Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (1976) - <AUTHOR> http://www.zoon.cc/stupid/ <comment><USER2> What makes a person stupid? If I have a friend who squanders their money while I save and build up wealth, are they stupid? What if they have a much happier and more fulfilling life than I do?

If you have a difficult job (like brain surgeon), but are terrible at most of the other parts of your life, does that make you stupid?

Are slow readers stupid? What if they invent a product or start a business that makes them a lot of money?

"Smart" and "stupid" are such harsh, black and white terms. They leave no room for the many shades of gray in between.

We all think we're smart, even if we say we don't. No one wants to be the dumb kid.

I feel like being "smart" usually just means you can think and process information a little bit faster than others. But like having a super fast cpu installed, it's really a matter of what you do with it. You could write a bestselling novel on a slower computer. You could have a super computer and just go on Facebook all day.

It seems like every time I feel like I'm smart, I see someone who I thought was dumber who is more successful or happier than me, and I wonder if I was that much smarter in the first place.

<comment><USER3> From the text:

      "A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."

I think all of your examples give the person some gain, or causes good to others.

<comment><USER4> This looks like a hint on a whole possible matrix:

\- Personal gain, others' gain: "good businessman".

\- Personal gain, others' loss: "evil".

\- Personal loss, others' gain: "benefactor" / "saint".

\- Personal loss, others' loss: "stupid".

<comment><USER5> Number 3 is called helpless for a reason. Even saints typically attempt to maximize gain, helpless do not - they tend to minimize loss instead.

In fact I would say many if not most people are helpless. This is part H1. Part H2 is the benefactor.

Likewise part I1 which is upper left triangle of I would be the inventor, scientist or good reformer. (They benefit but society benefits more). Bottom right of I would be good businessman. (Their own benefit is higher than society.) Top right B2 would be exploitative businessman. (Society loses a bit but the businessman gains a lot.)

As per political systems, capitalism attempts to promote rightmost two quadrants. Socialism (not Stalinism) attempts to penalize bottom half.

Essentially the full graph would be a square with a 45º rotated square inside. The stupid have two categories too - unnecessary cutting corners and messing up for minimal immediate gain with net loss (shortsighted) - top right of stupid quadrant - and plain old danger to society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are lots of strategies which are rational, non-stupid, in a specific context but irrational & stupid if context is expanded. Eg. Paying it forward by advising a sociopath, working on something interesting despite it being damaging, not being religious because its illogical even if being religious makes you feel/act better.

A better general definition of stupidity as a non-rational strategy would be "taking an action in deliberate ignorance of context". Not "taking a non- rational action". Root contexts are pretty simple and almost universally agreed "don't be an ass to others", "aim for happiness". If you don't ensure your action within context is rational, your being stupid.

Obviously its difficult in many scenarios to grasp the larger context, but if we promoted this definition we would as a society optimise for core ethics and be less apt to being manipulated by a minority.

Rationalism, about as useful as a piece of string is long :P

<comment><USER7> > not being religious because its illogical even if being religious makes you > feel/act better.

It's not exactly a choice. I for the life of me just can't start believing one or another unfounded story, because there's no basis to choose which story to believe. Even taking into account prevalent beliefs of the society as a basis, I can't imagine what kind of mental stunt I need to perform to promote probability of the hypothesis to one. Deep brain stimulation could probably work, but it's too risky.

<comment><USER6> I guess it doesn't make you feel better then :) Its subjective, but some can take comfort in rituals and beliefs that rely on a certain amount of doublethink.

PS I don't think you need to compare and contrast, just go with say an interesting one like Jedi (lots in England according to the census) and see how it goes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rather than asserting that the laws of stupidity are an inherent characteristic of people, I think it would be more useful or productive to apply the laws to human actions instead. So the third law would be something like:

A stupid action is anything that causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while the executor of action derives no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

The laws could serve as a heuristic for people who consistently perform stupid actions, and reconsider their position from being a plague to something (better?) like a bloodsucking parasite. Admittedly, the laws of stupidity seem to be in conflict with the laws of conservation. Then again, This comment probably qualifies as an act of stupidity.

<comment><USER9> One might also usefully characterise social institutions thus. Also technologies. (For instance tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline is in the bandit quadrant, as are cigarettes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid > individuals in circulation.

I think it's very arrogant and pretentious to call other people 'stupid' and I try to refrain from doing it. We all know people who are much smarter than us, surely we must sound stupid to them. Besides, one can be stupid for one thing (say mathematics) and shine for something else (raising kids or playing the trumpet).

That being said, I can't help thinking a lot of people are stupid, especially when I read news or youtube comments. It's amazing how so many people can be dumb, mean, uneducated and bitter.

<comment><USER11> > We all know people who are much smarter than us, surely we must sound stupid > to them [...]

I believe you misunderstood the article, because the "stupid" it discusses isn't relative. Quite the contrary: the third (and golden) basic law states that

 _A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses._

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This manual, as I may call it, is hilarious. But its usefulness cannot be discounted. The first rule while dealing with people is "Individuals are who they are." And if in the past you had an encounter with someone who fits the label of "stupid", as described by these laws, then there is a high chance that the person is going to display stupidity even in the foreseeing future.

As a friend of mine once remarked in Hindi-- "Once a chutiya, always a chutiya." (Translation ) "Once a stupid, always a stupid"

</comment><comment><USER13> I have never met a stupid person. Unwise, thoughtless, ignorant, uncouth, vain, angry - yes. Stupid no. I have never met someone I believed I could not make understand something, if I articulated it in the right way. I never met someone who, if confronted with a wrong action was intellectually incapable of understanding what was wrong: emotionally yes, but not intellectually.

I think stupid is just an inaccurate term and being pejorative brings little to any understanding of a situation or a person.

<comment><USER14> Really, truly? The interesting question to me is then: why not? Or how? There are many individuals on the planet who, through no fault of their own, have severely limited mental capacity. You've never met one?

<comment><USER13> I have met people with mental disability, who would have had significant limits on their intellectual capabilities, but I didn't consider them stupid.

If it helps to clarify: I can't explain relational databases to someone who doesn't have basic numeracy and you can't explain (say) quantum mechanics to me and the hyper-intelligent aliens can't explain ?$%>$£DDDD to you...but none of us in that chain are stupid. And all of us with sufficient power of articulation can convey the elements of those things to each other that matter to the person within their context.

<comment><USER15> But that's quite circular. I have never found a cup that would overspill, if not poured to beyond its capacity. I think I understand the sympathy you're trying to convey, and the insight that you should try to explain things to the capacity of the other people. It's a mine field of perceived ability and all, but yeah.

<comment><USER13> Well then the other way to look at it is that we are all stupid. The point I'm making is that the term itself does not mean what its users intend it to mean. It is actually a way of excusing our own lack of ability to communicate in a meaningful way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not that a certain percentage of people are stupid. It's that no matter how intelligent people are, they are very inconsistent about what they apply their intelligence to and there's always going to be some super intelligent idiot who doesn't have his head in the game and fucks shit up for everyone else because he wasn't paying attention to the right things.

</comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately this is a taboo subject so no one can talk about it candidly (hence: satire).

<comment><USER18> That's because intelligence is way overvalued.

With very little scientific proof.

Shh.

(Amusingly clever essay, though.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Worth remembering that Carlo M. Cipolla made up his middle name :)

 _What is the M. of Carlo M. Cipolla (1922-2000)? No, it 's not for Maria, as everyone believes and as Wikipedia also reports. So is it for Mario? Do not be bothered. It just stands for nothing at all.

Or, better, it stands for itself. "M." is the initial that the author (...) made up just to fill the "middle name" box on the modules at the University of Berkeley where he moved in the 1950s._

(quick translation from [http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/cultura/2011-10-21/irresistib...](http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/cultura/2011-10-21/irresistibile- spirito-cipolla-182530.shtml))

</comment><comment><USER20> I feel this is one thing that differentiate the European political cultures and the US political culture.

In Europe I feel we do better understand that people are stupid (in general). They won't insure their health, they'll kill you for $50, they won't pay the price for an education.

That's why we don't have guns, we have mostly free healthcare and universities.

In the US, I feel you guys hope or would like that people would NOT be stupid and do smart things on a general basis.

But that's not the case.

What if all side of the US political system could agree on this? People are fucking stupid, let's make more rules and put more systems and programs in place that take this into account.

<comment><USER21> I see your point but it also implies that Europe breeds the stupid while US allows them to extract themselves from the gene pool.. not a very nice perspective for me (as an European)

<comment><USER22> According to the article, extracting stupid people from the gene pool won't affect the ratio of stupid people present in society. σ remains constant no matter what.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I know the OP is not the author, and this edit is about 30 years late. However, the quote "With stupidity and sound digestion, man may front much" should apparently be attributed to Thomas Carlyle, not Dickens: [https://quotefancy.com/quote/917262/Thomas-Carlyle-With- stup...](https://quotefancy.com/quote/917262/Thomas-Carlyle-With-stupidity- and-sound-digestion-man-may-front-much)

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anybody have a year for it? I went with 2009 via [https://web.archive.org/web/20090601000000*/http://www.zoon....](https://web.archive.org/web/20090601000000*/http://www.zoon.cc/stupid/) but it feels like it might be older, especially as the author had been dead for 9 years.

Edit: a comment (now deleted) helpfully pointed out the Whole Earth Review, Spring 1987 reference at the bottom. Thanks!

Previously: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Basic%20Laws%20of%20Human%20St...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Basic%20Laws%20of%20Human%20Stupidity%20points%3E3&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0). Interesting annotation by pg at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817703).

Url changed from [http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human- stupidit...](http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/), which points to this.

<comment><USER25> Wikipedia page of the author [1] claims it was circulated among the friends in 1976 (English) and published in 1988 (Italian).

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

<comment><USER26> Yes, it is a "classic", and actually the linked to online version (with the illustrations) is (besides being not complete) somehow much worse (IMHO) than the original, which is a very plain booklet where the cartesian diagrams are less distracting, here it is (from archive.org), the PDF is an actual scan of the booklet:

[https://archive.org/details/The_Basic_Laws_of_Human_Stupidit...](https://archive.org/details/The_Basic_Laws_of_Human_Stupidity_by_Carlo_M._Cipolla)

More history about the Author and the book is here: [http://gandalf.it/stupid/cipoleng.htm](http://gandalf.it/stupid/cipoleng.htm)

<comment><USER24> You're probably right about that; such framing has a huge effect on how a text is perceived. But I think in this case having a normal web page might be more important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > I made a special point to extend my research to a specially selected > group... The result confirmed Nature's supreme powers: σ fraction of the > Nobel laureates are stupid.

I mean... okay. I would like to know both what the definition of "stupid" is here and what this study actually consists of. Also I'm pretty sure using "We all recollect occasions..." as your main supporting evidence is several logical fallacies rolled into one.

Is this satire? Am I missing the joke? If the main point is that stupidity is a product of nature and can't be changed by experience there needs to be a lot more evidence to back it up.

<comment><USER28> As defined by "The third (and golden) basic law":

"A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."

These are absolute laws, no need to see the studies =P

<comment><USER29> Not sure if I should take these laws seriously, but the difficulty is in defining a loss versus a gain.

For example, the old "I'm taking you down with me" is often driven out of spite or vindictiveness. Maybe it's stupid, but maybe not? If you get pleasure out of it, is it a loss?

<comment><USER30> I'td be in the lower bandit category (the personal gain is significantly less than loss to the other person). The definition of loss is intuitively simple I think: you would have preferred that nothing had happened instead. Vice versa for gains, and then its matter of degrees. With total gain/loss to society scaling the intelligence axis

The stupid man would take down the other _without meaning to_ ; he gets nothing out of the event, and he brought significant loss upon his neighbors. The key being that this was _without intention_ ; that is, he poses a threat to himself, and everyone around him, by virtue of his normal character.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Speaking of intelligence, from my brief thirty-year existence, I've observed that self-reflection and creativity are positively correlated with intelligence. I haven't tested out this theory, but I believe r = 0.75.

<comment><USER32> fwiw, pearson coefficients completely ignore non-linear effects.. make of that what thou wilt, regarding intelligence, self-reflection (irrelevant but it would be nice if we called self-reflection reflexivity, imo) and creativity :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you like this, try [http://www.thedevilsdictionary.com/](http://www.thedevilsdictionary.com/). Less PC, but also hilarious in places.

</comment><comment><USER9> The author, Carlo M. Cipolla, was an Italian economic historian, a professor at U.C. Berkeley. The article is from a small (71 page) book, available in paperback and Kindle.

</comment><comment><USER34> Is this thesis intentionally ironic? What exactly is the utility?

On a human level, loss and gain are subjective. The definition of a "stupid" person therefore requires complete context and access to their subjective state.

Therefore this doesn't provide any gain to the "intelligent" person to help resolve the situation.

However, from the perspective of a potential stupid person who is by definition self-destructive, when they read this thesis, their reaction at best will be neutral, and at worst cause them to become destructive.

So, to recap, this essay provides no gain, but does create potential loss.

In which category would that place this essay?

Q.E.D.

<comment><USER35> The category you're looking for is 'humour'.

You may not find it funny, but that was it's intent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> original url: [http://web.archive.org/web/20130216132858/http://www.cantrip...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130216132858/http://www.cantrip.org/stupidity.html)

with a bit more background and drama

</comment><comment><USER37> THIS is the shit. Very hilarious and weirdly very relatable to my life ??

</comment><comment><USER38> Not much of a reasonable writing ... what would it help????</comment>


Why Would Prosthetic Arms Need to See or Connect to Cloud AI? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/machinelearning/2018/09/10/why-would-prosthetic-arms-need-to-see-or-connect-to-cloud-ai/ <comment><USER2> What we really need is Local AI, not Cloud AI for such uses. It would suck to have to be internet-connected in order for your arm to work.

Want to take a trip into the wilderness? Lol. Power's out and the basement is flooding? Good luck, sucks to be you. I guess "lag" will become a valid excuse to being clumsy in real life.

Local vs connected is a no-brainer for this particular application.

<comment><USER3> Local inference with cloud learning isn't an unreasonable model.

<comment><USER4> The only acceptable usage mode is a (preferably short) learning phase with the "cloud". After that you disconnect and preferably deactivate all wireless connectivity with a physical switch so that nobody can mess with it.</comment></comment></comment>


Should Obesity Be a 'Disease'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/should-obesity-be-a-disease.html

<comment> jack-r-abbit I think some people do have a medical condition. But "obesity" is just a symptom of that condition... not the actual condition. Other people are just fat because they eat too much and/or exercise too little. I think it is dangerous to just call all obesity a disease.

</comment><comment><USER2> like it or not the fact of matter lies that obesity is the single biggest avoidable cause of medical expenses. Mental stigma or not a spade should be called a spade

</comment><comment><USER3> go to Africa and live there for a year. Strangely, your "disease" will be cured

<comment><USER4> [http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/284902](http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/284902)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would rather call that a 'disorder'... mental disorder to be specific.</comment>


Getting Closer to Mass Production of Bones, Organs, and Implants - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-27/we-re-getting-closer-to-mass-production-of-bones-organs-and-implants <comment><USER2> Airway is mentioned, but this is one of the hardest parts to manufacture. Very little clinical success in this area so far: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37311038](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37311038)

<comment><USER3> That is depressing. I remember seeing an episode of Nova Science Now about it and being so amazed at it that I showed that segment to everyone i knew to get them talking about it...

Really sad to hear that this is also a "can't have nice things" situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An acquaintance of mine had a part of her skull replaced by a 3D printed part, made by Materialise. While it sounds spectacular, she was out of the hospital in days, none the worse for wear.

<comment><USER5> Could you say more about it? For typical holes left by neurosurgical procedures the 3D printing part may be useful for comfort or cosmetics, but I think it is unlikely to be critically important. Surgeons have been using simple metal plates to patch holes in the skull for many decades, and they work pretty well.

<comment><USER4> Part of her skull was damaged when she was a child. At the time it was replaced by some kind of plastic. But from what I gather it slowly started to deteriorate, until it got infected and pressure built up and it had to be removed/replaced.

From what I can gather it's a piece a little over 10cm in diameter and resides above her ear.

<comment><USER6> Metal Plates make MRIs a pain.

<comment><USER5> No, essentially all modern metal implants are non magnetic, e.g., titanium. They go through MRIs all the time.

<comment><USER7> No, it's still a pain.

Titanium is MR-compatible: the magnet won't rip the plate out of your head, which is good. However, it can cause huge artifacts that obscure things around the titanium implant (and, sometimes, depending on the scan parameters and implant location, elsewhere too).

This is particularly annoying because the implants are often right near the areas you really want to image....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've read about coral being used as temporary structure for bone replacment but eventually the patient's own bone takes over replacing it.

You'd think a liver would be the easiest organ to grow since in adults a liver can regrow from a healthy piece. That's why you sometimes read about people donating part of their liver.

I think there will always be one big problem and that's the health of the patient. People who need a new organ are so sick they probably won't survive the operation to get a new organ. Anesthetic is like a controlled drug overdose but add age and poor health I can't imagine being an anesthesiologist that's one tough job!

<comment><USER9> It doesn't regrow the (larger) blood vessels and doesn't maintain the original structure. A liver is essentially two halves with two separate, large blood vessels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> why aren't teeth implants and crowns getting cheaper because of 3D Printers

crowns and teeth implants should be a lot easier than other organs or bones

<comment><USER11> I spoke about this with my dentist, and according to him the research and money is going to ever-greater precision and bio-compatibility. Scanning and imaging the tooth to replace is still part-art and not fully-automated yet. The scanning processes out on the market has not perfected discriminating the tooth from the surrounding tissue, so there is some manual work the dentist performs to shape the replica; there are weird artifacts here and there they shave away and/or re-shape. Bio-compatibility sounds like it is is very close: the latest materials outlast human lifespans, and is tougher than enamel, with very small populations that adversely react to the materials.

<comment><USER12> The part-art comment is certainly true. I have a 3D milled ceramic crown that was done years ago during the early days of the technology. It is absolutely great in every way, and has been since day 1. My wife went to the same dentist a few months later, another 3D milled ceramic crown. Same guy, same machine. The crown had an awful fit, was never right, and she had it replaced with a different technology within 6 months. Getting to three-9's reliability is hard for all of us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Who: Engineering Ph.D. dropout ..."

In other words, an ordinary professional engineer, who considered extending his formal education? Bit of a gaffe, there.

</comment><comment><USER14> "getting closer"... that's not much to go on.

If you read the article skeptically, there isn't any news here - nothing that hasn't been reported prior to the last 2 or 3 years.

The big news will be when we can fabricate complex organs, significant patches of skin with features like hair follicles or fingerprints, etc. Notice that even the liver reference was just some liver tissue that was implanted in a mouse - not an actual liver or a human trial.

</comment><comment><USER15> archives:

[http://archive.is/EC8ph](http://archive.is/EC8ph) [https://app.printfriendly.com/print?source=homepage&url_s=uG...](https://app.printfriendly.com/print?source=homepage&url_s=uGGCF_~_PdN_~_PcS_~_PcSJJJmoyBBzorEtmpBz_~_PcSArJF_~_PcSnEGvpyrF_~_PcScabh- ae-ch_~_PcSJr-Er-trGGvAt-pyBFrE-GB-znFF-CEBqHpGvBA-Bs-oBArF-BEtnAF-nAq- vzCynAGF)

</comment><comment><USER16> Has there been a term coined yet for people with these parts? I don't believe it would be classified as a cyborg since these are not machine-type parts. Although the parts are ironically produced by machines.

<comment><USER17> Sure: transplant recipient.

<comment><USER18> Booo! :)

What about Synborg or Synthorg? Maybe Pseudosynth.

<comment><USER19> How about we call them human beings instead of trying to create a label and separate them from the rest of society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if they'll be able to produce some of these parts in-place, inside the body, as part of the surgery. Otherwise, some parts may be too hard to implant.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm very excited for this technology. But not as much as hockey players, who would love to be able to have their teeth replaced.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hello 6 million dollar man.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Ten-year old Organovo [...] has received more than $100 million in funding

I couldn't help but think of Juicero's $120m to design a flat mechanical press.

(yes, supply chain etc, but still...)

<comment><USER24> Uh except Organovo is trying to solve a much harder problem and has been around for a while AND has proven success? What point are you trying to make besides superficial snark because some funding numbers quoted in the article are similar?

<comment><USER25> I think ricardobeat is pointing out that it says something about the current VC climate that something as dumb as Juiecero got $20 million more funding than something as potentially important as Organivo.</comment></comment></comment>


FrumiOS: a simple object-system for Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://s-expressions.com/2009/12/10/frumios-a-silly-object-system-for-clojure/

<comment><USER2> Not to play down the cool use of clojure here but multimethods already provide a flexible and powerful object system: <http://clojure.org/multimethods></comment>


Subverting the Intended Use of Objects - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/budding-scientist/subverting-the-intended-use-of-objects/ <comment><USER2> "the street finds its own uses for things" \-- William Gibson, in Burning Chrome.</comment>


Shipwreck found in Black Sea is 'world's oldest intact' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45951132 <comment><USER2> See also [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/23/oldest- intac...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/23/oldest-intact- shipwreck-thought-to-be-ancient-greek-discovered-at-bottom-of-black-sea)

And [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18279731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18279731)</comment>


Safe injection sites in San Francisco could be first in the US - <AUTHOR> http://fox59.com/2018/02/08/san-francisco-to-open-nations-first-heroin-injection-sites/ <comment><USER3> In days gone by, heroin addicts knew how much heroin they needed to 'stay well'.

A major factor in the escalation of deaths in the modern era is the contamination of the street pharmacy's heroin supply with more potent synthetic opioids (fentanyl, etc).

Overdoses happen when street drugs are more potent than the user expects, or when the user's tolerance has changed. Two factors in my girlfriend's OD were having been sober for 5 months and having been made addicted to clonazepam (a benzodiazepine that increases the potency of opiates - she'd only wanted this 'as needed', but the professionals at the hospitalization preceeding her OD thought she needed to take the full dose every day). That batch of heroin could also have been contaminated...

A clean supply of heroin would be quite helpful in preventing people from killing themselves while self-medicating. Until the politicians find courage to acknowledge that it was a mistake to trust organized crime to control the supply of addictive substances, at least 'safe injection sites' is an intervention that can actually prevent people from causing their own premature expiration.

<comment><USER4> > Until the politicians find courage to acknowledge that it was a mistake to > trust organized crime to control the supply of addictive substances, [...]

What would be a better solution in your opinion? Legalizing it, or allowing it with prescription? I see some problems with those alternatives as well; there's probably no magic bullet here.

<comment><USER5> Make everything legal to obtain or manufacture with a license attainable though education and certification – something in between what it takes to get a driver's license and an AA degree.

If you want to buy heroin you have to understand it's addictive qualities, how human biology is affected, and how to recognize the negative consequences.

Attach liability to the licensee for anything purchased that resulted in harm and to distributing substances with incorrect descriptions.

<comment><USER6> Education will not stop people from getting caught in the death grip of heroin. Just as education does not stop people from smoking cigarettes today.

And once an addict is born, as they say, that person will struggle with addiction for the rest of their lives even if they manage to abstain.

I'm all for legalization of marijuana, but legalization of heroin is a very poor idea. Heroin must be kept out of the hands of the people.

<comment><USER7> The death grip of heroin is mostly unrelated to the actual medical properties of heroin (or most opioids). The worst health effects come from the impurities in the substance (Strychnine, a common additive, is generally speaking not a substance beneficial to your health), the conditions under which it's used (shared needles, lack of hygiene) and the treadmill of having to organize funds for the next shot. Medically speaking, heroin is less harmful than alcohol. It's very hard to actually overdose if the purity is constant. It's a preferred drug for pallative care in many countries since it's effective and relatively easy to use (similar tor morphine).

Heroin addicts on a constant regime of pure heroin can be well-functioning members of society. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin- assisted_treatment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment)

So if you truly care about the health of the afflicted persons, legalization with a strict control is the most effective option that is currently on the table.

<comment><USER8> Heroin wasn't historically a problem because the users died. Heroin's been a problem because of just how far people will go to get it, and how a massive amount of people will drop everything else in life just to get a steady supply of it.

Opiates are the most addictive substances in the world. Once someone gets a taste of it, their life is forever changed. People can smoke a cigarette a couple times and decide it's not for them. People can have beers once in a while and move on. There aren't many people who try heroin a couple times then realize they're busy and drop it forever.

<comment><USER9> Oh please. Enough of your DARE rhetoric.

I've been on hydromorphone. It's 8x more potent than morphine on a gram basis. Heroin is only 3x more powerful than morphine. I was on hydromorphone for 4 months, and then went DOWN to oxycodone for another 6 months. After 6 months, went on hydrocodone. By all measurements of addition, I was 100% addicted.

Yeah, it felt good having the drugs. But I also quit taking them sooner because I felt my mind fogging up. I didn't like that, and took more pain to be able to think clearly. But no, your assertions that people will just drop everything to get it is blatantly false.

Homeless people will go after heroin, if they can afford it. But those that choose this route are trying to numb the fact that people don't care about their condition, and that they have very little chance to raise themselves up. It's a social reason - if I cant have a better life, I can check out with drugs.

<comment><USER8> And the problem is the people that are dying of heroin aren't the Silicon Valley tech workers with good jobs and homes that make up the majority of hacker news. They're people living in shithole towns like my hometown. The jobs left decades ago and people are just scraping by. They don't have enough savings to pack up and leave. I've got friends and family dying because it's way too accessible, and the idea of making it legal and even more accessible doesn't appeal to me or my common sense. I trust the average person to use heroin as responsibly as they'd use a military helicopter if they could afford one from a day's work--and that's not at all.

So congrats on being able to take opiates and not have a problem. If you have stable employment, your situation is in no way relevant to the people this problem is afflicting. We already know that soldiers who abused drugs during the Vietnam war were able to quit them easily upon returning because their lifestyle improved. Addicts don't have a chance to just up and get a happier life.

<comment><USER3> > And the problem is the people that are dying of heroin aren't the Silicon > Valley tech workers with good jobs and homes that make up the majority of > hacker news.

My girlfriend grew up in a "1%" household. She developed substance abuse problems because she was born premature, because she was adopted, because of some "adverse childhood experience", and because her doctors thought she was a candidate for chemical castration with Provera (which makes some women suicidal).

"Stress" is the main factor in addiction. For some people stress is emotional, for others it's economic, and for others it's biological...

> I trust the average person to use heroin as responsibly as they'd use a > military helicopter if they could afford one from a day's work--and that's > not at all.

Do you trust organized crime to provide heroin to people who are going to use it anyways?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A well written chronology of the rise and decline of the Needle Park in Zurich, Switzerland:

Chapter 1: [https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/extern/storytelling/needletraum...](https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/extern/storytelling/needletrauma/chapter1/)

Chapter 2: [https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/extern/storytelling/needletraum...](https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/extern/storytelling/needletrauma/chapter2/)

Chapter 3: [https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/extern/storytelling/needletraum...](https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/extern/storytelling/needletrauma/chapter3/)

Chapter 4: [https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/extern/storytelling/needletraum...](https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/extern/storytelling/needletrauma/chapter4/)

Methadone programs and safe injection sites were crucial elements in resolving the tragedy.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here in Vancouver the safe injection sites have saved countless lives and drastically lowered needle sharing. There's a big misconception that safe injection sites somehow promote drug use. They save lives and give people a legitimate pathway to get clean if they choose to. Do the right thing, SF!

<comment><USER12> It might be a hard sell to use Vancouver as a model. It has an area which is perhaps the most public display of social decay I've ever encounted in a first-world city, principally from drug abuse.

<comment><USER13> As someone with no stake in this, I would rather have all of that decay in one place I can avoid rather than strewn about my city.

<comment><USER14> Hamsterdam.

In all seriousness, watch The Wire. It gets you thinking and covers the topic well.

<comment><USER13> The Wire is fiction. The best place to observe the reality is Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia. I have driven through and parked and observed but never gotten out. The one thing the Wire got wrong was how densely packed everyone is... in Kensington Avenue people are only out and about to transact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We are caught in an ideological chasm in the US. On one side is a harsh society wide approach like that of the Chinese. On the other hand is complete tolerance and legalization, which is more compatible with a Western social and political values. We are in an awkward spot somewhere in between.

Unfortunately we must measure success of our national drug programs by the number of people who do not become junkies. I say unfortunately because it seems that many people self medicate to deal with sadness or emptiness in their lives, which makes dealing with hard drug use a daunting task. How do we remove sadness from people's lives? How do we heal the abscess of loneliness?

Unfortunately people do not always make good decisions, even if they are content, well adjusted people. If we legalize heroin in the manner I believe we should with marijuana, I fear many more people than now will stumble into heroin addiction.

So caught in a valley between two extreme responses, one which is antithetical to our Western social constructs and another which does not adequately protect people from themselves, what do we do?

Perhaps the case of Portugal represents an alternative. While not legalizing the all drugs - you won't see commercials for Black Tar™ brand Heroin - Portugal has decriminalized all drugs, meaning that while they haven't granted heroin the tacit acceptance that comes with legalization, they have made life easier for those who inevitably do become addicts. Perhaps this is the best we can hope for.

<comment><USER15> "Does not adequately protect people from themselves, what do we do?"

What we do as a society founded upon the principles of natural rights and liberties is stop trying to protect people from themselves. It always was, and always will be, a slippery and dangerous slope to collectivism and totalitarianism. The government has absolutely no right whatsoever to tell me what I can and can't do with my body, whether that is drinking beer, coke, smoking weed, or cigars, or eating lettuce. For by accepting the encroachment, you open the floodgates for arbitrary decisions on what can and can't be done.

It's not even that these thing need to be "legalized". It was never the right of the government either federal or state to determine them one way or the other. All the proper medical care, mentally and physically, and education about substances, would then be free to do its good work without the interference of lawyers attempting to legislate our lives.

This silent acquiescence of increasingly overreaching government must stop. It is anathema to everything America was founded upon.

"...a long habit of not thinking a thing _wrong_ , gives it a superficial appearance of being _right_ , and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason." \- Thomas Paine _Common Sense_

<comment><USER6> I don't accept the slippery slope argument. But, let's entertain your line of thinking.

Let's get rid of the speed limit everywhere. We don't need the stinking government telling us how fast to drive! Oh, looks like traffic deaths are going up. Hm, maybe we should institute a speed limit...

The point is that people do need to be told what to do - with an enforced penalty - in certain situations.

<comment><USER15> Roads are a public place, subject to constitutional reasonable regulation (by the states, not the federal government) as long as not in violation of our right to travel. So you picked a bad example. Case in point, if I own a vehicle that never leaves my ranch property it doesn't need license plates, insurance, or a drivers license to operate it, and I can go as fast as I damn well please.

What I do in the privacy of my own home is none of yours nor the governments fucking business.

>"people do need to be told what to do"

This is a disgustingly subservient slave mentality. Enjoy your self-forged shackles. The worst part is you would put them on others and tell them it is for their own good!

<comment><USER6> If you think being told that people can't go above a certain speed on the highway to make highways safe enough to drive on makes you a "slave", I would tell you that you're being melodramatic.

Civilization is a set of rules, either informal or formal, that we obey. We do this so we can live peaceful and comfortable lives. If you think that's slavery then I feel bad for you.

<comment><USER9> You seem to not understand the difference between private and public property. I have nary a issue to say "You have to follow the speed limit on public roads", or "No guns can be brought into the courthouse".

But once we step foot into your own property, I can take my guns anywhere I want. As long as I guarantee the bullets don't leave the property, I can shoot what I want. I can take any sort of vehicle I want at whatever speed I want. I'm the king of my castle and the land that surrounds it.

Now, as per drug usage - the bigger _public_ health crisis is people ODing on the streets, urinating/defecating on the streets, needles exposed for people to get jabbed _on the streets_... Notice a trend here? "On the streets" is in public. Therefore public health crisis.

If I want to do drug, one of, in my own property, there should be no good reason for a government to say "You don't know your body well enough, so we have to tell you no". The result is a bunch of nanny-state politicians who want to dictate your body on your private land.

And, slippery slope? Well, tell that to NYC who can no longer sell larger than 12 oz sodas. Or other jurisdictions that enforce usage, rather than information. Nanny state at its best.

EDIT: So, what gives? Why is this "government knows best" idea so prevalent? The choice of how I treat my own body goes all the way to choosing to commit suicide. Most jurisdictions, even that is "illegal". Harming others directly - whole different story and that should have state "interference".

<comment><USER15> Maybe more EU people on the board than US people at the moment... otherwise the downvotes (especially without explanation) baffle me.

<comment><USER9> I'm not entirely sure how true that is. We do have an awful lot of statists in this country as well. And there's also a healthy faction that are hell-bent on setting their "ethics" up as laws for the states too.

Then again, I'd much rather have discourse than simple -1's applied by random peoples. Even kuro5hin told whom up/downvoted content. But still, responses are intriguing. Sometimes, I've even changed my own views since underlying assumptions I had were false.

Oh well. I'd attribute it to a corollary I heard with voting systems - <USER2> matter the comment and moderation system, there will always be defects for each method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In Switzerland, we have that kind of structure since ages. They are effective, lower criminality, decrease neigboorhood issues, decrease criminality rate, health issues and lower the medical costs supported by the public hospitals. Of course, it does not solve the major issue: how to make them stop taking drugs. See that one in the center of Geneva: [http://www.premiereligne.ch/quai9/](http://www.premiereligne.ch/quai9/)

[https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/102904556286110178389/ph...](https://email@example.com,6.1398544,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m3!8m2!3m1!1e1)

<comment><USER17> Being someone who benefited from needle exchanges, it's a step in the right direction. It's a place where users will be exposed to options for getting clean. Ultimately they are the ones who need to come to that decision but having options positively shown to them will help.

Addiction becomes a cycle of negative reinforcements and being able to put a possible break in that will make a difference. Many have mental health issues that they are self medicating for. Hopefully there are counselors there to help those who want it.

<comment><USER16> Oh, yes. They provide a lot of services. Very good and positive structure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The individuals who are using these drugs already use them openly in the street. I see them daily on my way to work as I work in a popular area for vagrants/homeless.

If it prevents me from stepping on needles and seeing blood from people shooting up on the street, I am all for it. These individuals will use one way or another if they want to so giving them a place to do it safely off the street seems acceptable.

Of course, the ideal solution will be to eliminate heroin and other hard drug use but this is a start.

<comment><USER19> Well of course people want to eliminate it, but how?

Is this not at least a step in the right direction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The facilities provide a safe space where people can consume previously obtained drugs"

That seems strange. If you actually tolerate drug use why not go the full way and provide clean versions of the drug on prescription, driving illegal dealers out of business?

<comment><USER21> Because then the organizers of the site would be in jail for drug trafficking, and so would be any doctor who prescribed those. That could happen only if drugs are legalized, and not only on the state but on federal level. You can judge how far we are from there if you notice that DOJ, under Sessions, is still battling the benign marijuana, even for medical use (which makes me seeing red and my blood pressure skyrockets each time I think about it - ffs, we use chemicals in medicine that can are like a nuclear weapon compared to marijuana's zippo lighter, and still these people refuse to see the case for even prescribed medical use!). And you're talking about legally dealing out the real bad stuff, which _is_ dangerous. We are decades from that, at the very best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I thought the first of these sites in the US were going to be in Seattle? Seems like San Francisco is closer now.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/seattle- king...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/seattle-king-county- move-to-create-2-injection-sites-for-drug-users/)

<comment><USER23> The citizens of Seattle are fighting back against it pretty hard.

<comment><USER24> A group of Seattle NIMBYs are fighting back against it pretty hard. For the sake of _my_ city, I hope they lose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I lived in SF for a couple years near TL and I saw people doing it on the streets.

To me this site is a good thing, harm reduction policies have shown good track record. They work.

A good exemple is the "première ligne" association in Switzerland. They have a big site in Geneva, you can see the building for the train station.

I would recommend a read of their website. [http://www.premiereligne.ch/](http://www.premiereligne.ch/)

</comment><comment><USER26> In 2016 there were 204 deaths due to substance abuse in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), with ~17m inhabitants Germany's most populous state. That same year there were 321 deaths in Bavaria. Bavaria has a population of only ~12m and in general has a much lower crime rate than NRW. The difference in deaths is often attributed to the fact that there are safe injection sites in NRW while there are none in Bavaria.

<comment><USER27> That's because Bavaria is close to the Czech republic and the bavarian/czech border is a well known import corridor. Google further info on that, if you're interested. Also, I invite you to compare the NRW numbers to the Berlin ones.

<comment><USER28> The drug importers don't sell their stuff along their import corridors. They bring it to next distribution center before they start splitting it up. according your logic Texas would be one of the states with a high drug overdose mortality. You are confusing small scale crystal meth smuggling with large scale opiate importing.

<comment><USER29> >The drug importers don't sell their stuff along their import corridors.

This lacks perspective. Border states have "black tar" heroin, which comes from mexico, and is less pure than northeast heroin which is purer and in powder form instead of tar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article starts with "to open what could become the nation's first legal safe injection sites aimed at curbing the opioid epidemic". How that should work? I understand that it may help existing drug addicts and reduce mortality from opioid abuse (which by itself is a good thing) but how can it curb the opioid epidemic? I may be that it achieves many other benefits, but what would be the way it may achieve this one? By logic if opioid use becomes easier and less dangerous (which, again, may be a very good thing for current addicts) it would not make people less willing to take opioids, so how that is supposed to work? Is there some component of it that I am missing?

<comment><USER30> > have consistently shown them to be effective at reducing overdose deaths, > preventing transmission of HIV and viral hepatitis, reducing street-based > drug use and _linking people to drug treatment and other services_

There are a lot of people addicted to drugs that don't want to be. In a safe injection site, you have a bunch of health professionals around who are experts at treating addiction.

I'm not an expert on opioid addiction but I'd wager that the ease or difficulty of injecting the drugs isn't a major factor for opioid usage. I think the people who are addicted will get and take the drugs by any means necessary, and people who aren't addicted to opioid's probably aren't going to try them all the sudden because there is a safe injection site.

<comment><USER21> > you have a bunch of health professionals around who are experts at treating > addiction.

That'd be nice but the article doesn't say anything about health professionals - it looks like there are just organizations dedicated to supplying clean needles, etc. - which is completely different level of investment than having a doctor specializing on addiction and involved with long enough term that it could actually make a dent. From the article, the most they can do is provide referrals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The very lefty mayor of Paris launched one « safe site » in the city. Results : disneyland for drug dealers and addicts in the area, dead people (OD) in the street, noise, fights...

<comment><USER32> Sources for this would be very helpful. Always interested in alternative viewpoints!

<comment><USER33> Here is a recent study of drug consumption room programs across Europe (including the one in Paris), and their impact so far. [http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/topics/pods/drug-consumption- roo...](http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/topics/pods/drug-consumption-rooms)

Their analysis seems pretty balanced, and seems to skew positive. It definitely contradicts the negative comment you're responding to.

<comment><USER34> The truthiness of that comment can be pretty safely derived from the derisive word "lefty".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hamsters "The Wire".

</comment><comment><USER36> The article comes from [https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/07/health/safe-injection- sites-s...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/07/health/safe-injection-sites-san- francisco-opioid-epidemic-bn/index.html), which has the better title but also an autoplaying video, so we'll use the title but stick with this URL.

</comment><comment><USER37> Sounds like we're conflating 2 issues:

(1) How we can we let addicts shoot up in a way that is safe for them

(2) How can we let addicts shoot up in a way that is safe for their community

Pardon my ignorance, but I think we should be focused on the safety of the community (2), more than how addicts can continue to abuse drugs safely (1).

People have abused drugs for a long time (alcohol included), which results in self-inflicted repercussions. Natural selection tends to weed these genes out if such people don't exert self-control and make a permanent clean break, as difficult as it may be.

My solution: legalize all drugs in limited geographic areas — far away from society at large (along the lines of Vegas). What happens there stays there, and feel free to stay there forever if you'd like.

I don't say that to be insensitive. I myself enjoyed alcohol too much, until it got me in enough trouble enough times that I decided the pain it caused my family & friends wasn't worth it. I had 2 choices in front of me: drink my life away and drag the people I care about with me through it all, or man up and swear it off for good.

I chose the latter. No therapy, AA, etc., just a deep sense of the injustice and lack of empathy in my actions, and living (and dead) examples before me in my family.

Had I been so weak to continue favoring my short term pleasure, it would serve me right to die early and put an end to everyone's pain (my own included).

<comment><USER38> But you realise they can't be on their own, without society and its working businesses to feed themselves, its healthcare facilities to care for them, its giving inhabitants to sustain their addiction... I also really wish I would not have to see the worst humanity and its hopelessness everytime I pass the nearby hospital that has a safe and free injection site, but sadly as a society we can't just give up on those people even though a ridiculous proportion is making it in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It is like they are testing there how far they could go.</comment>


Gravity Waves and Neutrinos: The Later Work of Joseph Weber - <AUTHOR> http://mitp.nautil.us/article/162/gravity-waves-and-neutrinos <comment><USER2> As someone who was peripherally involved in this field I'm very glad this history of science was recorded and hope the author repeats the analysis for the context around the Ligo project.

When I was in grad school getting my PhD in Physics, I was interested in doing gravity wave searches for high frequency gravity waves using arrays of small, inexpensive, cryogenically cooled Weber bars. This was at the time when Ligo was being built to search for much lower frequency waves at much higher costs.

I found the sociology around both the Weber and Ligo work fascinating then and in hindsight, and I personally ascribe the complex sociology to the incredible difficulty of these incredibly sensitive experiments. Detecting gravity waves is one of the hardest experiments an experimental physicist can attempt (numbers like 10^-23 and 10^-51 are not uncommon to encounter in your sensitivity calculations, for example, and it doesn't really matter what units you're talking about if you're trying to measure something with 10^-51 in it, it's going to be incredibly difficult). My read was and is that the physics community understands the risks these researchers are taking to their careers by engaging in experiments of this incredible difficulty and cuts them slack or gives them an underlying cushion of respect for what they are doing because everyone knows they are probably going to fail and it is ultimately likely to be a fall on your sword effort for the benefit of trying to advance a very difficult aspect of our knowledge.

I can attest to the author's observations of the complexity of the continued respect for Weber even in the context of complete and universal disregard for his experimental results. He wasn't viewed as a crank or a laughing stock, even though everyone knew the story of finding a spurious signal in data that he'd failed to correct for differences in time zones between detectors. It was much closer to someone you respect very much who one day hooked his laptop up to the projector in the board room, opened it, and accidentally projected weird disturbing porn on the screen by mistake. He screwed up, everyone knew that, but he was still respected for all the other work he had done and no one took any joy or mirth in his screwup, nor did they really want to talk about it or bring it up (I suspect I spent more time poking around the historical periphery of Weber bars than most anyone other than the author of this paper, because I was seriously considering treading into this field and placing myself at risk of doing a very very hard experiment, with the added factor that I was proposing to go after high frequency gravity waves of a sort no one in the physics community had a source type in mind for, so it would have been doubly risky, a hard experiment looking for a signal that probably wasn't there but that I felt should still be looked for, if only to place a limit on the magnitude of the background).

I mentioned hoping the author writes a similar paper on Ligo. Ligo was a huge success, as everyone expected. Rai Weiss[0] was (is) a brilliant experimental physicist (and a very kind and helpful mentor to me when I was an undergraduate starting to think about alternative ways to detect gravity waves, he graciously gave me many hours of his time to bounce around crazy ideas and help with difficult calculations).

Back to the sociology, as much as I and everyone else respected Rai, I didn't go work on Ligo because it looked clear to me there were two answers Ligo could get: It could detect gravity waves at about the level everyone expected colliding black holes to produce (in which case everyone would say "It was an incredibly difficult experiment but they pulled it off" and a Nobel Prize would likely get awarded) or they could fail to see them/see way to many of them (in which case the community would say "Rai's a really smart guy but it was just a very hard experiment to do"). I simply didn't see any way that the community would actually increase it's actual Shannon information level about gravity waves significantly in response to Ligo, because the community had such a big Baysean probability factor folded in to its planned assessment of whatever the eventual outcome would be.

Fortunately, Rai (and others) were really smart, and really good experimentalists, and they did get "the right answer" having taken a great risk in doing so, and they are rightly respected for it, in somewhat the same way that Joe Weber was still respected in the community when I was thinking about these things back in the late 80's and early 90's (it's possible things have changed as the people who knew Weber personally have retired and/or passed away and his memory has been replaced by that of the actually, genuinely successful Ligo, I've been out of the field for too long to have current info there).

Anyway, thanks to @dnetesn for posting this and bringing good memories to mind for me.

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

<comment><USER3> Incredible story! Thank you for posting it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which tools do you use for SaaS customer management? - <AUTHOR>

I trying to spin up a SaaS, so I need to track customer registrations, which plans they have subscribed to and what addons they use.
What is your approach to this?
My first idea was to build something on my own, but this is a problem every SaaS provider has, so there should be something pre-made out there. Like launchrock for gathering email addresses. <comment><USER2> Well, I'm a web developer, so I rolled my own. I built a reusable framework for SaaS projects with just the kind of features you mention, and I've been using it both for myself as well for freelance clients.

Basically it's a PHP framework with a lot of SaaS-specific features built in. With each new project I implemented more and more features on it, to the point where I can now launch a functional MVP quite rapidly.

Lately (like, this week!) I got the idea of trying to license this framework to others, as well as sell them my web development services for the rest of their project. To this end, I published a quick LP ([http://turbomvp.com/](http://turbomvp.com/)), which I'm now trying to improve, because I've been told it's not really clear at all what I'm offering :)

I haven't yet figured out the licensing model either, this is still a very rough idea. The framework, however, is really cool.

<comment><USER3> I'm thinking of doing what you're doing, but with Laravel.

Let's say you have 3-4 SaaS sites all based upon your 'Core SaaS framework', when you make a change to the core framework, how do you manage this with your independent sites? Do you treat the independent sites as forks of the core framework and patch changes in? All manual? Or once you've started to build on the core framework do you simply accept that it's now an individual product and the core never changes?

<comment><USER2> Hi iDemonix,

Sorry for the late reply, I just came back from vacation.

I currently apply any updates manually, yes, I don't have an auto-update solution in place. Furthermore, sometimes a customer will ask for some custom feature that I can only implement by editing the actual framework, so at any point in time each customer may be running a custom version that cannot be auto-updated anyway.

> Or once you've started to build on the core framework do you simply accept > that it's now an individual product and the core never changes?

Something like that, yes. I currently treat each implementation as a separate project, so I don't worry about backwards compatibility too much when I implement a new features. However, I am looking into changing this workflow, since I'm not really satisfied with how updates are currently rolled out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depending on who you use for payment services you may be able to leverage their solution. For example Stripe has a good majority of the features you need including subscription tracking etc. you can have every customer with a unique id that ties back to your system and stores more detailed custom attributes.

We kinda do this, in that we let stripe manage the subscriptions etc, we just store all the relevant data back in our database. So if we ever had to switch payment providers we can without losing any data or historical accuracy. But it did really make getting running pretty fast and easy.

<comment><USER5> In your experience, is Stripe's subscription features good enough? When would I ever use something like a Chargify/Recurly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> RAILS: Use Devise for Login / Registration. For subscriptions there are some good stripe gems.

[https://github.com/thefrontside/stripe- rails](https://github.com/thefrontside/stripe-rails) [https://github.com/plataformatec/devise](https://github.com/plataformatec/devise)

</comment><comment><USER7> I use retain.cc for SaaS customer management.

Apart from tracking customer registration, they could even track anonymous behaviors too.</comment>


Qt app platform up and running on Palm Pre - <AUTHOR> http://www.precentral.net/qt-app-platform-and-running-palm-pre

<comment><USER2> Okay, _when_ did Nokia decide Qt is going to be pronounced "Cute"? At Mobile World Congress? Earlier?

I've been working with Qt for 5 years now and I never heard anyone call it anything other than "Que Tee", including Trolltech reps. And I'm gonna keep it that way, dadgum it!

<comment><USER3> That's been going on for a long time: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Qt_(framework)&...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Qt_\(framework\)&oldid=14602299)</comment></comment>


*-Oriented Programming, with Graham Lee - <AUTHOR> https://realm.io/news/pragma-graham-lee-oriented-programming-paradigms/ <comment><USER2> Just watched the vid. IMO the talk does a disservice by minimizing the importance of mutability or immutability and the related issue of static vs dynamic. Are there commonalities? Sure. Are there major differences in what can be expressed or executed? Sure. But I heard no attention to them in the talk. Imperative, dynamically-dispatched imperative execution has different implications than statically-typed rewriting rules.</comment>


Ask HN: 'Enterprise' hater - <AUTHOR>

Define and share what is 'enterprise application' in your words.<p>Rules: Simple. No marketing terms. <comment><USER2> I like Steve Jobs' definition: With enterprise software, the people who are making the purchase decision / order (whether it's in-house or externally developed) are typically not the people who're going to use the software. There are exceptions, of course.

<comment><USER3> I like this definition. It is short and zesty and feels true. However I don't think it is a sufficient condition for something to be enterprise software. Some tools for software developers or other highly skilled employees are too expensive to be bought by the employees themselves, but I still don't consider it enterprise software.

I think for it to be real enterprise software it must also be dictated from the powers that be that the minions should use it, wether they like it or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> \- Costs 5 or 6 figures

\- Has often unnecessary hardware and software requirements to reduce sticker shock. For example, requires Solaris on SPARC and the database must be Oracle or MS SQL Server when it's just a glorified CRUD web app.

\- Is buzzword-compliant (extra points for more esoteric buzzwords (like JSR-170 compliant)).

\- Is often written in Java to allow your typical IT drone to write the necessary glue to integrate it with other enterprise software.

\- Is excessively complex at all levels (UI/UX, configuration, extension).

\- Is poorly documented due in part to the excessive complexity and more in part to the fat support contracts the vendors rely on.

\- Makes your IT boss happy, because it continually uses up their yearly budget allotment, generates a lifetime of status meetings, and gives more of their subordinates something to do.

\- Makes you, the IT worker, miserable because you have to continually fight it in order to keep it working.

\- Makes you, the office worker, miserable because you have to continually fight it just to get anything done.

</comment><comment><USER5> I worked 5y at an Enterprise Search vendor. For us there, Enterprise application was:

* to be used "within" a large org or corporations (vs web facing apps)

* which deployment/usage is through the overall organization (not just departmental (=specialized app) this is why often the 2 types of license sold were "corporate or Enterprise license" with 1 important parameter: the number of employees (per seats) of the corp

* Most of the time, installed within the firewall on the corps own servers (vs cloud)

* if modern architecture the app to be deployed globally should have "connectors"/connectivity so that it can communicate with other pre existing systems

* very often deployed by system integrators or at 3 to 4 x the price by the engineers of the Enterprise App vendor

</comment><comment><USER6> An internal piece of software built by so many people that no one can agree on a feature set. Usually way over engineered using the latest technology buzz to enhance developers resumes.

</comment><comment><USER7> An application is a software product which fulfills a useful purpose (performing a task, storing data, etc.)

An enterprise application is an application which is suitable for use in a wide variety of environments seen in companies. (for example, as a point of difference, an enterprise application might support a wider variety of platforms or data, or at greater scale than a non-enterprise application)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks d4rt.

What about collection of different applications which is inter-dependent with each other. Each application must be communicable and extensible with less pain. That's what in my mind for enterprise right now..

<comment><USER7> Enterprise extensibility and inter-operativity or inter-dependency is extremely complex to get right.

Multiple standards exist for just about anything, and most implementations of something are broken in one way or another. I've seen obvious and subtle breakage in things that ought to be simple: * timestamps (not unambigious, not including timezone data) * mac addresses (within SNMP, in a variety of formats in different places on the same kit) * integration with LDAP (group membership only looking at primary membership) * etc.

We live in hope. Postel's Law applies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "One size fits no-one" software

<comment><USER9> Sold by people who promise everything and deliver very little after a lot of high priced consultants customise it to what they think your requirements should be. Costs a fortune to buy and several more in 'maintenance' fees. New, incompatible version, is released a month after you go live.

<comment><USER10> * Has known bugs that will not be resolved until the newer version is purchased.

* Is developed and delivered in big-bang style rather than incrementally.

* End users and support staff are not involved in purchase or evaluation.

* Primarily sold by offering decision makers (people with budget) tickets to the British Open, Premier League football, great meals, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A software system intended to store and manage a large portion of the data created and used by the members of an organization.

Most of the comments I see here so far are funny, pejorative, and spot-on accurate but the original post asked for a definition.

\- a software system: an enterprise application is like a library (as in books) except that instead of books it stores smaller pieces of information - employee names, timecards, purchase orders, etc.

\- intended to: because they don't always actually do that

\- store and manage: not just store but make provisions for users to add to and look up the data stored there.

\- a large portion: because a single spreadsheet shouldn't count. Postings on TheDailyWTF notwithstanding.

\- by the members: enterprise apps may involve public-facing information services but if that's all they do then they don't count as enterprise

\- of a an organization: not just businesses but schools, governments, and any other groups with a defined membership and purpose.

</comment><comment><USER12> An environment that combines the most intractable features of the La Brea tar pits and an industrial-scale cash furnace, with attendant performance and maintenance issues, dependencies on custom kudzu code, and all of which is in aggregate entirely critical to on-going business operations.

If you can afford to rip it all out and replace it - without seriously risking blowing up your business, your entire revenue stream, or risking having to issue a mea culpa to a legal entity, or having to jack-hammer congealed product out of your mongo-million dollar manufacturing line - then it's not Enterprise code.

And yes, stuff that might not be traditionally thought of as an enterprise installation can fit this definition. The large-scale deployments of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Exchange and SitePoint can fit this definition, as can your own large-scale deployment of your own customized software platform, as can anything to do with financial verifications or controlled substances, too.

</comment><comment><USER13> A large application trying to do many things at once. Has a very long sales cycle and is expensive. It requires sales and marketing effort teams to get sales. Support services offered because it is a pain to install and/or run.

</comment><comment><USER14> Total cost > $500K

A site license is > 500 seats

Long, intensive sales cycles

Heavy support and uptime requirements

And I'm not against it or anything. It can be more work than small or med businesses but it's also significantly more money. In fact, the amount of money is probably inordinately more. So you can actually become more financially successful doing enterprise software.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is the version of the software with one or two additional features, and one or two additional zeros on the license cost.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am building one right now ~ its a system to track piece pay for factory employees...

it takes all parts, processes and prices for those processes and generates reports.

Its enterprise to me because it could be valuable to many other companies.

</comment><comment><USER17> My friend Kragen wrote a good post about enterprise software:

[http://www.mail-archive.com/kragen- email@example.com/msg0010...](http://www.mail-archive.com/kragen- email@example.com/msg00109.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Software that aims to reduce the costs for a business and does not aim to increase its revenue.

</comment><comment><USER19> an application that is large, redundant, complex, and build to do lots of different things; costs a lot of money/resources; and is subsequently configured and customized down to fit the needs of the customer.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'll add that selection is often the result of a top-down decision, with an attendant disconnect between the needs and interests at the top as compared to those in the trenches. The greater the separation of those mindsets, the worse the result, speaking generally.</comment>


Analog engineering legend Bob Pease killed in car crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.edn.com/article/518568-Analog_engineering_legend_Bob_Pease_killed_in_car_crash.php

<comment><USER2> R.I.P. his columns were always the best part of any EDN issue.</comment>


LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://blog.beepnetworks.com/2016/09/loras-wireless-range-is-bananas-a-first-look-at-cellular-for-iot-in-san-francisco/ <comment><USER2> It does not look like your target market, but I imagine this would be ideal for pet/valuable tracking. Put it in a collar or bike seat and if your fido goes for a stroll and does not come back you can search much faster with an easy drive down the road. Same thing to help find a stolen bike.

If the transmitter could be inductively charged in a dog crate or where I park my bike -- it would be very convenient too. Ping time could be much slower, even once a minute would be plenty fast. Appears you could get 24 hours transmit and gps without too much trouble in a pretty small package.

<comment><USER3> Seems like the police could bait bikes with this technology to make a serious dent on bike theft in their city.

<comment><USER4> You'd have to hide the antenna well to do this.

<comment><USER5> Inside the frame would still work just fine if you used the frame as the antenna and if they want to get it out they have to destroy the bike so they're out a any money they were intending to make anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shameless plug: Have a look at my GNURadio OOT transceiver if you're interested in LoRa and SDR. [https://github.com/BastilleResearch/gr- lora](https://github.com/BastilleResearch/gr-lora)

Here is a summary of my black box/blind signal analysis that informed its design. [https://github.com/matt- knight/research/tree/master/2016_08_...](https://github.com/matt- knight/research/tree/master/2016_08_05_defcon_lora)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to see how it does in rural areas. There's a gap in the market for GPS horse trackers because you can't count on any particular communications network, unless you use licensed amateur radio APRS.

<comment><USER8> I'd be interested in near-shore(a few miles out and cell service is unusable/you don't have a high thoroughput requirement). There are plenty of "nearish" ocean applications that could benefit from an extended range without requiring iridium(where packet costs can be a killer).

<comment><USER9> Shawn from Beep here. These use-cases sound really interesting. Send me an email? shawn at beepnetworks dot com

<comment><USER10> Hey what are your thoughts on sigfox? They got an investment from Samsung who are apparently integrating into their devices. Will this play out like vhs vs betamax?

<comment><USER11> the overall verdict from Lora alliance members on Sigfox is that they are big on words but small on revenue or customers. add grain of salt

<comment><USER12> ~~Disclaimer : Sigfox employee ~~

Big on words, but not speaking about others ;)

I'd suggest anyone interested in LPWAN (be it Sigfox, LoraWAN or else) to get its own idea by field testing. Talk is cheap. Sigfox coverage is available in 25 countries, including some large US cities (SF, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, ..) [http://www.sigfox.com/coverage](http://www.sigfox.com/coverage)

Get in touch if interested by more info about Sigfox, solutions for developers, etc.. [http://makers.sigfox.com](http://makers.sigfox.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To see more coverage tests with heterogenous devices on the things network ([https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/)), see [http://ttnmapper.org/](http://ttnmapper.org/).

The most interesting place to see is in the Netherlands, followed by the Zürich area in Switzerland.

In my experience it's easy to get miles of range when you have line of sight. Just look at the measurement from nearby Lucerne to Zürich (Switzerland). That's around 50-60km. If you have buildings in the way, things get tougher. Putting up gateways high on the roof helps.

The Things Network Forum ([https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/)) is always a good place to talk about these things.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm rural and have a lot of things sending data to a central node for collection. I found LoRa interesting, but sadly none of the modules offered native encryption capabilities. Ended up using RFM69HW modules with AES128 in the same band and still get pretty good range, up to a mile+ NLoS (but not through 300m hills either..)

I imagine the low throughput of LoRa would make encryption a greater challenge than with other modules, but maybe there are other reasons for that.

<comment><USER15> Some of the modules have dedicated native encryption coprocessors such as the Laird RM186 - it's still easy enough to shoot your toe off though. I would argue there is negligible benefit for an encryption coprocessor (it's usually just AES ECB anyway) - you're either better off using a software implementation of ChaCha20/Poly1305 or a dedicated TPM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you are curious about tropospheric ducting this[1] site shows openings determined by looking at what packets are coming through APRS igateways. Some of the LoRa stuff runs on UHF so it could be subject to similar openings(like the huge one over the midwestern US right now.

[1] [http://aprs.mountainlake.k12.mn.us/](http://aprs.mountainlake.k12.mn.us/)

<comment><USER7> Troop is not going to be so strong as it is in 2 meter (140-144 MHz) band but 900 can bounce strongly off meteor trails, the moon, etc. Reflections off airplanes could be a big deal too.

Sporadic long range channels could be a bug and not a feature for this kind of system because if you are not a ham who thinks it is a blast to talk to someone 500 miles away on a a handheld, you want a radio system to work predictably and not be interfered with by distant stations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it still the case that LoRa is a single vendor proprietary technology? When I looked into it a bit it seemed like only Semtech produced LoRa chips and that it wasn't an open standard like 802.11, so it is unlikely that we will see offers from other vendors.

<comment><USER9> I believe Microchip licensed the IP from Semtech and has made their own chips: [http://www.microchip.com/design-centers/wireless- connectivit...](http://www.microchip.com/design-centers/wireless- connectivity/embedded-wireless/lora-technology)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the link. I hope Semtech makes it completely open in the near future. I think that is the #1 thing holding LoRa back from being a massive success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Shameless plug.

I am working as consultant for a startup building a backend for LoRa devices. If you have any question from the backend software point of view feel free to write me :)

email in the profile.

<comment><USER19> How does this sort of tech handle large scale use? Living in an apartment where all but one corner is in range of 60+ traditional access points has been a huge pain for my connectivity. I can only imagine it would be worse when you're in range of everybody in miles.

<comment><USER9> It's a great point. A smart network needs to scale down the transmit power of its nodes and gateways as the network density increases.

<comment><USER18> Hummm actually is more about the distance (in the radio topology) between the nodes and the gateway. Closer are the gateway to the nodes less power you need.

<comment><USER9> Yes, so if you have a uniform distribution of nodes and gateways over space, a node's nearest gateway gets closer as network density increases.

<comment><USER18> Definitely, but the philosophy that I usually see is that once your gateway cover an area you may want to add a second one (to cover in case of failure) but no more.

So the distribution is not uniform... On the other way, once an area is covered, more and more nodes are added.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone remember Metricom?

900mhz, miles of range, dial-up modem speeds.

<comment><USER21> Yes, yes indeed. Changed my life in 1998 when I no longer had to be in the office when on Pager Duty. Just velcroed a ricochet modem to my laptop and I was good to go from anywhere. We kind of take that convenience for granted these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find this technology incredibly exciting. I'm waiting until cell phones use it in conjunction with mesh networks to create wide adhoc networks in places without cell service. There's some fun app ideas there.

Unfortunately the spectrum that's available for this type of thing varies significantly country-by-country, so it's unlikely to be added to a major phone maker.

</comment><comment><USER23> As somebody working in the IoT space (specifically telemedicine), Lora is the technology that excites me the _most_. It really does sound like a magic bullet that really actually does solve a lot of real connectivity problems.

Go beep!

BTW, so, uh...hey beep, wanna sponsor a hackathon for this stuff this spring?

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

You mean in 9 months? We're hoping to do one earlier than that :). Hit me up: shawn at beepnetworks dot com

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are limitation to do with the Duty Cycles in LoRa networks which we've found inhibits certain real time applications. It effectively limits the number of "messages" you can send during a specific time frame.

<comment><USER9> Shawn from Beep here. Are you referring to LoRaWAN networks specifically? I'm always down to talk wireless schemes. Hit me up (email in my profile).

We go beyond LoRaWAN with our own protocol for some use cases.

For those following along: LoRa is a wireless encoding technique (PHY layer), LoRaWAN is a protocol for how a large group of devices should structure their packets (MAC layer).

<comment><USER11> what SF and bandwidth were you using for the range tests? what packet lengths?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what the frequency of operation is -- 315, 433 or 869 MHz?

<comment><USER26> 915 MHz in the US.

EDIT: Actually I suppose since it isn't LoRaWAN, it could be 433 MHz.

<comment><USER27> 433MHz isn't unlicensed spectrum in the US, its in an amateur radio band. Wouldn't be legal for commercial use like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Directionality. If you have a single gateway with tons of power for tx, is it ultra sensitive for RX and what the requirements on the end devices from a power perspective?

<comment><USER9> Yes -137dBm sensitivity: [http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/rf- transceivers/sx1272/](http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/rf- transceivers/sx1272/)

In the blog post we were using 27dBm transmissions. At that level the radio and power amplifier draw about 1.5W. If a transmission takes .3seconds that's .5Watt-seconds. So with a single AA battery (about 5Wh) you can do 40000 transmissions.

Transmissions can be much shorter in time depending on radio parameters, by a factor of 32 at most, but range can be affected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What's the throughput like for LoRa?

<comment><USER30> 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps is what they advertise.

<comment><USER31> I believe that's total bandwidth, and divided between all active devices on the network. Vs 0.3 - 50 kbps per device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Some are working on decoding the LoRa protocol with an RTL-SDR: [https://revspace.nl/DecodingLora](https://revspace.nl/DecodingLora) .

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if Beep has done any testing with Mavlink. I think 50kbps is pushing it unless you turn off packet repeats.

</comment><comment><USER34> Bernal heights is labeled incorrectly. Its north of 280, not south of it.

<comment><USER9> Ah you mean on the topo map, not the Google map at the top. Thanks.</comment></comment>


How to build a SaaS Rails site in an hour - <AUTHOR> http://www.bencurtis.com/archives/2008/04/how-to-build-a-saas-rails-site-in-one-hour/

<comment><USER2> I've got admit I've been looking for something like this but its $250 for one site. Are there similar free kits (even for other languages)?</comment>


DJI, KittyHawk and More: FAA Announce Nine New LAANC Partners - <AUTHOR> https://dronelife.com/2018/10/02/dji-kittyhawk-faa-laanc-partners/ <comment><AUTHOR> Example UAS facility map. The class E surface area is depicted in a magenta "keyhole" shaped overlay with blue dashed line. And the squares show areas where a UAV could operate (with authorization) at or below the depicted altitude. Much of the central area is marked 0, so UAV's can't operate there.

[https://www.faa.gov/uas/request_waiver/uas_facility_maps/med...](https://www.faa.gov/uas/request_waiver/uas_facility_maps/media/Class_E_UASFM.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: Is WordPress insecure? - <AUTHOR> I was considering WordPress for a small shop. Though I was under the impression that WordPress was more easily hacked and not as "professional." Don't know why I have a negative view of it. <comment><USER2> WordPress is very popular so it is targeted more, but it can't be said to be any more/less insecure than other CMS systems.

I feel like everything is hackable these days, unless you have tight security measures in place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wordpress is likely to be more secure than anything an above average developer can roll up on their own. Anything that's broken is likely to be fixed faster (and discovered faster to boot).

The professional measure of a website that's going to matter most to a small business is the design. On the technical side that includes the ability for any old shad tree mechanic to maintain it. Wordpress definitely fits that.</comment>