Matt Cutts: One of the more fun gadgets I've been playing with lately… - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/DnzRNRAP7wL

<comment><USER2> I'd pay lots of money for a _stylish_ watch or bracelet for my wife that would alert her to incoming calls and texts. She (like many women) keeps her phone in her purse and rarely answers because she doesn't know it's ringing.

<comment><USER3> Maybe she needs an HTC Rhyme phone, with its dongle^Wcharm thingy:

[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1333&bih=665&q=htc+rhyme+charm&g)

Its a dongle^Wcharm thingy that plugs into the phone and acts as visible alert for phone state while its buried in a purse. Pretty funny toy.

<comment><USER4> Wow, genius. Good point, it doesn't need to be wireless to look good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If the iPad is a hip flask[1], this must be an intravenous line. (And soon we'll have augmented reality glasses providing a central line to the heart.)

1\. <http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/03/10/ipad-as-hip-flask/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I bought one of these during the sale they had last year. I'm running CyanogenMod (Android) and everything works as described.

It's most useful when looking at one's phone would be considered rude, but looking at one's watch would not.

I haven't built any faces for mine (yet), but having the watch definitely makes me want to learn more Python/C.

</comment><comment><USER7> I already have my phone in my pocket and I expect it to do all the things mentioned (via interacting directly). I also have too many devices that beep/vibrate at me so another one that does alerts seems unnecessary (one in my pocket and _another_ on my wrist?).

If it was voice controlled however, _that_ would be cool. The range of interaction would be far greater.

note: I gave up wearing wristwatches some time ago, if I did still wear them, this would be pretty interesting.

<comment><USER8> I'm not a huge fan of inPulse - not because of what they do, which I think is awesome, but because of their size - if I could get the watch of my preference (random example, but here's the kind of watch I personally like [http://s7ondemand4.scene7.com/is/image/Signet/8349614?$detai...](http://s7ondemand4.scene7.com/is/image/Signet/8349614?$detail475$) ) with a few of these features, such as vibration in patterns to show the difference between a call, an SMS, an email... then I'd jump all over it.

As to the screen, I can see many people in the near future being sold on this - hell, it's a cool thing in principle, as a kid my two favourite watches (one of which I had), were one that was a calculator ([http://retrothing.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452989a69e201156f357...](http://retrothing.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452989a69e201156f35715b970b-800wi)) and one that was a TV remote ([http://www.calculatorwatch.net/wp- content/uploads/Digital-ca...](http://www.calculatorwatch.net/wp- content/uploads/Digital-calculator-watch-tv-remote.jpg)), and many of my friends thought they were awesome too. Personally I'm quite happy taking my phone out to actually read stuff - though on a small watch a display for calls would be great if/when using a wireless headset.

<comment><USER7> _".. vibration in patterns to show the difference between a call, an SMS, an email"_

This is genius. Why doesn't my phone do this _now_? Sure, I have different audible tones for reminders/sms/email/calls but most of the time my phone is in vibrate-only.

I think we will end up with watches similar to those you describe. I imagine they'll have more functions than alerting you though. A device in constant contact with the skin could likely do a whole bunch of health monitoring.

<comment><USER9> By default, iPhones vibrate once for emails, twice for texts.

Through the accessibility settings, you can set completely custom vibrations for each of the contacts in your address book (e.g. you could make morse code of each of their names)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are three or four watches out, and probably more in the planning phase. InPulse, WIMM (<http://www.wimm.com/platform-concepts.html>) are the two that spring to mind...anyone have any idea which is better in terms of battery life, small size, expandability?

Edit: Sony SmartWatch should be coming soon, too ([http://androidandme.com/2012/01/news/hands-on-with-the- sony-...](http://androidandme.com/2012/01/news/hands-on-with-the-sony- smartwatch/)).

<comment><USER11> There's the Sony LiveView ([http://www.sonymobile.com/global- en/products/accessories/liv...](http://www.sonymobile.com/global- en/products/accessories/liveview/)), which looks more feature-rich than the InPulse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The global watch industry is pushing $50 billion and very few people wear them anymore. With the mobile revolution this category is really ripe for a complete overhaul. This isn't it but it's one of several starts in that direction.

People talk about how phones are getting more powerful processors each year and extrapolate that out but what's also going to happen is that the current slab phone paradigm will be challenged strongly by a combination of lighter tablets at the high end and even more miniaturized devices -- glasses, watches, headsets, armbands, etc. on the low end.

Advances in LTE networks mean your mobile chip really only has to be good enough to decode audio and video at a low ping. Those chips are going to get tiny indeed and run extremely power light.

3D printing advances continue to astonish, check out this 330x130x100µm3 racecar: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y0j191H0kY>

Voice and Kinect-style motion controls are rapidly maturing as alternatives to touch input. Eye movement and thought control perhaps not that far off.

Flexible screens, projection and very high density VR screens are also maturing and offer alternatives to the current slab phone screen.

<comment><USER13> Something that's already possible today: an ensemble for mobile computing instead of a monolithic device. You have a 4G wifi hotspot, a bluetooth headset, a tablet, etc. I'm curious how you could evolve that idea. Maybe with wearable computers, maybe something else.

<comment><USER12> My wife took my 3GS iphone last year when she lost her phone and for a few months I used a 3G iPad and a prepaid dumbphone we had lying around. It was a surprisingly decent setup. Because I do so much of my phoning on Skype the actual monthly charges were about half of what they were with my 3GS plan.

One thing I realized was the iPad plan is the dumb pipe plan we've all been waiting for. It's really a neat trojan horse Apple's set up with the carriers for some future disruption like an iphone nano where the bluetooth headset is the whole phone and they can sell the thing for $149 without a subsidy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone got a mirror of the contents? It requires me to log into Google before I can read the post.

<comment><USER15> Matt Cutts posts:

One of the more fun gadgets I've been playing with lately is the inPulse smartwatch. It can silently buzz when you get a new email and show a preview of your email. It's has an API that works with many Android and Blackberry phones, so you can program your own custom apps to do things like move forward in a PowerPoint presentation or show stock quotes. It's pretty geeky, but in a very space-age way. I can see a lot of people wearing watches like this in a few years.

<http://www.getinpulse.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone post the text of this article here, for those of us on mobile phones who don't want to log in, or don't have Google accounts? Thanks

<comment><USER7> edit: already posted. Odd that a _public_ G+ post is not visible from a mobile device without logging into Google.

<comment><USER17> without logging into Google _and_ creating a public profile if you don't have one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It could be quite interesting to replace the medium-sized smartphone (that doesn't really want to be in your pocket, run a real OS, or accept much user input) with a watch+earbud+netbook combo. Stow the netbook in a small bag, controlled with the body-based devices for on-the-go communication, and whip out the actual computer to get something done/kill time/etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is really cool and will be useful for a niche, let's not make it out to be something else. A watch is a piece of fashion first. His assessment as pretty nerdy is correct - this isn't for the main stream user to parade around.

"Hey I made this hat that can send text messages if you just think about it!" "But I'm still wearing that ugly hat"

</comment><comment><USER20> Here is a 15 min talk were the founder talks about the challenges of building a hardware startup <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afH8KGv0W24>

</comment><comment><USER21> inPulse should consider teaming up with ifttt. Now that'll be amazing!

</comment><comment><USER22> I have long been convinced that smart watches are the next huge thing. For my money they can even be a phone, optionally with a detachable bluetooth ear plug/mic. I don't know if they will go full monty and get big fold-out screens and physical keyboards but I could see it, particularly for the geekier among us.

That, and AR headgear. People already wear wristwatches and glasses so it should be a smooth transition.

</comment><comment><USER23> Has anyone else noticed these posts can't be viewed on mobile devices without logging in to a Google account? I'm on latest Opera Mobile for Android.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting that this works with Blackberry and not iOS devices. Is this because the app store specifically rejected their app? If so, why?

<comment><USER25> It meshes well with the way Blackberry handles incoming messages (email, IM, etc.) and the Blackberry has a public API to allow 3rd-party access to such incoming messages.

iOS has no such public API, and the various types of incoming messages (email/SMS/IM) are not unified in iOS like they are on BB. It's always been a weak spot on iOS. The iOS 5 notification center improves the situation quite a bit, but there's still no public API to enable a device like this watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anyOne remember The Orb? <http://www.hybratech.com/products/orb/>

...I waited most of 2010 to see this thing hit the shelves but gave up eventually when it started looking like vapourware. Not certain what the current status is.

</comment><comment><USER27> The cool factor is definitely there but I am not buying one of these devices unless they figured out how to charge it without any help from the user.

I do not want another device I have to remember to connect to its charger and given its functionality I don't think its battery life is stellar.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm looking forward to the day someone puts a full-fledged Android device with a GPS capable of running most apps on my wrist. I'm an avid runner and would love to be able to use something like Runtastic and listen to podcasts without carrying my Galaxy Nexus on my arm...

<comment><USER29> A recent (few months ago) flight neighbor sported just such a thing. A Motorola-designed Android watch. Rather large and clunky, but it could do some apps. He was a Motorola engineer.

This is where Steve Jobs would have a coronary. It's a device that screams "Tech!!!!!" (yes, with five bangs), not "style".

Wouldn't swear on a large stack of bibles, but I might use strong language on a small pile of Jesus comics, that this was the MOTOACTV:

[http://phandroid.com/2011/10/18/motorola-actv-a-smart- fitnes...](http://phandroid.com/2011/10/18/motorola-actv-a-smart-fitness- watch/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> One of my friends has put an ipod nano into a watch strap casing. It looks stylish and works well too. I just wish you could build apps for them, there would be a huge market for that surely.

</comment><comment><USER31> Where can I get a Matt Cutts of my very own? I like fun gadgets too.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've wanted something like this for a while, but I'm worried that easier access to notifications is going to just make me more neurotic.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is a pretty neat gadget, but the last thing I want is another email distraction while I'm trying to work.

</comment><comment><USER34> They were originally going to call it the Distract-o-Matic, but I guess inPulse has a nice ring to it too.

</comment><comment><USER35> Would be awesome Wish they had Win7/64 support. Need to push on Broadcom for that.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Siri, read me my email."</comment>


Ask HN: I have 1k to invest, what would you recommend? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Do you have money saved for a six month emergency fund? If not, put this money in a bank account.

If you do have an emergency fund: don't ask on Hacker News, they'll tell you to do crazy stuff like buy Bitcoin. Head over to [http://bogleheads.org/](http://bogleheads.org/), or just read the extensive wiki.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a lot of suggestions but you haven't provided enough information to make a solid recommendation.

What rings out for me, is why do you only have 1k to invest? There could be a lot of reasons ranging from living in a low income country to having been recently divorced.

How old are you? What is the ultimate purpose of the money? Is it for retirement in 40 years time, or to buy a car next year?

Are you likely to have more $1k's in the future to invest. Is it cash in the bank or coming from your salary this year.

What country do you live in. What is your tax bracket?

Can developing your skills earn you more money?

Do you have debt? Is is tax deductible? High interest?

Do you like to gamble on a long term payout (maybe a cryptocurrency would be good) or would you really HATE losing that money at any cost (perhaps a savings account).

Etc.

As a general recommendation, if you don't know what to do with $1k - keep it in a savings account (or offset your mortgage if you have one) until you know what to do.

</comment><comment><USER4> Put $300 toward the administrative cost of opening an LLC or your local equivalent. Put the remaining $700 into a bank account for the LLC.

Use that money to buy hosting, domains, etc. for side projects. Try to build something that makes money, but don't worry too much about that. Just having the administrative structure ready will make it much easier for you to find productive ways to spend free time. That could mean freelancing or building side projects. The important thing is that once you've got the LLC you can just focus on code, and you have a legal umbrella under which you can release any new projects you decide to build.

<comment><USER5> That sounds like putting the cart before the horse.

I wouldn't spend on an LLC or domains before he has to.

I do agree investing on trying to build something, but there are a lot of free resources before having to spend money.

<comment><USER6> Agree with this as well. It's fun to set up up the LLC and domains and everything, but without an actual product or business its not necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Keep it in the bank for now and spend some time reading r/personalfinance, starting with the wiki.

Once you evaluate your current situation, which some of these questions others have asked or alluded too, the general strategy for how to optimize savings is pretty easy. Everything else is just how much risk you're willing to incur for potentially greater returns.

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't invest in either bitcoin or stocks.

If you don't have a emergency savings account I fully agree with itamarst below and invest in a emergency savings account.

If you already have a emergency savings account I personally would use it to either:

1) Invest in myself (e.g. materials for self study, like a Pluralsight account)

2) Invest in goods which improve my quality of life (e.g. a new development box, kitchen peripherals, whatever), or:

3) Invest in bricks (e.g. my house)

</comment><comment><USER9> 1k investment would give you very low returns most of the time. Like $50 in a year.

So you might as well put it into a high risk investment.

<comment><USER10> Bitcoin unfortunately probably has the best risk return profile for this amount of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Probably invest in yourself.

1) Buy books about programming / machine learning / etc and read them. Add some online courses to get some practical knowledge.

2) Flight ticket & hotel to go to some interesting tech conference and do some networking (this can lead to opportunities later).

3) You could also buy some new hardware for development, if your current gear is getting old and clunky. This also is good long term investment.

<comment><USER12> I agree. If you are in the first 7 years of your career especially this will do wonders for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Educate yourself about the stock market, it will take much less money and will help you in the long run... who knows you might even get really interestedly and could change your life... I am building stock trading robots and it really gave me my freedom and the FY money everyone should have to be able to pursue their dreams...

<comment><USER14> In one of your previous post you mentioned using python. May I know your roadmap of learning the python and using it? Not asking you to divulge your trading strategy.

<comment><USER13> I am not a developer, so maybe there is a better way, mine was to look into examples provided by the API providers... For sure my code is messy and not optimal, but it works and that is what matters to me...

<comment><USER14> Fair enough, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Get a subscription to O'Reilly Safari Books Online. $39/mo. or $399/year.

Easily one of the best investments you can make in your technical education and continuous learning.

It will also help you with leveling up so you can make one of those products/services other commenters have mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER16> Start a side hustle! [https://www.sidehustlenation.com/ideas/](https://www.sidehustlenation.com/ideas/)

IMO that money is far better spent in a way that allows you to develop skills in areas you're passionate about while making money.

</comment><comment><USER17> Since many with more knowledge than I are saying the stock market is overvalued and Bitcoin is vapor based I'll offer you invest in something you can add value to and resell or keep for your pleasure.

<comment><USER18> Can you give an example?

<comment><USER17> Restoring furniture, old cars and motorcycles, growing food, tools for any kind of trade work, buying and reselling almost anything of value.

One might just sit on the cash and wait for a bust in the stock market and then jump in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Think more in terms of monthly streams not individual value. Think of dollar cost averaging instead of timing the market.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you want to play it safe and not spend a lot of time deciding where to put it, Wealthfront.

</comment><comment><USER21> High yield dividend ETF if you are risk averse or if you want to gamble then a cryptocurrency

</comment><comment><USER22> If you want to be safe buy 4 $SPY you'll have to go a little over a grand as they are at $265. Historically very few assets beat it over a given 25 year period. For some fun buy Litecoin or 10 NVDA Jan 12 2018 217.5 calls.

</comment><comment><USER23> Bitcoin and Litecoin

<comment><USER17> "1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the [bitcoin] Market"

That, right there, is just one problem with Bitcoin, and it's a big one.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the- bitco...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin- whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market)

<comment><USER24> How is that any different from US dollars?

[https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2017/jan/16/w...](https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2017/jan/16/worlds-eight-richest-people-have-same-wealth-as- poorest-50)

<comment><USER17> US dollars are mostly invested in financial securities which have hard assets like factories and real estate.

Bitcoins have no hard asset backing them up. They are based on "irrational exuberance".

<comment><USER3> The market can stay irrational longer than your FOMO regrets can resist buying in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ethereum

</comment><comment><USER26> [http://coinmarketcap.com](http://coinmarketcap.com)

30-40% BTC

10-20% 3-5 other alts

:)</comment>


Susan Fowler Rigetti to Join Opinion as Technology Editor - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytco.com/susan-fowler-rigetti-to-join-opinion-as-technology-editor/ <comment><USER2> Is Susan Fowler related to Martin Fowler?

<comment><USER3> No

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It bothers me a bit that this blog post is what is highlighted her</comment>


Day of the Tentacle - <AUTHOR> https://www.filfre.net/2019/06/day-of-the-tentacle/ <comment><USER2> This is one of my favorite games from my childhood. If you haven't ever played it, you owe it to yourself to purchase the remastered version [1] and play it through (it's only $3.79). It's incredibly entertaining and witty. I doubt this game will ever get stale.

[1]: [https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered](https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered)

<comment><USER3> It's not necessary to have played Maniac Mansion beforehand? I'll admit this has been my main hesitation. I remember when Monkey Island III was big in the late 90s, I was hesitant because I hadn't played the two games that came before it.

I ended up doing it anyway at the time, but later I would play all three, and the third one really benefits - in my view anyway - from having played the first two ones, even though they can all stand on their own. So I wonder whether Day of the Tentacle is similar?

<comment><USER4> You don't need to have played or know anything about Maniac Mansion to enjoy Day of the Tentacle. I would not even recommend to play MM first, because MM is stupendously hard and frustrating compared to DotT. Play it after.

BTW: In the version of DotT I played in the 90s there was a funny easter egg: A computer in the game was running a playable version of Maniac Mansion. I don't know if this is part of the remastered version though.

<comment><USER5> Remastered has it too. Steam version even has achievements for doing things that require you to get a small way through the original.

Agree on not needing to play Maniac Mansion first, too. I came to the original having no idea that MM even existed. The characters and story are great even if you don't know the references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > One of the few negative things I can say about Day of the Tentacle is that > it's more fun than it is truly innovative; it doesn't break any new formal > or thematic ground

The time travel aspect and that you control three characters in the past, present, and future, where things you do in the past affect the future was truly innovative to me. I realize now that it's not as magical design or programming wise as it appears. It's not that hard to have something done in one room affect something in another room in the game, but as a player having to think across time as well as space was really cool.

The article goes on to talk about the time travel, so it's not ignored, but it seems that I found it more innovative than the author.

<comment><USER7> I think the site author comes from an interactive fiction background, so I suppose there were text adventures that did switchable playable characters and time travel before DotT [1], but I don't know of a graphic adventure that beat DotT to it. I found the interaction between the 3 timezones pretty innovative as a kid too and think he does the game a disservice here.

It also opens the game up in terms of how many puzzles you can be thinking about at once; if you're stuck in a traditional 1-protagonist game you might only have one or two things you think you need to do next, at least in a pretty linear game, but now you always have at least 3 things to work out at once...

[1] I'm not a big IF buff, but I guess Infocom's "Suspended" (1983) is a classic game where you can control different "characters" at once, and I really loved "T-Zero" (1991), where you also open up 3 different timezones you can travel between at will, and changes in the past affect the present/future in a slightly DOTT-esque manner - although it's a very different game.

Suspended: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_\(video_game\))

T-Zero: [https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr](https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr) or reviewed on filfre.net here: [https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text- adventures-of-1991/](https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text-adventures- of-1991/)

<comment><USER8> Chrono Trigger was a really good old SNES RPG that had gameplay centered around time travel, where actions in one timeline affected outcomes in another. Not an adventure game, but it's something that your comment reminded me of.

<comment><USER9> Much less known than Chrono Trigger, but the Game Boy RPG SaGa 3 (known in the west as Final Fantasy Legend III) was a case of Square's attempt at time travel in RPGs that came before CT. It had a lot of thematic elements in common, eg. actions in the past affecting the future, objects that appear in all time eras, separate dimensions that exist outside of the regular time continuum, etc. Unlike CT or DoTT, the eras were only decades apart, so you could also run into the same person as a kid and an adult. The same team at Square did not work on it, but it should have at least had some influence on CT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Probably my favourite LA adventure game, though Sam & Max really does give it a run for its money. I played it at what I suspect was a very formative time of my pre-teens, and I think it did a lot to shape not only my humour, but also my understanding that games could be challenging yet satisfying in how they deliver a story through puzzles and obstacles. I think it struck a very good balance between a hand-holding push-over and being so challenging that you needed to dig out a cheat guide every few minutes. That's largely a credit to its story-telling and design, and I think I was just getting to the age where I was able to appreciate that.

<comment><USER11> I'm 35 years old and had a similar experience. What you said about it shaping your humour really struck a chord with me (particularly Sam & Max). Maybe because it was the first LA game I played, but I think DoTT is the best, but it led to me playing all the rest.

I got the talkie on CD-ROM for a christmas present one year. I struggled with a lot of it, but my Dad before giving me the present removed the hint/solve book from the box and watched us (me and my younger brother) play and try and figure everything out and just gave us enough of a hint at the right times to make it feel like a really satisfying experience.

I'll RTFA after work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To people considering buying it, given so much praise here and in the article, I would like to just ask you to take note of the following quote:

 _> "Of course, there's no accounting for taste. If you loathe cartoons, perhaps you might not like this game. If you prefer more serious plots or more rigorously cerebral puzzles, perhaps you won't love it. [...] It remains at the end of the day a slapstick cartoon comedy"_

Personally, this caveat did apply so much to me. I bought and played the game, all way to the end, trying to give it a chance, but in my case, I found it plain boring. If you like slapstick, that's probably your gold nugget indeed, based on the glowing reviews. Me, I don't; I need at least some substance (?). I loved Loom, I enjoyed The Monkey Island (esp. the 1st one in the series), as well as the Indiana Jones games. I found amusement in their lightheartedness and casual humour. I liked Grim Fandango too. But DoTT fits the same place in my mind with Psychonauts: I plainly don't get why so many people are so stoked about them. To me, they're both just _super_ boring.

<comment><USER13> I think it's probably to do with the fact that many of us here played it when it was first out and were either kids or much younger than we were now. My memory of that game is amazing, but I highly doubt I'd pick it up off the shelf today as my tastes have changed.

<comment><USER14> I replayed it (the remastered version) some 20 years after initially playing it. It was still amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of the things that's interesting to me is the resources available at the time - in terms of help.

With a game like this now (Say, the excellent Thimbleweed Park - you played it, right?), if you get truly, epically stuck, there's a walk-through no more than a few clicks away. And you'll probably admit defeat and go there after a few hours.

When I picked DoTT up (a few seconds after release ;) ), no such thing. You were in it alone. Maybe there was a magazine write in for hints, and if you were lucky you knew a guy on a BBS, but other than that, you were on your own. That made the puzzles _so_ much sweeter when you got them.

<comment><USER2> > _When I picked DoTT up (a few seconds after release ;) ), no such thing. You > were in it alone. Maybe there was a magazine write in for hints, and if you > were lucky you knew a guy on a BBS, but other than that, you were on your > own. That made the puzzles so much sweeter when you got them._

Completely agree. Unlike today, there was really no alternative to really thinking "deep" and trying to figure something out on your own. If push really came to shove, you went to the local bookstore and hopefully they had a magazine or guide available. I miss those times. :)

<comment><USER16> The flipside is of course that some of those games were near impossible without some kind of hint. The old Hitchhiker's Guide game is the one that comes to mind for me. I read all of the books multiple times as a kid but never got more than halfway through the game. It was just plain cruel to the player.

<comment><USER2> > _The flipside is of course that some of those games were near impossible > without some kind of hint._

This is true, but it made winning all the more satisfying. :)

Myst comes to mind as another game which was a beast to figure out. Once you did though, you felt like a god.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another commenter linked to the remastered (hi-res) version for desktop, but it's also available for iPad for $4.99... and if tablets aren't the perfect medium for original point-and-click adventure games then I don't know what is:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/day-of-the-tentacle- remaster...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/day-of-the-tentacle- remastered/id1114170869?mt=8)

<comment><USER18> Nice. Any clue if other games are also available like Monkey Islands, Maniac Mansion, etc?

<comment><USER19> A little more 'evolved' (not scumm) but 'Grim Fandango' was also recently updated (well in the last few years) for newer platforms. Ron Gilbert & Co's Thimbleweed Park perhaps deserves a mention here too .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While Loom will always have a special place in my heart, DotT is possibly the best all-around adventure game from my childhood; particularly considering that the LA games have aged far better than most of the others.

<comment><USER21> The funny thing about Loom for me is that I remember the situation and people that were playing the game more than the actual game's story. It was a blast playing after school with a group that argued and explored together. I'm not even sure we finished the thing.

<comment><USER20> Loom just clicked with me for some reason. It was the first adventure game I completed 100% on my own, and I did so fairly quickly.

The other adventure games I had played to that point I was only able to finish by playing in parallel with several friends and when one of us got stuck, we would help each other. Hero's Quest was the first game I completed in this manner (we were stuck on King's Quest until someone downloaded a hint guide from a BBS; that game was primarily difficult because how easy it was to get in an unwinnable state).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had unforgettable fun with this game. I think only 2 games provided me with so much laugh, this one and The Curse of Monkey Island

<comment><USER23> Yup, hate how Curse of Monkey Island is almost always forgotten when talking about the series because Gilbert wasn't involved. The game is incredibly beautiful, voice talent flawless and impeccably casted. I wish they had created other adventure games with that iteration of the SCUMM engine.

<comment><USER24> I loved CoMI as much as the first two games. It seemed to ignore the basic premise of the story which was a hard pill to swallow (still is), but apart from that I found the humor, graphics and everything else to be at least on par.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, floppy disks and dreaming of one day getting a huge 17" CRT monitor on a Pentium, that was my early teenage years.

<comment><USER26> The Dig was one of my favorites. Conceived by Spielberg with a script by Orson Scott Card of all people.

<comment><USER27> I've got the CD-ROM version of that kicking around somewhere. I'm surprised they haven't made a movie of it or all the other old LucasArts properties.

If they can make a movie about The Magic 8-Ball...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Man, this takes me back. For me, the two pinnacles of my childhood PC gaming were easily _Monkey Island 2_ and _Day of the Tentacle_. I was so thrilled when Ron Gilbert announced his Kickstarter for _Thimbleweed Park_. Hopefully Disney one day sells him back the rights to Monkey Island, I'd love a true sequel by its creator.

<comment><USER7> I'd love that too - although I have to say I didn't really like the endings to MI2 or Thimbleweed Park, so I might love it even more if RG writes everything except the ending...

<comment><USER28> Yeah, the MI2 ending was definitely bizarre, but for me it was an off-the-wall way that made me really interested to see what happens next... Kind of like the ending of _Nightmare on Elm Street 2_.

Apparently Ron had a final chapter in mind for _Monkey Island_ , but with Disney/Lucas owning the rights, we'll probably never see it. I'm guessing the last chapter might do a bit of retconning on the final moments of Part 2, but no one outside of Ron apparently knows how it ends. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mr-ron This game captured a magical point in gaming where me my brother and my mother were playing on our PC, and my cousin and uncle were playing on another at the same time, keeping each other up to date on progress.

We all were blocked at the same point until my uncle found the puzzle where you have to close a door to get the keys, and as soon as he found it he phoned my mom and we all progressed.

That type of puzzle discovery hasn't happened since. Amazing game and amazing memory.

<comment><USER29> The key action to getting Ben Franklin his thunderstorm was a bit too much, no?

<comment> mr-ron No the keys were given to the masked man in the present day, who was breaking into the car. He gives you the crowbar for the keys.

<comment><USER30> I believe he meant the action needed to trigger the rain.

<comment> mr-ron To trigger the rain you needed the whole setup: gold, vinegar, and oil. The puzzle we were stumped at had nothing to do with that.

<comment><USER31> I thought you needed to wash the carriage? That was a bit obscure for me as a kid.

<comment><USER6> Speaking of obscure, getting Washington to cut down the cherry tree by painting the fruit red got me stuck as a kid in Sweden. I hadn't heard the cherry tree myth (and now only through the game) and even if they gave hints in the dialogue, I didn't get those either. I don't even remember if I got past it or if I gave up.

I replayed the remastered game a couple of years ago on PS4 with my daughter who was seven years old, and this time the only thing I was stuck on was the cat puzzle with the squeaky mattresses. I read a blog post just now about that puzzle, and it's special because you use the Use verb on two different things outside of your inventory. You usually go inventory->world or inventory->inventory, but here it's world->world. So I had to look up that one solution in the whole game.

Playing as an adult, it's much easier to keep in mind what clues you have and what the open puzzles are. As a kid, I would just start using everything with everything else, and the hints from failed interactions wouldn't clue me in. Now I see they make a really god job at telling you why things don't work and what you should try instead.

I was pleasantly surprised that my daughter thought the game was hilarious. I expected her to get bored quickly, but we played through it all together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Also one of my favorite games. Such interesting characters and puzzles.

Another gem from this era is Grim Fandango, which also has a recently remastered version.

</comment><comment><USER33> This game taught me that humour and story can be conveyed extremely effectively through player choices. It was eye opening (and hilariously satisfying).

The strong coherence between story, time, and gameplay was really really striking

</comment><comment><USER34> I still love all those games, and play them from time to time using ScummVM [1], which I installed on my PC and Mac. Back at the time, I bought them in boxed editions and was so thrilled to get them! I still have those original games as part of my greatest 80's collection items. The SCUMM engine is also very interesting to look at, internally.

[1|: [https://www.scummvm.org/](https://www.scummvm.org/)

</comment><comment><USER21> _One of the few negative things I can say about Day of the Tentacle is that it's more fun than it is truly innovative; it doesn't break any new formal or thematic ground_

So, friggin what. I dearly wish more game designers (and not a few critics) would remember that a lot of these games are meant to be fun. I don't want some message or insight or innovation all the time. I often want to sit down and spend some time having fun and unwinding. Its not a negative, its like the comfort of an old book that I've decided to reread.

Plus, fun and funny are damn tough to get right. Its so much easier to do drama than comedy because a so-so drama is still ok, but a so-so comedy is just bad.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have so many good memories of playing this game with friends back in the 90s. I played it again recently with my teenager nephews and they loved it. The humor still works and the puzzles are challenging.

</comment><comment><USER36> I spent my childhood and formative years playing adventure games. While I played more Maniac Mansion than the sequel, this is one of the best.

</comment><comment><USER37> Site seems down...archive link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190610020009/https://www.filfr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190610020009/https://www.filfre.net/2019/06/day- of-the-tentacle/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Is this the one that contains that easter egg where you can play a full other game within the game?

<comment><USER39> That's it. You can get to a terminal and play Maniac Mansion pretty early on in Day of the Tentacle.

<comment><USER40> ...As the article explicitly mentioned?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Favorite game of mine too. I remember when I was a 14 year old playing this game.

</comment><comment><USER42> For anyone wondering what the (remastered) game looks like:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW283uY3sLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW283uY3sLI)

</comment><comment><USER43> My best friend and I played Maniac Mansion and DotT for hours. So funny and great puzzles. Thanks for the memories buddy, you are missed, RIP

</comment><comment><USER44> Yet to play this one. Recently played Full Throttle and it was great. I guess I have to go back and replay Maniac Mansion since the 90s?

<comment><USER45> Just play Day of the Tentacle. I've been playing games since the Atari days. Day of the Tentacle is one of the greatest games of all time.</comment></comment>


Bad at whiteboard puzzles? You can still get a programming job - <AUTHOR> https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/07/29/getting-a-job-without-whiteboard-puzzles/ <comment><USER2> Coopting is the best alternative to any recruitment process. Best hiring are made like that. The cost is minimal. I know a bunch of people I can recommend. Just ask me (people in C++,JS,Go,CL and Python).</comment>


Sexy CSS3 menu - <AUTHOR> http://www.red-team-design.com/sexy-css3-menu One of the most common elements when talking about a website or an application design is definitely the menu navigation. No matter if vertical or horizontal, simple or complex, a menu is essential and it has to look that way.<p>In this article, you'll learn how to create a good looking menu using some CSS3 magic. <comment><USER2> Since this starts with mentioning less it would be nice to have example in less (and mixins would make the code more pleasant to look at). I started with less, but moved to Sass (<http://sass-lang.com/>) later.</comment>


Google images takes over fullsize content - <AUTHOR> http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.de/2013/01/faster-image-search.html?m=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Quote: 'The source page will no longer load up in an iframe in the background of the image detail view.'

Protest is growing as the traffic to the source sites heavily decreases (see the comments section).</comment>


Ask YC: Does everyone get notified? - <AUTHOR>

I had a quick question for the YC people.  Does everyone who applied to YC recieve notification if they do or do not get invited to Boston? <comment><USER2> If you have not received a response from us by midnight on Thursday, please check your spam filter before contacting us. (We've had issues with yahoo mail accounts in the past, for example.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you letting people know as you review the applications, or will everyone find out on the 18th (or another day)?

</comment><comment><USER4> Everyone who remembered to include an email address.

<comment><USER5> That's great. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Kenneth Reitz's Last Manic Episode - <AUTHOR> http://journal.kennethreitz.org/entry/on-mania <comment><USER2> I won't say too much publicly, man, because you already basically know my thoughts on this, but I will say one thing:

The content of your episode _was_ interesting and compelling, and you do a superb job of utilizing your passport into that other realm.

On the other hand, I think I speak for everyone here when I say we're all glad you're feeling healthy again. :-)

edit: And also that it's awesome that you're so available and public with your struggles; your story is one of the best insights I have into the various facets of mental health.</comment>


What If Instead of Taking the Sat You Got to Play a Video Game? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-19/a-harvard-dropout-s-plan-to-fix-college-admissions-with-video-games <comment><USER2> You mean "the SAT", as in the Scholastic Aptitude Test?</comment>


The Pentaphone - <AUTHOR> http://billgathen.github.io/pentaphone/ <comment><USER2> _Most online synth examples are too complicated: they try to give you everything_

Totally.

 _but you can make a bunch of music using only a subset of_

Waveforms? Filters? Oscillators? Envelopes? Yeah... synths are totally complicated. I'm excited to see how you're going to make it simpler.

 _the 12 available notes. The Pentaphone limits itself to just those heavy- hitters._

NOOOOOOO!!!!! Talk to every guitar player; this is the path to purgatory.

Edit: I've warmed; it's pretty fun and I could see this turning people on to improvising. The "8" (next tonic) would be sweet. Maybe shift to raise the whole thing an octave? Proper face melting requires access to two tonics...

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently used the web audio API and HTML5 to make a touchscreen-enabled synth app for iPad.

Its very basic, but keeping in mind its around 150 lines and written from scratch Im sure I can improve it from here :)

[http://codepen.io/tomhodgins/post/building-an-html5-app- for-...](http://codepen.io/tomhodgins/post/building-an-html5-app-for-ipad)

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting - played around with it but the sound is choppy and crackles between key preses on my computer. I'm thinking it's my audio setup (AMD Radeon 6770 graphics card feeding an Onkyo 5.1 receiver both graphics and audio over HDMI with the default AMD audio drivers), will try later elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> I think pressing 'i' to change bit rate from 8-bit helps with the crackling. I didn't get visual feedback that the bit rate was changing (bug?) but I similarly didn't get visual feedback when I changed instruments with 'u', though the instrument clearly changed.

<comment><USER6> "8-bit" and "Organ" are two mutually exclusive options, you can switch between them by using 'i' and 'u' respectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love it. Some people with a musical background might find it to limited. But I think it's good to explore and play.

I think I should get a Push, Monome, or Launchpad some time. Today I had a demonstration of the Push, and it's so simple to play around with samples and sounds.</comment>


Angular 2 service vs. Angular 1.x service: who wore di better? - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/gdi2290/634101fec1671ee12b3e

<comment><AUTHOR> if you have any questions ping me at @gdi2290 or @AngularClass</comment>


Starting up outside of traditional tech hubs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thomaspun/1310db46c7a3

<comment><USER2> Great points! Another great benefit of being outside of SFO/NYC is it's easier to avoid a lot of the time wasting hype and distraction.</comment>


I created my own MMO and lost 100 pounds - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/22/5625906/weight-loss-mmo-video-game <comment><USER2> I went the exact opposite route. After losing 180 pounds via bariatric surgery and then regaining 70 of it, I _dove_ into the science. I read books, but only books that pointed directly to scientific literature I could read. More importantly, I learned how to differentiate good nutrition studies from bad nutrition studies (hint: at least 90% of nutrition studies are _bad_ ) so I could tell when an conclusion is warranted by the data versus when it isn't. I also started completely ignoring anything said in the media, since, invariably, they get it wrong or they hype the afore-mentioned bad studies. Everything became about the science and the n=1 experiments.

What I found was that I could lose weight without effort, improve every health marker, and enjoy the foods my body really seemed to desire (as opposed to foods engineered to cause cravings). The 70 pounds disappeared without any tracking of anything[1]. More importantly, that 70 pounds was gone a year ago, and maintaining the loss has been just as straightforward.

I applaud anybody who finds the method that works for them. It's pretty clear our bodies are striving to be healthy and get what they need; once you find that, the rest comes relatively easy.[2]

1\. There was some early tracking as I learned about different foods and how they interacted with me and my goals.

2\. Unfortunately, some people lost the genetic lottery (less than you might think) or are so metabolically disturbed (becoming more and more) that it isn't always easy. I have a huge amount of respect for those who persevere through that and work towards a healthier life.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. What studies did you stick with?

<comment><USER2> Hmm, tough question. Here are some of the studies that struck me most. The danger of something like this is it can look like confirmation bias; that is not the case. It just happens that a close, impartial reading of the evidence tends to lean one direction.

* Comparison of the Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and LEARN Diets for Change in Weight and Related Risk Factors Among Overweight Premenopausal Women[1]

* Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance[2]

* The ketogenic diet as a treatment paradigm for diverse neurological disorders[3]

* The ketogenic diet reverses gene expression patterns and reduces reactive oxygen species levels when used as an adjuvant therapy for glioma[4]

* A Systematic Review of the Evidence Supporting a Causal Link Between Dietary Factors and Coronary Heart Disease[5]

At the time, I wrote a wikia article[6] that tried to distil all of my thoughts and what I had learned. It is mostly correct, but I'm sure I got some things wrong. I haven't gone back over it in some time.

More recently, I think this article (Dietary Carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management. Critical review and evidence base)[7] gives a good overview of the metabolic benefits.

All of this does not imply that I think a ketogenic diet is the One and True Path(tm); it is far more nuanced than that, but that's not a bad place to start for a lot of people.

1\. [http://www.mwc.com.br/files/Gardner_- _Standford_A_to_Z.pdf](http://www.mwc.com.br/files/Gardner_- _Standford_A_to_Z.pdf)

2\. [http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154)

3\. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3321471/pdf/fpha...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3321471/pdf/fphar-03-00059.pdf)

4\. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2949862/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2949862/)

5\. [http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=11084...](http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1108492)

6\. [http://fat- head.wikia.com/wiki/Health_Benefits_of_a_Low_Carb...](http://fat- head.wikia.com/wiki/Health_Benefits_of_a_Low_Carb,_High_Fat_Diet)

7\. [http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007(14)00332-3/f...](http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007\(14\)00332-3/fulltext)

<comment><USER4> This is good info, the only things I would add here:

* carbohydrate intake should really depend on your activity level. I'm guessing the majority of the people in these studies were sedentary so a ketogenic diet is a pretty good option. People who are more active should consume some carbohydrates because glycogen depletion tends to mess with energy levels.

* A higher dietary protein intake has been shown to increase satiety and lead to weight loss by itself. Regardless of your diet you should increase your intake of high protein foods; beans and low fat cultured dairy are good sources.

<comment><USER2> Steve Phinney and Jeff Volek have done a lot of research into high performance athletes using a ketogenic diet (see, for instance, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance[1]). Extreme endurance athletes are using ketogenic diets as a tool to smash records in ultramarathon running[2].

Nobody _needs_ carbohydrate. That doesn't mean carbs are necessarily bad, but the long-time trope that you have to have them if you want to move further than your couch is just silly and has long been disproven (if, by nobody else, hunter-gatherers who had gone days without food while running down a kill).

Phinney and Volek have found interesting things about fat and high-intensity exercise:

* Fat utilization in keto-adapted individuals that is, literally, re-writing textbooks. Levels of fat mobilization that have never been seen in laboratories is being recorded. This likely has a genetic component, what I would consider the opposite of the multiple copies of the amylase gene that highly carb-tolerant people seem to have.

* Fat requires less oxygen to utilize, leading to less lactic acid, less muscle tissue damage, and faster recovery.

* Keto-adapted athletes are much more efficient in their use of their glycogen stores, using less when passing 70% VO2-max and replenishing supplies faster. They do not store as much glycogen as carb-burners, so the net effect winds up being about the same amount of power from glycogen between carb and fat burners.

That doesn't mean there are no athletes who would see benefits of carbs, but, in a fat-adapted state, those carbs can be much, much more strategic in nature (the cyclist sprinting over the hill, the olympic lifter in competition, etc). Peter Attia talks a lot about his strategic use of carbs while exercising[3].

Personally, I see beans as a food to be very cautious with. The phytates, lectins, and saponins in them are there to protect the seed, since plants can't run away to protect their offspring. They use chemical warfare, and are quite good at it, leading to poor absorption of nutrients[4]. Properly preparing them (soaking and fermenting) can address this problem, something done in all societies previous to the 20th century, but rarely done now.

I also can't see any reason to use low fat, well, anything. Fat is a perfectly healthy macronutrient, and, when going for low fat, you are typically getting a lot of sugar and additives put in to replace the taste and texture of the lost fat. On the other hand, live-cultured dairy products, for those who can tolerate lactose, are an amazing food.

1\. [http://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com/the-art-and-science- of...](http://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com/the-art-and-science-of-low- carbohydrate-performance/)

2\. [http://www.meandmydiabetes.com/2012/08/11/western- states-100...](http://www.meandmydiabetes.com/2012/08/11/western- states-100-low-carber-wins-ultramarathon-steve-phinney-and-jeff-volek-study/)

3\. [http://eatingacademy.com](http://eatingacademy.com)

4\. [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/49/1/140.short](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/49/1/140.short)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I want to upvote this a dozen more times. I've always thought MMOs could "hack" the brain into doing all sorts of cool, productive things.

Somebody needs to create an MMO for language learning. Instead of "go kill 12 dragons" the questgiver would say "matar a 12 dragones" or "matar a 12 dragones verdes" or "matar al dragón en la cima de la montaña". The immersion and addiction would have hardcore players speaking 10 languages, I guarantee it.

And I think this could be extended to quantifiable human-necessary tasks, too. Like a mechanical turk, but fun.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure my ability to touch type was influenced by playing Quake 1 and Quake 2. You had to type quickly enough to insult someone and not die.

I've met programmers that don't touch type, but I've never met a PC gamer that doesn't.

And yes, your idea would be awesome. That would actually be a sick WoW add-on. I doubt you can pull different localizations through the API though.

<comment><USER7> I credit MUDding with my current typing speed.

<comment><USER8> ditto!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Figures that I submit this for karma myself eons ago but it only now, via another HNer, pops to the top. :)

\- The fat MMO guy

<comment><USER10> This is totally off-topic but I'm originally from San Antonio and noticed the last picture in the article and picked it out immediately as you having a drink at La Gloria. This (and the heat!) is exactly why it's so hard for people back home to lose weight. Kudos to you for figuring it out!

<comment><USER9> Good eyes! We were there after a con at Rackspace! It was as deadly as you've foretold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good inspiring article.

I recently added 3 rules to my life.

1.) No pop 2.) Track calorie intake via loseit 3.) Exercise everyday (even if it's just a 10 minute walk or some pushups)

Two weeks in and I feel way better. I find that I'm trying to control my calorie intake and get it where it needs to be without exerting as much effort as I would be if I was simply counting calories to lose weight. I find that I'm doing more than the minimum in terms of exercise too just because I'm already doing some exercise.

At least I found having rules helped me not push off weight loss until next week forever.

<comment><USER12> What's pop?

<comment><USER13> Most Americans would probably call it "soda" (there are a couple of weir areas where everything is "Coke", no matter what it really is, and some of the more civilized areas use the word "pop" as the gods intended); Brits would probably say "fizzy drinks".

<comment><USER14> >Most Americans would probably call it "soda"

It is HIGHLY regional. The Northeast and parts of the West mostly say "soda."

The South is "coke."

[http://www.popvssoda.com/](http://www.popvssoda.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> British guy problems but I thought someone was blogging about a very small financial loss on a game they made. lbs would help.

<comment><USER16> 45 kg

<comment><USER17> The problem isn't weight translation, it's reading "pounds" as currency instead of weight. Imagine the title was "I created my own MMO and lost 100 dollars", that's how we Brits parse it

<comment><USER18> "Lose 10 pounds! Only £10!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am actually testing the 1 day fasting diet, exercising every day (either speed walking 5K, jogging for 5K or tennis) and limiting liquid calories.

The things people forget: -your body is unable to calculate liquid calories (pop, juices etc) - so even after drinking 2K calories in Cola you can be still hungry

-fasting for 1 day a week (200-300 intake in sugars calories like sugar tea) or 2 days a week (500 calories in fruit sugars a day) is extremely healthy as for first 24 hours since eating your body will use gathered sugars in your body to maintain itself burning all the nasty stuff logging your veins and stomach. This also helps you to say no to food - next day after fasting you wont feel like extremaly hungry and even very small meals through the day will be enough to you

-track calories - but be honest, always round it up DOWN to full 50s and 100s.

-calculate calories weekly, not daily. Make sure on the end of the week you are good. Start Monday with fasting - you will have 1,500-2,000 calories deficit already so basically you can eat most of stuff through the week.

I have lost already 10 pounds in 4 weeks, I can run easily and I feel much better. 2 more months and I am done!

<comment><USER20> >2 more months and I am done!

This attitude is typically a very bad one to have when dieting. Ingesting fewer calories should be sustainable after you've reached your target weight.

Anyways, good luck to you in your efforts. If this is a way for you to start, then there's nothing wrong with it at all.

<comment><USER19> Why is bad. I didnt say I will stuff myself after 2 months, I will just remove calorie deficit from my diet - I wont stop exercising, I actually want to regain some body mass as muscles - so I need to stop deficit and make surplus of protein etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good for him. Though I was hoping he had actually created an MMO. This is kind of a metaphorical MMO, not a real one.

<comment><USER22> It's not even really an MMO, I would say RPG. It's not massively multiplayer but I guess it's online.

Still awesome.

<comment><USER21> Well, _he_ was massive. And he got a couple of other people involved, making this a multiplayer effort. Perhaps that is close enough, in metaphorical terms, for what he was trying to communicate here.

<comment><USER22> Haha I like your interpretation :)

<comment><USER9> That was technically the literal interpretation. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ha, I've done similar things, but I'm still in the middle of it, 62 pounds in to be exact, that's about the half-way point.

The key component turned out to be the scale for me. Automatic tracking works much better for me than manually keeping track of it. (I also got a Withings scale, but I don't think the brand matters. As long as the scale automatically logs everything without you having to do anything or even look how much you weigh in the morning it's great.) Seeing your whole progress in one graph really helps me keep on track.

A week without progress even though you did all the exercise you always do and ate like you always do? With the trend-line and the chart going all the way back you can easily see that it's just a statistical anomaly, most likely random noise (probably mostly dependent on when you drank your water and when you went to the toilet). It doesn't mean progress has stopped.

That 2lb setback, probably because I wasn't careful about what I eat? Now I look back all the way I have come and those 2lbs seem harmless. That's a ridiculously tiny amount of weight to lose. It's so easy. Just some extra care to what I eat and how active I am and I'm all set.

With manual tracking (mostly memorising what I weighed and remembering it the next day) I would at these points just get afraid of the scale and eventually stop weighing myself. The whole process was less transparent with manual tracking and the automatically logging scale demystified it for me. During my previous attempts weeks without any progress just doomed me and got me to this really dark place. No I'm not even bothered by them. The trend-line is going down. Always.

Now, step counters may not be accurate or even a good way to track how active you are (and walking or cardio may not the best ways to aid weight loss) but the built-in step counter in my iPhone that I have always with me (plus my podcast addiction and the beautiful weather this summer) actually lead me to automatically want to beat those 10,000 steps per day. And at some point I just started doing it. I think there isn't one day during the last two months where I didn't walk at least 9,000 steps per day, without even consciously deciding to do that. I just wanted to beat those 10,000 steps. I want to see the bar turn green and the 10,000 to light up. That has helped me tremendously to stay active (and not just move less when I started eating less).

I also started driving the ergometer for 30 minutes every day and while I don't really track that I'm seeing my progress (I can drive with more and more resistance and without any breaks in-between) – also with my scale. The heart rate measurement doesn't work so well (it fails two times out of three) but it also shows steady downward progress. From a resting heart rate in the high 80s I'm now down to a healthy one in the low 60s. I also feel much better and sleep much better. (This would certainly be beneficial for me, even without any weight loss.)

All this progress also motivates me to constantly optimise. Next step: Buy good shoes and convert some of that walking distance into running distance. (70 minutes of walking per day are a bit long, but doable. However, with some running I can bring that time down.)

(The eating story is similar. I don't particularly care about what I eat, but when you restrict how much you eat you will automatically tend to prefer food that makes you feel fuller. That's at least how it was for me so far. I don't want to eat pasta every day because then I wouldn't ever feel full. And when I do eat pasta I would rather make the portion a bit smaller and add a salad for the saved calories to feel fuller.)

Will it work? Ask me in three years. I hope so. I think keeping up my weighing routine forever will be the key. If I can do that I see no reason why I can't keep at it and at least hold my weight (but most likely lose some more and hold the weight I want to have). I'm cautiously optimistic. This is the most weight I have ever lost in my life and the longest I have been at it and I don't even feel constantly starving or demotivated or crushed (something that was common during previous attempts). I actually feel great most of the time.

Get tracking! It helped me.

<comment><USER24> Just remember losing weight is not the hard part. You need to keep it off. I lost 100LB over 2 years with vary little effort, stopped paying attention for 6 months and gained much of it back.

<comment><USER23> Losing weight is the hard part. Keeping the weight constant is the hard part. Everything is the hard part. (I attempted and failed losing weight for years now. Getting this started was extremely hard. Right now it's admittedly easy.)

I just assume that I can never stop tracking my weight and never really stop counting calories. These changes that I'm making now are constant. This is not a temporary thing. That's just how it is. I will see how it turns out in a year or so.

<comment><USER25> Although I'm not overweight, I had been trying for a long time to get myself to exercise, and finally started running a few years back, and I totally agree with the "this is not a temporary thing". Right now I basically run at least once a week but average about 3-4 times a week (it's only on terrible weeks that I get one run in, and I'm usually really antsy if I can't run more than once). That is basically non-negotiable, I will continue running regularly until I'm too old to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is genius. Really. In my mind you've just "jiu jitsued" the candy bars, by applying the same mechanisms they use to keep you hooked, but against them. By creating habits that are prone to compulsive behavior (the phenomenon at play when you want to check your diet data is the same as when a teen checks his/her Facebook/WhatsApp/Whatever for messages). The surprising thing here is that you could keep this going long enough until it actually became a habit (or so I suppose). This is the trick, and I couldn't figure out what made you keep it so (willpower may be the answer here, but s there any other thing going on?) Anyways, kudos, you data aficionado diet jiu jitsu guy :D

<comment><USER22> In my experience (which I've written a bit about at habitformed.com if you're curious), habits like these do become engrained if you keep at them long enough and if they specifically don't require any willpower. The key I've found is to take willpower out of the equation because you'll always be lacking that.

One way I judo'd my own eating habits was to force myself to eat two servings of decently healthy tasty things before being allowed a serving of junk. eg. some fruit, some nuts, then cookies. It didn't need willpower to enforce because I could always eat my way to a delicious cookie if I really wanted it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This title was very confusing for an Englishman.

</comment><comment><USER9> For the record, and for those asking for this to be a real game, FitRPG for iOS is planning to deliver on some of that very notion. It's a super cool app; and I say that with absolutely no affiliation (srs). Google it.

<comment><USER28> HabitRPG is a web and mobile platform for gamifying habits and life goals that launched via Kickstarter a couple years back that is very successful in helping people do what you've done

[http://www.habitrpg.com](http://www.habitrpg.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is exactly what I'm doing, down to the MFP app and the Withings scale. The results have been amazing so far, and I look forward to writing a similar blog post by the end of the year.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised nobody has linked the obligatory xkcd yet: [http://xkcd.com/189/](http://xkcd.com/189/)

I think about this every time I run.

</comment><comment><USER31> > The idea is to track everything you take in and track what you spend through > exercise.

Wouldn't it just be easier to weigh yourself once a week, and if your weight goes up, eat less calories the following week and/or do more exercise? Unless your memory is that bad, or your eating patterns that random, it should not be hard to cut out things you know are high calorie and you can do without.

<comment><USER32> The problem with weight loss and other sorts of large, daunting projects is that morale and focus tend to evaporate pretty quickly when you don't hold yourself accountable and don't see immediate results. Whether it's weighing yourself every day or keeping a food journal, these sort of small, incremental data points help you keep focused in the short term. Tracking them over larger time frames keeps you focused in the long term. When you want to learn a new language, you can't just say, "I'll look over some words this week, and if I'm not happy with my progress I'll do more next week," \- you have to have a day- to-day plan to go over X number of flash cards, or talk for X number of minutes with a native speaker.

Small, manageable, tangible goals are the key to weight loss, and tracking ones weight and intake meticulously allows you to set such goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's the guiding principal behind weight watchers. If you get into the habit of at least noticing what you are eating, you'll give yourself the opportunity to accept/deny it. The points system for weight watchers is genius and removes the complexity around nutrition as long as you how many points that thing your eating contains.

<comment><USER34> I just started doing Slimming World, which I guess is much the same as WW but with a different points allocation scheme.

(Rice/pasta/potatoes are basically "free" as long as they are not cooked in oil; a third of each meal should be fresh fruit/veg, to discourage you from overloading on the free carbs; bread is very bad on the points system; you get one free calcium-containing product and one free fibre-containing product from an approved list every day, which has bizarrely led to me eating more cheese than ever before. I mainly picked SW over WW because of when the sessions were, rather than because I liked their way of doing it; in fact, to be honest I wasn't sure it would work at all, but so far it is.)

Anyway, I agree there are definitely "gamification" aspects which are true for these weight loss group sessions too. The point scoring; every week people get applauded for their weight loss and shiny stickers are handed out for the best that week or for reaching various milestones; and just turning up to group every week (which you have to to keep your membership current) means you can't chicken out of weighing yourself on a bad week, and sitting in a group provides your "encouragers" and "challengers" too, although possibly not as effectively as selecting one of each from your everyday friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I imagine a future where we will be able to track everything we eat automatically without having to enter any data in onto an app. Imagine seeing data about your body right on your arm. I eat a sandwich and it tells me exactly how many calories it was. I'll be the first to signup for something like this if/when this comes out.

</comment><comment><USER36> In case the site isn't loading for anyone else: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.pol...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.polygon.com/2014/4/22/5625906/weight- loss-mmo-video-game)

</comment><comment><USER37> Ah, I'd actually hoped he had coded a real MMO. Well, congratulations to him in any case.

</comment><comment><USER38> The story reminds me of REAMDE, by Neal Stephenson. In fiction, the protagonist Richard also creates his own MMO and uses immersion as a way to loose weight.

</comment><comment><USER12> Switching from World of Warcraft to Ingress can also help with fitness and weightloss.</comment>


Ask HN: What's Your Brand Strategy - <AUTHOR>

Yesterday an article that I wrote on branding was submitted to HN.  It was commented on as "misguided." The article states that the only strategy a startup should pursue is a master branding strategy where the product/service is the same as the company name.  The other option is to use a sub-brand strategy where the company name is not reflected in the product name.<p>Which of these strategies are you using for your startup? <comment><USER2> It's hard enough to build one brand. As a startup, if you're trying to build product sub-brands while still promoting the company brand, you're frakking crazy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well I can tell you with our startup that we made a mistake--should have gone with the Master strategy around our product name. Should have renamed the company to be that product name actually. It's a cool name, precisely describes our offering, and I actually had people emailing me and asking if they could buy the domain.

</comment><comment><USER4> Being extremely consistent with applying your brand is half the battle won. So many startups, particularly the web2.0 variety pollute their brand.

Also, your brand isn't just your logo - it's your entire look and feel.

Those facebook business cards demonstrate that quite well.</comment>


CIA Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny First Tweet - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/CIA/status/474971393852182528 <comment><USER2> I find it humorous that there are no comments for this.</comment>


STARTUPS IN THE NORDICS - <AUTHOR> https://sigma.software/about/media/startups-nordics?utm_source=ycombinator&utm_medium=repost&utm_campaign=cross%20platform <comment><USER2> From the guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _In Submissions_

> _Please don 't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or > exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an > article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's > important. _</comment>


Flutter Linux Alpha with Canonical - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/flutter/announcing-flutter-linux-alpha-with-canonical-19eb824590a9 <comment><USER2> I really doubt that 80,000 mobile iOS/android apps are in playstore which are written in flutter/DART. DART is no way better than javascript/java/typescript/swift. i may try/adapt flutter if its provides alternate languages like typescript.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pros vs Cons with flutter in linux [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMnt90Si5K4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMnt90Si5K4)

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope vim dart plug-in also get enough love, so that I can build some cool linux app on my low power Lubuntu machine.

</comment><comment><USER5> Too bad the BSDs missed out on desktop support because the Dart team had other priorities and were focused on the mobile side of Dart, which is fine, but then their argument for not upstreaming the BSDs is quite poor.

It sounds quite ridiculous to say that Googler's maintaining Dart "...don't have the resources" to do it themselves given the might of Google's infrastructure and even when these contributors were willing to maintain it themselves as an alternative. Even with one other person having buildbots. It's not that difficult or hard to run automated tests on a BSD.

[https://github.com/dart- lang/sdk/issues/10260#issuecomment-3...](https://github.com/dart- lang/sdk/issues/10260#issuecomment-372138711)</comment>


Murdoch Says Web Aggregators Should Pay for Content  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aMA0yMciT0EQ

<comment><USER2> Paul Carr has an article on this that, I think, nails what is going on with Murdoch:

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/28/rupert-murdoch- google-n...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/28/rupert-murdoch-google-nsfw/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's not that I don't love newspapers or sympathize with their current plight, it's just that Murdoch seems so fully disconnected from reality that he's becoming dangerous. With all of his power and money he is perhaps dangerous even to those beyond the reach of his media empire.

<comment><USER3> You don't get to his position by being disconnected from reality in any way. This is simply about Rupert Murdoch wishing he could get money from news aggregators, and using all his influence and clout to try and make it so.

If his company is the only content provider that will block the search engines, he will lose big. However, if he can convince several other big content providers that they all should block the search engines as well, he gets more bargaining power towards the search engines and could eventually make them pay up.

From Murdoch's point of view, he has nothing to lose on this. It doesn't cost him anything to lash out like this, except making a lot of nerds like us angry, but we're pretty insignificant. And if he succeeds, either by getting a lot of content locked up behind payment walls, or by securing exclusivity deals with certain search engines, he gains money. If he doesn't succeed, he didn't lose anything, so trying it is a perfectly valid business decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Murdoch is basically saying he wants less reach and readers for his content.</comment>


Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/06/29/does-scrum-ruin-great-engineers-or-are-you-doing-it-wrong/ <comment><USER2> Id like to propose that the thesis of this article is incorrect, at least in my experience. Its correct on the points it makes, but I believe it ignores the greater point.

Scrum does not ruin great engineers - it simply does not place a Great Engineer at any higher value than another debatably less Great Engineer (who hands out Great Engineer! badges anyhow and where do I get one). Scrum is for management - pure and simple and do not ever forget it. Scrum can make a developers life much easier if implemented even semi-correctly.

"The idea of the scrum framework is to organize a development process to move through the different project cycles faster."

This is a very developer centric view of the situation. Scrum is in fact a way for other orgs in a company to wrap their heads around the output of the dev side of the company (velocity and predictability). Scrum is also a way for The Company to get some control of technical staffing and reduce reliance on "hard to find experts" (read; reduce the need to compete over TOP TALENT!! with FANGs).

Scrum serves a valuable purpose in that it provides metrics on when road map items might be finished deliverables. This enables product marketing to know a launch time ahead of time. This enables other parts of the org reliant on tech to know when a particular feature set is coming etc (when can we start selling this new stuff to our customers). Other uses of these metrics can be used to spot underperforming teams where something is broken, and generally as a whole provide some kind of useful (if admittedly imperfect) dashboard/console for the org as a whole beyond just the count of open tickets in Jira.

A conversation I was part of went something like this:

"Last year we spent $X,XXX,XXX on engineering and we managed about 1.6 points per dev per sprint. This year we spent 10% more and we actually only got 1.44 points per dev per sprint - we spent more and managed to achieve less. Why is that?"

Scrum in practice seems to purport the idea that a team of capable generalists (cross functional developers) are better than teams of talented experts (the person who inverts binary trees in lieu of counting sheep at night). In practice where delivering and maintaining robust production code this seems to work well in my experience. If you read between the lines here you can easily see that such a process reduces dependence on individual developers as a whole and simply endeavors to create a machine where interchangeable developers can complete tickets and move the ball towards delivery.

So in short - the article is not wrong - The way Scrum is used in any shop Ive ever been in has nothing to do with maximizing developer output or creating happy engineers. It has far more to do with wrapping a methodology with metrics around a development org. Its just like a song we all know the words to such that when I need to hire its easy for me to find other devs who know how to sing the same song we sing here at Stupid Corp.

In the limited experience that is my career, I've been at the point where I hated Scrum and the like. Ive seen others bristle the same as I did at such things as having to more or less guess how long it would take to do something of nebulous scope. As time passed I came to see it as a game that could be manipulated and won (from the perspective of an individual contributor).

You need not get promoted at work too many times before you realize its really not about the code at all - beyond it reliably functioning and making money. Its about delivering product and bug fixes such that the company gets to keep making (ever more hopefully) money. Scrum helps with this quite a bit once you get out of the hand to hand combat that is writing code as your daily job role.

Scrum is The Company's way of extracting value from a heterogeneous cluster of developers and measuring that value in terms of time and money. If there is one thing I could make people understand re: Scrum and dev methodologies in general it would be this single point.</comment>


Stacked Capsule Autoencoders - <AUTHOR> http://akosiorek.github.io/ml/2019/06/23/stacked_capsule_autoencoders.html <comment><USER2> So it's been almost two years since the capsules paper, and they still have nothing but mnist results? A bit underwhelming...

<comment><USER3> Has _anything_ actually happened in the last two years? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER4> I think there are two big things:

1\. Attention mechanism (transformers). Really moved forward NLP. It allows long distance dependencies without the need for sequential processing (like in RNNs). Generally scales much better (see BERT/GPT-2/XL-Net/etc)

2\. Separable convolutions. Significantly sped-up the standard CV networks. (mobile net, but now everything, really).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why do people assume that the assumptions in DL are correct for more general intelligence? It's not remotely like a real biological NN. It's seems like an arbitrary gross approximation that everyone is starting with just because it is the prevailing worldview.

Why do some Chinese focus on SNNs? I suspect they just have a different worldview because they are exposed to a different information stream in their language. But SNNs are still a gross approximation. Also, why assume it needs to look like an NN at all?</comment>


European Neanderthals on verge of extinction before arrival of modern humans - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120225110942.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29 <comment><USER2> Even at the peak, the total Neanderthal population was not that great. Much smaller than human hunter-gatherer densities.

</comment><comment><USER3> when I read the headline I thought this was a dig at greece and portugal</comment>


Tech Journalism photography makes me WannaCry - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/thegadhian/tech-journalism-photography-makes-me-wannacry-3ec5accbc9a2 <comment><USER2> medium puts up a non-closable pop-up that read "open in app". This happens with every link. This pop-up cannot be closed or disabled or hidden. It covers the article text.</comment>


Editr v2 - Host your HTML, CSS, JS  demos on your server - <AUTHOR> http://lab.idered.pl/editr/

<comment><USER2> Nice logo animation, the site looks great, but I have trouble figuring out why I would want to edit just a few files via a web browser.

Read-ony makes sense, and something like Cloud9 makes sense. But just editing a few files? You might have to help me out here. Genuinely requesting.

<comment><USER3> There are tons of different open source and pay javascript/html/css addons that exist out there that to evaluate you need to download, edit and play around with.

This is a much easier way to let developers evaluate a project without having to go through that hassle.

This is an area where right now most projects seem to rely on (the awesome) jsFiddle - but having things on your own server makes sense in many cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great! I usually use jsFiddle or Codepen for front-end demos on my blog, but it would be so much nicer to host it all myself.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very neat. I could definitely use this for some internal documentation. Thanks for the cool tool.</comment>


A bug in VS2015 exposed my source on GitHub and cost me $6,500 in a few hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.humankode.com/security/how-a-bug-in-visual-studio-2015-exposed-my-source-code-on-github-and-cost-me-6500-in-a-few-hours <comment> c-rack Already discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149179)</comment>


UCF Professor Richard Quinn accuses class of cheating  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbzJTTDO9f4 <comment><USER2> I had this happen in one of my classes, when I was in school. The whole class was in shock and fear, as the professor asked what we thought she should do. I was the only one that spoke up and said, well if you truly have evidence you should not be presenting it to us you should be presenting it to the authorities and that the whole thing felt like a shake down. It was the only class I got a C in, but I kept my dignity I know confronting a professor like that was grade suicide but man we as people get bullied enough, I was not about to get shook down for a couple students stupidity if it took place at all. If I where in that course at UCF, I would be raising hell about having to retake the test.

If they are so 100% sure about the offenders, then why does everyone have to retake the exam, why is everyone being punished. Maybe he does not have the data he claims he does. Until they could prove that they do, I would be standing my ground on not retaking the test because I am innocent until proven guilty and if they did prove it they would prove why I as a non-cheater need not retake the test.

<comment><USER3> The teacher used statistical analysis - enough to prove that a lot of students did unrealistically well on this test, but not enough to prove that any one student cheated (after all, even a poor student can decide to start studying or get lucky with the questions.)

<comment><USER2> That's not how he presented it, he presented it that they have the info to identify each cheater. He said (I am paraphrasing), "The net is tightening and we will catch you". He dared them to try to get away with it. He was shaking them down. My point is, I would call him on it, if they do have the data then they can prove my (hypothetical me) innocence.

If they don't then he is shaking people down, which is not entirely fair. If they don't have the data then the innocent don't deserve to be shook down for a witch hunt. He should just tell the class, we know some of you cheated, we don't have the data to unwind who did and who did not, so it's a do over for all of you. To the ones that did not, I am sorry but you can thank your fellow classmate.

I would be pissed if they came clean and said they can't sort it out, but I would not blame the professor for the actions of others. As it sits, with the claims that they know who the cheater are, I would hold it against the administration for holding me as a non-cheater to account when they claim to have proof that exonerates me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love how this professor is acting like he is taking the high road, but in reality, he himself is a hypocrite. If he had so much 'forensic' evidence, why didn't he just take it to academic affairs?

I'm not condoning cheating in anyway, but it's not the students fault that he is creating his exams from a public publishers test bank, which anyone could purchase and distribute. In my opinion the professor is just lazy.

<comment><USER4> Because in reality he could have gotten to 99% but never to 100%. There was always the chance that a student genuinely aced the exam on his own accord but would get accused of cheating and expelled anyway. That would be disaster for the prof and the school if the kid turned around and sued them. So instead he opted for a typical prisoner's dilemma to weed out the cheaters. And notice the carrot for that, take an ethics course and all is forgiven. Not, you will fail this class but be thankful you're not expelled.

<comment><USER5> The cheaters(?) would be visible if they do significantly worse in the second test, compared to the first.

<comment><USER6> That's not entirely accurate. Any number of things can affect a grade on a test. Included in this list is: personal issues, slightly (but sufficiently) different content, ambiguous questions (remember, these new questions were made in 90-something hours).

<comment><AUTHOR> Bimodal distribution exist when an external force has been applied to a data set.

Now for a what if. What if the students apply themselves and study, but the class ends up getting around the same distribution of scores?(Where the median is a 90.) The professors theory of cheating is thrown out the window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am amazed by the responses this article is getting. It's like the community here _approves_ of the cheating for some reason.

I personally think it's neat to see the analysis he did. It's cool to see the way statistics can uncover things with clarity you wouldn't have expected (e.g. the bimodal distribution) The implications are heavy, but I am impressed by his results (the confessions, which are a positive thing).

I have been on the non-cheating side of this sort of thing, both as an instructor and as a student, so I know exactly how both the professor and the honest students are feeling. It's a heavy, heavy weight to deal with (you can hear his voice is just shy of cracking- that's real, I've BEEN THERE), and there are no good and no right answers, but it _must_ be addressed.

<comment><USER8> How is using a test bank cheating?

Didn't you use test exams or example exams to prepare for the real test? I know that as a widespread and morally perfectly acceptable preparation method.

<comment><USER9> Many text books have accompanying material for instructors, including, sometimes, exam questions. The publishers will absolutely not make it available to anyone except instructors.

This is from the MIT press website, for example:

"Instructors with access to the manual must agree not to share the manual's password, to make any of the solutions publicly accessible, on the Web or otherwise, or to make any of their own solutions publicly available."

If a student has access to that material, someone violated that agreement, and the student is in possession of an illegal copy.

<comment><USER8> Ok, you are right, it is indeed cheating if students gained access to the test bank illegally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think getting questions from a third party exam bank to write your tests should be just as frowned upon as getting answers from the same bank to complete them. Am I being unrealistic to think that, if this guy's been teaching a course that hasn't changed over the last 5 years, he should be able to write a new midterm each semester?

</comment><comment><USER11> Wait how the hell is that cheating? Shouldn't he be lesser predictable in the exams?

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't. He should win an Oscar for his performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This guy pissed me off enough to write this comment.

Classical fear tactics. By offering a level of "immunity" for those who come forward, he's creating fear for those who actually did cheat.

Look at what he's offering to those who come forward:

"Any permanent record of this will be wiped from your transcripts. There will be no further action taken."

Then he goes on to taking a reverse psychological approach by saying:

"You want to take a high risk gamble, take it! I challenge you to take it…."

What he essentially did was scare the students into believing that his statistical analysis would be enough to expel them from college.

Sure, matching previous student batch's midterm results vs. current batch of midterm grades gives an insight. If you further compared that with the students other grades of similar subjects, then it is statistically possible to say that there's an anomaly present.

As far as I know (maybe the rules has changed since I went to college), you can't get kicked out of school because the administrators believe that it is statistically possible that you cheated.

</comment><comment><USER13> Looking at three diff threads on this story, people are assuming a bunch of things to be known that cannot be known from this video, such as:

* assuming the test bank is publicly accessible or is supposed to be (the instructor's statement that the publisher has been informed that the test bank is compromised implies it is intended to be private to instructors);

* assuming the test bank is accessible through teacher's versions of textbooks (it could be online via authentication);

* assuming the access by any student must have been illegitimate (the students could have easily thought it a study guide, and the source could have been someone other than a student--some instructors also can and do reuse questions and reward students for researching and studying them);

* assuming the access must have been legitimate;

* assuming the staff can prove particular students cheated (yeah.. we just don't know this, especially if we don't know how the test is structured or how the data analysis works);

* assuming the staff CAN'T prove particular students cheated (first, you can't assume something impossible just because you can't imagine how it could be possible; second, data analysis is shocking in what it can inform; third, the data analysis can be used just to indicate suspicious tests that the human instructor and TAs then review themselves; (and fourth, yes I did just nest semicolons and parens within other parens and semicolons));

* assuming the student who turned in the copy of the test bank was one of the cheaters or could even make use of it (it's possible they acquired it afterwards and turned it in out of spite or after discovering how widespread it was and that it would greatly disaffect the class results);

* assuming students feeling guilt implies guilt of the actual wrongdoing (people can feel bad about actions that aren't wrong, even when they know they aren't wrong);

* [I can't even list all the rest of the ones I've read..]

Then there are the assumptions that, even if true, aren't relevant, like:

* assuming students paid money for it because it's a business school * assuming older generations have superior ethics to the current generation (many would argue on the hypocrisy of older generations accusing others of entitlement); * whether the instructor is lazy or not (this is only relevant to issues of perceived value of the class, instructor, program, and school; not to the issue of academic dishonesty)

I have read these and many more from both people criticizing the students and people criticizing the instructor. The point is that people in these threads are assuming the video gives more facts than it does.

The only relevant factors I see are how they acquired the test bank and how the instructor communicated the nature of the exam. Neither of these factors are actually that easy to determine from the video. On one hand, the very existence of the test bank isn't something the instructor should feel either has to be divulged, if he has a reasonable expectation that it is supposed to stay private, or explicitly informed to the students that it's off limits. On the other, this is also a possible scenario: that some students reasonably assumed past or public exam material was fair game; encountered the test bank publicly (or acquired it from someone else thinking that they got it legitimately); used it to study; thought, upon seeing the exam contained some of the same questions, that they had studied from the right material; and only realized it afterwards, even as late as when the instructor revealed the extent of the incident, then felt compelled to confess. Is it likely it happened with all the confessors? Probably not. Is it possible and plausible it may have happened with some of them? Certainly. Presumably, all the confessions were in private, some possibly anonymous.</comment>