Unix system programming in OCaml (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://ocaml.github.io/ocamlunix/index.html <comment><USER2> For those interested, some of the underlying libraries that make up Docker for Mac (and, I think, Windows) are written in OCaml (or have components written in OCaml): VPNKit[0], DataKit[1] and HyperKit[2] (qcow2 support is implemented in OCaml).

0: [https://github.com/moby/vpnkit](https://github.com/moby/vpnkit)

1: [https://github.com/moby/datakit](https://github.com/moby/datakit)

2: [https://github.com/moby/hyperkit](https://github.com/moby/hyperkit)

<comment><USER3> To be fair, GitHub attributes 1.5% of hyperkit's code to ocaml

<comment><USER4> The 1.5% that's in the hyperkit repo is the shim to the Mirage block layer. The qcow2 implementation that's normally linked in is from [https://github.com/mirage/ocaml-qcow](https://github.com/mirage/ocaml-qcow) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ocaml, in comparison to other functional statically typed languages has had many successful Unix applications.

For a great tour of going to Ocaml (from Python), see Thomas Leonard's blog.

A retrospective is here but read the whole lot.

[http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2014/06/06/python-to-ocaml- ret...](http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2014/06/06/python-to-ocaml- retrospective/)

<comment><USER6> And related hackernews discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7858276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7858276)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is such a great book. OCaml's type system feels like a superpower specially in the context of Unix development which is traditionally done in C.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm contributing to a linker written in ~OCaml [1], and now I understand writing systems code in OCaml is really a bad idea. It makes things more complicated when you really don't want them to be. As James Mickens says [2]:

>You can't just place a LISP book on top of an x86 chip and hope that the hardware learns about lambda calculus by osmosis.

[1]: [https://github.com/rems-project/linksem](https://github.com/rems- project/linksem) [2]: [http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thenightwatch...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thenightwatch.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Can you provide an example of the things, OCaml makes more complicated and explain which languages you compare it to? I guess it's quite different in comparison to C, C++ or maybe Rust than to other garbage-collected 'system programming' languages like Go?

<comment><USER8> Here are a few examples:

\- Inferred types: you're constantly wondering "what is the type of this variable?". Type errors occur far from where the real type error is. Annotating is complicated because you're often dealing with complicated types (with nested tuples for instance).

\- Using higher-order functions: often you'll see a function with nested functions in it [1], or some functional list processing function like "unzip" being used [2]. This increases the code complexity a lot ("what does unzip do again?").

\- Using monads: yet another distraction from what's really happening. It forces you to write nested functions and doesn't play well with conditions [3]. Also various people use monadic operators way weirder than >>= and all of this becomes really hard to read.

\- Using functional-friendly data structures: the linker is using immutable lists of optional bytes to represent memory images, because this is idiomatic in OCaml. However this is slow and inefficient as hell. Really, I can't load a 60MiB binary because the linker runs out of memory and is killed by the kernel on machine with 6GiB of RAM. Also, just linking hello-world takes ages.

\- Designing functional loops: when the loop you want isn't in your stdlib, you first need to create a recursive function, and then make sure all recursive calls are tail calls otherwise you blow up your stack. The result is usually not very fun to read.

tl;dr: the C language is small, the OCaml language is not, and when you're dealing with complicated stuff you really don't _need_ more complexity from the language itself. James Mickens explains this (among other things) in his essay.

[1]: [https://github.com/rems- project/linksem/blob/master/src/link...](https://github.com/rems- project/linksem/blob/master/src/link.lem#L820) [2]: [https://github.com/rems- project/linksem/blob/master/src/link...](https://github.com/rems- project/linksem/blob/master/src/link.lem#L341) [3]: [https://github.com/emersion/linksem/blob/54c3a8430e621198653...](https://github.com/emersion/linksem/blob/54c3a8430e621198653744738933cdbea3151866/src/main_load.lem#L230)

(Note: set the syntax highlighting to "OCaml" when trying to read this source code)

EDIT: list formatting EDIT 2: grammar

<comment><USER10> >the linker is using immutable lists of optional bytes to represent memory images

Why would you use linked list instead of Bytes, Bigarrays or Arrays? You are doing it wrong, take a look at BAP's memory representation:

[https://github.com/BinaryAnalysisPlatform/bap/tree/master/li...](https://github.com/BinaryAnalysisPlatform/bap/tree/master/lib/bap_image)

[https://binaryanalysisplatform.github.io/bap/api/master/argo...](https://binaryanalysisplatform.github.io/bap/api/master/argot_index.html)

Looked at your code, damn it's bad, I'd really suggest to dive into BAP sources and documentation a bit to understand how to write OCaml. It feels like you are trying to write in OCaml as in some different language, Haskell maybe, not using modules and functors. Reminds me how J people write C.

You could write `fun x y z -> ...` instead of `fun x -> fun y -> fun z -> ...`, it's also better to write signatures (with docstrings) in separate .mli files (much easier to read and generate docs), if you use monads like maybe (why not result) and option, it would be much more convenient to use bind operators instead of `match ... | None -> None`

<comment><USER8> We need optional values for bytes, as a way to say "this byte is undefined", so we can't use Bytes directly.

But yes, we're doing it wrong for sure.

EDIT: seems like you edited your reply, so let me add this to mine :)

>Looked at your code, damn it's bad, I'd really suggest to dive into BAP sources and documentation a bit to understand how to write OCaml. It feels like you are trying to write in OCaml as in some different language, Haskell maybe, not using modules and functors. Reminds me how J people write C.

Oh, I also think it's bad don't worry. However we're using a subset of OCaml (Lem) so we don't have things like modules for instance. And no, I really don't want to start using complicated module features and functors, for the reasons I explained above.

<comment><USER10> Well, you could use arrays of optional bytes, but are use sure it's clever?

Maybe it's much better to define an abstract module of type

        module type Mem = sig
          type t
          val get_byte : t -> ~offset:int -> char option
        end

And invent some clever (maybe lazy) implementation using just Bigarray?

BAP also has something like this in

[https://github.com/BinaryAnalysisPlatform/bap/blob/master/li...](https://github.com/BinaryAnalysisPlatform/bap/blob/master/lib/bap_image/bap_memory.mli#L22)

You could ask about BAP in general on

[https://discuss.ocaml.org/](https://discuss.ocaml.org/)

especially

[https://discuss.ocaml.org/u/ivg/summary](https://discuss.ocaml.org/u/ivg/summary)

(one of the guys behind BAP, very clever and talented in explaining stuff)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Only somewhat related,but I've tried to learn ocaml before but have never been able to figure out when to put what kind of delimiters where. Can anyone recommend a resource that explains the usage of the double comma and the like?

<comment><USER12> The double semicolon only matters in the REPL (aka the "toplevel").

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two other situations where punctuation matters:

1) Whenever you have nested match cases:

        match left with
        | Some left ->
          match right with
          | Some right -> Some (left, right)
          | None -> None
        | None -> None

The compiler does not use indentation to figure out scoping, so the above gets treated as:

        match left with
        | Some left ->
          match right with
          | Some right -> Some (left, right)
          | None -> None
          | None -> None

So you need to surround the inner match with parens

        match left with
        | Some left ->
          (
            match right with
            | Some right -> Some (left, right)
            | None -> None
          )
        | None -> None

2) If you are doing imperative things inside an if statement:

Consider the following function:

        let cache_file file =
          if not (file_exists file) then
            printf "downloading file\n";
            download file
          else
            printf "file already exists\n"

The problem here is that OCaml allows one to create an if statement with no else clause. And since the compiler doesn't use indentation to figure out scoping, then the code is essentially treated like the following:

        let cache_file file =
          (if not (file_exists file) then printf "downloading file\n");
          download file;
          else (printf "file already exists\n");

Which is just totally wrong. So in order to do multiple imperative actions within an if block, you should use either parens, or begin/end delimiters (which are treated exactly the same as parens)

        let cache_file file =
          if not (file_exists file) then begin
            printf "downloading file\n";
            download file
          end else
            printf "file already exists\n"

<comment><USER13> There's an interesting thing with the semicolon. I've heard people advocating thinking of the semicolon as a binary operator:

(;) : unit -> unit -> unit

Of course, the reality is more complicated than this, because it can be used at the end of an expression, where it behaves like a postfix operator of type 'a -> 'a. Let's take your example:

        match left with
        | Some left ->
          match right with
          | Some right -> Some (left, right)
          | None -> None
        | None -> None

you can actually do

        match left with
        | Some left ->
          match right with
          | Some right -> Some (left, right)
          | None -> None ; ; (* <-- two separate semicolons *)
        | None -> None

This doesn't just work for imperative stuff, like the operator theory of the semicolon, it will work with this example.

My understanding is that this is due to the fact that optional semicolons are allowed at the end of statements and close the current expression.

So we're closing the first expression (None) and then closing the second expression (the inner match). The double semicolon is something else altogether.

Though it is worth noting that this example is straying from idiomatic OCaml and we can avoid this altogether with better matching:

        match (left, right) with
        | (Some left, Some right) -> Some (left, right)
        | _ -> None

Both the native optimizing compiler and BuckleScript are able to do what you would expect with this: the matched tuple is optimized away.

Your second unfixed example actually causes a syntax error. There is an if expression in OCaml and an if statement. This is particularly unfortunate, because the let cache_file = function | file when file_exists file -> printf "downloading file\n"; download file | _ -> printf "file already exists\n" first semicolon within an if expression turns the whole thing into an if statement, and an if statement can have no else clause. The else clause is then without an if statement, because we've triggered the imperative if statement. This is a syntax error.

were we to define an operator

       let (>>>) a b = a; b

then we could replace that semicolon with an >>> and things behave as expected. But it's really that if can be both a statement and an expression. For this reason I prefer using matches in general.

        let cache_file = function
          | file when not (file_exists file) ->
            printf "downloading file\n";
            download file
          | _ -> printf "file already exists\n"

<comment><USER14> OCaml has no guaranteed order of evaluation, which is not what you want with (;). It needs to be part of the language as special syntax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For some real world applications take a look at libguestfs [http://libguestfs.org](http://libguestfs.org), a library that can inspect, mount, edit VM filesystem images. Also includes tools for p2v and v2v migration.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think one major turn off, especially for systems programming, was the lack of multicore threading support (i.e. it had no way to get parallelism using threads). Does anyone know if this has changed?

<comment><USER17> One of the fastest web servers is nginx that uses child processes (typically one child per core) and asynchronous IO within the child without any threads. The same model with a parent process that monitor threadless child workers is often used in embedded system. One can and people do exactly the same in OCaml.

Surely it requires more code to setup things especially if the child processes need to communicate over shared memory to max the performance, but the big plus is that the resulting system is much more robust. In case of troubles one can just let a child die or even use kill -9 and start a new child. This is not possible with most threading implementations. For example, try to recover from out-of-memory in multi threaded C++/Java/Go etc. application. It is very hard. With threadless children it is almost trivial.

<comment><USER18> Plus we have learned the hard way that concurrency and processes are much saner from safety point of view than threads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You really don't want to use the Unix module directly. If you're serious about system programming in OCaml, use Lwt or Async to allow for concurrency.

</comment><comment><USER20> IIRC in Coders at Work, Brendan Eich talks about hiring a programmer who wrote an OS in OCaml.</comment>


Cantor's Diagonal Proof - <AUTHOR> http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath371.htm <comment><USER3> I was very relifed to discover later in life that I wasn't alone in disagreeing with Cantor. That, along with a few other proofs and axioms, were a major source of angst for me as a kid in school.

I find Wittgenstein's take on it very interesting.

[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein- mathematics/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein-mathematics/)

I wish some teacher had told me that other maths are possible if we agree with different rules, even though schools are always going to teach and require the status quo.

<comment><USER4> How do you define real numbers without uncountable sets though? I'm not sure most people are willing to give up the real numbers just because they are a bit unintuitive.

<comment><USER5> real numbers are a closure of the set of rational numbers under the limit operation. It just happens that the closure is uncountable.

It is pretty standard device in mathematics - having a set and an operation, to produce and explore another set built as a closure of the first set under the operation. Seems pretty intuitive to me :)

What is really unintuitive, puzzling is the starting point of it all - <USER2> numbers... 1, 2, 3... why there is a one stone, a one star, ... why this discretization?

<comment><USER6> You can start lower, if you want to.

{} == 0

{{}} == 1

...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A key part of Turing's computability paper hinges on the diagonal argument. It's really well covered in 'The Annotated Turing' by Charles Petzold.

In Cantor's version, we prove that numbers (real numbers?) are not enumerable by creating a new number.

In Turing's paper, he enumerates all valid Turing machines in a similar way, but crucially, we can't know if the new constructed machine is valid or not, so the outcome is different.

It's quite possible I'm botching elements of these, but it was a beautiful read.

<comment><USER8> > In Cantor's version, we prove that numbers (real numbers?) are not > enumerable

in the standard diagonalization, you just prove that the reals in the interval (0, 1) are uncountable; that proof is very simple to state and then you can argue that (0, 1) is a subset of the reals so the real line must be uncountable too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Intro to Real Analysis (or whatever your school calls it) -- where Cantor's proof is normally covered -- is really a gem of a course and the first time since 8th/9th grade geometry that students are clearly shown why math is the queen of the sciences.

Unfortunately, in my experience, a lot of future high school math teachers skipped it and not because it's hard but because the class before it (intermediate calc) was a huge step up from high school calculus (yes they should take intro to calc at college level but kids who do well in high school calc always want to skip it). What ends up happening is you get a lot of high school calc teachers who don't really understand calculus all that well and can't answer questions and so they just end up teaching to the AP exam and the vicious cycle reinforces itself.

</comment><comment><USER10> I read this for the first time in the excellent and surprisingly accessible The Annotated Turing[0], which I can highly recommend. If you're vaguely interested in things like proofs like these or about computability or just Turing's and others' contributions and approaches, the book approaches these things very well without presuming a deep pure mathematical background.

Seriously, read it.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic- Comp...](http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic- Computability/dp/0470229055/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1383018325&sr=1-1&keywords=the+annotated+turing)

</comment><comment><USER11> One of my favorite proofs. It blew my mind when I understood it; it's so simple in hindsight. I've tried to explain it to non-technical people and haven't has as much luck conveying why it's so cool.

<comment><USER12> The book "The Cat in Numberland" is a fantastic way to introduce this proof (and a few other related mathematical concepts) to non-mathematicians and young children.

It is however becoming harder and harder to find for a reasonable price :( I paid $50 for mine, which is quite a bit for a children's book, but it is that good.

[http://amzn.com/081262744X](http://amzn.com/081262744X)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The digits of every rational number repeat after some finite number of digits, so the "period" of every rational number is finite. However, there is no upper bound on the period of rational numbers, i.e., the periods are all finite, but there is no largest period. Thus, in a manner of speaking, the least common multiple of this set of strictly finite things is infinite."

Got lost here, what is the LCM of this set; which set?

<comment><USER8> this set (the set of periods of decimal expansions of rationals) seems to be oddly defined to no purpose.

Consider the set of positive integers. It has the same property described (in fact, it has all the same properties, since it's the same set). Why go to all the trouble of defining Z+ as "the set of periods of decimal expansions of rationals", which is harder to parse?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's a proof of Cantor's Theorem in Metamath, which is one of the simplest formal systems in the world: [http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/ruc.html](http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/ruc.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/#xl6a68x](https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/#xl6a68x)

Here I use the Diagonal Proof to talk about Observation Statements (or Observa) / Mental States (of Observers) such that Diagonal Statements (DiaSt), once normalized for all Observers, can be measured along arbitrary distribution of duration ranges (T) of a non-local universe. Given this, we can predict the upper/lower bound of periodic collapse of quantum systems (our Model).

I've also seen Cantor's Proof applied as a metaphor for the analysis of Web Artefacts: Hypermedia Types (X axis) / Web Components (Y axis). (I see "soft objects" as a species of Web Artefact.)

There are many interesting applications. For me, personally, I think Cantor's Proof gives us a means of assuming the periodic collapse of quantum systems w/r/t quantum observers (it is a myth that "your" mind and "my" mind are discrete entities) such that quantum field theory can be salvaged.

</comment><comment><USER16> I always liked the explanation of the proof in Gödel, Escher, Bach. Very easy to follow.</comment>


You Negotiate Commodities, But You Seize Opportunities - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2010/09/16/you-negotiate-commodities-you-seize-opportunities/ <comment><USER2> Over and over in business you'll see people avoid decisions they don't deeply understand (e.g. the average VC knows nothing about gaming, the average PHB knows nothing about databases, the average techie knows nothing about your market), and to paper over their ignorance and demonstrate they are in control and providing value they'll suggest a change to something they think they understand (advisor shares, the design of the front page, your pricing relative to a bowl of ramen).

This rarely works well, particularly when the two decisions are in fact related. One coping mechanism is being able to ignore advice (if you haven't taken their money, you can probably ignore their advice). Another is having a list of knobs people can twirl which are off the critical path (salaryman survival skill #1: distract the boss with rearranging a Gantt chart which can't kill anyone).

<comment><USER3> "I work in advertising, where frequently the challenge is to get the client to agree to pay you as much money as possible, then go away. The problem is that some clients (particularly new ones) will absolutely refuse to let an estimate pass their desk without making some alteration, just to show that they're involved in the process. Now, if you go in with a carefully crafted ad campaign, where everything beautifully interlocks with everything else, then this moron blindly slashing away with his pen will inevitably cock it all up.

The solution is to give him a helicopter. A helicopter is something glaringly, obviously wrong, deliberately thrown in to satisfy a busybody's need to "do something."

It comes from a video producer I once knew who would always include an actual helicopter (for aerial shots of the city) in the estimate every new proposal he made. The helicopter was always obviously far more expensive than anything else on the list, and the client would always immediately cross it off before approving the proposal. End result: the producer got to do the project as he wanted, the manager got to feel useful, and everyone was happy."

<comment><USER4> Let's say you have manager A, minion B and ad agency C. If A and C know one another, A can simply say to C, here's some money, get on with it. If they don't, A uses B as a proxy in case it all goes hatstand, B can take the fall.

There's no reason B can't be complicit in this and take the day off to play golf instead...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So the basic premise I get, but as a nascent founder, you haven't seen a lot, so sometimes, you may not know if this is a dime a dozen commodity or an opportunity.

I'm wary of fooling myself into thinking most thing's an opportunity rather than a commodity. Besides getting more experience and seeing more, how does one guard against it?

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting how your investors see you bringing this guy on board as an asset but only at a price that _they_ are comfortable with and that might have brought a multiple in value. Makes me wonder how they'll feel about dilution if you ever need to go for more capital.

On another note, did you put it to a vote? Do you still hold a majority?

<comment><USER7> In practice, everything a board does is unanimous. If you respond to you VC board members saying "he is too expensive" with "let's vote on it", the company has WAY deeper problems.

<comment><USER6> The bigger problem in this case was that there was consensus about the budget before it was made clear what the goal to be achieved by spending it was.

Being in business means being flexible and having a bunch of beancounters on the board that are scared to be diluted is not going to help at all.

In such a case stating your case as clearly as you can, possibly in a follow up meeting (because he clearly was not well prepared for this one) would have been much better, also, and that's another critical mistake here, before you approach an outsider you first agree internally that you will do so, and what the budget for that particular outsider is. That could have saved some friction here.

A ship has only one captain, if the VCs are on the board they are represented as guardians, but not in a decision making capacity, only an advisory role.

Board decision are not nearly always unanimous, and it could very well be that a decision like this is determined during a general shareholders meeting if the board can not find a resolution. 1 share, 1 vote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really enjoyed the personal touch the last sentence and full paragraph added to the story; being able to admit personal failure is an admirable trait, and everyone likes to see the mistakes their heroes make, and not just the successes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Everything can be overpaid. It seems like he is denying that.

I think what he really means to say is to don't negotiate too much where you can have a great profit. In fewer words, not to be penny-wise and pound- foolish.

</comment><comment><USER10> So does he mean you shouldn't negotiate opportunities? I don't think this is valid in general.

<comment><USER11> negotiating can send a signal that you don't value the other entity as highly as they value themselves. it's one thing to negotiate over the price of an apple, say, because the apple doesn't have feelings. but if you try to talk down the compensation package for a potential employee/advisor, particularly one who would likely become a star contributor, you can hurt their feelings and/or cause them to seek employment elsewhere. you can always buy an apple from somebody else, and the store/vendor can always sell that apple you passed over to somebody else. but as a laborer, you have only so many hours in the week you can sell to somebody else, so in general it's in your best interest to get the highest compensation you can.

So negotiating as a general rule is good. But in specific cases, where you're dealing with an opportunity or "non-commodity" thing, no, negotiating can sometimes be bad. That was his whole point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> great article but I think he failed to make a significant point which was also key to that experience: the failure wasn't so much about treating an opportunity as a commodity but that he failed to follow-through on an offer he has already made and negotiated with the guy and had buy-in from him on. so when he came back to him and said i have to make you a lower offer _that_ moment was going to hurt the other guy. It's not that negotiating itself was wrong, it's that there already seemed to be buy-in from both key parties and then later one side didn't follow though on it. Ouch.

<comment><USER12> He did follow-through on his first offer. What he wanted, but the VCs did not agree with, was to accept the last email two days prior to the board meeting.</comment></comment>


Clean up San Francisco's streets, tourist industry pleads - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Clean-up-San-Francisco-s-streets-tourist-12839281.php <comment><USER2> Homelessness, both in San Francisco and elsewhere is not rooted in housing but in drugs and mental illness.

Building more low income housing won't address those root causes or noticeably ameliorate homelessness as a symptom, because most homeless people cannot hold down a job and have 0 income, aside from begging.

There is no easy solution, but allowing the mentally ill to fend for themselves on the streets in the name of freedom is morally naive. Put them in institutions and get them off the streets.

<comment><USER3> It seems like you need to address both: Utah has seen good results from providing housing because that makes treatment programs more likely to succeed but it's a very hard problem without a silver bullet.

[https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865678779/Is-Utah- still-...](https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865678779/Is-Utah-still-a- model-for-solving-chronic-homelessness.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mental healthcare, drug decriminalization, effective rehab, actually affordable and/or donated housing, actual comprehensive-integrated social work and criminal justice reform would make more lives better. But when some rich, sheltered people callously suggest "others" are dirt in need of "cleaning," it's abhorrent. Fuck the tourists, they're tourists.

<comment><USER5> I would point out that those tourists come to town and pay taxes, some of which go to pay for local needs, including care for the homeless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tragic. The Bay Area has one of the highest concentrations of raw brain power and talent in the world. And they can't fix problems in their own backyard.

What a shame. Yet another symptom of what people say that so much talent and brain power is being wasted on showing better ads to people.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sure, when the global property bubble pops. Until that time, I kind of hope it gets worse. Everyone needs to suffer together and the ills borne by the homeless and lower classes need to be experienced by all.

Housing is a good investment for a limited number of players. When EVERYONE wants to invest in housing / real estate / whatever, it quickly becomes a long-term very bad investment, sustained through momentum, the fact that moving away usually happens across generations, and that the law changes slowly.

Case in point, if you look over the last 40 years, housing is a great investment. If you also look from 1870 to 1914, 44 years, Europe looks like an extremely peaceful place. But that will change very quickly and violently soon enough, to the point that only a federal, workforce based intervention like the New Deal can help (not the "Fiscal New Deal" we had under Obama). When that happens, housing will be super cheap and jobs you just have to show up to to get hired, and the crisis will abate.

</comment><comment><USER8> I recently visited SF for the first time in like 10 years, I was surprised at how safe and clean everything appeared after reading these sorts of articles for years. I walked 40 miles over the course of a week doing touristy stuff and spent lots of time in lots of neighborhoods at day and night and it wasn't nearly as "scary" as everyone seems to think it is.

If anything Denver has more homeless per street, and they seem to be much more aggressive and/or unstable. The Mission District was pretty hip and relaxed in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER9> Euphemism for move them on for many values of them.

Better idea: house people, give them jobs and healthcare</comment>


The Wellington Declaration (counter-ACTA) - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/the-wellington-declaration.html <comment><USER2> Direct link to the petition, which you can sign: <http://www.gopetition.com/online/35443.html></comment>


Face pareidolia recruits mechanisms for detecting human social attention - <AUTHOR> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620924814 <comment><AUTHOR> >Pareidolia (/pærɪˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is the tendency for incorrect perception of a stimulus as an object, pattern or meaning known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music.

Pareidolia can be considered a subcategory of apophenia.

Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, the Man in the Moon, the Moon rabbit, and other lunar pareidolia.

The concept of pareidolia may extend to include hidden messages in recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds, and hearing indistinct voices in random noise such as that produced by air conditioners or fans.

Pareidolia was at one time considered a symptom of human psychosis, but it is now seen as a normal human tendency.

Pareidolia is not confined to humans.

Scientists have for years taught computers to use visual clues to "see" faces and other images.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia)</comment>


Ask HN: GoDaddy replacement? - <AUTHOR>

I know this comes up periodically but since many are contemplating switching out of GoDaddy right now, does anyone have any solid advice on domain registration, domain hosting, DNS hosting and SSL cert providers? <comment><USER2> I use gandi.net, more of a higher-priced registrar and just transferred 10 domains to namecheap.com, which seemed really easy to do. Use their "SOPASucks" transfer coupon for the best discount. ($6.99/yr per transfer plus free private registration for a year.)

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://gandi.net/>

<comment><USER4> A (very) good thing about Gandi is that they anonymize WhoIs records for the domains registered for personal use (all but the first/last name, but these can be obscured by the user). Free of charge and without requiring a transfer of the domain ownership to the proxy like GoDaddy & Co. does.

Plus they are a French company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I saw DNSimple (<https://dnsimple.com/>) mentioned in one of the GoDaddy threads. Haven't used them personally but I'll be investigating them soon.

Another HNer recently launched Badger (<https://www.badger.com>) but I believe it is only open to beta testers right now.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://namecheap.com> & <http://name.com> (*These are ones I currently use [namecheap.com since more than 10 years I just realised] and I am pretty happy with them, so far)

</comment><comment><USER7> I am considering consolidating my domains on amazon route 53. I have both NSI and GoDaddy as domain providers and I guess now is as good a time as any to plunge into amazon's Route 53. The process is so awfully painful and laborious that I keep putting it off.

</comment><comment><USER8> Over the past year I've moved about half of my domains from godaddy/moniker to <http://nearlyfreespeech.net/>

I recommend nfsn to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER9> For me, the issue with switching from Godaddy is cheap ASP.NET hosting - Godaddy's shared hosting is fine because bandwidth is not an issue, however ASP.NET and IIS7 are.

Any thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER10> <https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/> is pretty good. Their site design is basically the exact opposite of GoDaddy.</comment>


How to Debug Rust with Visual Studio Code - <AUTHOR> https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/how-to-debug-rust-with-visual-studio-code/ <comment><USER2> Can I use VS to debug Firefox & Rust on Windows?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question. I don't know.

I'd imagine it's possible? But how difficult it is may depend on how frankenstein of a build system Firefox uses. If it produces normal pdbs then maybe it will "just work"?

Sadly, projects of that size are rarely so simple. :(</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Domain name for personal website - <AUTHOR>

Dear HNers.
I am looking to register a domain name for my personal website. Nothing fancy with respect to content; maybe just a personal blog, my amateur photographs and details about research and hobby projects. But being so late into the game, I cannot find any suitable domain name with just my first name or even first name plus last name initial with the common TLDs. Is it okay to get one of those new two letter TLDs like .ws or .at or are they looked down upon? My name plus last name is available with a .com TLD but I don't have a usual western name so it would be tough to remember with the correct spelling though it would be just ten characters hence I want to get just my first name. Plus I don't like .com for a personal page.
Any suggestions welcome.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> First of all: who cares? Seriously, if this is for a personal website, why does the domain name matter?

Second of all: .at is not "a new two letter TLD"-- it is the TLD for Austria, and has been around as long as any TLD.

Third of all: Looked down upon by whom? Who are you trying to impress?

Which brings me back to: Seriously, who cares?

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly I don't care. I just want something easy to remember. About caring about other people's perception well I was concerned about potential employers, nothing major.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a personal page, so the name/TLD don't really matter beyond your personal preference. From what I can tell, you value having only your first name (much) higher than having a .com, so I would say you should go with one of the newer domains. If you're looking to be technically accurate, check to see if a '.me' is available; that TLD was created explicitly for personal sites.

</comment><comment><USER4> Should be able to consolidate most of those needs with an aggregator like About.me - wordpress/blogspot for the blog, flickr/picasa for the photos, and maybe posterous for the research/hobbies.

Saves time in the creation/maintenance of the site and spreads your presence across the web.

Regardless, shunning you surname definitely won't help if people try searching for you.

</comment><comment><USER5> What about .name (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.name>)?

Or .me if you want something shorter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly none of them are available.</comment></comment>


Celebrities, CEOs & a former president attended Steve Jobs memorial - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/17/celebrities_ceosa_former_president_attended_steve_jobs_memorial.html <comment><USER2> Wondering why Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago mayor was on invitees list. Any guesses?</comment>


Top 3% of U.S. Taxpayers Paid Majority of Income Taxes in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/top-3-of-u-s-taxpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016 <comment><USER2> One thing that is important to understand is that the _income_ tax only makes up about 50% of federal revenue. The next major source of revenue? _Payroll_ tax. Income tax is a progressive tax. Payroll tax is definitely not progressive.

According to this source [1] in Fiscal Year 2016 income tax made 47.3% of federal revenue and payroll tax accounted for 34.1%.

I don't know what the exact numbers are if you take both taxes into account, but I do know that the headline [2] is at best grossly misleading because so many people are going to forget about payroll taxes.

[1] [https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are- sourc...](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources- revenue-federal-government)

[2] "Top 3% of U.S. Taxpayers Paid Majority of Income Taxes in 2016"

<comment><USER3> True, but at least in theory, the FICA (payroll) taxes fund programs that directly benefit the employee: medicare, social security, and unemployment benefits. The reason these appear more regressive than income taxes is due to how Social Security pays out an amount proportional to your contributions, while also having a cap on the max you can receive and be taxed for.

<comment><USER4> An lets be clear. Only in theory is this true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wealthier people also receive much greater benefits from the government. The court system makes complex contracts possible in a way that really only benefits holders of capital. Infrastructure for transportation and information technology benefits everyone, but especially people who own companies that ship goods and deliver services over the internet. Government contracts benefit people who have a stake in the companies that service those contracts. The police tend to provide better protection to wealthier people in wealthier communities, who have more to lose from property crimes in any case.

In case you're not persuaded that people who can afford to pay more taxes should pay a greater share, all of these things are valid reasons for the wealthy to kick in a lot more of their wealth, in relative and absolute terms, than other people.

<comment><USER6> > Wealthier people also receive much greater benefits from the government.

I've seen this said a few times before - I'm kind of confused on what this means? I'm technically in the top few percent (idk exactly where) and I receive less from government than I did when I was an undergraduate in college. I'm from a poorer family, so the government was straight up paying my family in the past.

I don't think this is remotely true, and if you're arguing that it's protection or something, I'm also calling B.S.. for my taxes I can easily hire a full time body guard, buy a few machine guns and make my house and car a fortress, and after some napkin math, I could still probably pay 10% taxes to keep the roads up (as opposed to the graduated 45% I pay).

The vast majority of taxes go to medicare, Medicaid, social security, and payments to foreign countries. I honestly do not see any benefit to me from any of the above. And the people who benefit from the prior mentioned, are also zero threat to me (retired, sick, etc.).

Not saying we should get rid of it, but it's definitely not benifiting me.

Edit: just for reference, I refused any government grants for school and took up a job to start paying for my own food / clothing when my parents started getting welfare. I didn't want to be a hypocrite at then (at 13), so I can say stuff like this now.

<comment><USER7> An ordered society with a stable government is a necessary precondition to building a business like say Facebook. (In the absence of a State, your best bet as a nerd is to try to make yourself as useful as possible to the most powerful warlord who will have you.) In that sense, Facebook's shareholders and employees receive a lot more benefits from the existence of government than say a day laborer.

<comment><USER6> I urge you to look at spending, you can have a stable government at 1/4 the cost or less. That's kind of my point.

<comment><USER7> heydenberk was talking about _benefits_ \--rich people, whose wealth is built on large-scale organization and sophisticated transactions, benefit more (in absolute terms) from government than poor people. You're talking about _costs_ \--can we decrease costs dramatically and still get the benefits of a stable government? The answer to that is probably "yes."

That gets us into the realm of political philosophy. What is the purpose of government? Achieving stability at the lowest cost? My view is that, once you yoke people under the boot of the State, you're morally obligated to give them Democracy. And in a Democracy, people will tend to vote for policies that maximize the benefit to the middle 50% or so, which is going to lead to a larger government than the minimum necessary to ensure stability. (In my view, thus, an anarchist libertarian society is not possible, while a statist libertarian society is fundamentally immoral.)

<comment><USER4> As for statist libertarian, I only partly agree. I think you can both have a democracy and a political system that is fairly libertarian. I depends what you call a democracy, a pure 51% majority rule, then its true, but in my opinion that is equally as immoral as a libertarian state.

However, I do think that a combination of democracy and a founding system, constitution or whatever can be better.

Switzerland is a example of a country that is very democratic but its more libertarian in many ways then most other democracies. That has probably to do with the way the system is set up outside of the pure democracy idea.

Not sure why you claim anarchist libertarian society is not possible, seems that has little to do with your post.

<comment><USER8> US Government spending as a % of GDP: 37.6%

Switzerland government spending as a % of GDP: 34%

[https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government- spending.htm](https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm)

Strip out the military (where the US spends quite a bit maintaining global hegemony), and the Swiss have a bigger government than the US.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and Switzerland and US both are pretty small. Compare Switzerland to the countries around it.

My point was not that Switzerland is a libertarian paradise but rather that it is not true that more democracy makes the government larger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is so much BS. Wealthy people slide their income into whole owned businesses. Those businesses use deductions to reduce their income in ways that you or I can't.

Simple example, to avoid paying income tax on $40,000

1\. Create a business.

2\. That business buys a car.

3\. That business then leases the car to the business's owner

4\. The owner as an independent contractor to the business deducts the 'cost' of leasing the car.

5\. The business depreciates the car net the lease 'income'.

Result: The cost of the new car is a tax deduction for the business.

The business owner never has to take the $40,000 to go out and buy the car themselves.

How about that fancy mansion?

Also simple!

1\. Have a separate LLC buy the house.

2\. Host company events at the mansion.

3\. The company pays a high fee for the privilege of hosting the CEO's Christmas party at the CEO's house.

4\. All the CEO has to do is make sure to invite enough customers' CEOs to the event and it becomes an IRS approved business function.

</comment><comment><USER10> In other news, top 3% of us taxpayers earned the majority of income in 2016

<comment><USER11> So you're willing to concede that the rich pay their fair share?

<comment><USER12> How did you come up with that?

The article just says that top 3% of US taxpayers pay the majority of income taxes.

If they pay 60% of all income tax paid, but have e.g. 80% of income, they're still paying "the majority of income taxes", but not a fair share of them.

<comment><USER8> Your hypothetical is not the case (as you can see in one of the graphs in the article).

I don't know what "fair share" means exactly, but the 3% in question make far less a % of national income than they pay in income taxes.

<comment><USER12> My hypothetical was an extreme example to show how this can be still fair.

Besides this extreme example, you can get the 3% much lower in their share of income and still be justified for the taxes they pay.

Say, a person makes 1M year and a 999999 people make 10K per year. The first person earns just 0,01% of the total income combined, but he might be the only one paying taxes if the others are below the taxable income level.

So, he might pay e.g. 20% of 1M (and 100% of taxes), while he only makes 0.01% of the income -- and that could still be fair.

Now add many dirt poor, many middle class, and a 3% of upper middle class, millionaires, billionaires and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a lot of talk about wether this is 'fair' or not - let's set that aside and ask if it's good policy to have so much of the country's revenue depend on the income of so few people.

Does this make the government more or less beholden to the rich? Does this put the government more or less at risk of exposure to financial events that only impact the wealthy? And does this incent the government to enact policies that increase the wealth of the top 3% over the bottom 30%?

Those are the questions we should be focusing on - not what's 'fair'. Life isn't fair - if it were the wealth of the top 3% would be determined by how hard they work and how much good their work does to society. That's not how we live, so let's get back to crafting our society based on what's good for it as a whole instead of how we feel about how much tax someone else pays.

<comment><USER14> How would shifting the tax burden more onto the poor reduce the influence of the rich on the government?

It seems like the wealthy's influence on politics is two fold. Indirect, people who get elected to Congress have wealthy friends, and interact more with wealthy people. I.e. they have way more friends that are doctors than burger flippers.

Direct, wealthy people and directly contributing larges amounts of money to access politicians.

It seems like the first would be unaffected, and the second would mbe made worse because the poor would have less, and the rich more disposable income to use to donate to and influence politics more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The top 1% paid about 37% of income taxes. They also own over 38% of the wealth and 'took home 85% of income growth between 2009 and 2013. In 15 states, the top 1% captured all income growth during the same four-year period'. Based on this I would argue that they are in no way being taken advantage of and that income disparity is a very real problem that is only getting worse. This also does not include payroll taxes which are almost always paid by the middle and lower class while only sometimes by the wealthy as they are able to leverage their wealth to generate income.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/top-one-percent-every-us- sta...](https://www.businessinsider.com/top-one-percent-every-us- state-2016-11#-2)

</comment><comment><USER16> So next time you hear about a tax plan that "benefits the rich", this is why.

It's really hard for a reduction in taxes to benefit the poor because they pay so little in the first place.

<comment><USER17> It sure doesn't feel that way to some.

$1 is a very different amount depending on your income.

<comment><USER18> The "feeling of a $1" is more of an opinion type statement whereas the other comparisons are more fact based.

<comment><USER17> Let me put it another way.

$1 feels like the difference between eating and not eating to some people whereas other people wouldn't stoop to pick a dollar up from the sidewalk if they dropped it.

How "fact-based" do you need this to be?

<comment><USER16> But the question at hand is not income, it's tax reduction.

When you get comparisons in the news about this tax plan or the other, they don't adjust the numbers based on how "$1 feels".

They just use a percent of income - but since low income people pay so little tax in the first place, even a percent reduction looks meager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Indeed, and how much of the income did they make?

Keep in mind when a company "succeeds", they're succeeding on top of trillions of dollars of infrastructure - human capital (enabled by education! try hiring the same talent in an underdeveloped country), the transportation, subsidized energy production & grid, and municipal infrastructure underpinning movement of physical goods & digital goods; and finally the public order that assures safety of people, and the enforceability of contracts.

<comment><USER20> This is the Elizabeth Warren argument. It fails to point out that those trillions of dollars of infrastructure was paid for already with taxes (which the top 10% mostly account for). So when she spouts the "they're only successful because of the roads, the schools, blah blah" you can rephrase that as "they're only successful because of the taxes they've already paid into the system".

<comment><USER19> A lot of it is property taxes, payroll taxes, local taxes etc. and in any event, paid by a different generation. If we're willing to go further back, let's also not forget that a lot of this was achieved by slave labor & after emancipation, an entire people denied basic civil rights. In any event, it was not as if Bill Gates paid for the Hoover Dam. Keep in mind some of the tools for creating capital and income was not available to large swathes of society - like access to subsidized higher education, homesteads / farmsteads, and mortgages. These are federal means to build capital which sets the stage for earning higher incomes.

<comment><USER20> >> let's also not forget that a lot of this was achieved by slave labor

C'mon, you know this isn't accurate at all, "a lot" is just an over the top false statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The trick isn't getting them to pay the majority of income tax, the trick nobody has succeeded at (but desperately want to) is to get them not to want a proportionally larger say in the government for that money.

IE people want rich folks to simultaneously pay most of the money the government is getting from income taxes but also

1\. Not get a larger say automatically

2\. Not spend a lot of money on politics to try to get that larger say.

Regardless of whether one thinks these are good goals, neither is really happening right now, nor has it ever really happened (at least in the US).

(and the position that you just have to take away enough of their money through taxes that they can't afford to do that is clearly silly in a variety of ways. About the only thing it shows is that you can't scale your government effectively)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is highschool math. Lets say you someone earning 70k and someone else 30k. Even with a flat tax rate of 10% the 70k earner pays 70% of the tax.

<comment><USER13> Your numbers are overly simplistic and do not reflect reality even closely - we don't have a flat tax, and the article clearly shows that the top 3% earn about 25% of the income and pay about half of the income tax.

Throwing out completely made up figures when the correct ones are available doesn't help much.

<comment><USER18> Pretty sure his example was just to illustrate his point. He even points out "even if" to show that it is an example and not the current tax system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is the point of the article to demonstrate that the tax system is unfair to the rich? If that's the point to be made, they're only looking at the most progressive part of the tax system. Add in payroll, property, state income, unemployment, and sales taxes, and the picture looks quite different.

<comment><USER11> Actually it doesn't look that different.

Yes, the top incomes earners might pay 60% of income, but they still pay 50% of all taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Remember that national income taxes are but a fraction of total government revenue. It does not include, among other things, consumption taxes (like VAT) which disproportionally affect lower-income people. Nor does it include social security, which has a similar bend.

</comment><comment><USER25> The thing is, if you own all the wealth, you pay yourself "income" effectively through the rent you're taking off the rest of society. The slaveholders I'm sure paid more taxes than the slaves. There are layers of indirection => you're rich so you can afford/get your way into an expensive university, you're placed in a position through nepotism, you "rise" to a senior directory of a company, you make X million but all you've really done is take your oligarchy shares.

If slaveholding is too extreme consider land-owning, the owner pays more tax than the rentiers, but he has income he's done nothing to achieve. Rentier capitalism is just this with more steps.

I'm sitting in an elite company, of the ten people (I'm not one) making serious money, 5/10 are nepotism hires and the others are socially elite who went to (and paid for) top universities.

</comment><comment><USER26> It feels a little misleading to not emphasize that this is reported income.

On paper the top 0.1% appears to pay more than their fair share (2x proportional vs. their median counterparts paying closer to parity). But as recent articles about Donald Trump and Jared Kushner have highlighted they have both engaged in schemes (legal or not) to reduce the amount of income they have to report to the government.

What would be interesting here is determining the proportion of individuals/households using expensive tax advantaging techniques by each quantile and then try to make some estimate of the actual income for each group is...

</comment><comment> d--b These statistics are meant to be polarizing... income taxation may need fine tuning here and there, but seems to be generally fine.

That the top 0.0001% pay a smaller tax rate than the top 1% needs to be fixed though.

<comment><USER18> How are the top .0001% paying a smaller tax rate?

If you are talking about the capital gains rates then there is definitely a huge reason that rate shouldn't be the same as income tax rates for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER25> So obvious they don't need stating or defending, huh

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That makes me recall that "47% paid no income tax".

If we all go to socialism directly, we will be all equally poor. If we stay with capitalism, a gap between rich and poor is part of the deal. Tax rate is one of the key method to stabilize the society, as the poor is the majority(the 80%, or the 99%) and if they struggle for too long a revolution is for sure to happen.

capitalism + welfare to the disabled(only the disabled please) + tax seems like the best solution still.

<comment><USER24> These labels are getting tiresome. There is not a single socialist state on earth today. It's completely out of the question that the US would ever become such a thing.

The often-cited examples of Scandinavia are capitalistic through and through: It's private enterprises deciding prices, creating products, and generally competing.

That they levy rather high taxes and use them to soften some of the edges of that system's outcomes does in almost no way affect the dynamics within the system. If you're a baker, and your bread isn't good, you still fail and society will be spared suffering your products. You just don't starve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Pay their fair share"

3% of us are floating 50% of the population. How much more "fair" can we get?

<comment><USER29> Nothing stopping you moving to a low tax environment and conducting all your business there if you think this is 'unfair'.

The concept of fair is alien with civilisation and taxation; society/economy/governments services are all intrinsically linked.

<comment><USER30> Wait, you're in support of the common practice of wealthy going to tax havens?

<comment><USER31> The fact the US allows their money to go while they stay in the US is the point of contention.

If rich people want to actually _leave_ then that's fully their right to so, but mysteriously that doesn't happen very much...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A popular sentiment was "no taxation without representation". Why not implement "no representation without taxation"? If you don't pay income tax, you don't get to vote that calendar year.

<comment><USER12> Because for rich people its trivial to pay income tax (and equally trivial to hire top accountants and lawyers to pay as little as possible, perhaps even less than an average middle class citizen). In any case, a rich person can pay $100K tax and still have tons to spare.

A poor person might not even afford to pay $1K.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the problem with much of this inequality talk.

If you actually ask people what they believe to be true, the usually way overestimate how rich the 1% are, and they WAY underestimate how much taxes the 1% pay (or whatever 'richer' group you want pick).

If you ask them about what the 1% SHOULD pay they often pick numbers that are actually below what they actually DO pay.

The problem as in many spaces in politics is that the waste majority of people have no clue about the facts that they are voting on. And they have no intensive to actually learn the facts because their individual vote essentially doesn't matter. This is called rational ignorance, its simply not worth informing yourself about what is voted on.

Voting is way more about proclaiming alliance to some sort of party or set of ideologies.

<comment><USER33> > If you ask them about what the 1% SHOULD pay they often pick numbers that > are actually below what they actually DO pay.

Not if you ask about the percentage of their income and wealth generated yearly that they should pay. Typically someone will say the mega-rich should pay at least the same percentage as them, per individual. And typically the mega-rich do not in fact pay that same percentage or more. Thanks to capital gains and hiding wealth overseas and in corporations, the mega-rich pay way less as a percentage than the middle or lower class do.</comment></comment>


Geolocation requests are timing out in Chrome – WONTFIX - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=814100 <comment><AUTHOR> there's a bit of history of problems

Chrome's geolocation fails daily due to API limit [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14964385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14964385)</comment>


Is CentOS 6 Out Yet? - <AUTHOR> http://iscentos6outyet.com/

<comment><USER2> <http://mirrorx.lithiumfox.com/centos/6/isos/x86_64/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not Scientific Linux? Or Debian? Or Ubuntu?

</comment><comment><USER2> this is awesome!</comment>


Ask HN: Would picking my brother as a cofounder be a bad idea? - <AUTHOR> My brother and I would like to start a venture together. What are some signs that we might be a good fit to work together without any major issues before it might be too late? What are some cases where picking your brother (or any sibling) would be a bad idea? <comment><USER2> My gut says, he's your brother, if you don't know if you want to have him as a cofounder, it's unlikely that you should partner with him.

I've known plenty of cofounders that had personal relationships to their cofounder and they were fine.

My suggestion would be to do a mini startup that builds on the skills you plan to use, but is not a startup either of you are personally believe in doing. Give it 100% each, and see what happens.

Beyond that, there's lots of advice on being a good cofounder online, but in the end, most of that is covered by just having a good startup/business and. It being an pain to work with.</comment>


You can't say that – It might be true - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rongarret.info/2017/08/you-cant-say-that-it-might-be-true_11.html <comment><USER2> _I am not defending Damore 's thesis. I am defending his right to advance it without putting his livelihood at risk._

The trouble is that this was at work where Damore was earning that livelihood and the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech doesn't extend to work. Google was well within its rights in CA to fire him for having a bad haircut.

BTW, I have a new theory about the manifesto: Damore is a really bad writer. He probably got an A on every paper he ever turned in and he's still a bad writer.

One of Orwell's rules in _Politics and The English Languages_ [1] is:

       The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

I don't think Damore is being sincere and says what he means. He's clearly angry about how people have misinterpreted him and says that Pichai misrepresented him. But really, he's just a bad writer who isn't saying what he means.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/Politics_and_the_English_Langua...](http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/Politics_and_the_English_Language-1.pdf)

<comment><USER3> You are projecting by assuming Damore isn't saying what he means. I.e., you are assuming he is deep into the alt-right, which seems like a hidden smear, when there is no evidence that he is.

<comment><USER4> If you read the doc[1] it will become very clear that Damore is a leftist/progressive, not a rightist.

The right is defending him, and that by itself seems to be enough reason for the left to vilify him.

I'm left, and I feel ashamed at the way this is happening and how many of my friends do the same.

[1] [https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo- uncenso...](https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncensored- memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f)

<comment><USER5> > If you read the doc[1] it will become very clear that Damore is a > leftist/progressive, not a rightist.

Would you mind elaborating on how/where that is very clear? Honest question. Not that I think it should matter, but I'm inclined to say the opposite and that he very much had an agenda.

> But as mainstream journalists across the globe reached out to him for > interviews this week, Damore largely ignored the queries and instead > selected two rightwing YouTube personalities [...] Stefan Molyneux and > Jordan B Peterson, who both have large followings on YouTube and have > espoused anti-feminist views.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a person who wholeheartedly agrees that we shouldn't avoid considering unpleasant truths in the quest for truth, the real problem here isn't Damore's hypothesis, or the fact that he held it. And there is no problem with testing such a hypothesis in the search for truth. The real problem here is the _context_ in which he presented his hypothesis is very prone to miscontrual of hypotheses as facts in a way that can cause unacceptable, and unwarranted discrimination that may be very hard to reverse.

<comment><USER7> Looks more like they sacked him for wrongthink, to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > It is important to note that Pichai makes no attempt to actually debunk > Damore's claims about women's biology.

Why is the CEO somehow obligated to debunk the theory? Why are we entertaining the notion that women might be biologically less inclined for engineering? Aren't we passed this?

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills or went through a time machine.

<comment><USER3> Pichai is obligated to do so because he fired Damore for "perpetuating harmful stereotypes" while at the same time "affirming" that Google values open discussion about what is true.

The notion that women may be biologically less inclined toward engineering is something that can be suggested in a non-contrived way from scientific studies. I am not claiming it is true.

When diversity training is based on the foundation that the totality of the gender disparity in tech is due to prejudice, and there is a possibility other important factors are at play, the resultant policies could have a negative or meaningless effect.

If this assumption about the cause of diversity is shoved down people's throat through a culture of shaming and silencing, then this is a serious workplace problem /unless/ the non-biological cause of the gender disparity is demonstrated to be the only cause by Pichai.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >I do not agree with Damore's hypothesis. The evidence for it seems thin to me, and the best data indicates that there are few discernible differences in mental capacity between men and women.

There are very large and well documented differences in personality traits between men and women. There is an enormous difference between men and women in the "interest in things vs interest in people" dimension. See here:

[http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x](http://sci- hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x)

93% of men are more "thing oriented" than the average women. And that's assuming there is no noise in the measurement, likely the true value is even higher! Similar for big 5 personality traits.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. Women may indeed have the same intellectual potential as men, perhaps more. But so what? I believe talent is widespread - and therefore what makes the difference is motivation and application.

One thing that bothers me is the putting on a pedestal of social skills, as if it's the be all and end all. Of course, it's those with supposedly good social skills that do this (though their social skills apparently do not extend to being kind to those that are different). Who do these people think built the bloody technology they use to post their banal crap on Instagram?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not surprised at all that this was flagged of the front page in minutes. Completely proving the point...

<comment><USER10> Although most of the pieces that have ended up on the frontpage (based on my subjective impression) actually were critical of what happened. I wouldn't imply that HN is overrun with people who want to surpress striving for the truth.

I also had a tex flagged. It seems to happen to articles about the topic which mostly include a personal oppinion and not much more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why was this flagged?

It's a quite reasonable argument.

</comment><comment><USER12> Gender segregation in sports is certainly not without controversy.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's news to me. References?

<comment><USER13> [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-mcenroe-refuses-to- apologiz...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-mcenroe-refuses-to-apologize- for-controversial-serena-williams-comments/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On the one hand I understand why people feel like they need the law to protect them when discussing biological differences in the workplace. Someone who is blind might not be the best at driving cars, for instance...

But on the other hand I don't feel good about notions of genetic superiority being accepted in the workplace and I worry about the slopes that could be exposed from such discussion.

<comment><USER9> No one said anything about genetic superiority. The Google memos entire argument was that women are statistically less likely to be _interested_ in tech for various reasons. He never said they were less capable or intelligent or anything.</comment></comment>


Social Mobility May Suffer as Income Fails to Keep Pace with Housing Costs - <AUTHOR> http://www.zillow.com/research/social-mobility-housing-costs-12138/ <comment><USER2> Housing, Education and Health Care are all insanely unaffordable for the middle class. Eventually the home equity of their parents that has been floating the millennial generation will run out and what happens then?

<comment><USER3> Housing costs are easy to fix.....it's just a matter of building more housing. Current residents don't want to do that though, so it's just a typical case of entrenched interests against newcomers: story as old as time.

<comment><USER4> This seems naive. There's only so much land in urban areas, and everyone wants to live there.

As population expands, isn't there some kind of mathematical constraint on total possible hoising within a circular area? City centres radiate outwards roughly circularly.

More NYC like areas would help, but we can't seem to build those anymore. When existing cities grow they just sort of spread outwards.

 __Edit: __Per my comment below, my argument is that as long as we build the way we do, we can 't really build our way out of this. Even our "dense" construction isn't really dense once you consider total land use including businesses, offices, etc

<comment><USER5> > More NYC like areas would help, but we can't seem to build those anymore.

That seems like a policy problem. I don't think we're nearly at the point where physics or math is a constraint on how densely we can build.

<comment><USER4> I agree, actually. But it's a deep policy problem. Since cars, we've built no cities that are both dense and desirable. And very few areas dense, period, especially when you consider that stores + offices are usually separate from dense residential towers. So those separate areas need to be accounted for in the total footprint.

The pre car areas tend to be dense and also have shops in the areas. I live in such an area in Montreal. Low rise but very dense.

<comment><USER6> In part (but only in part), I'd argue this is because--sort of by definition-- post-car cities have tended to be built in areas where there is room to spread out. And, for better or worse, the natural evolutionary path seems to be to spread out. (And, where there has been a conscious effort to build density in an area, it's tended to be housing project style.)

<comment><USER7> It's very much a policy problem. 'Dense' is not allowed in huge swaths of the US. Some people don't want dense, and that's fine, but for those who do favor it, it's simply not an option in many places, and that needs fixing.

San Francisco is not as dense as Paris, France - and Paris is not constrained by water, so that probably includes some fairly large tracts of low-density suburbs.

<comment><USER6> Central Paris was built quite a while ago :-) Paris is actually almost uniquely dense among large cities in developed countries. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_density)

Which I knew but wouldn't have guessed. Looking at a population density map [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris) I think the reason may be that the City of Paris is a very small chunk of the total area.

<comment><USER7> The density list seems to be missing a number of places - New York, for instance. Most European cities are denser than SF, but it can be kind of hard to gauge as the line where the city ends can be somewhat arbitrary.

Density doesn't need to be skyscrapers, it often works well if it's just a few extra stories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would say that basic economics should have predicted this. I mean, if there's an area where your children can escape poverty with a higher chance, isn't that area more desireable to live? And if so, wouldn't you pay a premium to allow your children the opportunity?

I would. My parents did. I'm a child of the lowest 25% who now am a developer living in the highest 25%.

<comment><USER9> A certain amount of price increase for a desirable area is expected, of course. It's just gotten out of control in certain areas due to highly restrictive regulations around building more.

Like, the bay area should be more expensive than normal because of the booming economy. But should housing in otherwise-normal suburbs like Sunnyvale or Santa Clara cost 3-4x as much as normal? No; that's the result of onerous regulations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been trying to buy a place for awhile now. On Zillow, as a matter of fact. I can attest to the fact that it seems bloody impossible to find a place. I've had people in my neighborhood tell me that they bought their townhouse for $200k or so ten years ago and putting it up for sale now at rates of $350k or higher.

The nice thing about Zillow is being able to see the pricing history. The vast majority of houses I have looked at are approaching their 2005/2006 prices, before the last bubble popped.

I'd say we're due for another one soon. I will begrudgingly bide my time until then.

<comment><USER11> I think it depends on the location. During the last bubble-burst(?) housing in Santa Monica didn't really fall. Activity just kind of slowed down. Also, the last bubble was partially fueled by bad loans to unworthy borrowers. They were leveraged to the hilt, and when their rates reset on their teaser loans, foreclosures went up. This is happening less now because easy mortgages aren't as rampant. I bought a house in LA as a 20 year old with 0 downpayment and 'stated income' in 2002! That doesn't happen anymore.

<comment><USER6> Much of the Boston area didn't really drop much either. Certainly a much different situation from, say, Las Vegas where there was a huge amount of speculative building and bad loans going on.

<comment><USER12> I was there, it was an interesting thing to see that's for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Figure 1's concentration of orange and yellow areas looks moderately correlated with the Bible Belt ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt)), in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism plays a strong role in society and politics, and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average. It would be interesting to explore this relationship further.

</comment><comment><USER14> ...in the US

<comment><USER15> ... and in Sweden</comment></comment>


The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming - <AUTHOR> http://altdevblogaday.com/2012/01/11/social-gamers-are-gamblers/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised the article states "Before social gaming, older women were an entirely untapped gaming market, and one that had both time and money to spend on games that could capture their interest." This is patently false. Anyone familiar with the casual gaming industry would know that. For example Big Fish Games and Popcap both had mostly women players. I say had, because social gaming has greatly reduced that market.

<comment><USER3> Ah, well I definitely missed that when doing my research, but I did build my assumptions into my language (ie using the word "untapped" versus "untouched", implying that it existed but wasn't fully utilized). That said, I think the word "entirely" is misplaced. I'm going to take it out and use "mostly" instead, if that helps :)

Also, if you can shoot me an article about the demographics of those games that you mentioned, I will include it in my article. Thanks for pointing that out.

<comment><USER2> Some anecdotal references to it in this article from 2006 [http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2006/05/26/interview-paul- thele...](http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2006/05/26/interview-paul-thelen-big- fish-games) I'll let you know if I come up with more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not surprising.

Also, if you haven't read the article/story/blog "Who killed videogames: a ghost story", then you should check it out: [http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames- a-g...](http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost- story/)

It talks a lot about the behavior mindsets of social video games.

<comment><USER5> This article makes me want to become a psychomatheconometrician mastermind developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article is written by someone in marketing for a company that provides real-money gambling services to video game companies. That their conclusion is "This is why real-money play is such a great fit for social games." is hardly a surprise.

<comment><USER3> Right you are ;)

We believe that social games are a natural fit for real-money play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, I always saw the uprise of social games as quite confusing, since myself as a gamer saw no need for these games. It makes sense that these Farmville/Social City/Zynga games then be targeted towards this new, untapped group. I find the Zynga numbers to be interesting, but the correlation confuses me. Is it completely out of left field to follow the 81% gambling figure to correlate that that number of women are visiting casinos/e-casinos and gambling? That seems like a HUGE number.

<comment><USER3> Hey nik, thanks for the comment. So you know, the number is that 81% of women prefer to play slots when they go to casinos. This doesn't mean that they are 81% of slot machine players (the actual ratio is closer to 52% male, 48% female).

<comment><USER7> That makes far more sense :) Thanks for the clarification, I didn't read the data closely enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A casino or other social-gaming company is often A/B testing variants to 'increase engagement'. However, such engagement is arguably _against_ the mental/physical health interests of the test subjects.

Is A/B optimization in such a case thus an illegal/unethical experiment on human subjects without their informed consent? (Can Zynga 'Whales', that minority of their users contributing most of their revenues via payments of hundreds of dollars a month, actually give _informed consent_? Or are they on a binge?)

Tobacco companies lost giant class-action lawsuits because they (A) hid known harmful effects of their products; and (B) engineered their products to be more addictive. Could companies pushing gamification no matter the cost become the tobacco-company-pariahs of the mid-21st-century?

<comment><USER9> That seems unlikely. It is kinda hard to know what people have put in your cigarets. It is easy to know what they show you on a screen.

<comment><USER8> I don't think the secrecy of the manufacturing formula was a big factor in the tobacco judgements. Everyone knew cigarettes had tobacco, flavorings, and preservatives, and delivered a bunch of nicotine/tar/smoke to the lungs.

You can see what's on the screen in Farmville, but do the players understand the effects of periodicity and random reinforcement on the dopaminergic motivational system? The power of well-crafted images and sounds or emotionally manipulative language? Viral loops?

We in the industry know these things; for a layperson it's as obscure as the chemistry of physical addiction.

<comment><USER10> But where do you draw the line?

Arguably Diablo, WoW, etc. are all about pointless clicking for pointless reward.

Some people call it fun, some people call it manipulation. One has little farms and the other Sword of Wonder +101.

<comment><USER3> ^ This. I don't think government intervention is the answer. In respect to tobacco companies, the government only intervened when public outcry became deafening, but the public interest in the abuse was what drove their involvement.

Also, cigarrettes contribute to lung cancer, which kills thousands of people per year. Social games do not directly cause any significant social issues, and even if they may indirectly cause some problems, it won't be as serious as death.

<comment><USER11> We stepped in to stop misleading advertising, and several other non lethal behaviors because of their derogatory effect on the lives of others.

We don't have to have games kill people to recognize that they are designed to manipulate and addict/engage its audience in a manner inimical to the interests of people.

Unfortunately, once we agree on the above points, we reach the real defense of social gaming, the slippery slope argument.

I believe that in due course of time, people will leave social games, after getting bored of them. The gaming market is not static.

At the same time that doesn't mean we stand back and let evolution go on its merry way. At the very least, we should be able to agree that there are some metrics we can analyze, perhaps the risk reward schedules and payout schemes, and compare them to their ability to create repeat behaviors/addiction in a percentage of the population.

(Heck even if we did wait for games to kill, we would have to work through the defence which will say: "well those people couldn't control themselves, so its just an outlier, or a freak case." )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Still looks a sleasy way to make money. Don't make it feel like gambling and before you know it your broke.

Also They fly under regulation radar. Most casino's online/real life have to give back a fixed percentage in winnings. Just looks to me it's a hidden form of gambling and because it's a game they don't have to follow regulations...

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if social gaming will kill casinos and slot machines? If so, I might think it's a little less evil.

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't that just change the form factor of gambling? just... with cuter animals to prey on younger targets?

<comment><USER3> Yes but it will also pull gambling out of the "Sin City" mentality, which is a good thing for both the industry and players

<comment><USER14> I'm a little bit confused.

Gambling, no matter what the form factor is, is still gambling.

Sin City or not, I doubt it'll change the attitude of people within the gambling industry. They are still the same kind/type of people.

<comment><USER3> But what is gambling compared to a virtual currency social game? They both employ same mechanics, and with gambling you can win real money, and with virtual currency you can only sink money in. There are differences in the amount of money, but the underlying system is largely the same.

Also, the American gambling industry is stereotyped to be that "Sin City" type of person, but I would argue that this stereotype isn't the case here or worldwide. Look at the blog post by Josh Hannah, former founder of Betfair and VC at Matrix Partner) on the recent US gambling DOJ ruling: <http://www.joshhannah.com/2012/01/us-gambling-goes-online/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a page not found for your link in the article to Exposing Social Gaming's Hidden Lever. The link under You may also like works. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3165365>

<comment><USER3> ACK! Fixed it, thanks for the heads up</comment></comment>


Researchers have found more evidence that butter is heart-healthy - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/909320/researchers-have-found-more-evidence-that-butter-is-heart-healthy/ <comment><USER2> Could we get a less audacious title? The article's about how butter appears to be healthier than corn oil -- and that, in general, the health differences between butter and linoleic-acid-based vegetable oils may be a wash. This is pretty interesting, but it doesn't upend the apple cart quite as comprehensively as the current title suggests.

<comment><USER3> Too late, I'm already drinking a cup of liquid butter to help my heart

<comment><USER4> bulletproof coffee, hold the coffee

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The subjects were broken into two groups. One was given a diet in which liquid corn oil was used in place of usual hospital cooking fats (including butter and hydrogenated oils) during meal preparation. The other group received meals cooked with common margarines and shortening. "

Where is butter in this study?Am I missing something?

<comment><USER6> Butter is a type of shortening, but I don't know why it's phrased like that. The actual study mentions butter: [http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246](http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246)

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure the study had much to do with butter. It mentions butter just once but leaves it very unclear how much butter was actually involved (versus "shortening").

The study talks extensively about "shortening" which is primarily a vegetable- based product now AFAIK. FWIW, the Wikipedia article tells us "the term "shortening" seldom refers to butter, but is more closely related to margarine."

<comment><USER6> Yeah it's very confusing. Maybe these words meant something different in 1968.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> On a side note, there's more than one kind of butter. I hate mainstream US dairy products; most of them are from Holstein cows which have the highest milk production of any breed but whose milk tastes insufferably bland to me. If you can get milk from Jersey cows, the difference is like night and day - much higher butterfat content.

<comment><USER9> Try Kerrygold, 100% grass-fed and grass-finished...or the U.S. equivalent. You'll never go back.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what I had in mind but I didn't want to sound like a butter commercial XD

I grew up with it and I'm baffled by what passes for butter in the American market. We probably spend twice as much on food as is average for the amount we consume, but it seems both tastier and healthier. Part of why I have negative opinions of capitalism is the inescapable fact that the baseline of food quality is _so bad_. The most popular and well-known food brands, which take up the most shelf space in most supermarkets and are thus the default choice for many consumers are just awful. They're somewhat-to-direly awful nutritionally, they don't taste good, and many people are so conditioned to sugar and artificial flavors that they find real food weird at first.

I feel like this is a serious social problem. What seems like a large majority of Americans _don 't know how to eat well_ and this causes all kinds of second-order problems - not just things like obesity and diabetes, but things like criminal recidivism too. The idea of nutrition and healthy eating in prisons is treated by most people as a contradiction in terms, as if diet didn't have any impact on self-control, learning ability and other factors that are likely to impact future behavior. (This is sadly far from an exclusively American problem.) When people aren't properly nourished they under stress and when they're under stress they make poor decisions.

<comment><USER10> lower middle class and struggling people can't afford to eat well and don't have the time to cook. this probably won't change for another 30 years. sadly, most will probably die before this problem is fully addressed.

don't worry, all the rich educated people already know exactly what the deal is. just take a look at any expensive restaurant menu or high end supermarket in california, texas, new york, etc.

<comment><USER8> Nope. You can eat healthy even if you're poor; it's just more boring and repetitive. Most of what I know about nutrition and cooking I learned in high school, which was a) long ago and b) nothing fancy by American standards. I make a fuss about this stuff _because_ I've got a lot of experience of being poor and I'm keenly aware of the tricky challenges of making food choices when you have very little money.

I'd ask for a refund on that snide tone if I were you, it's not helping your argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My stance has always been that butter is so delicious that I am willing to accept a reasonable amount of risk, whereas I find margarine so foul that I would rather eat food without any fat than consume it.

<comment><USER12> Amusingly, I quit butter for that reason. I had a major health scare just over a year ago, and despite being skeptical of dietary advice in general, I decided that at least I could lose weight. So I cut butter out of my diet. The result was that I ate a lot less food overall, because it eliminated most of my favorite snacks, such as buttered toast. Sure, I missed it, but I've gotten slimmed down, and am having no problem keeping it off so far. It took months, but the day arrived when I actually enjoyed a piece of toast with no butter!

So, this has more to do with me hacking my own brain, than about any sort of nutritional science.

<comment><USER11> In my case, I lost the weight by eliminating a lot of carbohydrates from my diet. The only way I would bother touching a piece of bread would be if it was unusually delicious.

<comment><USER12> For me, butter was the lubricant for stuffing myself with carbohydrates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> First salt, and now butter? How long until we find out sugar is a super food?

<comment><USER14> Sugar was the default super food for decades as a result of the 70's and 80's push to lower dietary fat.

It's only been recently that the medical community has realized that sugar is actually the number one hidden danger in the modern diet.

<comment><USER15> In the 70s people were pushing "low-glycemic index" diets. That precludes sugar.

<comment><USER16> Different people that were pushing high carbs, though.

<comment><USER17> I remember all the talk about "carb loading" for athletes and how many people decided "If atheletes do it, I should do it too."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If they want to research they should research cultured butter. It was the traditional way to make butter. The culturing of the milk into yoghurt does change it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe butter's good but their accompanying picture is pancakes with syrup, as if that's ok to eat now as long as it has butter.

<comment><USER19> sounds like a plan to me - put butter on it makes it healthier!

Donuts? Butter glazed maybe! Fries? Fry em in butter! Starbucks? Instead of cream add butter! Forget the BigMac sauce I'll take butter!

<comment><USER20> Ironically putting butter in coffee is a thing now...in keto/paleo diets especially: [http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-deal-with-butter-in- coffe...](http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-deal-with-butter-in- coffee-190911)

<comment><USER21> Hahah yeah they definitely had coffee with butter in it back in the hunter gatherer days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One component of butter, butyrate, has been shown to have many health benefits. See e.g. [1] (not endorsing this reference, I just link to it because it was easy to find and it references a lot of relevant literature).

[1] [https://selfhacked.com/2016/05/07/health-benefits- butyrate-d...](https://selfhacked.com/2016/05/07/health-benefits-butyrate- derivatives-sodium-butyrate-phenylbutyrate-trybutyrine-butyric-acid-butyrate- prodrugs-butyrate-producing-bacteria/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Butter may be healthful! (In a comparison with another believed to be unhealthful dietary choice)

Corn oil has a very high Omega6:Omega3 ratio.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is quite a bit of evidence to support that a diet rich in animal fats, and poor in vegetable oils has many advantages, including higher HDL cholesterol, lower LDL cholesterol, and improved thyroid function.

<comment><USER25> Interested in sources supporting this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is what's so great about online nutrition journalism. Love butter? Great there's an article that backs up your beliefs. Hate butter? Even better, there's an article for that, too!

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been having more than 100 gms of butter every day for the last 4 years. I'm on a ketogenic diet. I _have_ to do it. Helps a lots with my sub-optimal health. Questions welcome.

<comment><USER28> What health conditions are you trying to treat with your diet?

<comment><USER27> I was originally trying to alleviate my sleep problems. After I switched my diet to a ketogenic (only meat, eggs and diary) not only did my sleep improve dramatically but a whole bunch of other things that I did not expect: mood, digestion, acidity(not sure about this), stamina, cold tolerance, fat redistribution in the body (reduced tummy flab, but less gaunt face.) etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Butter is good for you provided you don't fry with it. If overheated it supplies more than the usual amount of inflammatory compounds. Instead, fry with ghee (clarified butter) or tallow.

<comment><USER30> Is there any evidence that people frying with butter actually damage themselves?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I only use butter and duck fat. Nothing better than cooking with duck fat.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is like comparing cigarettes to menthols.

Both are poisons.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYTf0z_zVs0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYTf0z_zVs0)

<comment><USER33> I hypothesize that if a comparison contrasts a suitable quantity of buttering / fat for flavor and refined sugars for flavor (because who actually uses molasses/etc) then either hybrids or fat biased foods will be easier to process and regulate for most individuals.</comment></comment>


How to snapshot multiple VMs - <AUTHOR> http://www.smikar.com/snapshot-multiple-vm-servers/ <comment><USER2> Even if your program is great. You really need to fix the UI, it looks like it was designed when visual basic 6 still were cool. And I could for that reason not take it seriously.</comment>


Gun Sellers Are Sneaking onto Facebook's Booming Secondhand Marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/gun-sellers-are-sneaking-onto-facebooks-booming-secondhand-marketplace-11566315198?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> I was served banner ads in multiple Woot (Amazon) pages today for actual assault rifle lower receivers.</comment>