Flat-file CMS Kirby launched version 3 - <AUTHOR> https://getkirby.com <comment><USER2> Soliciting upvotes and booster comments like this is the fastest way to get your domain and accounts banned.

<comment><USER3> Btw why are the points about asking for votes or comments not part of the guidelines but only part of the FAQ?

The usual understanding for me is that guidelines should be read and followed, while FAQ provide additional information on topics that are asked a lot (password reset, what does XYZ mean, etc).

<comment><USER4> Honestly i don't know what you are talking about. There are many products that launch on hacker news.

<comment><USER3> sctb is a moderator (kind of annoying that you have to google that) [1] and given their statement it indicates that "soliciting upvotes and booster comments" is disallowed/discouraged. Yet, that information is not part of the official HN guidelines [2] but is merely mentioned in the HN FAQ [3]. My point being, if telling your users about the HN post you created is disallowed, then why is it not part of the guidelines and merely hidden among the FAQ? Like I said, guidelines are to be read and followed, but I wouldn't expect from people to read the FAQ to find all the 'rules'.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675)

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

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

<comment><USER4> Oh i understand now. Well it is obvious people don't understand it works like that. From outside it seems that it is perfectly normal to share products and updates HN. It seems to happen all the time often with authors or employees in the comments.

So what is prohibited is to share the direct link?

<comment><USER5> Obviously submitting links to one's own work isn't prohibited. It's encouraged!

What's not allowed are asking friends or teammates to upvote and/or post booster comments in the thread. Those are forms of gaming the system which the community here is not ok with.

People should upvote or comment on things that they personally ran across and found intellectually interesting, not because they or a friend have something to promote.

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this on Twitter and of course kindly asked our followers to upvote it if they like the new version. This is something I see on Twitter every day and I really wasn't aware that it is not allowed to do. [https://twitter.com/getkirby/status/1085873516132605952?s=20](https://twitter.com/getkirby/status/1085873516132605952?s=20)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have followed Kirby since the very first post, when Bastian announced his new company launch in order to build Kirby. I have always be impressed by the heart Bastian and now the team around him put in Kirby. Having tested Kirby 3 a lot in the last weeks, I can confirm that the Kirby 3 version is just incredible. You can at the same time build your website and its admin interface. This admin interface becomes then the best I have ever seen. You can taylor it to match exactly your needs or your customer needs. My opinion is that to use Kirby with pleasure, you need to have a good understanding of OOPHP (oriented Object PHP). But it's only my opinion. For advanced PHP developers it is, without any doubt, the best CMS available. And I like also a lot Drupal or October CMS, and I even appreciate and use WordPress, trying to forget this strange thing named Gutenberg!

</comment><comment><USER4> It is a flatfile PHP CMS for anyone wondering. Version 3 is admin rewrite in Vue.js

It is one of the best if you need smaller/medium size website or blog. Much nicer dev experience thany any worpress drupal bs. I think Tower git client website is made using kirby.

<comment><USER7> It's not just an admin rewrite in Vue.js, the core has also been rewritten using new features introduced by latest PHP versions.

It also introduces a new API for plugins allowing things that weren't possible in Kirby 2.

<comment><USER8> Should add that that not only all of the code has been rewritten, but also the development process is completely test-driven.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> marc-t Such a great, fast and easy to use system. I love it for many years and with version 3 it got event better. I mean, look at the many fantastic showcase examples as well to see which companies and who is using Kirby already.

</comment><comment><USER9> We relaunched our company website in Kirby and have been really happy with it.

As a developer, it really hits the sweet spot between providing you with tools to create great webpages without forcing you into any particular modes of working.

Excited to kick the tires on Kirby3.

Just a comment in another post, it's not just for small to medium sites, there is no reason why a large site can't run this, it's extraordinarily fast and immensely extendable.

Lastly, can't say enough good things about the community!

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been developing websites and plugins with Kirby 2 for 3 years and have had a great experience with it. I find it great for building custom websites. Clients love the simplicity of the Panel too.

Kirby 3 is a huge step forward. Some of my favorite new features are:

\- New Panel powered by Vue.js

\- Panel tabs & sections

\- Better plugin API

\- Built-in REST API which allows it to be used as a headless CMS

\- External data sources

\- Asynchronous media API

\- Better cache system

\- Simpler language management

</comment><comment><USER10> Great to see it move into Version 3. I have been using Kirby for 4 years. I have found its super flexibility to be key to its adoption in my project

</comment><comment><USER8> Been using Kirby for personal and client projects since 2013. Kirby 3 is really a immense leap forward. My personal highlights:

\- an admin interface that developers can tailor to any content model

\- possibility to really integrate database content, not only frontend but also so it is editable in the admin interface

\- REST API to use Kirby as headless CMS

\- invaluable feature: the amazingly friendly Kirby community

</comment><comment><USER11> Been using Kirby almost exclusively for my clients and personal projects for at least a couple of years.

Was already super happy with the V2 and can't wait to start using the V3 since pretty much everything has been rewritten and there's a lot more flexibility available.

I'm also excited to see what the plugin developers will come up with. We've seen some pretty interesting creations during the beta period and things can only get better now that V3 is officially out.

Also need to mention that the Kirby Team is amazing, they all do their best to help everyone who's struggling and the Kirby Community is made of a bunch of fun people who are very passionate.

</comment><comment><USER12> Absence of a database makes the development experience that much more enjoyable. Having all configuration in yaml files makes for a very fast setup of the backend and easy deployment. Having worked with Wordpress, Drupal and Craft, this one's by far my favourite CMS.

</comment><comment><USER13> Kirby is by far the most fun CMS I've ever worked with.

I'm really impressed by its unrivalled flexibility when it comes to managing content. Everything about Kirby feels refined, functional and consistent. Congratulations to the whole team for the excellent work!</comment>


Tiny, dirty, iffy, good enough, basic multi-threaded web crawler in Python - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webhose.io/2015/08/12/tiny-basic-multi-threaded-web-crawler-in-python/

<comment><USER2> The regex will break on

        <a href='actualLink' _href='spoofedLink'

And will return spoofedLink instead of actualLink, while browsers will follow actualLink. This is why you shouldn't be trying to parse xml/html with regexes.

<comment><USER3> Whilst it's true in principal that you should always parse xml/html with a proper parser, in practise it can be a little different. On the web you'll find just as much malformed html that will throw an error in any parser, as you will bad html that will throw a regex. As long as you have proper verification of the link at the end, you'll be safe enough.

Then when you factor in that constructing and extracting links from the DOM might take 500ms vs. the 5ms of a regex - a 100x increase in crawl speed in exchange for a little potential dirtiness is more than acceptable; particularly if you have a million pages to crawl. That's the difference between a crawl taking 1 week, vs. 2 years...

And anyway, all web crawls are inevitably going to end up dirty and scrappy, that's just the nature of the web. I once crawled a website that returned "_ontent-Type" instead of "Content-Type", making it impossible to tell what kind of file was about to be downloaded by my polite, "text only" crawler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Crawling can be broken down to:

      1) fetching resources
      2) finding out what new resources to fetch

1) is an network bound problem, 2) is mostly disk/CPU bound. Realizing the difference between these two things and separating them is the key to building a good crawler.

Depending on how you find out what resources to fetch (parsing static documents vs. dynamic JS analysis with multiple dependencies on other resources (included JS &c)), "good-enough" crawlers are mostly bound to the network.

I've seen people running 1 crawl/process on their back-end and some management guy saying "we need to crawl faster, add more threads per crawl" when one crawl cycle spends 10x times more waiting on the network than it does parsing a document.

<comment><USER2> If you're crawling different origins in parallel then you could gain a boost in speed by threading. It's usually bound by the network/processing on the receiving side. Your server can probably handle several outgoing connections at once.

<comment><USER4> You can have several outgoing connections in one single thread, at the same time.

Threading is for CPU bound problems that requires a shared memory space.

I/O multiplexing and/or cooperative multitasking means you can have thousands concurrent connections per thread.

<comment><USER2> Sure. The parent comment referred to one download per thread so I did as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I highly recommend you check out [https://github.com/chfoo/wpull](https://github.com/chfoo/wpull)

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice to see a tiny, useful code example.

</comment><comment><USER7> Also happens to parse XML with regexes. Lovely.</comment>


Text-only video game shows how genre can be beautiful, innovative and complex - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/01/hadean_lands_the_text_only_video_game_shows_how_the_genre_can_be_beautiful.single.html <comment><USER4> On the subject of IF, programming language geeks should all check out Inform 7 - Graham Nelson's programming tool for creating text-based games that run on the Infocom Z-machine (and other related formats). There are a large number of truly astonishing things about the language, compiler and development environment. For example:

\- the text editor supports elastic tabstops

\- its documentation is embedded right into the development environment, beautifully complete and well written, and filled with great little examples

\- compilation error messages are delightfuly detailed, specific, and useful. But if the same error is repeated, the compiler usually tells you "again, this doesn't make sense" rather than hitting you with a wall of repetition.

\- many of the language's tools are for creating new language syntaxes for you to write your program with, rather than for the player to use in the game. You can create your own nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions to use in your descriptions of the world.

\- Its relationships system is very powerful, and includes first-class support for performing operations on the graphs defined by relationships. For example, rooms are related by adjacency, and you can enquire what room is 'the next step via the adjacency relation' from one room towards another to have characters navigate towards a goal - but equally you can create our own relationships and perform similar operations on those.

\- in spite of the syntactic restrictions of trying to 'read like English', it surfaces surprisingly rich functional and generics syntaxes; there's a real, grown-up programming language in there.

It is definitely worth a weekend play, if you're looking for a completely different kind of language for a change.

<comment><USER5> To give an example of the language. Let's say you want a room where the player is eaten by a grue if they linger too long:

        A room has a number called grue counter. The grue counter of a room is usually 0.
        A room can be grue infested. A room is usually not grue infested.

        Every turn while the player is in a grue infested room:
            Increase the grue counter of the location by one.

        The dungeon is a room. "You stand in a basic medieval dungeon." The dungeon is grue infested.

        The first time the player enters the dungeon:
            try looking;
            say "It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

        Grue lunch is a scene. Grue lunch begins when the grue counter of the dungeon is greater than 10.
        When grue lunch begins:
            	say "A large, smelly, foul tempered creature resembling a cross between a troll and an orc lumbers out from one of the open passageways. It sniffs the air, catches your scent, and looses a mighty roar! Before you are able to do anything else, it quickly lunges forward, chomping down on your head with a sickening [bold type]*crunch*"	;
    	end the story saying "You have been eaten by a grue."

This is the actual syntax, and it is surprisingly readable. Getting used to what the parser wants you to say can be tricky sometimes - just because the language is english like doesn't mean you can write your code in completely free-form english, but it's damn close!

Once you've gotten your head around a few of the foibles, it's a lot less like writing a program and a lot more like just writing a book. In any case, agreed heartily with parent, it's a lot of fun to play around with!

<comment><USER6> Wow! I was trying to create something like this for knowledge representation, last week. Ended up reading some of the CLIPS manual, then deciding to roll my own, as usual.

Wow. Programming is so faddish! I know this, but it's still surprising. What other problems that we're struggling with have been basically solved, in some currently unpopular corner?

<comment><USER7> _Programming is so faddish!_

Yes, sadly; and this is because programming languages, like spoken languages, live and die by their community. And it's harder to cross-pollinate programming languages since all changes must be backwards-compatible with existing source text. Language interop is usually terrible. You can't easily bring just a _bit_ of Inform into an application.

This is very slowly improving with the popularity of compile-to-llvm, compile- to-CLR, and compile-to-JS as intermediate targets.

The other factor in faddishness is ahistoricity; the most energetic and community-orientated people are young, but interested in building their own new wheels while overthrowing the old wheel order.

<comment><USER6> > The other factor in faddishness is ahistoricity; the most energetic and > community-orientated people are young, but interested in building their own > new wheels while overthrowing the old wheel order.

It's easier to write code for a small system than to read code for a large system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh cool, he finally finished it! Hadean Lands was kickstarted five years ago [1], receiving $31337. (Read that number carefully; this article rounds to $30k and completely misses the fun.) At the time, it was astonishing to many people that a piece of interactive fiction could pull in five figures of crowdfunding.

Andrew Plotkin has been releasing really excellent games for years; Spider and Web was my introduction to interactive fiction. (Talk about getting thrown in the deep end of the genre...)

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands- inter...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-interactive- fiction-for-the-iphone)

EDIT: The game's author has, for some years, been posting Hadean Lands design and progress notes at the Gameshelf blog: [http://gameshelf.jmac.org/author/author6b0d4/](http://gameshelf.jmac.org/author/author6b0d4/)

<comment><USER9> Spider and Web is a work of genius. But I'll warn you: if you have any interest at all in playing it, stop reading about it. Go in knowing as little as possible, and just work your way through. You'll do fine.

You can even play it for free online, so you have no excuse: [http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/](http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/)

I just impulsively picked up the Hadean Lands bundle after reading this article too. I look forward to playing it.

<comment><USER10> I spent far too long just reading along with this walkthrough ([http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intfic_clubfloyd_20080904.html](http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intfic_clubfloyd_20080904.html)) this game would drive me insane ;-)

<comment><USER9> But then you're denying yourself the experience! It's not so bad, really.

<comment><USER9> ...besides, that transcript totally skips over the most climactic scene in the game. It's a travesty, really. Don't bother with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Folks interested in interactive fiction (aka text adventures, but that name implies something a little different these days) should definitely check out the annual interactive fiction contest: [http://www.ifcomp.org/](http://www.ifcomp.org/) The winners are always top notch games, and the format is perfect as most games are built to be completed in an hour or two and have a full hint/walkthrough to help you if you get stuck. Modern IF games rely much less on tricks and traps like the classic Infocom games of days past, so they're much more friendly and entertaining to play.

One of my favorite authors is Ryan Veeder, his games remind me of Infocom's classics but aren't nearly as frustrating to play: [http://www.rcveeder.net/blog/interactive- fiction/](http://www.rcveeder.net/blog/interactive-fiction/) Check out Taco Fiction for a great example (and IF comp winner!).

<comment><USER12> Aaron Reed and Emily Short are also both worth checking out also, two of my favorites. Blue Lacuna and Sand-dancer are my favorites from Reed ([http://aaronareed.net/](http://aaronareed.net/)), and honestly everything from Short ([https://emshort.wordpress.com/my- work/](https://emshort.wordpress.com/my-work/)) is good, but Alabaster and Galatea are both particularly striking.

<comment><USER13> Anyone interested in this topic should definitely be following Emily Short's blog. She gives good coverage to the field as a whole, not just her own games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Since the article can't be bothered to link to the game: [http://hadeanlands.com/](http://hadeanlands.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> For those interested in more: Interactive fiction (IF) is one kind in a larger genre, e-lit, or electronic literature. I've recently started exploring it. Here are some links, but a warning that much in the descriptions, reviews, etc. is written for technical experts -- in the humanities. (If you want to complain, first look at your own documentation. Now you know how end-users feel. ;) )

* Beginners overview of e-lit at ELO (see below) [[http://directory.eliterature.org/node/3706](http://directory.eliterature.org/node/3706)]: Overview, includes links to more, a decent starting point but a bit technical.

* Electronic Literature Collection by ELO [[http://collection.eliterature.org/](http://collection.eliterature.org/)]: Collections of leading e-lit works, AFAICT. A pretty good place to start reading. The works themselves are less technical than the descriptions, reviews, etc. of them.

* Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) [[http://eliterature.org/](http://eliterature.org/)]: The most comprehensive resource, but maybe not the best starting place. They also have a large database of e-lit, [[http://directory.eliterature.org/](http://directory.eliterature.org/)]

* Electronic Literature Knowledge Base (ELMCIP) [[http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase](http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase)]: "cross-referenced, contextualized information about authors, creative works, critical writing, and practices."

* Electronic Poetry Center [[http://epc.buffalo.edu/](http://epc.buffalo.edu/)]: Community center with very broad collection, also curated collection(s?), author info, links, festival info.

</comment><comment><USER16> I will definitely check this out. I recently played A Dark Room ([http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/](http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/)) on ios. It was really great. The game was also really beautiful and just text. I have been wanting to create a game for some time and playing a Dark Room makes me feel that it is possible as my expertise is in algorithms and web development but I know nothing about animation. I'm excited to try out Hadean Lands.

</comment><comment><USER17> I cut my teeth on games like Zork when I was a kid and never looked back. Text based games have always captured my interest and I often tell my friends that there is no better graphics engine than your imagination. Many of the games I made in my spare time were text based in nature like old school professional wrestling sims, adventures games, etc and there is a surprisingly high number of people in the world who still enjoy them (young and old) as is evidenced by this article and my latest game (shameless plug in 3, 2, 1: Pit of War [1]). I don't believe I've ever spent money on a mobile game because its awesome 3D graphics, but I have spent money on a mostly text based game with an awesome story, or something like Gemini Rue with its retro style graphics and intriguing story and will happily do so again. Story is key for these types of games and I believe they leave a much longer lasting impression, at least for me anyway. My game that I mentioned above is more of a strategy pvp arena fighting game so there isn't the story element there yet (it is planned for 2015), however, I often get emails from my players telling me how much they enjoy the fact it is text based and they're happy to support continued development. Don't be afraid to try this genre out if you are small team or just one person. You won't get fawned over by the press but you'll have the ability to create a rich, fun and detailed world and with some creatively placed still images and an engaging story or game mechanics many people out there will pay you for your efforts if that is one of your goals. Be attentive to your player base, be good to them and they will reward you in spades for keeping one of their favorite genres alive that the mainstream have all but called dead and buried many times over.

[1] [http://www.pitofwar.com](http://www.pitofwar.com)

</comment><comment><USER18> I still remember the riddle on the cliff in Beyond Zork: My tines be long, My tines be short, My tines end ere my first report. What am I?

I got stuck on the game because I couldn't answer it. Spent months and then years thinking about it. Then one day the answer came to me, but by then we didn't have a Commodore 64 anymore.

Then in the 90s they rereleased the games as part of Return To Zork. I eagerly raced back to the cliff to proudly intone my answer! A portal was revealed, and I ran inside to claim my reward...and was promptly killed by a giant slug.

Good times! Btw, I'm sure many people on this list could reply with the answer to this riddle. I would invite you _not_ to, to give others an opportunity to noodle on it if they wish.

</comment><comment><USER19> I always preferred the less pretentious sounding term "text adventure".

<comment><USER20> while i like the term "text adventure" simply because that's what i grew up with, the broader term "interactive fiction" has genuinely provided room for people to experiment with the genre. it's not just a matter of "same thing, different label slapped on it"; if i say "design a text adventure" and "design a work of interactive fiction" the latter immediately suggests a lot more possibilities.

<comment><USER5> The Inform 7 docs go into this a little bit - a "text adventure" has aspects commonly associated with a game.. a player, a score, a win and lose condition, puzzles to solve, and so forth.

A work of "interactive fiction" need not necessarily be a game with the usual things that go along with that.

<comment><USER21> Haldean Lands sounds like it has players and puzzles. And most of the graphical adventure games I've played haven't had scoring systems.

<comment><USER5> Again, emphasis on "need not necessarily". Text adventures are a subset of interactive fiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The excerpt of gameplay suggests that it suffers from the same problem as the original text games: having to figure out the exact syntax the designer wants to hear. In the 'recall the brass tarnish ritual', there are five steps, but only three are performed, one of which doesn't match up with the relevant step ('Speak a word of essential nature' => 'say the sealing word').

I'm happy for other people to enjoy this kind of game, but the above is why they're not my cup of tea.

<comment><USER23> As it happens, the author of the article just inexplicably cut out the transcript of doing the middle two steps, which are indeed necessary for the player to perform the ritual.

It's possible that it would still be too fiddly for you, but modern parser- based text adventures have gotten a lot better since the Infocom days in this way. Probably the biggest reason is that games like Hadean Lands have dozens of beta testers play through it doing whatever their heart desires and providing feedback on puzzles and potential parser holes prior to an official release.

<comment><USER22> That's good to know - it's not the fiddliness (though done poorly, it would irritate), it's knowing what you want to do and then having to figure out how to get the program to understand it. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Shows"? Infocom and co have proven that 3 decades ago...

<comment><USER25> 30 years ago, they _were_ beautiful and innovative. So were Atari games and 14.4k modems. Today they're archaic, on par with rolling a hoop with a stick that was popular 100 years ago. There's a reason text adventures don't break the top charts on the App Store. The point of the article is that this doesn't _have_ to be that way, that text adventures can still be relevant.

If they weren't popular 30 years ago, this article wouldn't be talking about them becoming more modern, so really you're just rewording the entire point of the article.

<comment><USER24> They weren't "beautiful and innovative" 30 years ago in your sense that they were "modern" then and "archaic" now.

30 years ago they were also "archaic" in technological capability sense.

People played those games well into the era of Amiga and Atari level graphics, and played them for what they were, not because there weren't graphical games available in abundance.

<comment><USER26> During the Amiga and Atari age, graphical games were possible, but expensive (in time, talent, determination) to create. Text adventures were not. Even though platforms at the time could execute graphical games, the developer overhead in creating them wasn't even close to equivalent.

As graphical games got easier to produce, that gap shrank, and text adventures did get less and less vital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I had a long and favorable look at IF/text adventures and have to say, nope it's not that big a thing some people make it. Yes, focussing on content instead of big explosions is what increases depth and the kind of beauty I also like. But the IF world is wrong that it must be pure text. A game like Dwarf Fortress for example can tell a lot of its story without text. You see your dwarfs moving towards the goblins, nobody needs to explicitly write it down for you and prompt you for an interaction. Shadow Run Returns is a X-Com like tactics game, but it also has a lot of text adventure influence with all its heavy dialogue with different choices etc. And by adding these other elements together with text based story and depth, you get something more deep and more efficient.

Text is not a game. It's a feature. Depth is not a game. It's a feature. A puzzle or labyrinth is not a game. It's a feature. Make games by smartly combining (multiple!) features!

<comment><USER28> No one in the IF world would claim that games "must be pure text".

<comment><USER27> Not literally, yes. But would you consider Shadowrun Returns or Faster Than Light a success for the IF world? I think most IF world people don't. And that's why I conclude that they have a very specific definition of what counts as IF and what doesn't. We could discuss about the details what exactly is part of IF and what isn't. But that's not the point anyway. The point is, that IF people can be proud because text heavy games are quite successful, but maybe they shouldn't think so purist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I happened to play Violet earlier today --- I hadn't played a text adventure since I was a kid. This was really good.

[http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fi...](http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif- archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2FViolet.zblorb)

</comment><comment><USER30> In case you haven't seen it, check out the GET LAMP documentary: [http://www.getlamp.com](http://www.getlamp.com)

<comment><USER31> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you enjoy this type of game, you might enjoy attending an interactive fiction meetup. At meetups, we play IF games, talk about them, and meet with other IF authors. Andrew Plotkin (author of Hadean Lands) regularly appears at the Boston meetup.

* [http://pr-if.org/](http://pr-if.org/) Boston

* [http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/](http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/) Bay Area

* [http://www.meetup.com/Oxford-and-London-Interactive-Fiction-...](http://www.meetup.com/Oxford-and-London-Interactive-Fiction-Group/) Oxford and London

<comment><USER33> Any in Chicago? These games got me into programming when i was pretty young (scott adams style games that is - maybe I have IF entangled with text adventure?). Would love to meet up with some people who are into this stuff still - i've been playing around with some concepts recently for my own text adventure games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Because of this article I discovered "Mind Forever Voyaging" which I started playing on my lunch break. I'm pretty floored that a text adventure like this was around in 1985.

</comment><comment><USER34> was expecting an article about ADOM :)

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

<comment> guard-of-terra And I was expecting an article about Dungeon Crawl. Blows everything else out of the water for many years now.

Also playable by ssh.

<comment><USER35> DCSS is a remarkable open source project. The game's design is focused and coherent, avoiding "feature creep". Yet the devs are open to community suggestions and stay on good terms with the players. I can't think of any other project that so well harnesses the creativity of random internet people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I played MUDs for many years. I miss those days.

<comment><USER37> Glad to see someone post this. I laughed when I saw this article and some of the comments here. I laugh at most games which think they are "complex" or "challenging", whatever. Go play a MUD, one of the hard ones, get back to me.

<comment><USER38> MUDs were ridiculously fun. In college I was starting an LPMud of my own and somehow stumbled into using lex/yacc to alter the room and dialogue descriptions depending on point of view. For instance, a character would leave town to visit a cursed place, and then when they came back to town, they'd find it completely abandoned and threatening. But meanwhile, the other players in the town would experience the character speaking in with bizarrely altered words and speech patterns since the character was possessed. (I did this by taking the Swedish Chef filter and altering it.) But then the university admins found it and deleted it. Argh.

I had a friend whose character figured out how to put on a hockey mask, take out a chainsaw, and then hack off your limbs and give your limbs back to you - this was by coding from within the game, sort of.

<comment><USER39> They still are pretty fun. There's something about graphical RPGs that just gets old. Like, after a few generations of increasingly mindblowing worlds, you become desensitized to it.

MU _s are to games with graphics as books are to movies. In a modern game, you 're limited to whatever art the designers put into the game. In a MU_, you can create whatever persona you would like. It's also a small enough community to where you can have a major impact on the worlds you play in, if you so desire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> one thing the review didn't mention was just how beautifully atmospheric the game was. the writing is spare, but very evocative; from a purely science fiction/fantasy point of view this is a great experience even before you take the puzzles into account.

</comment><comment><USER40> Man, I used to LOVE Zork (all of them)...I still have my hand-drawn maps of every single area. Took me months to make them.

<comment><USER33> I used to play Pirate Adventure all the time when i was like 8 or 9 - <USER2> game got me into programming in the first place.

<comment><USER40> Same here (but with Zork)... Zork lead to Hypercard... Hypercard lead to a career as a programmer. Pretty cool when you think about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> FWIW, the article links to another article about Emily Short and Versu that isn't quite true anymore. They apparently worked out an agreement with Linden Labs, and Blood and Laurels is now available on the App Store for $2.99 - <USER3> bought it last night but haven't had a chance to play it yet.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think the genre is due for a revival. Another to look at is inkle's _80 Days_. It has some simple illustrations, but is mostly a choose-your-own- adventure style interaction with focus on conversation. Very well done.

<comment><USER28> Heck, the revival has already happened (at least compared to a decade ago). There was a long article in the New York Times the other month about Twine, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Always upvote Andrew Plotkin.

</comment><comment><USER43> I am a bit surprised text-only video games or interactive fictions don't bring back the narratology vs ludology debate from ~10 years ago.</comment>


U-Haul to Implement Nicotine-Free Hiring Policy - <AUTHOR> https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/19926/U-Haul-To-Implement-Nicotine-Free-Hiring-Policy-For-Healthier-Workforce/ <comment><USER2> If we start allowing corporations to dictate what their employees do in their own time, where does it stop?

Safety issues are one thing (and should be a matter of legal regulation, not individual corporate policy) but performance issues are another, and I've already seen them conflated in this thread. Should my employer have the right to impose a curfew on me so that I'm not tired the next day at work? Should they have the right to attach a tracker to me to make sure I'm not cheating?

We are already flirting with corporate-employment-as-citizenship and crazy dystopian things have become status quo, e.g. beyond-the-pale noncompetes for leaf-level wage-slave class employees, and _all_ "inventions"/IP developed by employees in their own time belonging to their employers regardless of relevance to their employer's business or support they received from their employer in developing them, and so on.

If an employee is performing poorly, fire them. That's where this should start, and where it should end. People are already selling their time to their employers, and they shouldn't have to sell their souls too.

<comment><USER3> Found the smoker.

Joking aside, non-smokers should not have to pay the insurance costs of smokers. It is all fine and good if you want to do that to yourself, but you should also have to pay for it. Simply not hiring smokers is the right decision, they dont get tangled up in the details of sorting out what diseases stem from smoking and what are natural.

It's different paying for insurance to cover incidents or conditions that people can't control (accidents, genetic diseases), or would be bad for society to not cover (pregnancy, psychological issues).

<comment><USER4> > non-smokers should not have to pay the insurance costs of smokers

The very idea of insurance becomes toxic when you start to pursue this idea. Everyone has some non-virtuous behavior we can identify in order to exclude them. Maybe your colon cancer is because you didn't eat enough fiber, so we're going to cut you off too.

All of this is why it makes no sense to have multiple "pools" for health insurance, because then it creates incentives for people like private insurance companies or employers to cherry-pick the healthiest people for their pool.

<comment><USER5> > _The very idea of insurance becomes toxic when you start to pursue this > idea_

Not really. In general an insurance protects you against risks outside of your control and/or they penalise you for increased risk, and will refuse to pay for intentional losses. We all experience this with car and home insurances.

Smoking and its health consequences are a personal decision and there is an argument that you should not expect others to subsidise your life choices.

That being said, in many countries smokers are indeed made to pay because tobacco products are heavily taxed and proceeds are used to fund healthcare.

In fact, I believe that for example in the UK taxes on tobacco products bring in more money than smoking costs the health service.

<comment><USER6> As someone who took up smoking when I was young, stupid, and vulnerable, describing it as a personal decision doesn't fit my reality. I quit eventually but it took 15 years of stop-start, combined with a constant, desperate sense of guilt and failure.

There are limits to free will. Depressed, anxious, abused and sick people are statistically more likely to make poor life choices. Let's give them a break.

Agree with what you say though. I live in the uk and it did ease the guilt a little knowing that I was at least paying my way.

<comment><USER7> Tobacco companies, and really every major branded company product, rely on manipulating shoppers vulnerabilities to make money. Advertising has caused a lot of problems that we cannot address until we excise the source.

I'm fully supportive of banning all substance use from tv that is not made by a nonprofit for educational purposes, forcing all substances to use generic black and white labels that Are only differentiated by the brand name written in size 12 font on the back of the container with the warning labels in size 16+ font on the front. Likewise banning all advertisements, and the sale/distribution of branded products associated with companies that sell drugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of Henry Ford:

> _The $5-a-day rate was about half pay and half bonus. The bonus came with > character requirements and was enforced by the Socialization Organization. > This was a committee that would visit the employees ' homes to ensure that > they were doing things the "American way." They were supposed to avoid > social ills such as gambling and drinking. They were to learn English, and > many (primarily the recent immigrants) had to attend classes to become > "Americanized." Women were not eligible for the bonus unless they were > single and supporting the family. Also, men were not eligible if their wives > worked outside the home._

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the- stor...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-story-of- henry-fords-5-a-day-wages-its-not-what-you-think/#3b27e5f9766d)

<comment><AUTHOR> And the Pullman company famous for its luxury railroad cars, whose paternalistic policies in the "model town" established outside Chicago to house its workers led directly to one of the great industrial crises in American history, the Pullman strike of 1894: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike)

<comment><USER9> From the Wikipedia article you reference: _" When his company laid off workers and lowered wages, it did not reduce rents, and the workers called for a strike."_

Was it the paternalistic policies or economic factors that caused the strike?

<comment><USER10> Both. The economic conditions of 1894 were the precipitating cause. The paternalistic policies were a contributing cause.

Pullman, Illinois was the definition of a company town.

[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/business-july- dec01-lab...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/business-july- dec01-labor_day_9-2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The definition of working hours are the hours when the employer can tell you what to do. If they want to say you can't smoke at night then it's no longer free time and they should be paying overtime.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure this works out. I know that people who operate heavy machinery in some states are tested to make sure they never, even in their free time, ingest certain things. Even legal ones. In their case it's done (IIRC) because of the impact those things can have on decision making and it's a safety issue. These situations can even be required by insurance companies to have coverage for the machinery operation.

While the case is different it does show a precedent for dictating some lifestyle choices as a matter of employment.

<comment><USER13> Pilots cannot consume alcohol 8 hours prior to flying for example.

<comment><USER14> The survival of hundreds of people has more value than freedom of an individual in his free time. One should not be allowed to put other people at risk for fun/entertainment/whatever.

Profit for a business, on the other hand, must not have more value than freedom of an individual. Otherwise, taking this to the extreme, it means slavery. Max profit for no freedom.

<comment><USER15> > _One should not be allowed to put other people at risk for fun > /entertainment/whatever._

I assume you mean to assert that the cutoff for putting people at risk for fun is somewhere below pilots going on a bender before flying, but somewhere above getting in a car and driving to the movie theater?

<comment><USER16> Going on a bender, getting into a car and driving is also illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is an interesting point in the argument for universal public healthcare. I doubt companies work care much if they weren't responsible for paying part of employee healthcare premiums. This was kinda already the case with the pre existing conditions nonsense before the ACA, but as costs skyrocket and companies are forced to make intrusive lifestyle demands from employees I wonder if it will finally tip the scales.

Universal healthcare already polls very well though... so maybe this won't be significant.

<comment><USER18> It would be significant if companies start realizing that they could offload some of their debt for "free" instead of using it as a bargaining chip in keeping employees.

<comment><USER19> I assume large employers have already done the math and decided keeping the status quo (locking in employees via health coverage) is a net positive (vs a nationalized system of some variety).

<comment><USER17> I don't think it has ever been presented as a possible option for anyone to seriously consider. Ultimately it would have to come down to the specific plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Slightly odd that they're conditioning this on nicotine and not tobacco or smoking. If someone quits smoking but relies on nicotine gum to get through occasional cravings, they would presumably still fall under the ban.

<comment><USER21> I think it's because there are health risks associated with most if not all forms of it. Some forms may have small health risks though. Really, they don't want to pay out the money for high health insurance anymore. I don't blame them, I guess. But it does seem discriminatory.

<comment><USER22> >it's because there are health risks associated with most if not all forms of it. Some forms may have small health risks though.

There is a strong causal relationship between _any_ nicotine consumption and a plethora of cardiovascular issues. While these effects might be small for the occasional user, they certainly have a detrimental impact on the health of habitual users.

<comment><USER20> > _There is a strong causal relationship between any nicotine consumption and > a plethora of cardiovascular issues._

{{cn}}

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I understand the health implications of being a nicotine user but I'm totally against policies like this.

It's your body, if you wish to smoke you should not face employment discrimination.

<comment><USER24> Strongly disagree. I am very allergic to smoke, cigarette smoke in particular. Its not just the smoker that's being affected. I've had numerous run ins with HR about second hand smoke on the job and how it affects my health. I wish my company had a policy like this.

<comment><USER25> This is a no nicotine policy, not a no smoking policy. It bans vaping, gum, patches, and lozenges. It bans employees from using them even if they are never used at work. The employee simply has to test positive for nicotine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Most 'Smoke-free' policies are superficial and often make the problems worse e.g. Smoke-free sites mean people smoke near entrances, causing more annoyance for non-smokers. I've noticed most building sites around London are smoke-free as they have a line of builders smoking on the pavement. Their smoke becomes unavoidable to anyone/ everyone walking past.

I absolutely detest smoking, especially when they're exposing others to their cancer. When my dad died [of lung cancer] we weren't on good terms as I wasn't sympathetic to him. It was no surprise he got lung cancer as he smoked like a chimney and had a chronic cough for over a decade. The reason I have zero sympathy is because they made my sister and I breathe that crap in as kids (my sister is also very anti-smoking).

However, I don't have a problem with vaping. It is many orders of magnitude safer than smoking yet it is tarred (excuse the pun) with the same brush. In The States along smoking kills 500,000 people per year. Lives would be saved if people were encouraged to vape (it's by far the lesser of two evils).

The media is even more anti-vaping. Like the scare stories about that mystery lung disease killing vapers. As I vape CBD myself (I have a condition that causes muscle spasms, vaping is by far the most effective way to reduce them) I followed the story very closely. It was apparent that it was THC vape products in/ around New York from the get-go, yet a totally different message was coming from the media. Even if they did attribute those deaths to vaping, 14 [in total] is better than the 1,400 per day from smoking!

<comment><USER27> Absolutely. I hate everything to do with smoking/vaping and drugs in general, but when it comes to policy, I go based on harm to others. Smoking has real harm to others, but vaping is pretty much harmless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In isolation, this is fine but if this is a harbinger of things to come, it seems quite problematic. Tobacco use is extremely strongly correlated with schizophrenia and while this would be difficult to ascertain, likely schizotypy spectrum (most of whom would be undiagnosed) as well. This may not be an ADA violation per se, but it seems to have that type of effect.

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia_and_tobacco_smok...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia_and_tobacco_smoking)

Edit: Wouldn't this potentially fall under disparate impact?

<comment><USER29> I guess you'll have to get a prescription for cigarettes then.

<comment><USER30> I sometimes wonder what a society would look like where everyone who is currently self-medicating for an illness using a recreational drug, was instead able to have easy access to a cheap prescribed drug for that illness with fewer side-effects. Would things like alcohol and tobacco even be popular any more?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In europe it is illegal to ask this kind of questions in an interview and you don't have to answer. Even if you lie they cannot fire you. If they do you can sue them.

[https://www.diepresse.com/3805136/verbotene-fragen-im- vorste...](https://www.diepresse.com/3805136/verbotene-fragen-im- vorstellungsgesprach)

<comment><USER32> Do they let people smoke in the workplace?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Are they as concerned about people's health, or do they just want to get rid of people who waste time on smoking breaks?

<comment><USER34> > Are they as concerned about people's health

Only instrumentally.

> or do they just want to get rid of people who waste time on smoking breaks?

No, they want to get lower group health insurance premiums.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Good luck to uhaul achieving hiring goals. I imagine that they have to disqualify a significant fraction for drug use, and now they want to add nicotine. Good luck with that. Maybe they really really just want to reduce the incentive to hiring.

There's an entire economic sector that struggles with finding good people because of the drug crisis. You don't encounter this problem in startup land, but talk to restaurants or places looking for general manpower that doesn't require a college degree. Finding talent who will pass drug tests is a struggle. Now adding a nicotine? Good luck.

We couldn't get universal healthcare fast enough. When you couple employment with healthcare, it is only logical that employment will start disqualifying people based on lifestyle choices. Start with nicotine today. Tomorrow add obesity and diabetes. Why both sides of isle seem to double-down, no triple down, on getting benefits from work is crazy to me. The left sees the policy as a way of extracting rents/dues from corporations. The right sees it as enforcing a 'working makes free' philosophy on the poor.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's an insane move, there's no doubt here. The question is: how did they came to that point? What are they trying to achieve? Is it about their HR brand, or just a pipedream of some C-level executive or even someone from the ranks below? What was the mindset behind this decision? Lots of questions, no answers yet.

</comment><comment><USER12> What might be the most interesting aspect of this is that...

company executives now (again?) think it's ok for them to dictate lifestyle choices on people that have nothing to do with how the business is executed as a matter of employment. And, it has nothing to do with religion.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's pretty frustrating how Americans have such authoritarian and dictatorial workplaces. We need more workplace democracy. Employers shouldn't be allowed to dictate what you legally do in your non-working hours if it has no impact on work (contraceptive coverage, etc.). This is how we got to the point that Amazon workers are pissing themselves in warehouses while trying to meet asinine metrics. Sad that all these gains in productivity haven't been leverages in any way to help wage earners and have mostly just continued going to the top .01%.

</comment><comment><USER38> I suspect they simply don't want their sales associates to smell like smoke.

</comment><comment><USER39> Having worked in an org where nearly everyone smoked, they usually were outside smoking and "Discussing problems and solutions" Every hour on the hour at least. Being at my desk getting work done, and then having to hear about how behind everyone else was or how swamped they are. Or "Mike your leaving?" "Yeah, My cases are all green" They scoff, but if you smoke two hours off the day, they easily did I kept track, you should stay late to complete your work in a timely manner.

<comment><USER40> cool story. What does this have to do with general nicotine consumption, the thing they're targeting? They're not banning smoking at the workplace, which is what you're talking about, they're targeting smoking in your own free time. Also, nicotine gum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> How is this not discriminatory?

<comment><USER42> It's certainly discriminatory. The question is if it's legal to discriminate in this way or if nicotine use is a protected class. That they're choosing to only implement this in some states may indicate that they're not totally confident.

<comment> blaser-waffle Smoking anything has no relation to protected class status.

The question is if they'd qualify as Disabled under the ADA as addictions can qualify as a disability.

<comment><USER43> It's quite ridiculous if that's the case. Someone getting him or herself willingly into an addiction (especially nicotine) should not constitute a "disability". Unless they're classified as mentally disabled since they couldn't judge right from wrong to begin with, in which case they have other issues to worry about.

<comment><USER44> So if I get drunk and drive into a tree and can't work anymore because my injuries were too severe, I should be able to get disability, but if I managed to get hooked on an addictive substance then I can't even be allowed to manage my addiction symptoms?

Only thing ridiculous here is your short-sightedness.

<comment><USER43> Perhaps, getting drunk is a deliberate decision in general. People should face the consequences of such (and we already see it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I feel sorry for the field staff and local managers who have to recruit talent. Also for potential recruits that require nicotine doses (via non- smoking means) to control inflammation.

</comment><comment><USER46> Interesting to see this in a tight labor market. I also wonder how much they'll save on health insurance.

<comment><USER37> >Interesting to see this in a tight labor market.

Most Americans still can't put $400 together for an emergency and wages haven't risen in decades, so even though the unemployment rate is better it's clear workers have zero leverage to negotiate for better working conditions or higher wages. We need labor unions badly in America. This would never happen in Western Europe. While America may be a democracy, most Americans live under the tyranny, for better or worse, of their employers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The nicotine half life is 2 hours. Don't know how they plan to enforce this.

<comment><USER48> Some comments above claim nicotine can be tested weeks after consuming. I wish someone could clarify if this is possible.

<comment><USER49> Just like weed, and many other substances, you can find traces in hair weeks or months after exposure. So if you smoke semi-regularly you'd always test positive depending on the threshold.

<comment><USER48> But this is about a piss test, not hair test, so could this be done with urine too? Also don't human body produce nicotine naturally as a neurotransmitter (unlike THC etc), which means they need to use a range as a marker for "smoker" so there _will_ be false positives, how do they deal with this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> And soon connected to your fitness tracker.

</comment><comment><USER51> You're all missing the point. Some statistician worked out that nicotine use likely correlates to age and this gives them a way to fire old people.

<comment><USER52> Existing workers are grandfathered in, the new policy applies only to new hires.

<comment><USER51> For now.

This is still basically being used to discriminate against older applicants.

<comment> blaser-waffle Bollocks. Vaping is incredibly popular, to the point where Juul was taken to task for marketing incredably hard at high schoolers.

It's a nicotine ban, not a smoking ban. That means vapes too, which means plenty of younger workers tossed into the mix as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> 2020 already feels like a train-wreck. The next thing will be caffeine... after that will be non-hiring based on DNA predispositions.

<comment><USER54> It's a rather large leap to go from discriminating against people who consume a thing by choice to discriminating against their DNA that they have no control over.

<comment><USER55> IIRC there is a law specifically prohibiting DNA discrimination, so that law would have to be repealed first.

<comment><USER56> There's laws specifically prohibiting a lot of things. That doesn't stop those discriminations from happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> they would do better to reward the non smokers.

</comment><comment><USER58> Here's some other bright ideas along the same line. Don't hire:

People who don't eat pork

People who eat pork

People with feet over or under a certain size

People who drive cars older than fifteen years

People who take public transportation

People who eat vegetarian some days but not others

People who eat bread without yeast

People who don't drink sugary drinks or eat sugary stuff

People who love chicken and watermelon

People who fast for a month

People who abstain from meat for forty days

Vegetarians and vegans

...

You can take this in any direction you possibly want because our governments don't give a shit. You are free to die of starvation because no one will hire you due to discrimination and hate and the government doesn't care.

</comment><comment><USER43> Good start. Hopefully more companies and work places follow with similar policies.

<comment><USER59> I refuse to work for a company that wants my pee.

In an interview some time back, the interviewer mentioned drug testing. I replied, "Do I get a bottle of the HR manager's urine in return?" They were a bit flustered. "How do I know my superiors aren't stoned?"

I let him twist a bit and then took my leave.

Absent real public safety or other liability concerns, control freaks like this can pound sand.

<comment><USER43> Smoking can easily be detected without a urine test. The disgusting smell lingers on the smoker after they smoke for example.

<comment><USER59> Read the article.

"In states where testing is allowed, applicants must consent to submit to nicotine screening in the future to be considered."

And you are aware that there are nicotine delivery methods that do not involve cigarettes?

<comment><USER43> I still don't see the issue. They want their employees to be drug free. Athletes already undergo drug testing for example.

<comment><USER59> You'll spot the issue in your word choice.

 _They want their employees to be drug free_

I do not belong to my employer. Maybe you're comfortable ransoming your bodily fluids in order to labor for others, but I refuse to do humiliating things that model one-way power dynamics for a right to work.

And until you show me how getting stoned offers a competitive performance advantage to truck rental clerks, athletes are utterly irrelevant. More on- point comparisons include prisoners and children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> This is just an attack on people with mental illness

[https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-public- policy/...](https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-public- policy/tobacco-and-smoking)

<comment><USER61> Is it absolutely proven that the causality isn't the other way around, and that smoking doesn't cause mental illness? Because that would be my assumption with a standout stat like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Dave Ramsey [in]famously fires people that cheat on their spouses. Opinions of his financial advice aside, his justification is nobody is making you cheat on your spouse and they are not a protected class. A lot of parallels here, health benefits are expensive for an employer to buy. Given these are recreational substances, it would be in everyone's best interest to avoid these hires.

</comment><comment><USER63> I doubt this is legal. Can a company refuse to hire people who drink alcohol because they're statistically less healthy than those who never drink? It's already illegal to discriminate on the basis of other factors which influence health, such as age and pregnancy.

<comment><USER64> Smokers and drinkers are (generally) not a protected class in US employment law whereas pregnant people and older people are [1]

Some states may have additional employment laws that protect smokers.

[1] [https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/smallbusiness/faq/who_is_prot...](https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/smallbusiness/faq/who_is_protected.cfm)

<comment><USER65> It isn't an EEOC violation, but possibly an ADA one. Discriminating against nicotine addicts might be illegal.

<comment><USER66> > An individual with a disability is defined by the ADA as a person who has a > physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major > life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, > or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment.

I'm not sure nicotine addiction fits the bill, what major life activities does it substantially inhibit?

[https://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm#anchor62335](https://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm#anchor62335)

<comment><USER67> _what major life activities does it substantially inhibit?_

Apparently, holding a job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Even a little tobacco stinks up the place and cigarette butts pollute. Vapes don't do this though.

<comment><USER69> I've sat in cube farms where others were vaping. I wouldn't say it "stunk up the place" but it was perceptible.

<comment><USER25> It's like the bad wig effect: You only notice the vapes that do smell.

I was very surprised to find that a coworker was secretly vaping at his desk. He'd been doing it for weeks before I saw him take a puff. Nobody noticed any smell.

If the vape juice is unscented, the only aerosolized compound should be propylene glycol– the same substance used in fog machines.

<comment><USER70> Also the nicotine salt ones are much more discreet since they don't need as much vapor per puff.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should we accept an acquisition? - <AUTHOR>

We are a bootstrapped three person team of MIT CS grads. We've built a solid product in the enterprise space and are at the alpha stage. We are looking at raising  a seed round from a top tier VC but we recently received an acquisition offer. This would give each of us $2mm over a golden handcuff period (we have no outside investment yet). We believe in the product and the team. We are new grads so we want to learn the process of doing a startup (raising money, building teams, finding customers). On the flipside we could take the small success and build a company again with a more solid financial background and success history -- but have to be corporate guys for 2 years. Any opinions on what we should do? <comment><USER2> I like mahesh's idea, but keep this in mind.

If you take an offer now, you'll have some stability going forward, as well as a successful exit.

If you continue on your own, you've got the possibility of gaining only experience if the company fails for some reason.

You're young, so you'll have a great learning experience either way.

If the company that is looking to acquire you is also young and has the right culture for you, you will still learn a lot while there. You say you want to learn about raising money, building teams and finding customers. Have you spoken to the acquiring company about what you'd like to learn? If so, they could provide you with that learning while you're with them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Take a one week holiday together someplace you like. Have fun, drink some beers, climb some mountain, and think together about a sensible and coherent way to go. Go with that and don't look back. But this is only what I'd do.

</comment><comment><USER4> Two problems here: 1) Is your aim to sell this company? 2) If yes, is now the best time to sell?

Regarding 1): What sort of company is it? Do you have an underlying philosophy for what you are doing? Do you believe strongly in what you are doing? Or is it just a company for a company's sake? Are you interested in and willing to spend the time and effort to build it up - do you think it could get big?

</comment><comment><USER5> yes. an exit changes everything</comment>


A Theoretical Framework for Back-Propagation (1988) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/publis/pdf/lecun-88.pdf <comment><USER2> Coming from a physics background I once upon a time learned the basics of neural nets from Hertz' book [https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9a_SyUG-A24C](https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9a_SyUG-A24C)

It is obviously outdated with respect to modern applications of NNs, but I still think he explains the basics of layered and recurrent networks in a clear fashion.

<comment><USER3> good memory for that book

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OP left a lot of typos in the title, it almost reads as "O Thororotocal fromowork for bockpropogotion"

<comment><USER5> Fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> (1988)

<comment><USER5> Added. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Using Linux vs. Knowing Linux - <AUTHOR> http://tuts.pinehead.tv/2012/08/26/using-linux-vs-knowing-linux/ Learning some Linux is extremely easy; there are hundreds of resources out there that will walk you through some simple install tasks. However, really "knowing" Linux is a tremendously difficult task that requires more commitment. But in reality, that's the same for all server operating systems on the market. Linux is just harder and more flexible because it's open, command line, and highly maintained by thousands of awesome open source programmers. Some distributions are community built, but other distributions such as Redhat, Suse, and Ubuntu are maintained at the enterprise level and even make over a billion dollars a year in revenue. <comment><USER2> This article confuses learning Linux with learning network architecture from layer 7 on down. The bulk of the internet, and every service on it runs on Linux for reasons that are fairly obvious to anyone here. But there is nothing special about Linux other than its ubiquity, meaning there is nothing fundamentally "Linux" about the internet, nor about the application stack of the typical web service, nor the underlying protocols upon which they are built.

"Knowing" Linux does not mean you "know" the internet, nor vice versa.

<comment><USER3> Also, Linux GUIs aren't necessarily insecure or unstable. The big advantage of shells over GUIs comes from economies of scale: if you're managing a data center full of machines, you'd much rather automate your tasks with shell scripts than perform the same operation over and over again in the GUI. This isn't unique to Linux. People who manage large Windows-based data centers also use scripts (e.g., PowerShell) for administration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The really important thing in Linux is not the command line it is the API, and how to programm it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Another Slashvertisment disguised as news.

<comment><USER6> I think you have the wrong website.

<comment><USER5> I think you have problems with abstract concepts...

<comment><USER6> Well, it's pretty obvious this isn't Slashdot but I'm curious, where did you get your psychology degree because without it your analysis rings pretty hollow. Oh, and the affected ellipsis at the end of your drivel... What does that imply about your psyche? That you like to wrap your trollish sniping in a little pretentious veneer? Thought so.

<comment><USER5> No, it means I don't want to read adverts disguised as content. But you're too busy with the psychoanalysis to figure it out. How are you connected to the slashvertisers?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tinder Leaked Everyone's School/Work Info. Called It a Feature - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gotinder.com/ <comment><USER2> This and the new message interface are just copies of Bumble. When your competition starts to gain steam, copy them! lol

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to editorialize in the title, but I'm not going to write a blog about it.

<comment><USER3> You can post a comment in the thread giving your opinion, but it's against the rules to put your opinion in the submission title. On HN, submitters get no special privilege to frame the story for everyone else.</comment></comment>


Friend of Bradley Manning Drops Lawsuit Against Feds Over Seized Laptop - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/lawsuit_dropped/

<comment><AUTHOR> Note to mods: this is my second submission in and hour - I'm not someone that normally submits a lot of links, but I just saw this in the sidebar of the other article I submitted and thought it would be interesting to the board.</comment>


McConnell says Trump nominee to replace Ginsburg 'will receive a [Senate] vote' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/09/18/us/trump-vs-biden#mcconnell-says-trumps-nominee-to-replace-ruth-bader-ginsburg-will-receive-a-vote-in-the-senate <comment><USER2> Wasn't he saying 5 years ago that it was wrong to appoint in the entire _year_ prior to the election and change over?

<comment><USER3> It's not even worth pointing out and discussing R historical context. Winning and power are the only motivators. Everything, -everything- else is on the table to those ends.

<comment><USER4> and darkness falls

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> RBG RIP she will be hard to replace.</comment>


Tensorflow Python 2.7 vs. Python 3.5: What is your setup? - <AUTHOR> how do you switch back and forth between 2.7 and 3.5
I am tired of getting  2.7 library errors every time every time I try to run 3.5 project. What is your ideal set up how do you maintain python path for two different versions  of the language
Any thoughts advising best practices appreciated <comment><USER2> Well, i am suprised nobody say a word about Pyenv:

[https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv](https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv)

You can use a lot of python versions, including pypy.

</comment><comment><USER3> virtualenvs, and outside of those taking care to always have proper

        #!/usr/bin/env pythonX

lines at the top.

<comment><AUTHOR> virtualenvs? can you please elaborate

<comment><USER4> You're in for a treat.

[http://python-guide-pt- br.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dev/virtu...](http://python-guide-pt- br.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dev/virtualenvs/)

<comment><AUTHOR> How is this a treat not clear it's not straightforward and not obvious as to how to switch back-and-forth between 2.7 and 3.5 why are there two dangling versions

<comment><USER3> for projects you only use with one Python version, you have a virtualenv per project, with the right version, and enable the virtualenv when you work on that project. (or you only do that for the python version you use less, but virtualenvs have more benefits than just managing python versions). If you need to test something with two versions, you have one env per python version and enable whichever one you need.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you switch back-and-forth

<comment><USER4> From the page I linked:

> To begin using the virtual environment, it needs to be activated:

> $ source my_project/bin/activate

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use Anaconda, which supports different concurrent installs

</comment><comment><USER6> I use Python 3.6 in an Anaconda env</comment>


Toyota Lifts the Veil on Its Guardian Driver-Assist System - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/ces-toyota-lifts-veil-from-driver-assist-system <comment><USER2> Bit of an aside, but; I recently was talking to a engineering lead at Rolls Royce and asked why it seems like Silicon Valley is coming in and eating car manufacturers lunch on autopilot/auto-assist/driver-assist and he said they aren't really, none of them are very far along compared to the car companies. It's to do with the car companies engineering with an eye to redundant systems that all play harmoniously with each other rather than just tacking LIDAR onto a car and using TensorFlow to do image recognition.

He pointed me to GeorgeHotz YouTube channel who developed in the open for CommaAI (now shut down), this company got 8m in funding (small cheese to a VC, but still showed there was interest in the project) and he was just googling answers and training his model on one single video he downloaded of the internet.

The 'play loose and fast' with the rules approach won't fly with self-driving and the car companies are looking to build something that works in the field with as close to imperceptible failures as can be realistically allowed.

The incumbents are building it right, but slow. And I would much prefer that approach if it leads to increased safety

<comment><USER3> Waymo claims to have autonomously driven 8 million miles on public roads, and 5 billion miles in simulation. That doesn't seem "fast and loose". Has any commercial automaker conducted anywhere near that amount of testing?

<comment><USER4> And what is there go-to market strategy? Most cars that people can buy today have active safety features as an option or in the case of Toyota, a standard in all of their cars. How is google technology, which is so advanced, mitigating crashes and fatalities today?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The driver might almost forget the help he's getting, and attribute the > success to his own powers

I really like this idea but I feel this is the key in getting it right. Several video games achieve this feeling of seamlessness when translating raw input from a controller to in-game actions. However this does occasionally go wrong and can be a frustrating experience in video games (especially if you're playing online competitively) but in the real world it can have much more drastic consequences.

Also, given the complexity of the real world, it's somewhat scary to think of a scenario where you're actually trying to take a drastic action on the road but are prevented by the system from doing-so because it feels that the action is unsafe.

<comment><USER6> The lane assist in my VW can get a little troublesome in areas of road construction where lane markers have been painted over and such. At times the car picks up the wrong lane area and encourages me to stay there instead of the real lane. It's more of an annoyance than anything but it's still a distraction when at highway speeds

<comment><USER7> Next version should detect whether a site is under-construction (# of cones per 100m, GPS-tagged construction zone from publicly available DB, sudden speed change, unexpected traffic etc.) and turn on the soft-mode for lane- assist where it says 'You might be driving through a construction zone, so lane assist will not fight'.

<comment> matt-attack I feel that until a car can ascertain that it's in a construction zone using only vision (like you and I do) we'll never achieve what we need. Any autonomous system that relies on (or even incorporates) stored databases of any kind is implicitly worse than a teenage first time driver and should therefore not be considered acceptable.

<comment> saiya-jin Indeed, we don't get basic things like GPS signal 100% right 86400 seconds per day. Relying on some remote DB which can crash, be hacked, cut off from internet, down for maintenance etc will be a problem. Or car just losing data connection (like it happens with phones).

Its nice to dream about ideal future, but if lives rely on reliability, it either works 100%, or shouldn't.

<comment><USER8> 100% is stronger than we need - humans are not 100%. If we were there would be no crashes. Even sudden mechanical failure could just affect the one car and not cause others if humans were perfect. We just need to be better than humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad they called out the 737 crash that was attributed to automation paradox. That's a real danger here, and I hope they do something about it.

<comment><USER10> I feel like this angle is massively overplayed in articles about autonomous vehicles.

Is automation paradox a real issue? Absolutely. But at present, all the evidence seems to indicate that the people automated cars will save far outnumber the people they will kill.

Focusing on the dangers is alarmist and misleading. The 737 crash is a good example really - I've never heard anyone with experience in the field suggest anything other than that the automation makes planes safer. Focusing instead on the fact that the automation isn't perfectly safe only makes sense if you're a media company looking to scare people.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's overplayed at all. It gives people a false sense of a security when they have automation that works 99% of the time. Look at all the people who think that Teslas can drive themselves. Most of the time they are fine, but then they are lulled into a false sense of security. Sure, they get a ton of warnings, but you start to ignore the warnings when it keeps working most of the time.

Heck, my car has adaptive cruise control, and I already find myself wandering sometimes, assuming that it will slam on the brakes if someone gets in front of me. And I'm well aware of the automation paradox and its dangers.

<comment><USER10> The issue I have is that when people talk about the dangers of automation they never compare them to the dangers of non-automated driving. They always make it sound as if automation is making things more dangerous.

The current evidence suggests that semi-autonomous cars are on balance _safer_ than purely human driven cars. The evidence isn't conclusive, but I've literally seen no evidence presented to support the case that semi-autonomous cars are more dangerous - at best I've seen people argue that we can't yet trust the safety claims. Teslas have been on the road long enough now and in large enough numbers that if they were really more dangerous than non-semi- autonomous cars, I think we'd have seen some non-anecdotal evidence by now.

The reasonable presentation of the issue would be "semi-autonomous vehicles likely make people safer, but there are still dangers and people should pay attention."

Instead, the story you're telling is "Tesla drivers are dying, semi-autonomous cars are dangerous, and you should be scared."

You must see how this is misleading at best, and likely downright counterproductive from an overall safety point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's the full Guardian press conference from CES today [https://youtu.be/SbtfdrC6Cho?t=592](https://youtu.be/SbtfdrC6Cho?t=592)

</comment><comment><USER12> IMHO, Toyota's more cautious approach to AI-augmented driving is the correct way to move towards autonomous vehicles. If we want humans to trust a computer to drive, start off by having the computer only intervene to save humans from situations where they would have crashed otherwise.

Tesla's so-called "autopilot" looks shockingly dangerous and reckless in comparison, and may hinder acceptance of autonomous driving in the long-term.

</comment><comment><USER13> What happens when someone who learns to "drive" with a system like this ends up in a rental car that doesn't have it? I've personally watched friends almost side swipe cars after becoming too dependent on "blind spot detection" telling them when it's safe to change lanes.

<comment><USER14> The same thing that happens when someone learns to "drive" with an automatic transmission and then ends up in a rental car with a manual transmission: They sheepishly admit they can't drive the vehicle, and ask for one with more automation.

<comment><USER15> In the UK you aren't permitted to drive a manual vehicle if you passed your test in an automatic.

<comment><USER14> Same in Australia. Are you allowed to do so in the U.S.? I kind of meant to imply there would be different licensing for "ADAS-only" drivers.

<comment><USER16> Yes. You can pass your test in an automatic, then buy a manual and have zero clue how to drive it and it's 100% legal. Just like you can pass your test in a little 1000kg 2 seater and immediately after the test go and buy a 12-tonne converted RV and drive that with no extra training or qualifications. US is extremely lax with its driver training.

<comment><USER17> Sounds like other countries are over-regulated.

In all of those cases you're dangerous for maybe a day while you familiarize yourself with the new vehicle and most people behave very, very conservatively when driving something different than they're used to. Nobody is passing their test in a Miata then renting a box truck and saying "yes, I can totally take this hairpin just as fast as I would in a Miata". The biggest danger from people switching from small to large vehicles seems to be bumping things in tight spaces (parking lots) and with manual the danger is rolling back too much on a hill start or stalling it when trying to pull into traffic. While certainly expensive and inconvenient I don't think those sorts of accidents are cause enough danger to the public or are common enough to prohibit people from driving a manual or renting a box truck without a special license.

I think people being unfamiliar with what they're driving is an edge case a lot like mechanical failure, everyone hand wrings over it, some jurisdictions take steps to try and prevent it but in the real world it's just such a tiny fraction of accidents (mostly minor single car accidents at that) compared to people being stupid that trying to prevent these edge cases is a waste of time and money. Resources are finite and they would be better spent elsewhere.

<comment><USER16> So I personally disagree with what you are saying. If anything, most countries are extremely under-regulated when it comes to driving - it just happens that US probably leads the way in how under-regulated it is. In most western countries it's far far far too easy to get a driving licence - I think it should be extremely difficult and it should be testing a whole range of different situations on the road, not just the operation of a vehicle + 30-60 minutes on the road. Mandatory 30-40 hours of training followed by a two practical tests in different conditions sounds like a good start.

And no, driving a bigger(especially larger than 3.5 tonnes) vehicle is not just about the vehicle being physically larger and harder to park. That's why the European categories for driving such large vehicles(C and D categories) have very different theoretical tests than a regular B category for driving small(<3.5 tonne) cars. There's a whole host of laws saying where and when you can drive such a vehicle, and speed limits are different for them, regardless of what the speed limit signs say. Part of the test for C category includes safe loading of a heavy vehicle - like in your example, if you rent a box truck and put a 2 tonne pallet on one side, you're going to have a bad time. That's why the training is important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm reminded of this report from CMU on Toyota's Unintended Acceleration and Software Saftey from a few years ago. [https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...](https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_slides.pdf) If you haven't seen it before, its an interesting set of slides.

</comment><comment><USER19> So what are the features of this system exactly?

<comment><USER20> It won't let you drive into a ditch or into a wall (or into the back of a truck), it seems.

Jet fighters (also passenger ones) nowadays are flown by computers, you push the joystick to tell it where to go, and the computers control the flight surfaces to follow your request but not beyond the point that it would fall out of the sky. And TFA seems to suggest the system will prevent crashes, so it would probably stop you if you e.g. tried to swerve into an oncoming truck.

<comment><USER21> Jet fighters also require computer control because their aerodynamic design is such that they would not be stable without constant computer-commanded micro- adjustments in the control surfaces.

<comment><USER22> Jet fighters are inherently unstable so you can pull off combat manuevers.

Regular planes are inherently stable so they can fly closer to a glider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's getting harder to buy a car without crazy stuff.

I just want a car.

I got one that wants to take over steering, disturbing me as I drive. I disabled that. It also wants to slam on the brakes whenever it gets confused. That misfeature must be disabled every time I start the car. Then there is the built-in cellular data and GPS and the microphone and at least 3 cameras. Yes, they are tracking me, and if they don't do worse already then it's just an involuntary software update away.

Some day this will be hacked, and millions will die. That will be a memorable day.

<comment><USER24> I personally like those features in my Infinity Q50 and always keep them on. As these features get better I suspect most people would prefer to keep them enabled.

<comment><USER23> This is alien to me. Tell me more. Do you trust the software to not have dangerous bugs? Do you drive while text messaging, commenting on Hacker News, or watching video? Are you perfectly fine with your whereabouts and driving style being known and sold, for example to insurance companies or toll collectors or the police? Are you using the features to compensate for any kind of disability? Would you be fine with a car like HAL 9000, saying "I'm sorry _muzika_ , I'm afraid I can't do that" to you?

<comment><USER25> Well, as many futurologists say... a self-driving car (or drive-assisting) doesn't have to be perfect. It merely needs to be better than a human driver. Data seems to suggest that that hurdle isn't that high.

Then again, I do share your concern about hackability. Just a single grand catastrophe would turn the scales over for a long time. And nothing suggests that car software is of high quality currently.

>Do you drive while text messaging

Amazingly many people do, even _after_ being told that it's about as dangerous as driving drunk.

<comment><USER26> I have said this before. Auto manufacturers are not the greatest at security. Jeep was not exactly receptive to fixing its hacked vehicles until it was exposed at blackhat. I agree, someone is going to do something simple like hack whatever main system is talking to all the cars and do something simple like tell all of them to accelerate and that is their last order.

Can we all trust the car companies to do their due diligence and have all their software audited. Do we trust their proprietary algorithms?

At least when i am driving myself i know what is going on in my head. Yes it might sound a little conceded, but who do you really trust.

Also as a side mark (to get me downvoted :) ), i can understand automatic braking and some of the other things, but if you need the machine just to help maintain your lane for you...you probably should not be driving (i seriously work with someone who praises their car for helping them not drift out of their lane).

<comment><USER27> > but if you need the machine just to help maintain your lane for you...you > probably should not be driving

This is not actually an argument against putting lane keeping assist functionality into cars. Yes, distracted driving is bad. But there's no way to completely prevent it, so the auto industry should do everything they can to mitigate the harm.

<comment><USER26> A five point racing harness is more secure. And a roll cage will help in rollovers. Not mandatory either, but would mitigate a lot of harm. There are a lot of other things they can do as well.

If you hold peoples hands on stuff they start slacking, they become dependent and cannot do something without assistance. My kid plays a FPS online on his xbox one, he started off doing ok and getting better. He found out you can turn on aim assist and got really good. If he turns off the aim assistance, he is worse than he ever was.

I am not disagreeing with you that lane assist, now that is exists, might not be useful. I just feel we are moving to a world like the people on the ship in the movie Wall-e.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Quick, someone make a competitor named Colossus.

</comment><comment><USER29> This might be a good way to lock people into a brand if they become dependent on systems like this to drive somewhat decently.

<comment><USER30> The press release says they will offer to license the technology to "all" auto makers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This sounds very bad.

It should be all or nothing control, at least that way people will not become marginally complacent, just out of practice (although most drivers can not drive for a month and drive again no problem).

</comment><comment><USER32> Has Toyota ever demonstrated any real-world success in autonomous driving or they only have PR articles and marketing videos?

<comment><USER14> You're getting downvotes but I don't see any links to examples of real-world Toyota autonomous driving.

Honestly I kind of feel like Toyota's still stuck in the 90s. They were ahead of the game but all they seem to have done since then is endlessly fine-tune and finesse the same vehicles.

<comment><USER33> '...but all they seem to have done since then is endlessly fine-tune and finesse the same vehicles.'

If only the other mainstream manufacturers would follow suit?

<comment><USER34> I love the 1GR-FE/5VZ-FE/2UZ-FE engines, I would just keep buying the same car with those. Except they last for hundreds of thousands of miles, so I might only need one other in my lifetime.

<comment><USER14> I just want a low km 2JZ-GTE so that when my 7M-GTE blows up again I have something better to replace it with. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> 99% of new cars sold within the U.S. are going to have basic self-driving capability in less than three years. Not really seeing what's unique about what Toyota is doing here.

<comment><USER36> From the last time I looked, none of the competitors have accident avoidance beyond automatic emergency braking. Full motion planning to avoid an accident seems like a huge step forward.

edit: Seeing your later comment, you seem to think this is emergency braking. The video clearly shows this goes beyond emergency braking.

<comment><USER35> I get that it's not just emergency breaking. My point though is that by 2022, all new cars are going to have both the sensors and the processing hardware needed to do this. So most new cars will probably have this sort of functionality, even if they're not required to by this specific industry agreement. (Lots of cars already have this, including ones that aren't even that expensive, e.g. pretty much any Subaru.)

<comment><USER36> The requirements for hardware and processing to achieve emergency braking is drastically different than the 360 degree situational awareness and avoidance that Toyota is showing here.

You can buy a 2017 Camry with emergency braking. It uses a laser and camera at the front and looks like a Camry. Compare the module to the Guardian sensor bank you see on the roof there. It's not for show. We will not see this sensor bank or these capabilities on every new car in 2022 and the article you posted doesn't remotely suggest that.

I think you're underestimating what Toyota is doing here.

<comment><USER35> How is that different than the active safety features on any other car? E.g. most cars already have an optional package to detect other cars in your blind spots, keep you centered in your lane, etc.

<comment><USER27> Toyota demonstrated a test where the car determines that it cannot brake in time to avoid hitting an obstacle, so it decides to swerve around it instead. No combination of blind spot warnings and lane keeping assist can come anywhere close to performing such a feat. I'm also not aware of any car currently for sale that will accelerate to avoid being hit from behind.

There are quite a few vehicles that have at least some of the sensor capability required for this kind of functionality, but the hard part is the software/AI, not the cameras and LIDAR.

<comment><USER16> >> I'm also not aware of any car currently for sale that will accelerate to avoid being hit from behind

Mercedes cars do that. They also preemptively play grey noise over the speakers if the collision is imminent, to protect your eardrums - that's something I don't think any other manufacturer is doing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Playboy tortoise had so much sex he saved his entire species - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/11/americas/diego-playboy-tortoise-sex-life-galapagos-scli-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> Great example of founder effect in action. This population will be studies for as long as humans keep the thread history intact.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do wonder how genetic variation is maintained when you have common lineage like this.

<comment><USER4> It isn't maintained, see "population bottleneck" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck#Other_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck#Other_animals)</comment></comment>