Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed - <AUTHOR> https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/2-wants-to-know/greensboro-dating-app-online-dating-singularity/83-de8a5d3a-dea6-4a71-8da0-f2394f071cdc <comment><USER3> I had an idea for a dating app a while back, in which the basic idea is that you pay the service to message someone (above a free weekly limit of say 1 msg).

The pricing would be reactive - as popular attractive people get more messages, the more it would cost to message them, growing exponentially in order to limit incoming messages to approx a few a day. Unpopular people who got few messages would have a price that would go down to zero. This would hopefully solve the problem of women getting hundreds of messages a day, and men getting neither any incoming messages nor any replies to their outgoing messages.

It shouldn't be much of a problem to get women on board, as they rarely send messages anyway and it would always be free just to put up a profile and receive messages. And for men it would hopefully be a fair an transparent way to have confidence that their outgoing messages would be received and read (and have fewer immediate competitors), rather than just lost in the noise.

I don't have time for it now, but it's always been something on my mind.

Edit: Thanks for your comments. This is interesting. Lots of hypotheses worth experimenting.

<comment><USER4> I can see where you're coming from, but I think in practice this is not a great idea. Even if it's not intentional, it's not going to be great publicity when you have an app that shows different women with different price tags.

I imagine it's not great either if, on current dating apps, the number of messages women receive becomes public information. The problem here is less that different women cost different prices to message. The problem is that it's visible. If you can overcome this there might be some merit to the idea. This is just me being open-minded though. It still feels like an icky idea.

<comment><USER5> There are probably ways you could make it manageable and less morally repugnant.

1) Let people set their own price. Then it's not the platform valuing you, it's how much you value your own time.

2) Provide "auto-pricing" as an optional feature. Use an imaginary unit - <USER2> it "stamps" and provide ways to earn "stamps" on the platform besides just buying them.

"How many stamps should it cost for somebody to send you a letter? Or you can use one of our auto-managers - do you want to receive lots of letters or only a few?"

You could still have some kind of invisible credit score under the hood even for users that don't use the auto-pricer - people with good credit get plentiful free stamps.

Then you'd have to get into a whole Google-style graph-based-ranking but for people, which I assume sites like Twitter are already doing under the hood.

Of course, the problem here is that you'd have a plethora of alts to farm free stamps, which would clutter the search list...

Everything is hard.

<comment><USER6> And also lots of guys would _freak out and get very upset_ if they perceived someone's price is "too high," which would make the experience more hostile to women.

I've got a better idea. Have a swiping system, but also have a simple indicator to see how often people respond to messages after first swipe. There could also be an indicator for how long those conversations typically last.

Or you could just make it extremely simple: just have something saying "this person is X% likely to respond after a match."

Or an opaque "conversation score" which is hard to game, but indicates whether or not they're actually talking to their matches. You could categorize them as "great conversationalists!" and then allow people to filter out those who aren't.

Of course, that could be gamed too but it would be better than just matching over and over with people who have no interest in actually talking to you.

<comment><USER7> Pandering to guys who would "freak out and get very upset" and "make the experience more hostile to women" sounds crazy.

Better I would have thought to kick such guys off the platform, raising the level for women, which would in turn make it more appealing for more evolved males.

<comment><USER6> Women tiptoe around male anger about being rejected 24/7, especially on online dating. Lots of "evolved" males still become scary when turned down and don't handle rejection well. There is no way to filter them out because they all walk among us, they're our friends and brothers, and sometimes us.

Every woman who's gone on online dating can give you a list of stories of creepy, scary and/or off-putting experiences.

My point here isn't to start an online debate about gender equality, but to say: one of the main things that would help bring users to an online dating app is making it safer for women. If the women come, the men will follow.

<comment><USER8> I too fear the boogeyman.

<comment><USER6> Deep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've thought about making a new dating app. The existing apps suck for 2 reasons: in most markets men are at a significant disadvantage because of how men and women differ in the way they approach dating (and there's also a significantly unfair male:female ratio in many markets). Additionally, none of them are really designed to get people off the app, but rather they're built to increase engagement and keep people on the app.

One idea I've had is to disallow conversation in the app, and instead focus on making date plans if there's a match. Another idea is to introduce a payment aspect to make spamming economically unviable, except that the payment goes to the recipient instead of the platform. Some apps have tried things like this, but they kind of suck because it's not real money so it's not useful.

<comment><USER10> > One idea I've had is to disallow conversation in the app, and instead focus > on making date plans if there's a match.

You should likely run this idea past a few women. The typical reason they want to converse before meeting is security: Meeting strangers is dangerous and they want to "sniff test" to see if it is safe enough to even go that far.

Your app idea largely seems to exist to solve issues men have with dating apps but it doesn't really address why women avoid them/prefer direct social interaction.

<comment><USER11> Ironic that people don't want to meet someone off an app without "sniff test" conversation first, yet are happy to meet strangers at a bar with no prior knowledge of them whatsoever.

I guess it's just a lingering bias that makes us think "dating app people are creepy" even though today the people you meet in a bar are probably all on dating apps too.

<comment><USER10> > Ironic that people don't want to meet someone off an app without "sniff > test" conversation first, yet are happy to meet strangers at a bar with no > prior knowledge of them whatsoever.

Consider the "social contract" of both situations.

With the bar situation you can literally leave immediately with no social expectation that you should have to interact with that person again.

With the "date" typically they're alone (i.e. she cannot bring friends, unlike a bar) and there's a social expectation to stay at least for whatever constitutes an entire date.

I think it is less irony and more that we have complex social expectations.

<comment><USER12> > With the bar situation you can literally leave immediately with no social > expectation that you should have to interact with that person again.

There are plenty of first date options that make this easy. I was fond of minigolf because it goes relatively quick and you can either opt to play more rounds or hit the eject button with a half decent excuse.

<comment><USER13> That's still 1000x different than realizing you have no chemistry with the person you're talking to at the bar and simply turning 90 degrees and talking to the next person.

Meanwhile, a date you eject from still consumes most of your evening. ...And it's extremely uncomfortable and emotionally taxing to be in that position for both people.

That said, I think almost everyone would be better served if they shot out a "wanna grab drinks at X at 8:00?" much earlier into the conversation. The sort of "Tinder convo" I see on r/tinder is almost exclusively men sabotaging themselves instead of making a move.

I mean, once you've established you're not one of those "send pic of vagene sex sex sex pls" people, I'm not convinced there's all that much more rapport you can build over text.

Then again, I imagine men who are able to talk themselves into a hole over Tinder chat are sending useful signals to women.

<comment><USER12> It's different, but if you're not the kind of person who enjoys going to bars then it is an alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a friend who used to work for one of the bigger dating app services. He is an AI expert and wrote the matching algorithm for the service. He is very good at his job and his algorithm was so good that people matched, got married and stopped using the dating service. The higher ups in the company noticed the loss of revenue and asked him to make his algorithm worse so that people would match, date, but then break up and go back to their service. He proceeded to quit his job.

<comment><USER15> Charge $100-$4000 a person. Make money while taking customers from all other dating sites once word gets out your site works and theirs don't

<comment><USER16> How to approach the lack of network effect at the beginning while paying upfront? Many sites/apps are free for "basic" features, presumably for this reason.

<comment><USER17> Just advertise wedding services really hard in the app. If you're really good at creating a market, capitalize on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- Dating apps are extremely broken, and yet they're almost all owned by a single company: Match Group. I have a suspicion that these apps are left intentionally broken to keep users fruitlessly searching and boost engagement metrics. I can't find a complete list of the companies they've acquired, but last time I checked, Match owns over 20 different apps and dating sites, including Tinder, OkCupid, and Hinge. We really need some antitrust action in this space.

<comment><USER18> Can you say more about what's not working?

I've been with my girlfriend three years, just bought a car together. It's going well! We met on OKcupid.

I'm a happy customer, though I don't think I've ever paid them anything.

<comment><USER19> Survivorship Bias: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)

I met my wife online after a year of fruitless first dates. Maybe I'm just unappealing or something but it was truly a miserable part of my life.

Edit: I'm gonna add in here that most people don't have the stick-to-itiveness that most readers of this site do.

<comment><USER20> It's not survivorship bias if you failed 100 times before your 1 success. It's only survivorship bias if they hit the jackpot and the very first date worked out perfectly and they lived happily ever after.

I was grinding away on tinder/going on dates for months before I found success. But that's not the dating app's fault - I was seeing the same thing using non-app strategies.

<comment><USER21> Survivorship bias is anyone who has had success at a task, regardless of how long it took. The lottery winner who played every week for 40 years will tell you buying a ticket every week is the secret to success at winning, irrespective of the millions of people who do that and never win.

So the grandparent comment did use the term correctly. Unless they were responding to someone who never "won" at the dating game.

The ultimate statistical issue is about the outcome of a task biasing the incentive for testifying about the task. It's usually winners who are more prone to speak to their approach to the problem than losers, so we don't know if the winning solution is representative of success or an aberration from the norm.

<comment><USER20> > Survivorship bias is anyone who has had success at a task, regardless of how > long it took.

I don't believe that. It depends on the task and how much of it is chance vs. skill. Winning the lotto is literally 100% chance, 0% skill. Odds are worse than 1 in a million, so yes, I agree with your assertion that a lotto winner who played for 40 years and finally won is exhibiting survivorship bias if they claim the key to winning is playing every week.

However, if I have a goal to run a 6 minute mile, and I fail 100 times before I finally succeed. Does that mean I have survivorship bias if I say that I found running a little faster every day and not giving up to be the key to success?

Dating does have an element of chance, yes, but it also has an element of skill - you get better social skills the more you use them. It's a bit disingenuous to compare "the dating game" (which billions of people "win" every year) to lotto (which probably < 100 people win per year).

If I had to start the dating game all over knowing what I know now, I'm confident I could find a wife _much_ faster than my first time around - especially with the help of online dating apps. I'm older and wiser and I understand females now _way_ better than I did when I started out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In our coworking space in Orange County, CA we had a guy come in for an app pitch fest with an app for dating for Mercedes Benz owners.

The idea was that the app would be for men -- only men -- who own Benzes, and for female users it would show men in Benzes within a certain number of miles.

Between drags off a bottle of beer (and while thoroughly drunk) he fielded a question from one of the attendees: "what sort of profile does the user create?"

"Profile? He's driving a Mercedes!" (big drag off beer)

I'm on the fence about whether the whole thing was a joke but he apparently did prototype the app, and given the nature of the current timeline I have completely lost the ability to tell the difference between jokes, trolls, satire, and reality. Other attendees were similarly on the fence about seriousness.

</comment><comment><USER23> Here is my "crowd-based" dating app idea: let others do the matching -- i.e. decide which couples fit together....

<comment><USER24> I think image analysis would work. I've noticed that couples tend to have similar facial features and expressions.

<comment><USER23> Are you sure? Are there any studies on this? Is there a good "actual couples" dataset?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's a business model here! Pay 120$ and be the only man in town for 2 hours.

<comment><USER26> Tinder already does stuff like this [https://www.help.tinder.com/hc/en- us/articles/360029087891-S...](https://www.help.tinder.com/hc/en- us/articles/360029087891-Super-Boost)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not sure who actually made it but the main guy in the app is pretty funny. At :30 in the video 'if life gives you lemons, like your personality for example..'

</comment><comment><USER28> Link to the (mobile-only) website: [http://www.singularitydating.com/](http://www.singularitydating.com/)

He even made a commercial that's pretty funny [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wWkAHOph6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wWkAHOph6A)

</comment><comment><USER29> I had an idea for a much more aggressive filtering service called first date. Men's profiles are a video that you only get one chance to shoot in which you are asked a random set of questions that you thus can't prepare for.

<comment><USER30> Wouldn't they just delete their accounts and start over if it went poorly? Any kind of Proof of Identity verification to stop people doing that would probably put them off signing up in the first place.

<comment><USER31> Face and voice recognition tech could help against that. I think nazgul's idea is really cool, someone should try it.

<comment><USER32> >Face and voice recognition tech could help against that

So if my twin brother already deleted his account, I wouldn't be able to sign up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Since we're all discussing our dating app ideas, here's one I've had:

Why does your interaction with the app end with the messaging thread? It feels like every app decides that once you've been "connected", that's the end of their responsibility.

I'd like to see an app that takes a more holistic approach: A good algorithm gets you connected, allows you to communicate but also helps set up the first (and second? or third?) date(s). Then gathers feedback on the dates -- what went well, what didn't, and uses that input to refine the matching algorithm (if necessary).

The key here is that the current crop of apps aren't really "dating" apps - they're "first introduction" apps. Getting involved in the whole process could (maybe?) lead to better outcomes.

This is of course assuming that the goal is better outcomes -- as other commenters have pointed out, some companies don't actually want that, they just want you endlessly scrolling (and subscribing). But assuming you build a business that does truly want to optimize for successful outcomes, this could be a start...

<comment><USER34> I'll admit to not even looking at these services in a very long time, but OKCupid had experimented with setting up the first date more spontaneously, but it was before ubiquitous smart phones so they didn't go very far with it, IIRC.

If you had the app on, and it knew you were in proximity to some sort of match, then it could notify each party and provide a message like, "would you like an introduction to so-and-so? You're both within walking distance of an art exhibit - meet a new person and enjoy some fine art!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Did the same man create the website? I can't seem to be able to access it

<comment><USER36> Are you talking about the target of this link from TFA?

> a new app called Singularity (only built to open on phones not computers).

<comment><USER35> it was a joke, but i was refering to the news website

<comment><USER37> I get 403 when connecting from the UK. Connecting via a US access point, I can view it.

Video

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[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wWkAHOph6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wWkAHOph6A)

Text

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's The Only Guy Allowed Most of us don't have the tech skills to create an app, but there are other ways to improve your odds for online dating. Author: Ben Briscoe Published: 3:29 PM EST November 20, 2019 Updated: 6:06 PM EST November 20, 2019 GREENSBORO, N.C. — 31-year-old Aaron Smith can put his finger on exactly what's wrong with dating apps.

"The biggest problem with the other apps is that my face is not featured prominently," he said.

To cut down on competition, he created a new app called Singularity (only built to open on phones not computers). What's unique about the new app is that he's the only guy allowed on it. No matter how many times you swipe, it's only different versions of his picture.

"If life gives you lemons, you should first make lemonade," he said. "Then make sure no other companies can produce or distribute their own soft drinks. So the only game in town is lemonade."

He even made a commercial to promote the app.

Singularity was created with the help of Smith's best friend and software engineer Scott McDowell.

"All of us who have done online dating in some sorta way can all relate to the fact that it really does sometimes suck," McDowell said.

Improving Your Chances

But not everyone has a computer genius at their disposal, so how do you improve your odds? By knowing when and where to look!

HighSpeedInternet.com says Tinder has the most men on it, but to get women, tinder tied with plenty of fish.

Your age matters too. PC Magazine found for 18 to 45 Tinder is king, 25 to 34 it's plenty of fish and 45 to 65 is most likely to find love on Match.

And a study by Ogury says the best day of the week to make your move is Thursday. Most people use the apps then looking for a date on the weekend.

It Can Happen

And don't give up hope of finding true love.

"It's 100 percent possible. We're proof of it," said Amanda Caudill.

She met Jonathon over Bumble. The two were married less than four months later.

Jonathon and Amanda Caudill Jonathon and Amanda Caudill get engaged. JONATHON CAUDILL "Trust in god to write your love story," Amanda said.

Jonathon said there's another key to success too.

"Be authentic. Be honest," he said. "Too many people try to sell themselves like a car. Just be honest."

And know one day you too could delete all these dating apps.

"Hallelujah," Amanda rejoiced.

As for Aaron, he hasn't heard from many women after making his new app.

"No, well other than like my mom who calls me. No."

But he hopes creativity will be the key to finally making love happen.

"Hopefully it will give people a chuckle about just the absurdity of what we're reduced to as a society," he said.

</comment><comment><USER38> My dating app idea is very different from the ones I see posted here.

The usual approach is to use algorithms / self selection to find matches for people (and pesimistically, specifically matches that won't work out but will string people along just enough to keep them engaged with the site.)

I would like to see a social / gamified matchmaking service that utilizes our own social intelligence to find matches for others. People seem to love matchmaking and shows like the Bachelor/Bachelorette have been very popular, so I would imagine that there would be a set of users who would find this very entertaining.

Monetization would be in-app tips that happy couples provide to the people who matched them up (of which the app-maker would take a cut). This aligns the incentives of the app-maker with the users (rather than against them as with normal dating apps).

Feel free to use this idea, I don't want to work in the space but I would like to see such an app exist.

</comment><comment><USER39> There are many interesting ideas about how to come up with a "fair" online dating market.

But I guess everyone is completely disregarding the basics of human nature, attraction is mostly based on "looks/facial aesthetics":

[https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPillScience/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPillScience/)

In a free/unregulated sexual market, women are the selectors, not men. Women are biologically hardwired to select good looking males (irrespective of his money, personality or social status). Therefore ugly people don't get matches. Very simple.

No matter how many ways you try to engineer/fix the system, it's not going to work. Because the existing system is already doing what it is supposed to do.

<comment><USER40> I don't think that's universally true. Being attractive certainly can help make good impressions easier (and I've known insufferable people coast by on good looks too) but I don't think it's the be-all or end-all of romance.

I've known women that have broken up with or turned down attractive men because they didn't enjoy talking with them, or had different political views, or wanted to have/not have children. Conversely, I've known men that didn't exactly look like movie stars end up in relationships with nice-looking women too. That's not even considering same-sex attraction either. Heck, I've turned people down to date less physically-attractive people in the past too.

<comment><USER39> In the online dating market of 2019 looks is all that matters. Because of these reasons:

1\. Online dating mostly depends on looks, it's based on your pictures. Almost no woman reads your bio. Simply because people don't have time (this is another reason why new apps like tinder and bumble even don't give you enough spaces to write about yourself, because it doesn't matter at the end).

2\. If a woman does not find an attractive man "interesting" after first couple of dates or so, she can easily find another attractive man with "interesting" personality. They do not have to go for an ugly male with interesting personality. Because women (even average/non-attractive ones) have an extremely large dating pool, men don't. For example:

[https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=168948903&pa...](https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=168948903&page=1)

3\. Almost no woman picks a mate based on political views. I have seen die hard leftist women dating neonazi guys.

[https://mtonews.com/.image/t_share/MTUzODEzNzk4OTYyMDc5NDg2/...](https://mtonews.com/.image/t_share/MTUzODEzNzk4OTYyMDc5NDg2/image- placeholder-title.jpg)

Same sex (specially between men and men) is a completely different ballgame. The mate choice strategy of women is completely different from that of men.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I tried many dating site over the years and the one thing that stood out is if you're under 6 feet tall don't even bother creating an account.

<comment><USER42> It really makes me feel sad you've had this experience I hope you change your mind. I am a fellow short man so I have experienced rejection because of height among other lame reasons. I'm not conventionally good looking either.

But this type of mentality is negative and detrimental to your success as well as the success of other men in the same position. Your looks absolutely matter and to say otherwise is disingenuous. But to say you shouldn't try at all because of height is ridiculous. I found my wife through a dating App after having used dating apps off and on for a few years. I also tried conventional dating in person. Did I receive less attention than my more attractive Male peers? Yes absolutely, but I accept it and instead focus my efforts on the variables in my control. Physical fitness, attitude, and having life goals I work towards everyday. I can't beat most guys in looks or charm so I focused on persistence more than anything else.

I recognize that can sound nebulous, but it really works over the long run. I hope I don't come off as condescending these types of comments just really strike a nerve with me. I wish you success in your personal life if you haven't found it already.

<comment><USER41> Thanks for the comments but I'm good I've never had a problem with my height except on dating sites. It seems the women who use the sites also ignore anyone below 6 feet. I actually tested that and it was sad to see the results.

It's that magic "6 foot" number it seems women want. I'm not talking 5 feet or 5'6" even 5'11 3/4 seems to be too short. I guess dating sites are irrational it's like shopping for perfection not reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> In a country where single men outnumber single women by up to 3,000 to 1, creating a dating app where the male creator is the only man allowed might sound like a good idea. Unfortunately, it isn't much more likely to get him a date in the United States of America where 98% of women born after 1980 are lesbian, many are in gangs, and they are nothing but selfish, unapproachable, and spoiled rotten with a bad attitude, most women are obese and the only reason they are single is because their own tremendous girth is keeping men away like a cement wall, and the only attractive straight ones are 90210-minded gold diggers aka you better be financially capable of living in Beverly Hills, California, or even Hidden Hills, California (which is similar to Beverly Hills, except Hidden Hills is a gated community).

The dating scene for men sucks in the United States. American women are worthless trash. They are nothing but drama just waiting to happen. Prison terms, restraining orders, divorce, a criminal record for the man. The only logical thing to do is save up some money and GET OUT of America! Countries like Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Thailand, France, and Greece have far superior quality women who are not one or the other; either morbidly obese with an unattractively massive girth, man-hating lesbians, or 90210-minded gold diggers.

In fact, check out [http://www.happierabroad.com](http://www.happierabroad.com)

</comment><comment><USER44> The first rule of online dating is be attractive. If you're average or below average dont waste your time.

</comment><comment><USER45> There is a new dating app currently in beta called The One that has open messaging (like the old school OKC), no ads or micro-transactions, and has user defined traits for building your profile and filtering others. They also charge less if you don't get any matches or send any messages in a month.

[https://theonedating.app](https://theonedating.app)

</comment><comment><USER46> Peter Thiel would be proud of your business and dating approach Aaron (it's a "zero to one" approach). No doubt there will be a woman out there who sees the ad, and then joins your exclusive dating club. But my question is this? Can the women see the other women on your app, if not you should consider renaming your app to "myharem".

<comment><USER47> If the women can see each other, it might work as a dating app for lesbians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I just want to say that this guy is brilliant and deserves to get a couple of dates from this.

<comment><USER49> This is the next iteration of natural selection - another item in the long line of complex and sometimes not so complex ways of monopolizing attention from the other sex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This was amusing, I don't know why it blocks desktop but Firefox dev tools responsive design mode was enough to fool it into working on my pc.

Also amusing was the wfmynews2 using the youtube redirect to link to the site, wtf, lol.

</comment><comment><USER51> I had this idea yesterday (and even wrote it down). Too slow I guess...

<comment><USER52> Yeah I had it a few weeks ago, too, honestly. Execution and timing are hard. Not for something like this, but sometimes you can be too early with an idea, too...

<comment><USER51> Apparently it had been done even earlier :D [1].

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/14/14601254/shinder- dating-a...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/14/14601254/shinder-dating-app- shed-simove-tinder)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've been writing a piece on dating apps, friendship app and such, looking deeper into what apps do for their users. The tldr is that we used all the tricks in the box, but we taught users nothing about relationships.

Apps let you swipe, or send messages, or add cool pics. But they don't tell you how to handle another person.

</comment><comment><USER54> Looking back on the 2010s app wave, it's hard to think of any other app (including FB, Uber, and Airbnb) who have had a bigger cultural impact than Tinder.

<comment><USER55> Tinder had no effect on a large percent of the population. So your estimation of the cultural impact is skewed by your personal experience.

<comment><USER56> Assuming by "a large percent of the population" you mean "people who are no longer dating," this is not a good way to think about it. Analogously, there are many cultural trends that people don't engage with after they are teenagers (music, fashion, etc.) but it would be wrong to claim that these trends don't have high cultural impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> But at the end he says this was a joke , probably not :)

</comment><comment><USER58> "Greensboro Man creates Lesbian* Dating App"

</comment><comment><USER59> "Access Denied" for the article from the uk. Looks like someone couldn't be bothered to deal with GDPR. :)

<comment><USER60> Good. This is honestly the best way to deal with GDPR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> So, he just copied this idea from 2017? [https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/14/14601254/shinder- dating-a...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/14/14601254/shinder-dating-app- shed-simove-tinder)

</comment><comment><USER62> Woot! Local story on front page of HN. I cannot believe it!

</comment><comment><USER63> Modern problems call for modern solutions. /s

</comment><comment><USER64> "Access Denied You don't have permission to access "[http://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/2-wants-to- know/...](http://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/2-wants-to- know/greensboro-dating-app-online-dating- singularity/83-de8a5d3a-dea6-4a71-8da0-f2394f071cdc") on this server. "

I seriously hate how US sites block Europe because of GDPR. No other country in the world does that</comment>


Earth was smashed by a rock the size of Mars to make the moon - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2157172-earth-was-smashed-by-a-rock-the-size-of-mars-to-make-the-moon/ <comment><USER2> I have a moon question.

So the moon affects the gravity of Earth, producing tides.

If the moon did not exist, would that affect the 'Tyranny of the Rocket Equation', would it be more difficult or easier to launch spacecraft?</comment>


AWS Lambda service name and logo is identical with Half Life's Lambda logo - <AUTHOR> http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Lambda_logo <comment><USER2> Agreed, they are quite similar. But there are only so many ways to draw a lambda.

Comparison: [http://imageshack.com/a/img907/4425/da9gGJ.png](http://imageshack.com/a/img907/4425/da9gGJ.png)</comment>


Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DrBoolean/mostly-adequate-guide <comment><USER2> For a long time I've been looking for a guide to functional programming, applied to common real-world web examples, but still can't find one.

E.g. when most of the code I write is database queries, performing business logic, calls to memcached, handling error cases/messages, validating input, and then outputting data in various formats (JSON, HTML templates, etc.) -- how/where does FP help with that?

Is FP more a paradigm for computationally intensive programming? Back-end web programming? Front-end? I come across "FP is good" all the time, but I've never found any kind of resource to help me understand the tradeoffs between FP and non-FP, where it makes sense to use it and where it doesn't. Or any kind of FP tutorial on how to build, for example, a basic web CRUD app.

<comment><USER3> Functional programming is not for back-end web programming or front-end web programming. That's like asking if calculus is for making better nails or for making better screws. Or if a 68K processor is for doing taxes or for doing word processing.

It has nothing to do at all with what kind of thing you are building, it is a general means of expressing common patterns in programs. Much of the reason people like FP is because it provides a high degree of code reuse in standardized forms, and it does so with a good bit of terseness and flexibility. Just about everything else in the FP world is about optimizing safety, performance, and reliability without giving up these benefits.

When someone says "FP is good," it's analogous to saying "well-commented code is good." As in, it's good everywhere you have the time to do it correctly. (There just happens to be a lot of debate about how to do it correctly.)

<comment><USER4> For those of us non-yet enlightened, I keep reading these kind of comments and walk away more confused.

Sure, I get what it is but what I don't get is how I would use it in my world of mutating data and side-effects.

<comment><USER5> So far I believe side-effects as we think of them are unavoidable[1]. But they can be reduce to a minimum (the maximum being writing programs as a big set of global variables, and jumping GOTOs between mutations). Using functional style avoid a lot of nasty side effects like unnecessary temporaries, uninitialized values and their modification afterward (local assignments or across procedures). This is a thing one can do in C, whereas in FP languages, you're constrained to write this way, giving a culture of combinators and patterns (tree rec, map, fold, streams, monads, ..) hugely solid and tiny, thus reusable.

I understand what you mean, because even though I love FP a lot, I still struggle to conceive whole systems (other than simple map-filter dataflow ones) this way. So far I keep the FP principles for small pieces, hoping later on I'll find a way to close the gaps.

[1] John Backus tried to design purely functional languages a long time ago and he hit the IO wall (he mentions it in some article). Haskellers had issues at first and found that Monads were a nice functional way to express IO-like logic. It's still something weird, a lot less clean than purely functional expressions to be evaluated.

<comment><USER4> The 'IO wall' as you put it is the main thing I have not been able to wrap my head around. Most of the examples I have seen of FP-implementation-of-X leave this bit out, or at best is a passing mention left as a 'reader exercise'.

Most of us probably already follow best practices in terms of small functions, no global state, promises, composability etc. But at the end of every chain I have a db query and most of those mutate some data or other.

Hopefully some day it clicks.

<comment><USER6> > Hopefully some day it clicks.

While you wait for that, try writing useful code despite not fully understanding it.

Tell me what you think of the following code examples:

        > sum . take 2 $ [1,2,3,4,5]
        3
        > -- now lets pretend we have a list of numbers we got from the DB
        > let mockDBResponse = return [1,2,3,4,5] :: IO [Int]
        > -- first lets try the exact same code as above
        > sum . take 2 $ [1,2,3,4,5]
        3
        > sum . take 2 $ mockDBResponse

        <interactive>:46:16:
            Couldn't match expected type '[c]' with actual type 'IO [Int]'
            Relevant bindings include it :: c (bound at <interactive>:46:1)
            In the second argument of '($)', namely 'mockDBResponse'
            In the expression: sum . take 2 $ mockDBResponse
        > -- what to do? Use <$>
        > import Control.Applicative ((<$>))
        > sum . take 2 <$> mockDBResponse
        3

1) Applying pure functions to pure functions

        sum . take 2 $ [1,2,3,4,5]

2) Applying pure functions to monadic functions that implement fmap of the Functor typeclass

        sum . take 2 <$> [1,2,3,4,5]

When I noticed that adding brackets around $ allowed me to apply pure functions to monadic ones a lot more made sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author should probably have mentioned in the Currying section that it's roughly analogous to what OOP people call dependency injection.

Rather than a "class" with one "do it" method, which also has a constructor to initialize configurations (or worse, a bunch of "setters"), just make the configuration (or other "dependency") values the leading parameters of a function. Then, partially evaluating the function to supply those values does the same thing that "dependency injection" does, only without the logorrhea of a class.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for that analogy, I think you might have saved me a bit of time wrapping my head around the FP "paradigm".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also see Functional JavaScript [1] by Michael Fogus.

[1][http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920028857.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920028857.do)

</comment><comment><USER10> Something I've been wondering for a long time that no one seems to be able to explain is "what the fuck is a monad?" and why is this seemingly the one question about programming that is inadequately answered

<comment><USER11> I'm willing to bet you've read 10 plain-english perfectly-adequate explanations of monads that explain them fully, and you've rejected them because they don't seem hard enough.

A monad is an abstraction pattern that, as applied in typed functional programming, has three parts.

1\. A type constructor that takes a type and returns an type. Enough languages have an Optional construct now that this should be sensible to anyone paying attention.. If Integer and Optional<Integer> are types that have values, Optional is a type constructor.

2\. A function for injecting a value in an appropriate manner. To stick with java-ish syntax, it'd look like Optional<T> inject(T x) { ... }.

3\. A function for binding a function to a value with appropriate types. Optional<R> andThen(Optional<T> x, Function<T,Optional<R>> f) { ... }. This function has a couple restrictions on what it's allowed to do which are called the "monad laws". It's not really worth burying yourself in them. The important part is that they have the effect of requiring inject and andThen to do the absolute minimal thing that works sanely.

This really isn't complicated. It's a super-basic pattern. It keeps getting reinvented over and over in languages with first-class functions.

So why do you not hear about it outside of typed functional languages? Because very few languages give you the flexibility to _work_ with this abstraction. In Haskell or F#, you can write code that works with any monad. In Java or Rust, you can only write code that works with a specific type. The missing abstraction capability makes the abstraction academic only. And since it's so simple, there's nothing in particular to be gained by talking about the abstraction when you can't use it.

People have made a huge deal out of monads, but they're really not complicated. Thinking they're hard or hold the secrets of the universe is like thinking the Iterator interface is hard or holds the secrets of the universe. Sure, maybe a language has some syntactic sugar to make it easier to work with them (do-notation in Haskell, for loops in Java). But it doesn't mean there's anything complicated going on.

Note the things absent from this response: IO, side-effects, purity, sequencing, basically any use case. None of them are related to the definition of monads. None of them require monads. Monad is an _abstraction_. It doesn't let you do anything new. It just lets you share vocabulary (and code in more expressive languages) between many disparate areas.

<comment><USER12> > In Haskell or F#, you can write code that works with any monad

F# doesn't have higher kinded types, so I doubt this is true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice illustrations, and a worthwhile project. I'd like to know what has motivated the sequence of topics, as things I consider fundamental (e.g. structural recursion) don't seem to get a look in. This is judging just by the TOC.

(For all the innovation in the training delivery of programming training there seems to be little attention paid to the pedagogy. This is not really a slur on this book (I haven't looked in detail; hence the brackets) but too many of the online training providers just use the same old ineffective curriculum they were exposed to in undergrad.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Seriously impressed with the communicability of your examples. A+, will share this around.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does it treat lazy evaluation? Also, how efficient will the resulting code be, if these conventions are used?

</comment><comment><USER16> > We'll use the world's most popular functional programming language: > JavaScript

Then you won't be doing functional programming. You will be doing "somewhat functional programming" at best.

<comment><USER17> Is there a reason why you can't do functional programming in JavaScript. Unless I'm mistaken, there isn't anything about JavaScript that explicitly prevents you from doing functional programming.

Even then, I think we all understand that the OP isn't trying to be strictly pure and is simply trying to explain the concepts in a manner that those used to imperative development can easily digest.

<comment><USER16> 1\. No pattern matching. Libraries can't help here, it's a syntactical and semantical issue.

2\. No product types. You can emulate those, but it's awkward.

3\. No recursion over lists. You can emulate this, but it's awkward.

4\. It's difficult to write code that is efficient, yet is side-effects free. Good luck with prepending an element to a list.

About emulation, you can emulate closures on Turing machine, though it doesn't make Turing machine a functional language. Lack of the aspect is simply lack of the aspect.

And no, JS doesn't _explicitly_ prevent functional programming (or rather, some aspects of it). It does so _implicitly_.

> OP isn't trying to be strictly pure and is simply trying to explain the > concepts in a manner that those used to imperative development can easily > digest.

It's like trying to show how to do OOP in C. It's a different paradigm than the primary of the host language, so any educational aspect will be severly diluted, to the point of being useless to anybody who doesn't already know functional programming.

<comment><USER17> > It's like trying to show how to do OOP in C.

Actually, I'd think that would be a super valuable to a C developer. Learning to implement OOP patterns in C would provide practical patterns that can help architect C software. For non-C developers, it'd also provide fundamentals of how OOP actually works. C developers have been implementing OOP patterns since well before C++ existed.

There's lots of resources, and practical examples of this. GObject provides an object system used by both Gnome and GTK. Check out "Object-Oriented Programming With ANSI-C" for a book on the subject.

<comment><USER18> It's arguably faster and of more benefit to learn OO in an OO language, and then work backwards to figure out ways to implement those strategies in C (eg. polymorphism using structs with arrays of function pointers, or win32 send_message constructs).

It's similar with functional programming. Figuring out folds, pattern matching and monads is probably easiest in haskell or Ocaml/F#. The decision to apply those techniques in other languages without native support then becomes a judgement about the benefit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Give Google Chrome for the holidays - <AUTHOR> http://www.givechrome.com/

<comment><USER2> Hm, good idea. I think I will also sign up for a couple of competitions with the addresses of my friends. If they win, they'll thank me, if not, it has cost me nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those are some really ugly themes.</comment>


What are the biggest problems in the world? - <AUTHOR> https://80000hours.org/career-guide/world-problems/?src=hn <comment><USER2> Suggested reading: Living On Almost Nothing In America [http://www.twodollarsaday.com/](http://www.twodollarsaday.com/)</comment>


Why would you use "Ruby on Rails" for a new React project? - <AUTHOR> https://forum.shakacode.com/t/why-would-you-use-react-on-rails-for-a-new-react-project/787/8 <comment><USER2> I would choose Rails if my biggest concern were time to market and server costs weren't a huge concern.

For any kind of site where you're selling a service or product and for the vast majority of freemium models, Rails is great. You'll have to scale a bit sooner than if you chose something like PHP, Node or Go, but you'll have plenty of revenue to pay for it. You'll also either get to profitability or to the point where you realize your experiment is a failure a lot faster.

I wouldn't use Rails if I were working on something really simple or if my plan were to monetize off of ad revenue and a huge base of free users.

<comment><USER3> Why compare rails to PHP and node for server costs? They are all similar. If you care about server costs you use Java or Scala or something with actual performance...

<comment><USER2> Java, and to a lesser degree Scala, would be an eye-brow raising choice for a startup. That's why I didn't bring them up. However, it's worth pointing out

1) PHP and Node both tend to get significantly better performance than Rails. Either is more than sufficient for free products. See: Facebook, WordPress.com, Medium, etc...

2) Java does well in numerical processing, but it isn't necessarily more performant than node or PHP as a web server and it's a bit of a memory hog. Keep in mind Paypal realized huge gains from rewriting large parts of its Java back-end into Node a few years back. Ditto for Groupon.

3) If you're really worried about web server performance, you're probably better off going with Erlang/Elixirm, a JVM language or Go. If you have something truly massive (e.g. Google/FB/Amazon), then you'll probably hire teams to write infrastructure code in C++. Doing that for a normal web app would be nuts.

<comment><USER4> Very informative. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ruby is alive and well. A beautifully written language with an incredible community. Rails only gets stronger and you can look at Shopify for just one example of very large production rails apps. How about Gitlab? There are many more.

It's a quick and easy way to iterate a design while getting out of the way. React can just talk to a rails API and boom you're building the MVP with a simple rails new command. One command to generate models. It's just fucking beautiful. And not bloat like node, rack is a few thousand lines. Idk I'm not an expert but it's just a great platform, why the fuck should anyone not use it? Plenty of reasons exist but it's the right tool for a set of jobs.

<comment><USER6> >A beautifully written language with an incredible community.

This is what has always killed me about Ruby. Such a wonderful language, community, and tooling held back by a painfully slow and inefficient runtime.

<comment><USER7> I am hoping TruffleRuby, which is looking more like a drop in replacement for MRI Ruby, would solve all these problem.

It will still uses LOT of memory, but memory for most is cheap these days. Even it it uses double the memory of MRI and gain 10x the processing performance it is still a net 5x win.</comment></comment></comment>


Any room for new enterprise collaboration softwares? - <AUTHOR>

is there a room for additional enterprise collaboration softwares that compete or co-exist with sharepoint (microsoft), lotus notes (ibm) or other open source offerings? <comment><USER2> I would say it is rather a saturated market and you'll probably find it hard to compete with monsters like sharepoint.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes but dont you think all those Small and Medium sized businesses would like to go for a comparable solution with less string attached (something on lines of atlassian or jive)...sharepoint is expensive in long run and in these tough economic conditions with no signs of improving there is still a market for small players

<comment><USER3> The problem is most SMB want to play it safe (i.e., use Microsoft). There are some that will play with other technologies but then one of the "business types" gets nervous and asks to go with MS.

It is probably easier to get Atlassian and the like into larger organizations. Start with a small group, kick off a pilot, get noticed by other people who want to collaborate/use your information and then grow within the organization. We use Atlassian and that is what we are hoping to do.</comment></comment></comment>


A Quest to Document the World's Flowering Plants - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nature.org/science/2018/08/14/a-quest-to-document-the-worlds-flowering-plants/ <comment><USER2> All the known species of flowering plants are documented. By definition there is an holotype and a paper describing it, but often is a pain to unbury the info. It happens all the time in taxonomy; lots of old documents are not in digital format other are in a different country and you need to lend books and journals in other countries or to ask for obscure papers on forums. Some species are forgotten except by maybe ten people in the planet able to differenciate it.

This is a quest to put photos of all the species in one single place, but 1) there are a lot of digital herbariums around yet promoted by universities and 2) this is a battle that google won long time ago.

Simply, this is a too big goal for two people only, and there is not need to duplicate efforts in another page like this. Just correcting and keeping trace of the everchanging scientific names would need an entire team of experts. You just can't build a "wikipedia level" webpage alone.

Would be much better to use their resources improving the red lists of endangered flora for example.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately their website ([http://floraoftheworld.org/](http://floraoftheworld.org/)) seems to be down. The wayback machine has some snapshots: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180329231424/http://floraofthe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180329231424/http://floraoftheworld.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> What a cool project to spend your life on.</comment>


PayPal error credits man with $92 quadrillion - <AUTHOR> http://cir.ca/story/paypal-quadrillionaire

<comment><USER2> Some discussion already: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6053421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6053421)

Also submitted several times from other sources.</comment>


Ex-Valve hardware expert shares uncommon look inside the company - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/195786/ExValve_hardware_expert_shares_uncommon_look_inside_the_company.php

<comment><USER2> All forms of government (management is no different) work great under specific conditions. That Valve's flat (or pseudo-flat) structure doesn't work in all instances, or for all groups, or for all projects should come as no surprise. It may not even function well at the scales Valve operates at now, we have very little prior experience to know.

Hopefully this is a case where it doesn't work in a specific instance, as it would be a shame to see something so different and unique (within the industry) have major structural problems so early.</comment>


Report: NSA spied on Brazilian, Mexican presidents - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57600928/report-nsa-spied-on-brazilian-mexican-presidents/

<comment><USER3> At the risk of being "not HN".

no duh

These revelations, that "The NSA spied on <insert>" are unimportant beyond "The NSA spied on Americans". _Every_ country spies on _every_ other country. Welcome to being a grown up. I'd be sad if the NSA _wasn 't_ spying on the Brazilian and Mexican presidents.

<comment><USER4> What? It'd be sad if the US DIDN'T spy on other, friendly nations? And, am I not a grown up for seriously being angry about all this then?

<comment><USER5> Being angry is a normal reaction, but that doesn't mean spying on "friends" isn't the thing to do.

It's not black and white. You don't just have "friends" on one side and "enemies" on the others.

It can also be understood as "Trust but verify" \- [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As6y5eI01XE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As6y5eI01XE)

<comment><USER6> So you'd be fine if your partner breaks into your email account on the basis of "trust but verify"? [1] I'm not. The NSA/GCHQ are breaking into secured computer systems of other countries and the UN despite having signed treaties that forbid this practice. They use the information gained to undermine the negotiation position of their partners. Now, that this information gets published, it's "what everybody does", but back when american systems were hacked, it was "evil chinese hackers".

I'm not willing to accept that "what everybody does" is always a good practice. The USA is currently loosing a lot of goodwill and trust with other countries due to the NSAs actions. Those actions might have provided a short- term benefit in some negotiation, but now that they're exposed do a tremendous damage. I might be a bit of a dreamer, but I always hoped that governments should be in for the long-term benefit and fostering reciprocal trust between allies is certainly better than spying on them.

[1] trust but verify can be baked into treaties, as was done in the START treaties for example.

<comment><USER5> If you wrongly entrust your partner, you might be cheated.

If you wrongly entrust another country, millions of persons might die.

Different consequences, different rules.

<comment><USER6> If you wrongly spy on your partner, you might loose him.

If you wrongly spy on an ally, millions of persons might die.

Different consequences, different rules.

Your argument is a straw man. I never called for blind trust into all actions, but for trust in the countries you call your allies. Brasil is unlikely to start the next major war, as is Germany, France or the UN. Spying on those is all about leverage and financial benefits. Is that worth the loss of trust you're risking?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "a document dated June 2012 shows that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's emails were being read."

I have serious issues with the NSA spying on civilians, the lack of oversight, the notion that the NSA can use terrorism to justify whatever they want to do regardless of due process, just because they think it's really, really important, but... this particular thing doesn't really feel like news. Governments spy on other governments. They always have. I don't feel that threatens my civil liberties.

I think the danger of stories like this is that they muddy the waters. The fact that the NSA spies on foreign heads of state is _not the issue_. This kind of spying is what they were set up to do. If we all have knee-jerk reactions to this just because of the anti-NSA zeitgeist, we distract from the things the NSA is doing that actually pose serious threats to our civil liberties.

<comment><USER8> Would you be upset if you found out Mexican secret services have been listening on Obamas calls? What about your calls? Do you like to be spied on?

Isn't it a bit egoistical to assume this affects or is interesting only for American citizens? "Well my Constitution says they can spy on everyone as well as they are not US citizens". Well a lot of other citizens are not US citizens and they don't really give a crap what is written in the US Constitution. They care that they are spied one. And it doesn't even matter if their own government turns around and spies right back on US citizens. They don't like it. They didn't like what NSA did before this either. NSA is in the news now and know more of what and how they do it. That is why there is talk about it. .

<comment><USER9> That's just it though, countries spy on each other. If that upsets you, then you're going to be disappointed forever. It's a bit like being upset that rain makes you wet, no kidding its rain. Countries spy on each other, friendly countries spy on each other because people lie all the time and do the opposite of what they say all the time. The lie to get their allies to do something for them (Iraq WMDs anyone?), they lie because they are covering something up, they lie to protect their own interests, and sometimes they just lie for pride.

It doesn't surprise or upset me one bit, because I know it's happening, I know it needs to happen, because why should I blindly trust any governments leaderships? And because lying and statesmanship seem to go hand in it will always happen. No country should ever trust another country blindly. As no citizen should trust its government blindly. Any government that does that is abdicating its responsibility to serve its citizens interests first, and any person that blindly trusts a government is going to be disappointed.

Think of spying like whistle blowing. We all want to know the truth.

<comment><USER10> 2023:

"Countries spy on their citizens. If that upsets you, then you're going to be disappointed forever. Countries spy on their citizens because people lie all the time and do the opposite of what they say all the time."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title is a bit misleading: NSA spied on Enrique Pena Nieto before he was elected, and explicitly states that "it's not clear if the spying continues".

</comment><comment><USER12> Doesn't it bother anyone else that the only source for the recent "NSA spied on <x>"-type news seems to be Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden? Has their claims ever been independently verified?

<comment><USER13> The most recent edition of this book came out a few years ago, so it doesn't verify this year's claims specifically:

[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/privacy- line](http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/privacy-line)

...but what it does explain (and backs up with a plethora of sources) makes this summer's NSA news sound like business as usual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If we are so good at spying on other country presidents that means we knew every step of the way what Syria was doing to its people and we did nothing.

And congress is about to give that a seal of approval.

That's what you get for not having oil.

</comment><comment><USER15> Has anyone changed their opinion on Edward Snowden?

There is a difference between this, and exposing potential crimes toward the American people by the NSA.

Now he seems to be attempting to embarrass and weaken US-interests as much as possible.

The funny thing about all this is these leaked "revelations" are pretty much _standard operating procedures_ for any country and their native NSA counterparts.

All this is doing is allowing those other countries to mobilize public hate towards America and Americans, and use that to potentially give them the upper hand in future dealing with or against the US.

<comment><USER6> > Has anyone changed their opinion on Edward Snowden?

No

> There is a difference between this, and exposing potential crimes toward the > American people by the NSA.

Yes, sure, but only marginally: The NSA is spying on other nations and the UN, violating treaties the US government voluntarily signed. IMHO, that's a pretty clear sign of a secret service out of control - unless it's the administration that is signing treaties left and ordering the secret service to break them on the right. I'm not certain which idea appeals less to me.

If that's standard SOP for every country I think it deserves a public debate and that's what's happening. It's the spectre of the NSAs actions that comes back to haunt the government. Same as the whole WMD story in Iraq: Now the "undeniable proof" that Assad used chemical weapons is questioned. Nobody trusts you if you treat your friends like shit - and everybody on the receiving end is entitled to be pissed off. Sure, they'll use that in future dealings, but well, that's the price you pay. SOP, you could say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is starting to become a trend, which was to be expected. When you spy on your allies, and they find out, they won't trust you or your companies anymore, and they will isolate themselves from you as much as possible.

Maybe this will lead to the _decentralization of power_ in the world, and EU and Latin America will start challenging US in services and economy - <USER2> would be good for everyone in the world.

Brazil Wants National 'Antisnoop' Email

[http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/world/2013/09/...](http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/world/2013/09/1335563-brazil- wants-national-antisnoop-email.shtml)

<comment><USER17> "Brazil Wants National 'Antisnoop' Email"

Translation: Brazil wants an email they can snoop without regards to unimportant things such as "due process" and "privacy"

<comment><USER18> Are all people, everywhere, so under the thumb of their intelligence agencies that they have no hope of privacy? Or are you willing to admit that some people, somewhere, have actual freedom and self-determination?

<comment><USER19> Brazil wants the servers within its borders (officially) to snoop on drug traffickers and other suspected law breakers without having to ask for permission: [http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2013/08/11/act...](http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2013/08/11/actualidad/1376172139_847597.html)

Calls to mind a high profile case of China imprisoning an activist who used Yahoo mail which then was hosted within China.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mechanical Turk and beta testing - <AUTHOR>

How many of you have used Mechanical Turk for beta testing?<p>* Have you guys gotten any real value out of it?<p>* Do people really come back and tell you what works and what doesn't?<p>* Has it been effective in fixing bugs or improve funtionality or usability?<p>* And does the reports help in determining the usability of your app?<p>Thanks in adv for your input. <comment><AUTHOR> Aaarrgggghh ... I wanted some insight from the HN community and got none!!</comment>


Ask HN: Is all code worth sharing? - <AUTHOR>

I personally believe that unless your code offers one or more of the following, you should keep it to yourself:<p>- a novel experience<p>- a solution to a previously unsolved problem<p>- a faster or smaller solution to a solved problem<p>What's your opinion? <comment><USER2> Your requirements are from the perspective of people who view/use the code. I'd argue there are many benefits for the coder by releasing code including getting feedback from the community on aspects that could be improved or changed. This learning aspect is important as well

<comment><AUTHOR> that may be true, but is it worth the time of the community to critique code that offers them nothing in return?

one might argue that the decision as to whether code is worth reviewing is up to the individual, and i would agree. but i would also argue that it's the responsibility of the author to decide whether or not the submission of that code in a public forum will generate more light or more heat, and filter such submissions accordingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How would you expect to achieve any of the things on your list _prior_ to sharing the code with others, so that people can collaborate? You're basically implying that none of the good stuff happens after the code goes public.

</comment><comment><USER4> I strongly disagree. For the types of code you mention we already have avenues for this -- academic papers and publications and libraries.

Publishing code, say, in a GitHub profile, can serve other purposes though. Sometimes you're applying for a job and the employer just wants to assess that you can write syntactically valid, human-readable, not-too-terrible code and use source control. For this, I'm not too terribly concerned about whether this is the millionth time solving the problem, so much as I am about excluding people who aren't ready to be interviewed by a bona fide developer.</comment>


Rijndael Inspector - visualization of AES cipher - <AUTHOR> http://www.formaestudio.com/rijndaelinspector/archivos/rijndaelanimation.html

<comment><USER2> Nice, if a bit glossy. I find this visualization to be a bit more profound:

<http://cr.yp.to/snuffle/diffusion.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent visualization! Very nicely done.</comment>


Overclocking the lecture: consume recorded lectures much more quickly - <AUTHOR> http://joshua.schachter.org/2008/11/overclocking-lecture.html

<comment><USER2> I'm in grad school and watch all my lectures using the approach described in the blog post. After following this accelerated viewing approach for almost 2 years I can tell you that in reality the content doesn't get consumed "much more quickly".

First, for most lecturers it isn't possible to listen to recordings more than 1.5 times faster. At this rate, there is a roughly 33% reduction in the time it takes to view a lecture. It is noticeably faster, but not really significant unless you are viewing more than 1 lecture at a time, for example a lecture is typically 50 minutes, so one saves about 17 minutes per lecture. In my experience the savings fail to realize for the reasons I'll cover further.

Second, the rate at which the lecture can be accelerated varies significantly depending on the professor who is presenting the material. Some professors speak quickly and once the playback speed is increased to 1.5, their speech becomes blurred and unintelligible. Often the native English speakers are the ones who can't be sped up much. Luckily, at my school most of the professors aren't native speakers so a rate of 1.5 is adequate. For non-native speakers, the useful playback rate varies pretty widely. One of my professors who is from Turkey speaks slowly and his lectures can be played and understood at a speed up of 2.

Third, the playback speed does affect comprehension. Even at a normal playback rate I find that some topics covered in the lecture require a rewind and a replay. Accelerated playback requires closer attention and more frequent replays. Of course how often one needs to replay the lecture depends on the content and varies from person to person.

<comment><USER3> "Often the native English speakers are the ones who can't be sped up much. Luckily, at my school most of the professors aren't native speakers so a rate of 1.5 is adequate."

Luckily?... Think about it a few seconds. You don't get any more benefit from listening to a slower speaker at a faster playback speed over a faster speaker at an equivalently less fast playback speed. If you see what I mean...

<comment><USER2> >You don't get any more benefit from listening to a slower speaker at a faster playback speed over a faster speaker at an equivalently less fast playback speed

That assumes that you are comparing the same course being taught by a faster speaker vs. a slower speaker. In reality, you don't have a choice. So if you are stuck with a slower speaker, you might as well speed up their lecture.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you understood what I mean. I mean that if you have someone who speaks at a rate of x and that gets unintelligible at a playback speed of y and another that speaks at a rate of 2x and gets unintelligible at a playback speed of y/2 then all other things being equal you have no advantage in listening to one instead of the other if you playback at the maximum intelligible speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of "Microserfs", when the protagonists took to watching foreign movies on fast-forward, because they could still follow the subtitles.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like that idea too.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> i still want to find a way to do this with ffmpeg (for the video) and sox (for the audio) plus maybe slide changeover detection, slide text recognition, face detection (to remove motion from speaker) etc etc etc. Feels like fixed camera video is not too hard to process...</comment>


A Response to REST Is the New SOAP - <AUTHOR> https://philsturgeon.uk/api/2017/12/18/rest-confusion-explained/ <comment><USER2> So I need to read this-that-and-the-other to _really_ understand REST, and many other people misunderstand and misimplement pseudo-RESTful services. This implies that the 'standard' is too complicated and nuanced to be useful. What's the point of a lingua franca for web services if most people are too stupid to understand it?

<comment><USER3> The designers of the Web (the formalisation of its architectural style is called REST, there is no 'standard') first and foremost cared that it works well. If it's more difficult to understand than RPC, so be it. Make an effort, that never hurt. If more people would make an effort, we would have less articles with infuriating clickbait headlines arguing against strawmen, like the original one by Chambon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The beauty of REST is that it's not defined. If one says it's no great, the response is "that's not REST". A nice trick.

One would think that a integration protocol standard would be defined by someone who's been doing integration for years, over many projects. And only then would those hard-won lessons would be codified in a standard.

Nope, it was by a student for a thesis. Are students known for their expereince in integration? Also this guy was "heavily involved in the development of HTML and Uniform Resource Identifiers" [0]. Other questionable 'standards', IMO.

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

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://lobste.rs/s/yow5nr/response_rest_is_new_soap](https://lobste.rs/s/yow5nr/response_rest_is_new_soap)</comment>


New Apple Laptops Due Next Week: A Rumor Recap and a Poll - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2008/10/09/new-apple-portables-due-next-week-a-rumor-recap/

<comment><USER2> I remember watching a call with someone from Dell on CNBC during the last US recession (2001 recession and "jobless recovery" the following couple of years). He said that Dell was basically going to cut prices like crazy and actually lose some money in order to gain market share during the down time so they could capitalize on it when the economy swings back up again.

I wonder if Apple has something like this in store in terms of the "cheaper laptop" rumor. We're (sort of) already seeing this with the iPhones. ("Cheaper" but higher monthly rates which nullify the savings in the long run.)

<comment><USER3> I too am keenly interested in seeing how Apple works the premium product angle in response to the netbook segment. It's pretty obvious that they're going to have to do something, but exactly what doesn't seem obvious.

<comment><USER4> You don't see the iphone as _almost_ a competitor in this space?

Basic typing, myspace, facebook, emails, flickr, youtube... That's retty much what a netbook is used for isn't it?

<comment><USER3> Sort of... Honestly I don't have a particularly charitable opinion of the iPhone: you can't touch type on it, which makes it effectively consume-only for email, and it's also consume-only for video (and recorded audio for that matter).

The iPhone is a shot across the bow for Blackberry and Windows Mobile, in my opinion. Always present, capable of doing text composition in a pinch, and a pacifier or Game Boy for (near-)adults.

I believe that the netbook segment represents the future of notebook computing, in that they're for task oriented ("I'm sitting down to write a chapter of a novel at the coffee shop", or "I'm checking up on my myspace and facebook accounts"; contrast with "I'm bored and have a second and would like to see if someone responded to me on facebook" in the mobile case) use. They're big enough to touch type on, and they generally can accept USB devices, so you can create content on them.

From my POV the Asus Eee PC stands for everything that the Apple notebooks do, it's just a little smaller, as sexy, and a lot cheaper. It's obviously not as gratuitously sexy as the MB Air, but at $2500 that's not even on the radar of the vast majority of the computing public.

Since OS X and the Bondi Blue iMacs Apple has had a really weak foe in the Windows hardware vendors. Sony had the engineering prowess but no cohesive design language, IBM had the design language, but it was ugly as sin (I say this as a ThinkPad fanboy). There was nothing that integrated well enough with Windows to make it feel monolithic or whole.

Asus has a game changer on their hands with the Eee in that they have full control of both the hardware and the UI, and the price point is substantially below typical laptop prices. This, combined with downward price pressure from conventional laptops means that a response from Apple is inevitable.

Apple could well ride it out for another two years, but like any other business they do better when they stake their claim (integrated iPod + iTunes + store, best served on an iMac) as opposed to reacting to a market trend (Newton, back in the PDA days, or the megahertz wars).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rate this Idea: Analyze your life with the help of a GPS data logger - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattmazur.com/2009/06/path-tagger-explained/

<comment><AUTHOR> HackerNews, this is an idea that I was seriously considering spending the next few months of nights and weekends on.

I've decided not to pursue it and was hoping to hear your thoughts. Specifically: is this something you would have been interested in using?

</comment><comment><USER2> Isn't this precisely the sort of thing criminals are made to use in some places to monitor parole compliance? (i.e. the kind of thing I would only use if my alternative were somehow worse).</comment>


Ask HN: Tricks to Avoid Eye Problems? - <AUTHOR> As a software engineer, I have the need to stay many hours in front of a screen.
I work 8 hours a day in an office with a computer. At home I usually spend about 3 hours a day at the computer (social network, programming, side projects, HN, ...).
I usually have slightly red eyes. Lately the problem has gotten worse. I began to have some pains in the right eye and difficulty focusing on the computer screen.
Because of that, I'm currently at home on vacation. I have a scheduled appointment with a vision specialist next week.
This is the first time I have complications with vision. I'm 26 years old, so far I've never had any problems or need glasses.
Someone has some tips to avoid eye problems? <comment><USER3> Look away. Frequently. I work from home, spend 10-12 hours a day looking at screens. My office is set up so I can glance out a window easily. In fact it's in my peripheral vision, that's how close it is. I look out it frequently. I'm 42, just had glasses in the last 2-3 years. The trick is to let your eye focus on something far away on a regular basis. It's like getting up and walking around, but for your eyes. It makes a huuuge difference.

<comment><USER4> looking far is important. i recently switched to a large monitor and a small office and it has been disastrous for my eyes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Been using PC screens since 92 and excessively since 95. I'm now 36 and my wife urged me to take an eye test with her because I've ignored my eyesight for so long.

She had a 25 minute session to get her glasses corrected. My time, 20 seconds into mine.

"Ermmm.. there's nothing wrong with his eyes"

My wife was visibly annoyed.

I have this 'terrible' habit of watching people walk by, sometimes stare out in the distance, looking at objects close and far all the time!

</comment><comment><USER6> Try avoiding displays using PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) for dimming. Unfortunately most monitors and high-end phones made by Samsung, Apple and Google make use of PWM.

For monitors you can check here: [http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/flicker_free_database.h...](http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/flicker_free_database.htm)

For phones you can check the reviews on notebookcheck.net, they also test whether the display is PWM-free in the reviews. [https://www.notebookcheck.net/?&hide_youtube=1&typeArray[]=1](https://www.notebookcheck.net/?&hide_youtube=1&typeArray\[\]=1)

</comment><comment><USER7> Eye stretching exercises. Focus on something as close as possible (in good light) then slowly track out to something at infinite distance, one eye then the other then both.

Additionally, make sure the contrast on the screen matches your surriundings! There's no reason to have your brightness very high at all, and brightness is different from contrast.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's the 20/20/20 rule (every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds) that's cited often.

I started to have similar issues, and my optometrist set me up with some reading glasses optimized for how far away I usually sit from my monitor. They have eliminated a lot of the eyestrain issues I'd been dealing with.

</comment><comment><USER9> > I have a scheduled appointment with a vision specialist next week.

I was having eye strain towards the end of the day, and getting some "occupational lenses" pretty much fixed the issue. I think visiting an Optometrist is the way to go.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

You might check if the lights in your home office flicker with the slow-motion camera mode on your phone. I haven't researched whether it actually causes eye strain, but it's so easy to fix I went ahead and purchased some Phillips LED bulbs like the ones talked about here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19098678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19098678)

Some random things I do:

\- Lower brightness on your monitor (mine is at 75% currently, I think most people go lower)

\- Use night shift/flux to make the monitor colors warmer at night

FYI getting used to the lower brightness and glasses will take a day or two. My glasses made my eyes hurt at first.

<comment><USER10> For reference, the brightness of my screen is somewhere between 1% and 7%, depending on the time of the day (switching between three modes). People always wonder how I can see anything, but I'm so used to it that I get tired looking at brighter screens very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had similar issues for a while. Some recommendations:

\- pick a LARGE, high-quality monitor, both at work and at home, and use retina/hidpi modes. I use a 43" LG 4K monitor, and it was one of the best investments of my life. Sometimes my co-workers laugh about the size of the fonts on my screen, but that usually means I have ZERO STRAIN on my eyes, since everything is extra large (basically, FullHD on a 43" monitor)

\- Tune your colors towards red. Blue imposes more strain to your eyes. That's especially true when working indoors and/or by night.

\- Tune down your brightness, and use "dark mode" whenever possible.

\- Pick a pair of blue-filtering glasses with LARGE lenses, to use while at your PC.

</comment><comment><USER12> While I'm not normally one to espouse buying _gear_ to fix problems, when it comes to problems with the body, I think it could be worth it.

If you are unfortunate enough to need glasses, consider getting a pair that has blue-light filtering (in addition to the regular AR coating).

I also use a monitor that comes with blue light reduction built-in (The Lenovo p24h, if anyone's wondering), and there's a definite difference when I work in the office (with the monitor) and at home (without).

Before I got my glasses, I was getting headaches after a couple hours in front of the computer as well. Not anymore, but taking breaks (as others suggest) is important too!!

</comment><comment><USER13> I have had glasses since I was 1 year old. They were flexible and strapped to my head. I still have them in a keep-sake box.

Today, I am 42 and my vision is still changing for the worse. I get 2 eye exams each year and I always get an "everyday" pair and an "occupational" pair used for screen, reading, writing, etc.

I am going to a specialist next week to look at why prism adjustments aren't helping. I am skipping lines in test, not seeing text, having difficulty typing without looking.

Good luck. Whatever you do, don't cancel your appointment. Go. You owe it to yourself to get answers.

</comment><comment><USER14> To respond to a click-bait-esque question, just don't have eyes.

But really take breaks, lower the brightness, use the color change function if you work at night, keep the monitor further away from you (check your ergonomics).

</comment><comment><USER15> I developed eye floaters about a year ago that are annoyingly noticeable against any page with a white background. The Dark Reader extension ([https://darkreader.org/](https://darkreader.org/)) has been a life saver for me, and I've found my eyes to be less tired overall when using it, too.

My only wish now is for a way to invert PDF colors on Mac - I haven't found a good way to do that short of inverting all screen colors, which messes up all the other apps that do have a dark/night mode.

<comment><USER16> havnt tested on a mac but I use zathura on linux and its reverse colors (cntrl+r) is a lifesaver for me.

this seems promising: [https://github.com/zegervdv/homebrew- zathura](https://github.com/zegervdv/homebrew-zathura)

<comment><USER15> Wow, that looks perfect, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> * Use a program like flux to reduce the blue light in the late hours (helps with sleep as a side effect)

* Think about your workspace. A lot has been written about this. Read it.

* Every now and then look up and gaze into the distant, roll your eyes and try to feel which muscles of the eyes seem tense. Try to loosen them.

* If you read a lot on screens get an e-reader and implement a way to get away from the screen (can also help with focus)

Your eyes are muscles. And like for every muscle the best thing you can do is move it instead of keeping the same position unchanged for ages.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wear eyeglasses frequently. My newest pair has Blutech lenses [0] which help filter blue light. I call it "flux for real life". [1]

They have an amber tint but I don't mind it. The filtering is a part of the lens and not a coating, so it won't wear off.

GP indicates they don't wear glasses but this may be an option for those who do.

[0] [https://blutechlenses.com](https://blutechlenses.com)

[1] [https://justgetflux.com](https://justgetflux.com)

<comment><USER19> I think screen manufacturer can provide option to buy product with the this type of glasses in their display in built

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Having two monitors at different distances/angles is what has worked for me after almost a year of pomodoro'ing with no better results & slightly blurry eyes at the end of a work day.

Also look at monitors by moving your eyes & not your entire head, just like pilots.

Finally drink lots of water every hour. The pee breaks will help with sedentary lifestyle problems, improve circulation, give your eyelids a break & act as a breather between work bouts.

</comment><comment><USER21> My sister had high power, she went to a yoga class and learned some exercises - these were simple (twice a day, doing something simple like look up/down/left/right etc, plus she got a specific cup to wash her eyes) and her power went down quite a bit. She also made sure to look away from the screen often and she got a good night's sleep. This definitely helped in her case.

</comment><comment><USER22> Had pain, sensitivity to light and trouble focusing all caused by dryness due to 2 factors: 1\. not enough blinking (staring at the screen while concetrating) 2\. Oil glands in eyelids getting stuck and causing suboptimal tear quality

Did two things: 1\. purposely blinked more often 2\. warmed up eyelids and massaged them from bottom up to stimulate oil glands and get them unstuck twice a day

Solved all problems in two weeks.

Hope it helps, good luck!

</comment><comment><USER23> Can you elaborate on why you think this might be due to screen exposure? Just curious since I often have a vision pain too, but was not sure if that is indeed because of screentime. I tend to take time off from screen at regular intervals and maintain healthy lighting around etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> > I work 8 hours a day in an office with a computer. At home I usually spend > about 3 hours a day at the computer (social network, programming, side > projects, HN, ...).

> Someone has some tips to avoid eye problems?

1\. Stop doing that.

2\. Make sure that lights are appropriately bright around you.

3\. Stop drinking Diet Soda or similar drinks.

<comment><USER25> What does diet soda have anything to do with eyes?

<comment><USER24> The artificial sweeteners can interfere with the optic nerve and can damage blood vessels in the eye. The impact is much worse for smokers and diabetics.

I had a personal experience with this in my 20s. I was in a situation where I was working on a project that left me working long shifts in a dim area, and started having peripheral flashes of light. That's a sign of retina detachment, so I was rushed off to the ophthalmologist. They went through a bunch of stuff and it turned out I was ingesting extreme amounts of aspartame. (>12 cups of coffee and 8-10 Diet Cokes a day) From a medical POV, more than 4 cans of diet soda is considered "high" use. I stopped sweetening coffee and moved to seltzer the next day and the symptoms were gone in 48 hours.

Diet Soda is bad stuff for many reasons. You're better off with drinking sugared soda or beer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Avoiding light grey text on a pale yellow background (like Hacker News) is a good start to saving your eyes.

</comment><comment><USER27> I do these: Keep all device brightness levels at their lowest. Use "night mode" if available. Prefer natural lighting if available. At nights, keep indoor lighting dim. Sit under the sky at night and focus eyes on stars. Eye exercises (rotate eyes inside closed sockets CW and CCW).

</comment><comment><USER28> Get Blue light blocking glasses like Gamma Rays. I've been in the business 30 years and do need some reading glasses, but for the most part not any issues. The Gamma Rays (or something like it) really ease the stress on the eyes. Probably use a screen 12 hours a day unfortunately!!

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's one that sounds obvious but I rarely see people point out: close your eyes. If your eyes are tired, just close them for a for a while. Let your eyelids do some work. That's one of their main functions after all - <USER2> protect the eye.

</comment><comment><USER30> [https://lifespa.com/home-ayurvedic-eye-treatment-ghee- netra-...](https://lifespa.com/home-ayurvedic-eye-treatment-ghee-netra- tarpana/)

Worked very well for me for dry eyes due to pollution.

</comment><comment><USER31> DevTools Theme: Zero Dark Matrix if you are looking at chrome inspector, [https://darkreader.org/](https://darkreader.org/), f.lux, dark mode in your IDE

<comment><USER32> I can't live without f.lux ([https://justgetflux.com/](https://justgetflux.com/)). Dark mode in all apps possible and looking away frequently generally help me as well as parent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It is not healthy to sit in a chair staring at a screen all day. Consider early retirement or a change of career, if you can.

</comment><comment><USER34> In addition to using a program like flux, develop your awareness of your monitor brightness. Adjust it throughout the day so that it is neither too bright nor too dim.

</comment><comment><USER35> I started having eye strain issues around 25. For me, I was able to fix it by lowering the brightness of my monitor / laptop to the minimum for it to look 'normal' to me.

</comment><comment><USER36> The app "Time Out" is really good for this on Mac. I've used it daily for probably the last six months, it automatically helps you do eye breaks.

</comment><comment><USER37> The "glasses off" smartphone app has some good reviews.

But I'd just echo others advice and say look out the window frequently.

</comment><comment><USER38> flux!

<comment><AUTHOR> What about a dark theme in Code Editor (something like default Sublime theme)?

<comment><USER38> That certainly doesn't hurt. My favorite of the other comments is the 20/20/20 rule. If you had to only choose one choose that one. But ideally, choose them all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Your eyes are an important part of your health. There are many things you can do to keep them healthy and make sure you are seeing your best. Follow these simple steps for maintaining healthy eyes well into your golden years.

Have a comprehensive dilated eye exam. You might think your vision is fine or that your eyes are healthy, but visiting your eye care professional for a comprehensive dilated eye exam is the only way to really be sure. When it comes to common vision problems, some people don't realize they could see better with glasses or contact lenses. In addition, many common eye diseases such as glaucoma, diabetic eye disease and age-related macular degeneration often have no warning signs. A dilated eye exam is the only way to detect these diseases in their early stages.

During a comprehensive dilated eye exam, your eye care professional places drops in your eyes to dilate, or widen, the pupil to allow more light to enter the eye the same way an open door lets more light into a dark room. This enables your eye care professional to get a good look at the back of the eyes and examine them for any signs of damage or disease. Your eye care professional is the only one who can determine if your eyes are healthy and if you're seeing your best.

Know your family's eye health history. Talk to your family members about their eye health history. It's important to know if anyone has been diagnosed with a disease or condition since many are hereditary. This will help to determine if you are at higher risk for developing an eye disease or condition.

Eat right to protect your sight. You've heard carrots are good for your eyes. But eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, particularly dark leafy greens such as spinach, kale, or collard greens is important for keeping your eyes healthy, too.

i

Research has also shown there are eye health benefits from eating fish high in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, tuna, and halibut.

Maintain a healthy weight. Being overweight or obese increases your risk of developing diabetes and other systemic conditions, which can lead to vision loss, such as diabetic eye disease or glaucoma. If you are having trouble maintaining a healthy weight, talk to your doctor.

Wear protective eyewear. Wear protective eyewear when playing sports or doing activities around the home. Protective eyewear includes safety glasses and goggles, safety shields, and eye guards specially designed to provide the correct protection for a certain activity. Most protective eyewear lenses are made of polycarbonate, which is 10 times stronger than other plastics. Many eye care providers sell protective eyewear, as do some sporting goods stores.

Quit smoking or never start. Smoking is as bad for your eyes as it is for the rest of your body. Research has linked smoking to an increased risk of developing age-related macular degeneration, cataract, and optic nerve damage, all of which can lead to blindness.

Be cool and wear your shades. Sunglasses are a great fashion accessory, but their most important job is to protect your eyes from the sun's ultraviolet rays. When purchasing sunglasses, look for ones that block out 99 to 100 percent of both UV-A and UV-B radiation.

Give your eyes a rest. If you spend a lot of time at the computer or focusing on any one thing, you sometimes forget to blink and your eyes can get fatigued. Try the 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes, look away about 20 feet in front of you for 20 seconds. This can help reduce eyestrain.

Clean your hands and your contact lensesproperly. To avoid the risk of infection, always wash your hands thoroughly before putting in or taking out your contact lenses. Make sure to disinfect contact lenses as instructed and replace them as appropriate.

Practice workplace eye safety. Employers are required to provide a safe work environment. When protective eyewear is required as a part of your job, make a habit of wearing the appropriate type at all times and encourage your coworkers to do the same.</comment>