Why Are Psychedelics Illegal? - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/read/why-are-psychedelics-illegal-368 <comment><USER2> > To better understand why, in McKenna's view, psychedelics are illegal, it > may be helpful to examine why the world today operates on a dominator > instead of a partnership model, and what exactly these terms mean.

What?? No! That won't be helpful at all!

Why not start with the discourse at the time they were banned. What was said? Should we take it at face value? Did the illegality emerge once and spread, or did it "evolve" separately, in lots of different places?

Plenty of policy gets passed due to specific, contingent circumstances right at that moment. It often comes down to the judgment of a few people thinking on a very short time-horizon.

Before reaching for some sort of grand dialectic theory, we should at least find out whether the "reasons" aren't wholly contingent. What if we just got stuck with this policy because of some specific set of circumstances, and we still have it due to sheer inertia?

<comment><USER3> It's true that there were contingent circumstances that led to the modern prohibition of psychedelics back in the 60s.

However, you seem to be overlooking the overarching theme of prohibition that goes back many, many centuries in Western culture. There is a lot more to this than simply a modern governmental overreaction.

Jonathan Ott, in his Proemium, says it far better than I can:

" Despite overwhelming scientific and experiential evidence to the contrary, human beings are conceived of as a special creation apart from other animals, and we are enjoined to subdue the world, which is matter. This horrible superstition has led to the despoiling and ruin of our biosphere, and to the crippling neurosis and guilt of modern people (Hofmann 1980). I call this a superstition because when people have direct, personal access to entheogenic, religious experiences, they never conceive of humankind as a separate creation, apart from the rest of the universe. "Every thing that lives is Holy," us included, and the divine infuses all the creation of which we are an integral part. As the dualistic superstition took root in our ancestors' minds, their first task was to destroy all aspects of ecstatic, experiential religion from the archaic ("pagan") world. The destruction of the sanctuary of Eleusis at the end of the fourth century of our era (Mylonas 1961) marked the final downfall of the ancient world in Europe, and for the next millennium the theocratic Catholic Church vigorously persecuted every vestige of ecstatic religion which survived, including revival movements. By the time of the "discovery" of the New World, Europe had been beaten into submission, the "witches" and "heretics" mostly burned, and ecstasy was virtually expunged from the memory of the survivors. For the Catholics, and for the Protestants after them, to experience ecstasy, to have religious experiences, was the most heinous heresy, justifying torture and being burned alive. Is it any wonder that today we have no place for ecstasy?

In the New World, however, the Age of Entheogens and ecstasy lived on, and although in 1620 the Inquisition in Mexico formally declared the use of entheogenic plants like peyotl (see Chapter 1) to be heresy and the Church vigorously extirpated this use and tortured and executed Indian shamans, ecstasy survives there even now. It bears witness to the integrity of the New World Indians that they braved torture and death to continue with their ecstatic religion- they must have been bitterly disappointed in the "placebo sacrament" of the Christian Eucharist, which is a placebo entheogen (Ott 1979b)- and it is largely as a result of the modern rediscovery of the shamanic cult of teonanacatl (see Chapter 5) by R. Gordon Wasson in Mexico in 1955 that the modern use of entheogens, in many respects a revival of ecstatic religion, began. Even though myriad justifications for the modern laws against the entheogens have been offered up, the problem modern societies have with these drugs is fundamentally the same problem the Inquisition had with them, the same problem the early Christians had with the Eleusinian Mysteries- religious rivalry. Since these drugs tend to open people's eyes and hearts to an experience of the holiness of the universe... yes, enable people to have personal religious experiences without the intercession of a priesthood of the preconditioning of a liturgy, some psychonauts or epoptes will perceive the emptiness and shallowness of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition; even begin to see through the secular governments which use religious symbols to manipulate people; begin to see that by so ruthlessly subduing the earth we are killing the planet and destroying ourselves. A "counterculture" having ecstatic experiences in California is quite as subversive (Einhorn 1970) and threatens the power structures in Sacramento or Washington just as much as the rebellious Albigensians or Cathars, Bogomiles, Fraticelli "de opinione," Knights Templar and Waldenisians threatened the power structure in Rome and Mediaeval times (Cohn 1975)."

[http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pharmacotheon/pha...](http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pharmacotheon/pharmacotheon_proemium.shtml)

<comment><USER4> This was an excellent insightful post thank you

<comment><USER3> Thank you very, very much! Promoting these sorts of ideas is my main contribution to HN (since I am not a professional programmer, but merely a techie dabbler and lover of mathematics)

However, the real credit should go to people like Jonathan Ott, Charles Grob, Stanislav Groff, James Fadiman and Benny Shanon. Terence McKenna too, of course, but I find his views are less appealing and less convincing to the typical HN demographic. There are far more academically credible authors who write deeply about these things than TM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing that wasn't mention by the article is that drug prohibition is (at least partly) based on racist beliefs[0], here is a famous quote from Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA):

> There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, > Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing > result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual > relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others. [...] its effect on the > degenerate races.

[0][http://io9.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-based-on-racism- not-...](http://io9.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-based-on-racism-not- science-1500321449)

<comment><USER6> This is terribly hilarious -- thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that > you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because > they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior > and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that > everything you know is wrong.

This in my opinion is exactly right. I do not have wide experience with psychedelics, but I have experienced a few, and the common element among all of them was how much it opened my mind up to new lines of thinking, and these paths were tended lead in directions that were not amicable towards our neoliberal capitalist society.

<comment><USER8> > They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.

In mathematical modeling, they say that every model is wrong, but some are useful.

Insofar as psychedelics are dissociatives, they can cause harm by convincing us to discard our wrong but useful models of the world. And I have experienced that when no associations seem significant, _all_ associations gain significance, independent of usefulness.

Our brain works pretty well with our incomplete-but-useful heuristics, and the ability to discover these heuristics and transmit them culturally is one of our central powers as a species. I don't have the perspective of a state to say why exactly they have been banned, and I don't have the perspective of a god to say whether the lubrication of psychedelics might slip us into a greater local optimum. But I do have enough personal experience to say that bad things can happen to an unmoored mind.

<comment><USER9> That's an interesting conjecture, but is there any evidence at all? Say, in the form of dysfunction in cases where users of psychedelics come into leadership positions or positions of influence? Or among communities where use of psychedelics is common?

<comment><USER8> Respectfully, I make no conjectures. When I say that psychedelics can cause _us_ harm, I mean that psychedelics can cause the individual harm, and I generalize from my own (extremely mild) experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that > you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because > they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior > and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that > everything you know is wrong.

Counterpoint: Isn't that pretty obvious even without psychedelics?

<comment><USER11> >Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing.

If true, what this says to me is that a ban on psychodelics is justified if you are interested in maintaining civilization.

<comment><USER12> Not quite - the subtler point of that is _this_ civilization versus _a_ civilization, which in turn is part of the larger point that civilization is a made thing (and continuously, at that - like Sartre's consciousness) that we have the option of doing differently. That your cultural opinions are opinions, not facts, and that most of "consensus reality" has that kind of relationship with actual reality.

Like when economists talk about the Market like it's some oracular weather system instead of a bunch of things people made and do.

This is also the actual meaning behind the "drop out" of "turn on, tune in, drop out" \- not to leave all civilization entirely, but to leave /this/ civilization in order to participate in your own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tend to look at drug prohibitions by governments as akin to kosher restrictions. I once heard a rabbi explain why kosher exists. (These are his words, recalled from my memory so certainly not exactly correct.) There is no inherent meaning to the prohibition. Not eating pork doesn't make you a better person, nor does eating it make you a bad person. But by not eating pork you are demonstrating your obedience to God. The law says "do not kill" and for most men it is easy to obey that law. If that was all one needed to do to be a servant of God there would be little point to religion. Your personal faith would rarely be tested. So God tests us in a small way, with kosher laws. These are easy to obey, but also more difficult because the temptation is more common. When you abstain from eating pork you are strengthening your faith and preparing for when you may be faced with a more serious temptation. It is a daily affirmation of your obedience to God. (end quotation)

So I also think that government prohibitions exist largely to allow governments to assert their authority. If you can't be trusted to follow a simple law like "don't use this recreational drug" then you can't be trusted to follow more serious laws like "don't stab someone in the face".

(Not saying I agree with it. I'm just making an observation.)

<comment><USER14> So kosher laws and all those other random little mitzvot are God's version of brown M&Ms?

<comment><USER15> I've heard -- and am biased to believe -- there are some practical bases for kosher laws. Some people got trichinosis from mishandled pork, e.g., and prohibition is simpler than quality assurance; Other, non-Hebrew cultures cooked lambs in their mothers' milk as a "sacrament;" not doing so was a practical cultural differentiator.

<comment><USER13> My suspicion is that it started as an economic move. The Israelites were sheep herders trying to carve a niche in a dominant culture of pig and cattle herders. Telling them they couldn't eat pork and certain sacrifices had to be lambs was a way of subsidizing the sheep farmers. I came to this conclusion after reading a long chapter in the bible that talks about the breeding. Even back then they understood husbandry and economics. I doubt anyone had a clue about germ theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the article, and many of the comments here, the thrust is that illegality is primarily a political matter. I certainly can't argue that isn't a factor, but I can say it's not the only salient issue.

All drugs have multiple effects, most of which receive little or no study. Particular effects may be useful, and the others we call "side-effects". The problem with drugs is determining these characteristics, a notably difficult task since individual responses vary widely. BTW, the US FDA considers AE occurrence of >=1% to be "frequent", that is, a major/signficant side-effect of the drug.

Systematic study is extremely laborious. That's the reason therapeutic drugs require such expensive and time-consuming development. Potential severe but rare effects may not come to the fore until millions of people are exposed to the drug. If it comes to light that >=1/10^6 recipients have a fatal response, that may represent too big a risk to leave the drug on the market.

Hallucinogenic drugs are _not_ risk free. Spend a few days in the ED where such drugs are being widely used and there will be multiple instances of panic, dissociative responses and psychosis. This is something I've personally observed. Yes, it's anecdotal, but large, well-structured, placebo-controlled trials have not yet been done.

In the absence of such studies, is it ethical to assert the use of any drug is "safe"? Even if serious adverse effects are "infrequent" (<1%), encouraging people to use a drug (particularly for non-essential purposes) could conceivably result in thousands of people trying it, and consequently a substantial number suffering harm. Such advocacy would almost certainly not meet standards of responsible behavior.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's been well over a decade since I've dabbled in this. My viewpoint is that while psychedelics are mostly harmless, there is a small chance for some latent psychological "damage" if you will.

There's not much evidence that psychedelics cause any physical harm to the body or risk of death/overdose, but there is evidence that psychedelics can have lasting psychological effects. I think most of the time (as in my case, personally) the effects are generally positive. However, I think that excessive use (which is uncommon due to the nature of these substances being generally non-addictive) can increase the chance of adverse effects.

HPPD ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percept...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder)) for example is the occurrence of latent "sensory disturbances" that people can experience years after psychedelic drug use.

Anecdotally, a friend of mine had to be temporarily hospitalized for a week or so due to a "psychotic break" that occurred after a year or two of fairly heavy psychedelic drug use. He had been otherwise mentally sound and physically healthy leading up to that point, and to this day he believes that the psychedelic drug use either directly contributed to the meltdown or otherwised exacerbated some previous unknown condition. Thankfully he's been mostly fine ever since.

I don't think that this evidence is reason enough to ban psychedelics. I think there is some genuine benefit that they can provide, and that more research should be done so the positive and negative effects can be better determined.

<comment><USER12> While it sounds like your friend did actually run afoul of these substances...

How would you distinguish between lasting psychological effects from psychedelics, and lasting effects from other impactful experiences? (World travel, adventure tourism, cults, psychiatry...)

In other words, do you have any ideas about to distinguish between the lasting effects of the _chemical_ versus lasting effects of the _experience_?

<comment><USER17> Interesting point you bring up. I don't know if we know enough about how these substances work that we can make those distinctions.

I will say that I personally think the experiences themselves are powerful enough psychologically on their own to have lasting effects, similar to the effects you would get from other worldly experiences. Psychedelics do differ from "real" experiences in that they are comparatively brief, more intense, and have other unique characteristics (such as ego loss). I think that the intensity of those experiences, if repeated enough times, definitely has the potential to permanently change you psychologically (and potentially negatively). Fortunately, that intensity also has built in anti-addictive properties, so most users would not be endangering themselves in that way.

<comment><USER12> While I do agree with you that there are differences unique to psychedelic experiences versions "real" experiences, your enumeration isn't quite accurate - Most psychedelics last 1-12 hours, intensity is almost entirely dependent on dosage, and most meditation exercises are also about ego loss. And that's before you get into things like sensory deprivation or binaural beats, although for this discussion I'd put them on the psychedelic side of the line because they do similar things in the brain.

It's actually a pretty common comment from experienced "psychonauts": that you can have the same experience without the substances, it just takes years or decades of training and quite a bit of per-experience preparation. This is also because, on a chemical level, a number of psychedelics actually just get your brain to do something it'll normally (but rarely) do - the substance you take doesn't actually create the experience, the substance your brain releases/creates/doesn't absorb due to what you've taken does the work.

That all said? In a normal life, by a normal person? Yeah, those three you mention are what I'd expect to seriously differentiate the psychedelic and non-psychedelic experiences.

<comment><USER17> Regarding the comment about intensity: I agree that the intensity is dosage dependent. What I was getting at was that with a sufficient dosage, psychedelics can provide a level of intensity that is for the most part not matched by "real" experiences that most people would encounter. Also, the peak effects of most psychedelics last only a few hours at most. I imagine a 12 hour peak would be rather uncomfortable.

I think my response is colored by my relative lack of life experience. I agree with you that it is likely possible to achieve a similarly intense experience via activities like skilled meditation, though I haven't done it myself.

<comment><USER18> A 12 hour peak can definitely be described as uncomfortable. It was certainly interesting, at least. The DOX class of drugs are weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As, over time, there's less of a need for low-end workers, we will probably see restrictions on recreational drugs relaxed. We're seeing that now with marijuana. It's a good drug for keeping the useless part of the population happy and quiet.

Read: [http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/themes.html](http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/themes.html)

<comment><USER20> You're being downvoted, but it is true that drugs have been and are used to control populations, whether through prohibition or supply. There are strong links between the intelligence community and the drug "counterculture", including evidence that the government has actively promoted psychedelic drugs as a means of controlling the population. This should raise concerns. Some salient points:

The CIA was testing LSD as a mind control drug under the MKULTRA program in the sixties and seventies. [1]

Gordon Wasson, who was VP of Public Relations at JP Morgan and had close ties to Allen Dulles (head of CIA), introduced Americans to magic mushrooms in 1957 on the cover of Life magazine, a JP Morgan company. This effectively kicked off the psychedelic movement in the US. [2]

Terrance McKenna, an evangelist for psychedelics and the "archaic revival", admitted to being a "bard" and working for the FBI as a background agent. [3]

These points barely scratch the surface, but there does appear to be a concerted effort to promote psychedelics as a spiritual rite of passage or initiation, into a New Age religion of sorts. Similar to how the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece ushered in the Greek Dark Age, it is likely that the Psychedelic Revolution will be used to usher in another dark age, as a way to get people to accept a new form of feudalism and totalitarian state control.

Just something to think about the next time you drop some acid. Are you really having a "god manifesting" spiritual experience, or being taken on a carnival ride of socially engineered mythology?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra) [2] [http://www.gnosticmedia.com/public-notice-appeal-to-the- cia-...](http://www.gnosticmedia.com/public-notice-appeal-to-the-cia- regarding-classification-of-r-gordon-wasson-documents-related-mkultra- subproject-58/) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj1yFZRmFsw#t=15753](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj1yFZRmFsw#t=15753)

<comment><USER3> I've seen some of these claims before and find them interesting.

The TM quote is pretty hilarious/strange - "they" either means the government or whatever tryptamine fueled fantasies he encountered in South America.

Could you cite something regarding the Eleusian Mysteries ushering in the Greek Dark Age?

Cicero supposedly said: "Among the many excellent and divine institutions that your Athens has developed and contributed to human life, there is none, in my opinion, better than these mysteries, by which we have been brought forth from our rustic and savage mode of existence, cultivated and refined to a state of civilization; and as these rites are called "initiations" so, in truth, we have learned from them the first principles of life and have gained the understanding, not only to live happily, but also to die with better hope. "

[http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/eleusinian_myst...](http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/eleusinian_mysteries.html)

Of course, since I can't read Latin or Greek, I can't really verify that this quote truly was written by Cicero.

Regarding the strain of opinion that thinks modern entheogen advocates are being systematically manipulated by government agents - there might be some truth to it, but I feel like it must be an inadequate explanation.

Entheogens have been used well before modern USA governments. Governments in general seem to expend much more energy trying to prohibit them than they do covertly advocating their use. I just find the whole thing to be very implausible.

<comment><USER20> I would not doubt Cicero would have said that regarding Eleusian Mysteries. He was a politician during a time when the Caesar was worshipped as a god, and massive bureaucracies of priests evangelized his divinity as "Pontifex Maximus", highest priest of the Roman state religion. Like the Greeks, the Romans had similar initiation rituals and mysteries to inculcate the population into their mythologies espousing Caesar as god. To me, it sounds like Cicero is simply admiring the implementation of the Eleusian Mysteries, the result of which was a "cultivated", "refined", "happy" population -- all synonymous with an obedient population.

Regarding a citation of the Eleusian Mysteries ushering in the dark age, I don't have anything specific other than the fact that they were correlated in time. Since they were mysteries, the curators of which went to great lengths to guard their secrets, facts are hard to come by. Substitute Eleusis for Egyptian magic rituals, the Roman imperial cult, or other state religions, and I think you'll see similar patterns.

But I think it's useful to ask, why did these mystery religions use occulted knowledge? Why keep knowledge from groups of people, if not to keep them in the dark as a means of controlling them? Are these mysteries not akin to the noble lie which Plato discussed in The Republic?

Myths, combined with psychedelic drugs, which provide emotional catharsis and grandiose visions, are an effective way to /mystify/ people. Mysticism, by way of confusing, offers a means to control an individual by providing an opportunity to substitute or suggest the reality the hierophants want their initiates to believe.

This is the opposite of the scientific discovery, reason, and the challenging of traditional authority that marked The Enlightement.

<comment><USER3> Good point on Cicero's political affiliations. I'm sure that must have greatly influenced much of his writing.

I'm curious if you are at all familiar with the theories Micheal Hoffman discusses at his website egodeath.com

His ideas are extremely difficult to summarize, but they are of great relevance to the issues we are discussing (Eleusis, Egyptian mysteries, Roman state religion, Plato, myths, mysticism, etc)

[http://egodeath.com/emperorworshipjesusfigure.htm](http://egodeath.com/emperorworshipjesusfigure.htm)

[http://egodeath.com/index.html#_Myth- Religion_and_Mystic](http://egodeath.com/index.html#_Myth-Religion_and_Mystic)

[http://egodeath.com/#_Entheogen_Diminishment_Fallacies_1](http://egodeath.com/#_Entheogen_Diminishment_Fallacies_1)

This intro page is his attempt at explaining his theory in broad terms: [http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm](http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm)

He would probably answer your question "Why did they keep knowledge from groups of people, if not to keep them in the dark as a means of controlling them?" by saying that, while political control was, of course, a real thing in those times, the original function of mystery cults was actually to initiate participants into true knowledge of the transcendent through the use of ritual and entheogenic drugs.

You also might find this interesting: [http://csp.org/experience/experience.html](http://csp.org/experience/experience.html)

Have you had a unity/mystical/transcendent type experience with chemicals or other methods?

<comment><USER20> Yes, I'm familiar with Michael Hoffman's egodeath theory, and I agree with many of his historical perspectives and interpretations of religious experience. Like you say, his theory is hard to summarize. Relating to this thread, I think psychoactives can be a double-edged sword used for good or evil. Quoting Hoffman:

> Given that the Empire used entheogenic mystery-religion initiation to > dominate socially and oppressively, Christianity used mystery-religion > initiation to emancipate/liberate ... The religions of Jesus and Caesar were > in a battle over the meaning and application of mystery-religion initiation. > It's a battle about what to do with the fact of mystery-religion initiation. > [1]

Perhaps there were mystery cults with the best of intentions, such as the Gnostics for example, who would have had good reasons to conduct their initiations in secrecy to avoid persecution. And perhaps psychoactives can be used for "short path enlightenment" as Watts would say, as well as for political control.

What gives me pause for concern is the evidence of deep involvement on the part of the CIA with the drug counterculture. This is the same agency with a history of overthrowing democratically elected governments, conducting heinous psychological experiments on Americans, and not to mention torturing and murdering people around the world. They're simply not to be trusted.

Yet we find the fingerprints of the CIA all over the origins of the so-called psychedelic revolution, even carefully crafting the terms and definitions in which to frame the discussion:

> In the early years of research into these drugs, psychology researchers and > military intelligence communities sometimes called them, aside from > "hallucinogen," by the name "psychotomimetic" –which means psychosis > mimicking. The word hallucinogen, "to generate hallucinations," came just a > few years before psychotomimetic. The same year that psychotomimetic was > created we also saw the creation of the word "psychedelic" – which means "to > manifest the mind." The last stage of this etymological evolution, as we'll > see, was the word "entheogen" – which means "to generate god within."

The word "entheogen" was a creation of Wasson and Ruck [2], which has the intended effect of framing discussions about psychoactives as spiritual phenomenon. Like Leary said, it's all about set and setting.

Jan Irvin, a researcher in this field who I quoted above, has said that "mysticism is the tool of tyrants". It's hard to find cases in history of mysticism liberating individuals with so-called true knowledge. Usually, it's been the opposite: rational, scientifically-based discovery has been the liberator from superstition, ignorance, prejudice, and authority.

I'll definitely check out csp.org since this is an area of interest for me. And I'd be happy to talk about experiences via an email discussion with you at donald dot ness at gmail dot com.

[1] [http://www.egodeath.com/SocioPoliticalResistanceAsThematicLa...](http://www.egodeath.com/SocioPoliticalResistanceAsThematicLayer.htm) [2] [http://www.gnosticmedia.com/Entheogens_WhatsinaName_Psychede...](http://www.gnosticmedia.com/Entheogens_WhatsinaName_PsychedelicSpirituality_SocialControl_CIA#_ednref105)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm thinking the banning was probably not a conspiracy to suppress "enlightenment" for the benefit of the status quo. The people who did the banning almost certainly never tried psychedelics (which they very well may have if they really believed it would give them extra super powers and make them smarter... a view sometimes seen on HN which I believe may be a bit overblown).

I'm thinking the keyword is "unexpected". People who took psychedelics behaved in an unexpected and unpredictable fashion. When it was a few Native Americans and University researchers, no big deal. When it became a large percentage of America's young people dressing up funny and doing weird things (i.e. anti- social from the perspective at the time)... well, that's a different matter and steps _had_ to be taken! Western civilization hates and fears the unknown.

So as usual with these types of things (terrorism, communism etc). everything got all blown out of proportion and the person who screamed "Fire" the loudest got the most air time while anyone who dissented was highly suspect and had trouble staying employed. You know, the usual nonsense that seems to repeat throughout history.

There probably was a (very small) seed of reality at the base of the hysteria. Twisting everything around can on occasion produce undesired side effects along with whatever benefits are claimed. The idea of drugs for extra powers of perception is not new. Psychedelics have been used for thousands of years. While I am in full agreement that they may on occasion lead to individual realizations which can be useful, if psychedelics were a magic answer for creative thinking, then it would have been a tribe of jungle natives sailing over to greet the linear thinking palefaces rather than the other way around....

Should psychedelics be legal? To that I answer... what are laws when time and space are expanding? (real answer... I don't know. I guess I don't care either. But I don't think people should be criminally prosecuted for drug use. I believe I would be wary of mass commercial availability. Not for the masses I think.)

<comment><USER22> I agree with your initial sentiment that the unknown is frightening to the status quo and that is why it was out lawed.

As to your later points though, in a magic mushroom study "Eighty per cent of the volunteers reported moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction." [1]

Also in regard to european conquest of the americas, it seems to be more a sign of who was good at fighting and spreading than who was most creative or some other more universal measure (if there is such a thing).

[1] [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/health-news/magic-mushrooms-can-induce-mystical-effects-study- finds-407475.html)

<comment><USER21> "Well being" and "life satisfaction" don't necessarily build boats...

The idea of psychedelics for mind expansion is not new nor is it novel. But as civilization became complex, the idea was largely discarded or relegated to arcane corners (and on occasion persecuted). I'm saying I believe there is a reason this happened and in those societies in which it didn't, complexity didn't develop.

There may be benefits for certain people at certain times and places. But I believe psychedelics are not a magic bullet for out of the box thinking and enlightenment which everyone should take. Not if we want to the trains to keep coming on time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Recently Riane Eisler in her important revisioning of history, The Chalice and the Blade, has advanced the important notion of "partnership" models of society being in competition and oppressed by "dominator" forms of social organization. These latter are hierarchical, paternalistic, materialistic, and male dominated.

The funny thing is that this book was published in 1987, 8 years into Margaret Thatcher's rather violent domination of GB. But why let facts come in the way of fantasies rooted in the size of very old clay statues?

<comment><USER24> [https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=thatcher%20mannish](https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=thatcher%20mannish)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I know it's not cool to say anything bad about drugs these days but maybe it's because they are harder on your liver.

<comment><USER26> Yea because alcohol is totally not bad for your liver.

<comment><USER25> I didn't say that it wasn't, I'm well aware alcohol is a drug as is nicotine but I am referring to the topic of discussion which is psychedelics.

I thought this was Hacker News not reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "psychedelics had always been that they were illegal not because it troubles anyone that you have visions but because there is something about them that casts doubts on the validity of reality."

No. Psychedelics are illegal because they make you want to run in front of an oncoming bus because its headlights sound like tchaikovsky and the wind tastes like blueberries.

<comment><USER28> While vivid, is that true? Given all of the people who have taken LSD, I would expect more reported accidents of the sort you describe.

According to [http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide-t...](http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide- trends) , about 0.4% of the US uses a hallucinogen each month. According to [http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol- con...](http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol- consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics) about 60% have had alcohol in the same month.

Thats a ratio of about 150. Let's round it up to 200.

Nearly 88,000 people die from alcohol related deaths per year (see [http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol- con...](http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol- consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics) ).

Thus, if the risk factors for death related to hallucinogens is higher than that of alcohol, I would expect to see about 440 such deaths per year.

10,322 died due to alcohol-impaired-driving. Using the same ratio, I would expect to see about 50 such deaths related to hallucinogens.

I have failed to find deaths of the sort you described, which make me doubt that there's a simple causal relationship between the number of fatalities and the prohibition of a substance.

<comment><USER29> LSD certainly kills people, but it's down around the danger level (to the user) of Cannabis or Ecstasy. Much safer than scary drugs like alcohol or cocaine let alone even worse ones (to the user) like Meth or Heroin.

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_cause_most_harm)

(That list has alcohol at the top but that's mainly due to drunk people's tendency to harm others via driving or violence)

<comment><USER30> Alcohol is far worse than Heroin or the other opiates. Nearly all the problems with opiates relate to having unknown quantities due to the lack of regulated producers. The opiate side effect profile is rather tame, mainly constipation. (Apart from respiratory depression, and the unfortunate people that get nauseous.)

<comment><USER31> The most heinous thing about opiate overdoses is that there exists a drug (Naloxone/Narcan) that if administered in a comfortable window of time will completely negate the effects of the overdose and there are still states in the US that don't condone or approve of its use among drug addicts.

Here's a link to a Vice documentary talking about it: [http://www.vice.com/video/back-from-the-brink-heroins- antido...](http://www.vice.com/video/back-from-the-brink-heroins-antidote-333)

<comment><USER32> I bet Naloxone/Narcan isn't available over the counter so it isn't as available as it should be. First I'm hearing of this.

<comment><USER18> It's available in Australia at the needle exchange. You do a 1 day course as a training session, and you're allowed to purchase it. $5 for three doses, which is pretty great.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Raspberry Pi Zero W as a headless time-lapse camera - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2017/raspberry-pi-zero-w-headless-time-lapse-camera <comment><AUTHOR> Happy Pi Day everyone! Since the SpaceX launch was scrubbed this morning, I thought I'd go ahead and finish off this post and kick off the Pi Day celebration early.

Every year I try to do a new Raspberry Pi-based project on Pi Day, and this year I finally plugged in the Pi Camera I bought about 3 years ago to build this time-lapse camera. It was a fun project, and I hope you enjoy the build!

</comment><comment><USER2> For anyone who wants to do time lapse photography but doesn't want to expend the effort to build something like this, check out the Xiaoyi Yi. [0]

It has WiFi, the firmware is Linux (you can get telnet IIRC) and it also supports scripts for more advanced configuration and control. You can buy it online from China (e.g. AliExpress) for around $80

Sample timelapse video [1]

[0] [http://en.xiaoyi.com/xiaoyi_en.html](http://en.xiaoyi.com/xiaoyi_en.html)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zlb2VFGVbs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zlb2VFGVbs)

<comment><USER3> You'll notice that the internal battery only lasts for ~1hr. But the yi-cam can run completely without the internal battery. I'd suggest plugging it directly into a powersupply or an external battery for this purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did basically the same thing!

[https://github.com/bschwind/timelapse- zero](https://github.com/bschwind/timelapse-zero)

I even have the same carbon fiber case:

[http://i.imgur.com/PF5kri7.png](http://i.imgur.com/PF5kri7.png)

Though I did this before the Zero W came out so I had to have that ugly USB hub and WiFi adapter there. Something is being built across the street from me which is what prompted me to set this up.

<comment><USER5> How long does the battery last? I'd like a camera at our summer cottage to take a timelapse during the whole winter (in Finland, so snowy), turn itself on each day, take a pic, shut down, repeat for like 6months, not sure it's possible?

<comment><USER6> On my home server/NAS, I use rtcwake to sleep the computer for a few hours, then wake up, check if there's work to do, then sleep again. I'm not sure if it'd work with a Pi, though, since its hardware is different from a typical motherboard.

Alternatively, you could use something like an Arduino, and connect it in some way to an independent camera. Since it doesn't need to process the picture, you don't need a powerful processor or MBs of RAM.

<comment><USER7> The Raspberry Pi doesn't support power management of any kind. It simply can't go into suspend or soft power-off because it doesn't have the hardware to do it. In theory the C.H.I.P can but I'm not sure if the software support for that feature is there yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're into this but don't need the WiFi connectivity I bodged together my own DSLR shutter release triggered by my Arduino: [http://blog.mclemon.io/hacking-the-canon-dslr-trigger- releas...](http://blog.mclemon.io/hacking-the-canon-dslr-trigger-release- using-arduino)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice little project and writeup! I thought about using my SLR but I don't want to bump it's shutter count too much, and since I have young kids in the house, there's no good place I can set it up on a tripod for long periods of time without it taking a tumble :(

<comment><USER8> Ah yeh this was an old-ish DSLR (Canon 450D) that has seen better days so I didn't mind too much about running it for a few hundred pics every few days - it's on its way out anyway :)

I had a similar concern with my dog experimenting with the camera setup - luckily he managed to resist the temptation!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Similar, but not quite... The way I've done timelapse in the past, is via an old laptop plus an old USB camera, and any number of freeware tools to take a jpg every X minutes.

I happen to have a registered copy of Webcam32 from years ago, so with that and copy of XP, I've been able to timelapse things for zero-cost. Then it's just a case of FFMPEGing the jpgs into an mp4.

However, nothing comes close to a proper DSLR doing it - it's all about the optics. So I might do the hack described in this comment (I have a 350D):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13865967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13865967)

<comment><USER10> I have also been shooting with a various laptops, USB cameras (mostly Canon PowerShot A-series), software (including my own badly rolled C++ tool using CanonSDK) before finally settling on GBTimelapse, which ended up being the killer "app" for controlling multiple cameras at once. I just did a count of ~3 million images, here are some of my more dodgy installations using my now defunct beloved waterproof Panasonic touchbook: [https://imgur.com/a/jyNLP](https://imgur.com/a/jyNLP)

I still continue to shoot but I've moved on to using GoPro 5 and various Nikon DSLRs and I have to absolutely agree: nothing comes close to DSLR and decent optics! The only problem is that you get slight fluctuations in image brightness even when shooting identical shutter speed, etc. which necessitates a non-free tool like GBDeflickr or LRTimelapse to get flicker-free video. Alternately just stick to using non-SLR cameras such as GoPro or other Compact with the function builtin, which I've noticed is becoming quite standard in most cameras.

As for controlling your Canon, if you want to skip a step (and extra hardware requirements) you could just put MagicLantern on an SD card and write a LUA script (or download one of the many available ones out there).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has anybody found an easy way to power a zero via solar? I haven't been able to find any cheap or lightweight solutions. It'd be perfect for a project like this.

<comment><USER9> I explored this once. The camera actually draws a fair bit of current, so you need big (1Msq) panels to run the Pi-Zero properly and/or charge a battery.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the only way to get it to work reliably is to also employ other energy- saving tricks, like using a Sleepy Pi HAT and a rechargeable battery. The cost starts inching towards $1k+ at this point (not to mention the time involvement as well).

However, it's definitely doable, and if you have something like a year-long construction project... it's not really that expensive for what you'll get in the end!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks geerlingguy, your Pi-related content is always useful and enjoyable to read.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a nice write-up :-) Any chance you could provide a dd image to get up and running quickly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Before the Pi Foundation released Raspbian Lite, I used to distribute a semi- popular 'diet' image of Raspbian for headless Pi servers, but found that in addition to extra bandwidth costs, there were many little security risks associated with maintaining an OS image. So I'm not interested in taking on those risks again, unfortunately.

I would like to get the packaging and installation of this script a little more streamlined, though!

</comment></comment><comment> blackout-314 i've created an awesome for raspberry [https://github.com/blackout314/awesome- raspberry-pi](https://github.com/blackout314/awesome-raspberry-pi) :D

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm building this at home too. Quite exciting!

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! Are you using the Zero W or one of the other Pi models?</comment></comment>


Why your Push Notifications never see the light of day - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/why-your-push-notifications-never-see-the-light-of-day-3fa297520793 <comment><USER2> Are you sure you are not doing something wrong? IMO push notification doesn't need any app background service to work. They should be managed by system. When app is not running OS will display message which when clicked will open your app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Broadcast Receivers listen for push notifications. When a message is received, Service is started which are responsible for showing the notification as UI. Developers can rely on SDKs to take care of this for them but the steps are still the same.

The article points out a behaviour in some devices where the services do not get started because the stock ROM blocks the app. This in turn blocks the showing of the notification as UI.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Setting up an LLC in America for a non-resident - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know the process of (or a reliable service, or anyone to go to) for setting up an LLC and opening a bank account in the US for a non American citizen for the purpose of accepting payments by credit card on a subscription based web app about to launch? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Organizing LLC is not a problem for non-residents at all — you can do it either yourself (could be tricky if you don't know what to do) or use some incorporation service (there are plenty of them available).

Getting a bank account for it is way more tricky. First of all, you'll need a EIN for your LLC, which you can get with your own SSN or ITIN only. Since you're not a resident, you're not eligible for SSN, and getting ITIN is a little bit of "catch-22" problem.

And even if you'll get ITIN and, respectively, EIN, you might have hard times opening a bank account. I personally was able to do that by e-mail/mail, but I was introduced to financial specialist by a friend of mine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Can I get urls, a phone number, a contact email, anything?

<comment><USER3> International applicants must call (215) 516-6999.

The specialist gives you an EIN over the phone. They then snail mail you a hardcopy in about a week.

From: [http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=97860,00.h...](http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=97860,00.html)

<comment><USER2> just out of curiosity (since I already have an ITIN), does this allow getting EIN _without_ ITIN?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this is related

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=354508>

<comment><USER5> This is why I _love_ HN. Thank you, I managed to miss that discussion :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Make sure you consider the added expense vs just using other credit card clearing company in your country and eating the exchange rate costs.

Officially with the LLC you will also have to submit taxes each year. LLC Taxes in the US are not low and are complex.

Other processors include Quickbook merchant account Costco Nova Networks Beanstream, PSiGate or InternetSecure. Chase Paymentech These are available from Canada - but most countries have clearing companies. Panama, Costa Rica etc with much better tax advantages then having a US Account.

</comment><comment><USER7> Spend the $10 on an international phone call with any laywer in the state of your choice.

They'll be able to handle the whole process for you, all you'll probably need to do is have a few signatures witnessed in your country of origin.</comment>


Backlash against Apple's new MacBook Pro from its core users is unprecedented - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/11/7/13512322/apple-macbook-pro-backlash-power-users <comment><USER2> After 32-years of buying from Apple, I'm done once my brand new devices get relegated to my kids.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I suspect Apple will have to think hard about how to please those who want a portable yet ultrapowerful machine, which is really the even narrower segment that has been criticizing the new MacBooks. The portability/power tradeoff it has made in the new machines seems to be fine for the mainstream, but that's the one thing that seems to be creating the most problems for the hardcore base, and it's worth addressing."

I have an idea. They could have a line of Macs for those that care about lightness and thinness and little else. Perhaps they could call it the "Light" or the "Air".

The consumer-class Macs intended for the mainstream could just simply have "MacBooks" with no suffix. The new MacBook Pros actually seem just like this. If Apple is worried about too many product lines, the "Light/Air" and the plain "MacBook" could merge.

But for the professionals, don't worry about weight so much and put a nice variety of ports and great specs on a "Pro" line of MacBooks.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure that the portability/power tradeoff is suitable for the mainstream. Specifically, I am referring to the value proposition of the machine.

There are three reasons for this - firstly, the mainstream cares a lot about price. Apple's new machines are expensive, and it stands to reason that a portion of the added expense is in the engineering efforts required to e.g. redesign the SSD card factor, battery, casing etc) to accomplish the size and weight.

Secondly, Apple's BTO upgrade pricing is extremely high when compared to off the shelf parts. The lack of upgradability, and with respect to batteries, serviceability hurts mainstream users, but they may not notice this at the time of purchase. I know many users with Macs who I would would consider "mainstream" (i.e. not technophiles, people that don't work in IT industries etc), and the vast majority have either upgraded parts in their machine at some stage via a local computer store, or wanted to do so in preference to replacing it outright.

The old MacBooks and MacBooks Pro could be purchased with minimal or required specs at the time of launch, and then upgraded with off the shelf, standard parts by basically any mediocre technician, for a fraction of the cost of buying a new machine and selling the old one on the second hand market, giving them another year or two of usable life. The new Macs cannot, and Apple isn't exactly generous on specs for the lower end models (RAM perhaps, but SSD and CPU not at all).

Third, because of the lack of upgradability, the second hand market for Macs is now extremely fragmented and difficult to navigate. Those people who buy second hand Macs (myself included on occasion) have a much harder time now with the various unchangeable combinations of i.e. 2GB ram / 128GB SSD. If you're looking for an Air with 8GB RAM (almost a necessity these days) and a 256GB or 512GB SSD, you'll be looking for a long time or paying a big premium - whereas a non-retina Pro of similar vintage can be purchased without fear, and upgraded easily and cheaply - often to specifications well beyond that ever available with the machine at purchase. 2TB SSDs, anyone?</comment>


A Single-Layer Atmosphere Model - <AUTHOR> https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming/singlelayermodel.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's a "toy model" for learning purposes. At the bottom they have a link to their page of a multilayer model.

</comment><comment><USER2> Funny how this doesn't account for night time. Any math on that? Edit: I mean with reference to heat retained over time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this an alternative to US Standard Atmosphere?</comment>


Digital Ocean's journey from TechStars reject to cloud-hosting darling - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/digital-oceans-journey-from-techstars-reject-to-cloud-hosting-darling/ <comment><USER2> Every day, working with customers' products or witnessing stories such as DO's I realise that success is 90% marketing and 10% actual technical stuff.

You don't have to have the greatest features or too many of them or even all of them working as advertised. You don't need to take security very seriously (hello DO, WhatsApp!) or use buzz-stuff such as OpenStack (hello Rackspace, HPCloud!) or any existing "cloud standards" in order to succeed.

You just need to market it and promote it right.

I'm not even sarcastic or anything. As a techie I always frickin overlook it and this is the single most important element that can help you make serious money/business.

There's a whole bunch of people out there who don't know shit or don't really care about how great your product is technically (or not ;> ). All you need is it satisfies some basic "need" and a shiny packaging, it's enough to go out there and get some milk flowing in.

Kudos to the DO folk!

<comment><USER3> I think you're kind of wrong here. DO's biggest thing for me is that it's _incredibly easy_ to use while providing all the baseline features I actually need for casual hosting. I guess you could count this as 'marketing', but I think there's a strong technical element to knowing your market and how to make what they want to do as easy as possible. DNSimple occupies a very similar niche.

In fact, part of the appeal may be that they _don 't_ use openstack, because openstack implementations to date have all been quite limited and complicated so far.

<comment><USER4> Yes. Two parts of business: engineering and marketing.

Two parts of marketing: promotion and meeting needs.

The key "marketing" of DO was:

      Existing providers offered pricing plans that were too complicated and platforms
      that weren't always meeting the needs of their users.

It's not enough to make a "better" product, technically. You have to make a product that _better meets user needs_ (relative to existing alternatives).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Article doesn't disclose that Crunchfund has a stake in DO.

</comment><comment><USER6> Totally misleading linkbait title.

Sure they were "rejected" by NYC (for valid reasons - apparently treated very well) but then went into the Boulder program after applying. And no doubt the reference given by Tisch must have certainly helped I'm guessing.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know that TechCrunch isn't interested in discussing any actually useful details of what made DO successful...but for me it came down to them doubling the RAM per instance and using SSDs in 01/2013, creating a collection of excellent sysadmin articles, and cheap/free backups and images.

<comment><USER8> I used slicehost, though when it became rackspace cloud it became way more complicated. The main draw for me was the $5/month pricing combined with a $50 voucher they gave for black friday and they use SSDs. Even with all those benefits there are still switching costs due to having to re-setup on the new host, though I imagine most of their growth is people starting new projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My opinion. I am a DO user and I don't think you can use it for production application. Casual hosting is fine.

For production servers, deterministic backups are very important. DO does not provide that. I faced a lot of issues when transitioning my server from non- backup to backup mode. To do that, you need to take a snapshot(server shutdown is required for this)of server. Then, you need to destroy it to get the same ip. There is a chance that your ip may go to someone else & any services that are dependent on ip may need changes. I was lucky to loose the ip for a while & get it back after some trial & error.

Also, you don't have any control on the backup. It is taken by the system and is supposed to be anywhere between 2-3 days.

<comment><USER10> Are those the only backups you take? I have all of my code stored in git, and my database (and assorted files) get backed up each night to aws. I figure a snapshot is my first line of defense, and aws is my backup in case this doesn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> DigitalOcean is not a cloud or anything that resembles what a "cloud" is.

If you consider "cloud" hosting backup-enabled virtual private servers with multiple operating-system choices and multiple locations, well, hate to break it to you, but that's has been around since 2005.

Everyone is hopping on DO because it's marketed as a "cloud" and it's part of a tech accelerator (and maybe because it has SSDs and is so damn cheap). Other than that, there's really nothing special about it.

Source: me; hosting-industry expert.

<comment><USER12> >Everyone is hopping on DO because it's marketed as a "cloud" and it's part of a tech accelerator (and maybe because it has SSDs and is so damn cheap). Other than that, there's really nothing special about it.

The marketing is good. The quality of the product is good. It's incredibly easy to get started with. The tech accelerator I don't think plays any factor. I searched my database and there are 24 mentions of TechStars out of 3213 positive mentions. That's 0.7%, I can't imagine it has much impact right now on their growth. To give some other comps cheap is 115, affordable is 36, ssd is 133, fast is 174, amazing 212, easy is 134.

Source: [http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/101/digitalocean](http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/101/digitalocean)

<comment><USER11> The marketing is false though.

That would mean I can go ahead and market a Galaxy S6 as an Apple device and watch all the fanboys and teenage girls hop on. But of course I need pretty colors.

<comment><USER12> I measure what people are actually saying about them. People seem pretty happy. You can pontificate all you want, but I am looking at thousands of people's opinions on them, the consensus is that it's pretty good.

If your complaint is the marketing about 'cloud' is false, then cloud computing in general is a pretty ambiguous term. It's being used for things as simple as a VPS in the industry. It's pretty meaningless at this point, people will use it to market their products and I don't think they are wrong. I still couldn't tell you where the line is drawn and I've been around this business for ages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really loved DO, that is until they emailed me that my server had to be rebooted and I found it with all the config files being replaced by a bunch of @@@'s (I had to use the browser VNC to log in).

I asked them what had happened and if it can be fixed, they tell me to make a new droplet. I ask what will prevent this from happening again... no response...

Bye bye DO.

</comment><comment><USER14> DO really is a tremendous product. The simplicity, pricing, and speed of setting up an instance is awesome. For setting up a quick dev environment or a simple host for X or Y, it is definitely easier than through AWS.

I use DO pretty often and I hope they have some cool new offerings in the future. Maybe really simple load balancing?

<comment><USER15> I wish they could address these issues: [http://www.redbottledesign.com/blog/five-reasons-why-you- sho...](http://www.redbottledesign.com/blog/five-reasons-why-you-shouldnt- choose-digital-ocean-your-next-project)

I think "There's no way to increase storage space without major down-time" is the most important one. One hour of downtime is no good for production.

<comment><USER16> You don't care much about downtime if you're using only one droplet for your app in production, do you?

<comment><USER15> What if you start out small with one server, but then need to expand to multiple droplets? You won't be able to without powering off and making an image.

<comment><USER16> That's bad planning, but unfortunately also a very common situation. If you really can't afford a couple late hours downtime when you're small then this is what I think I'd do:

\- Get a new pair of droplets in front of your current droplet to load balance the traffic (HAProxy, Nginx, you name it). Point the NS records to those :)

\+ Why two? Well, you can't afford downtime so there we go.

\- Get a new droplet and manually clone the initial one, i.e. copy over config and assets. Add this second droplet to the LB pool for your site/app.

\+ Manual work? Well, again you can't afford downtime so you'll need to put some man-hours on this.

\- Now you can shut down the initial droplet and image it while the second one gets the traffic coming from the LB.

Eventually you'd want to separate functionality on different servers, so try to also plan that in advance. Also bear in mind that each 512MB costs like $5/mo, that makes this solution work for $20/mo, how cool is that?

I agree there's room for improvement on DO's service, but there's nothing that a good architect can't work around.

<comment><USER15> You're absolutely right. How about your MySQL write server? You typically have one master that you update to and one or more slaves where you read from. If you get a sudden burst of traffic and your master can't handle all the writes, what do you do?

<comment><USER16> I understand how HTTP works so I know how to scale it, but unfortunately I don't have the knowledge to scale DB infrastructure.

Anything I say would be a shot in the dark, but I'm interested on your point of view about this one. Caching? Write on two servers? In the second case do you setup a cluster or you just load balance it with a third device/service?

<comment><USER15> I'm still learning this myself, but from the research I've done I've figured this out:

1\. Most people don't go with two writes to a relational database (like MySQL). Syncing is hard, and when it is done, it loses its relational features. 2\. Common set up is one mysql write server, scaling it up to fit your traffic, and automatically syncing it with additional servers where SELECT statements only will be made. A random read server is selected if there are multiple to choose from. 3\. This also means that in the application, doing a write and immediate read on what you just wrote won't work, so you have to code your application around that. 4\. In you app you separate your connections for the reads and writes.

Now, in terms of making changes to the write server is what I'm trying to figure out. Perhaps there's a way to make upgrades on one of the slaves (the reads), then automatically make that slave the master and the master a slave? Not sure, I'm reading a MySQL book (The MySQL Bible) right now that I hope will point me in the right direction.

<comment><USER16> Well, that was quite interesting, thank you!

<comment><USER15> No problem!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder at what scale a business like this is sustainable with this low pricing schemas. Whatsoever, will it ever be?

</comment><comment><USER18> "rejection" \-- I had to reread that headline 3 times before I figured out what it was trying to say.

<comment><USER19> "Reject" is fine, it means "a person or thing dismissed as inadequate or unacceptable."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What the HTML is that?!

<comment><USER20> ...was their catchy phrase on their earlier video commercial on Youtube.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHZLCahai4Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHZLCahai4Q)

I'm sure this contributed in a way to their current success

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> i dont know why but i'm so tired of these posts</comment>


"Selfie sticks" banned at WWDC 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2015/04/14/wwdc-selfie-sticks/

<comment><USER2> Title's a little misleading. All recording equipment is banned.

<comment><USER3> Like iPhones?

The talks are recorded. At least at one time one had to pay for the videotapes. I'm not sure but I expect the company that did the taping was making a modest profit on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if I can still bring a belfie stick</comment>


Interview: Threadless CTO Harper Reed Heads to Rackspace - <AUTHOR> http://siliconangle.net/ver2/2009/09/29/exclusive-interview-threadless-cto-harper-reed-heads-to-rackspace-whats-a-nepholologist/

<comment><USER2> It's weird that Jeffrey Kalmikoff (cofounder) left for Digg earlier this month and now the CTO's leaving, too.

Especially at a company that's had years of seemingly happy, noneventful growth.

Guess it could be just a coincidence, but I wonder if it's not something else (purchase, etc).

<comment><USER3> I think it was a bit of coincidence and a bit how we grew up doing threadless and needed to graduate to move on. it was hilariously timed though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How great would it be to be able to say this:

"the goals i had set for myself were all accomplished. I was done. We had accomplished a lot and since threadless image was in a great place – i was able to exit without feeling like there was more to do."

<comment><USER3> It is certainly an amazing situation. it took a long time and a lot of work. but when i was there it was clarity. i felt like i could see forever. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congratulations to Harper. Met him briefly at bar camp here in Chicago last year.

I'll never forget when some unfortunate fellow let slip that he did SEO for a living and Harper just ripped into him for "gaming the web". It was a sight to behold.

</comment><comment><USER6> Rackspace is on a roll.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Kristen Nicole sat down with Threadless CTO Harper Reed yesterday, just ahead of his announcement of his move to Rackspace. Harper is a _prolific_ serial entrepreneur. Good read.</comment>


When and How to Fire Employees at a Small Startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2010/06/startups-when-how-to-fire-employee-at.html

<comment><USER2> Great post Elad. I especially agree with even if the team member is producing, a bad cultural fit can be equally, if not more, detrimental. Rhythm and momentum seem to be critical to startup success and having to pull an early member along can break that.</comment>


The Pirate Bay Added a CPU-Hijacking Bitcoin Miner to Some Pages - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/the-pirate-bay-added-a-cpu-hijacking-bitcoin-miner-to-s-1818488143 <comment><USER2> It's no more hijacking CPU than the new normal 'web app'-style of webdesign that can't even render text without JS.

This seems like an excellent way to monetize popular websites in a minimal impact way. And best of all since it's mining Monero all the transactions will be private.</comment>


A macOS app to generate app icons - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/onmyway133/IconGenerator <comment><USER2> You shouldn't put your node_modules into git. Try using this git ignore. [https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Node.gitigno...](https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Node.gitignore)</comment>


The poor, misunderstood innerText - <AUTHOR> http://perfectionkills.com/the-poor-misunderstood-innerText/

<comment><USER2> My impression from this is that "take the text nodes and format them with whitespace that corresponds to the browser layout" is a vague enough definition that browsers can't agree on precisely how to do that. So it seems like it shouldn't be standardised, but maybe a JS lib could step in to come up with a reliable way of doing it?

<comment><USER3> Completely agreed. There are such a ridiculous number of edge cases here, that it makes much more sense for this to be done by a JavaScript library that either comes with a huge number of configuration flags (which would be totally inappropriate for a built-in DOM function), or else whose source code is designed to be edited directly. (E.g. do you want a bullet to become a "•" or a "*" or a "-", etc.)

<comment><USER4> (author here)

I'm working on text editor with real-time spelling correction where `innerText`-like retrieval has to happen quite frequently; it's what pushed me to research the state of affairs with `innerText` in the first place.

It __pains __me that we don 't have a quick, native way of doing that; that I have to traverse the DOM manually instead — a horribly, horribly slow process — essentially writing what `innerText` was supposed to be.

I guess HTML/DOM were never really designed to be good at a task like this. The closest thing is Selection/Ranges API but it's still way behind in terms of performance.

The fact that there's `innerText` in some browser sarcastically starring in your face ("I'm here, but you can't really use me") just makes this so much crappier.

I guess a lot of this boils down to performance. It's certainly possible to emulate `innerText` but we can't possibly match native speed. And speed is crucial for any kind of real-time editing that needs to have a quick access to plain text version of an element.

<comment><USER5> This would be one of the (many) reasons why, in _my_ browser-based text editor, I just avoided the DOM entirely, drawing everything to a Canvas.

<comment><USER6> Font rendering in Canvas2D is _slow_ plus you have to reinvent the wheel with things like word-wrap/new line. Using a texture based font in Canvas/WebGL is a lot faster and is used in many (older) games, but with the obvious downsides.

Browsers should finally fix all issues of _contentEditable_ API: [http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/execCommand/](http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/execCommand/) , [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/HTMLElement...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/HTMLElement/contentEditable) , [http://caniuse.com/#feat=contenteditable](http://caniuse.com/#feat=contenteditable)

<comment><USER5> It's fast enough, and newline/wordwrap are not that hard to implement.

Do you really expect them to fix those issues? I'm not holding my breath. In the mean time, I've got a text editor that works identically in almost every browser, with very little browser-specific code, in VR.

<comment><USER6> Really interesting your VR editor!

> Do you really expect them to fix those issues?

Mozilla could fix the issues without hurting their business. Their legacy Thunderbird email client as well as various FirefoxOS system apps would profit too.

Microsoft, Apple and Google all have Office cloud apps and a really bug free contentEditable implementation would be a competition to their online Word/Pages/Docs. Google Docs v1 used contentEditable, but with v2 they coded a page layout render JS library.

<comment><USER5> I'm just saying, these issues have been issues for a long time, and to your point Mozilla does dog-food its own contentEditable (especially RE: the Ace editor) and it _still_ hasn't seen fit to fix these issues. Yeah, it's clear that it's in their interest, but I think they've all demonstrated that it's just not a big enough deal to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Coming back to a text editor... Let's say we have a _contenteditable_ area > in which a user is writing something

Browsers should fix all issues of _contentEditable_ API:

* [http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/execCommand.html](http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/execCommand.html) (see compatibility table (old but still valid), and demo: [http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/execCommand/](http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/execCommand/)) ,

* [http://caniuse.com/#feat=contenteditable](http://caniuse.com/#feat=contenteditable) (see issues tab) ,

* [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLElement...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLElement/contentEditable) (see bugs list).

* and additional touch related bugs in mobile browsers.

</comment><comment><USER7> The first live example doesn't work in Firefox, for a reason the article already mentioned: Firefox doesn't support innerText.

<comment><USER8> So what's the purpose of this comment?

<comment><USER9> I would think the examples are there to show the difference between the two methods but in firefox the innertext column only shows "undefined". Maybe a picture could be used for firefox users?

<comment><USER8> Are there "firefox users" upon the HN crowd though (or the intended technical / web dev crowd)?

I'd say that pretty much all of those of article was intended for have 3 or more browsers installed and regularly test things on each. It wouldn't be much for them to check the article in a different browser if they cared for its contents.

<comment><USER10> why shouldn't there be "firefox users" in the HN crowd?

Anyway, the purpose of the code example there was to show how it looks and explains some more things in the text afterwards. If you don't see what he means because you're using a different browser, it's essentially pointless to show it at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That table is another interesting opportunity for browser fingerprinting, and also shows how difficult it is to define precisely a concept that at first seems deceptively simple: "retrieve the text contents inside an element."

</comment><comment><USER12> Note that WebKit/Blink are very unlikely to change their behaviour to be more interoperable/sane if it ever gets standardised because so many of their tests rely on it, and making sure all the test expectations stayed valid while updating it would be an enormous amount of work. (Lots of their tests load a webpage, take the innerText of it, and compare that string with an expectation.)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've had a go at implementing a simple version of innerText: [https://github.com/timdown/rangy/wiki/Text-Range- Module](https://github.com/timdown/rangy/wiki/Text-Range-Module)

</comment><comment><USER14> >Thankfully, at least Chrome (Blink) and Safari (WebKit) were considerate enough to immitate it [innerText].

This looks to me like a small error when the standard spec was written which has become more important over time and needs to be updated—not a case for praising proprietary software.</comment>


Advice for a young entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.stubbleblog.com/index.php/2011/04/advice-for-a-young-entrepreneur/

<comment><USER2> I was most nervous about including "Focus on the right things" since it's such a wishy-washy idea. But I think it's core and comes from two camps that I really admire, Steve Blank with Customer Development and 37signals with Getting Real.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love the "Greater Fool Theory". Well said. It is a great way to summarize the problems that exist with a lot of companies.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great advice.

I had the pleasure of working at CrowdVine for some part of last year and I really learned a lot from Tony and the team there. Sometimes I missed them :P

<comment><USER2> Armando, thanks! It was so great to work with you as well. It'll take me all year to release your designs. Let me know if you ever have availability again. I would recommend you in an instant!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It may go without saying, but this is also advice for an older entrepreneur.

<comment><USER2> I mostly meant young in experience. I'll have to revisit this when I'm older =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Error establishing a database connection.

<comment><USER2> Sorry. I think the days of self-hosting my blog are over.

<comment><USER7> What's wrong with self-hosting?

<comment><USER2> My blog keeps falling over under load. It's not even particularly high load, front page of HN and a retweet by @timoreilly. But this is the second time this has happened. I already have my hand in managing services that have to withstand load, I don't need my blog to be one of them.

<comment><USER7> That sounds like a pretty awful blog engine... Are you using uncached wordpress or something? If so, just install a caching plugin and it will work fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 20 Best Cars That Still Offer a Manual Transmission in the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/g2161/20-best-cars-with-manual-transmission/ <comment><USER2> _Because the newest computer-controlled automatics can shift more quickly than any human can, engineers see the manual transmission as outdated. We disagree. Shifting a manual transmission is not only more engaging and fun than flicking some dainty little paddles, it also requires more skill and makes the driver a better one._

"It's an unimportant skill but as you practice it you will get better at it." Well, yeah.

My fun weekend car has a stick, and that's not such a bad thing, but there's no denying stick shift on passenger cars exists solely for entertainment value or vanity at this point.

<comment><USER3> Ever tried to get an automatic transmission car out of being stuck in the snow? ;)

<comment><USER2> I've driven 4wd manual, as well as front- and rear-wheel drive manuals and automatics in ice and snow. I have no idea why anyone would find an automatic more difficult to deal with in the snow?

<comment><USER4> Rocking an automatic is a lot harder than rocking a manual, since you have less control over the application of power to the wheels.

Rocking is a fantastic way to get unstuck, since it puts your wheels on fresh snow.

<comment><USER2> > Rocking an automatic is a lot harder than rocking a manual

You're not the first person I've heard say this, and maybe there's something to it, but I just don't know what's hard about doing it with an automatic, or what control people feel like they're being robbed of in this context. I've been doing it all my life with both types of transmissions. I'm visualizing it (on this sunny spring day) and it seems like one of the many things that's just a little bit easier with an automatic. (I'd defer to anyone who lives further North than I do in a conversation like this about snow driving technique, but the only guy I know who lives in Alaska drives a Chevy Cruze, of all things, with an automatic)

Recently I've seen people have a lot of trouble when they don't know how to turn off their traction control, but that's not really an automatic transmission thing.

<comment><USER3> Very strange....I haven't driven in snow for years, but when I did it was _undoubtedly_ easier to rock a standard car than an automatic, like no comparison whatsoever. I appreciate imagining how it wouldn't be different, but in practice, totally. Hmm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's just SO MUCH MORE FUN to drive a stick-shift. Even if all you're doing is getting on the interstate you can make it feel like you're really kickin' ass and zooming along simply by how you shift.

Forcing your car to rev up a little more than need be may be inefficient compared to what a computer can do, but where's the fun in that?

Getting perfect 0-60 times is for drag racing (which no one does). Having fun on your daily commute? Yeah, that!

<comment><USER6> >>Having fun on your daily commute?

Prolonged periods of bumper-to-bumper traffic inching along during daily commutes will take the fun out of stick pretty quickly. Hopefully this doesn't happen to many people, but for those that have a choice, automatic is the preferred option.

<comment><USER5> That's the common refrain, but I don't even mind it in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I think it's pretty magical to just barely lift my foot off the clutch and control the car's acceleration. Is it tedious? Needless effort? Nope, it's racing in ultra-slow-mo!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's far more than just these 20. Honda, for example, has plenty of manual models available (we happen to own a manual Fit). They may be dying but they're far from endangered.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, the article says "20 best cars" not necessarily those are the only 20 cars.

<comment><USER9> I just assumed the Fit would be on this list without even clicking. Truly a diamond in the rough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You not get manual Land Cruisers in the states? I haven't bought an auto car ever, will only buy manual. Have always driven manual and find it quite humerous that people consider them difficult or more effort. I prefer manual as i find auto's suck for going up/coming down steep hills and are also a pain in the arse in bumper to bumper traffic as they always creep forward unless you have a foot on the brake.Not to mention they cost an arm and a leg to fix. Gimme manual any day, from a 5 speed synchro to an 18 speed crash gearbox. Love driving manuals,my fuel efficiency is up there with if not better than auto's too (you can't coast in an auto). Edit: i got >400,000km out off my last land cruiser clutch....You won't see a auto gearbox in a work vehicle that will do that(e.g vehicle used off road and towing heavy loads).

<comment><USER11> > I haven't bought an auto car ever, will only buy manual.

A manual-shift self-driving car may be hard to find.

It's interesting how the word "auto" (self) has evolved with respect to cars. An "automobile" is self-propelled, an automatic transmisson of course shifts itself, and we went right back to "self" for self-driving cars.

<comment><USER10> Ever bandied the concept about that some folk may not ever buy a self driving car?

GPS/maps struggle to find most of the places I go, i doubt anybody will release a self driving 4x4 anytime soon with the ability to map and navigate fire trails/off road/national parks/river crossings). Like eventually they might but it's not going to happen anytime in the next decade. Hell I've seen people put vehicles in places and situations that manufacturers would have a heard time believing so good luck getting software coded in a way that would let you do it (maybe if we could get a "she'll be right mate" sudo command overide for the navigation/control systems it could happen?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like manual, but even better is my EV with no transmission.

</comment><comment> d-sc Coming from a farm, I've driven both manual and automatic transmission cars, trucks, tractors, heavy machinery, semi-trucks, etc.

At some point the type of transmission used is only one part of the car that is going to affect its performance. I have not done anything in an automatic that I cannot do in a manual transmission car. Sure, my automatic pickup will accelerate faster than the manual one I had before it. But that is more due to the engine horsepower to vehicle weight ratio than the transmission. (2013 f150 w/ 350 hp vs 2004 f350 with 250 hp)

My guess is the reason that it is becoming harder to buy new manual transmission vehicles is declining demand and the cost associated with extra development to create two versions of the same car.

<comment><USER13> "An estimated 95% of all cars sold in the U.S. have automatic drive, versus less than 20% in Europe and Japan, where stick-shift is the overwhelming transmission of choice."

Still a good market globally, if not in the US. I'm more worried about EVs taking over than automatic transmissions.

[http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/americans-driving-stick- shi...](http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/americans-driving-stick-shift- article-1.1072784)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This list is terrible. How, for example, could you ever exclude the Subaru WRX? One of the most fun to drive -- and affordable -- cars with a stick out there today.

<comment><USER15> I may be biased as I live in an area where the AWD in the WRX is especially useful in the winter but I would take the WRX over the BRZ in the article any day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is just depressing.

I had an S2000, but sold it when I had the opportunity to travel overseas for work one year... Been back a few years now and I still haven't found anything to replace it.

Given the very short list of cars that still offer manual transmissions, it's unlikely I'll ever in my life have another car I will love to drive as much as my old Honda. I just can't see driving a convertible without a manual transmission... where's the fun in that?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's still plenty of M/T cars available in the US. The article just highlights a small sample of those cars...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Motorcycles are keeping the faith.

<comment><USER18> They have DCTs now too.

<comment><USER19> I mean, they have also had mechanical automatic transmissions since the 70's at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand what people find fun about shifting, but it is not worth the pure agony of traffic jams. Let off the brake, pray the person isn't too close behind you, accelerate a bit, decide if traffic is moving enough to accelerate more, brake. Repeat twice a minute. Add in hills and snow for more "fun."

<comment><USER21> It offers a degree of control unparalleled by any auto system, for those who just don't want from A to B. Sensations from the gearbox and the engine are more direct (albeit gas pedal nowadays is no longer...).

> it is not worth the pure agony of traffic jams

You just don't notice if you don't want to. It's second nature.

> pray the person isn't too close behind you

true, but never had an issue with this

> Add in hills and snow for more "fun."

This is a non-issue for anyone that likes it, and has been driving more than a month.

<comment><USER22> I love my manual tramsission but traffic is hellish on long drives. If my daily commute was in traffic (like many parts of LA and other major cities), then I definitely wouldn't want an manual for that.

But yeah, I do love my stick shift. Now that I know how to, I especially love driving on hills. Nothing like shifting through the gears on a windy mountain road. And for traffic on hills you quickly learn to use the handbrake so that you don't roll back at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Outside of Germany, the SS is the only old-school V8 performance sedan you > can get with a manual.

Except of course for the Australian car that is the original version of the SS.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_Commodore_(VF)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_Commodore_\(VF\))

</comment><comment><USER24> Is the price listed on these vehicles starting at $35000 USD because of the stick shift or is that just the starting price for cars now? I haven't seriously looked at cars for well over 8 years since I moved abroad, and before that it was just buying beaters from people on craigslist.

<comment><USER25> I bought a toyota yaris with manual transmission for 12k new

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I just bought and learned to drive a manual transmission BRZ about a month ago. The beginning was tough but was very worth the effort and time.

Sure, the transmission isn't as efficient and in some cases your mileage probably winds up going down, but the fun factor is very enjoyable.

<comment><USER27> Actually if you know what you are doing your mileage will improve with manual.

<comment><USER28> This has gotten less true as automatics have added more and more gears.

<comment><USER27> Less true maybe, but I think you still can do better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> No Fiesta ST?

<comment><USER30> I love my ST.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I mean riding a horse also requires more skill, and so does braking on slippery surfaces without ABS. Personally I'd rather not do the latter, and not rely on the former for transportation...

But to each their own. Maybe I'd me more inclined to drive manual if I wasn't living on a hill... surrounded by hills.

<comment><USER32> > Maybe I'd me more inclined to drive manual if I wasn't living on a hill... > surrounded by hills.

That's actually a reason to for me to prefer manual transmission, to be able to switch gears predictably.

<comment><USER33> Or possibly have to stop on a hill and accidently hit someone behind you or in front. Some hills are just too nasty. My speed control looses and gains 5 miles on my hills not really a big deal on the transmission though.

<comment><USER7> _Or possibly have to stop on a hill and accidently hit someone behind you or in front._

I take it no one taught you how to start on a hill in a manual using the handbrake?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> _Americans just don 't want to be bothered with the chore of working a clutch with their left foot and shifting with their right._

It's my impression that more American drivers use their right _hand_ to shift, rather than their right foot.</comment>


Realizability of Graphs (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://faculty.bard.edu/mbelk/DiscreteMathDayTalk.pdf <comment><USER2> So, _n_ -realizability seems to mean you can make a model of the graph in _n_ dimensions, _with every edge the same length_. (i.e. much more strict than the usual _planarity_ ) What is that useful for?

<comment><USER3> Not quite. If I understand correctly, the requirement is that _any_ model of the graph with arbitrary edge lengths can be "flattened" into n dimensions, without changing any edge lengths. This is not necessarily stronger than planarity; in particular, according to these slides, the complete bipartite graph K3,3 is 2-realizable but not planar.

I'm not sure what practical applications there are for this area of theory. But intuitively, it seems like the "flattening" process captures some notion of _rigidity_. For instance, there's a sense in which a 1-realizable graph is as non-rigid as it's possble to get. If you make a physical model of a tree, using (idealized, infinitely thin) rigid rods and joints, the tree can always be folded up so that all of its edges lie parallel.

Similarly, a 2-realizable graph consists of rigid, flat pieces, connected along their edges by "hinges" that can always be folded flat, whatever their original configuration.

So maybe this could be somehow applied to the automated design of structures that can be assembled from foldable pieces.

<comment><USER2> Oh geez, yeah I misread that totally! thanks.

A graph is _d_ -realizable if given any realization of the graph in _n_ dimensions (possibly high dimensional), there exists a realization in _d_ dimensions with the same edge lengths.

(I thought 'n dimensions' looked clearer than RR^n, though less accurate I guess)</comment></comment></comment>


HPE Powers Up The Machine Architecture with ARM - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/01/09/hpe-powers-machine-architecture/ <comment><USER2> Wasn't "The Machine" (whoever came up with that name should be whipped with a wet noodle) supposed to have memristors? I skimmed the description, but didn't see any mention of this having memristors, just conventional DIMMs.

<comment><USER3> Actually it has a very large shared non-volatile memory. HP felt memristors would be a great way to make that memory but as it is pointed out in the article you can make it with regular DRAM and leaving the power on, or with Intel/Micron's cross point (Optane) NV-Dimm tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article, like most, makes a big deal about the (not yet really extant) memristers but the other interesting technical advance in this device is the optical interface (optical-to-the-die interface) which is only discussed in passing in this article. That alone could potentially carry HPe, which is good since what else could?

<comment><USER5> They spend 9 paragraphs discussing it, and other aspects of the optical system.

I think it's pretty neat. I'm mostly skeptical because commodity compute has led HPC for so long. Novel architectures are often quite interesting, but feel like they only have a performance advantage for short periods of time.

It looks like a neat system though, and I'm sure many of the ideas will trickle down into commodity hardware eventually. It's great that HP are still doing this kind of stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My idea of a vacation would be playing with this thing. In looking at variations in systems architecture I see this as the opposite extreme of Google's "shared nothing" architecture. There is probably a PhD thesis in developing a calculus that can transform an algorithm P from one to the other architecture.

<comment><USER6> > There is probably a PhD thesis in developing a calculus that can transform > an algorithm P from one to the other architecture.

Far more than a single thesis. That is a grand challenge problem.

</comment></comment><comment> Arcanum-XIII Since it seem that they're showing working prototype, does it mean the wider world will get some hand on too ? (not the layman of course...) Would be a fun toy to tinker with !</comment>


Why TechCrunch is Over - <AUTHOR> http://peteryared.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-techcrunch-is-over.html

<comment><USER2> TC may be declining, but I don't think Arrington individually is to blame.

Let's not forget that he is not the CEO of TC anymore, and hasn't been for a long time.

Peter Yared says 'If it was not for MG Siegler and Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch would be a content-free environment.', yet MG's apple fanboyism is often such non-sense that I avoid his articles as much as possible.

In general, the quality of content from TC has gone way down hill.

Arrington said long ago that he'd like to get back to writing about start-ups, but that just doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

As far as the stuff about TC being a 'king maker', I don't think that was ever true. My startup was covered by TC a few years back, and though getting covered by TC gives a bit of cred, it doesn't make instant success.

Mashables numbers are seeing similar decline... [http://siteanalytics.compete.com/techcrunch.com+mashable.com...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/techcrunch.com+mashable.com/)

it is a bit of a coincidence that the large drop in views came shortly after the AOL purchase of TC.

<comment><USER3> I blame Paul Carr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The real answer to this is a creative one: The magic is gone.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use HN's noprocrast profile setting? - <AUTHOR> I just found noprocrast in the HackerNews FAQ:<p>> It's a way to help you prevent yourself from spending too much time on HN. If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. <comment><USER2> I tried it, but it wouldn't allow me to read HN, so I disabled it again :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have used it. I need to start using it a bit more often.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER5> occasionally</comment>


Czech programmers were donated to the state service costing 16M euros - <AUTHOR> https://thetimeshub.in/czech-programmers-were-donated-to-the-state-service-costing-16-million-euros-transport-minister-fired/12597/ <comment><USER2> Indeed governments often asks for programs that are easy enough to create in a hackathon. The difficulty is integrating them with their current hardware and software setup. What I can do with Javascript or Python in a few days, might be a month in an enterprise Java setup where I need to run as a module on top of their existing application. Needing to integrate with existing SOAP based services etc, it might be even longer. So I'm pretty sure this story hasn't finished yet.</comment>