's easy to see the antisemitism of a largely poor, uneducated group as "not their own fault"; they're a product of their upbringing and environment. To criticize them for being antisemitic is as unfair and pointless as to criticize a savage for, well, savagery. Under this worldview, what these antisemitic poor people need is love, education and a chance to better themselves; give them this, and the antisemitism would probably wither away (except for a few truly bad individuals, who it would then be perfectly legitimate to criticize).

By contrast the Nazis had no such excuse; the Germans were quite possibly the best-educated and most advanced nation in the world. Not to mention the way they put their antisemitism into practice.

(speaking as a leftist myself)

<comment><USER5> Oh my god. :-) Off the top of my head...

1\. As far as I can tell, this antisemitism thing is mainly from dictators that need an external enemy to hate. (A universal phenomenon in those countries -- and yes, using external enemies is not unique to dictators.) Just see how Iran motivates anything with attacks against Israel. _The left wingers must KNOW what they are supporting!_

2\. Isn't it racism to accept so low standards for [mainly ethnic] groups and assume them to be unable to be responsible for their actions?!

3\. This tolerance (of e.g. antisemitism) goes for Muslims living in Western Europe too, which hardly have these excuses. So it isn't coherent.

4\. Why do the left accept the arguments and world view (re Israel), when they at the same time argues it comes from a bunch of illiterates that aren't responsible for their actions/opinions?

5\. Should people with low education get lower punishments for crimes? Should they get no punishment if they can't read and don't understand the law?

6\. Afaik, e.g. Iran has a quite large part educated of their population. [Also, that was a high culture _thousands_ of years before my ancestors had writing.]

Etc, etc, etc.

(Still not arguing, fascinated. I have no clue what the Hell political believers on all sides are smoking -- I just want to live in a country without any of them.)

<comment><USER3> >As far as I can tell, this antisemitism thing is mainly from dictators that need an external enemy to hate. (A universal phenomenon in those countries -- and yes, using external enemies is not unique to dictators.) Just see how Iran motivates anything with attacks against Israel.

Dictators do use it, but it works because the population supports it. The people really do hate Israel and the Jews.

>2\. Isn't it racism to accept so low standards for [mainly ethnic] groups and assume them to be unable to be responsible for their actions?!

Eh. Maybe. I suspect those who were bothered by this would argue that it's not about race, it's about socioeconomic status. That those of lower socioeconomic status need/deserve help that the rest of us don't is pretty much the core thesis of the left.

>3\. This tolerance (of e.g. antisemitism) goes for Muslims living in Western Europe too, which hardly have these excuses.

Even in western europe, you're largely talking about a ghettoized underclass. There's not a lot of tolerance of antisemitism from e.g. serious academics (muslim or otherwise). The nouveau riche sometimes get away with it, but again they're being looked on with pity by the left, and it's assumed they got those attitudes in their early days.

>4\. Why do the left accept the arguments and world view (re Israel), when they at the same time argues it comes from a bunch of illiterates that aren't responsible for their actions/opinions?

I don't think you see leftists following the same Jewish conspiracy theories as Iranian peasants. Many on the left do believe Israel shouldn't exist in its current form, simply because we don't think it was right for the UN to arbitrarily confiscate the land of a bunch of (largely) innocent Palestinians.

>5\. Should people with low education get lower punishments for crimes? Should they get no punishment if they can't read and don't understand the law?

Speaking for myself, yes that should be taken into account. If you're asking about the orthodoxy, I think the left would object to the notion that the justice system should have anything to do with punishment; its goals should be the prevention of crime, which is served a little bit by deterrence, and much more by reform. If you're thinking about it in terms of preventing re- offending, an uneducated person probably needs to take more time before they're ready to re-enter society. Not that the current prison system is good at helping with that.

>6\. Afaik, e.g. Iran has a quite large part educated of their population.

Not really AIUI. There's small a university-educated middle class in the capital, from whom we hear a disproportionate amount in the media because they're the ones who speak English. And these people are quite possibly less anti-semitic than the general population. Certainly the left would expect them to be.

<comment><USER5> A few days too late, sigh. If I had time then, I would have written this...

I really think the hypothesis "We hate everything the US do and all their close friends" fits better as an explanation for the left's double standards. (Even without considering the venom against equally uneducated right wing extremist idiots.)

Disclaimer -- I only know Sweden well, but similar positions are seen also in English.

Here the media are very left leaning and tend to straight out censor pro- Israeli news and negative information about Palestinians.

Swedish media never mentioned e.g. Pallywood and the same goes for news about torture between Palestinian groups. UN's Ban's recent Iran criticism in Teheran was mangled in the translation(!) -- that is quite typical.

And so on.

It is just hard to not see my local left wingers as propagandists in this question. Often even filled with hate.

(Swedish media is why I follow this subject, I grew up believing them -- and I'm totally disgusted by now. The Mid East is a good test of Swedish media.)

>>I think the left would object to the notion that the justice system should have anything to do with punishment; its goals should be the prevention of crime, which is served a little bit by deterrence, and much more by reform.

I know all about this -- Sweden. These are the questions that are never answered:

The left seriously argue against both the existence of game theory and the existence of uncurable psychopaths?

Is the left really aware of that many crime victims gets their lives destroyed?

<comment><USER3> >I really think the hypothesis "We hate everything the US do and all their close friends" fits better as an explanation for the left's double standards.

Shrug. It's possible. Obviously as someone who takes quite a lot of the leftist view I don't like that explanation.

>The left seriously argue against both the existence of game theory

Interestingly criminals tend not to take a rational approach to evaluating the risk of punishment (or else, their utility function is rather skewed). There's a wealth of evidence that longer prison sentences don't deter crime any more than short ones, and while the threat of prison has some deterrent effect, it's less efficient overall than e.g. community service (which has far better reoffending rates)

>and the existence of uncurable psychopaths?

While such people exist, a) they make up a tiny proportion of the current prison population b) prison, and "punishment" in general, is not really an appropriate way to deal with them. Some people genuinely do need to be kept out of society, but we can deal with those cases as a medical matter rather than crime and punishment.

>Is the left really aware of that many crime victims gets their lives destroyed?

You'll find a lot less sympathy for violent criminals than property crimes. Certainly the leftist position would be that, considering their overall life, a typical burglar is more in need of help from society than their typical victim, but I don't think that's so unreasonable. Certainly going by the obvious financial measure it's true.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the answer.

You have nothing to add re Israel's existence?

As I wrote: Why no indignation AT ALL over the coldly planned destruction of Palestinian lives in the camps of Libanon, Syria, etc?! All other cases in WW I/II have been laid behind them by the victims, but this.

To the other arguments might be added that more Jews had to flee in the Middle East (including the West Bank 1948) than Palestinians 1948. Ethnic cleansing -- because of their religion, not in the middle of a dirty civil war...

Those Jews got most assets stolen, including multiple times larger area than Israel itself. Why is there no indignation at all?!

I could probably add more. But the previous two which the left _ignores_ are at least as bad as anything Israel has done, even with the left's description of Israel.

I can't use any milder description than "disgusting double standards", especially if you add the non-criticism of state supported nazi hate propaganda...

Re crime:

>>There's a wealth of evidence that longer prison sentences don't deter crime any more than short ones

I've heard that sentence length is irrelevant since I started school, but... It seems just too close to other lies they fed us in Swedish school.

1\. Is that measured for first time criminals only? It is a big step to risk jail.

2\. To simplify, there are two types of criminals. The first are the idiots that drink beer on a Saturday and get in a knife fight and the second type consider and weigh for/against like any other entrepeneur. How is the sentence length sensitivity if you ignore things like drunks that knife each others?

3\. Sentences have influence. A proof: If there was a death sentence for e.g. jay walking, not even _I_ would do it (sober, see 2.). But -- I wouldn't jaywalk even if it was just one year in jail. In that way, there is no influence by sentence length -- is that how the claim is measured?

4\. But certainly, psychopaths are not that influenced by punishment...

>>[psychopaths are a tiny part of the prison population and can be handled as a separate case]

Do you have a reference for the claim?

The figures I've seen (easy to google, from Hare afaik) say 20% of the US prison population, 50%(!) of all violent crime. That is hardly something minimal to just ignore...?!

>> a typical burglar is more in need of help from society than their typical victim

I know of a couple of females that were very, very upset over a burglary and had e.g. nerve problems and problems sleeping home for quite a while. I slept with a couple of knives for a couple of months.

I only know about Sweden. Afaik, there are two types of burglars:

\- Hard drug users. The logical solution is _not_ to give them short sentences if they aren't likely to have stopped the drugs -- for their own sake.

\- International crime syndicates -- see type two above (entrepeneur).

<comment><USER3> There's certainly some element of not expecting much from poor arab states. Yes, we do hold Israel to a higher standard than its neighbours - because it's richer, because it's seen as an extension of the US, and because it advertises and makes much of its status as the only democracy in the region. And there's probably at least some element of racism, but I think it's less a case of "it's all the jews' fault" and more "these smart white folks have a burden the brown savages do not".

>All other cases in WW I/II have been laid behind them by the victims, but this.

My instinct is to lay that at the feet of religion. Two violently opposed religions claiming the same areas as important holy sites makes peace hard.

>1\. Is that measured for first time criminals only? It is a big step to risk jail.

AIUI it's been tested across criminals in general, not just first time.

>2\. To simplify, there are two types of criminals. The first are the idiots that drink beer on a Saturday and get in a knife fight and the second type consider and weigh for/against like any other entrepeneur. How is the sentence length sensitivity if you ignore things like drunks that knife each others?

The thing is, "crime doesn't pay" isn't just a slogan, it's actually true. So the kind of smart people who evaluate the consequences usually end up following a different career. The only place it seems to me that it might make a difference would be the kind of grey area tax avoidance/fraud schemes, where the person is going to argue that what they did isn't a crime at all. But I don't think there would be much support for harsher sentencing of crimes that were only just on the wrong side of the law.

>3\. Sentences have influence. A proof: If there was a death sentence for e.g. jay walking, not even I would do it (sober, see 2.). But -- I wouldn't jaywalk even if it was just one year in jail. In that way, there is no influence by sentence length -- is that how the claim is measured?

AIUI studies mostly look at crimes for which the sentencing guidelines were changed, or where different regions sentence differently, or statistically compare criminals who were given different sentences for the same crime. Obviously none of these methods are perfect.

I'll defer to you on psychopaths.

>\- Hard drug users. The logical solution is not to give them short sentences if they aren't likely to have stopped the drugs -- for their own sake.

But prison is no good at getting them off the drugs or stopping them reoffending, unless you're going to lock them up forever to rot; what would a long prison sentence achieve that a short one wouldn't? Medical treatment and community service give them a better chance than prison - though still not a great one - at being able to reintegrate into society.

>\- International crime syndicates -- see type two above (entrepeneur).

AIUI most of the inherently illegal income for crime syndicates comes from drugs, but it's hard to see how heavier sentencing would damage that income. Street-level dealers are easily replaceable and it's a pretty crappy job already, I don't think longer prison sentences would damage their recruitment. The executives usually stand to lose all their money and lifestyle if they're ever convicted (proceeds of crime and all that); they're banking on paying the right bribes and/or never getting caught.

AIUI you missed a third category of burglar: the independent "professional" who burgles because they're poor and have no skills with which to get a job. But while these guys do a bit better than drug addicts in prison (sometimes they're able to get some kind of qualification there - which is pretty much the only case where spending a longer time in prison will help), community service sentences still give them a better chance of not returning to crime.

<comment><USER5> Re Israel:

I have a hard time to take seriously excuses like "we have harder demands on democracies" together with _no criticism of state supported Nazi race hatred_.

It is just ridiculously large double standards.

A couple of more examples:

Syria was one of the world's worst police states long before the present turmoil -- many times worse treatment of its citizens than Israel, even with a Palestinian description. Syria is/was a big part of the Israeli conflict, so it is discussed when the conflict is discussed. The criticism of Syria from the left has been almost nil.

The Swedish left wing politics have existed for a bit more than a century. During that time, they have _never_ supported a democracy against a dictator.

As I wrote, there are many more examples of this insanity.

The _real_ reason for this lefty weirdness, is that foreign politics are treated as arguments for internal politics.

The problem is: with incoherent arguments, conspiracy theories and disgusting double standards -- why would anyone sane take the left seriously?

I seriously don't believe you consider so gigantic double standards as rational -- the modern difference is that they aren't for nobles/kings now...

Why do _you_ try to defend double standards of a factor of (at least!) thousands? Do you have no intellectual integrity? Do you identify with the position, like football fans?

Re prison:

We have too different societal systems and prison implementations.

To a Swede, the US 19th century prison system looks both counterproductive and like a crime against humanity.

Sure -- you can make a good argument that a country with 30 times the Swedish population is impossible to control and manage; the problem size increases with the square of the population, or something.

Also, Sweden didn't have "real" criminal subcultures and organised crime syndicates until quite recently. And still don't have desperate people, except for drug users. An influencing factor might be that the police isn't functioning well (compared to most of the rest of Europe) and punishments are short, so crime-as-profession might be a better deal in Sweden.

But in general, if you make extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary proofs. To argue against mathematics (in this case, game theory and evolutionary biology) is an extraordinary claim.

Sure, humans have culture -- which is updated when the environment is updated. There is an obvious lag of at least decades, before the cultures change.

And it is easy to make proof of concept examples of punishments influencing crime (e.g. see previous re prison/death for jaywalking).

<comment><USER3> >But in general, if you make extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary proofs. To argue against mathematics (in this case, game theory and evolutionary biology) is an extraordinary claim.

To argue that humans (and criminals in particular) behave rationally is a far more extraordinary claim. I believe in using evidence over theory (much like in medicine - see the use of blood-thinning drugs after heart attacks) - <USER2> the (admittedly imperfect) evidence we have is that prison sentences are ineffective in preventing future crime.

<comment><USER5> I see you gave up defending thousands of times less criticism of brutal dictators and nazi racist hatred propaganda. (See previous examples if you want to touch that.)

There are afaik papers that discuss different evolutionary strategies for animals of different social status in groups. In some level, behaviour with so big influences on fitness generally makes sense in game theory.

It would be interesting to see support for the claims about sentence length not influencing behaviour? I've only heard claims, bever seen a good overview of the research. (As I wrote above, not or drunk idiots getting into fights.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author seems more intent on Dawkins-bashing than anything else. What else can explain his deliberate mis-reading of Dawkins missive. "As is typical of hatemongers, Dawkins is careful not to name his target directly: instead, he works with insinuation -- though that said, calling the victim "Muslima" is particularly crass." Dawkins does not call Skepchick "muslima"; he addresses the missive to some "muslima" to ironically point out that there are women who suffer far worse sexism than being asked if they'd like a cup of coffee.

Two specific laws were passed in Britain in the last 25 years outlawing FGM. Yet there has not been one conviction. A report recently pointed out that there may be as many as 100,000 victims. [http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital- mut...](http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital-mutilation- might-be-illegal-but-it-still-takes-place-in-the-uk/)

Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or two. The only person to mount a campaign on it is the novelist Ruth Rendell.

When the female "Equalities Minister" recently appeared on the BBC's premiere news programme defending the status quo (along with a muslim man), it was an array of young muslim women accusing the authorities of racism and sexism in not bringing prosecutions.

It really is an appalling state of affairs. And in the last 20 years, FGM has barely been mentioned by British media. I would guess that the total number of stories in the last decade is no more than 20.

When I've brought the issue up with socialist feminists they claim that it is racist to get involved.

So, I think Dawkins has a point. And from my observations of Dawkins he seems to be far more concerned to offend christians than muslims.

<comment><USER8> "Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or two."

No they didn't. It's a common subject in blogs, forums and such less-visible mediums. But if you think it's easy to get into the media with that, you're wrong -- you will be called out on racism, possibly with good reasons -- even I, if faced with a mainstream article that focuses on FGM, would grow suspicious, since when the media cares about women this much?

<comment><USER9> Imagine an ad. A woman buys a car, comes back home, shows it to her husband, which takes them for a ride. The woman says: "Hey, isn't that nice for the price tag?". The guy thinks a bit, then at the first turn, violently drops the woman out of the car, and says, grinning ear to ear while he thoroughly enjoys the moment: "Now, that's _perfect_ ".

This ad would not stand a single second before a horde of people would yell at how sexist this is and the media would bathe in the scandal.

Yet it's been a few years the exact opposite ad[0] airs in France, daily. That's not the only one, there are a shitload of ads that market men as inherently stupid and worthless fools (at best), yet the CSA[1] regularly bans content that would be subject to doubtful interpretations of women status. It turns out in some cases that animals just seem to deserve better protection than men.

I'm not _quite_ sure the solution to sexism is glorifying women while vilifying men (which just reads like _more_ sexism — i.e differentiating statuses between genders — either way). We are different in a few ways for sure, just _not_ better or worse, but can't we just all finally see each other as, you know, human beings, and respect each other as such?

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oCt-xb_ecg>

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conseil_sup%C3%A9rieur_de_l%27a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conseil_sup%C3%A9rieur_de_l%27audiovisuel)

<comment><USER10> When will people stand up for white men :c

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That was certainly an interesting if not completely ridiculous read... The author seems to spend most of his time generalizing and erroneously misinterpreting the view points of those he perceives as skeptics (the most heinous of which include his characterization of skeptics as people who "hate and fear" philosophy, which is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard).

He seems to have misguided views on everything from modern medicines use of the placebo, to the development of fields such as computation linguistics and medical science. Here's the deal, if the author can demonstrably prove that people who use homeopathy know that it is just a placebo, then they can go for it. But they don't. If the author can show that there exist better methods for researching language, then go for it, but he doesn't. In fact, as someone who is interested in the field and friends with many computational linguists, let me tell you they are trying to look for better models to deal with the uncertainty inherent in NLP, and I'm not even sure where his statement that computational linguists fear pragmatics comes from. That is complete crap.

Wrapping bullshit around some kernels of truth does not make it true. I.E. yes, the atheist community on reddit can have misguided views, and yes people like Hitchens and Dawkins and the like are subject to their own personal biases, but both those people and indeed most of these communities are acutely aware of this fact and spend a lot of time trying to come to terms with it (look at the recent furor about whether the glorification of people posting snarky remarks made to "fundies" on reddit constituted a positive step). His rant against the skeptic conspiracy against feminism is also something which I found incomprehensible, and as far as I can tell completely untrue.

I would encourage people to read this in its entirety, if only to convince yourself that the title is an attention grab, and that the contents, while pointing out some valid truths, are largely filled with conspiracy theories and facts which are not backed up, and based on vast generalizations and oversimplifications.

P.S. I did enjoy the bit about the skeptics movement being a neoliberal conspiracy.

<comment><USER12> > Wrapping bullshit around some kernels of truth does not make it true.

> I would encourage people to read this in its entirety, if only to convince > yourself that the title is an attention grab, and that the contents, while > pointing out some valid truths, are largely filled with conspiracy theories > and facts which are not backed up, and based on vast generalizations and > oversimplifications.

Personally I found it extremely painful to read. This article is like a small piece of chocolate hidden inside shit ton of dog shit. That small piece of chocolate is totally negated by heaps of dog shit. You just keep reading in the hope that the hidden chocolate would be worth it, but you find out what you believed to be chocolate was few crystals of household sugar, and you ploughed through dog shit for nothing. Also, this experience left a bad taste in your mouth.

<comment><USER13> > _Personally I found it extremely painful to read. This article is like a > small piece of chocolate hidden inside shit ton of dog shit. That small > piece of chocolate is totally negated by heaps of dog shit. You just keep > reading in the hope that the hidden chocolate would be worth it, but you > find out what you believed to be chocolate was few crystals of household > sugar, and you ploughed through dog shit for nothing. Also, this experience > left a bad taste in your mouth._

Notice how you didn't manage to come up with one iota of actual criticism on specific points?

<comment><USER12> > Notice how you didn't manage to come up

I would replace that "didn't manage to come up" with "didn't come up" - trolls, feeding etc. The whole article is full of straw-man and false generalizations. If you got anything out of it, superb. I didn't; and I simply stated that. I don't see why I am obliged to write a full rebuttal.

<comment><USER14> You aren't obliged, but it would be nice to read some explicit counterarguments and some strawmen exposed.

Given your strong opinions about the piece, at least rebutting the worst part of the article should be easy and not take much effort. It would also make the thread more interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _> Online forums, whatever their subject, can be forbidding places for the newcomer; over time, most of them tend to become dominated by small groups of snotty know-it-alls_

Human interaction is woven out of several different materials. One of these is social dominance. It's even more fundamental to our psychology than sex.

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/08/actors-see-status.html>

Unfortunately, while it's widely recognized in much of the civilized world that letting our sexual impulses run unfiltered in the professional context is detrimental to a relaxed workplace where people feel free to interact openly, most people seem to deny the existence of our need to seek and test social dominance. This often leads to the pollution of communication and debate.

There is nothing wrong with sexuality in the workplace, so long as it's discrete and consensual. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with dominance behavior in forums, so long as it serves substantive debate. When dominance takes a back-seat to the love of knowledge, things are okay. When it's the other way around: considered harmful. (I suppose Galileo had some experience with this.)

 _> The truth is, I became a skeptic for aesthetic reasons, and the truth is, its aesthetics now repel me. I increasingly find the core skeptical output monotonous and repetitive: there are only so many times you can debunk the same old junk, and I've had it up to here with science fanboyism. And when skeptics talk about subjects outside their domain of expertise, I'm struck by how irrelevant their comments are, and how ugly, shrill and trivial._

I've noticed that techies often create mini "crapsack worlds" in forums and in games. (And I'm not referring to colorful backstories for a game, but in the actual social dynamics between players or commenters.) Much of it can be characterized as "immaturity." However, that label alone isn't so helpful. It's better to ask: what makes a society or a place wonderful? What best encourages a high signal to noise ratio?

</comment><comment><USER4> This issue is much easier to resolve than by way of the thousands of words the article's author used.

What a layman calls "skepticism", a scientist called the "null hypothesis." The null hypothesis says that an idea with no supporting evidence is assumed to be false. So in science, and to a skeptic, until there's evidence, there's no justification for taking an idea seriously.

To someone not trained in science (the "sheep"), an idea is true until there's contrary evidence. To a scientist (the "goat") by contrast, an idea is false util there's supporting evidence.

A sheep believes in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and UFO visitations only because these ideas haven't been disproven, but _they cannot be disproven_ \-- that would require proof of a negative, an impossible evidentiary burden. This explains most of the really weird things people believe.

The remedy is skepticism, a healthy intellectual posture that awaits evidence. That's why I'm still a skeptic.

<comment><USER16> The author is still a skeptic in the sense you described (first paragraph.) He just rejects the identification with the social group.

<comment><USER17> It's as boring as saying "I love science fiction but I'm not a member of SF fandom."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Weird rambling. From his style of argumentation ("other skeptics are sexist and Star Trek fans") he probably wasn't a very good skeptic anyway.

<comment><USER19> Would you believe that he's a well-known programmer and consultant who also happens to be the highest rated speaker at OSCON _ever_?

But if it helps you avoid cognitive dissonance to conclude that he has no clue, that's your choice.

<comment><USER18> I mostly read his paragraph on sexism, which frankly struck me as very silly. What has other skeptics being sexist to do with him being a skeptic? And what has Star Trek being sexist to do with skeptics? The logic was just very bad, so he didn't convince me as a skeptic. I assumed being a skeptic would involve being rational.

His ratings in an community unknown to me don't impress me at all. I mean it is cool, but I still look at what he says with skepticism. The world is full of famous people who are wrong.

<comment><USER19> If you read it again, you'll see that he did not attempt to lay out his section on sexism as a rational argument, but merely as a series of observations. The Star Trek reference was an analogy to what he observes among skeptics.

I think that this is appropriate. If you've thought about sexism, and have observed skeptic communities, then you'll have no trouble recognizing the validity of his observations based on your own. If you have not observed skeptic communities, then you can either take his word for it, or else go out and do your own first hand observations. And finally if you've never actually thought much about sexism, well, how could he reasonably begin to explain?

In short, either you get it and further explanation is superfluous, or else you don't and his attempting to enlighten you would take him seriously off course. Either way there is no point in having him try to present an airtight logical argument.

<comment><USER18> What on earth is a skeptic community? I thought being a skeptic simply means not taking things at face value. Why do I have to be lumped in with random people from the internet just because I like to think about things?

Can we say that HN is a skeptic community, for example? Would you say HN is very sexist? Or do only "skeptic communities" that are actually sexist count?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well its the difference between being skeptical about things, and being a skeptic. One is a gut feeling you shouldn't accept things, and the other is a mind state/religion. With one you can accept you where wrong, with the other you just change topics and begin the next assault why something is wrong.

I find most people who proclaim to be 'a skeptic' quite intolerable after a short period because they are always trying to find new ways to laud mistakes over people, always putting people down, and more often than not lifting themselves above others through humiliation. More or less just intellectual bullying, often without realizing it.

</comment><comment><USER21> The author attacks skeptics' obsession with quantifiable knowledge at several points in the essay (e.g., the comp ling section), without providing an alternative.

We have a word for "sciences" that are unquantifiable -- "soft" sciences. They don't work very well.

<comment><USER22> > We have a word for "sciences" that are unquantifiable

But as you say, the author isn't standing up for these "sciences" (in scare- quotes). Rather, he takes issue with the claims of objectivity and rigour for certain fields, one of which you appear to feel is unfairly tarred. You don't need to mischaracterise the author's position to defend computational linguistics though.

<comment><USER21> I hope I'm not misstating the author's position. In my reading, he goes well beyond pointing out that some fields, such as linguistics or medicine, have made stronger cases than their data can support.

He actually says "I do not believe in the primacy of the scientific method as a source of knowledge", and later, that [in order to successfully advance a particular scientific field] we need to "admit the presence and value of non- scientific knowledge". The nature of this non-scientific knowledge is not entirely clear from the essay but seems to be some mixture of culture and common sense.

He throws out several such claims without addressing the problems that come along with accepting non-quantifiable or non-scientific knowledge into a traditionally scientific discipline. For example, if you make a hypothesis that is not quantifiable, how can you determine the degree to which your data supports it?

<comment><USER22> Fair enough. I was just pointing out your use of the word ["sciences"] to describe the same thing as the author's "non-scientific knowledge". Whatever form this knowledge is supposed to take, "science" as a term for it is explicitly rejected.

On a more substantive point: You acknowledge the difficulties faced by "soft sciences". Does that mean you accept that there are whole categories of real- world phenomena of which it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to systematise whatever "knowledge" we do have? I don't think that position is incompatible with respect for science.

<comment><USER21> Yes, of course non- or soft-scientific phenomena exist. But until a soft science finds some way to quantify its data, it makes little or no progress.

Take psychology as an example. The history of psychology until c. 1950 consists of different gurus with different opinions, and since few theories offered testable predictions, no one could be proven* wrong. Psychology has since learned to do controlled experiments and has been more successful. Computational neuroscience and cognitive science are more successful still. Literary criticism, OTOH, is still caught in this trap.

Ultimately, my issue with the author is that he strongly channels Thomas Kuhn. Yes, the political and social contexts of science are important. But they are nowhere near as important as the actual data and arguments made within the scientific framework.

* With all due qualifications about the impossibility of true falsification

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why on earth am I seeing this nonsense on Hacker News? Is there a shortage of new languages or something. ;-)

<comment><USER24> Perhaps because relatively few users have enough karma to downvote a story. I've never been clear on how much karma it takes to do that, actually -- does anyone know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Alright, so some skeptics can be pricks. Self-declared skeptics are mostly reformed Calvinists ... what do you expect?

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm in some sympathy with the OP's idea that skepticism can be a shield against criticism of one's own prejudices, but when calling out the prejudices of particular skeptics, he seems to rely a great deal on extrapolation.

The OP's abandonment of skepticism does not seem to have turned him into a nice guy.

</comment><comment><USER27> In the "sexist bastards" section, his train of thought appears to be implying something like: Randall Monroe expressing a sexual preference for nerdy girls in his web comic is not much different than forcing a woman to wear a burka.

Did I read that correctly?

</comment><comment><USER28> Previous discussion, from a submission by Alex3917 319 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3120721>

</comment><comment><USER29> How do people (who basically agree with this article) evaluate the rationality movement?

My limited experiences reading mostly lesswrong.com lead me to think they avoid many of these problems. I have no idea whether they actively try to counter institutional sexism, Islamophobia, neoliberalism, etc; but at least I've seen little-to-nothing so far which actively reinforces these problems either. (But I'm not deeply acquainted with them.) Strikes me as a very healthy alternative to these skepticists in the article. Focusses a lot on introspection and effective action, rather than attacking others.

<comment><USER3> Not my experience at all. lesswrong as a community is rife with sexism, and takes a very strongly neoliberal position on ethical questions. I'm not sure about Islam specifically (if anything there seems to be a lot more hate for Christianity, largely from posters who have had unpleasant personal experiences with it), but there's quite a lot of angrily (as opposed to rationally) anti-religious sentiment there too. I mostly avoid that community these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> _Christopher Hitchens, for all his thuggery_

What thuggery was this??

</comment><comment><USER31> I stopped reading here:

>Science has a high media profile and a powerful lobby group: in the midst of a global recession and sweeping government cuts, science funding has generally held up or even increased

Perhaps science funding has held up because science was fricking responsible for the economy booming for the last 500 fricking years? E.g. The Internet that he posted his blog on.

Maybe it just might help the economy come out of recession? Science works because it delivers and the funding is there because people know that.

<comment><USER22> > I stopped reading here

Which the rest of your comment proves. Thanks for that.

<comment><USER24> (Shrug) Burying the lede has its risks. If you don't want to lose your readers, don't waste their time.

<comment><USER22> Presumably, the commenter I replied to was able to read this part, since it comes just before the line they quoted:

 _In the modern world, science, technology and reason are central and vital, and this is widely recognised_

So I don't see how you can say that anything was buried.

Also, to disengage as a reader is one thing. To take the time to then comment on what one hasn't read, misstating the author's point-of-view and encouraging others not to read, on the basis of one's own lazy misunderstanding, is just wilfully spreading ignorance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As far as I can tell about the blog comment: Some left wing guy do personal attacks.

The post was from 2011 -- I thought most left wing people had stopped claiming evolutionary psychology was like frenology from racist right wingers? Especially after this:

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/gould-morton- revis...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/gould-morton-revisited/)

Edit: Please don't start post rebuttals to HN from the other end of the political scale, or something. Idealism is better kept off HN.

Edit 2: Clarity.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wholeheartedly agree

The "skeptics" seem to have one objective: offend anyone who has any form of religion.

Or take the Lance Armstrong case, some "skeptics" were saying if you believe he doped you are "anti-science" because his exams never came back positive.

What a bunch of idiots. Modern tests detected evidence of blood manipulation.

So in a sense "skeptics" are just like the religious anti-scientific crowd, but saying "blah blah science" instead of "blah blah religion". But guess what, they don't know enough about science to say that.</comment>


"Every platform that Google software runs on is little-endian" (2nd paragraph) - <AUTHOR> https://roughtime.googlesource.com/roughtime/+/HEAD/PROTOCOL.md <comment><AUTHOR> Note, I'm reading this as "every platform that we use for compute in active production."

There has been much discussion about Google operating at the cutting edge of datacenter evolution, and while I know exactly zero about the details, I'm not discounting that this is very likely to change in the future.</comment>


On Quitting Your Programming Job to Hack your Trajectory - <AUTHOR> http://vermasque.blogspot.com/2011/07/on-quitting-your-programming-job-to.html

<comment><USER2> Life is too long to live unsatisfied.</comment>


What does the design team do? - <AUTHOR> https://tannerchristensen.com/blog/2020/6/15/what-does-the-product-design-team-do-here <comment><USER2> This is awesome, Tanner! Thanks for writing it.

One thing I think may be missing from this post is examples on what "include design early and often" and "leverage design for more than UI" looks like.

Some examples–like how design artifacts (like service blueprints, context maps and personas) can help non-design team members contextualize their problem and get to actionable solutions earlier–have helped me in the past make the case for involving designers early and often.

I've often seen how centralized design orgs can get caught in the trap of only getting called when there's "there's some UX to wireframe". Getting ahead of this perception early on in establishing a company's software development culture can do wonders for cross-discipline collaboration!</comment>


Are Old Scientists Less Innovative? - <AUTHOR> http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/the-danger-of-old-scientists.html <comment><USER2> I'd be curious to see the age trends among grant committee members, as a bias factor.

</comment><comment><USER3> from:

[http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2009/12/how-paradigms- ch...](http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2009/12/how-paradigms-change.html)

"Scientific paradigms change one death at a time."</comment>


Ask YC: What if you would have classifieds site with 6K visits daily? - <AUTHOR>

Guys, if you would have classifieds (abroad topics,not niche) site with 6K visits daily what other site would you build for these users to keep them in your sandbox?? What kind of site could be interesting for them? I'm really sorry, they are going elsewhere ... <comment><USER2> Can you provide more detail? What sort of classifieds? Where are they going?

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you asked them?</comment>


Ask HN: Every outcome in this world is a mathematical function. Do you agree? - <AUTHOR> Every outcome is controlled by variables that are sometimes known or sometimes unknown. If we could identify these variables, we can predict any outcome in this world.<p>Do you agree? <comment><USER2> Maybe to the first one, Big definite no to the second one- quantum physics, chaotic systems (as in Chaos theory) and the fact that we still don't know all the rules of nature are theoretical limits to your idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> No. Determinism hasn't been an accepted model of physics for a hundred years.

<comment><USER4> ...below the atomic domain, which may very well constitute what the author considers "this world". Our lifes don't take place in the quantum realm (although you could argue that reality as a whole is some weird quantum graph)

And even on the quantum level, it's not like anyone is able to falsify determinism; due to uncertainty and a lack of understanding, all we have are pdfs, right?

<comment><USER3> > Our lifes don't take place in the quantum realm

The world is full of unpredictable noise, ultimately because of quantum mechanics. This noise inevitably gets amplified to the point where it affects the behavior of complex macroscopic systems.

> And even on the quantum level, it's not like anyone is able to falsify > determinism

Since physics is an empirical science it's never possible to be certain of anything. However the evidence against quantum mechanics being deterministic is quite strong. In particular Bell's inequality shows that such a deterministic theory if it is compatible with known experimental results would have to violate the principle of locality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> does it matter</comment>


Ask HN: What's the time-tested web framework for 2018? - <AUTHOR> Ideally, I'm looking for a popular framework with static typing.
My hesitation with almost anything Typescript is the fleeting pace of new frameworks, versions and deprecation of old ones-- React Router is already v4 for instance. How many npm packages will still be around and supported in 2 years?
Java/Spring? Maybe. But now that Oracle has announced what amounts to pretty quick deprecation for JDK 8 and beyond, its stability is no longer beyond reproach. <comment><USER2> Well, if you're looking for time-tested then ASP.NET MVC is s viable option.

If you wanted to walk a bit more on the wild side, you could opt for .NET Core. It's not as mature as the main .NET framework, but over the past year a lot of people have moved projects over to it, and it feels mature enough to do standard web stuff.</comment>


I got my music back. At least most of it - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/07/24/i-got-my-music-back-at-least-most-of-it/

<comment><USER2> Music lockers sort of terrify me.

I know there've been lots of complaints about them before,[0] and I think most of the early complaints are actually resolved now. But I still have a lingering bad feeling...

After playing a series of MMOs that subsequently died, or online games that then lost all their servers, I'm just really wary of putting all my trust in a central server somewhere.

Companies can die, or sell off parts of their business, make strange decisions about UI or storage without noticing how it destroys someone's music in edge cases.

I guess you're covered as long as you backup your music on a NAS too... but it's not crazy to assume you shouldn't have to do that, so I don't blame the author.

[0] [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/29/music- lockers...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/29/music-lockers-are- stupid)</comment>


Google Analytics is wildly inaccurate - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ArtemR/status/990014506213363712 <comment><AUTHOR> To give more context here, depending on the time period selected (2010-2018 in the first screenshot, 2014-2018 in the second), the data for the same months (say, August 2017) will be wildly different and cannot be relied on.</comment>


Entirely algorithmically generated music album is now on Spotify - <AUTHOR>

"A Rose Smiles for a Man" (https://play.spotify.com/album/3vCyoGxNzaI8MB1QUOLN1U), probably the first music album entirely composed and performed by a computer algorithm, is now on Spotify.
I developed the algorithm over the past few years, Computoser (http://computoser.com) Now some of the best pieces are packaged in an album with a name that is also algorithmically generated.
Computoser is not the first composition algorithm, and "A Rose Smiles for a Man" is not the first album to be said to be algorithmically composed, but it is most likely the first that required no human input whatsoever. <comment><USER2> Has anyone done a project with a genetic algorithm and quantitative input from humans to produce generative music?

Seems like it would be not to difficult to source listeners via some kind of songbattle site[0] or Mechanical Turk if you wanted to to AB tests.

[0] Maybe different strains of the same algorithm competing head-to-head rather than through AB testing?

<comment><USER3> check out Bloom for iOS, by Brian Eno.

[http://www.generativemusic.com](http://www.generativemusic.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great job! Is there a way to mix up the instruments used? Most of the songs sounded very similar because of the starting piano keys. With the exception of "Life Talks to a Story" which I found to be the most diverse.

Cool stuff!

</comment><comment><USER5> great job! Sounds great!</comment>


Pieter Hintjens GitHub contribution history (pacman art) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hintjens <comment><USER2> probably done with [https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti](https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't there as show HN a few months back that allowed you to draw anything you wanted in the commit history?

</comment><comment><USER4> For anyone on mobile who is confused, try viewing in desktop mode.</comment>


Simple Dynamic Strings library for C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/antirez/sds <comment><USER3> I think the library is great, and don't have a whole lot to say about it, but wanted to mention one tangentially related thing:

The README on this repo is awesome. Opening up with advantages and disadvantages? Awesome. Plenty of code examples covering all of the major use cases? Awesome. Quick overview of the internals? AWESOME! Quick two line note about how to use the library in your project? Awesome.

I'm tempted to rant about how I wish documentation was taken more seriously, and that programmers seem to make it a point of pride that spending the first half hour with a library figuring out how to actually use it is just something we have to deal with as programmers, but I won't do so aside from this single sentence.

<comment><USER4> man pages used to be treated with the same reverence, but nowadays nobody seems to bother. I have pretty extensive man pages for some of my open source stuff, but it doesn't seem to help with users downstream.

<comment><USER5> To be honest, I pretty much hate man pages.

They almost never have examples(Is that some sort of rule?), they have no "quick summary of the shit you use 95% of the time", and they get generally written as a novel, seemingly from the perspective of the developer of the util rather than consumer.

Mind you, I have used man pages many times before, but only because it was the best source of information, not because it was a particularly efficent one.

The Markdown README of this string library is a thousand times better than any man page I have seen.

<comment><USER6> Man pages are bad but mostly useful

INFO pages on the other hand, are terrible. Is there something _less_ intuitive than the Info reader?

Navigation is awful

I think the RHIDE IDE had a better Info reader, IIRC, that one was useful.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure it was ever meant to be intuitive or easy to use. As far as I can tell, INFO pages (and much of UNIX) was intended to be a stop-gap solution until something better and more permanent was written atop them. Unfortunately that dream was never realized, and Linux's accidental popularity standardized what was supposed to be a bunch of building blocks. I could be wrong though, but almost every utility in UNIX screams this to me.

<comment><USER8> INFO is a Richard Stallman thing, it's a GNU thing, it is emphatically NOT a Unix thing.

Stallman wanted to replace the Unix thing (which was always man pages) with INFO, and for many years deprecated man pages, which is part of why many _GNU_ man pages are sub-par.

Not that non-GNU man pages are perfect, but still.

As for Unix being intended to be a stop-gap, your impression is simply historically incorrect, aside from philosophical issues like the claims made in the infamous Gabriel essay "Worse is Better".

> I could be wrong though, but almost every utility in UNIX screams this to > me.

Unix/Linux is certainly not perfect, but this simply reflects the truth of Henry Spencer's aphorism, "Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."

People who think Unix got it all wrong, as opposed to merely having assorted warts, should read Raymond's "Art of Unix Programming".

I was more than a little startled that Raymond captured a lot of the truth of the subject; it's a good read, and can potentially make anyone a better programmer.

Edit: a more concise starting point: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy)

<comment><USER9> +1

Info really sucks compared to decent man pages. Sun did good man pages, go look at them, they are quite good.

A lot of the man page hate can be traced back to crappy gnu man pages that were just trying to get you to use info.

Info is cool, it's sort of like a web in text, but it isn't a replacement for a decently written concise man page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mixing signed and unsigned arithmetic operands.

Not doing trivial overflow checking before arithmetic.

Using results from said arithmetic as indices or starting points for memory writes.

My gut says that any application using this library to process untrusted input is exploitable.

Of course, it was never advertised as being secure :-)

Which is unusual, as many "better strings" libraries make claims about the security of the traditional way of string handling (and then go on to do it wrong).

Edit: To give a concrete example, someone here recommended BString just a few days ago. That library has a "security statement" in which it claims to prevent overflow type attacks by _using signed integers instead of size_t_ , and then checking whether the result is negative after arithmetic. But signed overflow is _undefined behavior_ in C, and these are not guaranteed to wrap around. And yes such things have been exploited. I don't know how likely or easy bstring is to "own" but in any case it's doinnit wrong.

And yes I checked the code, it does what it claims to do..

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello clarry, I don't think there are APIs that if not grossly misused will lead to security issues in general. There is one issue I'm aware of that perhaps is not easily exploitable but surely is unexpected behavior, that is, overflow when you reach a 2GB string: that requires a check in sdsMakeRoomFor() for sure.

Note that this could be fixed by using uint64_t type for example in the header, however in the original incarnation of SDS inside Redis this was not possible for memory usage concerns. In the standalone library I believe it is instead a great idea, since 2GB is no longer an acceptable limit.

From the point of view of the security the most concerning function looks like sdsrange(), there are sanity checks in place to avoid that indexes received from the outside can lead to issues, but I'll do a security review in the future in order to formally check for issues.

<comment><USER11> If it's any reassurance, I had a look at it, and although there is unnecessary signed/unsigned arithmetic, I could not find anything exploitable. Change the types of variables representing an object size, length, array index, and so on to size_t (from int) and it will be fine.

<comment><USER12> Might be acceptable for an individual project where you can make statements about the sizes that will be used ahead of time, but for a general purpose library your statement is absolutely false. The issue is that your size requirement can overflow size_t, malloc gets passed a smaller value than you really intended, then if you try to use what you think you allocated (remember, it succeeded with a smaller size), it's a derefence outside the bounds of the allocation. Changing the size or type of the length variable won't solve that. This is a common and well known vulnerability pattern - <USER2> is disappointing to see folks so dismissive of it.

<comment><USER11> I'm aware of arithmetic overflow, thanks. It was the subject of my research (which will eventually be open source, watch www.peripetylabs.com/publications/ if you're interested). See my sizeop library in the meantime: [https://bitbucket.org/eliteraspberries/sizeop](https://bitbucket.org/eliteraspberries/sizeop)

I am not dismissive of the problem. I just know from experience that the chances of code like that being fixed at all, let alone correctly, is near zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I forked sds.c from Redis given that it was very useful for the project for years, so I guess it may be useful in other contexts as well. There are a few changes at API level compared to the Redis sds.c file, however most of the work went into documenting it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice, thanks for contributing (even more).

I haven't read much of the code at all, but a minor suggestion would be to change:

        struct sdshdr *sh = (void*)(s-(sizeof(struct sdshdr)));

to

        struct sdshdr *sh = (void*)(s-sizeof *sh);

since the entire idea is that the pointer on the left-hand side is to the type whose size should be subtracted, I think it's better not to repeat the type but to "lock it" to the pointer instead. This also (of course) means we can drop the parenthesis with sizeof, since those are only needed when its argument is a type name.

<comment><USER14> Heh, you're the first person I meet who advocates dropping the parens around the sizeof argument in any situation. That does look terribly alien to me.

<comment><USER15> sizeof is a unary operator and not a function. Only types need to be enclosed in parens. Most people don't know this.

<comment><USER13> Exactly! For some reason this anti-pattern is very thoroughly entrenched among C programmers and it's so very frustrating.

My other favorite is casting the return value of malloc(), something you see a great deal of and that I always oppose. See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/605845/do-i-cast-the- resu...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/605845/do-i-cast-the-result-of- malloc) for my best arguments.

<comment><USER16> Casting the return value of malloc is necessary in C++. I think that's why it's so widespread, so you can compile your C program with a C++ compiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is neat, but please add a pointer to deallocation function to sds header and use it in sdsfree. This will allow to return sds strings from functions in shared libraries. A common problem it that the user of the library might use a different version of libc than the shared library (this is especially typical on Windows), and when it calls sdsfree on an sds string allocated with a different libc, something awful will happen (in the best case, it will just leak memory). By storing a pointer to the deallocation function in the code which allocated the string you can make sure that it is always released by the same libc version that allocated it.

</comment><comment><USER18> At some point in time, I found this list of C String libraries with some comparisons: [http://www.and.org/vstr/comparison](http://www.and.org/vstr/comparison)

The (different) approaches taken by many of these libraries are interesting.

<comment><USER19> A great list.

I'd add the str bits of [http://libslack.org/](http://libslack.org/) to that list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The biggest missing thing in C imho is destructors, because you need to manually clean up everything whenever you leave a scope or function. That means calling "free" at every exit point.

Or alternatively, putting one "cleanup:" label at the end of the function and using "goto cleanup;" instead of break or return everywhere.

But goto is considered harmful, so that handy pattern seems unclean.

My question is: do you consider the "goto cleanup" pattern clean or not, and if not, what are better alternatives?

<comment><AUTHOR> Goto for cleanup is not bad IMHO. I use it extensively...

$ cd redis; grep goto *.c | wc -l 251

All the instances are like:

        goto cleanup;
        goto error;
        goto badfmt;
        goto numargserr;

In this context is easy to read and makes the code structure better.

<comment><USER21> I don't see the difference between this and

        cleanup(state);
        error(state);

etc.

Just pull them each out into a function. You're still DRY and don't lose flow control.

In my honest opinion, there is never a _need_ for goto.

<comment><USER22> In performance critical nested loops, goto is the only way to exit early. A typical example here is performing a matrix multiply. In cases like this, it is absolutely necessary, because C doesn't provide a more granular 'break'.

<comment><USER23> You could leave nested loops with a condition flag, which could produce something semantically equivalent to the goto. It seems like the logic here might be simple enough that the actual check could be eliminated in the generated code by a Sufficiently Smart Compiler (that could actually exist), if there was sufficient demand for it. I'm not sure it's actually more readable, though.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, of course I'm aware, it's just that there is a time/space trade-off, so I think folks who argue that goto should never be used or has no legitimate uses, are just taking too much of a hard-line.

And I think it just highlights a lack of understanding about what might make goto "bad" in programming--IMHO it's "bad" when it makes control flow more complex, which undermines maintainability. Common "cleanup" idioms that only jump forward are not that bad, because they _don 't_ make control flow particularly more difficult to follow. (Whereas jumping backwards, especially across many state changes, can be very hard to follow.)

<comment><USER23> _" it's just that there is a time/space trade-off,"_

I don't see a time-space tradeoff here. Compiled naively, I expect the version with flags to be slower and take more space. Compiled sufficiently smartly, I expect them to be equivalent. I expect real compilers to be close enough to the latter for most but not all purposes, but I think _if the flag version was more readable and maintainable_ the place to focus (collectively, medium term) would be on making compilers smart enough. Obviously, in the short term on specific projects you do what you need to.

 _" I think folks who argue that goto should never be used or has no legitimate uses, are just taking too much of a hard-line."_

I agree, but that's because there are places where use of Go To makes things more readable and maintainable, not - primarily - because they are actually _needed_ , per se, even with performance constraints (in the overwhelming majority of cases).

 _' And I think it just highlights a lack of understanding about what might make goto "bad" in programming--IMHO it's "bad" when it makes control flow more complex, which undermines maintainability.'_

I agree wholeheartedly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Recently I've been getting into some C and having programmed in a number of other languages know enough to be sure I wanted to have a solid understanding of properly handling encodings and strings in general. I've obtained a good understanding, but now I am looking to abstract some of the low-level mechanics. Unfortunately most of the libraries I have seen (such as bstring) use structs. It was nice to see this approach taken. Thanks for extracting it and making it easy to find and learn about!

On a related note - does anyone have recommendations for a similar small library for dealing with conversions from char * to wchar_t * and basic encoding duties? I'm working cross-platform, and so far I've stitched together some functions wrapping stuff like wcsrtombs() and WideCharToMultiByte().

</comment><comment><USER25> Excellent news - the Redis source code is a really good source of high quality dependency-free C code and tends to be the first place I look.

Some time ago I forked the SDS code and added a set of additional utility functions around this for a project I was working on at the time (basic file reading, regex, LZF compression, Blowfish encrypt/decrypt, SHA256 etc).

This was from a fairly old SDS version so this looks like a good opportunity to sync up with the library version.

Repository is here: [https://github.com/paulchakravarti/sdsutils](https://github.com/paulchakravarti/sdsutils)

</comment><comment><USER26> Disadvantage #1 can be simply solved by using a pointer to the "sds" type instead.

Then you can be sure that

      sdscat(&s, "Some more data")

updates s to always point at the right memory address and you can't introduce hard to find bugs by forgetting to assign to s which the compiler wont warn you about. If you'd pass just "s" instead of "&s" as the first parameter, the compiler would error out.

So all functions modifying the string should take a pointer to it.

</comment><comment><USER7> My biggest gripe with C's string functions is that it's really easy to make off-by-one errors when trying to do anything with two strings, due to NUL and the way they seem to handle it inconsistently. I'm constantly having to check the docs for any given string function to find out how it handles NUL (which isn't always in an obvious spot thanks to the design of man pages). And once I've found it, I have to come up with some contrived example that usually needs to be written in a comment just to make sure I've used its intended algorithm correctly and didn't cause an off-by-one error. If this library hides all that for me, I'm sold.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sigh, another string library. And this is the reason why I prefer C++ over C. You don't end up writing _another_ string library for the 300th time. There aren't that many differences between string libraries anyway. Most of them are just structs with a pointer to a memory block, plus a length field.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, but this one has not the usual layout of struct+pointer (that's the whole point), and I'm not sure it qualifies as "yet another" since it was written in 2006.

<comment><USER28> It appears to me to be "yet another" because the length before the string approach is usually referred to as a b-string.

windows (for example) has had a comprehensive b-string library (type is called BSTR) for about 20 years - due to it's age and provenance it has the downside of thinking a character is a 16-bit value...

<comment><USER18> Just to add a reference to the parent: [http://www.johndcook.com/cplusplus_strings.html](http://www.johndcook.com/cplusplus_strings.html)

(The article is mildly interesting by itself)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Making sds a typedef for char* is very convenient. But it makes it very easy to pass an sds to a function that expects a C string without checking for null bytes.

Ruby, Java, Perl, PHP have all had security problems when interacting with C because they failed to properly distinguish binary-safe strings and C strings.

[http://insecure.org/news/P55-07.txt](http://insecure.org/news/P55-07.txt) [http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/626.html](http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/626.html)

<comment><USER30> I'd prefer a typesafe version (that would be a library with a struct type). It could even be a trivial wrapper struct for the char *.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Disadvantage #1 seems unnecessary. Instead of this:

      s = sdscat(s,"Some more data");

Why not do this?

      sdscat(&s,"Some more data");

The latter would make the use-after-free error they're describing impossible. (Disadvantage #2, changing one reference but not others, would remain. And callers would still need to check for NULL if they intend to handle ENOMEM gracefully.)

I assert there's no meaningful performance difference between the two.

<comment><USER32> To be consistent between allocation and reallocation (like malloc() and realloc()).

And you still want to access the old value if reallocation failed.

<comment><USER31> > To be consistent between allocation and reallocation (like malloc() and > realloc()).

Consistency is a tool that is often useful to promote program correctness. You're suggesting using it to accomplish the reverse.

If it's important aesthetically that all sds operations be consistent in this regard, you can structure the allocation interface in the same way:

      sdserror sdsnew(sds*);

      sds mystring = NULL;
      sdsnew(&mystring, "Hello World!");

This is a common practice in relatively new interfaces like pthread_create.

> And you still want to access the old value if reallocation failed.

If you want to provide commit-or-rollback semantics, you could signal error via return value rather than by replacing s with NULL:

      if (sdscat(&s,"Some more data") != SDS_SUCCESS) {
        /* failure path; s is unchanged */
      } else {
        /* s now has "Some more data in it" */
      }

but this may be completely useless, depending on the environment(s) in which the library or program is intended to be used. On 64-bit Linux systems with memory overcommit enabled (the default), this failure path essentially shouldn't ever happen. Instead, some process (maybe yours, maybe not) will be picked by the kernel OOM killer. Many programs just use an allocate-or-die interface, as the sds README mentions.

<comment><USER32> You're right, I wasn't saying that it's the only way to write allocation/assignment. I was saying that in that case sdscat() matches with sdsnew() style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> NB: In the following function:

        /* Like sdscatpritf() but gets va_list instead of being variadic. */
        sds sdscatvprintf(sds s, const char *fmt, va_list ap) {
            va_list cpy;
            char *buf, *t;
            size_t buflen = 16;

            while(1) {
                buf = malloc(buflen);
                if (buf == NULL) return NULL;
                buf[buflen-2] = '\0';
                va_copy(cpy,ap);
                vsnprintf(buf, buflen, fmt, cpy);
                va_end(cpy); // <--- add this ----
                if (buf[buflen-2] != '\0') {
                    free(buf);
                    buflen *= 2;
                    continue;
                }
                break;
            }
            t = sdscat(s, buf);
            free(buf);
            return t;
        }

From the `man va_copy` on my system:

        Each  invocation  of  va_copy()  must  be  matched  by
        a  corresponding invocation of va_end() in the same
        function.

This is not likely to be a problem in most systems, but it can't hurt to be formally correct.

<comment><USER34> I think you meant "va_end(ap);".

Created a pull request for you: [https://github.com/antirez/sds/pull/8](https://github.com/antirez/sds/pull/8)

<comment><USER33> No, I'm pretty sure that `va_end(cpy)` is correct. `ap` is the `va_list` passed into the function. `cpy` is the local copy.

<comment><USER34> You're right. Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've had the pleasure of getting pretty deep into sds back when I was tinkering with thredis, and it's definitely very cool.

</comment><comment><USER36> The CString C++ class from Microsoft's MFC and now also ATL used since forever the trick of having both the length and the reference counting in the single allocation with the characters themselves, as well as additional 0-termination character even if it was initialized with non-zero terminated character.

</comment><comment><USER37> In the case of disadvantage #1: s = sdscat(s,"Some more data");

You could fix that by adding a "remote pointer" header field. Inside of sdscat, you would allocate a new sds struct, and set the remote pointer header field in `s` to the new sds structs location. You could also try to do a realloc and maybe youll get the same starting pointer back again.

</comment><comment><USER38> How much better is this dynamic approach than something like immutable strings? (not that char* is immutable)

Since with the sds library, you could potentially be getting back a new pointer for each operation, you could just as easily be working from an immutable string library. Do immutable strings have poor performance? I've never really considered it.

</comment><comment><USER39> Disadvantage #1 isn't really a disadvantage in modern computing, it's _the right thing to do._

<comment><USER40> I strongly disagree. It is a tradeoff between that and advantages #1 and #3; with the bstring library, for example, you pass in a mutable string and the function mutates it.

In no world is passing in a mutable value, having it mutate it, but then having to reassigning your variable superior.

Passing in an immutable value, and then assigning a fresh value is reasonable, but that's not what SDS is doing, AFAICT.

I think gcc has some decorations you can have to tell it to never ignore the return function.

I'm curious why s = sdscat(s,"Some more data"); didin't end up like: sdscat(&s,"Some more data");

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> So, this is an interesting approach to strings:

It's basically a malloc()/free() implementation with printf, some formatting, and strcat bolted onto it. (Strictly speaking, it may or may not use free lists or whatever, but the use of the header and returned pointer is quite similar.)

And that's awesome.

</comment><comment><USER42> ustr [1] is another library to consider. It uses a variable sized header to avoid having large (percentage wise) overhead for short strings.

1: [http://www.and.org/ustr/](http://www.and.org/ustr/)

</comment><comment><USER43> I remember lifting the 'sds' string implementation from within the redis back in the day. Thanks antirez

</comment><comment><USER44> How does it compare to strbuf that is used in git?</comment>


Facebook says Apple rejected its attempt to tell users about App Store fees - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-apple-exclusive/exclusive-facebook-says-apple-rejected-its-attempt-to-tell-users-about-app-store-fees-idUSKBN25O042 <comment><USER2> Good thing they did, too – it'll strengthen Apple's legal case (because they're consistent), and weaken Apple's PR case, because this would be at least somewhat offensive to most people if they realized it happens, and Facebook running into those limitations is much harder to hide than a million Smalltime Cos being treated like that.</comment>


Show HN: Shredplates – Surf-themed iPhone 6 template pack - <AUTHOR> http://shredplates.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

I just launched Shredplates, an iPhone 6 template pack to show off your rad app and website designs. Crafted using authentic surfers at epic surf breaks, Shredplates will make your product stand out and your users look cool and influential. Use them for your surf, beach and outdoor related products.

And just for HN - use the code "hacker-shred" at checkout to take $5 off your purchase.

JT</comment>


Applications open for summer 2009 YC funding - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/s2009.html <comment><AUTHOR> A couple new things this cycle:

It's going to be in Silicon Valley, not Boston, in case anyone still hasn't heard about that (<http://ycombinator.com/ycca.html>). Fortunately the Mountain View office is much bigger. We were pretty much at the limit in Cambridge.

Also, we're asking applicants to submit videos introducing themselves this time. Thanks for Posterous for saving me from having to write code to deal with submitted videos!

<comment><USER2> _we're asking applicants to submit videos introducing themselves_

I'm glad I'm not applying this time.

Never mind the irritation of figuring out how to create a video (I'm sure it's easy, but why spend time figuring that out when I could be hacking?) -- I simply don't video well, especially in artificial-seeming situations. And I don't think a video would tell you anything useful about me anyway; my most natural voice is the written voice, so that's what you should listen to if you want to learn anything about me.

I can see a couple of potential advantages to requiring an introductory video -- first, it allows you to detect some fraudulent applications; and second, it raises the bar for entry, thus removing some of the less serious applications -- but my impression from everything I've read here is that neither of those are particularly problematic even without videos. I'll admit that some people speak better in video than in writing -- although I think this applies more often to business people than to hackers -- but surely the right solution to deal with such people is to make an introductory video _optional_ , not to make it _mandatory_. I know there's a lot you can see when you engage a candidate in conversation which you can't see on a written page; but a unilateral video doesn't tell you how well someone can carry on a bilateral or multilateral conversation either.

I'm sure you guys have some reason for this... but I certainly can't see it. Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've found that someone talking live is a _much_ higher bandwidth form of communication than words typed into a form. As well as words you get gestures, intonation, the vibe between a group of cofounders, etc.

But people shouldn't worry that they "video badly." We're not (I hope) so dumb that we'd be taken in by people who are merely smooth presenters. We come from the world of people who video badly ourselves. If we'd been applying for Viaweb, I'd have had to negotiate with Rtm how many words he'd say, and I'd be lucky if I got it as high as 10.

<comment><USER2> I absolutely agree that a video of someone talking is a much _higher bandwidth_ form of communication. Similarly, usenet was higher bandwidth in 1995 than it was in 1985 -- but that doesn't mean that it was _more useful_ , only that there was far more noise.

Maybe this will work out fine, but I worry that with a video you'll pick up things like "this guy seems uncomfortable" but not be able to identify the reasons why (is he uncomfortable with the rest of his group? Or just uncomfortable being in front of a camera?) -- or worse, get a subjective sense that a video isn't very inspiring without even identifying what you're noticing, never mind figuring out whether what you're noticing is signal or noise.

There's a reason why most professional symphony orchestras use blind auditions: While nobody disputes the fact that being able to see a musician play is valuable, experience has shown that the noise it introduces is more significant than the signal. Simply put, eliminating the high bandwidth distraction of being able to see someone allows orchestras to pick better people.

<comment><AUTHOR> We could do blind auditions if a startup had already launched, in the sense that we could just look at stats like their traffic growth. But at the stage we're trying to pick startups, we almost never have such data. So our situation is more analogous to trying to pick people who could become good musicians, before they'd taken any lessons. At our stage, you're judging the people-- so it's useful to see the people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It'd be interesting to see how many applications YC gets compared to this time last year (as a % change).

On one hand, people might be pretty worried about taking a risk like this now that the economic turmoil has really started to hit the labour market and not apply as much. OTOH, recently laid-off people might flood YC with applications, even if they would not consider it before.

<comment><USER4> It seems like there will be a sharp decline in the number of applications because of the effort required to produce a video introducing the founders, even if it's a simple video. That is a Good Thing though because it will probably filter out most of the low-quality apps (a 13-year old single-founder applicant probably wouldn't take the time to make the video, for example).

On the other hand, if you ever wanted to Goatse PG, here's your chance.

<comment><USER5> ?! Outside of setting world records for texting, pretty much the only thing 13 year olds do these days is post videos of themselves to the internet. The effort required to make a sub-minute intro video has almost reached zero.

<comment><USER4> I should've selected the example more carefully. If the first few seconds of the video is of a 13 year old, then the app can probably safely be discarded, so it's still a decent low-quality filter.

Also, if you put "almost zero" effort into your intro video, then it's going to suck. I don't know what YC is looking for in the video, but it seems like you'll have a higher chance of them funding you if they see that you have at least one naturally-charismatic founder, in addition to a very skilled technical one. The video can show your charisma, just like the application can show your technical skill.

It still seems like the total number of fully-completed applications will decrease because of the video. But again, that's a good thing.

<comment><USER6> So you would've thrown out Aaron Swartz's young face? (Aaron co-founded of Reddit)

<comment><USER4> Thirteen year old: <http://www.canbymn.org/dhoyme/Zach.MVC-004S.JPG>

Seventeen year old: <http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn/RogerHolyfield.jpg>

Eighteen year old Aaron Swartz in 2005: [http://graphics.boston.com/bonzai- fba/Original_Photo/2007/09...](http://graphics.boston.com/bonzai- fba/Original_Photo/2007/09/06/1189079344_5333.jpg)

Also, I just realized that doing a Google image search for "thirteen year old boy" at a public coffee shop might not be such a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are applications from outside America accepted? How are they handled if they were selected?

I'm somewhat new to the YC funding process, not sure if I can find this info somewhere (a link would be appreciated if that's the case).

Thank you!

<comment><USER8> <http://ycombinator.com/faq.html>

<comment><USER9> What if you have already registered your company in another country, i.e. a limited company in the UK?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PS: Video Applications now required, interesting: <http://ycombinator.com/video.html>

> In the video please introduce yourselves, explain what you're doing and why, > and tell us anything else you want to about the founders or the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'd been meaning to do this, but it required me to add support for uploading videos. Fortunately Posterous appeared and solved the problem way more thoroughly than I would have.

<comment><USER11> "If you want to apply, please submit your application online by 10 pm PST on March 18, 2009. Groups that submit early have an advantage because we have more time to read their applications."

Do we have the chance to update the submitted video with our latest video? For instance, if we decide to submit the application with the video before the deadline, then, decide to update the video later. Can we do so?

<comment><USER10> > Edit and resubmit as much as you want, but be sure to submit at least once > before the deadline (March 18 at 10 pm PST), because you haven't applied > till you do.

I assume they simply use the most recent application...

<comment><USER11> I know. But, are they going to use the latest video?

<comment><AUTHOR> The last video url you put in the form field will overwrite whatever was there before. We might see an earlier video if you submit your application early, we look at it, and then you update and submit again before the deadline. But (a) it would be very unlikely that all three of us would independently do that and (b) we'd probably also check the new one after applications closed and we started reading them in earnest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So what should I do if I want to be a part of this but don't have an idea or any partners?

This is hypothetical right now, but I am very seriously considering applying next summer.

<comment><USER13> [shameless plug - read all before modding down] find another community of people interested in starting software/online businesses. I launched <http://fairsoftware.net> almost 6 months ago at TC50. We host a bunch of projects, most private, but some public. Join an existing project or put a call out there for ideas.

My motto: "Succeed Together". The team is the solution, not the problem. Once you got your team of passionate people, apply to YC!

[before you mod me down, feel free to contribute other places on the web where people can find partners that would qualify to start a YC-funded business. If you have a decent list, then mod me down. If you can't come up with more places, then accept that my plug really is informative :-) ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "(c) Half or more of your group can't move to the Bay Area for the winter. (d) One or more founders will keep their current jobs during the winter."

Shouldn't this be summer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, yes, will fix. Edit: fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there any place to get YC like advice and connections without the requirement of moving to Mountain View for 3 months?

<comment><USER10> the internet

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does a weak application hurt applications in later rounds?

</comment><comment><USER16> Will applying now affect future applications?

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know if this already has been answered before, but how do you evaluate if a candidate has a sense of design?

<comment><AUTHOR> By things they've made, either in the past, or the project they're applying with.

<comment><USER17> Thanks. Maybe it was lost in translation, but by Design do you mean appearance (like in graphical, interface, industrial design) or architecture (like operating system design)?

If it's the former, I hope you don't get offended by it, but I think, looking at HN and your website, that you wouldn't be accepted. :) Nor would Sergey and Page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both. They're the same thing.

Good design doesn't mean fancy design. Quite the opposite.

<comment><USER17> I also didn't mean fancy design.

But in your 'startup ideas', in the idea #16, you said Google has no sense of design, so I suppose that the people responsible for it (Google founders originally. Marissa Meyer with a team of designer now days, I believe) wouldn't be accepted in YC.

And that is more of a rhetoric observation. I know they would.

But then isn't the 'sense of design' requirement unnecessary?

<comment><AUTHOR> Paradoxically, early Google both had no sense of (visual) design and yet managed to produce results that are way above average. The reason was that (perhaps knowing they weren't good at visual things) they just kept everything as simple as possible. It was like the design equivalent of a low-fee index fund, which despite not even pretending to know how to pick stocks, consistently generates above average net returns because of the low fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Do All founders need to submit a separate application ? couldn't find it in the FAQ?

<comment><USER19> No. You submit one for your team. However, each member needs a Hacker News username.

Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why does the "March 18" link on PaulGraham.com go to a PollEverywhere site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, fixed. (Polleverywhere was in the summer 2008 cycle, and I used to have a link to them there.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> my idea would be really good but flights to silicon valley from ireland arnt cheap and im the only founder, not going to bother applying

<comment><USER21> thought i had a valid point, $600 wouldnt cover my costs</comment></comment>


The Amazon email marketing experience - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getvero.com/guides/the-amazon-experience/

<comment><USER2> Really fascinating breakdown and some really good ideas to take away if you are running a startup. The bit about frequency and habit forming was new to me. Now I know how to start regularly flossing. My dentist will be happy.

I also realised I don't get any of these emails. I've completely unsubscribed from all marketing emails long ago. Nice to see that preference is being respected. Of course some of the transactional email semi masquerading as marketing we'll give a pass to for the time being.

The only unwanted emails I do get are from the various Amazon partner/affiliate programs. I signed up to the various programs (US, UK, CA, DE, JP, FR) a number of years ago for a specific idea I had, but it never took off. Now I can't delete those affiliate accounts and I'm not allowed to unsubscribe from all those French, German, etc, emails from Amazon affiliates, so instead they get sent straight to the spam/bin using a Gmail filter.</comment>


Facts Still Matter, but They Don't Change Many Voters' Minds - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/01/10/facts-still-matter-but-they-dont-change-many-voters-minds/ <comment><USER2> Like so many articles and papers of this sort, the headlines and conclusions make claims that the actual evidence can't back up.

In this particular case, they analyzed two particular "lies" from the 2016 Trump campaign.

First, Trump claimed that there was a rising tide of violent crime -- and pointed to a 17% increase in the homicide rate in the 50 largest cities. This was "debunked" by the statement that the FBI had found that the nationwide murder rate had increased, but was below the level of 10 years before.

First, that _is_ an increase in the murder rate (actually, 20% more murders per capita than just 2 years before), and second, Trump didn't make a claim in any way related to the murder rate when compared specifically with 1991 (the year chosen by the paper to "prove" the lie). He made a claim about violent crime, and specifically about the homicide rate in the largest cities.

Then, the article goes on to "debunk" a second "lie" \-- this time about jobs leaving Michigan and Ohio. The "proof" that this is a lie is that, after decades of decline, there was indeed a modest uptick going on at the moment that Trump spoke. As if 75,000 new jobs in 2016 can make up for the almost 600,000 Michigan jobs (over 10% of the labor force) that had been lost from 1999 through 2014.

With "fact checking" like that, it's hardly surprising that the "fact checking" didn't change people's minds</comment>