Ask HN: Do you make your own PCBs? If so, how? - <AUTHOR> Curious to see if anyone has a good CNC milling machine that's "cheap" and works very well with PCB boards.<p>Do you have another method that is fast, easy, and clean? <comment><USER2> This is a much discussed subject in the electronics community. I just love soldermask too much. Not only is there potential for colors and art and a bunch of other aesthetic reasons, but the improvement of my soldering makes it all worth it. Cheap PCB fabs from China do default 24 hour turns + 3 days of delivery from DHL...so yeah, I just do that.

If you're set on doing them in house and aren't budget constrained, I usually recommend an Othermill (Bantam) or a Nomad 883 or a Roland (all of which will easily get you above $2K). If you're cost constrained, I'd stick to etching boards using the toner transfer method.

But fast, easy, clean (and cheap)? Order them from a PCB house. If that's not of interest, I suggest you get very specific with your budget.

<comment><USER3> Any recommendations on PCB fabs?

<comment><USER2> Usually I am loathe to mention them by name because it brings the spammers in like crazy but I use and have liked AllPCB. I found them on PCBshopper.com, which is a good way to comparison shop for the type and size of boards you'll need: [https://pcbshopper.com/](https://pcbshopper.com/)

I don't know who owns that site, but I think they have found a great little niche for advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I normally outsource my PCBs to a board shop, but every once in a while I have to make a one-off. I'm not sure where I read about it originally, but I use a process that doesn't require any special, well anything:

* Print copper mask onto transparency film using a laser printer

* Very carefully iron the transparency film, print side down, on a standard copper FR4 board

* Even more carefully, peel the transparency film back, and the mask should stick to the copper board (you might have to try a few different brands of transparency film for this to work)

* Mix 50/50 hydrogen peroxide and vinegar in a tub, put the PCB in but elevate it off the bottom of the tub

* Add salt until the copper starts coming off the unmasked parts of the PCB, and agitate the entire thing somehow (I use a busted cell phone with an app that makes the vibrator run continuously)

After a while, maybe an hour, you'll be left with an etched board, then rinse and scrub the mask off.

It takes some practice to get the quality level to the point where you can reliably make thinner traces on the board, but it's entirely doable for small quantities. I recommend doing 2x2 or 3x3 boards at a time so a few rejects are ok.

It's not the fastest or easiest method, but if you're really screwed and you need a board right away, it's possible to do this process with nothing but a Walmart.

In case I need to do SMT parts, I don't bother trying to make SMT traces using this method; I keep some SMT to DIP adapter boards around so I can just solder the DIP through holes onto one of these ghetto PCBs.

Although H2O2 and vinegar are both common household chemicals, the resulting bath is mildly corrosive to metals and apparently dental enamel, so treat it with some respect and neutralize it with baking soda before putting it down the drain. Don't throw it in your yard, it seems to sterilize any soil it comes into contact with.

I'm not entirely clear on the chemistry of what's going on here, but I'm pretty sure the oxidized copper residue left in the bath is low level toxic waste, so filter that out before getting rid of the bath chemicals. I let it dry out and I dispose of it at the battery disposal center in my building.

</comment><comment><USER5> Etching doesn't have to be super messy if you are experienced in it and have all the equipment set up. I would also recommended using ammonium persulphate over ferric chloride as it's a see-through and a bit less nasty.

I few months ago I would have dismissed DIY PCBs altogether in a heartbeat. But I visited my friend who etches PCBs on the regular and as long as you are OK with the limitations there is a lot to be said for holding your design in your hand minutes after having layed it out. I wrote a bit about this experience in my blog: [https://blog.monostable.co.uk/posts/etching- oscillators-in-z...](https://blog.monostable.co.uk/posts/etching-oscillators- in-zurich)

<comment><USER6> I recently learned that on a single sided pcb you can use a zero ohm resistor to effectively cross over a trace, netting you half the benefit of a 2nd layer without having one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unless you're building a stupid-simple board w/old-style through-hole components, give up on milling and just use an internet board house. (FWIW, Sunstone/PCBExpress has done great boards for me.) Why? 1) Layers & plated vias: You want them, even if just for power and ground planes; 2) Solder Mask (really makes manual soldering easier, esp for fine pitch chips), and opaque solder mask can provide a _little_ early IP obfuscation; 3) Silkscreen annotations, but most importantly, especially if doing Surface Mount components, 4) Solder paste stencils - if you're doing fine pitch surface mount you _do_ want this! (Make sure your solder mask prevents bridging between adjacent pads!)

<comment><USER7> And FWIW, I haven't used anything but Internet PCB shops for prototypes since 2001 - that's the point at which I needed surface mount, so I made the change, and never looked back. If you're really in a hurry, you can pay a bit more to expedite and get everything in a day or two (usually the stencil's the long pole in the tent...) We did two board spins a week for rapid development projects, without no problems - in 2002!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always found the best combination was a photo resist method, with a small CNC machine for drilling and routing the PCB.

precision and accuracy is all about alignment, so i built alignment guides into all my printouts.

I uploaded some photos of a one + the alignment guides I used, i even did nickel plating and a silkscreen on this one...

[https://imgur.com/a/GNZKaMK](https://imgur.com/a/GNZKaMK)

heres a short video of the CNC drilling machine too, it was homemade

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiIWB1PsAg8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiIWB1PsAg8)

used to take maybe 1-2 hours start to finish to manufacture a full PCB

<comment><AUTHOR> That image is so nice! Do you have a video of you doing it from start to end? I would love to see that.

Great job!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I want a quick-and-dirty prototype or breakout board and I don't mind waiting 2-3 weeks, I use dirtypcbs.com. Always good quality and _crazy_ cheap.

If I want full-up assembled prototypes I use macrofab.com. I can usually get fully assembled prototypes to my door in ~3 weeks for $30-$100/unit. Manufacturing and assembly is so cheap now I don't even bother doing any of it at home anymore and only keep a small stash of parts for troubleshooting/debug in the home lab.

</comment><comment><USER10> Embedded systems engineer of the sharpie resist era.

If you're in Shenzhen, don't bother making your own... you can even get prototype flex PCBs in a couple of hours.

The chemicals, heater, tank, maintenance and disposal are a PITA.

It's fine once or twice, but generally it's not scalable.

</comment><comment><USER11> OSH Park ([https://oshpark.com/](https://oshpark.com/)) seems to be popular in the guitar effect building community.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm open to all options - but it could be done using a nice milling machine thats under $200 and comes recommended, please share the model?

</comment><comment><USER12> fast, easy, and clean? add cheap and you get JLCPCB

<comment><USER13> I've heard good things. They even sponsor GreatScott! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> have you tried photographic methods... such as mask and photo +ive/-ive etchant resist? you can mill the photomask for serial production...

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't yet - I read about it. It would be great to have a small milling machine that sits on the desk and can do PCB for say $200. I would cry :)

<comment><USER14> if you want to use SurfaceMountComponents you may have trouble with the milling machine approach due to constrained spaces...if you only need discrete analogue or large scale digital boards milling maching is not a problem, a really sweet CNC setup will have a learning mode so you can mill a one off by hand then let the machine copypasta the rest of the boards in large number...look for stepper motor controll projects and raid some dead printers and CDdrives for tasty parts and you are well on the way to a kewlissimo homebrew...</comment></comment></comment>


Early Macintosh Emulation Comes to the Archive - <AUTHOR> http://blog.archive.org/2017/04/16/early-macintosh-emulation-comes-to-the-archive/ <comment><USER2> I did the initial work of porting this emulator to the browser (most credit should go to the original emulator author however: [http://hampa.ch/pce](http://hampa.ch/pce)).

I wrote up the process and hacks that went in to making this possible here: [https://jamesfriend.com.au/porting-pce-emulator- browser](https://jamesfriend.com.au/porting-pce-emulator-browser)

The most gross/fun part was how I made the Mac OS mouse position align with your real mouse cursor: by writing its position directly to the emulated computer's memory. Classic Mac OS held the mouse position in a few fixed global memory locations. I realised I could just write to those memory locations every few CPU cycles. I could have instead written a driver which ran inside the emulated OS to communicate with the emulator program, but this was simpler!

<comment><USER3> Sadly it's not working for me, seems to be off by half. The emulated mouse is always at x/2 y/2 compared to the real mouse pointer.

<comment><USER4> I believe Chrome misreports the mouse position if you zoom the page, or if you have a hidpi display. Care to share more details?

<comment><USER3> This was in Safari on a retina mac book pro

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do wonder, from a legal perspective, did the Internet Archive get permission from Apple or are they merely trusting that no one will enforce their rights on abandoned software? Especially since they seem to be doing the same with MS-DOS/Windows 3.1[1].

[1] [https://blog.archive.org/2016/02/11/internet-archive-does- wi...](https://blog.archive.org/2016/02/11/internet-archive-does-windows- hundreds-of-windows-3-1-programs-join-the-collection/)

<comment><USER6> Definitely seems like the latter. It's pretty strange to see archive.org adding more and more stuff that's under copyright without explicit permission.

They have a ton of copyrighted games, they have recordings of concerts from artists who almost certainly haven't authorized that. Personally I love this, I just really hope they don't get sued into the ground.

<comment><USER7> DMCA exemption.

[http://archive.org/about/dmca.php](http://archive.org/about/dmca.php)

And the Archive could always move out of US jurisdiction if absolutely required.

<comment><USER5> > Following deliberation, the Copyright Office ruled in late October 2003 that > four exemptions should be added to the anti-circumvention clause of the > DMCA, to be valid until the next Copyright Office rulemaking in 2006, > including two that are related to the Internet Archive's original comments: > [...]

It's past 2006 now. This text seems outdated. Furthermore, it states:

> In 2003 the Internet Archive, as part of research into vintage software > archiving, discovered possible archiving issues involving the Digital > Millenium Copyright Act. This could make it impossible to legally archive > early computer software and games, even for accredited institutions wishing > to store limited amounts of non-distributable, archival images.

I don't believe we're looking at "non-distributable archival images" here.

<comment><USER7> I suppose we'll just need to wait for someone to sue the Internet Archive and have the EFF step in.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if even the EFF can rationally justify the amount of copyrighted materials on there.

<comment><USER9> I think the sheer quantity of really valuable copyright-free things on there would be a pretty good case.

This is one of my favourite things on the internet: [https://archive.org/details/EALand_FinalCountdown](https://archive.org/details/EALand_FinalCountdown)

And it would probably vanish in a few years without something like archive.org.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Several things strike me going down this memory lane:

1) How modern and responsive the UI behavior is.

2) How many subtle improvements there have been (e.g. the old Mac menu behavior that I liked I find annoying). No command-A for select all in MacWrite.

3) How screen updates I used to think were instantaneous decidedly were not. (That said, I couldn't trigger the "ultra slow update" mode and watch menus drawing one line of pixels at a time).

4) Copyright notices for third party companies in "Apple" software (e.g. MacWrite is copyright "Encore Systems".

</comment><comment><USER11> Somewhat OT but it should be more widely known that you can run NeXTSTEP on VMWare.

[https://medium.com/@jmarhee/installing-nextstep-on-vmware- fu...](https://medium.com/@jmarhee/installing-nextstep-on-vmware- fusion-5c5c3e4442f4)

It's pretty creamy.

<comment><USER12> And with shoebill[1] you can run A/UX, Apple's Unix with a MacOS GUI.

What I love is that it was a real Unix, but it could run Mac apps, and it even provided a graphical interface to select/explain the command line switches of some Unix tools.

[1] [https://github.com/pruten/shoebill](https://github.com/pruten/shoebill)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is why I donate. To me this is important. We already lost the library of Alexandria once (or multiple times really until its final destruction). Let's not have our hubris do that again.

<comment><USER14> The donation link, to save everyone a search: [https://archive.org/donate/](https://archive.org/donate/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dark Castle! It was so great for the time.

[https://archive.org/details/mac_DarkCastle_1_2](https://archive.org/details/mac_DarkCastle_1_2)

<comment><USER16> I ran into Jonathan Gay at CGDC, and upon realizing who he was, I squatted down, raised up my arms up above my head, flapped my hands, and chanted "Nya nya nya nya nya!"

Dark Castle was so cool, I totally forgave him for writing Flash.

<comment><USER17> TIL the author of Dark Castle went on to write Flash. (Didn't it start out as some Macromedia thing?)

<comment><USER16> Jonathan Gay [1] and Charlie Jackson [2] founded FutureWave Software [3], and developed a drawing program called "SmartSketch", to which they added animation features and renamed "FutureSplash Animator" to challenge Macromedia Shockwave [4], which Macromedia (nee "Macromind") then bought and renamed "Macromedia Flash".

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Jackson_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Jackson_\(software\))

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

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

<comment><USER17> wow, that's awesome!

Also, any old Dark Castle fans should note that "Return to Dark Castle" exists and was finally released a few years ago [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/return-to-dark- castle/id4107...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/return-to-dark- castle/id410703154?mt=12) (possibly the longest wait for a game sequel ever?)

<comment><USER18> That is the second sequel. The first one was Beyond Dark Castle, a truly excellent game.

<comment><USER17> Ah good point. Yeah, finished both of those back in the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So many hours of my childhood were spent playing early Mac games, especially Dark Castle and Prince of Persia.

Ubisoft did release an iOS port of the original Prince of Persia: [https://appsto.re/us/FNmRB.i](https://appsto.re/us/FNmRB.i)

But sadly Apple is about to discontinue support for iOS apps that don't support 64 bit. I expect that Prince of Persia Classic will get lost to that.

</comment><comment><USER20> What strikes me is that Excel almost hasn't changed. Yes, they added some colors.

</comment><comment><USER21> It even works on iPhone !

[https://twitter.com/ontouchstart/status/853683865113722885](https://twitter.com/ontouchstart/status/853683865113722885)

</comment><comment><USER22> Shufflepuck! I'm so excited to play that again.

Please can we get a copy of LogoWriter on one of those? That was how I first learned to program, on a Mac Plus when I was about 7 or 8 years old.

</comment><comment><USER23> Basilisk II on a current Mac may be a more useful option for those interested. I routinely run Mac OS 8.0 with hyperCard... on my 2016 MacBook Pro using Basilisk II.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting that this is done in-broswer; it looks like they're using Emscripten for emulation.

<comment><USER25> Correct, also for the other runnable software (e.g. Apple II collection) and livingroom consoles :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Awesome. Mac Plus was my first real computer as a kid, played a lot of games. World Builder scripting was the first programming I ever did.

</comment><comment><USER27> oh man, Crystal Quest! amazing. the mouse control seems wonky though, sudden bursts of acceleration, and jitter even when the mouse isn't moving?

<comment><USER28> As I recall, the mouse sets acceleration, but not the position of the gamer's piece, so it is possible to have movement even if the mouse is left alone.

FWIW, I just tried the emulator on MacOS Sierra and Chrome and it works just like I remember it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Impressive work :)</comment>


Show HN: Wakeup.io - Free Online Wake-up Call Service - <AUTHOR> https://wakeup.io

<comment><USER2> What an excellent way to spam people!

I just sent my friend 200+ wake up calls in 5 minutes. I really hope it calls him 200 times.

And it's free.

<comment><USER2> Apparently you get text messages letting you know you subscribed, and you can just reply stop to block them. He just yelled at me when he got 200 text messages in a row.

<comment><USER3> What about a land line?

EDIT: They don't do anything for land line users, just tried it on my land line phone. Great spam tool indeed :/

<comment><USER4> you can call the number to cancel or block the service, it's listed at [https://wakeup.io](https://wakeup.io)

<comment><USER3> I know but that's after you know you've been signed up because you received a call at 1AM. How do they let land line users know they've been signed up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How are the owners affording these costs? Sending calls and text messages isn't free obviously.

Or are they selling our information?

From the terms:

 _We use your personal information to operate, maintain, and improve our sites, products, and services._

That could be interpreted pretty loosely.

</comment><comment><USER6> I tried to schedule a wake up for 12:50pm and it said I am getting a call at 12:50am. FML

</comment><comment><USER7> Why is this better than setting up an alarm?

<comment><USER8> It would be good for people who don't have an alarm on their phone.

Can you set the wakeup call for 20 years ago?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see there is no information about cost. Are there any plans to charge, and if so what would you charge?

Maybe a $25-$35 year plan would make sense depending on how often the wakeup calls are needed.

<comment><USER10> I'm guessing there might be advertising along with your call.

"Good morning! And be sure to check out new McDonald's value meal..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It could be a nice spam tool.

</comment><comment><USER12> What keeps people from entering someone else's number here?

<comment><USER13> New idea: prank.io. You pay $1 and enter your friends number and it'll call him/she between 2am and 5am couple of times.

edit: friend who was pranked can pay $5 to discover who was the asshole.

<comment><USER14> And have it warn your friend it'll randomly call them in the middle of the night, and offer them the opportunity to pay $2 to call it off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can now cancel the wake-up calls by dialing 857-254-9253.</comment>


State of the Art: Reproducibility in Artificial Intelligence [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI18/paper/viewFile/17248/15864 <comment><USER2> I think that the result is overcooked. Their hypothesis 1 is somewhat falsifiable in that I don't think that there is a widespread reproducibility crisis. I have been unable to reproduce results a couple of times in my career, but I think that each time that was due to naughtiness (deliberate) on the authors part or incompetence by me. Almost always you can reproduce and when I have run into trouble I've found that the authors almost always help out (most people are just delighted that you are interested!) On the other hand this paper is very useful in that I think it will be used to establish better criteria for papers in the future. I often reject papers because they make no claim and have no results, contribution or conclusions (this makes reviewing them quick so I really like papers like this !) I think that it would be harsh to outright reject a paper because the hardware set up is poorly documented, but it would be reasonable to ask for that change before publication (for example). I agree with the authors that their criteria are useful.

One issue though, open sourcing software is a good aspiration, but it's not always possible due to IP and licensing - also export controls in some cases (not always US -> other places too). If the community insists on opensource pre-publication some important stuff is not going to get published.

</comment><comment><USER3> The paper claims that only few variables are documented so reproducibility is low. I think that's not a good measure because this complexity has kept increasing and it would require significant space in pdf to document every little detail. The good measure is if paper comes with code and it reproduces the claims. If I'm reading it right, this paper says AAAI and IJCAI had only 25% of papers with code. We really shouldn't be accepting AI papers without code.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reproducibility being difficult to impossible is not limited to A.I. research.

There is a reproducibility crisis in general in research of all fields.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/02/09/how-the- reprod...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/02/09/how-the- reproducibility-crisis-in-academia-is-affecting-scientific-research/)

</comment><comment><USER5> That is one of the clearest abstracts I've ever seen in an academic paper.

<comment><USER6> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.2832](https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.2832)

I've seen some with half as many words, but can't find them in the time alotted.

<comment><USER7> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.11336](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.11336)</comment></comment></comment>


Who are the people in the dark corners? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32446711

<comment><USER2> Article is on a convicted internet child porn collector and a neo-nazi troll.</comment>


George Hotz: I Can Make Your Car Drive Itself for Under $1,000 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqdYbwY9vPU <comment><USER2> But can you _test_ it for under $1,000 in a way that meets legal highway safety standards? Seems like the classic "Why is it $500 a pill?" problem. These things take enormous upfront development cost that needs to be baked into the cost of every subsequent unit.

In-car technology is a largely untapped market but there's better opportunities than something that requires access to the vehicle's most secure, most safety-critical systems. I personally would love to see a startup that works with car companies to create infotainment systems that work as dumb terminals to cell phones. The web browsers and media players that ship with cars are woefully outdated in just a few years and never updated; imagine now if there were a simple standard ala Android Auto that just put your phone as the "brain" for a variety of tested, secured, "documented APIs" to your car's functions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here ([https://electrek.co/2016/10/28/george-hotz-cancels-his- tesla...](https://electrek.co/2016/10/28/george-hotz-cancels-his-tesla- autopilot-like-comma-one-after-request-from-nhtsa/)) is an article of a run in Hotz had with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last year.

Although in the video he comes off as somewhat BS-y and irresponsible (you screw up your PS3 while hacking, you brick it; same thing for a car may very well kill you) I still like his overall maverick approach to the problem. Having a cheap cell-phone based OBD-II interaction mechanism with a simple GUI will may not solve the self-driving problem but may provide input for people to improve their driving. Therefore the "fitbit for your car" analogy is very apt.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm much more likely to trust my life to a company which says people own the stuff they buy, and that you shouldn't need to ask permission to do stuff with it, than a company that has every reason to lie about their products' capabilities and maybe even let your car choose to sacrifice you for someone else. I think it's quite likely comma.ai's position would never be to make a car operate outside of the owner's self-interest.

</comment><comment><USER4> How about something simpler first like a robot that picks up dog crap?</comment>


Google Docs adds Pivot Table support - <AUTHOR> http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/05/summarize-your-data-with-pivot-tables.html

<comment><USER2> Awesome. I'm a big fan of Google's feature-by-feature, slow-and-steady approach to competing with MS Office. Excel is the _only_ application that I really _miss_ since leaving Windows (Numbers & Mac Excel just don't feel right) and Google Docs is creepy up on it a little bit at a time.

<comment><USER3> Excel 2011 feels just fine - get the latest version. Excel 2007 was slow as molasses, unbearable.

<comment><USER4> _since leaving Windows_

<comment><USER5> I believe he means Excel 2011 for Mac.

<comment><USER6> There is no Excel 2011 on Windows, so it pretty much has to be the Mac.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is fairly huge. Anyone who is sufficiently advanced or works long enough with Excel sees it as a lot of stuff around an amazing analytic engine. I wonder if they'll have large dataset support?

<comment><USER8> From personal experience, I'd say there's more to its "analytics engine" aspect than just pivot tables. (Not that you necessarily meant there was not.) Although it is a hearkening cry for many... "intermediate" level users as well as a significant tool for advanced users.

If people can pivot sufficiently, this is going to provide some significant competition to Excel from the perspective of many reporting demands.

I've already observed Google Doc's word processing component exceeding Word in ease of use to get to an actual, acceptable final result, for non-technical users. At that point, I really started to wonder how long it would be until Docs ate Microsoft's lunch with respect to the office suite market.

A big, conservative anchor still being data privacy and hosting. There's a lot of stuff people (still) simply can't/won't put into someone else's cloud/computers.

<comment><USER9> Collaboration alone is worth a ton. Even if the document is stuck in word for formatting at the end, docs makes it ridiculously easy to pass around edits.

<comment><USER10> So true. If I need to co-write a paper or presentation I either use Latex and Git (for serious work) or Google Docs for one off stuff. Nothing beats Latex for writing something really lengthy, but the setup time is too much for quick 1-2 page documents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I interned at Google in 2006, one of my side projects was an all- JavaScript Pivot Table tool for internal analytics. I doubt any of that survived to present day, but it's nice to imagine.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the few reasons I've held out on excel - pivot tables seem to be such a great way to use SQL like queries on spreadsheet data. Excellent!

<comment><USER13> Agreed, this is "a great success": my family budget can finally move from Excel/Dropbox to Google Docs.

On a more serious note, this does open up some interesting possibilities for Business Intelligence "in da cloud". Pivot tables coupled with data fed through Google Docs API can resolve quite a few basic reporting needs of my small business customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google should create a turbo-charged version of Docs that requires Chrome, Firefox 4, or other sufficiently advanced browser. If Linux can boot in a browser, Google can make a much better spreadsheet for people on better browsers.

Like Chrome, they can offer a different channel. It might even encourage people to install Firefox/Chrome.

<comment><USER15> Agreed; The spreadsheet is pretty nice already, but Docs is still an extremely limited word processor. I mean, lack of custom named styles, who can do without those? And there's more of those pretty straightforward features which even a simple wordpad application can do but not Docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are the data sources? Can I source from SQL Server, Oracle, DB2? OLAP engines? If not, while still better than nothing, not really a first class solution for most of my users. But great for soccer moms (seriously -- our team mom will flex on you with pivot tables for the soccer team).

<comment><USER16> Yah, it totally doesn't target the 0.1% of people who do this! HOW LAME IS GOOGLE WITH THEIR FREE-TO-USE SOFTWARE!?!?!

In all seriousness, this is much more useful than to just soccer moms.

<comment><USER17> pivot table is probably the most interesting interface to BI cubes, I've hardly seen them used elsewhere!

so i can't really agree on your assumption that "other data sources" would represent 0.1%, in most business places i would say "other data sources" represent 100% of the usage

<comment><USER18> Not true at all. I could trade anecdotes but pivot tables are an essential tool in the analyst toolkit, without requiring external data.

Great opportunity for someone to develop and share a standard spreadsheet for capturing and reporting usefully on iTunes appstore data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For exploring data sets, Google's fusion tables are useful. <https://sites.google.com/site/fusiontablestalks/>

some support for filtering and grouping

250MB data size limit

nice mapping capabilities

</comment><comment><USER20> I can't imagine how I used Excel before I learned pivot tables, and it still makes me appear fairly godlike to my co-workers.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can't find the 'pivot table' option from my account. They said they are rolling it out, any one else able to use it?

<comment><USER22> I've got it, though I don't really know how to use them yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Almost ready for primetime. Keep up the good work Google.

</comment><comment><USER24> Please please please add something like MS Project...

<comment><USER25> Just in case you didn't know there is an open source version: <http://openproj.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> congrats GDocs team!</comment>


Ask HN: Any projects/softwares you wished that exist, but doesn't? - <AUTHOR> Hello, I've been searching for a project to do for my next semester. I'm looking for projects which are not either tried or made but not polished. Something which requires thought before implementation would be awesome.
I have nothing to do for the next six months besides a side job, and looking to expand my expertise, so I have six months of half-work days to devote to the project. I researched a little, and kind of leaning towards AR/VR, but AFAIU, it is more about content/experience rather than programming(correct me if wrong). But since I'm still a student, I'm low on budget. The new Windows 10 headsets seem interesting(maybe I can buy one), but I'm not sure.
That's why I'm asking you if you have some project in mind which you are planning to do yourself and not getting time or you want to see happen. Time is not an issue, I'm ready to put in a lot of it, but I do want to have something substantial ready by the end of it, even if that is just a proof-of-concept.
I have experience in mobile, web and general purpose development, and I've studied sufficient maths and biology too. And don't worry, I'm usually aware of things and I do a lot of research for everything, so if someone can mentor me, their time won't be wasted.
Also, do let me know if this is the wrong place to ask, I've already been asking a lot of people about this. Please help me out. <comment><USER2> Have a look in this recent thread : Ask HN: What "missing" technical solution(s) do you wish existed? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13088714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13088714)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, I'll go through it.</comment></comment>


The Mixologist: How Mike Will Made It - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/11/how-mike-will-made-it <comment><USER2> You have no idea how happy it makes me to see a piece about Mike Will Made It on the frontpage of HN of all places.

Not only is he a Hip Hop producer (producers normally stay in the background), but he's a part of the ATL Trap movement which I wouldn't have expected anyone on HN to be tuned into.

<comment><USER3> too bad the article says Trap is "currently embodied by" Fetty Wap and Desiigner... that's some bullshit only a New Yorker could write.

<comment><USER4> Right? Desiigner embodies trap more than Future?

<comment><USER5> Bay Area has a lot of trap too. Speaking of, my favorite event out here called Trap City SF, is hosting Mike WiLL Made It a week from now if anyone is interested: [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mike-will-made-it-trap- city-4-y...](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mike-will-made-it-trap-city-4-year- at-1015-folsom-tickets-25963029119?aff=site)

These people seriously throw an amazing party. Come check it out if you're into this kind of stuff, or if you just want to get a taste of the scene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think the phrase "trap house" has to do with exits. I believe it is just a reference to "trap", which I think refers to the drug business as a sort of trap. And after all, a trap house should probably have another exit for a quick escape.

</comment><comment><USER7> trap = Techno Rap?</comment>


A suggestion for eliminating workplace discrimination completely. - <AUTHOR>

Whenever possible, employees would work from home and would never actually meet their employer or fellow employees face to face.
Communication would be limited to text and fake names would be used.
Anything requiring the true identity of the employee would be done via a trusted third party.
If the employee's writing style reveals too much about his/her background, then he/she may request someone to help make his/her writing more generic. <comment><USER2> Is discrimination an issue in that particular country that this would be a real cause for concern?

Are you asking if this it would be a viable business model if you were the trusted third party (e.g. identity escrow)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Discrimination is an issue in all countries.

<comment><USER2> Agreed -- but to a much lesser extent in some over other countries.

If it was, then I'd have to agree with you that working remotely under the arrangement you proposed (akin to eLance.com) should work fine.

If this wasn't a primary concern for a new job, then I'm not sure I see the overall benefit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it would have to be mandated by law for certain companies in which it would work.

Otherwise, what is the incentive for an employer to provide such an arrangement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> An economist's reply to this might be that if there really are a lot of workplaces that are so full of invidious discrimination that they don't value talented employees, then other workplaces will gain a comparative advantage by hiring the disfavored kind of people.

On my part, I'd certainly rather work in a diverse workplace where I meet a lot of varied people than work through anonymized telecommuting in which I never meet co-workers in real life.

</comment><comment><USER4> well, I think this makes sense for interviews; Of course, you should have the person come in and interact before finalizing it, but I think that for most technical positions, you will get a better candidate if you judge them based on how they answer questions, not on how well they interview (which is largely a test of 'charisma under pressure') I personally try to do this because I find it easier to overcome my own biases and make a rational decision this way.

Discrimination based on writing style (and correctness) will continue, and personally, I think that's fine. I think it's rational to weight a good writer over someone who can barely communicate in text.

If you are a business that operates mostly on voice communication, well, you are going to be a more homogeneous organization. Most people feel about accents the way I feel about poor writing skills.

</comment><comment><USER5> For certain cases in IT this may be feasible, but too many interactions in business today are still done face-to-face that would render this suggestion impossible.

</comment><comment><USER6> But many people _actually enjoy_ interacting with their cow-orkers.

<comment><AUTHOR> But there's a price to be paid for that.

<comment><USER2> If you're suggesting that the price is always discrimination, then I'd have to disagree. If not, then could you expand on this a little more?

<comment><AUTHOR> Discrimination is ubiquitous. The only difference between people who discriminate and those who do not is that the latter group is better at hiding it. But even subtle/latent discrimination can produce unfair outcomes in the workplace.

<comment><USER2> For people that subscriber to this black and white worldview, your suggestion is a temporary band-aid solution that should work well in the short-medium term (for as long as the employee and company can keep up the faceless and highly impersonal relationship).

I am not one that subscribes to this worldview. To each their own.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Understanding Mathematical Notation as Code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Jam3/math-as-code# <comment><USER2> This is a nice little document, but you have to understand that mathematical notation is syntactically closer to spoken language than to code, and it's only expected to be semantically rigorous after context is taken into account.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ken Iverson's Turing essay was _Notation as a Tool of Thought_ [1]. Both his languages, APL and J [2] were based on the idea of mapping mathematical and a programming language. Iverson's _Math for the Layman_ presents that link explicitly despite being an enjoyable read. [3]

[1]: [http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm](http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm)

[2]: [http://www.jsoftware.com](http://www.jsoftware.com)

[3]: [http://www.cs.trinity.edu/About/The_Courses/cs301/math- for-t...](http://www.cs.trinity.edu/About/The_Courses/cs301/math-for-the- layman/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've always thought (ever since university) that math notation should take inspiration from code. Instead of writing Xi, they should really write X[i]; because Xi is ambiguous. I find that dealing with all the ambiguity in syntax can be rather frustrating.

<comment><USER5> > _" Instead of writing Xi, they should really write X[i]; because Xi is > ambiguous. I find that dealing with all the ambiguity in syntax can be > rather frustrating."_

This is a feature of math, not a bug. The potential for ambiguity is the cost that one pays to have a flexible and extensible notation which can be adapted to concepts yet undiscovered. This is generally not the case with code [1]. When you are exploring new ideas you want the ability to redefine your notation to match the nature and structure of the abstactions you are examining.

There is a finite number of symbols in the set of all human languages, and thus far we know of no reason that there should be a finite set of concepts in mathematics. Enforcing a one-to-one mapping from a given sequence of symbols to a given concept forces you to either limit the space of concepts you can consider or to eventually deal with impractically large sequences of symbols for relatively simple concepts.

[1] Yes, Lisp and DSLs are a thing, but you still have to define what a given sequence of symbols means. In an interpreted language, the interpreter computes the meaning using inputs and any necessary state. In math, the meaning is necessarily dependent on context as well.

<comment><USER4> > deal with impractically large sequences of symbols for relatively simple > concepts.

I don't think they would ever have to be impractically large.

Right now they are just impractically weird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The part about using = for definition doesn't seem to reflect the way that works in mathematics.

The mathematical meaning of _x = 2kj_ isn't var x = 2 * k * j but var x = function(k, j) { return 2 * k * j; };

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on improving this part; feel free to add more discussion here: [https://github.com/Jam3/math-as-code/issues/17](https://github.com/Jam3/math- as-code/issues/17)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't like being negative, but this seems really patronising and unhelpful. Just because someone is a 'self-taught game/graphics programmer' doesn't mean that describing maths concepts to them as code is at all intuitive, especially for things relating to geometric concepts like vectors, for which a simple diagram would speak volumes.

<comment><USER8> I agree, sadly. I'm not sure anyone who didn't already understand vector products is going to be helped by staring at "var rx = ay * bz - az * by; var ry = az * bx - ax * bz; var rz = ax * by - ay * bx" (as opposed to, say, [0]). Sure, it's precise and unambiguous, but it's missing the context that make it possible for a human to actually understand what it is as opposed to just calculating it (which the javascript interpreter is capable of doing fine on its own).

To say nothing of "var determinant = require('gl-mat2/determinant'); determinant(matrix)"! I guess the point is to go read the source code of the library, but I can't imagine many worse ways of learning linear algebra than reading the source code of optimized linear algebra routines.

[0] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Cross_pr...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Cross_product.gif)

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is not to understand linear algebra in a few lines of code. The point is to present the language of mathematics in another light; and hopefully demystify intimidating-looking equations that often appear in literature surrounding games, graphics and other fields of programming.

The audience is hobbyists and self-taught developers with no formal background in mathematic notation. This audience might have no problem with a for loop, but the Summation symbol is (literally) just Greek to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not sure if I agree with the statement that "=" is used for definitions. It's true meaning is to simply state that two things are equal. I can see where the confusion comes from since mathematicians have a tendency to just state "Let x = 2kj", instead of the more explicit "Let us assume that the statement 'x = 2kj', is true". It's important to note the distinction though, since introducing a new variable by simply stating it's properties is more powerful than just defining it to be equal to something. For instance it's equally valid to define a symbol x by simply stating "Let x∈A". This is used quite a lot since anything you can then prove about "x" must automatically be true for all elements of A.

<comment><USER10> I like the idea of using the compound symbol ":=" for "is defined to be". So, you can say something like "For x∈A, y := 2x". When I take math notes, it helps a lot using this shorthand. I'm able to remove some ambiguity between what is and is not a definition.

<comment><USER9> I definitely agree with the use of ":=", but "=" simply doesn't mean the same thing. For example, the similar statement "For x∈A, y = 2x" could even be interpreted as using y to define x.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand -- you say "=" and ":=" are not the same thing, but give an example where they act the same?

Practically speaking, using ":=" removes any doubt when quickly skimming over old notes. It is nice to be able to easily separate what is defined and what is asserted in each of dozens of statements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Surprised there's no mention of the Curry-Howard correspondence between proofs and programs.

<comment><USER12> Mention? The title led me to believe that was the topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice, it would make a great book : "Math for coders: from code to math notation.". Seriously ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is amazing; It's always annoying having to Google arcane mathematical notation, in order to translate something into code.

</comment><comment><USER15> Math is pure = not mutable, and that code is mutable. Damn barbarians try to desecrate math!

</comment><comment><USER16> Math notation is just obfuscated code in a language that doesn't compile or run.

<comment><USER17> It's not really code - more of a pseudocode, because it leaves the details of the implementation to the reader.

Might be what you were getting at with "doesn't compile or run".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is neat. I hope to see more!</comment>


Show HN: List of transphobia in movies/tv - <AUTHOR> http://transphobic.media/ <comment><USER2> Seems like more of a "let's check a box if the actor wasn't trans because we have access to that data and it's easy" rather than a real research project.

The details for each movie are so lacking they might as well not be there. Get an expert to write a blurb on each film maybe?</comment>


Against Against Pseudoaddiction - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudoaddiction/ <comment><USER2> "Under-dosed" would avoid most of the trouble. If someone said "Maybe the patient isn't an addict, maybe they're under-dosed", anyone could understand this. Nobody would have philosophical debates about nuances between "under dosed" and "addicted", whereas it's no surprise people are skeptical when contrasting "pseudoaddiction" vs "addiction".

The author says "pseudoaddiction is as good [a term] as any other", but I disagree. Most of the trouble he describes could be avoided by using a more descriptive term. "Pseudoaddiction" doesn't even refer to the patient, it's about second-guessing a diagnosis, which makes it really difficult to contrast.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The prefix "pseudo" implies that there is some normal behavior (addiction) and faked behavior (pseudoaddiction). But it's the other way around. Wanting medication for legitimate reasons should be the normal behavior and faking it (addiction) the pseudo behavior.

<comment><USER4> not defending the term or the pharma behavior, but pseudo can also mean 'similar to' or 'having the appearance of', especially in an academic context

<comment><USER5> that seems more appropriate for quasi but i could see how pseudo might be used in such a manner

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Theoughout my life, I've ended up on opiate painkillers a handful of times, after broken bones or surgeries or whatnot. I have absolutely no history of addiction and never used them innapropriately but I realized how effective the pain relief was and id save them in case I have a snowboarding or mountain biking accident and don't want to go begging for meds for this exact reason.

So finally I run out over time and then later that summer I severely sprain my ankle rock climbing. I'm in excruciating pain which has to be pretty obvious to the urgent Care I'm at and I'll I'm thinking about is how to act as responsible and non addictey as possible so I can get a few pills and the next week won't be a living nightmare. So I drop the question and the mood instantly changes. I'm treated with suspicion for the rest of the appointment and the conversation is quick to the point of being rude.

And why? Because I didn't have the correct back story for my pain. And then the doctors put on this self righteous paternalistic act like they are taking the only accepted medical action which is in my interest by not listening to my subjective opinion of my own subjective experience.

What an infuriating experience and one of the first tough lessons I learned in my life about not relying too heavily on the medical system.

<comment><USER7> > never used them innapropriately

> I'd save them

Worth noting that by the definition a doctor would use these two observations are incompatible.

<comment><USER8> "Save" as in "not take/require" the entire prescription is not the same as hoarding. And then rarely dipping into the extra supply as needed is not the same as abusing. However, I agree that many (most, probably) doctors probably do see it as unacceptable behavior.

<comment><USER9> I got Vicodin after an appendectomy. I took 3 total I think. I threw away the rest. I didn't want them around the house.

The odds of you 'needing' spare opiates in the house are pretty small unless you're frequently doing impromptu field surgery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Devil's advocate position (mostly from a book, "Dreamland", about this topic):

"Pseudoaddiction" is deliberately defined such that it's indistinguishable from actual addiction. The concept was popularized by Purdue Pharma, who were trying to market OxyContin.

At the time, providers were averse to prescribing opioids because of addiction concerns. Purdue created the "pseudoaddiction" term to teach providers that just because someone looks addicted, you can keep prescribing them opioids anyways.

At the same time, they lied with statistics to tell doctors that opioids only caused "true" addiction in less than 1% of cases.

Thus, the brunt of the message was that if you see addiction, there's a 99% chance that it's _not real addiction_.

Many doctors were convinced. Now the nation is dealing with an opioid epidemic driven by OxyContin.

Pseudoaddiction exists. But actual addiction also exists, and it's more dangerous and more likely to happen. Being afraid to diagnose "addiction" because of "pseudoaddiction", is just FUD.

<comment><USER11> > Pseudoaddiction exists. But actual addiction also exists, and it's more > dangerous and more likely to happen.

Many people kill themselves over chronic untreated or undertreated pain. I've seen studies showing that people with chronic pain kill themselves at twice the rate of those without chronic pain (even that seems low to me) [0] and various other similar studies. Assuming this is true, and that the two are causally related, then opiate deaths and suicide deaths due to chronic pain are in the same order of magnitude.

If you any of you are unfortunate to end up with a condition that causes significant chronic nerve pain, you'll quickly understand how this can be.

0\. [https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2702061/chronic-pain- amon...](https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2702061/chronic-pain-among- suicide-decedents-2003-2014-findings-from-national)

<comment> munk-a As someone married to someone with chronic pain... Opioid pain killers tend to be ineffective anyways - they will provide a window of pain killing that is longer than other substances (when taken within safe limits) on the order of months but their efficacy is not unlimited and even being willing to heavily addict yourself to Oxy is likely going to cease helping your pain after half a year. This is part of the cause of this epidemic, people were _entirely falsely_ prescribed an ineffective medication that has heavy side effects.

My spouse managed to get a medical supply of mj and that has helped her get back into life, given her pain source is from arthritis and a few other issues it'll probably never be a thing she'll be without but the few studies out there on mj have a positive view of long term pain treatment on it.

Chronic pain is a very serious condition that can ruin lives, it is extremely disgusting to see what has happened with Oxy and heavier penalties are needed.

<comment><USER11> > This is part of the cause of this epidemic, people were _entirely falsely_ > prescribed an ineffective medication that has heavy side effects.

It really depends. Opiates work for some people, with some conditions. People should have the choice, just like with MJ. For me, one opiate worked, and another didn't (and made things worse. it was Oxycontin, incidentally, haven't taken it in many years).

Also, people with chronic pain take opiate breaks for the reasons of tolerance you describe.

And yes, I've heard MJ works for many people (I've never tried it for my conditions, since it's still not legal where I live. Also, I tried it a couple of times in college and hated how it made me feel, no way I could work on MJ). But I'm very happy it works for your spouse and that she's able to obtain it. Chronic pain is brutal. If MJ is ever legalized where I live I might try it just to see if it works.

<comment><USER12> > _It really depends._

In the past, throwing opioids at chronic pain patients and calling it a day was par for the course.

Now, there's a level of awareness that not only are opioids not very good for managing chronic pain all of the time, they can even make pain sensitivity worse in the long-run.

Criminalizing pain patients is disgusting, but I'm hoping we can reach an equilibrium where those who have chronic pain are able to seek adequate treatment and opioids aren't the first line of treatment or overprescribed.

As someone with family members suffering from chronic pain, I know several people who have switched to MMJ or CBD supplements with great success. One of them took pain killers for decades and hasn't needed them in years because of CBD.

CBD won't affect you cognitively, if you have the time, money and your doctor thinks it's a good idea, it wouldn't hurt to give it a go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't it basically known at this point that insufficient pain medication is very likely to encourage addition? Specifically, if pain medication wears out before the next scheduled dose, so that the patient experiences significant pain and therefore is looking forward to their next does for relief from that pain... well, it seems obvious that that would be a perfect recipe to strengthen dependency on that drug. IIRC that was one of the main criticisms of Oxycontin, that it was claimed to have a longer efficacy period than it actually did, so too-long dosing periods were prescribed, resulting in this effect. (Not to mention all the unnecessary discomfort between doses itself.)

<comment><USER14> Research on drug addiction points to socioeconomic and cultural factors predicting addiction, not consuming the drug.

See the work of Johann Hari. People become addicts because they're unhappy with their lives and their environment, not because opioids are inherently addictive. Which shouldn't be surprising to anyone who has experienced addiction.

<comment><USER11> > People become addicts because they're unhappy with their lives and their > environment,

You know what's one thing that makes people _very_ unhappy with their lives? Severe chronic pain. Aside from the pain, it also removes a great deal of agency and self-efficacy from their lives. They can't control the pain, the medical system is basically out of their control, and now there's a societal hysteria about opiates.

Beyond that, what you're describing it the difference between addiction and dependency. Any flesh and blood human will become dependent on opiates after a few weeks. It's why doctors have you taper off opiates and other meds that cause dependency.

Although even that distinction seems to be going by the wayside in the current hysteria.

<comment><USER14> > You know what's one thing that makes people very unhappy with their lives? > Severe chronic pain.

That's my point. Having taken an opiate actually has little to do with whether they form an addiction. So we shouldn't be focused on restricting supply to treat and prevent addiction.

> Any flesh and blood human will become dependent on opiates after a few > weeks.

Yes, if by dependency you're referring to withdrawal symptoms or tolerance. Opioid addiction however varies wildly depending on the demographic, despite all having consumed opioids. It's not the act of taking opioids that predicts whether someone becomes addicted. Research points to addiction not being caused by the drugs themselves. This isn't surprising when you consider that humans get addicted to such a wide variety of totally unrelated chemical combinations. When you think about it, isn't it a little suspicious that almost any chemical that can be consumed is potentially addictive? That strongly suggests that addiction is not about the drugs really, and research is finally corroborating this.

Having said that, now think about the fact that all food is drugs (chemicals that affect and manipulate your biology) and it becomes apparent that addiction is a much much bigger issue than one might assume when only thinking about things like Oxy and booze as drugs. If one qualifies harmful diet as drug addiction it turns out the majority of our society is suffering from addiction. But there's very little research going on in this area, despite diet probably being the most prevalent and harmful form of drug addiction. You can't unsee it. The similarity between someone talking about their struggles with poor diet ("but that cheeseburger/cheetos/soda/etc. is all I have, can't I have just one thing to look forward to?") and someone talking about alcoholism or smoking is almost indistinguishable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting!

So my understanding from this is that "psuedoaddiction" is a name for the concept that a patient agitating for drugs is doing so not because they're addicted, but because they actually need the drug to ease their symptoms. In other words, someone rolling around on the floor moaning in pain and screaming for oxy may be doing so because they're actually in a lot of pain, as opposed to acting because they need a fix.

As a term it's pretty unfortunate. And this is the point of the article: the notion that "pseudoaddiction" is an unscientific pharma sales technique has made it difficult for those in need of medication to get enough of it.

The author cites examples of insulin and non-addictive antidepressants too, lest you think it's all about opiates. They make a strong, frustrated case.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure how one would go about addressing this problem. While it could be argued that Big Pharma pushed for psuedoaddiction more than necessary, that doesn't necessarily discount what the patients were saying. From the article, it sounds like a doctor with experience with the patient could distinguish between addiction and psuedoacction well, but the doctor also wants to avoid bureaucratic oversight and risk causing harm to their patient.

<comment><USER17> The question I have (as a complete lay-person) is: can't we develop effective painkillers (and other useful drugs) that aren't addictive at all? Is there something inherent about the types of things these treat that makes it really hard to avoid using addictive substances?

<comment><USER18> And a follow-up question: Would it help? Many of the examples given were for non-addictive drugs, the deciding factor seems purely to be whether you're adamant that you need the drug. Especially awful are the examples involving diabetics being denied insulin.

<comment><USER19> Both need to be solved but the problem spaces of "the doctor wants to you to come for an appointment the next day" and "the doctor thinks you're addicted so won't prescribe you anything" are completely unrelated and I don't really see how the former ended up in this article.

Solving pain relief without being labeled an addict certainly shows value even if you have to inconveniently schedule an appointment to be prescribed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Whenever you hear the term "drug seeking behavior", imagine instead you're hearing a term "food seeking behavior" being used to describe someone at a grocery store. People "seek" things they think they need, duh.

People wouldn't "seek" drugs at the doctor if they could simply buy them at the store. Even if you believe the current regime of controlling access is worthwhile (debatable), then you still have to accept that many patients are going to apply themselves to solving their own problems more than any doctor during a half an hour visit. They may not necessarily be correct, but it is a better default attitude than removing their agency.

Tangentially but not really, I feel like a large part of this outrage fest against Purdue Pharma is a media-scapegoat to deflate attention from 1. Ongoing price gouging by the rest of the pharmaceutical industry and 2. The large spike in street opioids even before the fentanyl epidemic, likely due to invading Afghanistan.

<comment><USER21> > The large spike in street opioids even before the fentanyl epidemic, likely > due to invading Afghanistan.

Sorry, that flew over my head. How would the invasion have caused the spike?

<comment><USER20> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be really interesting to do a "UBI"-like study where a select group of chronic pain-managed patents are given full control of their prescribed drug and dose for ~6 months and study if they have worse outcomes than a control group under normal pain management guidelines.

One could make the argument that insufficient dosage would increase the chance of the patient seeking drugs outside of the pharmaceutical system. How does the magnitude of the risk of using impure black market drugs compare to the risk of overprescription? Fentanyl cuts are extremely dangerous. Would the average pain-managed patient choose to increase their dose perpetually, or do they reach a plateau? What percentage of patients would have their lives ruined by carte blanche prescriptions? 80% would certainly justify our current regime, but if it's only ~5%, perhaps those 5% already have identifiable confounding risks that could be screened out. Perhaps those 5% would seek drugs on the black market anyways, and thus giving them access to a clean source would be a legitimate harm reduction intervention.

Similarly, I wonder if anyone has ever studied giving prescription opiates to heroin users. It seems like if they could get ~80% of their normal dose legally and without hassle, some might voluntarily choose to stop purchasing from the black market. Heck, I'd imagine many would tolerate quite a bit of hassle, could probably get them to discuss their long term plan for treatment with a health profession before getting each refill. "Do you intend to take opiates forever? Is there anything I can do to help you taper your dose? No? well here's your refill, lets talk again in a couple weeks."

</comment><comment><USER23> Addict or pseudoaddict, the solution is the same. Give them a supervised dose as necessary and provide support and encouragement for them to stop if they wish. Anything else and the patient will turn to the black market. It's that simple. You want to stop people dying, provide them with opiates so they don't get fentanyl laced garbage from some street dealer. Anything else is, frankly, just torturing the patient, often in the name of morality when this is not at all a moral issue. One day people will realize this. Until then, addicts will die by the thousands. Some places have already realized this (Portugal, Switzerland, Vancouver BC, and even the US before the war on drugs started early last century).

<comment><USER24> > Addict or pseudoaddict, the solution is the same. Give them [it]

Exactly. If someone shows up at your clinic wanting drugs that you think they're addicted to -- especially ones that are cheap generic -- are you really preventing harm by not giving it to them?

<comment><USER25> Unfortunately we carry a second responsibility to help the DEA control drugs, and the scope of our liability is ill-defined. We need to make medically justifiable choices at each point to retain the privilege of legally prescribing or dispensing controlled substances. I will err on the side of not dispensing opioids to someone I don't know or a case I'm not familiar with.

<comment><USER26> Glad to hear from an actual doctor. Is it common practice to get previous medical history and notes if you are seeing someone for the first time who has been under someone else's care? Or are there strange laws preventing you from getting the continuity information from the other doc? In Australia once we give consent, the other clinic/hospital would release notes electronically. Sometimes it's also a quick check with state PBS registration to get confirmation on dosage already being prescribed.

PS: based on my personal experience in Australia, not for opioids but for other controlled substances like amphetamines or ritalin.

<comment><USER25> I'm a veterinarian by the way.

Yes, you can get medical records. They're not as easy to get in an emergency situation, which is how drug-seeking (and I assume pseudoaddiction) presents itself. Sometimes the bizarre extremeness of the situation makes you skeptical enough. For example, "The dog needs the meds for a trip tomorrow from Georgia to a remote part of the Pacific Northwest and it will be in excruciating pain and anxiety if you don't prescribe three months worth right now," and it's 6pm on a Friday evening.

<comment><USER26> Gotcha, that's super shady. My friend who used to be pharmacist said, he can guess fraudulent prescriptions, because they were always the one just before the pharmacy was about to shut doors and has a prescription that will lead him to empty the full pill box behind the counter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Based on the examples he gives, physicians seem to have a disappointingly unsophisticated response to the word "addiction" or to any signs that point in the direction of it. Even if you are physically dependent on a drug and respond poorly to having it withdrawn, you're not addicted in the clinical sense unless you're engaging in problematic behavior. That nuance seems to be lost on far too many doctors amidst the current moral panic.

I wish that we could have a more nuanced response to the true horrors of the opioid epidemic. But perhaps even highly trained doctors aren't capable of more discretion. To be pessimistic and reductionist, the only options are "make drugs harder to get across the board" or "make them easier to get" and we've chosen the former. That may help with the opioid crisis, but it has its own costs.

<comment><USER28> _Based on the examples he gives, physicians seem to have a disappointingly unsophisticated response to the word "addiction"_

That's because the incentives are not in proportion to the disincentives. Doctors are highly trained, yes, but they adjust their level of discretion in response to liability risk. If the current legal regime treats addiction like the black plague then doctors are going to avoid enabling addicts like the plague, even if that means leaving a lot of legitimate patients in severe pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> >Into all this came the drug warriors. It's hard for me to be angry at addictionologists, because they have a terrible job and are probably traumatized by it. But they really hate drugs and will say whatever it takes to make you hate drugs too. These are the people who gave us articles on how one hit of marijuana will get you addicted forever and definitely kill you, how one hit of LSD will make you go crazy and get addicted and probably kill you, how there can never be any legitimate medical reason for using cannabis, how e-cigarettes are deadly poison, and other similar classics. Sensing that they had the high ground, they wrote a couple of papers about how pseudoaddiction isn't "empirically proven", as if this were a meaningful claim. This gave the media the ammunition they needed to declare that pseudoaddiction was always pseudoscience and has now been debunked and well- refuted.

>This is just my story, and it's kind of bulverist. But if you think it's plausible, I recommend the following lessons:

>First, when the media decides to craft a narrative, and the government decides to hold a moral panic, arguments get treated as soldiers. Anything that might sound like it supports the "wrong" side will be mercilessly debunked, no matter how true it is. Anything that supports the "right" side will be celebrated and accepted as obvious, no matter how bad its arguments. Good scientists feel afraid to speak up and question the story, lest they be seen as "soft on the Opioid Crisis" or "stooges of Big Pharma".

</comment><comment><USER30> I've found that a lot of doctors have this attitude of letting patients suffer, as if a bit of pain is good for you. I can't help but think it's also an ego thing, never let the stupid patient have a say in what could be right for him. After all, the patient hasn't studied medicine.

The good thing is that there are now more studies of pain. It's subjective and not measurable. Sure we can't give out morphine like vitamin supplements, but there's no need for unnecessary pain.

<comment><USER31> Attitudes towards pain are cultural and can vary wildly.

"letting patients suffer" is a very telling sign of one attitude, but it isn't the only one, and not necessarily right or wrong.

Wanting to avoid discomfort at all costs is a very American trait as is its opposite attitude glorifying discomfort. There are more than two directions.

<comment><USER32> Not to delve too deeply into relativism and who can truly know right and wrong, but I think that as a cultural aspect letting patients suffer is bad and if a culture accepts that it may be an area for improvement within that culture.

Of course there are situations where suffering is necessary or cannot be prevented, but I don't think preventing suffering and pain is a very American trait.

<comment><USER31> I meant something different.

The link between physical sensations of discomfort and pain and the conscious experience of suffering is not constant across individuals or situation and is correlated with cultural differences. I'm trying to create a distinction between pain and suffering (perhaps there are better words).

Western cultures and Americans in particular have a generally much stronger association of pain and suffering and expect that everyone else does too.

As an example, if you took me and a random life-long resident of the bay area and dropped us, appropriately dressed, into a 5 degrees F day outside for an hour, we would have very different experiences because I grew up in a cold climate and I just like it. I don't think my nerves work any differently or that any physical sensation I received would be different than anybody else's -- but my attitude towards cold and my feelings about the sensations are very much different than someone who spends most of their life in 65-90F.

Pain is information and your attitudes and experiences will change how you perceive it. The sensation is universal but its interpretation is not. You don't have to push nerve chemistry around with drugs to alleviate suffering. It is certainly useful in some circumstances, necessary in others, but not all circumstances and some cultures and some people put much to high a value on eliminating the sensation as opposed to treating and improving the downstream conscious and unconscious perception of it.

<comment><USER33> 5°? That's basically hoodie weather.

<comment><USER32> I went on a trip recently with some family and the weather was 5-10 but sunny. Not bad at all. My partner kept remarking how freezing it was and miserable. When mentioning this to locals we got conversations how it was midsummer and beautiful weather.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Has the medical community and psychiatry in particular grown over-accustomed — even 'addicted' to overusing, academically endorsing, and clinically propagating, the proxy diagnoses of 'pseudoaddiction' and 'self-medication' to avoid dealing with addiction itself? If so, what forces have contributed to this phenomenon? Do doctors believe these constructs help them avoid heaping the criminalizing stigma of 'addiction' onto their patients? Do these constructs excuse doctors from dealing with addiction, when so many of us, and most detrimentally, psychiatrists, don't know how to treat it, or can't get paid for doing so, or, are so often accustomed to prescribing addictive drugs for a wide variety of indications? Have there been too many incentives, and too many effective marketing campaigns from corporate interests that manufacture and sell addictive drugs like nicotine, opioids, benzodiazepines and stimulants, that have over-inflated their medicinal attributes to doctors and the public, while minimizing their addictive downsides?"

A string of five consecutive sentences ending with a question mark.

This seems similar to the "journalistic" technique of ending a head line with a question mark. So you have plausible deniability about claiming "X", you are just innocently raising the possibility "X?" for consideration.

But the headline gets clicks because the human brain sees "X?" but remembers "X" and repeats it, making it conventional wisdom.

So this journal article seems to be using a similar technique. Putting "?" at the end of each sentence, but never answering the question with strong evidence one way or another, just introducing the claim to the reader, who will come away vaguely remembering "pseudoaddiction is causing doctors to over prescribe opiods."

<comment><USER11> > So you have plausible deniability about claiming "X", you are just > innocently raising the possibility "X?" for consideration

I don't think there's much question after reading this article what the author thinks. He was fairly explicit about it.

Edit: Please disregard this response. I misread (or rather, failed to carefully read) the quote. Thanks to user zaroth for pointing it out.

<comment><USER35> To be clear, the author of the post ("Scott") in this case is quoting from a journal article against pseudoaddiction which Scott finds highly dubious.

The highlighted string of theoretical questions from the article IMO greatly bolsters Scott's case.

But then again, I think it would be really hard to find an SSC post which I strenuously disagreed with. And any SSC post on moral panic and media narratives is a sure 100% winner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I couldn't find the link, but some years ago I listened to a talk on the Cato Daily Podcast ([https://www.cato.org/archives/type/multimedia/category/9390](https://www.cato.org/archives/type/multimedia/category/9390)) from a doctor, describing his experience with opioids. The doctor said that, having read medical literature, he believed that exponential increases in opioid dosage were an appropriate response. So (exact mathematics aside) if a dose wasn't sufficient for a patient, then you double the dosage. And double it again, and again, and again as necessary. This was not the conventional wisdom, so he was prescribing much much higher doses than was typical.

Was this approach to dosing correct? Maybe? It was unclear to me if people eventually reached an appropriate dosage and then held steady.

From there of course patients sought him out for their pain management, people who had constant chronic pain, because he was willing to offer a treatment other doctors were not.

Eventually there was concern about opioids, and this doctor's very high prescriptions quickly became noticed. He was shut down. Without access to the pain treatment he was willing to provide (and other doctors were not) several of his patients committed suicide.

I still don't know what I think about the whole story. What is a manageable amount of pain? Are individuals able to identify the boundary between pain management and... whatever other experience we consider to be an inappropriate use of opioids? Because you could be "addicted" to opioids while only using them for pain management, i.e., only trying to achieve a comfortable existence.

If we believe individuals can self-determine the boundary between appropriate and inappropriate use, how then do we trust individuals to report on this? Especially if we believe that addiction makes a person untrustworthy, maybe even to themselves.

And how do we rate pain, when for so many cases it is genuinely subjective? Like, we have no way to see what pain a person experiences except for them to tell us, maybe relating it to a more objective experience (like: does this hurt more or less than a bee sting?) (Does everyone even have shared experiences that cover the necessary range of pain?)

I don't really buy Cato's relatively extreme perspective on this (that we should let people do whatever they feel is right, and that all the harm is from restrictions that lead people to dangerous substitutes). But there's clearly some hard philosophical questions here to consider.

</comment><comment><USER37> "Pseudo-addiction" is a very bad term and should never have been concocted. A more correct term would be "inadequately treated". Calling a person suffering from pain who reasonably desires relief from pain a "pseudoaddict" shifts the 'blame' and actual problem from the source of the problem (the doctor who is not adequately treating the pain) onto the patient -- like there is something wrong with the patient rather than something wrong with the doctor (inadequate skill in managing pain).

I'm a retired physician who prescribed opiates for decades and have seen how persons with inadequately controlled pain behave. This problem is created by (1) not having adequate treatment facilities and funding for such treatment for actual addicts, and (2) draconian drug laws that encourage addicts to visit physicians and pretend to have pain so they can get a high-quality safer supply of the desire of their addiction.

The problem is not 'pseudoaddiction', but rather 'pseudopain' behaviors that addicts have been trained to display. It is a glass half full vs half empty sort of problem, but using a term (pseudoaddiction) to describe a failure of medical treatment just seems perverse to me.

</comment><comment><USER38> tl;dr _" you should treat reporting on medical, scientific, and social scientific topics as having less than zero credibility"_

Well, yeah. You should treat _all_ reporting as having zero credibility. Otherwise people will believe anything they read, _especially_ if more than one source reports it. This is a logical fallacy.

A lot of people have reported being abducted by aliens. So far, not much proof. But if the biggest media companies all reported tomorrow that a guy in Kansas got abducted by aliens, everyone would just buy it immediately.

Nothing is true until it has been proven.

</comment><comment><USER39> One of the definitions of addiction that seems to be common around addiction specialists is that an addict will chose behavior that negatively impacts their life in obvious ways.

There's a separate set of questions that have been asked and I'd still really like to see the answers be tracked down. What is it about some people that they can try some chemicals once and abandon them, while lots of other people simply cannot stop? Is it genetic, philosophical, or environmental?

If it's nurture, can we spread these tools around more widely? If there's a nature component, can we identify metabolic pathways and support detox?

<comment><USER40> > What is it about some people that they can try some chemicals once and > abandon them, while lots of other people simply cannot stop? Is it genetic, > philosophical, or environmental?

Like most things, it's probably a combination of genetics and environment. From what I've observed, it really seems like some drugs mesh with some brain chemistries and not others. Case in point: when I was a young teenager, I wanted to be cool, and I tried smoking cigarettes with the cool kids. I've probably smoked 50 cigarettes in my life. At no point did I ever feel the pull of nicotine. It just never did anything to me. That's surprising because I know a lot of people who quickly got hooked and can't quit even if they want to. I've also tried pot: it makes me terribly paranoid and is a sure fire way to ruin my day, so pot has negative appeal to me.

On the other hand, I was also in the rave scene for a while. I've tried stimulants such as amphetamines and MDMA as well as ketamine. Those drugs all had a definite pull on me. I had to take a step back at some point because I was using them every weekend and it was starting to take a toll on my work. I eventually realized that I was going dancing not because I liked it that much, but because I was subconsciously trying to put myself in situations where I would do drugs (early signs of addiction IMO, and I'm glad I noticed).

I think that when a chemical tickles your reward center in the right way, your brain starts subtly adjusting your behavior so you get that stimulus again. It will slowly creep up on you. If you aren't careful, you can lie to yourself, not notice what's happening, or not want to notice. If you're in a position where you don't like your life very much, it's easy to give in to that pull. I know that when I discovered party drugs, I was in a vulnerable place: I had low self esteem, my girlfriend and I had just broken up, I had very few friends, I was bored with my life, and I felt like going raving and taking MDMA was the only way I could feel connected with other people. The drugs filled a void in my life. They did add a lot of novelty and excitement too, and it took me a while to realize that they were making things worse, not better.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, this is my experience too. I've tried MDMA on occasion and at various purities. It's fun but doesn't really have much pull for me because usually I'm already in the place MDMA is putting me but naturally. There are some fun effects but nothing that makes me want to go out and buy it.

Cigars on the other hand are something that have an immense amount of pull for me, and even just thinking about smoking a cigar after several weeks without one is rekindling a desire to go to the smoke shop. And that tells me that I absolutely should not go to the smoke shop. Cigarettes don't have the same pull for me because I can't get stoned off my ass with a cigarette.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm not a medical doctor, so correct me if I'm wrong: opioid and drug tolerance is nowhere mentioned or only once in the article, but seems one of the reasons behind this pseudo addiction behaviour in several described cases, no?

Another question that comes to my mind is: if uncertain or under circumstantial evidence, would it be morally more acceptable to point to someone's addiction at the risk of letting that person really suffer?

</comment><comment><USER43> Despite this article involving some things lucidly explained, I have trouble understanding the overall implications.

I think I understand that:

Pain and conditions have somehow become more common since, 1990 and the prescription of opioids has increased since that time.

So now we a situation where:

Some Patients and some other people are becoming addicted to opioids and abusing the prescription system as much as they can, also dying.

Other patients are still being under-prescribed. These patients may also belligerently demand more drugs, like addicts. One can say "they're not addicts, they just seem like it and they actually do need more drugs." This is "pseudoaddiction", near as I can make out.

The one thing I find very puzzling or annoying, is why anyone want to even use the very confusing term "pseudoaddiction" and especially be "against against" it. Jeesh. The situation seems like it could best be handled by saying "banish the jargon and look at the situation".

<comment><USER44> " _The one thing I find very puzzling or annoying, is why anyone want to even use the very confusing term "pseudoaddiction" and especially be "against against" it. Jeesh. The situation seems like it could best be handled by saying "banish the jargon and look at the situation"._"

The author explains his reasoning in the article:

" _Others seem to kind of equivocate between "pseudoaddiction is fake" vs. "[the phenomenon described by the word pseudoaddiction] is real, but there's no point in having a separate word for it." The latter would be reasonable if there weren't so many people saying the former. Because people are constantly misdiagnosing real distress as addiction, we need a word for when that happens, and pseudoaddiction is as good as any other._ "

<comment><USER45> Which is rather silly because he used the correct, non made up, word right there in that sentence. Misdiagnosis.

There's absolutely no benefit to say "they are suffering because of pseudoaddiction" instead of saying "they are suffering because their pain was misdiagnosed as addiction."

<comment><USER44> Except that the pseudoaddiction isn't the misdiagnosis. The pseudoaddiction is the collection of behaviors that have been misdiagnosed. Someone else in this thread said 'underdosing,' and I think that gets at the idea better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Speaking of dubious medical shenanigans... did you know that the "Medical Advertising Hall of Fame" is a real thing?

[https://www.mahf.com/](https://www.mahf.com/)

I came across this after reading yesterday's story on the Purdue bankruptcy. I'm not easily phased, but jeez... seriously?

<comment><USER47> Looking at their award winners, it looks like a lot of those ads were aimed at doctors, which makes it a little less concerning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Opiates are also a fun and addictive drug. As long as they exist and are generally available, some percent of the sub-population will abuse them. We can try our best to keep them only for medical use, but once the prescription leaves the pharmacy there's not much you can do. You can't blame the legal manufacturer when that happens, if they took all required steps to keep their drugs in the legal channels. Maybe you think that's true, but that the opiate manufacturers have used their power and influence to over-prescribe their products. That assumes that opiates are over-utilized in American healthcare. And that's a narrative that simply isn't borne out by the data.

Only 0.19% of opiate-treated chronic pain patients without a prior history develop any form of abuse or addiction[1]. And remember these are chronic-pain patients who take tolerance-escalating doses over years or even decades. Virtually no one develops an opiate addiction from following their medically prescribed treatment regiment.

The death rate from prescription opiates has not budged since 2006[2]. The vast majority of opiate overdoses in America are not prescription opiates, but illicit fentanyl, and to a lesser extent heroin and methadone. Nor do chronic pain patients face any major risk of overdose. The fatal overdose mortality rate for long-term opiate-prescribed patients is 17 per 100,000[3]. And that number doesn't exclude the subset of the population engaged in abusive behavior like mixing with alcohol, snorting pills, or hoarding medication.

Finally the sizable majority of prescription drug abusers in this country do not source from a doctor or the healthcare system at all. The vast majority get their drugs either from the black market or a friend or relative. On the National Drug Use Survey only 18% of prescription drug abusers report doctors as their primary source. And among street prostitutes (a high at-risk group) only 5%[4].

All of this goes to show that there is very little evidence of any sort of over-prescription of opiates in America. To begin with the vast majority of the opiate crisis has to do with fentanyl, not prescription drugs. But even when it comes to prescription drug abuse, the intersection with medical users is vanishingly small.

However what there is a major problem in America is untreated chronic pain. 50 million American suffer chronic pain[5]. And 20 million suffer high-impact chronic pain which severely impairs normal life function. More than 10% of suicides are linked to chronic pain[6]. High-dosage opiates are absolutely essential for this group to live any sort of normal life. As long as there are such massive numbers of legitimate pain patients, the law of large numbers guarantees a large supply of diverted opiates. Even under the tightest controls. There's simply no way around that except by denying most of the legitimate patients treatment for their debilitating conditions.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18489635](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18489635) [2] [http://www.ncsl.org/portals/1/documents/health/APeeples0118_...](http://www.ncsl.org/portals/1/documents/health/APeeples0118_32103.pdf) [3] [https://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/745518/opioid- prescr...](https://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/745518/opioid- prescriptions-chronic-pain-overdose-cohort-study) [4] [http://sci- hub.tw/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108...](http://sci- hub.tw/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10550880903182986) [5] [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6736a2.html](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6736a2.html) [6] [https://www.ehidc.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/Ch...](https://www.ehidc.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/Chronic%20Pain%20and%20Suicide.pdf)</comment>


XHP-JS: Building efficient user interface components with Hack, React, and XHP - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/858739974205250/announcing-xhp-js-building-efficient-user-interface-components-with-hack-react-and-xhp/

<comment><USER2> Side question: I wonder how HN let this be posted as a duplicate - just the trailing slash in the URL?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9859511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9859511)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does constructReactInstance require node.js servers?

<comment><USER4> No - it still renders the element client-side so that it supports interactive components. See:

[https://github.com/hhvm/xhp- js/blob/master/src/XHPReact.php](https://github.com/hhvm/xhp- js/blob/master/src/XHPReact.php)

[https://github.com/hhvm/xhp- js/blob/master/xhpjs.js#L94-100](https://github.com/hhvm/xhp- js/blob/master/xhpjs.js#L94-100)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What platforms to emulate between Chip-8 and GameBoy? - <AUTHOR> After writing an emulator for Chip-8, most recommend emulating GameBoy. Let's suppose I'd like some intermediate options. What would they be? <comment><USER2> 2600?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe. Wikipedia page for 2600 mentions Fairchild Channel F, which is even simpler. It also gave me an idea to look at "List of early microcomputers" on Wikipedia.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I wrote my first Neural Network - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/as1ndu/keras-for-numerai <comment><USER2> As far as I'm aware, Numer.ai is completely broken. I sent them this email a day ago:

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

 _Hi

You probably already figured it out, but in case you didn't, I'm pretty sure your current system is completely broken.

The algorithm is simple:

0) Use throwaway accounts to test batches of 50 uploads

1) Generate a correct submission file with all probabilities set to 0.5, get your baseline score

2) To test each row, set it first row probability to zero

       a) If the new score is lower, it's correct

       b) If the new score is higher, switch it to 1,
          retest to get the new score

       c) If the new score is the same, it's one of those
          rows that you put in for your own testing, so
          ignore it

3) Repeat step 2 until you get to the top (or better yet, get a perfect score)_

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

Got a canned reply from Xander:

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

 _Thanks for your feedback.

We're always working on improvements to the tournament._

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do you need 10 hidden layers of 500 neurons each? That sounds pretty crazy to me :)

<comment><USER4> The architecture is called a wide and deep net

Wide & Deep Learning for Recommender Systems [https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.07792](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.07792)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where are the wholesome jobs in IT? (e.g. like Emergency Responders) - <AUTHOR> As a kid, I wanted to be an ambulance driver or a AAA Roadside Assistance. I grew up around computers and became a Software Engineer instead. I'm okay at it and it pays the bills.
I have no idea if it was car accident I had last year (I got away okay with some physiotherapy) or being "stuck" working from home due to the pandemic, but it got me thinking I wanted to do more with my life.
I brainstormed with the idea to apply at the local emergency services (ambulance) with the intention to work there one day in the week (I would even consider volunteering). But they had stacks of applicants already waiting to help (even for next year). I honestly was pretty saddened by it and now I'm a bit clueless.. I've worked in home automation, apps and e-commerce, but those industries are failing to fill a void in me for a long time now. Its starting to bring me down more and more going into my 30s; I don't want to important, but I want to be significant.
I've browsed through YCs Startup Jobs eager to find a wholesome Job but I haven't found yet. Is there such a thing? Where can one find one? <comment><USER2> There are but as you noted a lot of these jobs get filled quickly. Perhaps you can find a way of mixing the experience you have with areas for social good and find some niche there, for instance specialising in accessibility within home automation or e-commerce. You could also consider volunteering some work for not for profit organisations you respect and would like to work for, failing that donate some of your salary.</comment>


Learning Is More Complex Than We Thought - <AUTHOR> https://sum.cuny.edu/mental-process-learning-complex-study-brooklyn-college/ <comment><USER2> Who is "we"? The authors of the paper? The received wisdom of the academic psychology community? Or some other unspecified group?

</comment><comment><USER3> So what does the author think we thought before.

<comment><USER4> probably big data pattern matching search with a NoSQL db</comment></comment>


Vision-S – Sony unveiled an electric car - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/cars/2020/01/07/in-a-shocking-announcement-sony-just-unveiled-an-electric-car/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. Now that vehicles are entirely electric does it mean that the electronics giants will challenge the automotive ones?</comment>


Handling Flash Crowds From Your Garage - <AUTHOR> http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix08/tech/full_papers/elson/elson_html/index.html

<comment><USER2> "In between the time a user requests a CAPTCHA and the time the CAPTCHA is scored, Asirra must keep state in order to recognize if the answer was correct, and do other accounting."

In this section, the paper only explores ways of keeping state on the server. But a better way to do this is to give the client an encrypted token -- as a cookie or as part of the form action URL -- identifying the CAPTCHA they were sent. Then the server itself can be stateless.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting.</comment>