How to Be a Stoic - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/how-to-be-a-stoic <comment><USER2> You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just endeavoring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"\--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage- players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise-- and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves-- Stoicism is self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.

-Nietzsche

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this, osti.

As a stoicism fanboy I partly agree, and if it wasn't pouring outside I'd run to my local bookshop to get something from this Nietzsche fella. Any suggestion?

<comment><USER4> Beyond Good and Evil is probably his most important work, but Thus Spoke Zarathustra is more readable.

<comment><USER5> Don't start with Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It's all parables told in an old testament style that's hard to comprehend without already knowing what Nietzsche is about. I read The Gay Science first, and I thought it was a good starting point. It covers his big ideas and has the famous "God is dead" aphorism in it.

<comment><USER4> I agree that his philosophy isn't super clear from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but the parable-esque story style is what makes it easy to read. I suppose for clarity we should separate reading and understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have embraced certain aspects of stoic philosophy in my life. In particular I've found _The Meditations_ by Marcus Aurelius to be helpful and practical. I struggle with my temper and in the last few years my temper has affected my career growth. These stoic works have helped my get a better grip on things when dealing with especially difficult people. I'm not a person who reads self help books nor am I into cheesy or trendy philosophies. I usually roll my eyes at this stuff. But I have found a framework in stoicism that has helped me overcome some of my limitations and helped me achieve some of my goals.

<comment><USER7> I too had an anger management problem. I didn't like who I was or how I behaved. I tried every thing, every book, every bit of advice. Most of it terrible. Failure.

Part 1:

I eventually found quality help, who then recommended I read this:

When Anger Hurts

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/278196.When_Anger_Hurts](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/278196.When_Anger_Hurts)

TL;DR: Anger is a cascade: Expectations, disappointment, resentment, blame and then BOOM anger. The fix to anger is to eliminate your expectations.

Part 2:

Awareness of the psychology only got me so far. I struggled to change my habits. Recalling that you can only replace a habit, vs unlearn, I decided to pretend to be happy. I would tell people "I'm fantastic! How are you?!" It started out sarcastic, wry.

About three years later, I woke up one day, thought "I feel phenomenal" and actually meant it. I was shocked. I didn't even notice the change.

TL;DR: How you talk changes how you think.

Good luck. Please believe me when I say the effort is worthwhile.

<comment><USER8> > The fix to anger is to eliminate your expectations.

As Buddha said "Expectations lead to disappointment"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here some great contemporary introductions to Stoicism:

1\. William B. Irvine, "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", [https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient- Stoic/dp/0195...](https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient- Stoic/dp/0195374614)

This is an introduction to Stoic thought as it applies today by a professor in philosophy, very clearly written. Great for first exposure. It (sensibly) skips some of the more arcane stuff, such as Stoic metaphysics (historically relevant, but really obsolete).

2\. Donald Robertson, "Stoicism and the Art of Happiness", [https://www.amazon.com/Stoicism-Art-Happiness-Teach- Yourself...](https://www.amazon.com/Stoicism-Art-Happiness-Teach- Yourself/dp/1444187104/)

This is a touch more academic and historic on one hand, and very practical and text-book-like on the other hand, in that it has self-assessments, key points, exercises for every section. Excellent second book. The author also has a course, blog and FAQ at [http://donaldrobertson.name](http://donaldrobertson.name)

3\. Epictetus' Enchiridion is available on Project Gutenberg, btw. It's very short, and many things are not really relevant today anymore, yet surprisingly many sections still "speak to us".

4\. Note also that Tom Wolfe's huge novel "A Man in Full" is suffused with Stoic themes.

I find Stoicism quite wise, and still substantial enough when you subtract all the obsolete superstition (which cannot be said of, for example, Abrahamic religions). Certainly good for tranquility and empathy. Sometimes hard to translate into positive action, though, I find.

<comment><USER10> > _(which cannot be said of, for example, Abrahamic religions)_

Interesting thought! I'd say that "love thy neighbour" is a pretty substantial idea, albeit a "bit" less deep than the average stoic philosophy.

Did anyone try this? Take a religion like Christianity (or one interpretation of it) and remove all the deities and miracles? As an avid Christian who dislikes dogma even more than militant atheists, I'd love to dive into an attempt at this.

<comment><USER11> Something akin to the Jefferson bible?

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

<comment><USER9> That's awesome, didn't know about it.

Full text available online, about 20 printed pages.

Edited to add:

Here you can read it, facsimile of the original cut-and-paste (literally...) version by Jefferson. 84 pages, because it's in Greek, Latin, French and English. Love it.

[http://americanhistory.si.edu/jeffersonbible/](http://americanhistory.si.edu/jeffersonbible/)

Here's an ePub, if you want to put it on your ebook reader (note: possibly unsavoury site):

[http://bookfi.net/book/1865049](http://bookfi.net/book/1865049)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't recommend enough "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" by Irvine, William B.

I am 2/3 into it, maybe one of the best philosophy book I've ever read.

<comment><USER13> Also read Happy by Derren Brown. It's brilliant in a very different way.

<comment><USER12> Funny & weird, I am also a big fan of Derren Brown shows, didn't know about his books. Going to buy it on Amazon right now.

<comment><USER14> Looks like the Derren Brown who wrote the 1964 book is not the same Derren Brown who is the 21st century magician.

<comment><USER12> I am actually not sure what to think. If you look at Amazon, it does say 1964, but list Derren Brown - the magician - as the author and even give his biography. The confusion grows even deeper as one of the reviewer is referring as Derren Brown - the magician - as the author as well.

[edit] Amazon US got the date wrong. Amazon UK is giving the publication date, 2016, right. Derren Brown - the magician and mentalist - is still also a stoic. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Saw a few remarks about the "bleakness" or "uncaring" of the "universe".

That view of the universe is in error, people are part of the universe and they certainly care. To view the universe without humanity is to not view the universe.

There is bleakness in the universe for sure, but there is also compassion and caring.

<comment><USER16> This is worth giving a second thought.

It's practically (literally?) instinctual to feel like the universe is happening _to_ you rather than _with_ you.

<comment><USER17> It's true. Alan Watts isn't necessarily the best, but I always like his (paraphrased) quote "Like the water waves and flowers bloom, the Universe peoples."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is perhaps most interesting about stoicism is how it influenced cognitive therapy and CBT in a big way. These forms of therapy, along with derivatives that integrate practical ideas from Buddhism such as DBT and radical acceptance therapy, have been seen to perform as well as medication and in some cases providing longer term improvements.

I think both the stoics and Buddhism were definitely on to something.

<comment><USER9> Agreed, and in both cases, when you strip away the obsolete superstitions that accompany it (just by virtue of the world view at the time they emerged), then there is still a lot of original wisdom and substance left.

<comment><USER18> I think the same is true for Christianity too. The golden rule is an excellent way to be an awesome human being. I think that's a better motive than a good afterlife.

I haven't studied other religions to much but I am dead sure there are timeless pieces of advice.

My opinion, and I stress opinion, is that much of the world's religions offered a way of life that attempted to reduce violence, illness and suffering.

Even kosher and halal, thinking about it, could have been a recognition that these foods can lead to death, especially in a time when germ theory and proper cooking and hygiene methods were not developed. Since disease was associated with evil, it makes sense that "God declares these unclean".

Plus, what would you speculate if you didn't have the knowledge of how the universe, the planets and life, including us, developed? In that case, a creator provides the fewest assumptions.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the thoughtful and respectful comments, I hope my answer manages to stay in that spirit, too.

> I think the same is true for Christianity too

Disagree, concerning the Abrahamic religions, as what is good is rarely original, and what is original is rarely good:

1\. What is good (golden rule, some of the 10 commandments) is not very original. The golden rule has appeared in ancient Greece (Thales), China (Confucius), etc. half a millennium before Christianity, and other places independently. By contrast, Stoa and Buddhism were, I'd venture, among the first to arrive at and codify certain substantial insights that constitute large parts of their teachings.

2\. What is original is mostly fairly absurd, if looked at dispassionately. If you strip Christianity of the superstitions, its essence is basically gone.

Just as a small example: it is still current position of the Catholic Church that the eucharist is actual transformation in substance of wine and bread into actual blood and flesh of Christ. (There was a (possibly apocryphal) case in Germany of a vegetarian asking whether he could participate in the communion, and he was told that he could not as a vegetarian, because it IS flesh.) If you erroneously believe that it's purely symbolic, you'd be subject to the punishment of anathema (which is worse than excommunication), if the Church were consistent with its teachings.

> religions offered a way of life that attempted to reduce violence, illness > and suffering.

Yes, at the time. But not today.

> what would you speculate if you didn't have the knowledge of how the > universe, the planets and life, including us, developed? In that case, a > creator provides the fewest assumptions.

Yes, at the time. But not today.

In that sense, Stoa and Buddhism have aged better than the Abrahamic religions, maybe because they were more empiric.

<comment><USER18> With regards to one, just because it was not original does not discount its value. That only supports my point that it was an attempt to present a way to live - a failed attempt given hindsight. I never said it was original nor entirely good. That's why we can both recognise the good parts as generally good advice.

2\. I'm not preaching. I was brought up Catholic and learned enough to reject it. Catholicism and the actions of that church and other splinters are fundamentally at odds with what Jesus actually preached - love your neighbour. Somehow, it was ok to burn your neighbour alive if they did not believe Jesus was God, which the rule did not mention. I am not a Catholic today - there is too much hypocrisy. My assertion was that these, regardless of what we know now, were misguided hypotheses that had mixtures of valuable advice along with ideas that we now know are wrong. The structure built on top of that is perhaps a hypothesis taken too seriously. My thinking is that what originally was the equivalent of Aristotle to some Newton was misunderstood and taken to the extreme. I share your sentiments exactly.

> Yes, at the time. But not today

This was exactly my point. Your English is very good, by the way. If I didn't know better, I'd mistake your German directness as rude and blunt.

I would agree. Perhaps not empiric but more practical which lends itself better to empirical study.

<comment><USER9> > I never said it was original nor entirely good.

True, you didn't, I had said it ("... there is still a lot of original wisdom and substance left"), to which you replied, that's why I focused in on it.

> I'm not preaching.

Fair enough, I try not to... :-)

> If I didn't know better, I'd mistake your German directness as rude and > blunt.

Nailed it, thanks for the benefit of the doubt. Edited to add: This (mostly) works on HN, but lamentably not many other sites...

<comment><USER18> Wow, you're right. Sorry about that. Yeah, clearly not original. I do agree.

I'm British - I will apologise if you bump into me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [Shameless plug] You can read Marcus Aurelius "Meditations" at [http://directingmind.com](http://directingmind.com)

<comment><USER20> Can you say couple of lines why someone should read this ?

<comment><USER21> I'll take a stab.

It is a very accessible work, still today. The writing is clear and simple.

It's always been a popular work across the centuries, but the form seems to work well for contemporary audiences. You can engage with at different levels, it doesn't require a deep commitment. You can read a few passages before bed time, leave it for years and pick it up again, leaf through it and skip back&forth. As you grow older, the depth of the work reveals itself.

Specifically, given the easy to digest form, Meditations is somewhat of a board room coffee table book, like Machiavelli or Sun Tzu. There is a lot in there about what it takes to be a good leader.

It is a primary work. As a reader, you will take a trip back in time, when people were, for lack of better word, different. The deep religiosity on display can come across as somewhat alien, especially since it is one that focuses on the importance of the observance of rites rather than on establishing a personal spiritual connection. It is very un-american, un- christian, and that journey is valuable in itself.

The breadth is wide. Stoicism is easily dismissed as being somewhat of a dour, pessimistic philosophy. There is undoubtedly a melancholy undercurrent in Meditations, but it is also full with love, joy, kindness, happiness. The opening sets the tone. A thoughtful thank you note to all the people who Marcus feels affectionate to. Near the end, after being reminded a great deal about your mortality, those bright colors will have lost their luster somewhat, but Meditationes leaves you with more confidence in humanity and love towards your fellow man than with less.

Marcus Aurelius was by all accounts an admirable man and an important historical figure. There is somewhat of a voyeuristic kick you get by reading something he never intended to publish. Especially when writing about his wife, his insecurities, his unpleasant views on sex, all are more personal passages than philosophical. It's been 2000 years, I'm sure we're forgiven.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Albert Ellis came up with an early form of cognitive-behavioral therapy, > based largely on Epictetus' claim that "it is not events that disturb > people, it is their judgments concerning them."

This actually is presented in Buddhism too, which was where I first encountered it before re-discovering similar principles in stoicism and Ellis's Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. See this sutta: [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.006.tha...](http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.006.than.html)

Quote:

"When touched with a feeling of pain, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person sorrows, grieves, & laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught. So he feels two pains, physical & mental. Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, were to shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pains of two arrows; in the same way, when touched with a feeling of pain, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person sorrows, grieves, & laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught. So he feels two pains, physical & mental."

But what is nice about Buddhism is that there is a practical skill-training that comes along with the theory. When disagreeable events happen to you, mindfulness training teaches you not to grasp on to the events automatically and start your own narrative about it, but instead, observe them mindfully. This gives you the opportunity to skillfully deal with the situation. REBT in addition implores you to consider the situation rationally.

These are troubling times (especially where I live in India), and I think a little bit of stoic + Buddhist teachings can go a long way in maintaining our composure even as we engage with the world. I still struggle with this from time to time, but I would have been completely lost without these teachings.

<comment><USER23> Which particular troubling event related to India are you referring to?

<comment><USER22> Not events, but several trends and crises. Two that personally concern me are the looming water crisis and pollution: I would love to have more water security and be able to breathe cleaner air. I can put up with the haphazard electric supply and the abysmal transport infrastructure. I don't have to bother about such fancy things like the substandard educational system or the endemic criminalization of politics.

But perhaps above all, (a) the dysfunctional governance system that is incapable of doing anything about any of this, and (b) the gradual descent of the society into a more regressive state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 'For such a small price, I buy tranquillity.' Beautifully put.

The Penguin edition of fellow stoic Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is free on Amazon kindle: [https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Marcus-Aurelius- Wisehouse...](https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Marcus-Aurelius-Wisehouse- Classics-ebook/dp/B0192TVZ3A)

<comment><USER25> Actually, that quote was the one sentence I didn't understand. Who's spilling the wine? And why does that buy tranquility? If you could help me that would be great :)

<comment><USER26> I read it as "instead of getting angry for losing a 20$ note, consider it the price you pay for tranquility".

Which maybe works for yourself, but most of my significant others of the past would just start complaining that I lost a 20$ bill.

<comment><USER27> I prefer to consider the joy of finding money; when you lose it you've almost certainly given someone else that joy.

<comment><USER28> Just like when things get stolen from my car, they're inevitably things that the thief might have needed more than me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> One interesting thing I've noticed is that ancient Stoics have not rebuked the concept of god (or "the universe"), a higher power that determines all the things that are not in our control (as a Stoic you very much need to distinguish between things in and outside of your control). I have found it difficult to really, deeply, accept things as out of my control without resorting to some concept of god or "the universe as a well-meaning entity".

Is there someone among you HNers who has retained a positive outlook by believing that the universe is a bleak, chaotic place with no intrinsic meaning to the things happening in it?

<comment><USER30> Bone cancer in children - if there exist an almighty sentient God, then he is erratic and malicious. The polytheistic concept of gods is actually more realistic (better explains reality) in that there are multiple gods with different agendas and morals acting.

In polytheism the universe is not chaotic and meaningless - things to not happen at random, but because the gods willed it. But the gods does not always act for the benefit of humans, so the universe is not "fair".

If something bad happens to you, is it really a consolation that it is because an allknowing and just God _wants_ you to suffer?

<comment><USER27> Your first statement is a pretty classic and naive position. For me at 8 years or so I rendered the objection of "pain" in terms of volcanoes.

The standard, and again naive, rejoinder in mainstream Christian theology is that God had a pattern for the World that didn't include such types of pain and destruction but that man chose not to follow God's plan (as allegorised in "The Fall" in Genesis). Thus we chose to go it alone, and you can read the various theories on how that has a Universal effect too.

To raise the basic Argument from Suffering you really should look past the first-tier argument and present it anticipating The Fall.

In my limited understanding suffering appears out of the axioms of free will. To make us human, with the ability to choose to love, choose to care, choose to follow God or not, we require free-will. Otherwise it's just "echo 'i love you'" rather than a genuine emotion.

Your question should be "is it better not to create our Universe, with the possibility for love, if there is also a possibility of suffering". You may come to the same conclusion, that a benevolent being shouldn't turn Creator when faced with those possibilities ... but then if they hadn't you wouldn't be here to make the objection.

tl;dr "The Fall" and "free will" are the standard, Biblical, Christian counter-arguments that stand against Suffering and allow for a loving, benevolent God to be creator of a Universe such as ours.

<comment><USER30> So God inflicted leprocy on humanity because otherwise we wouldn't be able to feel genuine love? And not buying this makes you "naive"?

<comment><USER27> I perhaps haven't expressed the position well however, "naive" isn't a slur, read "simplistic" if it helps, it's philosophy on the level of someone who has not demonstrated cognisance of the basic sources and hasn't addressed the obvious counter-arguments.

The mainstream Christian theology is that leprosy, and such diseases came in to the world after, and as a consequence of, The Fall. That if we'd chosen God's way we wouldn't have such things.

>So God inflicted leprocy on humanity //

God created a Universe with free will for man rather than creating a fancy automaton. Mankind chose not to follow God's precepts, the consequences being that disease, pain and suffering entered the world.

It's like if I serve you a hot drink. You can choose to cause pain and suffering with it - throw it at someone, say - or you can follow my instructions to sip it slowly, let it cool and enjoy it, share it. I can't serve you a hot drink without the possibility that you will abuse it, unless I make you into a "hot drink robot" with no free will.

You could couch that as God inflicting the possibility of suffering in order to allow the possibility of beauty, love, passion, humanity.

<comment><USER30> Then I sure you are also well aware of the counterarguments against this form of theodicy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I had read a book by Epictetus some years ago. Liked it. Forget the book name now. It was about living simply, not getting overly affected (mentally or emotionally) by circumstances or things that happen to you, and a lot more stuff along those lines, and other things too.

Basically Stoicism, I suppose, though I've not looked up the term in detail.

I also like this quote by him which I read long ago:

"Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things, and thence proceed to greater."

[http://philosiblog.com/2013/06/06/practice-yourself-for- heav...](http://philosiblog.com/2013/06/06/practice-yourself-for-heavens-sake- in-little-things-and-then-proceed-to-greater/)

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

[https://dailystoic.com/epictetus/](https://dailystoic.com/epictetus/)

The Stockdale Paradox is also interesting. Stockdale was influenced by Epictetus.

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

<comment><USER32> Not about stoicism, but you might also enjoy

"The Tao is Silent" by Raymond Smullyan

<comment><USER31> Thanks, will check that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well, it turns out I've been a stoic all this time, I'm finding out.

It blows me away how that part about taking every problem as a chance to learn and become a better "wrestler" fits right in with my natural conclusions. The rest of it describes me adequately also.

I'm reading Epictetus now, thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER34> >turns out I've been a stoic all this time, I'm finding out.

It seems to come naturally to some, especially those that tend to adopt a somewhat cold analytical view of the world

<comment><USER35> You might have dropped the word "cold" and been a bit more inclusive.

<comment><USER34> Fair enough. It was meant to convey reasoning devoid of emotion...wasn't aimed at a negative judgement.

I consider myself one of those people so def didn't intend to offend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Allow me to share my collection of links to Stoicism resources (which I will soon update with this)

[http://www.pa-mar.net/Main/Lifestyle/Stoicism.html](http://www.pa- mar.net/Main/Lifestyle/Stoicism.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> What's up with all those submissions about stoicism on HN, is that some new SV fad?

<comment><USER38> Stoicism gives you the mental ability to deal with evil, futility and failure, since it makes you believe you are a non-entity in an inflexible, vast and nasty social structure.

It's a philosophy of inaction and accommodation to injustice and oppression. There is a reason it became popular for Roman soldiers under the Empire. Well, at least stoicism does not claim that you are changing the world for the better by creating all these data slurping algorithms. But I wish SV would embrace the Hellenistic philosophy of Cynicism instead.

<comment><USER39> > It's a philosophy of inaction and accommodation to injustice and oppression.

This is not what I got out of reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and articles on Stoicism. In common English use, "stoic" sometimes implies what you said, but that's not the same as Stoicism-the-philosophy.

"The Stoics held that virtue is the only real good and so is both necessary and, contrary to Aristotle, sufficient for happiness; it in no way depends on luck."[0]

It's also true that Stoicism encourages acceptance of all outcomes, whatever they are, which people misconstrue to imply it's not worth doing your best. Here's a quote by Cicero on doing your best but not letting the outcome influence your emotions:

"Take the case of one whose task it is to shoot a spear or arrow straight at some target. One's ultimate aim is to do all in one's power to shoot straight, and the same applies with our ultimate goal. In this kind of example, it is to shoot straight that one must do all one can; none the less, it is to do all one can to accomplish the task that is really the ultimate aim. It is just the same with what we call the supreme good in life. To actually hit the target is, as we say, to be selected but not sought."

[0] [http://www.iep.utm.edu/stoiceth/](http://www.iep.utm.edu/stoiceth/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kudos for writing about Stoicism. However, I think it's pretty weak article. No mentions of negative visualization or Seneca while both are roots of the Stoic philosophy.

<comment><USER9> Agree, but to be fair, it's just 3 paragraphs or so, and it's not even aiming to cover the fundamentals. More of a "look here what I found, and how it's helped me."

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Hmm. To be honest, this philosophy seems like a flowery and overstuffed version of secular mindfulness, like an earlier step along the evolutionary path to what would eventually be a really simple, straightforward strategy for learning about and being with one's own mind in a skillful way.

If it helps you suffer less: great. But before you dive in, know that you might be able to save a lot of time and avoid a lot of jargon by learning about mindfulness from a secular source.

<comment><USER41> Stoicism is about achieving freedom, mindfulness is incidental to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Currently also on HN and much deeper article on stoicsm: On Anger, Disgust, and Love: Interview with Martha Nussbaum

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13710672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13710672)

[http://emotionresearcher.com/on-anger-disgust- love/](http://emotionresearcher.com/on-anger-disgust-love/)

In a section further down the article she discusses the books "Upheavals of Thoughts" and "Therapy of Desire". There she elaborate how stoicism and emotions relate in a fairly comprehensive way.

</comment><comment><USER43> I love learning about Archaeology and corollary some of the philosophies of civilizations.

Stoicism has been one of the most appealing one to me. However, one issue I have with Stoicism is similar to that of religions.

Most people who follow Stoicism or any other religion, tend to pick and choose to what is the best fit of them.

Stoicism is not about giving up anything (common misunderstanding) but it IS to moderate everything including things like our carnal desires. I do not think anyone does this nowadays.

Does this mean we need a Stoicism 2.0 like we do in many religions? _______ 2.0? Not entirely sure...

<comment><USER44> I think some philosophy 2.0s could be produced to take account of the advances in scientific knowledge since Senca's time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I haven't dug deep into stoicism, but it appears to have a lot of overlap with buddhist philosophy. Is that a fair comparison?

<comment><USER39> Here's a good compare-and-contrast: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/wiki/faq#wiki_what_are_sim...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/wiki/faq#wiki_what_are_similarities_between_stoicism_and_buddhism.2C_in_terms_of_mindfulness.3F)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Other than this, the author has some great writing and you can read a recent interview with her over at The Daily Stoic: [https://dailystoic.com/elif- batuman-interview/](https://dailystoic.com/elif-batuman-interview/)

</comment><comment><USER47> Can anyone shed light on why so many Stoic societies/clubs seem to be essentially religious? The Stoics I have read do not seem to be particularly religious nor of any particular creed - some were polytheist, some were monotheist, some seem to nearly be agnostic or atheist.

</comment><comment><USER48> Tim Ferris (from the fourhourworkweek.com) also talks (podcast) and writes a lot about this subject: [http://tim.blog/stoic/](http://tim.blog/stoic/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Another classic book to look at is "Letters from a Stoic" by Seneca the Younger, published by Penguin Classics. Seneca is perhaps my favorite of the Stoics.

</comment><comment><USER50> This reminds me of Richard Feynman's quote "I am not responsible for the world I live in" from his first autobiographical book.

</comment><comment><USER51> What if I want to suffer _more_? I want to be _less okay_ with all my procrastination, my job situation, my lack of willpower in the face of adversity, and more. I want to take my failures _more personally_ \- I want losing to be painful like it is for Michael Jordan, I'm presently too content with it.

<comment><USER52> That doesn't seem very difficult. You can try judging yourself harshly and make a habit of ruminating over it. Quite a number of people have those sorts of habits and want to break them. You might find it hard to stop if you develop those habits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Not sure if a hipster's magazine could be an authoritative source.

The first paragraph told me that I should stop reading and what kind of Stoicism I would find below.

</comment><comment><USER54> Note that stoicism is NOT rejecting and ignoring your feelings. If you feel bad about something, that too is a fact that you have to accept and deal with in the best way possible. Stoicism is about keeping your head up in the face of adversity, and not about becoming a hardened robot capable of taking any punishment. I think a lot of people on HN might get this wrong.

<comment><USER55> This is the modern Buddhist and psychology influenced interpretation of stoicism and apatheia.

Personally I don't see much evidence that this really was the case in the golden era of Stoicsm. Freedom from all passions was not the same as removal of emotion, but it was very close to it.

> not about becoming a hardened robot capable of taking any punishment.

This was exactly what Stoics of the old saw as ideal and this view was propagated in stories. Epicetus was a cripple and according to Origen his leg was broken by his master.

>Epictetus' master one day was twisting his slave's leg to help the time pass. Epictetus said calmly, "If you go on doing that, you will break my leg." The twisting went on and the leg broke. Epictetus observed mildly, "Didn't I tell you that you would break my leg?"

The story of Gaius Mucius Scaevola was also propagated by stoics. Mucius kept his hand over the fire without indicating any pain while it burned.

<comment><USER54> >This is the modern Buddhist and psychology influenced interpretation of stoicism and apatheia.

No, it is not. Read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The man certainly argued for a certain inner brilliance that does not come from emotionlessness. He'd argue for you to be the even-tempered guy but full of fortitude and pouring your entire being into what you are standing for and doing, but without getting consumed by it. Stoicism is not the rejection of emotion, it is the rejection of uncontrolled desire. That's a huge difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The doormat really tied the throne-room together

</comment><comment><USER57> Oh look, it's the new mindfulness.</comment>


Getting started with vim - grey-area http://lucapette.me/getting-started-with-vim <comment><AUTHOR> Vim keybindings are amazing. Easiest way to think of it is to think of how frustrating it is watching someone do everything with a mouse, not knowing any shortcuts. Clicking File -> Exit instead of the window's X. Or deleting a whole line of text just to change one word. Not knowing Ctrl-X/C/V.

That's how I feel when I work with someone editing text files without Vim.

Once again I'll recommend Vim Adventures[1]. It's fun enough even my 8-yr-old daughter wanted to play/learn. You learn a few keys at a time; no big deal. Meanwhile, install Vim emulation in your current text editor. Slowly you'll learn keys. Your desire for knowledge will increase, and you'll start picking up the ideas mentioned in the article. Within a few months you'll be flying and wonder how you ever coded without it.

The key is making it a natural thing, not forcing yourself to "learn Vim". At least for me, those approaches failed due to the short-term productivity decrease.

1: [https://vim-adventures.com/](https://vim-adventures.com/)

<comment><USER2> My 1 gripe with vim adventures is the whole subscription based model for a game. I went ahead and shelled out for the full thing but after 6 months I was no longer allowed access because my subscription had expired. That's some bullshit.

<comment><USER3> Don't you miss the days when you could just buy software once for a reasonable price and own it forever?

<comment><USER2> Even though my development role means I do SAAS yes, yes I do miss owning software forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My advice: don't go wild with plugins or vimrc hacks. Get sensible.vim for sensible defaults and work with that. Vanilla vim is good enough for most editing and coding needs.

<comment><USER5> My retort. Install YouCompleteMe because if you don't have high quality auto- complete your editor will feel rubbish compared to an IDE and you will end up moving.

<comment><USER6> Is autocomplete really necessary though?

<comment><USER7> Do you have any suggestions about how it may not be, or are you just pondering the idea? I really want there to be something that has the benefits without the Intellisense-level overhead, I haven't seen it though.

<comment><USER8> I find autocomplete annoying.

I also suspect autocomplete to be the leading cause of a particular set of subtle bugs - ones where the words on the page seem right but the function chosen has a surprising and uncatered for side affect.

When you reinforce to people that it is OK to code blindly ahead, grasping for the right calls at the last second you will end up with poorer quality code (although, it may be typed faster).

<comment><USER9> There are always tradeoffs but for me, I feel like lack of autocomplete encourages people to use shorter less descriptive names for identifiers.

I am a believer in using as descriptive identifiers as possible to make the semantics of your code as clear as possible. If this gives rise to 5-word+ identifiers, so be it, providing it is done tastefully (and not for verbosity's sake).

As typing 10+ characters per function call/variable call can get tiring, lack of autocomplete can leads incentivizes the use of shorter names which runs counter to this philosophy, and leads to code being harder to read. (IMHO)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vertex-four If vim doesn't click for you, I'd really suggest trying kakoune. It swaps vim's behaviour around - where vim commands are "verb-object", kakoune's default behaviour is to allow you to select things, and perform an action on them once you know what you're operating on. Movement is precisely equivalent to selection - w is "select the next word", W is "expand the selection across the next word".

The visual feedback makes it easier to pick up (for me), and also makes building up complicated sequences of actions very easy. Multi-selection ties into that as well - a common workflow for me when editing is to select an object (a-a or a-i), split it by some regex into multiple selections (s), then perform my changes on those selections.

<comment><USER10> I saw Kakoune last week on HN and think about giving it a shot. Can you comment on how extensible it is? Are there extensions available, and can I write my own?

<comment> vertex-four I've not played much with extending it past writing a couple of hooks. It has a decent enough hook system. What would you like to try and replicate in it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At work nobody understands why I use Vim, I'm tired of having to explain myself to my coworkers and hearing all the time "Why don't you just switch to Atom?"

<comment><USER12> I have trouble understanding Vim as well. It seems to be good at code editing, where I find that I'm not bottlenecked there. I'm bottlenecked at my ability to plan and think about programs.

Once I have either a plan or comprehension of a program, I move at lightspeed, and typing becomes a small proportion of software production time. When editing an unknown codebase, it becomes even more imperative to have comprehension + plan before making an edit.

Also, since its my ability to comprehend and plan that is so strained, I'm not sympathetic to Vim's lack of anything like intellisense, or cross-file grammar and type awareness + autocomplete.

<comment><USER13> Exactly why I use vim bindings in Intellj.

Typing may be a small part, but there's no reason not to make that part efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like this quote:

> Vim is a small language for editing text that ships with a small user > interface.

Pardon my ignorance, but are the two separable? Could someone write a GUI interface that uses the vim text editing language underneath? I know of gvim, but this seems to be just vim with a menu bar.

<comment><USER15> There are plenty of Vim emulator plugins for "GUI editors" like Atom (or even the Visual Studio family, as a comment in this thread mentions) that do just that!

<comment><USER14> Yes, I've used them in emacs, atom, etc. They're useful, but often feel unnatural. I was looking for something that was built from the ground up specifically as "vim editing with a nice interface" \-- maybe this is neovim, as someone else suggested.

<comment><USER16> Nope, VIM the UX (keys and movement) and VIM the application are not separated at the moment.

It would be great to be able to use VIM key movement as drop-in replacement for any text field OS wide but the VIM interface (the command line) plays an important role in the UI and I don't see how it could be swept aside without losing some VIM core functionality: EG how do you :%s///gi without the overlay command line ?

<comment><USER10> I actually have a design document from 5 years ago lying around in my backup that outlines a desktop shell based on (and expanding on) vim's UX. I should get back to that project one day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Shortcut Foo's vim dojos are also a good way to learn all the shortcuts in vim once you have got the basics down (opening and closing files, insert mode etc)

Each dojo trains you on a few related set of vim actions.

Practice one dojo at a time and try to use it during your regular editing. Once you have incorporated it into your existing workflow, move to the next dojo.

[https://www.shortcutfoo.com/app/dojos/vim](https://www.shortcutfoo.com/app/dojos/vim)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm looking forward to teaching a Vim class in Seattle next month. [https://www.casitconf.org/casitconf17/tutorials/](https://www.casitconf.org/casitconf17/tutorials/)

I've got some resources for learning Vim on [http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/vi.htm](http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/vi.htm)

</comment><comment><USER19> For an easy start, use a sane defaults plugin like sensible.vim [1] or vim- simple-defaults [2] (more opiniated).

Also, use vim-plug [3] with few plugin like ctrlp, nerdtree, nerdcommenter and vim-simple-complete [4].)

[1] [https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible](https://github.com/tpope/vim- sensible)

[2] [https://github.com/maxboisvert/vim-simple- defaults](https://github.com/maxboisvert/vim-simple-defaults)

[3] [https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug](https://github.com/junegunn/vim- plug)

[4] [https://github.com/maxboisvert/vim-simple- complete](https://github.com/maxboisvert/vim-simple-complete)

I am the author of [2] and [4].

</comment><comment><USER20> For someone mostly playing with Python, and using Atom, what is the great step forward that editors like Vim and Emacs offer?

I read things like this occasionally and still don't really get _why_? Why is the learning curve worth it?

<comment><USER21> speed and efficiency.

some people don't care about those things, some people do.

<comment><USER20> Exactly the kind of thing I have read. But nothing explaining _how_ it achieves that

So it has keyboard shortcuts, and I guess I could add those to another editor...

Is it one of those things you just have to take someones word for it, have a go with it and see?

<comment><USER21> in your editor, without leaving the keyboard, how would you search-and-replace using a 2-variable regex, only between lines 275 and 1305, and then turn every instance of 'TEST_' into a lowercase, but only on the lines that didn't match?

<comment><USER22> How often do you find yourself doing operations like this? I feel like it would take me more time to formulate and confirm that your set of commands are correct than it would for me to just ctrl+f to each instance and then ctrl-v the ones that needed to be changed. Don't get me wrong, I think it is really cool that you can do this, but it feels like this requires a level of fu that is beyond most typical programmers.

<comment><USER21> you search and replace by hand?

... are you serious?

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the substantive reply;)

In almost all cases where I need to do a find/replace there are typically no more than 4-5 references that need to be updated. And I think a better way to phrase my behavior is I search, inspect the code to make sure that my change won't introduce a bug or some unintended consequence, and then replace. This may be slower, but in the grand scheme of things it barely registers on my overall productivity and if it saves even one bug from getting introduced into the code than the extra time spent probably pays for itself. If I need to update more than just a handful of references, than Sublime has a perfectly functional find/replace tool, but I have only ever really needed it maybe 3-4 times in the last few years.

To get back to the question at hand. How long does it take you to formulate these series of commands in your example? Because to me it feels like it would take longer to come up with a correct set of commands for your example than it would be to just search and replace 'by hand'. Of course if you are updating 100's of references than spending some extra time to formulate your solution makes sense, but in your example, you limited your search ~1000 loc, so presumably you are only updating a few lines, maybe a dozen at most? I understand that vim is powerful tool, but it seems to solve problems that I don't have (or that I don't consider to be problems), and I am genuinely curious as to the sort of problems and types of code bases that vim aficionados work on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thank you for writing this great summary. Just last week I was was trying to compile such a list as a 'novice' user and this has everything I had bookmarked and much more.

My focus was on portability, I switch systems alot, I don't know how practical carrying all these plugins around is but have not given vundle a try yet.

I have to say that working with VIM feels like a weekly/monthly epiphany's. I will discover something new that can be incorporated into my workflow and can't believe what I'd been missing all along.

</comment><comment><USER24> Modal keybindings seem to be the most efficient way to work in an editor.

Xah Lee created one for emacs. Has anyone given it a try?

[http://ergoemacs.org/misc/ergoemacs_vi_mode.html](http://ergoemacs.org/misc/ergoemacs_vi_mode.html)

[https://github.com/xahlee/xah-fly-keys](https://github.com/xahlee/xah-fly- keys)

<comment><USER15> Isn't evil-mode more well-known?

<comment><USER24> Sure, that's vi bindings. The author analyzed his layout and claims this is more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you're in the Visual Studio ecosystem, I enthusiasically recommend ViEmu. It let's you learn the vi keystrokes a little bit at a time, all the while being able to fall back to the VS keys when you don't know how to do something the vim way. It really flattens out the learning curve tremendously.

</comment><comment><USER26> I started to used VIM seriously last month. My biggest concern so far is editing new files. Too much switching between INSERT and NORMAL modes.

This is not a problem when editing existing files.

Also I think some keyboard shortcuts are not comfortable on an AZERTY keyboard layout.

<comment><USER27> Have you remapped Caps lock to Escape yet?

<comment><USER28> I just use ctrl-[ to go back to normal mode. I actually do use the CAPS LOCK key for typing in all caps on occasion, so I would rather not remap it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Vim itself comes with a user manual, besides the command reference. :h user- manual

Another site with good general advice is [https://www.vi- improved.org/](https://www.vi-improved.org/)</comment>


Feds Seize Domain Names of Korean Movie Portals - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-domains-of-korean-movie-portals-111204/

<comment><USER2> How is James Bond IP a matter of national security?

<comment><USER3> I didn't see that in the article; I saw that _The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)_ was who did the seizure.</comment></comment>


Crystalline nets harvest water from desert air, turn CO2 into liquid fuel - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/crystalline-nets-harvest-water-desert-air-turn-carbon-dioxide-liquid-fuel <comment><USER2> It's a cool idea and all, but how do the calculations look for actually moving enough air through the "net"?

One cubic meter of air at 100% humidity and 25C only holds 22g of water. For the 8 liters per day value it doesn't seem like an unreachable amount: 363 cubic meters of air need to pass through the filter. You probably need to more than double that number due to relative humidity not being at 100% and we probably won't get all the water in the air, but it seems reachable.

On the other hand, 22500 liters per day seems quite crazy. I'm interested to see how they're going to tackle this.

<comment><USER3> At 100% humidity and 20 C air holds 18 g H2O per cubic metre so to deliver 22 500 kg of water per day they must entirely dessicate 1.25e6 m3 of air. Air is about 4 kg per m3 so this means moving 5 000 tonne of air through the system.

If the energy cost of moving the air is equivalent to lifting it is, say, two metre then the energy required to do this is 5e6 * 9.8 * 2 joule, about 2e9 J or 555 kWh so it would need something like 250 m2 of solar panels at 20 5 efficiency for 10 hours.

At higher temperatures 100 % is more water but that only changes the yield by at most a factor of about three.

Of course the humidity in the areas where this would be used is much lower so the amount of air to be processed is correspondingly higher.

I'm not saying it can't work, or guaranteeing that I haven't slipped a decimal place somewhere but these figures suggest to me that it would be very expensive and might be outcompeted by piping in water from desalination plants.

<comment><USER4> _"Air is about 4 kg per m³"_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_of_air](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_of_air) gives around 1.3 kg/m³ for dry air. If you add the 18 grams of water you give, you only get around 1.32 kg/m³.

⇒ I think 4 kg/m³ is too high.

<comment><USER5> Humid air is actually _less_ dense than dry air, as any aircraft pilot should be able to tell you. That's because the water molecule H2O has a molecular weight of 18, while O2 has a molecular weight of 32 and N2 has a molecular weight of 28.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's plenty of people here who have done some fantastic math that throws red flags at this "I'm going to save the world" project. And each of you are beautiful people.

What gets to me, these overly complicated dehumidifiers keep popping up every 6 months and make a big buzz. And each time, "Look at this brand new thing that no one has ever thought to do!" That's the part driving me crazy. It's the same investment sham, over and over. Slightly different method, but the same idea "We tested a dehumidifier in a place with high humidity. We collected water. Throw money at us." I give it props for at least being done in Arizona. But Arizona has higher humidity than a lot of the other water problem areas in the world.

But I'm the asshole because I don't say "I'm curious how they're going to overcome the humidity problem."

No, they're not going to solve it. They're going to disappear. Why? Because they took the money and ran. Like the hundreds of other assholes who keep coming up with these middle school "I know how to save the world" ideas.

<comment><USER7> >I give it props for at least being done in Arizona. But Arizona has higher humidity than a lot of the other water problem areas in the world.

It does? Have you ever lived there? I'm not sure about actual humidity number comparisons between there and other deserts, but during the summer it's so dry that whenever I spilled water on the floor, I didn't even bother cleaning it up, because it would evaporate in seconds while I was watching it. Seriously, if you're trying to test a device like this within the US, I don't know any lower-humidity place to go than the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

<comment><USER6> First, it doesn't state Sonoran Desert. Just "In the desert of Arizona". That entire region of America is a desert if you grew up in places like Florida or the western part of the Pacific Northwest. Because this article already treats the idea of "pulling water out of air" as some brand new concept that's never been done before, I already assume they're not using the scientific definition of desert.

However, check out NOAA. Here's a chart of average relative humidity of cities throughout the US ([https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd- data/relhum18.dat](https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd- data/relhum18.dat)). From 1950 to 2018.But you'll notice in the Arizona cities, plenty times of the year, the average humidity is between 40%-60%.

Still, this is better than the Water Abundance X-Prize winner from Oct 2018. The article was on HN: [https://www.fastcompany.com/90253718/a-device-that- can-pull-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90253718/a-device-that-can-pull- drinking-water-from-the-air-just-won-the-latest-x-prize) These bastards "tested" it in Hawaii of all places.

So yes, I'll say I give them props for doing this in Arizona. But I'm not going to do backflips. There's still plenty of humidity in Arizona. Especially if you time your testing in the right time of year. But I mean, when huge investment money is on the line, no one would ever dare cheat or try to tip things in their favor unethically. Oh no. Never. That's just silly talk. No one has ever lied in experiments to make wheel barrows of money...cough Theranos cough.

Plus water evaporating from the ground isn't just based on lack of air humidity. It's also on heat of the ground. Just straight up steaming away. Same happens here in Florida, but you can't really confuse Florida with dry air.

<comment><USER8> > Here's a chart of average relative humidity of cities throughout the US > ([https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd- > data/relhum18.dat](https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd- > data/relhum18.dat)). From 1950 to 2018.But you'll notice in the Arizona > cities, plenty times of the year, the average humidity is between 40%-60%.

I think you're reading that wrong. Doesn't M stand for "Max" and A for "Average"?

If so, the average in southern Arizona cities is 15%-30% and in northern Arizona cities 30%-50% (which matches my experience).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Last year, he formed a company called Water Harvesting that this fall plans > to release a microwave-size device able to provide up to 8 liters per day. > The company promises a scaled-up version next year that will produce 22,500 > liters per day, enough to supply a small village. "We're making water > mobile," Yaghi says. "It's like taking a wired phone and making a wireless > phone."

Any ballpark estimates on the cost for a residential use unit? i.e. 200L-1000L/day

Also, is it feasible for this to markedly effect downstream areas?

i.e. If there's eastwardly wind flowing through Nevada where machines are extracting humidity at an extreme scale, how might the 30%+ humidity-requiring plants (i.e. that Jamaican Yerba) in Utah hold up?

water wars 2.0, version: air.

humidity credits & humidity sink surveillance with humidobfuscation 'consultants'.

<comment><USER10> >Also, is it feasible for this to markedly effect downstream areas?

> i.e. If there's eastwardly wind flowing through Nevada where machines are > extracting humidity at an extreme scale, how might the 30%+ humidity- > requiring plants (i.e. that Jamaican Yerba) in Utah hold up?

There is a LOT of water in the air, 12,900 km3 [0]. As a comparison, the US uses 1.2 km3 of water per day (all uses combined.)

[0] [https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science- school/scie...](https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science- school/science/how-much-water-there-earth)

[1] [https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science- school/scie...](https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science- school/science/total-water-use-united-states)

Interestingly in that second link - the largest category of water usage is for thermoelectric power generation, actually using more than irrigation. I wouldn't have guessed that, and as we start to rely less on burning things for power, that number should come significantly down.

<comment><USER11>
      the largest category of water usage is for thermoelectric power generation, actually using more than irrigation

Isn't there a lot of overlap there? Hydroelectric doesn't _consume_ the water, it just takes energy from its gravity.

<comment><USER12> Thermoelectric sort of does consume it, I guess. They inject the water down into geysers to produce steam. My home town, Santa Rosa, California, gets most (all?) of its power from thermoelectric. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geysers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geysers)

<comment><USER13> To be clear, when the article says "thermoelectric", they're talking about any power plant that heats up water to generate steam, which is to say, every coal, nuclear, and combined-cycle natural gas power plant in the country.

<comment><USER12> Ah...makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Supported by a solar panel to power a fan and heater, which speed the cycles, the device produces up to 1.3 liters of water per kilogram of MOF per day from desert air."

This is _pretty good_ , but not yet amazing. It's more energy efficient than a compressor-based dehumidifier, but probably still less efficient than trucking water in from somewhere a few hundred miles away where it's plentiful.

Either way, the big question to me is how well it will hold up over hundreds of cycles - there's no report here that I see on whether or not the MOF will also trap dust particles and other things that are likely to decrease efficiency over time.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > whether or not the MOF will also trap dust particles and other things

This is the crux of the matter, yes. Of course you will need filtration to avoid clogging your MOF with sand and dust. Then you increase the power draw, having to push the air through a filter, and you have added a potentially expensive consumable.

As TFA states, people have been making MOFs since the mid 90s. And people have been scrambling for applications since. The unanswered questions are, as always: Can they be made cheaply enough? Do they last long enough?

<comment><USER15> As per the article, they can make and Aluminium based MOF for $3 per kilo, so yes.

<comment><USER16> It says bulk aluminum costs $3 per kilo, not MOF-303.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I want to hear more about the bit mentioned at the end:

> At the meeting, Thomas Rayder, a graduate student at Boston College, > reported building on the idea. He encapsulated a pair of enzymelike > catalysts in a zirconium-based MOF to drive a series of reactions that > convert gaseous CO2 to methanol, a liquid fuel.

> When they were unprotected by the MOFs, Rayder found, the two catalysts > didn't produce any methanol because they were quickly deactivated, likely by > reacting with each other. But safely ensconced in the MOFs, they could make > methanol at temperatures and pressures far below those used in existing > methanol plants, offering a potentially cheaper and greener way to make the > fuel.

<comment> semi-extrinsic The paper probably isn't out yet. But there is quite some previous research on using MOFs to make fuel from CO2:

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=MOF+...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=MOF+co2+methanol&btnG=)

The challenge in that regard is always: turning CO2 to fuel takes at least as much chemical energy as was released from burning the fuel to CO2 in the first place. If you have that (presumably emissions-free) energy available, it's infinitely better to _not burn the fuel in the first place_ and use the emissions-free energy for something else.

<comment><USER18> Could you put a nuclear power plant far away from human civilization, and then use nuclear power to convert excess atmospheric CO2 to liquid fuel, and ship the liquid back to civilization? Reduces the NIMBYism (and risk) of nuclear, while also reducing atmospheric CO2.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure there's a place far away enough, while still relatively free from regular natural disasters (and human disasters, like war). It's not like high- voltage transmissions lines are very lossy, so if putting plants far away was enough to assuage the nuclear fears, we'd probably have them already.

<comment><USER5> The main problem with putting nuclear reactors far enough away from everyone is that they need to be cooled, which means a water supply. There aren't that many places that have plenty of water for cooling, but no people. And most of the places that do fit that description already have a nuclear power station.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems everybody wants to be a moisture farmer, but these _" novel dehumidifier in the desert"_ schemes have thusfar always failed.

<comment><USER21> I never wanted to be a moisture farmer, I just wanted to go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!

Although, realistically, it could still be useful in non-desert places? How about drinking water on ocean vessels?

<comment><USER22> Most ocean vessels will have a reverse osmosis "watermaker" to convert salt water to fresh water

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

<comment><USER23> Which require regular maintenance and the primary membrane, a wear item, isn't exactly cheap to replace.

Having more options is definitely welcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would love to be wrong and stupid, but can't fall to think in another Theranos when I read this. Maybe is the style of the writing, dunno. Of course sucking all the water from the desert air would have a profound impact on its vegetation and fauna.

Unless we are talking about coastal waters, importing trucks of water from areas with more vegetation and water excedent seems a more economic and sensible solution.

</comment><comment><USER25> The thermodynamics of this rarely matches peoples' optimism about it.

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thunderf00t+wat...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thunderf00t+water+busted)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is really interesting! As someone who lives in the desert, I would want one of these.

But nothing comes for free - it seems like the output would be dependent on the humidity level of the air. If everyone was running these, would it be as effective? My gut says yes, just due to how much airmass there is, and even the heat from the ground should provide some mixing. But I am not sure of the napkin calculation, which I'm sure they've done.

Also at higher temperatures, the air can hold _more_ water vapor. This is why humidity is relative to the maximum amount of water the air can hold.

The CO2 capture potential is also really impressive.

[edit: got it backward as to temp vs holding capacity, doh.]

<comment><USER26> It's the other way around, at lower temperatures the air can hold less water vapor. That's why you see condensation forming on cold things.

<comment><USER21> Doh, you're totally right. Although still, in the desert, there isn't much water in the air even if it's really hot.

[https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/moisture-holding- capacity...](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/moisture-holding-capacity-air- d_281.html)

<comment><USER27> Easy to get confused because humidity % tends to be higher at a lower temperature (morning dew for example).

<comment><USER9> Why is this?

<comment><USER28> Say you have a given amount of water vapor in the air. Relative humidity as a percentage reflects the amount of water vapor in the air compared with the maximum amount of water vapor the air could hold at that temperature (and pressure). The amount of water vapor the air can hold depends on the temperature, with higher temperatures able to carry more water vapor.

As the temperature goes down, the amount of water vapor stays the same while the amount the air can carry decreases, so the relative humidity goes up.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So, is this the first step of making windtraps[0] a reality?

[0]: [https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Windtrap](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Windtrap)

<comment><USER30> Yeah, my first thoughts too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looks like the next "crowd funding scam" we see alot lately.

Ill wait some time for someone to do a napkin math to debunk that as a valid product.

<comment><USER15> It's published in a reputable journal, I'd say it's more than a crowdfunding scam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if the MOFs self assemble. I just started searching, but if any experts here know how they're made, please explain. I found an article that says the organic linkers are "ditopic or polytopic organic carboxylates (and other similar negatively charged molecules)," but MOFs are crystalline, so do they have to be baked? I get the impression that they're pretty easy to create, and can be designed to have affinity for any molecule. I really wonder if hydrogen storage will ever be solved. [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/1230444](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/1230444)

</comment><comment><USER33> What about he environmental impact of sucking the small amount of water present in the air out of it? I am sure some animal or plant depends on it. Don't get me wrong, I would let an animal die to save a human any day, but is this needed? Seems people having been making due in these climates for thousands of years. If this is as good as they claim this will only attract people to these locations instead of places which already have an abundance of water, since people generally find arid climates more comfortable than humid ones.

<comment><USER34> The amount of air that can pass through a microwave size device is miniscule compared to the amount of air over a desert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Seems logical to see that after all these Dune related posts on HN.

</comment><comment><USER36> How much more effective are they versus low tech alternatives like: [https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/world-driest- desert-c...](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/world-driest-desert-chile- harvests-water-fog-article-1.1304082)

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder what impact will this have on the desert itself

<comment><USER38> Seems like a good way to eliminate a lot of life in the desert. Presumably that air moisture gets cycled through the plants and animals in that environment. No water = no life.

Mind you, humans have already drastically altered the deserts by rerouting rivers and building dams, so it wouldn't be the first time an environment has been changed by technology

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Heh it's the Lars Moisture Farm

</comment><comment><USER40> Now set a restriction on pollution or kill it so there is no trace.

Else this man's water will be polluted. Thats how you pay respect, not by using more of your intellect.

</comment><comment><USER41> probably I'm paranoid but I worry this could be one of those kinds of inventions humans are good at that in small amounts are really beneficial but when scaled up start to have unintended harmful side effects only by then it's too late or too big to stop.

<comment><USER42> I'm not sure it'll be scaled up to the point where it would affect things in a big way. We've had technology that can extract water from air with electricity for well over a hundred years (vapour compression refrigeration) and so far it hasn't caused any issues.

The ocean is a huge source of water with a massive surface area which would constantly provide a source of humidity, and the lower vapour pressure caused by removing water from air in substantial amounts would encourage further evaporation.

That said, local effects would be more pronounced than global effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Wow</comment>


Google hires firm known for anti-union efforts - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/technology/Google-union-consultant.html <comment><USER2> After a 35-year career writing software for various companies, my biggest regret is that I never insisted on a written contract. If I had, the companies I worked for probably would have lost interest in hiring me. Professionals insist on written contracts. Tech workers do not, but they should. I believe this is what tech companies fear most.

<comment><USER3> Having worked as software engineer for big it companies, the job offer looks like a contract - are you referring to something else than a written job offer contract?

<comment><USER2> Yes. Ask a senior executive in your company if you can see their employment contract. Doctors and lawyers usually have written contracts tailored to their specific requirements and responsibilities. Professional athletes would never work without a contract.

<comment><USER4> Might be a dumb question, but I am not a native speaker: What is the difference between a written contract and a job offer?

<comment><USER5> A job offer is an agreement for $x compensation for x hours worked.

A contract specifies what that work is and is not. If it's not in the contract and I don't do it, well that sucks, for my employer. Without a contract I could be fired for cause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What happened to "Don't Be Evil"? How did it go so wrong?

<comment><USER7> Is it really 'evil' to disagree with unions? Doesn't seem like a particularly controversial, unusual, or unreasonable viewpoint, among people from all backgrounds and political alignments, workers and leaders alike.

<comment><USER8> Yes, it is really evil for a corporation to disagree with the concept of unionisation (I don't actually understand what it means to disagree with unions).

The relationship between employer and employee is a fundamentally uneven one. The ability to organise and cooperate amongst employees to bargain on an even ground is an important right, a right which was hard won by our forefathers.

> Doesn't seem like a particularly controversial, unusual, or unreasonable > viewpoint, among people from all backgrounds, workers and leaders alike.

Widespread opposition to unionisation is fairly unique to the USA, a country with both a shockingly low level of unionisation, poor working conditions in regard to its richness and high inequality.

<comment><USER9> Your post only makes sense when you frame the employer-employee relationship as adversarial. When you frame it as working together to create wealth for both parties, unions, which make money when employees and employers are in conflict, seem like a much less appealing idea.

<comment><USER8> > unions, which make money when employees and employers are in conflict

That's non sense. Unions are not for profit organisations making money during conflict.

Most unions are not for profit association representing their members for collective bargaining. Companies can and do have good relationship with unions. It is in everyone interest that the company works. It's just easier to negociate when you have collective power and can have a meaningful impact.

Also companies absolutely are not there to create wealth for their workers. Google especially has an history with non poaching agreements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My guess is that the most outspoken and principled activists among the Google workforce will find themselves singled out. If they navigate an exit wisely it could be great for them personally and the industry at large. The upside is that by managing an exit from adverse working environments, their passion experience and pedigree will likely fuel some great upstarts.

I really hope these people choose their battles wisely and use their force for good. Not to transform a firm, but rather to disrupt the status quo of an entire industry, without needing association to a name like Google or FB.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a Canva for mobile UI/UX? - <AUTHOR> I am a devleoper who don't know to design. I struggle with CSS and XML too. Instead of designing from scratch, I was wondering if there's any tool that can help me use existing UI templates to develop apps faster. Sketch, Figma, etc needs the user to have know how to design. <comment><USER2> I think Invision has templates you can start with...

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

<comment><USER3> Invisionapp is great for high fidelity designs. But I think the question is more about generating copy paste frontend codes for native mobile.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Frontend Interview Questions – Flashcards - <AUTHOR> https://www.flashcardsfordevelopers.com/collections/5b945dc20d9bd6cbc6e67a2e <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, This is a set of flashcards decks for frontend interview questions I've collected. Hope they help you study for your next interview. Happy to answer any questions. Cheers!</comment>


Alternatives to AWS/Azure/Google Cloud, Hetzner and Canonical? - <AUTHOR> We are a big data analytic firm, eBrandValue YCW15 dealing with terrabytes of data using cloud. We are contemplating moving away from AWS to Hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/cloud) and use a third party managed Kubernetes service. We think the AWS's prices are too high. We appreciate any experiences and recommendations. Is there anyone who tried Hetzner and a managed Kubernetes service, i.e, Ubuntu's Canonical (https://ubuntu.com/kubernetes) ? Reliability recommendations and experiences, customer support are some of the areas where you may be able to provide feedback. Thanks. <comment> Lorenz-Kraft We made the experience that its very cheap and easy to do things on barebone metal by yourself IF you have the knowledge in-house anyways. By cheap, I mean 10% of the costs. You might add another 10% costs to have an external backup service running (for example the Backblaze B2B).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Lorenz. Did you have any reliability issue on the machines? We need them to be up and reliable. As you said, the cost seems to be one fifth.

<comment> Lorenz-Kraft We were using simple Hetzner 49Euro/month (SSD/NVME) Servers of the shelf (these do not include Terabyte Storage, this will be a paid upgrade (10 Euro/m ??)). The "reliability" of the servers are normal. So once every two years or so (my personal experience, might be worse, might be better) there are hiccups with ventilators or something. So if your tech knowledge is allready in-house, you should put a little effort into fallback or load balancing to not disturb your daily business. Also, a automate spinup of servers (fixed install and setup routine) should be your best practice.

Bye the way, your in-house tech (and proggers) should keep an eye on "Vendor Lock in". As soon as your are using services that are not open source, you will tie yourself to one company and its pricing scheme. Getting out of this rabbit hole is mostly painful.

Depending on your analytics needs, you might even consider having your analytics server IN YOUR office. For example, if you are doing any kind of deep learning, you can buy "little" servers and two or three top notch GPU (Graphic Cards) per server to fit your needs.

Like I said, this all makes sense if you allready have tech knowledge in- house. If you don't then I would strongly advise to use providers like AWS and such, because they are handling all the above described. Also, if your data access is critical to be available 100%, these providers often give you pre build solutions that are battle proven.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Extended Validation Is Broken - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.ian.sh <comment><USER2> I think the only solution to fixing this is for Safari to show the domain again. It is the URL that is unique and known by the visitor, not the business name.

Here in the UK it's more complicated, there is no way of registering a "trading name" or "trade dress" against a company so you can only have an EV cert issues against your actual registered business name. If that is different from your trading name and what you use as your domain name then they are less than worthless. For example, if the company is "Widgets of London Limited" but trade online as "Widgets Online" with the domain "widgetsonline.com" they cant get an EV cert with "Widgets Online" as the name - even if they own the registered trademark of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love that people think you go through rigorous checks to get one of these. I was able to get one for my personal domain just by saying "oh yeah that's owned by this company too". A simple Whois lookup would have shown otherwise. These CA's are so incompetent. Still really cool having one on a personal domain though!</comment>


WebWindow, a cross-platform webview library for .NET Core - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stevensanderson.com/2019/11/18/2019-11-18-webwindow-a-cross-platform-webview-for-dotnet-core/ <comment><USER2> Alternatives:

1\. Webview: [https://github.com/zserge/webview](https://github.com/zserge/webview)

2\. Lorca (Chrome): [https://github.com/zserge/lorca](https://github.com/zserge/lorca)

3\. Carlo (js/Chrome): [https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/carlo](https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/carlo)

<comment><USER3> And my shameless plug: [https://github.com/patr0nus/DeskGap](https://github.com/patr0nus/DeskGap)

<comment><USER4> This is the first I've heard of it. So I can't say much about the project itself. However, by the look of it DeskGap is at least taking the right approach, where as most these other projects (there seems to be a new one every week) miss the mark.

Electron Pros:

1\. Consistent JS runtime/API

Electron Cons:

2\. Huge distributions (bundling a full browser)

3\. No re-use of components (every app is huge)

Electron Pro?/Con?:

4\. Consistent rendering / WebKit monoculture

By the look of it DeskGap keeps Electron's biggest pro and solves its two biggest cons. The only "issue" is that there may be rendering inconsistencies. However, given we want to avoid a WebKit monoculture, I see this as a pro more-so than a con.

With that being said Microsoft have themselves migrated to WebKit; so the WebKit monoculture looks likely regardless. For consistency I guess that's even another tick in DeskGap's corner, although it'd be nice if on Linux (for example) it could use Firefox when present.

Carlo is interesting for a similar reason, but perpetuates the WebKit monoculture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very exciting, thanks for creating this! I've been hoping for a way to build native apps via web technologies without the bloat.

Please let this be it.

.NET is such a good runtime.

<comment><USER6> Web is only native on browser OSes.

<comment><USER7> Which on Windows is basically IE11 (not an environment I really want to develop in).

<comment><USER6> Which isn't what I said, rather OSes that jungle browsers as the only userspace processes available, e.g. FireOS, ChromeOS, KaiOS ....

As for IE11, I don't know of any Window 10 user that still uses it instead of Edge.

<comment><USER7> Apologies, I meant to state that Windows WebView uses MSHTML which is IE10/11\. I see in BETA right now is a Win32 API for WebView2 which uses Edge(Chromium)[0]. Not sure if you edited your comment for clarification or if I replied to the wrong post as my initial comment no longer makes sense.

[0] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/hosting/webv...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/hosting/webview2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks amazing - can you please add a license file so others can actually use it? (Hoping for MIT or if not then Apache 2.0 or BSD or whatever reflects your intent and preferences)

<comment><USER9> For anyone else who didn't see your github issue, it's apache 2 as of 3 hours ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm potentially the only one being skeptical. Don't get me wrong, it's nicely done (for an experiment), but we also did similar experiments several years ago.

At the fundamental level such an approach works, but it brings several issues that are not addressed with it (in contrast to, e.g., Electron). The most pressing one being "I don't want _any_ browser - I want a browser that I know is capable of doing what I want".

<comment><USER11> So most of these techniques used to have the problem that on Windows "any browser" was always "Internet Explorer"; but while I don't disagree that this is still an issue, it is much much much less of an issue now that Internet Explorer is Edge and Edge is Chromium (which I am not saying is a good state of affairs for the web as a whole, but makes this use case not fall as easily to this complaint).

<comment><USER12> But I don't think Edgium is replacing Edge/IE as the system web component. It's no different than having Chrome installed except it replaced the Edge icon in the start menu instead of making a new one.

<comment><USER13> In each case, the new thing is added with a new interface, and the old remains. In this case, the new thing is [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/microsoft-edge/hosting/webv...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/hosting/webview2).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks like a nice solution to save some time for cross-platform developers on .NET Core. I'm sure we're going to see a lot more of this once the new Chromium version of Edge is released mid Jan 2020 (which will include the new webview2 component).

If you don't want to add an external library to do this, or your source is already platform dependent, just use the default web view component of each operating system (WebBrowser for Windows, WKWebView for macOS and WebKitGTK+2 for Linux) like this library does.

To work around some of the ugliness of the old IE rendering engine used in the current WebBrowser control on Windows, just add this meta tag to the HTML file to ensure it uses the new versions of IE to render the UI: <meta http- equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">

You can disable most non-native app behavior in JS (like scrolling or the default right click context menu using javascript). You're then free to use whatever front end framework you want and pass data between the web-app and native code using JSON.

<comment><USER15> I think setting x-ua-compatible ie=edge doesn't mean use the _Edge_ EdgeHTML engine - it means enabling "Edge mode" in IE, which means "the latest available version of IE" and you end up with IE10 or IE11.

EdgeHTML can be embedded, but only using the WinRT API, not the ActiveX WebBrowser control.

<comment><USER13> Welcome to the web, where browsers are named after existing browser concepts in as confusing a way as they can come up with. "You know how browsers have chrome around the web content, and how that's the accepted term of art? Let's call our browser Chrome!" "You know how we can tell IE to run in edge mode? Let's call our replacement browser, which IE compatibility mode won't be able to use, Edge!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fabulous! Standalone app sizes look to be less than half that of Electron. Wish I had more C++/Obj-C skills to help out...

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice work, although WebViews shouldn't be used for anything beyond displaying HTML documents.

Either go native or go Web, hybrid apps always always feel worse than middleware frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER17> While this definitely sounds like a good alternative to everything bundling its own Electron, I do have some questions.

To make sure I understand how viable this solution is...

> On Windows, WebWindow uses the _new Chromium-based Edge via webview2_ , > assuming you have that browser installed (it could fall back on older Edge > if you don't, but I haven't implemented that)

So this will currently only work for those running the absolutely newest version of Windows 10?

(But if the user does, you get a reasonably up to date and capable web-engine, which sounds good)

> On Mac, it uses the OS's built-in WKWebView, which is the same technology > behind Safari

Sounds decent, I guess?

> On Linux, it uses WebKitGTK+2, which is yet again a WebKit-based technology

Isn't WebKitGTK horribly outdated, or have things improved recently? Couldn't that be a source of issues down the road?

</comment><comment><USER18> Has anyone experience with Blazor in production? I would like to jump into it but it still feels a little immature to me.

<comment><USER19> I would recommend starting with the server-side variant of Blazor on a non- production test app to familiarize yourself. You can easily move to client- side WASM mode once you need to (or feel comfortable doing so) without any major changes to your codebase.

Our long term plans (aka by end of 2020) are to rewrite all of our internal tooling from SPA (RiotJS) w/ JSON APIs to server-side Blazor. The principal motivations here are productivity gains. It is a LOT faster to write a razor view in C# with direct invocation of your business logic from view logic, than it is to determine what a clean JSON API contract looks like, write all the boilerplate for controllers, and then play the back-and-forth game between chrome devtools and visual studio with 2 separate debugging contexts. After you write your first LINQ .Where().Select() to populate a table in Blazor, you will truly understand what I am getting at in terms of productivity if you have ever tried to do the same sort of filter->map stuff in JS.

With Blazor, I only need to know C#, HTML, CSS and just enough JS to write a blazorhelper.js interop which reads and writes my session cookies. I set 1 breakpoint in visual studio and it gets hit when I press some button in the browser.

With SPA, I have to be at the top of my JS game, and also pull some SPA framework into my mental context which must then be shared with all of the other C# business logic in scope. I have to manage breakpoints in the browser as well as in visual studio. I have to deal with 10-100x the amount of JS code.

Additionally, we don't even want to move to client-side variants of Blazor for our use case. First request latency and security are the 2 largest motivators for us here. Server-side exposes precisely zero things to the client you didn't want to, as opposed to SPA which makes even unauthenticated clients download your entire application. Also, "the server" is substantially faster these days (even more so going into 2020 on AMD's warpath). For the number of concurrent clients we are anticipating, server-side Blazor is actually our best option in terms of UX.

I would be curious what aspect of Blazor feels immature to you. It is certainly a new(ish) thing, but the fundamental aspects of it (especially server-side mode) have been around for decades and microsoft has leveraged a lot of existing or otherwise proven ideas here. I would agree on the client- side aspect being "immature" relative to server-side, mostly due to WASM and the need to push a very large payload to the client upon first request.

<comment><USER18> I absolutely see the benefits of using Blazor. But it feels immature because I see a lot of tutorials with ways to work around little bugs and problems.

But orcourse those tutorials could be from before the official launch which was just some months ago.

I think Blazor looks a little like Phoenix Live View. And imho this is the way to go. It is way more productive for the reasons you describe as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My biggest problem is that WKWebview on Mac just seems so slow compared to Chrome. I have a canvas in my application and it just doesn't seem to render as efficiently as it should or with ease as it does in Chrome. Does anyone experience similar issues?

<comment><USER21> It might have to do with the retina settings that rescale after rendering. I had this issue when we were testing 3DC.io on some Macbooks. Play around with the scale and css a bit, there is some information on Stack Overflow if you search for canvas+retina.

Edit: Also check out devicePixelRatio, that might be causing the issue as well.

<comment><USER20> Ohh! That actually was it. My canvas was a very large size - like 1900x1200 and Safari drastically slowed down - I readjusted for it to only take page height and width and it works nicely again. Thanks!!

<comment><USER21> No problem. I think of it as collectively saving the mankind another 10 hours of debugging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> this is really interesting! i'm wondering if there's a variant of this project out there that still uses node/javascript, but similarly avoids the chromium packaging and leans on the OS's rendering engine.

<comment><USER23> There was Electrino a couple of years ago but it looks dead. [https://github.com/pojala/electrino](https://github.com/pojala/electrino)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This looks interesting, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

</comment><comment><USER25> Beautiful MVP. I really love this idea.

I have been tinkering around with some enterprise solutions for delivering desktop native experience for web based apps.

</comment><comment><USER26> Very cool, I am hoping the project is in fact supported and maintained!

</comment><comment><USER27> This is fantastic. Another step in the right direction!

</comment><comment><USER28> This is mostly obscoleted by [https://github.com/sentialx/electron- global](https://github.com/sentialx/electron-global)

<comment><USER8> Both projects can be of interest without one obsoleting the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Looks very cool!</comment>


Little's Law, the Universal Scalability Law, and the Usl4j Java library - <AUTHOR> https://codahale.com/usl4j-and-you/ <comment><USER2> This is a very useful way of thinking about responses and latency, and a great example of a domain with a lot of very specialized knowledge (industrial engineering and logistics) that probably doesn't overall have enough cross- talk into CS given how much we talk about queues, latency, and workers.

I'm going to have to brush up on my IE one of these days to try to figure out if there are some useful insights to potentially be gleaned from models that account for server-level concurrency more directly, along the lines of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M/M/c_queue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M/M/c_queue)

</comment><comment><USER3> Instead of giving the entire dataset to the model (which in this case already identifies a performance limit visually), give a partial set and then see if these algorithms can predict the remaining known values. That should be the real test of whether prediction works.

Here's what I found last time I did it: [https://github.com/brendangregg/PerfModels/blob/master/scale...](https://github.com/brendangregg/PerfModels/blob/master/scale.pdf)

ie, I'm splitting the dataset into "model input" and "extra measurements". USL was not really working.

<comment><USER4> I think that the 10th data point in your model is an outlier.

Could you test it again

1) by adding 11th data point, 2) without 10th data point, 3) with 10th data point corrected?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone interested in this should have a read of the Neil Gunther's own books: [http://www.perfdynamics.com/books.html](http://www.perfdynamics.com/books.html)</comment>


Protecting your Firefox OS App code - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/12/protecting-your-firefox-os-app-code/ <comment><USER2> Obfuscation at this level is such a dead-end. People already reverse engineer optimized native binaries. Microsoft faced the same "problem" with .NET and even went so far as to put a "no not disassemble" bit that their ildasm tool honoured. (That flag was removed because it's such a stupid idea.)

This kind of lightweight obfuscation only works if your product is of very low value. At that point, you're better of spending the few minutes of obfuscating on making your product more valuable.

The only real useful obfuscation is on malware (which always has a negative value to the user), and on games to gain a couple of non-pirated days after launch.

The only real prevention is to not run code on the user's device (like Diablo III).

Most developers complaining about this are just surprised to learn that reversing is relatively easy and it reflects more on their lack of knowledge than an actual problem.

Disclaimer: In 2004 I actually wrote a decent IL obfuscator, etc. I never shipped it because as I got better at writing it, I got better at reversing, until I realised it was a stupid, pointless battle. I guess that makes me less of a business person.

<comment><USER3> That is true for most code protections other than moving the code away from the client. Developers definetely need to understand they they are only making it harder but not preventing access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Emscripten recommendation is hilarious. How long before people are writing JS and bundling it with a JS interpreter which is compiled with Emscripten merely as an obfuscation measure to satisfy a very confused manager?

For a group supposedly keen on JS that's a really stupid recommendation.

<comment><USER3> It is true that the way from JS to C to JS is an awkward recommendation. The common use case for Emscripten is the cross compilation when you already have native libraries that you want to share with your web app; which makes the web just another build target. And I concluded in the article that the obfuscation is really just a benefitial side effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A guide from mozilla on how to close the web. Great :)

<comment><USER6> It would be nice to see Mozilla's app-store have more first-class support for open-source projects. The notion of Free software (apps, particularly) seems to have died with mobile, but I think Mozilla is in a position to bring it back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Step 1: compile to local binaries.

There is no step 2

<comment><USER8> Because decompiling isn't a thing?

<comment><USER7> Because decompiling is a lot easier when your "executable" is a high level language built on top of a well known and heavily targeted VM.</comment></comment></comment>


What about the user?? - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/articles/web-security-basics.html#HashAndSaltYourUsersPasswords <comment><AUTHOR> As a user, I don't always care that much about security. I use a throw away password and wouldn't be that upset if my account was compromised.

What i do care about is your stupic website that imposes unreasonable cpnstraints on my password, then corces me to answer three personal questions, information id prefer not to share, information that becomes less useful the more it is shared.

Lets find a solution. How about a checkbox that says "does security mayter to you".</comment>