Russian Cosmonauts Say That the Hole in the Soyuz Was Drilled from the Inside - <AUTHOR> https://www.universetoday.com/140996/russian-cosmonaut-says-that-the-hole-in-the-iss-was-drilled-from-the-inside/ <comment><USER2> So I was teaching a new guy on building some of the interior work on sailboats. I showed him how to drill a couple of holes through the fiberglass flange to mount something-or-other. Several hours later my boss asks me why there's two small holes in the hull. Well, I didn't specifically tell him _not_ to drill through the flange, the cm of space, and through the whole hull.

<comment><USER3> I'm a smart person but when learning stuff I often feel really dumb because I ask what should be really obvious questions. It's some weird mix of ignorance and fear of doing it wrong in front of the boss.

"So fasten x to y with a screw."

"Do I drill through and into the workbench too?"

"Why would you do that?!"

(In my mind) well I saw someone else fastening a work piece to the bench temporarily like that and why would the screw be this long then? Oh wait yeah that makes zero sense. My logic centre isn't working fast at all.

<comment><USER4> If you don't know, it is not clear that it makes zero sense. I'm often on each side of this, and what it really drives home is that most people do not actually consider most of the ways in which something can be done differently. :)

<comment><USER5> Classically illustrated by the "give instructions to make a sandwich game" [https://youtu.be/cDA3_5982h8](https://youtu.be/cDA3_5982h8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you ever find yourself in the position whereyou are holding a brand new drill (for instance) in your hand, and you are just desperate to try it on _something_. I am the same with a new knife, something is going to get cut. Maybe this happened? "I wonder how well this drills aluminium, OMG it went right through"...pretend nothing happened.

It is a bit like developers with a new js framework I suppose.

<comment><USER7> > pretend nothing happened

Sure, but in the hull of the spacecraft that's leaking my air away, I'd still put a wad a chewing gum in the hole to patch it.

<comment><USER8> As someone who fought and lost a war with holes in an inflated mattress I have to say that even one atmosphere is a surprisingly powerful amount of pressure when applied over a long period.

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, it's probably easier when the air's moving the other direction.

<comment><USER8> One of the ideas was to put a piece of insulating tape inside so that it could push from there.

It would have worked if it weren't for a rubber column inside just next to the hole which required my tape to be curved at a right angle - screwing up any proper insulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the museum on Nantuckut there is a display devoted to the _USS Essex_ , a whaling ship (it is the ship that the whale rams, I think). One incindent that made an impression on me was a sailor, who was driven insane by boredom, and sabotaged the ship, just for something to happen.

I understand space to be unbelivably boring.

<comment><USER11> My boss's classmate from college went up to the ISS for the first time a couple of years ago. They graduated about 25 years ago and his classmate worked nonstop for 25 years to get to go to space.

My understanding is once there, you work 16 hour days non-stop.

I think most people would describe being on the ISS as anything else but "boring".

<comment><USER12> There was a mutiny on a Skylab mission due to overworking the crew

<comment><USER13> Overworking the crew and the absolutely horrendous quality of life on Skylab

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well if it was drilled from the outside in, that would be spooky.

<comment><USER15> Not really. It was most likely done on the ground.

<comment><USER16> I suppose. But I would think cabin pressure and such are checked pre-launch.

<comment><USER17> The hole was sealed with glue initially. Temperature change in orbit eventually made it brittle and fall out, so the loss in pressure was only detected in orbit, but not prior to launch.

<comment><USER18> That makes too much sense...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If it was deliberate then it sound like someone who doesn't know wtf they were / are doing. That rules out the astronauts, seems to point to someone on the ground, pre-launch, with nefarious intentions but a lack of knowledge on how best to execute that ill intent.

Maybe?

<comment><USER19> I'd guess incompetence over malice

<comment><USER16> I'm suggesting both. That is, someone with bad intentions but too incompotent to exectute correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's the agregate pressure loss in the ISS which is just taken as "meh" and ignored? Is there one? I could imagine a leak being known from input/output maths but once you get to the error digits there are a number of sources of input and output (outgassing of materials? Incidental losses with inefficient vacuum pumps emptying Chambers) which would mean it wasn't clear there was a leak. I guess the Dynamics of a leak stand it pretty Stark: constant unremitting loss. Except of course if it's in a flexing part. Or a function of thermal change in orbit or a-periodic for some reason...

</comment><comment><USER21> Cant they determinate the point in time when the air of the hole started acting as a thrust vector?

<comment><USER22> No need, they can determine the point in time the air started escaping from looking at the internal pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone have any good theories as to how this could have happened? Is it really plausible that it was "accidentally" drilled during manufacture, and not detected?

I mean, _surely_ there must be some kind of testing step where they test that the craft is completely airtight. And no one is going to be drilling anything after that point.

<comment><USER24> Don't forget it was sealed, and the seal failed. So it was initially air tight.

To me that excludes sabotage, and instead points of error that someone tried to cover up. It also points to someone low-level/unskilled since they did a bad job of sealing it.

<comment><USER25> Do they know for sure it was sealed or is that just the theory how it would have got into space without detecting air loss on the ground?

Based on the tracks around the actual hole it looks accidental to me.

<comment><USER26> Part of the point of looking outside was to see if they could see any remains of the seal. Something was preventing it from leaking air, until it did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me of cloning error [http://steeljawscribe.com/2007/04/30/red-bulls- of-replicatio...](http://steeljawscribe.com/2007/04/30/red-bulls-of- replication-the-b-29-and-tu-4-bull)

</comment><comment><USER28> I do this mistake sometimes, I am off in my measuring, and have to drill a hole beside the one I drilled. I know it's likely not the cause, but if I built a shuttle, maybe it would have holes like this too. :/

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone who has ever held a drill can see in the pic that it was drilled from the inside. That means nothing in relation to _when, where or who_ did said drilling.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can they figure out if it was drilled in space or Earth

<comment><USER31> There are drill bit skid marks, so, in theory, it might be possible to build some sort of a model (of a drill held by a human hand) and then see under which conditions these skids marks _are_ possible.

But that's without considering that the simplest explanation is usually the right one and the at-orbit sabotage is just not that.

<comment><USER32> Presumably there's a "breakout" burr on the outside surface of the metal which indicates that the drill bit emerged through that surface.

<comment><USER33> This only indicates that the hole was made from one side or the other-- we can't say for sure that just because the hole was drilled from the inside that it was done in orbit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> We knew that already in September, due to the way the hole was plastered up. With the wrong material. The spacewalk just confirmed the coverup by the engineer who really should have told his boss. With the right material to cover it up it would have been no problem at all, so it had to be fixed in space.

</comment><comment><USER35> > they wasted no time plugging the hole with epoxy and gauze. [from article]

>Sealed with epoxy and resin [from photo caption]

I'm kindof confused, was it resin-impregnated gauze?

I'm also curious: If the hole was in a more-critical location, like one of the station's modules, would that be the repair process? Or would they be doing welding in space?

<comment><USER36> It's a small hole that doesn't really compromise structural integrity, and it doesn't have to hold that much pressure --- remember that sea-level atmospheric pressure is <15psia, and in the vacuum of space it's effectively 0, so the difference is <15psi.

<comment><USER37> This brings to mind a great Futurama scene:

> Fry: How many atmospheres can this ship withstand? > Farnsworth: Well it's a > spaceship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> At least it wasn't drilled from the outside..

</comment><comment><USER39> If the seal had remained, would the capsule have survived re-entry?

<comment><USER40> The hole was not in the part that reentered the atmosphere. Soyuz is made up of 3 modules: Orbital, Descent, and ISM. The hole was located on one of the modules that was jettisoned before deorbit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Russian Cosmonaut says that the Hole in the ISS was Drilled From the Inside

</comment><comment><USER41> Just to be clear, the title is incorrect. The hole is in the Soyuz, not the ISS.

<comment><USER42> Ok, we've changed that above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Perhaps that section stunk and someone drilled a hole to relieve the stink to space.

</comment><comment><USER44> Just adding the theory below for completeness. Search in the article for the part about the ISS:

[http://www.unz.com/ishamir/toilet-wars/](http://www.unz.com/ishamir/toilet- wars/)</comment>


Why truly sociable people hate parties - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebookoflife.org/why-truly-sociable-people-hate-parties/ <comment><USER2> I have personally found that being the host of a party or dinner is an interesting way to be social without being extremely extroverted. Sure, you have to be sociable, but your primary objective is to make sure _everyone_ is having a good time, the party is going well, the food is distributed, and so on. Your role is not to entertain individual people for hours on end, but more to make introductions between others and work behind the scenes, so to speak.

</comment><comment><USER3> > we make real friends through sharing in an uncensored and frank way a little > of the agony and confusion of being alive

You sound depressed, to be honest. Not everyone thinks like this (I certainly don't), and I'd hope I'm in the majority.

I don't think there's much value in calling any one class of people "truly sociable". People have lots of different ways they like to interact with others. If they're mutually beneficial, they're true enough for me.

<comment><USER4> You're really not in a position to speculate about someone's mental health state.

Furthermore, the manner in which you've phrased your response is going to be counterproductive to the person to whom you've communicated your perception, at the least. You're projecting your own social norms and worldview onto someone else in an ostracizing way.

This is actually a really telling microcosm, how you've decided to respond. It's indicative of the chasm between people like you and the poster to whom you've responded, a chasm that goes beyond any simple assessment of a mental health condition, all the way to elucidating a fundamental issue with the manner in which mental health issues are identified and handled in society.

The way you've represented the other poster is that he is odd, unusual and that your way of thinking _should_ be the majority consensus view (at least you hope so), and is the socially acceptable way. You've alienated the poster with your phrasing.

<comment><USER5> The author began the alienation by a deliberate choice of phrasing: "true sociability" is the thing that the author likes, and if you disagree, the implication is that you enjoy a shallower form of interaction.

It's all very sophomoric.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an interesting website.</comment>


Create Genuine Connections with the People Who Make Failure Impossible - <AUTHOR> http://zenhabits.net/genuine/ <comment><USER2> I actually had a conversation about emergent behavior with a friend the other night.

He stated that he had started doing things he didn't necessarily agree with and wondered how these behaviors could have become habits.

One potential explanation was that you are the sum of the people you have your five closest interactions with, over time. So your five people in any given situation are likely different from other situations and the average of all of your five person cliques are what effect your behaviors when you aren't actively cultivating them.

The person (actually people) I live with has actually become a daily toxic influence, so as a last resort I'm making the environment switch (moving to San Francisco) to attempt to generate a better environment.</comment>


Clojure-conj speaker abstracts posted - <AUTHOR> http://first.clojure-conj.org/speakers

<comment><USER2> I'll be speaking on Leiningen, my build tool, but I don't want to repeat what's available in the documentation or what _should_ be in the documentation. Open to suggestions for angles to go on this.

<comment><USER3> It might be a good idea to open with a 5 minute demo of Leiningen under normal use before you move one to the substance of your talk. Not every Clojurian uses Lien yet, some because they think it's too complicated. Demos that show how easy something is are pretty impressive (It's no accident that Rails and the Screencast became popular simultanously). It also gives you a launching point for further discussion.

Personally, I'd like to see a discussion of Lein plugin development - what's possible, what's not, how to hook into the build process, etc.

<comment><USER2> > might be a good idea to open with a 5 minute demo of Leiningen under normal > use before you move one to the substance of your talk. Not every Clojurian > uses Lien yet, some because they think it's too complicated.

Interesting; I hadn't thought of that.

> Personally, I'd like to see a discussion of Lein plugin development

Plugin development will definitely be covered!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope the talks will be recorded and posted.

<comment><USER5> That is the plan.</comment></comment>


A hacker's mom broke into a prison and the warden's computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-mom-broke-into-prison-wardens-computer/ <comment><USER2> These stories always make me wonder how many malicious infiltrations occur that are never discovered or reported? It could happen all the time, especially at places much less secure. It's certainly far riskier to infiltrate a prison (where all the guards have guns) than a corporate office.

<comment><USER3> Well in Georgia we have had a few reports from the prison system about what they confiscate from prisoners. [0]. Look at what they are finding just among the prisoners so imagine how much easier it is to smuggle into the staff areas anything you want. Nearly two thousand cell phones, four times that number in make shift weapons, and of course drugs.

Cell phones are a particular problem because it has been shown that some in prison continue to engage in criminal activities with those outside including witness intimidation or worse.

[0] [https://allongeorgia.com/georgia-state-news/ga-dept-of- corre...](https://allongeorgia.com/georgia-state-news/ga-dept-of-corrections- seized-9657-contraband-items-from-jan-march-2019/)

<comment><USER4> Is it wrong that I find it a terrible thing that people aren't allowed computers with internet or cellphones in prison?

How do we expect people to join back to society when they can't use literally the number one most important thing?

Maybe give them phones with no cameras and monitoring of use, but just nothing seems very inhumane.

<comment><USER5> In the US sometimes the evidence isn't clear that facilitating "join back to society" is an actual goal (it's often a stated goal). It often doesn't seem to be a policy priority.

<comment><USER6> It most definitely isn't a priority: If it were, the US would look at other countries with lower recidivism rates and spend a bit more on things like mental health care, halfway houses, job placement, and so on.

<comment><USER7> While I agree that the US prison system has many issues, recidivism rates can't really be compared between countries because of differences in time frames and rearrest vs re-conviction.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/)

<comment><USER8> The issue is not about comparing recidivism rates.

It is whether the US is looking at the results achieved by other countries and whether the US is trying to emulate successful strategies.

As a sweeping generalisation, I see that the US says "that doesn't apply to us", always finding some weird excuse. Your invalid response is kind of an example.

<comment><USER9> How do you "[look] at the results achieved by other countries" if those results aren't reported?

It's a fairly common sentiment that the U.S. penal system is heavily skewed toward retribution than reformation.[1] But identifying a problem on the one hand, and quantifying and addressing it on the other, are two entirely separate tasks. The latter is typically much more difficult.[2]

[1] Justice Anton Scalia admitted as much in court, "Well, I thought that modern penology has abandoned that rehabilitation thing, and they--they no longer call prisons reformatories or--or whatever, and punishment is the--is the criterion now. Deserved punishment for crime." Oral argument, Miller v. Alabama, 2012.

[2] Thus the quip, "Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." A reformulation of a Charles Dudley Warner quote, who, interestingly, also seems to have been an advocate for prison reform in his time, among many other civic and political reforms. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner) and [https://books.google.com/books?id=ktwRAAAAYAAJ&q=+%22little+...](https://books.google.com/books?id=ktwRAAAAYAAJ&q=+%22little+done%22#v=snippet&q=%22little%20done%22&f=false).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just listened to the Darknet Diaries Courthouse podcast about the pentest gone wrong that was referenced in the article. Highly recommended.

[https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/59/](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/59/)

<comment><USER11> That wasn't a good look for their employer, "Coalfire", and not only because no one answered when they got their jail phone call. How did Coalfire not notice that the target was owned by a completely different entity than the organization that signed the contract?

<comment><USER12> > How did Coalfire not notice that the target was owned by a completely > different entity than the organization that signed the contract?

The courthouse was owned by who? The sherriffs? I thought the ownership was okay, but it was the over-eager law enforcement that refused to budge because they weren't informed.

<comment><USER11> They had a contract with some office in the state government. The courthouse is owned by a county, as most courthouses in USA are. Later the fig-leaf of "they use a state-administrated computer program there" was constructed so as to limit the injustice inflicted on two humans, but county buildings are no more owned by the state than state buildings are owned by the feds.

And yes, stipulated, the sheriff is an asshole, but even he would have honored a contract between Coalfire and Dallas County, Iowa.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the clarification

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a great article, and one of the obvious but brilliant advice from the write up is :

> Don't blindly assume.

I know I would be way more willing to allow a pleasant lady of mature mothering age and demeanor than a middle aged guy.

Its the stereotypes we subconsciously build up unfortunately.

<comment><USER14> In the same vein:

It's not young thugs that come in to medical centers trying to score painkillers; it's middle-aged suburban moms.

The former know where to buy on the street. It's the latter that think of trying to lie to their doc.

But in practice we tend to be more suspicious of the former.

<comment><USER15> Young adults (age 18 to 25) are the worst offenders of prescription abuse, the largest increase in opioid abuse has been in rural America, and men are 140% as likely to die from opioid abuse.

So you have classified the greatest threat as female, suburban, and adult, but the statistics seem to indicate male, rural, and young adult. You are in danger of being pen tested.

<comment><USER16> Your parent was talking about people who try to convince their doctor to prescribe them painkillers, while you're talking about all people who abuse opioids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > In 2016, Rita died of pancreatic cancer; she never had a chance to do > another pen test. Strand declined to say which prison his mother > infiltrated, only that it has since shut down.

After reading the rest of the story, that was a gut punch!

<comment><USER18> Well, you've heard of burner phones -- welcome to 'the burner hacker'.

<comment><USER19> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've been doing it repeatedly, and we're trying for a bit better than that here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This also demonstrates an uncomfortable situation. There are certain types of bias in favor of women that help out with these kinds of situations. His mom likely was benefitting from a positive bias that she was harmless and fulfilled the presumption about what an inspector may look like... Something like this "Women are wonderful effect"[1].

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

<comment><USER21> This is absolutely a thing.

I worked at a fortune small-cap where the IT department was absolutely insidious. They would undermine anyone who they didn't like, or who opposed their nonsense. I wrote a lot of backend stuff, and they would spend far more effort and money denying us servers and resources than it would have taken to simply get those things for us. They'd tell us developers we couldn't use the OS's our products targeted, and yet they'd be using them.

They undermined their own CIO time after time; most lasted about 18 months.

Then, the company hired a sociable, intelligent, woman as CIO.

Within six months, she'd (rightly) fired the ENTIRE department. They just didn't see it coming.

<comment><USER22> Wait, what was your point here? That women actually are wonderful?

<comment><USER23> I assumed the point is that the combative developers saw the new CIO as harmless and didn't fight her as with the others CIOs.

<comment><USER21> That was the point, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Articles like these are a great anecdote of the ease of getting people into security.

Despite the need for people, you'll still encounter a lot of barriers to getting a job.

It doesn't make sense to have a bunch of hoops to jump through when the demand is there, you can train people easily, and there are people willing to learn.

You can disregard 99% of calls-to-action regarding security hiring and talent demand.

<comment><USER25> I think you're disregarding the fact that Rita was almost certainly better than anyone in that company at playing the role of state health inspector specifically and getting into that prison without stink eye from anyone. She brought the interest (she asked for the job) and a deep domain expertise that the company was able to directly leverage into an engagement. This is something the industry is begging for and will trip over themselves to invest in.

It's not clear that you're describing that kind of situation. Taking someone with essentially zero relevant experience and training them up to be someone that can deliver a skilled service to a client is a much different ask. There are companies that are willing to make that bet, I work for one now that is hiring pure developers in a security role, but they have the resources to play the long game. Little infosec consulting firms can't do that.

This comes across as me disagreeing with you. I'm not, I agree security is easy to get into and there is way too much black box bullshit surrounding it. I just have been involved with companies along the full spectrum of services and capabilities and feel that not everyone is in the position to make the bet you're laying out as a sure thing.

<comment><USER24> Many physical pentesters have gotten into places where they didn't have requisite deep domain knowledge because they can research particulars or just rely on regular social engineering. If someone is able to breach a prison without the deep domain knowledge, then it's not actually that important. It's good for demonstrating the damage an insider threat could pose. This article doesn't have a comparison engagement with someone lacking domain knowledge though.

I don't think the industry is tripping over themselves to get talent in any aspect. It just isn't what I've encountered. None of my prior domain knowledge counted (what little there is). Only certs and recent activity.

<comment><USER25> Depends on where you're looking. Companies like the one in the article are not going to be in a position to do a lot of staff development unless they have no other choice..you need to be able to hit the ground running in many cases.

Depending on what experience you do have you might find good luck in hiring on at larger firms like insurance, financial, healthcare where they are going to need in-house staff and can make use of other skills that you might bring while they train you up on the security side.

<comment><USER24> I personally am going back to a dev job. It pays better and there's work to be done (incl. security). I got OSCP and 5 months later eventually landed a security job and ended up sitting on my hands for 3 months doing nothing. It isn't what the industry sold to me as "needing talent".

I know there's smart people doing good work, but it could not deliver for me within a reasonable time despite putting in the work, and that was enough to realize most of the call-to-action was bullshit. If anyone asks me for career advice (no one should), I just tell them to learn to code and do code reviews in their spare time. Don't even bother with the pentesting side of it.

<comment><USER25> I blame it on the security industry because we are terrible at communicating, but your idea of how this works isn't aligned with reality. Think of it as a dumbed down version of the current staffing situation with healthcare. We have a huge talent gap, but that doesn't mean we put fresh grads to work on surgery.

Pen tests and red teaming are about both skills _and_ decision making, both of which have very high potential for significant damages if carried out incorrectly. For me personally, getting the OCSP would just tell me you have very basic skills and have demonstrated some interest. I would then have to fold you into the engagement pipeline, which would involve some thumb-warming, as basically a water person until i get feedback from the rest of the team that you are asking the right questions and are making good decisions. You would then get progressively more responsibilities and operate under scrutiny for a couple of years before you would be asked to lead anything. The fact that you did nothing for three months just tells me they were too busy to figure out how to get you started on that ramp...or they were idiots. Who knows.

Again, it's a communication issue and your expectations were set too high, but that definitely doesn't mean the industry is secretly flush with talent.

<comment><USER24> OSCP has too high of a fail rate to only demonstrate very basic skills, it's a bit more than that (if so, that puts CISSP, CEH, etc. way futher down yet you see those as job requirements all the time). There are plenty of people without it and employed still doing pentesting. This was my reality, I don't know how actually going through that situation qualifies it as anything but reality.

This is another thing: people value those certs really differently and it's almost worth not doing them at all, again going back to: just learn to code. And to your point: more communicating badly.

There's not a single more valuable qualifier than experience and yet that's the hardest thing to get when it really shouldn't be. Med students assist with surgeries but they aren't put in charge, I don't see why pentesting can't be the same.

I think you've taken the rare, good, working parts of the industry and believe that to be a baseline, and I don't think it's realistic.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the exchange. Your experience with trying to enter a field that I'm probably all too complacent about at this point has been very informative and I'll definitely incorporate it when I'm encountering those that are trying the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone interested in this stuff should check out the Darknet Diaries podcast for similar stories. They're great!!

</comment><comment><USER27> AFAIK this talk aas given at DerbyCon in 2018 and there might be video.

<comment><USER28> Here's the video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upa6IEwnTTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upa6IEwnTTo)

Here's another one from yesterday - RSA Conference: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqOGuXcLdOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqOGuXcLdOA)

<comment><USER27> Also you're right it's from 2017 not 2018.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there an article to this article? I just see a 3 sentence blurb and an unrelated video.

<comment><USER30> keep scrolling down....

<comment><USER29> Nothing. I see 3 sentences. A short bio about the author. An unrelated "Featured" video. And then "More for You".

Screenshot here. Safari on the left. Firefox on the right. [https://i.imgur.com/Qgqiywc.png](https://i.imgur.com/Qgqiywc.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Mr. Robot, S1.

</comment><comment><USER32> Off-topic but can someone please fix the lazy title? I detest misused (or omitted) apostrophes. Even better would to just change the title to match the linked article: "How a Hacker's Mom Broke Into a Prison—and the Warden's Computer"

<comment><USER19> Yes, fixed now.

Submitters: please don't rewrite titles unless they are misleading or linkbait. This is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

(Submitted title was "Pen testers mom breaks into a state prison and infects wardens computer")

<comment><USER33> Dang, if I may use this opportunity to ask a question about titles, is it okay to change a title because the original isn't descriptive enough within the context of Hacker News?

Just to choose an example: There's a program called Retroactive which patches Aperture, iPhoto, and iTunes to work again on macOS Catalina. The project's github links to a medium article the author wrote, which is titled:

> Technical Deep Dive: How does Retroactive work?

If you arrive at this article from RetroActive's github, it's a fine title. But if you just see it on Hacker News and _don 't_ know what Retroactive does, the title is 100% useless noise. So when I submitted the article to HN[0], I tried to make the title more descriptive while also changing as little as possible. All I did was replace "work" with what Retroactive actually does:

> Technical Deep Dive: How Does Retroactive Patch Aperture for macOS Catalina?

Even though I did my best to change as little as possible, I felt quite guilty about the title change. But in hindsight, by trying to "compromise", I ended up with a title that's _still_ really bad! The first 6 words of my 11-word title give the reader absolutely zero information.

This article didn't get much attention, and I can't help wondering if the title is why (not to imply that this or any article somehow deserves attention). The title really should have been:

> How Retroactive makes Aperture, iPhoto, and iTunes work again on macOS > Catalina

0: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22229101](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22229101)

<comment><USER19> What you're talking about is fine. We could construct an argument that it's also within the site guidelines, but really the rules aren't meant to be treated so formally.

The only thing I'd add is that it makes a huge difference to use language, where possible, from the article itself, rather than come up with words that aren't in the article. There's nearly always a subtitle or representative phrase that is suitable. A title that consists of the article's own language makes for a much better title than one that the submitter made up. We stick to that principle when editing titles. It's not always doable, but 90% of the time it is.

In the case of 22229101, though, I'd go for the subtitle: "The technical backstory of Retroactive". It's true that it doesn't explain what Retroactive is. But it explains what the article is, and it implies that readers will find out what Retroactive is. Indeed, the very first thing you see if you click on it is "If you need to run Aperture, iPhoto, or iTunes on macOS Catalina". It's a great HN submission, so I've changed the title to that and emailed you a repost invite.

p.s. I don't mind having these conversation on the site from time to time, but it's random whether we end up seeing a post like yours or not, so if you want to be sure to get a response, email@example.com is better.

<comment><USER33> Thank you! I have resubmitted (with that title).

I will say: my concern with not defining Retroactive is that the people who'd likely be most interested in such an story (say, macOS programmers) won't be any more likely to read it than, say, SQL programmers. But maybe that's less big a deal than I think it is?

<comment><USER19> That didn't work, and a bunch of users even flagged it, so let's try again with your title. I put the submission ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22454069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22454069)) in the second-chance pool (described at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML - <AUTHOR> https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/firefox-dev/2014-December/002510.html <comment><USER2> I've built that. Just to be clear: this is a personal project, not a mozilla project (even though I'm a mozilla employee).

Also - many people find it silly to use HTML instead of the operating system toolkit library. But it's not HTML _or_ native. It can be both. In this case, the HTML code define the layout, and we can draw native widgets inside (look at the <input type=submit> tag in HTML, it's a native widget). For example, if you run the current build on Mac, you'll see that new tabs use Yosemite "vibrancy" effect. Native look and native performance, can, in theory, be achieved.

<comment><USER3> As a guy who works with primarily back end server code. I hate UI stuff primarily because even creating small input UI windows requires jumping though hoops of fire it feels like with strange API calls, and documentation that says, "Just follow the example it'll all be fine in a couple minutes." But I'm 8 inheritance levels deep trying to figure out why my text box isn't rendering.

I've often wondered why OS's just don't host browser render engines internally and draw their UI with that.

Well I don't for long, I know HTML is much younger then X. Also browser engines are massive resource hogs. But with the advent of 8-16+ GB of ram in consumer computers can we really say 2-3GB for windows rendering is heavy?

Especially if it offers that much empowerment to developers.

<comment><USER4> no more software layers please! my PC was much faster when my programs were native. Apps rendered with chrome rendered with webkit...8GB used to be enough, then all these "developers" with their "development machines" who think it's no big deal that their Hangouts implementation takes 200MB when Pidgin takes 20.

people used to complain about Firefox hogging memory, I think it's Chrome we should be worried about...

<comment><USER5> At the same time, it's likely much more expensive to code native apps than it is to just build an html/css/js app using chrome with a lot of the heavy lifting already done for you (at the expense of increased resource consumption).

A lot of these apps wouldn't exist if they couldn't have been built quickly and cheaply.

<comment><USER4> well, we're hitting process node limits (5, maybe 4nm) in 10 years so I think we better stop it.

[http://www.chipworks.com/media/wpmu/uploads/blogs.dir/2/file...](http://www.chipworks.com/media/wpmu/uploads/blogs.dir/2/files/2012/04/FIN-410K-c_branded.png)

You see those little dots? Those are individual silicon atoms from one of a few fins in the gate on Intel's 22nm node.

Also, I Am A C Programmer. I Think Everything Should Be Written In C. C Is Close To The Hardware And Is Faster And Use Less Resource Compared To The JavaSlow and WebKittenz and CSS. But I Like CSS Because It Has C In It. I Am A C Programmer.

Get back to me when we have compressed ZRAM implementations and Same Page Merging everywhere to save memory on each Chrome process and each JS interpreter instance. Don't you want to do the green thing?

<comment><USER6> Congratulations, I thought I'd managed to go a whole year without hearing about process limits and the grim future we face. Seriously, every 6 months or so for the last 15 years or more there is an article published explaining the end of the PC revolution. Google the terms "end of silicon" or "end of moore's law" and add a custom date range like 1998-1999 and you'll get dozens if not hundreds of articles from reputable sources saying that we've come to an impasse or that in 3, 5 or 10 years we will be screwed.

When chips started hitting the limits of the photo-lithography process, they switched to lasers, UV, DUV, and now EUV. Transistors start leaking so they redesign them time and time again. We've gone from completely 2D Circuts to 2 layer 3D to what's it at now 16 layers? The end is nigh and has been since Moore came up with that god damn law.

My point is that there's a lot a really brilliant people in the field who've been working for years if not decades to address problems we haven't even had yet. We're perpetually on the verge of a crisis, and simultaneously on the verge of a solution to said crisis.

We're in an age of ridiculously powerful machines that we don't know what to do with. If suddenly all progress halted in chip development and we had to make due, we'd probably enter into an age of hyper optimization where software engineers would be scrutinizing every clock cycle furthering the annual performance gains we've had for the last 40+ years.

<comment><USER4> perhaps you didn't look at the atoms in the picture I linked.

At 4nm no amount of dielectric will save you from the quantum tunneling.

<comment><USER6> I'm not suggesting a solution, I'm simply stating that lots of brilliant people have been aware of this eventuality and have been actively working on next generation processes to address it.

<comment><USER4> if "next generation processes" is really the best you can come up with...

Those people are working on EUV at ASML. Those are the next generation processes. What you're suggesting is they have some super science quantum- tunneling barrier that the world has never heard of nor seen nor thought could exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The browser shipped with Blackberry 10 was written in HTML and was a real joy to develop.

Edit: some more public details

The default browser on the BlackBerry 10 platform was a completely new browser application. The chrome was written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Being able to develop the chrome on your desktop browser or being able to run inspector remotely and using your desktop was very handy. The core was a command line application called webplatform that "launched" a url that was a "webapp". The webapp had API's exposed to it such as creating WebView's in or out of process (yup blackberry has had multi-process tabs for a while now...). One joy was being able to pull up the Javascript console for the browser WebView and dynamically calling exposed c++ API's in any WebView in any process to test out features or diagnose problems.

It started out as a quick little proof of concept I tossed together over a day and the upside was large enough to invest time into. One of the reasons for making the main browser in html was that as a platform we wanted web application to succeed. Eating our own dogfood we made sure webapps could handle the job. The API's that were needed were there, memory usage were low, startup time was fast etc. And if you search for reviews of the blackberry 10 browser you will find that the end result was a success.

Edit 2: Much more in depth information can be found on this video which was a presentation given at Blackberry Jam by several of my colleagues. Skip to the 23 minute mark to see some actual code of what a webapp browser would look like.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ8vxhTezvs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ8vxhTezvs)

<comment><USER8> Congratulations on awesome tech. Can you confirm the browser still work like this or did they change it to a non-HTML version in recent revisions?

<comment><USER7> I left RIM in 2012 so I could not confirm that this is how the browser works in new devices released today. But given the success and advantages that having the html browser gave us there would have to be some really compelling reason (or $$$) to abandon it. The group I was part of was formally TorchMobile and as a group had significant browser experience having written a fair number so we understood the hassles of maintaining two projects. Being able have webkit developers help with part of the browser made development go faster on both sides (webkit devs could easily abuse the browser to test new feature). Even if it isn't used in the browser as mentioned at the bbjam the weblauncher application was used by not only the browser, but for a number of other purposes.

I can only imagine there is a fair amount of overlap in Mozilla where there are two developers working on the same thing, one for xul, one for html.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm very excited at the potential of the browser chrome being implemented entirely via standard web technologies. And given that Servo is never going to implement XUL, it would save a lot of effort that would otherwise be spent implementing a bespoke, minimally-functional UI (which has been tentatively named Crow, if the MST3K reference wasn't already obvious).

See also this other thread linked from the discussion in the OP, "Moratorium on new XUL features": [https://lists.mozilla.org/pipermail/dev- platform/2014-Octobe...](https://lists.mozilla.org/pipermail/dev- platform/2014-October/007160.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I realize this is a personal project, but this is deeply amusing considering that:

1\. Way back when (circa 1998-2001?), the Mozilla project started as a radical redesign of the next gen Netscape browser. One of the core principles of the architecture was that the browser itself would render the UI elements (using an HTML-like tech call XUL).

2\. The Firefox browser (then called "Phoenix") was a reaction against the above, which was thought to make the browser too heavyweight and slow. Originally Phoenix was the Gecko engine in a native UI window without all the XUL overhead (and without all the other components of the Mozilla Suite like the email client).

Now we're seeing the reverse trend, 15 odd years later.

EDIT: It turns out I misremembered about Phoenix dropping XUL completely-- rather they dropped XPFE for a "new light-weight XUL toolkit", along with dropping all the non-browser components of the Mozilla suite.

<comment><USER11> Well, XUL was quite ahead of its time. Most of XUL has now been incorporated (and improved, and optimized) in HTML.

Also, Phoenix kept using XUL, just a rewrite that didn't attempt to do everything from scratch, but relied upon native components wherever available. Most of the Firefox UI is either XUL or HTML.

<comment><USER12> XUL also had my favorite namespace URI of all time:

[https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.x...](https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great. My experience with XML for UI went something like this.

1\. build an XML language for abstracting C++ UI MCF or gtk

2\. realizing the need for HTML content - embed mozilla/xulrunner

3\. realzing xulrunner /mozilla already provide a cross platform toolkit use XUL to build the user interface with xpcomm wrappers

4\. realize that HTML is better for user interface, and only write HTML/javascript with xpcomm wrappers.

5\. switch to web development completely and avoid desktop apps all together :)

6\. from time to time check in on the state of desktop/app development and see if they've finally figured out html is better for interfaces than any interface builder

<comment><USER14> > from time to time check in on the state of desktop/app development and see > if they've finally figured out html is better for interfaces than any > interface builder

Is this for real? I can name numerous advantages of Web Apps have over desktop/native Apps, "Building better interfaces" is not one of them.

Trying to build a UI with CSS and DOM manipulation (not to mention <div> hacks, Bootstrap, Dojo/JQueryUI, different rendering engines, etc) is an exercise in pain compared to basically _any_ modern UI toolkit. (From XAML to Qt, Android, hell even GTK.)

edit: minor correction, I meant to say " build a UI" not "build a native UI"

<comment><USER15> You're right - but the real win here is that hundred of thousands of developers already know HTML + CSS, and very few developers know XUL or even any native UI API. Given that these native APIs change with the platform, many developers have given up on them since HTML + CSS will be useful for the foreseeable future.

Is XUL really better than HTML + CSS? Probably. But HTML + CSS is getting a lot better (flexbox, etc), and tons of developers know it _now_ and can contribute. Plus, dogfooding. I think it's a really good move!

Sure, RAM usage will probably get worse, but perhaps it will motivate them to improve that as well, and all users of the browser on all pages will benefit as a result.

<comment><USER14> I don't know if XUL is better than HTML + CSS, I haven't used XUL. I have used XAML and Qt, and the Android Layout Manager. and they are way easier to deal with.

In HTML, a button is not a button, it's a DIV with an CSS properties (which render differently depending on the browser) + some images + some Javascript. And that abstraction leaks a lot.

The equivalent in native code will be having to deal with Xlib in X11 or GDI on Windows every time you debug.

That said, there is value in HTML/CSS/JS UIs, I don't deny that, and I use them when appropriately. I still think native UIs are 'cleaner' to develop.

<comment><USER15> While that's true, a lot of the frustration with HTML/CSS/JS melts away when you have only a single target environment and don't have to worry about browser compatibility. Targeting a modern environment like Gecko would actually be quite nice; you could use a lot of modern ES6 features and Flexbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Color me surprised, but when we get to the point where we run HTML to build a browser that is supposed to be the tool used to render and display such HTML... haven't we gone too far? Is a browser necessary? What is rendering that HTML if not a browser?

I mean, I get it, a browser is used to browse (duh) the internet, not necessarily to render HTML, but at this point we really need to ask ourselves "why are we doing this, again?".

EDIT: Still impressive though, nice proof of concept!

EDIT 2: As much as I hate the "Why am I getting downvoted?" shenaningans that people usually pull, I want to clarify the intent behind this post. I'm not flaming or hating on the project, it's a cool idea. I was trying to spark some insightful conversation on "where do we want to go from here?" and "do we really need a browser if we have gone this far?". If you want to downvote me, why not just reply to this post and have a nice interesting conversation instead?

<comment><USER17> > What is rendering that HTML if not a browser?

The rendering engine (Gecko). I guess for it to make sense you must separate the drawing engine from the browser, which adds things like tabs, bookmarks, themes and add-ons.

<comment><USER9> This can be seen today in Servo, which can browse the internet but has no GUI of to speak of (e.g. to visit a URL you must pass it as a command-line parameter to the executable).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a fantastic idea and I'm really glad to see experimentation in this area. It's already great to look at how things like Webkit's dev tools are implemented in HTML and see how that idea might be extended.

At it's core, a browser is an HTML/JS rendering engine with some chrome to allow users to manage what pages they're looking at – and in most cases, that chrome is actually pretty minimal. It seems like a natural evolution to play with the idea of implementing that chrome in the natural UI language of the browser engine too. Yeah, the tools aren't there yet – but experiments like this will give us some scope to play around with what might be possible and identify the pain points that must be overcome to make it a reality.

Great stuff.

</comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of Breach[1] / Thrust[2] which basically lets you do the UI plus some low level stuff via Node/JS.

There is a 'browser in a gist' [3] using Breach which is a good example of its use.

[1]: [http://breach.cc/](http://breach.cc/)

[2]: [https://github.com/breach/thrust](https://github.com/breach/thrust) (I believe this is the new core of Breach by the same people)

[3]: [https://gist.github.com/morganrallen/f07f59802884bcdcad4a](https://gist.github.com/morganrallen/f07f59802884bcdcad4a)

</comment><comment><USER20> Copy this into firefox's URL bar for a fun treat:

        chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

<comment><USER21> Nice, and it nests too! Though with strange behavior after the first nesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm always pleased when I use chrome devtools on chrome devtools. So I can't welcome this enough. Have fun.

<comment><USER23> This has worked on Firefox since the beginning of time. One could use the DOM inspector and venkman JS debugger, then Firebug chrome inspector and more recently the Firefox developer tools to inspect Firefox's XUL.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Tools_Toolbox...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Tools_Toolbox#Settings)

<comment><USER22> Ha, weird, I never felt the same direct access to the metalevel as in Chrome. Just the other day I spend an afternoon trying to access Firefox restore session url list through the developper tools without any luck, the XUL ~DOM element was an opaque type I couldn't inspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can HTMLRunner be used as the basis of something like node-webkit[1]? What's its strength / weaknesses compared to that?

[1]: [https://github.com/rogerwang/node- webkit](https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit)

<comment><USER2> weaknesses: I built it in a couple of days. It's ugly. Designed for Firefox.html only. Don't use it :)

<comment><USER25> How did you build it? I always thought the Firefox code was huge and monolithic and couldn't be used like this.

<comment><USER24> The main commit seems to be this: [https://github.com/paulrouget/gecko- dev/commit/a3bb11e9bcf8c...](https://github.com/paulrouget/gecko- dev/commit/a3bb11e9bcf8cf48184c522f9c1856d79db5025e)

You may notice a thin layer of XUL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Would it be possible to implement XUL using Web Components and port the existing XUL interface to HTML that way?

<comment><USER27> Possibly, yes. Though I would not recommend implementing it as is... XUL was never versioned as far back as when I used to work with it, which is about 5 years ago. It's messy. Not easy to use. Although still easier than the new flexbox standard that evolved from it.

Anyway I'd hope for something better than XUL/XBL. The potential was always there. Mozilla the platform! —

I massage HTML and CSS professionally since 1996, and I must say I'd prefer something like "XUL2" over my beloved web standards any day. I wouldn't mind if "XUL2" was in actuality created with web components. Though seriously, CSS and DOM (HTML/XML) were created to make you suffer. That's their true purpose.

There is no easy way out of this. And rewriting the web won't work either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Live demo from github instructions : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcCtRpkq53M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcCtRpkq53M)

ps: not my work, see : [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2ow1g0/firefoxh...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2ow1g0/firefoxhtml_rebuilding_firefox_ui_in_html_paul/cmr81pl)

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a connection between this and the old Chromeless project? (It doesn't say there is, so I suppose my real question is, why not?)

<comment><USER11> There have been many attempts at a chromeless app runner for Gecko, including Prism and WebAppRT. If I recall correctly, Paul is using a variant of WebAppRT as a runtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm all for it if it means we finally get ::-webkit-scrollbar equivalency in Firefox...

</comment><comment><USER30> What widgets are used? (I'm not a web dev and only dabbled in that over 15 years ago) If you use native widgets, then you end up with a cross-platform app framework. If you create your own widgets, then you end up with a cross- platform GUI toolkit and app framework. Which is it? Either way, this seems quite interesting. OTOH, can you do apps this way with anything other than js?

</comment><comment><USER31> This sounds like a good idea. But change should happen gradually - no to parallel versions. Like author of zeroconf, when he was rewritting in in OCaml: [http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2014/06/06/python-to-ocaml- ret...](http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2014/06/06/python-to-ocaml- retrospective/#porting-method)

</comment><comment><USER32> Is this the first step to switch to servo?

<comment><USER11> There are discussions on that topic. However, everybody needs to realize that this is Paul's personal project, not an official Mozilla project, so don't get your hopes too high.

That being said, I'm quite excited about that project, I opened a pull request a few hours ago and it was accepted :)

<comment><USER9> Can you link to the pull request? I'm curious to see it, but can't find it.

<comment><USER11> [https://github.com/paulrouget/firefox.html/pull/17](https://github.com/paulrouget/firefox.html/pull/17)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Interesting. But on Android Mozilla already deviated form this approach of "webbiness" in favor of using native UI. Same as Sailfish browser does with Qt and Gecko through IPCembedlite.

If not for that, Sailfish browser could reuse the UI.

<comment><USER34> Firefox OS on the otherhand is HTML.

<comment><USER33> Yeah. So I wonder if Mozilla is going to switch to HTML UI on other mobile platforms too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> >we could drop XUL and close the gap between B2G and Firefox Desktop

I hope not. Customisability is always the first thing to die in mobile 'apps'. As soon as that happens on the desktop, I'm moving to Pale Moon permanently.

<comment><USER36> What about this (using HTML instead of XUL) would make it less customizable? If anything, it's at least more accessibly customizable because more of us know HTML than know XUL.

Also, I imagine if this truly the way forward, XUL will be removed from the FF code base, thus making a XUL based Pale Moon trickier since it would be so different from upstream at that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if this could be used to visually replay captured HTTP traffic?

Say, I want to visualize what my site visitors are seeing - and I capture complete request/reply stream of data off Ethernet interface.

</comment><comment><USER38> Way back when wasn't the original plan for Seamonkey to use Gecko to render the UI as well? Maybe they were too far ahead of their time back then.

<comment><USER11> Yep, and most of the UI in Firefox is either XUL or HTML, both of whom are rendered by Gecko. This is not the case on Android, for technical reasons (libxul is too long to load, so we rely on Java, which is pre-loaded by the OS, to display the UI).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is like watching a nuclear superpower go down in a fist fight. I honestly think HTML5 was designed to eliminate Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER40> love the idea, web tools built on web technology.

</comment><comment><USER41> The one thing that absolutely annoys me about the current Firefox is the location of the refresh button, which is a tiny icon stuck in the far right of the location bar. Worse of all you can't customize it natively. You have to download extensions to change the UI and still you won't get it to look 100% how you want it. Being able to modify a HTML based UI would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have been running Firefox for almost a month now. The divide between firefox and Chrome is getting bigger and bigger.

1\. What do you guys think about sidebars and multiple toolbars? There is only a limited space available on screens these days for most people. I find them very archaic.

2\. Dropdown arrows - I also don't understand the purpose of actually showing that if you click here a menu will open. A folder expands when you click it. There is nothing to be said about it.

3\. Lack of overlay icons. There is literally a block with yellow background which shows number.

4\. Lack of interest in devs to innovate on Firefox. There is a difference in versions of Evernote webclipper for Firefox and Chrome. Diigo extension is in atrocious condition.

Why do you think a solid browser like Firefox is lagging behind in UI compared to Chrome?

<comment><USER43> It depends on your point of view, I could bring up similar arguments with Chrome. There is still no way in Chrome to open more than 25 tabs without the tabs being so small we can't see them and the Settings page of Chrome is not an example of clean UI either.

<comment><USER42> They both are great browser. I am not trying to say one is good and other is bad. What I am trying to say is that because of the reasons mentioned above it has been hard for me to adopt to Firefox. Chrome is Google's platform they want to push their services and has become more of an application platform with Chrome only apps and less of a browser. I would like a browser that promotes a free web.

For example, Diigo's addon doesn't have overlay icon so it is impossible for me to tell if I have already bookmarked a page or not. Like many addons on Firefox Diigo has both sidebar and toolbar. So basically they have developed 3 UI elements and none of which work well. There is clearly Diigo's fault here but applications are as good as platform.</comment></comment></comment>


What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Stronger - <AUTHOR> http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2014/12/09/what-doesnt-kill-me-makes-me-stronger/ <comment><USER2> I'm not buying the Demographic Theory of Senescence.

> Aging is nature's way of leveling out the death rate, assuring that we don't > all die at the same time. Aging puts our deaths on an individual schedule so > we can die at different times; other causes of death tend to kill everyone > or no one.

It's a magical "group selection" hand-wavy argument—it sounds nice and is kind of heart-warming, but when making an evolutionary argument, that's usually a bad sign. In this case, it doesn't provide an explanation of how purposeful aging could possibly increase an individual's probability of passing on their genes.

If not aging was an option, you would expect to see something more similar to the results of Michael J. Wade's 1976 experimental attempt to show group selection behavior in individuals of a species. He artificially induced resource constraints on a selected subpopulation of flour beetles to see if the beetles would restrain their reproduction for the benefit of the group. What happened? The adults started eating the young of the other adult beetles.

[http://www.pnas.org/content/73/12/4604.full.pdf](http://www.pnas.org/content/73/12/4604.full.pdf)

I don't have an explanation for aging, but I seriously doubt that it's a way for Nature to regulate population size to avoid resource depletion for the group.

<comment><USER3> I'm way out of my league here, but what if aging is just the way to evolve and adapt. If there were no natural deaths, beings with the same genes would be around forever, with no possibility for its species to adapt to a new environment.

Any reproduction would be just creating more competition for resources if one expect to live forever. So there would be no deaths, but also no births, no mutations.

If there was no death we still would be just - what is the first life form to age? protofishes? populating the oceans until the salinity (?) changes and we were all dead.

<comment><USER4> Yea, coming from the background assumption of "everything comes from the same thing", it seems more interesting to me that we have consciousness to experience, rather than the curiosity that we age and die. Age and death are phenomena we observe of ourselves, a thing that is constantly changing yet fundamentally the same thing.

It's a philosophical quirk, but it really depends on your existential and universal (philosophies / beliefs / religions). Things you must assume, basically, in order to make meaning from what is otherwise, pure logic (structural arrangement) and pure state (instances of that structure).

The idea that aging and death are undesirable is a complex phenomena to begin with. A rock does not care that the water slowly washes it away to shape it into a new form, yet humans have very discerning opinions on the matter across all phenomena they observe. Every explanation humanity manufactures seems to have some bias.

<comment><USER5> >it seems more interesting to me that we have consciousness to experience,

Everything that is alive has some level of "consciousness" aka some ability to sense, detect, and adapt to it's environment. The idea that consciousness is "special" and "unqiue" is the big lie. If knowledge is unified, then that means the same is true for the universe, since what we call "knowledge" is in fact the universes structure directly. Like your hand, your car, etc. What we call "knowledge" is our representations (symbolic languages like math, english, etc). We confuse our symbols with reality.

It's not that knowledge is "provisional" (aka the structure of the universe is the truth, hence not provisional), it's that our current abstract representations of it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are some questionable assertions in this article. eg,

"Survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings had lower cancer rates later in life than people of similar age who had not been exposed to radiation " has the ref [http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/095530006010859...](http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09553000601085980)

which a) has nothing to do with Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and b) found that low dose radiation in fact increased cancer risk (shock!):

"The results suggest that prolonged low dose-rate radiation exposure appeared to increase risks of developing certain cancers in specific subgroups of this population in Taiwan."

<comment><USER7> Also:

"Paraquat is the chemical name for the active ingredient in Agent Orange."

In reality, paraquat is very different from the active ingredients in Agent Orange (2,4-D and 2,4,5-T).

For instance, a molecule of paraquat contains 2 nitrogen atoms and no oxygen atoms whereas a molecule of 2,4-D or 2,4,5-T contains no nitrogen and 3 oxygen atoms.

The only similarity between them that I know of is that they are both used as herbicides.

<comment><USER8> The author seems to be confusing the US government's use of agent orange in Vietnamese jungles, with their use of paraquat on marijuana farms in Mexico in the 70s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mitteldorf has an interesting take on programmed aging, which is to say the collection of theories suggesting aging is a evolved program that acts to shorten life because there is some very global selection advantage in it. It is worth reading as a counterpoint to the more common viewpoints of that school (such as the hyperfunction theory of aging that is a modern take on antagonistic pleiotropy in the context of programmed aging) espoused by some of the Russian gerontology community. There's a link somewhere in the article linked above.

Programmed aging is, however, a minority view in the aging research community as a whole. The consensus view is that aging is caused by an accumulation of unrepaired damage, though there are many factions and a lot of debate within that tent. Programmed aging seems to be gaining some ground, but it's rather hard to tell from the sidelines as some of the advocates (e.g. Blagosklonny and his views on mTOR) are very prolific in their publications.

Hormesis as a phenomenon to be measured and evaluated can stand apart from either of these views on aging for the purposes of evaluation and investigation of molecular mechanisms. It is a robustly demonstrated thing in animal models, though as for all these things translating those findings into human health is ever a challenge. For things like calorie restriction, exercise, and intermittent fasting, where hormesis is thought to play an important role, the human and rodent responses in the short term are very similar. There is a small mountain of papers on this topic - just go look at PubMed and search for hormesis and longevity.

Hormesis works because some forms of damage - such as mild oxidative stress - trigger repair responses that last long enough and are proficient enough to produce a net benefit in cell health throughout tissues. There is a dose- response curve to all of this of course. This is may be how you get a variety longevity mutants in nematode worms wherein they live longer if you either reduce or increase the flux of reactive oxygen species emitted from the mitochondria. Less means less damage and more means less damage because it produces more aggressive repair.

There are plenty of ways to damage tissue that will cause incremental damage over time, but are not hormetic, and will not produce benefits. It all depends on how the repair mechanisms handle the specific case in question.

</comment><comment><USER10> I had a friend who was telling everybody : "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger ... or paraplegic" and it made him laugh every time.

This title made me think of him, I automatically appended "or paraplegic" to the title.

RIP M.

<comment><USER11> I used to say something similar until I read an even better version:

"What doesn't kill me makes me stronger."

"I hope a bus tries to make you stronger."

(source: [http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/how_does_the_shutdown...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/how_does_the_shutdown_relate_t.html))

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure your sources are correct but the view and sample data are biased. Cancer rates, as you note, go up with radiation and also withUV exposure. You make a dangerous point that some people who don't read carefully might buy into fast and make poor decision. A warning at the top of the post or another analysis of the effects of these exposures, on a large sample that also presents the downsides would be more balanced.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hormesis as a general concept reeks of me of the "like cures like" of Homeopathy. This is mentioned in the article even. "A little snake venom is a cure to snake venom" is commonly used when explaining homeopathy. There may be some scenarios that exhibit this behavior but it still means your relaying on a fallacy of composition to turn it into something that can be sold as a life style.

Why do we have to simplify things and try to apply sweeping generalizations? The universe is complex. Things that apply one way to somethings do not apply that way to others.

<comment><USER14> Yeah but this concept isn't nearly as hard to stomach for me. "Fighting off disease makes you better at fighting off disease" is a little more believable than "these overpriced water molecules can learn the shape of toxins and help eliminate them in your body".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A lot of this makes sense in the new deterministic model of aging.

It argues that aging is not a collection of mutations, the old/popular model, but instead a programmed outcome of our genes that never experienced selective pressure.

We are like a building, but the builders never know when they are done and eventually start doing counterproductive work that destroys us.

Kicking in a response to injury or pathogen may cause cells to run programs that are less detrimental to our continued survival.

Edit: Let me clarify that this in no way should be taken as an endorsement of the author's claims. I have proposed a possible model that would make the claims reasonable, but haven't examined them closely. There is a lot of quackery out there.

<comment><USER16> The only reason why we are here and not rotting are our immune systems. Take it away and we dissolve in matter of days.

Recently research on very old lady showed that all of her immune cells came from just a handful of stem cells.

It made me think that the only reason we live that long is because, that's how long our immune system lives. As we grow old it becomes less and less versatile as stem cells die out and less effective as the most effective randomly die out. Then the old age diseases kick in as there's less and less competence in cleaning up this pile of bio-matter that we are.

Excising and eating a little is not because it almost kills us and therefore it makes us stronger, just because our cleaning crew was optimized for much less food and much more movement.

Stress is not good for you. When you see pair of identical twins you can tell which one lived life of more stress. He/she looks older and by various measurements is older.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think aging, in vertebrates, is mostly driven by the need to preserve what data has been encoded in the nervous system.

Ask yourself these questions. Would you rather have old bones or young bones? Would you rather have an old cardio-vascular system or a young cardio-vascular system? Would you rather have old muscles or young muscles?

In every case, the answer is "young".

But would you rather have an old nervous system or a young nervous system? The old nervous system is trained, the young one lacks all skills (skills range from the basics, like control of urination and defecation, to knowing how to hunt down an antelope).

Creatures that do not have a trainable nervous system (trees, coral, insects) experience a very different aging process.

Among vertebrates, those creatures that demonstrate negligible senescence (tortoises) also demonstrate a lack of learning. The price of immortality is perpetual immaturity of one's nervous system.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like a wind up for one of Garry Trudeau's characters from back in the day...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Butts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Butts)

</comment><comment><USER19> To quote Dobzhansky, this is all becomes obvious in the light of evolution. A challenging environment removes those cells that accumulate mutations. (i) In challenging or resource constrained environments mutated cells tend to behave more aberrantly and our immune system responds by attacking them (this is why radiation therapy works). (ii) Mutated cells will be more prone to pathogenic infection. In either case, we use the external world as a kind of extended immune system or to police our bodies against cellular mutiny.

<comment><USER20> There is no "natural selection" within an individual body, within an individual lifetime. Yes, there are some cells that continue to live and others that continue to die. But the cells are not competing, with the fittest winning out. Rather the whole scheme is orchestrated centrally for the good of the genome (which is the same in every cell).

<comment><USER19> Actually it's called somatic evolution. And there is no central orchestration. When cells start to mutate they no longer share the same genome and it's typically in the organism's interest to remove those cells because they can lead to mutation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >If animals eat all the food that is available to them and reproduce as fast is they are physically capable, then the environment will be denuded, the next generation will starve, and the species will face extinction. All animal species are evolved to avoid this

Isn't this a Tragedy of the Commons? Won't genes that cause individuals to eat more and reproduce more quickly than fellow members of their species confer a relative advantage causing those genes to spread through the gene pool?

<comment><USER20> Tragedy of the Commons is exactly right. Yes, the genes spread through the gene pool, but then the population goes extinct very quickly because there's a huge population and nothing to eat. This is the most powerful form of group selection, and it was first described by Michael Gilpin, [http://press.princeton.edu/titles/663.html](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/663.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is all based on the ability of the organism to strongly adapt. In order to do this, they need enough energy (calories) and micronutrients. I assume the organisms studied in labs for the ability to adapt to these stressors, are (outside of calorie restriction or related studies) well-fed...

Humans are often not so well-fed, at least not nutritionally.

</comment><comment><USER23> A very interesting concept, will definitely need to read more on this!

But what about the kind of research that talks about the dangers of living in cities... like "living in a polluted city is like smoking X cigarettes a day"?

</comment><comment><USER24> This sounds a lot like Taleb's Antifragile: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile)

<comment><USER25> In reality it's the other way around: Antifragile sounds like a lot of principles in nature, or rather: observations about nature that have been made a long time ago. However, this article sounds scientific but really isn't, as others in this thread have already pointed out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If this is true... then I need to rethink a lot of my life choices... what is actually good for me?

Would love to hear the opinion of doctors/scientists on this...

<comment><USER26> I would be very, VERY sceptical - the moment he brought in evolution, he argued a theory based on (and nigh-identical to) group selectionism. Except group selectionism has been thoroughly debunked, to the point where he might as well have been spouting Lamarckism - read "The Selfish Gene", by Richard Dawkins.

Put simply, you can't just jump from looking at individual survival to looking at a group's survival, because any individual could just be a free-rider. More importantly, what's actually been _observed_ is that group selectionism simply doesn't happen in the real world.

So while anything I said about the rest would be mere opinion, there is at least one multi-paragraph section of his argument that is a GIANT heap of shit.

<comment><USER20> The Selfish Gene was a phase in our understanding of evolution. The mainstream now agrees that evolution is a whole lot more complicated than that. It's still true that "group selection" is a dirty word to a majority of evolutionary scientists, but this is shifting pretty fast - much less true than it was 10 years ago. Take a look at the works of David Sloan Wilson. I recommend his book, Unto Others. [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674930476](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674930476)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yeah... what about bacteriocidal antibiotics that cause mitochondrial DNA damage? The people affected by that stuff don't seem to just like recover and get stronger.

<comment><USER28> Mitochondrial damaged human speaking (genetic cause, not antibiotics)

Hormesis is about dose. In these cases, the dose is just too high and our body is unable to cope with it.

In my case the damage is just below this threshold and my body has created a powerful antioxidant machinery [1] that is keeping me alive. In other cases of my disease, the burden - % of mutant mitochondria - is just too high [2] and sadly, the kids die when they are 3-4 years old.

[1] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096719203...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096719203001677)

[2] [http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/leigh- syndrome](http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/leigh-syndrome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Trevor Goodchild (AEon Flux) had a far better version: "That which does not kill us, makes us _stranger_."

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm very skeptical.

Aging isn't there because our genes "need" it. It's there because our genes _don 't need_ long lifespans. The gain in reproductive viability that we'd get with a >60 year natural lifespan just isn't enough to justify the constraint that a much longer (or indefinite) lifespan would impose on our genetic "search space". We can live forever and be simple, or we can be complex and get a job done and die.

There probably is some anti-fragility in us. I don't buy the LNT threshold of radiation, for example. All that said, I'm not sure that hormesis is useful as a general concept. There are mild stressors (such as cold, when prepared and for short duration) that turn out to have positive effects, but there are a great number of stressors that seem to have no positive effects, whether you're talking about biological agents (e.g. cadmium, lead) or psychological experiences (e.g. rape, war).

<comment><USER31> Can you translate that for someone who skimmed to "weight on belly versus weight in backpack" ?

<comment><USER32> Natural selection only molds us up to the point where we procreate and ensure the survival of our offspring. After that (say age 50), we're winging it.

Mild stressors that would occur naturally - physical exertion, exposure, hunger; it is perfectly logical that natural selection would favour those who handle these circumstances well.

<comment><USER33> I like that ... "winging it" after 50. :-) Made me chuckle. I agree with it.

I have a (an emotional) problem with that number though, being acutely aware and sensitive to ageism or age-related relegation of human functions and roles in society. I have a problem with any number for that matter. 50 is too low, and any number will always be too low, the way I see it if you incorporate Dawkins' idea of the Selfish Gene into the mix. I would argue that sticking around "to ensure the survival of our offspring" (as you put it) for the human species is significantly more important than any other species on the planet.

Turtles don't need this survival strategy. Lay eggs (procreate) and chuck - that form of hormesis aggressively weeds out the weak members of the species from the ones laying eggs for the next generation. While chimps, elephants and whales may also need to "stick around longer" for their young - relatively, the human is by far an incredible outlier in this regard. Not only do adults have to stick around for their kids well into the young's teen years, but elders too have to stick around for the group or for the clan. This last point is important to understand the relationship between the survival success of the species and an imagined age cutoff for "usefulness" (that contributes to the success of the species) of any one member of the species. The individual has extended roles beyond just his/her offspring. His/her role in the clan's survival success mattered too.

Recent discoveries of hominid fossils suggest that as early as Erectus, "humans" have been keeping their elders alive! :-) Evidence of a toothless skulls suggest that able members of the group may have been keeping the elder alive by chewing for her. But for what?? Could it be to access knowledge of poisoned berries to avoid, or hunting methods to teach or ... stay at home creche for the kids while able-bodied adults went out for hunting??

Again, I don't think I needed to respond to your point necessarily ... you're right for the most part.

<comment><USER34> > 50 is too low, and any number will always be too low, the way I see it if > you incorporate Dawkins' idea of the Selfish Gene into the mix. I would > argue that sticking around "to ensure the survival of our offspring" (as you > put it) for the human species is significantly more important than any other > species on the planet.

I see what you mean, but with every generation of your offspring, you're less and less vital to their survival - your children and grandchildren can care for your great-grandchildren as well; there's more redundancy there, so no individual is as crucial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Searching for articles with the keyword "hormesis" (a word I first learned in the latest book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is not a person with medical training or experience) on the Science-Based Medicine website is instructive.[1] The concept of "hormesis" is not well thought out enough or well validated enough with careful measurements to be your guide to your personal health practices. There is better health advice in some of the earlier comments here.

Thank you to the several commenters who have already politely pointed out factual and logical mistakes in this submission. We can do better for reading matter to be submitted to Hacker News. "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads."[2]

[1] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?s=hormesis](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?s=hormesis)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Searching for articles with the keyword "hormesis" (a word I first learned > in the latest book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is not a person with > medical training or experience) on the Science-Based Medicine website is > instructive.

No it's not! 3 out of the 7 links relate to homeopathy, which the article _explicitly_ states is problematic:

'Association with the problematic science of homeopathy. In the early 20th Century, people who promoted homeopathic medicine were prominent supporters of the concepts of hormesis.'

Your stance is based on an _argumentum ab auctoritate_. How about constructing an argument, rather than spewing meta-trash talk?

> a word I first learned in the latest book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is > not a person with medical training or experience

Ergo, hormesis does not exist? _Non sequitur_.

> The concept of "hormesis" is not well thought out enough or well validated > enough with careful measurements to be your guide to your personal health > practices. There is better health advice in some of the earlier comments > here.

The only _prescription_ of the article was to eat less & exercise more!

> Thank you to the several commenters who have already politely pointed out > factual and logical mistakes in this submission.

Agreed. It's called 'discussion'.

> "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and > don't be rude or dumb in comment threads."

I don't see how this quote is relevant.</comment></comment>