When TCP sockets refuse to die - <AUTHOR> https://idea.popcount.org/2019-09-20-when-tcp-sockets-refuse-to-die/ <comment><USER2> Then there is a discussion about forcefully killing sockets :)

* close(): socket will be lingering in background as usual

* shutdown(SHUT_RD): no network side effect, discards read buffer

* shutdown(SHUT_WR): equivalent to FIN SO_LINGER socket - if timeout non-zero blocks until write buffer flushed; if timeout is zero then immediately sends RST

* the trick with close() after TCP_REPAIR: ([https://lwn.net/Articles/495304/](https://lwn.net/Articles/495304/)) immediately discard a socket with no network side effects.

* "ss --kill" command: forcefully close a socket from outside process, done with netlink SOCK_DESTROY command.

<comment><USER3> > * shutdown(SHUT_RD): no network side effect, discards read buffer

My understanding is that if the read buffer is not empty, or if you later receive any further data from the other end, that this will result in a RST.

Wrt to linger behaviour: "if timeout non-zero blocks until write buffer flushed" is only true of blocking sockets. For non-blocking sockets things get complicated and vary across platforms

<comment><USER2> I made an attempt to check:

* shutdown(SHUT_RD): seem not to have _any_ side effects. you can totally still recv() on that socket. Kerrisk writes 61.6.6: "However if the peer application subsequently writes data on its socket, then it is still possible to read that data on the local socket". Basically, SHUT_RD makes recv() return 0. That's all it does.

* SO_LINGER on O_NONBLOCK: shutdown() doesn't block. close() still blocks.

<comment><USER4> This highlights few more details on SHUT_RD: [https://books.google.com/books?id=ptSC4LpwGA0C&pg=PA173&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=ptSC4LpwGA0C&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=posix+shutdown+shut_rd&source=bl&ots=Kt6GNjalMm&sig=ACfU3U08rZm- krUqsrwl6Vlnk4XfHbDPPw&hl=ru&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjdysC5zubkAhVFpYsKHTmACB8Q6AEwCHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=posix%20shutdown%20shut_rd&f=false)

That is not discussed in POSIX at all, I believe, so basically platform- unaware SHUT_RD is vaguely defined and I wouldn't even rely on recv() returning zero in particular.

Edit: changed books domain to .com

<comment><USER5> Ok so I decided to check it empirically. Behavior is indeed platform- dependent.

Linux: after shutdown(SHUT_RD) all blocked recv() calls unblock and return 0. But the other side can still send data and the recv() call will still read it! It is just that after shutdown when there is nothing to read a recv() call immediately returns 0 instead of blocking.

macOS (and BSD, I presume?): The read buffer is discarded and all subsequent recv() calls return 0. If the other side sends data it is discarded.

Unfortunately I have no Windows machine around to try out.

Now, maybe someone can clarify, given such wildly different behavior what is the intended use case for shutdown(SHUT_RD)?

<comment><USER4> It is likely a remnant of non-PF_INET families under SOCK_STREAM. There is no SHUT_RD in TCP by design.

Sockets are known to be not very standard landscape historically. Best bet here is to just stick with that "Disables further receive operations" posix definition and follow it to the letter by not recv'ing anything anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Side conversation.

I am constantly amazed how a tiny piece of code, the linux (or bsd) TCP stack, can be a source of mysteries and adventures for decades, even for kernel experts and industry leaders like CF. The thing has around 11 states and 20 transitions, around 4000 LOC.

Compare this with some of the multi-million LOC, distributed monsters we all know and love.

[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/net/ipv4/tcp.c?h=v5.3)

<comment><USER5> This is an example of "the settings problem". When a system has even a moderate number of behaviors controlled by their respective settings the number of possible interactions rises exponentially. Combine that with different possible user behaviors and you get a combinatorial explosion of possibilities with some weird results that are non-obvious even to experts.

<comment><USER6> That's a good point, plus it's not just (states x transitions), it's also a whole bunch of hidden state: the other guy's state as well as all the packets in flight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you are going to force a minimum drain rate, please make sure you use a large enough monitoring period. With the patch in "The curious case of slow downloads", once 60 seconds have passed it starts checking download speed as often as every second, which is really aggressive. If you have a slow connection that's not super-stable, you're still going to get kicked, even if you're well over the minimum drain rate on average. An average of some kind over 15-20 seconds would be a lot more appropriate here.

<comment><USER8> Very true. Just today, I had to use an old 3G phone tethered to my laptop for data connection and found my ping times to be in orders of 5-10 seconds and at sporadic intervals in between data was getting sent/received in bursts at much lower latencies. It wasn't fun trying to get work done on such a connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's really weird is that TCP is an endpoint protocol and should have been relatively easier to upgrade/replace/change (relative to say, IP protocol).

But why haven't we moved to something better?

Say, why doesn't Apple use a better suited protocol between Apple devices and Apple servers? Why doesn't google use a better protocol between Google devices and Google servers (oh wait, they do – QUIC..which is something-other-than-TCP over IP).

More people should be doing this, yes? why not?

It is as if the layered architecture of the network isn't being taken advantage of by engineers.

As people build 4G-5G networks that are IP based, shouldn't we insist they build purely IP based and not peek into layers above and make assumptions? thereby enable more of the flow control and reliable transmission protocol experimentations?

<comment><USER9> 1\. You don't want to reimplement a quarter of the network stack in userspace.

2\. Network infrastructure may drop "unusual" packets.

<comment><USER7> > 1\. You don't want to reimplement a quarter of the network stack in > userspace.

That post doesn't say anything about user space. Ideally the new protocol would be in the kernel, triggered with just a flag or even automatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thought this article was interesting as I've been working with a piece of hardware lately that doesn't close STMP connections after sending mail. Took me a while to figure that out, it would always send email properly the first time but then wouldn't be able to again until after a reboot. Turns out it doesn't close TCP sockets created while sending mail, unless you jump through some hoops. Such is the world of embedded industrial devices, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER11> TLDR: TCP_USER_TIMEOUT is an important setting but it's somewhat tricky, not properly documented and there are kernel bugs related to it.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is indeed very problematic, I worked on ONVIF test suite 3 years ago, in some failing test cases, the tcp socket can never die in time, it failed the certification as a whole as all the following unit test cases can not continue. All those immediately-kill-tcp-socket or socket-port-reuse can not help, at least not reliably.

</comment><comment><USER13> System Of A Down intensifies</comment>


Ask HN: What's your use case for extracting text from PDF? - <AUTHOR> There are so many APIs for PDF-to-text conversion. What are the use cases with most business need? <comment><USER2> Why do you ask?</comment>


Google set to blow open the tablet market later this year with $99 Nexus tablet - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2012/09/27/google-nexus-tablet-price-99/ <comment><USER2> I don't think Apple will be unhappy to see this _at all_.

The most recent figures I've seen have the iPad at around 70% market share. There's no chance that will survive after this kind of device appears, but I would guess Apple would be very happy to own, say, the top 40% of the market while the Android OEMs bleed each other dry at tiny margins.

Witness Apple's killer execution in the laptop market - and there they've fought there way upwards from virtually nothing, whereas with tablets they're starting with the dominant ecosystem.

<comment><USER3> pardon me, I don't understand your reasoning. Why would apple be less happy with 70% of the market than with 40%?

Do you mean that you expect the total size of the market to double, and then expect apple to own 40% of it (so they have a total number of customers which is slightly more than what they had initially) ?

<comment><USER4> I think he means, in layman's terms, Apple wants to sell Mercedes...

Someone else can sell Kia's.

Edit: Not sure how that will work out in the tablet market, but it certainly works with cars and laptops.

<comment><USER5> Newer Kia's are the best value money can buy. They are solid and very reliable automobiles. And, they cost 10 times less than a Mercedes. Smart buyers buy them.

<comment><USER6> As someone who used to work in the automotive manufacturing sector I'll say this: Mercedes/BMWs/luxury cars are not nearly as overpriced as laymen make them out to be.

There is a lot going on under the hood (literally!) that sets these cars apart.

Which isn't to say that everyone needs a Mercedes, but there's certainly nothing intrinsically smarter about a Kia over a Mercedes.

<comment><USER7> I'm sure that Mercedes puts a lot into making their cars, but consumer reports seem to indicate that the end product is actually worse than low end Asian vehicles. Most of the people I know that have Toyota, Hyundai, and KIA automobiles drive them for a couple hundred thousand miles. The people I know who drive Mercedes, bmws and audis have constant. problems. I'm not a mechanical expert but my guess is that the extreme standards of precision that high end cars are manufactured to may actually make them less reliable. Maybe it's similar to the way that an AK-47 is the most reliable assault rifle because it is cheaply made, while our m16 jams if you don't clean it constantly because the machining is extremely precise.

<comment><USER6> The plural of anecdote isn't data ;)

Having actually seen the religiously-collected failure data that all manufacturers keep, I can safely say that your impression is incorrect. The budget brands suffer from substantially more expensive failures than the luxury brands, whose failures tend to be concentrated in non-critical systems (power windows vs. your transmission).

The AK-47 analogy doesn't really work here. There haven't been any "mechanically simple" cars since, what, the 80s? The main differentiator here isn't design or technological complexity, it's part selection and manufacturing rigour. So really you're talking about a hand-made M16 done up in a garage vs. a precision-manufactured M16. We're well past the age of "AK-47" cars.

<comment><USER7> This a website where people discuss things, often their opinions. Not every single response on hacker news is going to have a peer-reviewed study attached to it.

I used to inspect auto parts for a factory that made ball-joints for a couple dozen different auto companies. It was a parts supplier for everything from low end asian cars to Humvees, Corvettes, and BMWs.

The part selection you speak of isn't always better. When we pulled defective parts off the production line, they were inventoried and put into storage in case the factory failed to meet their quota. When this happened, the defective parts were shipped to the auto manufacturers along with the good parts.

That being said, I agree that there's nothing wrong with owning a luxury vehicle. People have to take a look at their own finances and determine what the best decision to make is. For the average American, it is much smarter to buy a KIA, because the average American can't afford a Mercedes/BMW/etc. If a person can afford it, then good for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know this is purely anecdotal, but everyone I've seen recently who has bought a tablet, bought a laptop within 6 months or switched back to their old laptop and got rid of it.

I'm still not convinced by the tablet hype. The star trek wow factor wears off pretty quick for most people.

A $99 tablet may change that (temporarily as it's almost impulse buy pricing), but I'm not sure something of that price will have anything groundbreaking to add.

<comment><USER9> For me, the tablet clearly does not replace a laptop for serious emailing and browsing. However, it's perfect as a window to the internets. I read my RSS feeds on it, check my facebook, browse some hacker news (although I still find clients lacking). That's about all I do with it, but that sums up to a good 1-2 hours per day so I would hardly call it a waste.

<comment><USER8> I don't have any feeds or Facebook. That was a far better solution if you ask me.

<comment><USER9> This is silly, you are telling me that my way of living sucks and I should change it.

I enjoy this stuff, reading articles, stories. I don't read news papers or magazines, this is how I get my information and news.

<comment><USER8> Not at all. I'm saying that it works for me versus buying another device to consume with. To me it doesn't matter what the medium is - it's still the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Asus have aparantly already denied this, not that it means much. [1]

It seems pretty unlikely to me, most of the $99 tablets available on AliExpress are significantly underpowered, especially around the areas of battery and screen quality. Google haven't released a sub-standard Nexus device yet, I'm not sure why they'd do it now, when according to all the reports I've seen the Nexus tablet is doing pretty well.

1 - [http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/27/asus_rumored_to_reject...](http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/27/asus_rumored_to_reject_99_dollar_nexus_7_rumor/)

</comment><comment><USER11> If this is true, I would wager it has the same specs as the current Nexus 7. The Tegra 3 that is currently used is printed on an out-dated 40nm process:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegra#Tegra_3>

Printing the same chip on say a 32nm or 28nm process (Like the iPad 2,4) would dramatically reduce the cost.

This would also allow them to use a smaller battery and achieve the same battery life.

The major challenge is the LCD panel. It's plausible they could continue to use the same IPS screen, but using a nice TN screen is another place they could cut costs. They could also just wager that these are going to sell like crazy and work out a deal at volume like Apple does.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, the low-end N7 has a $152 bill of materials and has some fairly high-end hardware, so putting in slightly lower-end hardware (dual core chip, 1,024 x 600 display etc) can get the tablet close to $99.

The other thing to note is that Google can probably afford to lose a bit of money on these, since it'll only take a few months (say, q2 '13) for them to really drop to $99. Seems like having the only $99 this holiday season is worth a couple of hundred millions (think of it as a huge advertising campaign).

</comment><comment><USER13> I hope all Android OEMs are fully aware that Google has tricked them all into a race to the bottom. That's pretty much been Google's strategy against all its competitors to date.

<comment><USER14> There was essentially no Google Android tablet market before the Nexus 7, only the Amazon & Nook forks. Manufacturers will be happier having a market with no margin, than no market at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd be much more willing to spend $99 on a Google tablet then $99 on another cheap Chinese tablet. I bought a Novo 7 several months ago to test out the accessibility of Android verses iOS as a blind user. Since it was Android somewhat modified by the manufacturer I needed sited help to install a TTS engine as well as install the talkback screen reader. I then had to remove a bunch of crapware, and deal with the fact that the tablet was somewhat underpowered providing me with a substandard experience. I was not very impressed with the tablet's accessibility, but don't know how much of that is Google's fault verses the manufacturer. In comparison with iOS I can take a device out of the box, turn it on, hit the home button three times, and it starts talking. After this experience I won't be buying no name $99 Chinese tablets, and since I have an iPhone that works fine I can't justify $199 for another device that would be nothing more than an excuse to test the accessibility of an OS I most likely won't switch to any time soon. If you reduce the price from $199 to $99 and it's a stock Android experience with the accessibility software preloaded I can justify $99 to test out the accessibility of an OS I most likely won't switch to any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER16> I just picked up a Nexus 7 today :| May have been a bad time to buy. Any thoughts on whether I should sell it? It's still completely packaged, haven't opened it yet.

<comment><USER17> Not because a cheaper one is coming, that is always the case, but because pretty soon you will find out that there is not much utility to it... IMO

<comment><USER18> I'm curious as to what you mean by lack of utility? Could you explain please

<comment><USER19> iLock just doesn't like tablets. Most geeks are going to want more from any device they own (including a typical computer). The average consumer thinks otherwise though. Consuming and posting little blurbs is the majority of what consumer do, and tablets are great for that use case. The N7 is the first non- Apple tablet that I think really challenges the iPad for that average consumer. The N7 at $99 could change the tablet landscape.

<comment><USER18> See I know the limits of a tablet. It is not some fancy all singing device. If I want serious power I get on my desktop or laptop. But as a device to surf the web or read an ebook it is much nicer to use a tablet than have a laptop on my lap

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If they do that, it will be HUGE here for us in Uruguay and other Latin American countries.

Any reduction in price means a 2x reduction here due to import taxes and other stuff, so a decent U$ 99 tablet will be the first quality sub-U$ 200 tablet here.

They will also be available for direct import - you can't buy most stuff online here without paying heavy taxes, but sub-U$ 200 after taxes and shipping can be imported directly for personal use.

I will personally buy several, if this is the case (one for me, one for my gf, and some for my family members).

</comment><comment><USER21> A quality $99 name-brand tablet would impact the eInk device market the most. Why would someone buy a $139 Nook or $179 Kindle when they could get a tablet for less? (Yes, I know how eInk is "better for the eyes" -- but we are talking the general population here, who have not embraced eInk in droves and who probably don't want to read books, either.)

<comment><USER22> This is already happening. I don't have a citation handy, but about a year ago, I believe Barnes & Noble was saying that its Nook Tablet was outselling the e-ink Kindles (this was before the Kindle Fire was introduced).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A quick google search (<http://bit.ly/RkNKpF>) shows that there are plenty of tablets under $99. I think sub $100 tablet by Google will be good for the market but not any huge game changer like the article makes it out to be.

<comment><USER24> Yes, pretty much all of those are junk though. The Nexus line is very much NOT junk and coming from Google means they have to stake a bit of their reputation on it. Personally I'm excited if only because it'll be a good way to get a tablet sized device to test apps on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great.. another low budget tablet that I'm going to need to support when developing android applications.

why didn't I just stick to iOS?

<comment><USER26> Maybe you wanted access to a faster expanding market?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You can already get a 7" android 4.0 tablet off aliexpress.com for $53, shipping included.

<comment><USER20> I haven't bought from that website specifically, but some coworkers and acquaintances have bought from dealextreme, alibaba, etc. They are incredibly bad.

Several have resistive touchscreens, most have modified Androids that don't have Play store and don't install what you want, most have quality issues (for example my coworkers' has wifi connectivity problems), bad battery life, and overall terrible experience.

I'll gladly pay double to ensure good quality and a good experience.

Edit: aliexpress is part of alibaba (which is part-owned by Yahoo IIRC), so it's very likely what you get is similar to what I'm describing.

Edit2: browsing, it seems most do come with capacitive touchscreens now. I don't see any with free shipping, but I'm not in the U.S.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Lol, bgr.

</comment><comment><USER29> It will be interesting to see what kind of tradeoffs are required to go that low on the price - 2GB RAM, weaker GPU?

<comment><USER30> my wild guess is the $199 will get 4g, while the $99 will be wifi only like the current nexus7. and obviously less storage.

<comment><USER31> BYO memory card storage perhaps.

<comment><USER30> I may be not far from the truth <http://www.bgr.com/2012/09/03/nexus-7-3g-release-date-rumor/></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Story Behind North Korean Jeans - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,670826,00.html

<comment><USER2> You've got to find a little bit of amusement in Swedes naming their hip North Korean jeans based on a corruption of a Japanese word which is itself a coinage half-derived from English.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought it was sad that I'd assumed Kara and Oke meant something relevant in Korean. Nearly slapped myself in the face when I put them together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there more to this story? It just seemed to end...

<comment><USER4> My general impression is that doing business with the DPRK is easier than generally thought; it's just that they don't really offer that many competitive advantages to doing so. Someone once posted a link on HN giving a price list for DPRK _software developers_ (generally without a constant Internet connection).

I went to the DPRK last summer, and it was quite easy. I Paypaled my money and emailed a picture of my passport to Koryo Tours, and a few months later I found myself in Beijing waiting to get onboard a 30-year-old Soviet-built Tupolev jet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> History has a term for guys like these. It's "useful idiots".</comment>


Alan Turing pardoned [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cryptome.org/2013/12/turing-pardon.pdf

<comment><USER2> This document looks fantastically fake.

UK bills don't tend to use a fake cursive font, they don't tend to have common language like "Greetings!", there is no court at Sandringham that I have heard of, and the bill to pardon Mr Turing is not through its full process in the house of commons.

[http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/alanturingstatut...](http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/alanturingstatutorypardon.html)

<comment><USER3> "Greeting!", no less.

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that this is actually standard form for certain official documents in the UK. Example:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_patent#Form_of_British_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_patent#Form_of_British_Letters_Patent)

<comment><AUTHOR> It certainly has a more distinct ring to it than "To whom it may concern:"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks fake, it is scheduled for a second debate in the 2nd house (Parliament, the one that's democratically elected) in February 2014.

[http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/alanturingstatut...](http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/alanturingstatutorypardon.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right; I thought they had already done the second reading, but it was a reading in the House of Lords instead.

That said, the Parliament website is fantastic. The US sites are getting better, but the overall flow for public bills in the UK's site is so much nicer.

Edit: the original schedule looks like it was altered after MP Christopher Chope raised an objection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Better late than never, I suppose. Assuming this is a legit leak.

</comment><comment><USER7> "graciously pleased to extend our grace and mercy".. what a bunch of garbage. I hope that is toned down for the actual pardon.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't that a mis-print in the third line? There's an extraneous "it" in the text.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not only does it come a bit late (if legit), it also soft-pedals the abuses against him.

</comment><comment><USER10> This demeans the word 'apology'. It's bereft of meaning and viciously partisan to the extent that I find it disgusting in view of the many who've suffered and are now dead and unremembered. Pity energy wasn't better spent in further public explication of his significance and achievements.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good thing he didn't chemically castrate anyone, they'd never pardon that.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hope this is real - but can anyone prove this is legitimate?

<comment><USER13> The second reading of the bill in the House of Commons is not due until the 28th of February, so even if this is a draft it's not the real deal yet.

I have to say I feel uneasy about this whole thing, I'd be much happier if we pardoned everyone prosecuted under the same law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Little late there, eh?</comment>


How to Be a Stoic (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/how-to-be-a-stoic <comment><USER2> I think of this as a variant of Postel's law (for TCP/IP):

        Be conservative in what you do,
        Be liberal in what you accept from others.

Most major belief systems have the same concept of defining "winning at being human" as putting up with more crap and simultaneously taking the effort to overdeliver. As a society, this pulls us upward.

On a continuum, there are 3 states:

\- A negative state, where we take/expect more than we deliver. At best, we require others to do us good before we ourselves do good, at worse we are unconcerned about other's good. It's also, at an individual level, the path of least resistance.

\- A neutral state, where we attempt to balance what we expect and what we deliver. In that state is the Golden Rule (do to others what you want them to do to you) and eye-for-an-eye (don't return more tort than the tort caused to you). Very loosely, this is where justice lives.

\- A positive state, where we attempt to give more than what we expect. This is the domain of mercy, stoicism and "turn the other cheek". It requires a personal cost/sacrifice in order to expect less yet still deliver what is good. This is also the domain of love.

<comment><USER3> I don't think stoicism belongs in what you've described as a positive state. It's about our attitude towards the world and experiences as they unfold. I don't think you can extrapolate giving more to the world from that. In fact expectations are irrelevant in that framework.

<comment><USER4> Don't conflate "positive" in this domain with any typical connotations of the word. Stoicism is certainly "positive" in the sense of what one gives to the world, in relationship to what one expects to receive, because a Stoic has no expectations to receive anything from the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As befits HN, I also want to pitch the _Meditations_ by Marcus Aurelius here. Being written for himself, it has a very different tone (no athletic coach, but rather a somewhat world-weary, if benevolent, uncle). Fundamentally, it treats similar ideas, though.

I also stumbled over a very interesting quote from the article:

> In other words, think of every unreasonable asshole you > have to deal with > as part of God's attempt to "turn you > into Olympic-class material." This > is a very powerful > trick.

The _exact_ same trick is practiced in many (traditional) Christian faiths--- but I have the feeling that placing it in that context would alienate many modern readers (and in the worst cases, it comes relatively close to the prosperity gospel stuff).

<comment><USER6> >The _exact_ same trick is practiced in many (traditional) Christian faiths

Unfortunately this is true, despite being complete heresy. One of the saddest things for an American Christian is how a huge portion of the church has diluted Christianity to an unbiblical set of self actualization themes.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your view on American Christianity. But do you consider a milder variant of the statement in the article, namely something along the lines of 'Challenges can help me grow (in faith, in character, etc.)' to be heretical as well?

(just curious; no hidden agenda here)

<comment><USER7> The phrase "Challenges can help me grow" is specific to the individual; that is, how you choose to accept them. The phrase "God's plan" implies that you are claiming to understand it in terms of not only what has happened to you, but what will happen to you in the future. It is one part prophesy, one part imposing your own desires and will upon God.

I don't know that I would personally consider it "heretical" (especially since I am an agnostic by way of Catholicism) but that would be my stab at understanding the difference between the phrases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think being stoic is becoming increasingly valuable regarding today's politics. Vindictiveness and toxicity is reflected regularly in people that closely follow national politics, usually demonstrated by their desire to relieve their frustrations by venting their negative emotions. Like the author quotes, "it is not events that disturb people, it is their judgments concerning them." Letting things which are so far removed from your control affect your daily disposition seems exhausting and miserable.

<comment><USER9> One of then side effects of the rise of identity politics is an explosion in victim complexes. It's just a bit of a race to the bottom effect where one group will argue X thing doesn't mean they're victims because their group are victims in Y way. There are just so many victims these days that victimhood doesn't even serve actual victims. The supply of victims outstrips the demand.

Stoicism is so starkly opposed to victimhood and complaining that it comes as a breath of fresh air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think there is a lot of value in stoicism, but it never really worked for me, because accepting things aren't my thing.

Instead I prefer the Socratic approach to issues, where you actually try and discover solutions together. I know stoics took a lot of lessons from Socrates, and that you can't be Socratic without a tad of stoicism, but I've also found asking questions to be better (for me) than letting things slide.

Like with the cab-driver taking the long route. Sure you can let it slide, but I've never had politely asking about it break my tranquility.

<comment><USER11> I'm hardly an authority but I've been doing daily stoic journaling for about 9 months. Stoicism isn't about passivity, though I can see how people think that, it's about 1. Accepting your circumstances 2. Understanding what you can and can't control 3. not having your happiness be dependent on outcomes but rather your actions. So in your cab example you could say something to the cab driver. You could simply get out of the cab and get another. You could let the cab driver take you the long way and pay more because it isn't worth the hassle. Any would be an appropriate stoic response. The unstoic response would be to sit and seethe or complain about it later. At it's core stoicism seems to be just a system of empowered decision making. Or at least that's how I use it.

<comment><USER3> Right on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One book that I had bought a few months back and started reading on Jan 1st is this The Daily Stoic: "366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living" [1]

It contains 366 quotes, one for every day. I usually read it in the morning, then I take a photo on my phone and I re-read it during lunch time. This way I can process it again and make sure I (try to) 'fix' one thing at a time.

I have made this part of my "What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast" and "The Miracle Morning" combined-routine.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Daily-Stoic-Meditations- Perseveranc...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Daily-Stoic-Meditations-Perseverance- translations/dp/1781257655/)

<comment><USER13> I also find this book really nicely written. Worth checking out if someone is interested more.

Also Mark Aurelius Meditations are interesting read. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A good book on Stoic is: [https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient- Stoic/dp/0195...](https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient- Stoic/dp/0195374614)

Very easy to read this book and growth mind. There are no abstraction here. Very pragmatics. For those who want to know/understand Stoic. I'm highly recommended.

<comment> martin-adams As a newcomer to it, I found this book extremely helpful and instantly impactful to my daily life. That said, I find that you need to keep up the practice continually as its impact has a half life and fades over time.

<comment><USER15> almost as if the world has a limitless supply of "challenges". As you level- up, so do the challenges which force one to grow. Hopefully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have found both Stoicism and secular Buddhism to be right up my alley.

I'm closing in on 60 years of age, and have had both major wins and major losses in my life. Today, I am generally at peace with whatever happens and my different moods; they come and go like the weather. I usually meditate for 15 - 30 minutes a day. The Buddhist concept of "no self" is something I'm reflecting on as well.

<comment><USER17> The closest thing I found to "no self" is the Radiohead song "how to disappear completely".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For those interested in learning more, I highly recommend Ryan Holiday's book _The Obstacle is the Way_ which gives a great high-level modern take on stoicism. The classics are also obviously great too.

</comment><comment><USER19> Meditations gave me nothing that I didn't get from reading a few of Aurelius' quotes. One of those books that you expect to be great and it disappoints.

The problem with stoicism is the same problem as the problems with Buddhism's eight-fold path; avoiding suffering is not living to the fullest. If that's your philosophy, what's the point of being alive?

Stoicism/Buddhism works well in situations for which it was designed by Siddhartha - enduring your crappy slave existence. It makes sense to learn not to feel when all you feel is disappointment and lack of control. A bit defeatist, really. Enduring, while valuable, is not being proactive.

It's effective, but it's no way to live long term.

<comment><USER20> > avoiding suffering is not living to the fullest

Stoicism isn't about the avoidance of suffering. It's about accepting fate, loving others despite their behavior, and not creating anguish for yourself, in your own mind. It doesn't mean, however, that you don't attempt to put things in order and fix your problems.

"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart."

"Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself."

"So you were born to feel 'nice'? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you're not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands?"

<comment><USER21> > Stoicism isn't about the avoidance of suffering. It's about accepting fate

That's actually a Roman-Christian reinterpretation of the Greek philosophy.

The Greek teaching in a nutshell is that what depends on you depends on you, and what doesn't depend on you (such as others or nature) does not -- and therefor shouldn't be a source of frustration.

(It says nowhere, as you note a few sentences later, that you should accept the would-be source of the frustration; just that you shouldn't be frustrated about it -- while working on improving the situation if you feel strongly about it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is not at all "how to be a stoic". This is "what it is to be a stoic".

It's nice to say you have to avoid reacting to things outside of your control. But how does one do that ?

Stoicism fails at explaining any practical way of embrassing the teaching. It's strange since they were quite practical people, but you see that a often in philosophy: lots of theory, very few advices for practice.

At least the buddhists suggest meditation as a tool to learn to act instead of reacting, and see things more objectively.

<comment><USER23> > It's nice to say you have to avoid reacting to things outside of your > control. But how does one do that ?

The first step is to learn to distinguish between the things that are in your control and those that outside of your control. The second step is to consciously remind yourself that things outside your control are by their nature indifferent - neither good nor bad - and to act accordingly.

Both of these things require constant practice to develop skill. One specific exercise that can help is the "Premeditatio Malorum". Another is to keep a journal of one's successes and failures and to review it daily.

There are other useful resources online with practical advice. One good example is Donald Robertson's Stoic Therapy Toolkit: [https://learn.donaldrobertson.name/p/stoic-therapy- toolkit](https://learn.donaldrobertson.name/p/stoic-therapy-toolkit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend William Irvine's "A guide to the good life: the ancient art of stoic joy"

[https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient- Stoic/dp/1522...](https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient- Stoic/dp/1522632735)

Its treatment of modern stoicism is uplifting, and I found that the overall philosophy (and even just the practice of having a set of values and philosophy) matched my personal beliefs well and gave me new tools to use.

Overall - Stoicism as it was taught by Epictetus is more about freeing yourself from desire for things and the fear of losing them, and not about giving up all worldly things (that's Asceticism)

I appreciate that the Stoic teachings allow for enjoyment of life and its fruits when that enjoyment is bounded by the good of "community feeling" or love for your common man. If the 80's "greed is good" movement had had a "but try to lift up others and don't be a dick", it may have been a more sustainable culture, and I hope that those of us disrupting things and building new systems figure out how to create societal benefits as well as wealth.

</comment><comment><USER25> CliffsNotes: "Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown."

</comment><comment><USER26> I think with stoicism you have to be careful to actually be stoic and not just pretend to yourself to be stoic. There are quite a few stories of meditation practitioners and teachers who broke down after years of looking peaceful and serene to the outside but they were just pretending to others and also to themselves.

<comment><USER27> Do you remember / have any references to these people? I am very interested in criticisms of stoicism.

<comment><USER26> From what I gather buddhism and stoicism share a lot of ways how to deal with external input and managing your mental state. I know more about buddhism and there have been quite a few articles about teachers who fell apart even after decades of practice because they hadn't really internalized them and were trying to "fake it till you make it".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Somehow Aurelius never took with me as a longer man, but Stockdale's accounts of the impact of stoicism on his life are pretty good.

[http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/978-0-...](http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/978-0-8179-3692-1_1.pdf)

[https://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/stoicism1.pdf](https://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/stoicism1.pdf)

[https://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/Stoicism2.pdf](https://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/Stoicism2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there a more energetic way of looking at life than stoicism? Stoicism seemed life-denying whenever I seemed to get knto it.

</comment><comment><USER30> I want to say that after reading Montaigne, I get the impression that he did not consider stoicism a reasonable way of life, especially with respect to the writings of Seneca. He saw the dangers when virtues are taken to extremes. He(Montaigne) was more impressed by the ideas of temperance and moderation as espoused by Plutarch.

</comment><comment><USER31> None of these philosophies can be applied when the stakes get really high and personal.

<comment><USER32> That separates the real philosophers from the wannabes. The real philosophers can take it.

Like when Sokrates and Seneca had to end their lives. They didn't lament the unjust verdicts but embraced it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So Epictetus was a theist?

Edit: what stops me from being a christian because both believed in god

</comment><comment><USER33> _Don 't get angry with slaves_ could take on new relevance with an emerging underclass. I think we can all learn something from this.</comment>


United MileagePlus Frequent Flyer Changes - <AUTHOR> https://mileageplusupdates.com/mileageplus/english/qualification/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'll just add my $.02

United is definitely targeting very high spend customers for their highest public status (Global Services is invite only). You can fly every other week on a coast to coast route and not qualify, even with $600 fares.</comment>


The Blurring Line Between Commerce And Ad Models - <AUTHOR> http://jordancooper.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/the-blurring-line-between-commerce-and-ad-models/

<comment><USER2> Right on. Glad to see this post because the nexus of e-commerce and ads is a smart place to be in. I have been working on that problem with a partner for 6 months straight. We are launching soon for our first customer who is very well-known, and we have customer number 2 signed on (and lots of warm leads, too).

We are doing exactly this: building and selling "a 'turnkey' monetization mechanism and selling into publishers".

The next few weeks should be exciting and I would like to give you updates as things happen if you are interested. Our product info is at: <http://palermo.infusedindustries.com></comment>


Feds grant permit to kill bald eagles for religious purposes - <AUTHOR> http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/15/feds-grant-permit-to-kill-bald-eagles/

<comment><AUTHOR> I, for one, think that there ought to be a huge uproar about this. Millions of emails, calls and faxes ought to descend on Washington to prevent these animals from being killed for no reason whatsoever.</comment>


Betrayal at Krondor - <AUTHOR> https://www.filfre.net/2019/10/betrayal-at-krondor/ <comment><USER2> It's a pleasant surprise to see such an in-depth write up of something that was extremely influential on me. That was at the sort of young age where things could blow my mind without me being at all cognizant of the rich real- life backstoies that produced them.

I remember getting a demo of BaK on one of those demo disks that came with PC gaming magazines. I was blown away by the immersive open-world 3D gameplay. The battle and equipment systems were innovative and well designed.

Our local library didn't have the Riftwar books that inspired the game, but it did have the Serpantwar saga that followed them. I'd eventually figure out how to acquire books on my own and catch up with all the books that Feist published, and I hung on until the end of the cycle, even though the books plummeted in quality on the back half.

I also played Return to Krondor, with much excitement. It was a fun game and better produced, but much more linear than the original.

Thinking about this reminds me of a time in my life when things were a bit more magical. Information was accessible, but not too much so, and being a kid with a meager allowance meant I had to have some hustle to follow the cultural threads that intrigued me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I played this gem when I was a kid, and I love Betrayal at Krondor dearly. Having not read the backstory before playing the game, it was kinda confusing at times, but game quality was awesome, especially compared to games bound to rectangle grids (wizardry, lands of lore, eye of the beholder series). It also did well for my English: the language was very rich with sprawling vocabulary. 10/10, the only games from the 90s that match my love for BaK are Star Control 2, Monkey Island and Full Throttle.

<comment><USER4> Star Control 2 is free now (and on many platforms): [http://sc2.sourceforge.net/](http://sc2.sourceforge.net/)

It will probably surprise first-time players with its depth and breadth and non-terrible UI (which you might expect in an early 90s game).

Save early and often, there are no autosaves.

<comment><USER5> Here's the article on Star Control II by the same author (Jimmy Maher) as the OP:

[https://www.filfre.net/2018/12/star-control- ii/](https://www.filfre.net/2018/12/star-control-ii/)

Although I love Maher's "Digital Antiquarian", I feel his opinion on SC2 is a tad unfair.

He basically criticizes the game for having a living, evolving game world where you can lose simply by taking too long. That's one of the things that originally blew my mind about SC2 back in 1992: it truly feels like a universe that's not artificially made for the player. You're just one ship trying to understand great forces that are in motion on their own, and will eventually crush you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I loved that about SC2. Its so long ago though that I don't remember if I learned about the constraint from a FAQ or on my own. But given how mad people were about a similar constraint in Fallout, I can't recall the last time a big adventure game had a world-ending condition dependent on the passage of time.

<comment><USER3> The difference with Fallout 1 constraint is that in SC2 you feel the galaxy to be alive and breathing, with multiple events happen and influence each other. While in Fallout you just have a timer. The world in Fallout 1 & 2 feels very static, where nothing happens without your direct intervention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > This is precisely the problem which the player of Betrayal at Krondor can > all too easily run into. Not only does the game allow you to ignore the > urgent call of its plot, but it actually forces you to do so in order to be > successful. If you take the impetus of the story seriously and rush to > fulfill your tasks in the early chapters, you won't build up your characters > sufficiently to survive the later ones.

I finally have my answer. As a kid, I really enjoyed this game, but never understood why I would always get stuck partway through, with seemingly impossible paths. Having played many point-and-click games as well as much civilization, I assumed there was some puzzle I was missing (I was pretty sure I had explored all the tactical ones). Turned out I needed to _restart the game and ignore the objectives_

<comment><USER7> I did the opposite. I looted and leveled for fun but didn't read the storyline and got powerful but stuck. Played a lot but never beat it. My friend got pissed at me for not reading the storyline! Fun times.

<comment><USER6> Ha! I played with a friend too, and always read all dialog out-loud (except the loot-the-bodies one, that got old pretty quick).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have read books where the authors have actually "played" the character behind the scenes, taking dice rolls to decide critical events and rolling with them, no matter how catastrophic.

It definitely lends the work this "internal coherency" that is mentioned in the article. Feels much more _real_.

And being in a solid tabletop group has been great for my life. Not only do you maintain friendships, but you take part in a shared story. It's great, and I'd definitely recommend it to HNers who have never tried it before. If someone ever asks you, don't turn it down - it'll be worth it.

<comment><USER9> > If someone ever asks you, don't turn it down - it'll be worth it.

I have enjoyed tabletop games immensely, both as a player and a DM. That said, I wouldn't feel comfortable making the above claim -- I've also had horrible experiences, including one session with a group I never returned to where the DM kept having the only female player's character get raped. Like, three times in one session. It was weird. Other times a DM can try to railroad players way too hard and turn the thing into a short novel that gets read aloud with minimal player interaction, or an overly placating DM can let one inexperienced player run the game off the rails entirely by playing a sociopathic cannibal who impulsively eats key NPCs without natural repurcussions kicking in. I'm not trying to be a downer, but if somebody has a bad first experience roleplaying they should be aware that not all sessions are created equal; I've had all of the above horrible experiences as well as many magical nights of collaborative storytelling, puzzle solving, and tactical decisions with friends. It's a social thing, you need the right mix of people to make it work, and the kind of game that one person enjoys might be horrible for another person (Robin's Laws covers this last point well and has good tips for finding the right mixture of elements for a specific social group, IMO).

<comment><USER8> Sorry, for a moment I forgot how disgusting humanity can be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I loved Feist's books as a early teen. Never got around to playing BaK, but I've been surprised to see few people talk about Magician for how popular it supposedly was. That book was formative for me and I can't get it out my brain to this day.

<comment><USER11> Magician was super popular at the time, but having already read Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Moorcock and a few others I found it more of a join the dots exercise spotting where he pinched pretty much everything from. It was like reading a whistle stop tour of fantasy fiction from the 60s and 70s. I did read some of the later novels. The sequel where Midkemia was invaded by a blatant clone of the Empire of the Petal Throne from Tékumel was fun.

That might come across as faint praise, which it is a bit, but like a few novel series of the time, it was a toy box of fantasy fun. Most of the readers of novels like this were never going to wade through all the source material, but here all the basic concepts were in compendium form. They certainly had a niche to fill.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I guess that's what Feist was talking about when he said he was successful because he broke the rules. It makes sense that the work was a mashup of previous works, it seemed clear that outside of his set pieces things really got bogged down.

I read magician first and after that trying to read Lotr was going from a carnival ride to a cathedral, long slow and overly rich.

The dizzying heights of individual expansion that pug/tomas got to over the series has died with the 80s and thanos I guess. That scene in the colosseum raining fire raindrops still sits vividly in my mind, why the greatest hits from magician have never been made into a more expressive media is obvious financially but nags at me nonetheless.

<comment><USER12> > That scene in the colosseum raining fire raindrops still sits vividly in my > mind, why the greatest hits from magician have never been made into a more > expressive media is obvious financially but nags at me nonetheless.

Ah the memories. That was indeed an awesome scene. You also reminded me of some other scenes in that book:

\- Macros defending Elvandar all on his own \- Macros confronting Tomas after the battle and Tomas realizing how powerful Macros was \- Pug Tomas and Macros watching the creation of the universe at "A darkness at Sethanon"

On one hand I'd like to see them turned into movies/series but at the same time I think I prefer not to "spoil" the world and the characters that I have built in my mind.

<comment><USER13> The parallel "... of the Empire" series is very good too, and has the colosseum scene from a different character point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think a year has ever passed since this was released without me doing a playthrough at least once. This article really shows why - it's about the story, so it's not so different than having a favourite movie you watch every year.

Of course, if the novel were based on my average game, the first half of it would be Gorath wandering around the middle of nowhere sharpening a pile of swords with hundreds of whetstones for a month.

</comment><comment><USER15> The "honesty" factor is the key for me. Every event in a novel is under the control of the creator but that isn't so for role-playing games. It adds true significance to everything and makes gaming sessions truly engaging to watch. I've seen groups make it through months of hardship only to have a particularly bad dice roll or stupid choice kill them all and plunge the world into darkness. That kind of actual risk based on the cleverness of real people has a flavor that cannot be replicated in any traditional fiction medium.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone read the Malazan series? I'm in the midst of it and the world building is incredible.

I heard the author wrote the series based on DnD games he played. I imagine he'd have to in order to keep everything coherent across all the races, histories, religions, tribes, wars, etc. That said, while the setting is fascinating, the writing seems to me to be at times a bit of a slog.

Definitely an interesting way to write. It was the first I'd heard of it.

<comment><USER17> I've read more than one book that is obviously the author's role-playing campaign written down. Sometimes this can make for an interesting story but more often it leads to action-packed but dull novels.

The problem with makes books (and films) out of games is that novel and games have different aims, and creators skilled at one are not necessarily good at the other medium. The typical game (tabletop or computer) is heavily action based. There are exceptions, but typically the plot (where the characters make impactful choices) is front loaded, happening during the introduction or even just before the game starts.

How many computer games have the player show up just after a big event and learn about it through recordings or notes of NPCs who are no longer there? The player joins the plot at the point where the only thing left to do is kill a bunch of things - basically the third act of a typical film.

The Malazan books were recommended to by an author but, like you, I found the ideas much better than the writing, but the author did improve noticeably in the second book.

[https://sheep.horse/2013/9/book_review_- _deadhouse_gates.htm...](https://sheep.horse/2013/9/book_review_- _deadhouse_gates.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Oh what an amazing game. I vaguely remember, playing all night once, until I started to hallucinate in the early hours of the morning, and decided to put myself to bed. To be honest I'm not sure whether I ever finished it.

I recently reread Magician, and it was just as good as I remembered it.

<comment><USER19> It was a fantastic escape in middle and high school to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The spyglass and the spider took 15 year old me like a month to figure out. Still think it's one of the most enjoyable games I've played.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd never heard of this game when it was released, but had played some of its contemporaries like the Ultima series. When this article came out, I started watching a Let's Play. I'm finding it to be quite enjoyable and I can see how easily I would've been interested in it. I'm still in Chapter 1 but right away I can see how the characters are much more developed than other games I'd played. Glad to get a late chance at it rather than none at all.

</comment><comment><USER22> My young teenage self really, really loved this game. I was totally oblivious to the shortcomings described in the article (digitized characters, 'disconnect' between main story and character building, etc.). Instead, I just played and played, seeking new chests for new riddles (simultaneously curious and fearful of not being able to solve it), new combats, new artifacts.

One of the few fantasy games that kept me glued to the PC monitor for logn stretches of time.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great write up. So many hours spent playing this game and trying to figure out how to wring the last bit of himem to get it to run better.

</comment><comment><USER24> Although I did read some of Riftwar, I was completely unaware of the transliterary aspects of the game when it came out. I do remember being impressed by the game though; it was ambitious and well executed and I think one of the classics from that era that deserve to be remembered.

</comment><comment><USER25> Damn you! Whenever there's a link to the Digital Antiquarian, I lose at least an hour of time!

</comment><comment><USER26> I bought Betrayal at Krondor (the book) when it first came out. The author's foreword talks about the game in a fair bit of detail and also contains the "you couldn't afford me" quote mentioned in the article, along with backstory.

</comment><comment><USER27> Read most of Feists books back in the 90s. Picked up the PC version of the game. Always seemed to crash on me, one of the drawbacks of OTA updates that was missing from the CD-ROM era. Now Daggerfall...that was my jam.

</comment><comment><USER28> Betrayal at Krondor was my first computer RPG. I didn't knew English well and I was just stumbling around with dialogs, but the mechanics were obvious and well designed and it was fun anyway.

</comment><comment><USER29> Interestingly I first encountered the DnD side of Mikedima before reading the books.

My Rogue character I developed lived in Carse and had his main residence which I designed in detail there

</comment><comment><USER30> Excellent game, excellent article. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER31> Loved playing this game growing up - bought it on gog many years later and was shocked by the old graphics

</comment><comment><USER32> Betrayal In Krondor, surely?

</comment><comment><USER33> I love this game and play it every few years. It's available on GoG.

</comment><comment><USER34> The wordlocks were the best part of this whole game.

Oh and the cd soundtrack.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I spent ages figuring out some of the puzzles (DARKNESS, anyone?).

It was also cool that they were in moredhel language, so once you lose Gorath from the party, you have to rely on spells to decipher their runes. Or just brute force them as is.</comment></comment>


How Qantas Ferried an Engine on the Wing of a 747 - <AUTHOR> http://www.flightradar24.com/blog/how-qantas-ferried-an-engine-on-the-wing-of-a-747/ <comment><USER2> Fair dues to QANTAS for milking this on social media but spare-engine ferrying was common from the dawn of the jet age.

The 707, 747, DC-8, DC-10, TriStar and VC-10 all had an underwing hardpoint for the extra engine and carrying it was fairly routine; just apply the compensations laid-out in the flight manual.

Four-engined TriStars looked funny...

It is rare nowadays due to the ubiquity of twin-engined airliners which have neither the underwing space nor the take-off engine-failure margin to ferry a spare. Instead their spare engines are stripped and sent in freighters, usually by the engine manufacturer who provide power-by-the-hour contracts to the airlines.

<comment><USER3> I seem to recall I once flew on an L-1011 TriStar as a kid that ferried an engine. It was out of Atlanta but I can't remember if we were going to Los Angeles or San Francisco. That was probably 25 years ago, so not sure which it was.

As a sidenote, the L-1011 is still one of my favorite planes. It was one of the most technologically advanced airliners ever created when it was unveiled; lots of things about it were way ahead of its time. It's a shame that the competition with the Douglas and the DC-10 nearly bankrupted both Lockheed and Douglas. Airlines played both companies against each other and nearly killed both. Lockheed ended up exiting the commercial business while Douglas merged with McDonnell.

There's a great long article on the the L-1011 published a few months ago: [http://www.airlinereporter.com/2015/09/requiem-trijet- master...](http://www.airlinereporter.com/2015/09/requiem-trijet-masterpiece- lockheed-l-1011-tristar/)

<comment><USER4> The L-1011 is/was amazing. It was the first airplane to be certified for full autoland in zero visibility conditions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seeing a 747 with 5 engines reminds me of seeing GE's N747GE testbed aircraft in Mojave, which usually flew with a odd engine configurations. I can't remember if they used the 5th pylon at all and most pictures show an experimental engine on the inboard pylon. Sometimes a very large engine[1], sometimes a small one[2].

One time they tried to ferry the aircraft from Mojave to Victorville with only three engines (they must have removed the experimental engine for whatever reason). They attempted the take-off but had to abort. It was quite a sight anyways. They went back to the hangar and we saw it fly away with four engines a few days later.

GE now has a second 747 to play with.[3]

[1] [http://www.jetphotos.net/photo/45634](http://www.jetphotos.net/photo/45634)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ge-747-N747GE-020404-01.j...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ge-747-N747GE-020404-01.jpg)

[3] [http://www.sieinc.com/into-thin-air-the-lofty-side-of-jet- en...](http://www.sieinc.com/into-thin-air-the-lofty-side-of-jet-engine- testing/)

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing they would never use a 5th pylon when engine 2 is missing and replaced by a potentially misbehaving or inoperable test engine. The 5th pylon could never accommodate a running engine since it's just an external cargo mount, not a full blown engine mount with all the necessary connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My father works for QANTAS, has for 40 years. He said they used to do one, once a month on the older jumbos. But with the newer ones 400s, QANTAS just retired one to the desert with the 4 original engines still on it. Meaning it never needed an engine change in its entire operating life.

</comment><comment><USER8> > The fifth pod option is restricted to Qantas' Rolls-Royce-powered 747s

Why the restriction to RR-powered 747s?

<comment><USER9> I would guess it's a flutter problem. Flutter is when an aircraft becomes dynamically unstable due to the interaction between the aircraft structure and the air around it. Certain aircraft are more prone to flutter than others such that it occurs at speeds closer to its max airspeed. The type of engine and how it's attached to the wing can have a big effect on flutter since it's a large mass that's hanging off the wing. As a result the same aircraft with different engines can have significantly different flutter properties.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroelastic_flutter#Flutter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroelastic_flutter#Flutter)

<comment><USER10> An oscillation builds up in the wing span to the point where the wing self destructs. Here's an video example from the development of the 747:

[http://www.airspacemag.com/videos/category/flight- today/wing...](http://www.airspacemag.com/videos/category/flight-today/wing- flutter-on-a-747/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why not use a full fairing over a complete engine?

<comment><USER12> Probably less drag to let the air flow through an "empty" engine rather than to have a large obstruction on the wing.

<comment><USER11> I don;t know. Cramming all that air down the tube of a fanless engine doesn't seem very efficient compared to the clean cone of a fairing.

<comment><USER13> Adding a bigger fairing will increase the cross section of the object, increasing the form drag. (Bigger things push more air out of their way when moving)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_drag#Form_drag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_drag#Form_drag)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm also curious about what had happened the engine that needed to be replaced.

Is the 6T engine the heaviest non-visible part on a 747?

<comment><USER15> From the article: "The disabled engine in Johannesburg will make its way back to Sydney at a much slower pace by ship."

<comment><USER14> Sorry, I meant what happened to the engine that meant it needed to be replaced. It doesn't sound like these engine replacements happen too often so I figured it was in some way noteworthy.</comment></comment></comment>


Tunnel collapse at the Hanford nuclear waste site - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/technology/hanford-us-nuclear-waste-radioactive-contamination-tunnel-1.4107595 <comment><USER2> While there are some very real issues at Hanford, the issue this week has been vastly blown out of proportion in the media (I work fairly near to the the location). There is a massive amount of work that has gone into detection of any kind of nuclear leak around here.

<comment><USER3> I lived in West Richland as a kid while my dad was working at Hanford. Beautiful area!

<comment><USER4> isn't it a lovely place?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The EPA sensors show that radiation levels are normal: [https://www.epa.gov/radnet/radnet-air-data-richland- wa](https://www.epa.gov/radnet/radnet-air-data-richland-wa)

</comment><comment><USER6> The window for nuclear energy has come and gone. Time to embrace renewables.

People can argue about safety of nuclear or storage of nuclear waste until the cows come home but what they can't argue against is government incompetence.

We need to embrace clean energy solutions that don't hold us hostage down the line.

<comment><USER7> This is FUD.

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

All other forms of renewable (And non-renewable) energy generation kill more people then nuclear does, per KWH produced.

More people fall off roofs installing solar panels, then die in nuclear accidents.

Far more people die from hydro dam failures, then they do from nuclear accidents. Every hydroelectric dam is a loaded gun, pointed at the city downstream. Most of them are managed by the 'incompetent government.'

<comment><USER8> The Wikipedia entry is silent on non-rooftop solar installations, and I'm struggling to find good numbers. Can anyone with more experience in this sector point me in the right direction?

I would hazard a guess that non-rooftop installation is substantially safer than getting on a roof. I would also guess that nuclear would be more hazardous if reactors were installed on roofs.

<comment><USER9> It's not even a fair comparison. One is construction/installation vs running.

I would be interested to see how many deaths have occurred during the construction of nuclear plants.

How many deaths occur from solar once it is built/installed?

<comment><USER10> >How many deaths occur from solar once it is built/installed?

Well if we are talking about what would happen if energy was produced entirely with solar/wind wouldn't you have to include things like the people freezing to death during a string of cloudy yet still winter days?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple unfair restrictions continues even in the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/xldrx/status/971143969936629760?s=09 <comment><AUTHOR> After enforcing sanctions against Iran ( which btw has one of vibrant tech environments in the region) App store now rejectst even Iranian developers and users outside Iran! Why do you guys at silicone valley ignoring the repetition of this kind of behavior from Google, Apple , Oracle and others ? Isn't it against diversity? Isn't it against freedom of information? Ps: Iran has the biggest community on Telegram and the 7th biggest Instagram users!

</comment><comment><USER2> Perhaps you should read more carefully what they said and realize its not Apple its the US Government.

[http://www.export.pitt.edu/embargoed-and-sanctioned- countrie...](http://www.export.pitt.edu/embargoed-and-sanctioned-countries)

While I am dismayed at the policies of the US Government, I don't think its necessarily the purview of Apple, Google, Oracle and other companies to argue on your behalf.</comment>


Invert a binary tree on LeetCode - <AUTHOR> https://leetcode.com/problems/invert-binary-tree/ Inspired by Max Howell's tweet <comment><USER2> The problem wasn't to just reverse the nodes, it was to re-sort it:

> @rogerdai16 to min-max the tree, ascending to descending.

[https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608891015945170944](https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608891015945170944)

<comment><USER3> I can't stand this. That's an equally intelligible description of the problem as the original.

<comment><USER2> Well it's a 140 character description from someone who's probably feeling a bit emotional. I'm sure he got a clearer problem description in the actual interview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In fairness to Google, the question is pretty darn simple...

        def invertTree(self, root):
            if root is not None:
              tmp = root.left
              root.left = self.invertTree(root.right)
              root.right = self.invertTree(tmp)

            return root

<comment><USER5> Indeed, it's not a difficult question.

I think people were making fun of Google, because it is a caricature of their whole interview process.

If a large number of your engineers is using Homebrew, having its developer is an asset for many different reasons (e.g. influencing the focus of the project, getting formulae in that interest you, or simply improving a tool that is important to your productivity). But no, they reject him because he cannot invert a binary tree.

It's like throwing one of the better offenders out of your soccer team, because he cannot substitute as a goalkeeper.

<comment><USER6> Having the developer of Homebrew as an employee is only an advantage if you want to influence it's development, and if the developer is happy for his application to be influenced by his employer rather than the Homebrew community as a whole.

In fact, I would see Google hiring the leaders of open source projects _in order to influence the direction the project takes_ as a problem. Sponsoring an open source project is brilliant, and Google are great at that, but buying influence over it is completely different and (potentially) an issue that would lead to people forking the project.

<comment><USER7> If interviews are really made to maintain high-engineering standards and prevent bad hires, interviewing and rejecting the author of a software that 90% of your employees use everyday is quite perplexing indeed.

While I understand that interviews are sometimes necessary to evaluate a candidate, it seems completely out of touch for Google to pass on an applicant with such an impressive background.

Not only that, but heaven knows that it takes a lot of dedication and leadership to lead an open source project from ideation to wide-spread use. If I were a startup founder, I would kill to get someone like him on my team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks like it works

        <html>
        <style>
        pre {
            -webkit-transform:scaleX(-1);
            -moz-transform:scaleX(-1);
            -ms-transform:scaleX(-1);
            -o-transform:scaleX(-1);
            transform:scaleX(-1);
        }
        </style>
        <pre>
             4
           /   \
          2     7
         / \   / \
        1   3 6   9
        </pre>
        </html>

</comment><comment><USER9> What's hard is to have necessary CS background to understand what "inverting a tree" as a term means. As a non-CS major, I don't know what they use it for as a "term" and it evokes several things I can do with a tree as an outsider. So interviewers can quickly eliminate me as a non-CS. How to invert a tree on a whiteboard? Use a mirror.

<comment><USER10> I like the solution a friend suggested: flip the interviewer upside-down.

<comment><USER11> I would go for flipping the White Board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At first I thought that he was given a slightly harder problem: given a binary tree and a particular leaf node of that tree, return another tree that's graph-isomorphic to the original, but has that node as the root. (You can visualize that as picking up the tree by a leaf node and shaking it, then reinterpreting the result as another tree.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Too bad the website requires you to sign up to run your solution.

But it's an interesting concept, I've had to use a similar one in the past for a job interview.

<comment><USER14> There's a bugmenot login that works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've enjoyed many of the responses on this topic, some people like to use it as a self congratulatory platform to express their position that the solution is trivial and "any engineer should be able to do it like me" with a piece of example code, while others use it as a soapbox to moan about the scourge of the tech interview process.

<comment><USER16> I've noticed that dichotomy as well. It seems to be splitting along culture lines - so one of these two camps would be right at home at Google, the other would be fairly miserable.

Of course, this creates its own issues related to creating and maintaining a mono-culture, but that's a topic for another thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This topic has spilled too much ink.

<comment><USER16> Its prevalence suggests that it's a pretty big issue that many interviewees face, and nobody has the answer on which is the best approach for hiring competent developers at scale.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> C++ Solution here :

TreeNode* invertTree(TreeNode* root) { if (root) { TreeNode* temp = root->left; root->left = invertTree(root->right); root->right = invertTree(temp); } return root; }

</comment><comment><USER18> Considering the answer is 1 line, I doubt I would have hired him either...

        def inverse(t): return Node(inverse(t.r), t.v, inverse(t.l)) if t else t

or if you must do it in place, 3 lines...

        def invert(t):
            if t: (t.l, t.r) = (invert(t.r), t.v, invert(t.l))
            return t

</comment><comment><USER19> >> _You have not signed in, cannot submit your code. </a>_

<comment><USER20> You can use [http://ideone.com](http://ideone.com), it doesn't require you to sign in to execute your code and allows almost every language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My JS

      var invertTree = function(root) {
          if (!root) return null;

          root.right = [invertTree(root.left), root.left = invertTree(root.right)][0];

          return root;
      };

</comment><comment><USER22> As a non-CS major, what is inverting a binary tree used for? Google just keeps bringing me back to Max's tweet, or blog posts about it.

<comment><USER22> I assume it's for sorting (and ordering) algorithms?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is just flogging a dead horse.</comment>


IBM's Sequoia is the world's fastest supercomputer - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/18/ibm-sequoia-worlds-fastest-supercomputer

<comment><USER2> I'm very impressed with the super-computing community's commitment to energy efficiency. Sure, we could throw more cores at the computations, but making meaningful strides to minimize energy consumption -- _in parallel_ with the iterative improvements to computational power -- is pretty noble and prudent.

</comment><comment><USER3> In case anyone missed it, here are a few more reports of the same story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4125450> (bbc.co.uk)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4125840> (bbc.com)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4126713> (washingtonpost.com)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4127060> (eweek.com)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4127543> (patexia.com)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4130027> (llnl.gov)

There are probably more ...</comment>


Google Code: Search before you spend 2000 hours porting Rails to JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/trimpath/wiki/TrimJunction <comment><AUTHOR> In reference to: <http://www.iunknown.com/2007/06/steve-yegge-por.html>

Steve Yen already did it years ago! _

_Kind of. The code looks pretty brief.</comment>


The Yuri Gadyukin Wikipedia Hoax (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/13362/greatest-wikipedia-hoax-ever <comment><USER2> By the end of the article it had crossed my mind that Boyter and Ducker (the perpetrators of the hoax) were themselves fictitious characters, and that the article itself was part of a larger hoax.

<comment><USER3> Oh wow. Sure enough: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Boyter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Boyter)

<comment><USER4> If you read the deletion log, it was deleted simply because he's not notable enough yet. There may also be an element of retribution, because the deletion log also mentions the hoax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> it seems to suck that the page is deleted out-right. I would rather that the page altered to reveal that it was all a hoax, but still describe the ficticious person, and perhaps also describe how the hoax was perpetrated. Those tidbits are rather interesting, and would be a shame to have all been lost in the next few decades.

<comment> at-fates-hands I agree.

It's interesting to note that Wikipedia does this for other pages that were "based on real facts" or were hoaxes. The one that comes to mind right away is Blair Witch.

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

 _The movie 's official website featured fake police reports and "newsreel- style" interviews. These augmented the movie's found footage style to spark debates across the internet over whether the movie was a real-life documentary or a work of fiction.[30]_

Apparently when its their OX getting gored its not ok.

<comment><USER6> Articles about hoaxes need to meet same notability standards as other Wikipedia articles. If other newspapers write widely about the Gadyukin article and it becomes a famous example, then an article about it will presumably be created.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_create_hoaxes...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_create_hoaxes#Hoaxes.2C_versus_articles_about_hoaxes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there any proof that this Wikipedia page actually existed for a significant time?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130321015446/http://en.wikiped...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130321015446/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gadyukin)

<comment><USER3> See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia)

Wikipedia claims Yuri's page lasted for "3 years, 7 months"

<comment><USER7> How do we know if that is true? I'd trust the article's diffing history, though. But that is gone - just as the text of the article is nowhere to be found.

<comment><USER8> The article was moved from its original location to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia/Yuri_Gadyukin) . Its edit history is intact there; click "View History" at the top there to see it.

<comment><USER7> "Now I'm a believer ..." _[1]_

Sources:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is hilarious:

"Following the controversy of Where the Tractor's Roam, Gadyukin's arrival in London was received with great expectations. His first production in the UK was Waiting… in 1956, a project born out of a desire to film Samuel Beckett's stage play "Waiting for Godot". Beckett however, was unhappy with the textual changes Gadyukin proposed and withheld permission for an adaptation. Gadyukin's film is a testament to his ability to tread a fine line, being very close to Beckett's play in places but always with sufficient alterations to avoid a lawsuit. Waiting… was both experimental in narrative and formal terms, much of the dialogue being a mix of English and Esperanto. Despite a warm reception from European festivals Waiting... met with mixed reviews from the British press and did little business."

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a feeling that Gadyukin sounded wrong, and sure enough. So I guess they were foiled by not having basic Russian knowledge.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't sound wrong, actually. It's a surname produced from the Russian word for "viper" (гадюка), which would make it unusual due to negative connotations, but not incorrect.

<comment><USER3> Ah, okay. Still, it's not a real surname, which caught them out.

<comment> at-fates-hands After 3 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reading this article reminded me of the "Nate Tate" art hoax ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Tate:_An_American_Artist_1...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Tate:_An_American_Artist_1928%E2%80%931960))

</comment><comment><USER12> This article was originally published in The Daily Dot in 2013:

[http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/wikipedia-hoax-yuri- ga...](http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/wikipedia-hoax-yuri-gadyukin- nitrate-movie/)

This is a re-print.

<comment><USER13> Thanks, we added 2013 to the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lovers of hoaxes should read about Ern Malley.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley

As the article points out, Ern is more famous than either of the hoaxers. The hoaxee Max Harris is also more famous.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me quite a bit of Neal Stephenson's Anathem - the concept of bogons, introduced in one of the later chapters.

</comment><comment><USER16> What I find more interesting is that the site recycled an article from two years ago and posted it with today's date.

</comment><comment><USER17> Borgesian indeed. :)

</comment><comment><USER18> reminds me of "Benjamin Breeg"</comment>


What's New in OS X El Capitan, Safari? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know what's new in OS X El Capitan, Safari? Will we get WebRTC support? <comment><USER2> www.apple.com/osx/elcapitan-preview/

<comment><USER3> Doesn't mention WebRTC in the upcoming version of Safari. The info is not mean't for a technical audience so i imagine this is still an unknown for now.</comment></comment>


The HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) Cybernetic Suit - only $4200 - <AUTHOR> http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/robotics/i-am-ironman

<comment><USER2> Now why'd they have to go and name themselves Cyberdyne? That comes with certain...baggage.

That said, things like this are only going to get more common, assuming technological society continues.

<comment><USER3> The name Cyberdyne made me think this is a hoax. It's not, right?

<comment><USER4> Its not a hoax. I used to work with folks who were tangentially involved with the project (their team and the other team went to the same robo conferences) and got to see the tech demos.

Their favorite one is suiting up a comely young Japanese lady and then having her lift various "That must be impossible!" objects. (30~50 kg of rice and the male presenter being two favorites.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cheaper than the Segway!?

Are Americans so suburban McMansion-bound that we've created a huge marketplace of people more interested in moving their stuff around than going anywhere?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a waiting list? They are seriously underpricing this, assuming it can hold up to industrial material handling use...

<comment><USER6> I don't believe it is very strong. I believe it's designed to provide enhanced mobility to old people and others with limited movement abilities. Not to enable geeks to chuck cars at one another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is so cool! I want one and I want to modify it.

I would be very surprised if these do not become very popular.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> here's a good video of the suit in action: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSP46lWvxJ4></comment>


Pound Flash Crash Baffles Traders as Algorithms Blamed for Slump - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-06/pound-plunges-6-1-percent-in-biggest-drop-since-brexit-result <comment><USER2> Ah, the financial press.

 _> With the currency already in freefall amid concern about a so-called hard Brexit, Friday's slide took it to the weakest level since March 1985._

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/gbpusd=x?ltr=1](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/gbpusd=x?ltr=1) \- look at the 5 year view.

The currency took a sharp drop right after the vote, quite possibly as much because the BoE said they'd engage in a massive QE (money printing) program as the vote itself. Since then GBP/USD has acting fairly normal, as in, continuing a general weakening trend that has been going on for several years now. Zooming out to the ten year view shows what an _actual_ freefall looks like as the relatively huge drop from $2 down to $1.50 during the financial crisis hit. The movements of the past few days are quite small relative to that.

But I guess freefall sounds exciting and showing a longer term graph is not.</comment>


Federal Court ruled defendant has no "reasonable expectation of privacy" for PC [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/files/2016/06/23/matish_suppression_edva.pdf <comment><USER2> That's a 58 page legal ruling. It sure would benefit from some legal eagle summarizing it. I didn't read the whole document, and even if I did I wouldn't necessarily understand all of it.

Apparently it involves someone's use of a Tor website called Playpen, which hosted a good deal of child pornography.

One really really disturbing thing to me is that the Feds raided a house in Florida and seized control of the site, and then:

 _The FBI did not immediately shut Playpen down; instead, it assumed control of Playpen, continuing to operate it from a government facility_ ... _Defendant argues a substantial increase in the usage of Playpen occurred after the Government took it over. While the Government concedes that there was some increase, it disputes the unsupported figures in Defendant 's briefs._

That just seems so wrong. The Feds seized the website and then continued to serve child pornography from it for at least several weeks.</comment>


Avegant Glyph: Transforming Virtual Retinal Display will sell on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/18/5222372/avegant-glyph-the-mainstream-virtual-reality-headset

<comment><USER2> What's actually relevant here? Call me back when someone makes a commercial display capable of synthesizing an accurate light field for each eye.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5XS4-hFgCs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5XS4-hFgCs)</comment>