Most Vegetarians and Vegans Eventually Return to Meat - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3039505/the-vast-majority-of-vegetarians-and-vegans-eventually-return-to-meat <comment><USER2> One thing worth noting is that regardless of one's personal reasons to be vegan/ vegetarian , being 90% vegan WILL almost always be 90% effective for said reason.

This is not to dispute anything from the article. Just a reminder that if you sympathize or relate with any cause to reduce animal product usage, you don't have to be "vegan" or "vegetarian", just try to reduce your consumption to the point where it starts to inconvenient you.

<comment><USER3> I wanted to cut meat for environmental purposes, so I've started only eating it on holidays - turkey on Thanksgiving, fish on Christmas Eve, a burger/barbecue on 4th of July, buffalo wings on my birthday. I don't describe myself with the "V" word, and usually just say I "avoid eating meat".

People are usually critical when I opt for vegetarian options, and then completely lighten up when I describe that I do eat meat. It's strange how defensive people get about eating meat, and how quickly they lighten up just because I eat meat 5 times a year.

<comment><USER4> > It's strange how defensive people get about eating meat

Not so strange, when you have been the repeated recipient of either the "meat is murder" or "I'm obviously better than you because I don't eat meat" comments from militant vegetarians.

Basically, there's prejudice and justification on both sides of the divide, and it's too easy to respond to the constant hate with your own hate.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure those militant people exist, but I've yet to encounter one.

I can speak from the other side though. After someone realizes that I don't eat meat, I usually (as in way too often) get follow up questions about the reasons etc. I'm not sure if this is because of attempted "small talk" or other reasons, but after a while, I just got tired of it.

I generally try to avoid long follow-up discussions on the topic, because I simply don't think it's worthy of attention (at least in this context).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title seems misleading to me. According to the article:

>A third-of people abandoned their animal-free diets in three months or less, and more than half abandoned it within the first year.

Are you _really_ a vegan or vegetarian if you break in 3 months? In 1 year? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that 1 in 5 people who attempt to go vegan/vegetarian succeed?

I'm a vegan and I'm active in my local vegan/vegetarian community. There are two camps: people who do it for ethical reasons and people who do it for for health. People who do it for health usually give up and move on to whatever fad diet becomes popular. People who subscribe to the ethics rarely quit. We have a saying: there's no such thing as a former vegan. Just someone who tried the diet.

<comment><USER7> This is a text-book example of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

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

<comment><USER6> Is it, though? I mean, I can see the similarity, but ethical veg*nism does exist outside of the dietary practice. You don't need to subscribe to the ethics to partake in the diet. We lack the words to distinguish between and ethical vegan and a for-health vegan, but that doesn't mean they aren't distinct groups.

<comment><USER8> Does it matter?

What difference does it make if someone who's been a vegan for 3 months calls themself a vegan? Are they "harming the movement" by doing so? If partaking in the diet doesn't require you to subscribe to the ethics, as you say, then the label should just be a label: someone who doesn't eat animal products. No time frame or reasoning attached.

<comment><USER6> It does matter. It's the same with Jews, for example. You can be religiously Jewish but not ethnically, or ethnically Jewish but atheist, or you can be both. But they remain distinct concepts.

<comment><USER8> And yet you managed to convey that information with just one extra qualifying word. Unless you consider one of them isn't _really_ a Jew, shouldn't both share the title equally? If more information is required, use more words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For me, an almost-always vegan who eats cheese or meat in social settings, it was a general despair that the moral argument for veganism is so simple. It's easy to intellectually coast in this area for a while, because all the arguments meat-eaters present in favor of eating meat are so astonishingly and universally dumb - we evolved to eat meat, meat gives me pleasure (ignoring consequences of that maxim), some distinction between humans and animals which falls apart under scrutiny or has consequences for treatment of the mentally disabled, etc. I've seen even very intelligent people put these forward. Converting from meat-eating to veganism carries with it a component of acknowledging an underlying personally-applicable horror in the world which is similar, I would say, to becoming atheist. It's thus nearly impossible to reason with reasonable people here, simply because the psychological consequence of losing the argument is so strong. PETA recognizes this, which is why their videos focus on the graphic ugliness of the meat industry to provoke an emotional reaction.

Anyway. I originally really liked the moral arguments for veganism as forwarded by Peter Singer, which of course is very similar to his argument in Famine, Affluence, and Morality - it's pretty much impossible to accept one but not the other. I have more problems with the consequences of the FAM argument - that we inexorably ought to use all our life for the benefit of others if we profess to care for others at all. This, to me, is such an absurd consequence as to throw the entire enterprise of morality as a chain of material implication following from axioms (very attractive to a computer scientist!) into doubt. Which, I've been told, casts me out into the great despair of postmodernism where we don't have access to any meaning or oughts at all. I'd love to talk about this with someone who knows more about it, since my philosophical education pretty much comprises a single ethics course in university, some existentialist literature, some SEP reading, and a whole lot of PEL episodes.

<comment><USER10> > It's thus nearly impossible to reason with reasonable people here, simply > because the psychological consequence of losing the argument is so strong.

I'd dispute the characterization of these people as reasonable, but given how common it is, I suppose I'm descending into pedantry a bit here. It may seem enormously childish (and it is), but I know very few people who seem able to acknowledge that an action of theirs may not be the optimally moral one. Almost universally, this baseline of ethical maturity is replaced with twisted, desperate contortionate reasoning as to why their actions are actually in the morally superior one.

I personally still eat meat; I tried vegetarianism a few years ago but started weightlifting shortly after, which tends to have a pretty profound effect on my appetite and dietary needs. The difference is that I acknowledge that this is a moral failing of mine: I'm not a morally perfect being.

<comment><USER11> I am not sure you get to claim any points for acknowledging your own moral failing. If anything, this kind of ethical "living in sin" is even worse than contortionist justification because you debase your own ethics, turning them into something that can be cast aside when convenient.

You have two options - change your morals (accept and embrace that your desire to lift weights outweighs your concern for other beings). Or change your behaviour (stop either lifting weights or eating meat).

<comment><USER12> I think this desire to feel like you are living a morally perfect life is strong in most people but incompatible with an honest observation of the world from just about any ethical standpoint. There are an endless number of Very Bad Things in the world and an endless number of things you can personally do to improve them. Really improving how your life reflects your ethics will necessarily involve a huge amount of failure, false starts, and half measures. The best results possible will never get you that far on an absolute scale.

Even when a better path is fairly clear, human beings rarely make lasting changes in behavior instantly; there tend to be a lot of details and that need to be worked out and new movement patterns to learn. It is not clear from a brief message on the internet what a person has or has not done to make such changes. Even without intentionally making changes over time, you can recognize things that other people do that are better than what you do and be more likely to copy them or otherwise be inspired from them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A major issue with a lot of vegetarian / vegan diets is that they try to create vegetarian / vegan versions of what are fundamentally non-veg foods. This always ends up with people finding the veg version of something just an inferior tasting version of the 'actual' thing deprived of its primary component (the meat) and seasoned with some moral righteousness.

Instead of this, people should try to design these dishes ground up, and look at vegetarian cuisines around the world (Indian would be a great place to start) for inspiration.

<comment><USER14> As an omnivore, nothing annoys me more than my well intentioned veggie friends trying to serve me the vegie version of everything. It's gross to me, and it represents what they are trying to distance yourself from. Its like christian rock. It makes both things worse, while attempting in good faith, to celebrate them. Just cook kickass food that tastes good and meets your needs.

Edit: just reread, and I sound dickish. I, of course, am flattered by their attempt at accomidation. But veggie bacon is bad, and someone needs to tell you. We still love you.

<comment><USER15> > But veggie bacon is bad

One thing to keep in mind is that many vegan substitutes can vary _greatly_ in quality / flavour. For example, discounting all vegan cheeses because you tried one doesn't really work because they are all using different methods to achieve the same end, so the result (flavour, taste, texture) is different.

It's not like dairy cheese which is all basically using the same method / ingredients (and therefore the results can be more consistently close together, even among variations on the theme).

<comment><USER16> I have a strong stomach but the vegan cheese I've tried brought me to the brink of illness because it was so gross. Maybe I could have enjoyed it if it didn't present itself as "cheese" \- like an uncanny valley effect. Cheese is one of the main reasons I fell of the vegan wagon. Can you recommend any cheeze that's palatable?

<comment><USER17> I've been vegan for half my life at this point, so take my recommendations with a grain of salt (I have no idea what cheese tastes like any more).

That said - there are several brands of nut cheeses that I really enjoy, whether or not they taste like actual cheese. I would recommend Dr. Cow, Treeline, Punk Rawk Labs and Miyokos nut cheeses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a personal anecdote, I was a vegetarian for ~3 years from late in high school to junior year of college. It was definitely a valuable experience that afforded me much perspective into my diet, the diets of others, and food in general.

When I started eating meat again it was under a vague condition to eat "good" meat, that is, either cooked fresh by my mother, or from a higher-end restaurant. This eroded a bit and after a year or so I was back to eating meat relatively unabashedly again.

A few days ago I spent my entire Saturday vomiting bile from food poisoning ($CMG is the top suspect), and now I'm back to my post-vegetarianism habits of being careful about the meat I consume. I'm aware of probability and statistics, so this is somewhat irrational in that sense, but I suppose my point is that I'm grateful for the experience I had of being vegetarian and I think everyone should try it for as long as they can.

EDIT: Oh, perhaps the most shocking part of the experience was how few people knew what the difference between being pescetarian, vegetarian, and vegan is, as well as dealing with all manner of assholes who couldn't fathom why anyone would do such a thing to themselves.

EDIT2: As for health, it bears mentioning that I knew a couple people who are/were vegetarians and had much worse diets than many non-vegetarians. Naively substituting a chicken breast for a block of cheese is _not_ healthy!

EDIT3: I made a point of almost never asking my friends to pick somewhere more vegetarian friendly. Almost anywhere, I could deal with. Notable exceptions were seafood restaurants and anywhere in the South of the USA. There's only so many onion rings one can stand!

<comment><USER19> > I was a vegetarian for ~3 years from late in high school to junior year of > college

Observationally, this seems to be a stage that many young people go through at that time of life. At least on the surface - I've seen far too many "vegetarians" and "vegans" wolfing down greasy pepperoni pizza, blacked out at 3AM in my college days.

<comment><USER20> > I've seen far too many "vegetarians" and "vegans" wolfing down greasy > pepperoni pizza, blacked out at 3AM in my college days.

Why is this still a trope? Being vegetarian or vegan does not require perfection. Think about how absurd this standard is. If you've ever done something unkind you are no longer a kind person. If you've ever written poor code, you are no longer a good programmer.

This kind of thinking is a huge deterrent to people being vegan or vegetarian. If they ever have a lapse in judgement or decision making they just give up completely because of this line of thinking.

<comment><USER21> There are people in this very thread calling for perfection and calling the vegans and vegetarians who relapse into eating meat as described in the article as "failed".

Even you're falling into the trap of labeling people as X or Y or Z.

Why can't the goal be "eat less meat" ? If you want to quantify it, make the goal "eat ~50% less meat" than you used to.

Alternatively, bring down the meat consumption to the level of Norway or Switzerland or Japan, countries just as prosperous as the US, but with even better health outcomes.

Even something as simple as "order a mostly vegetarian dish every other time you eat out" would go a long way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The thing is, if you want to reduce dependence upon animal products and increase sustainability, you can expend 20% of the effort to go 80% of the way, and not spend another 80% of your effort to go the last 20%.

The pareto optimal curve is a real concept, and you don't need to go full vegetarian or vegan for you and the planet to reap the benefits.

<comment><USER23> Having been a semi-vegetarian for over 25 years, I agree completely. I eat yogurt and cheese frequently, eggs or poultry a couple of times a week, and the occasional fish; never beef or pork. It works for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article forgets to mention that the same report says that most people who are vegetarian for 3 years or more stay vegetarian for the rest of their lives.

The "vast majority" here are probably people who tried it and stuck around for a couple of months before quitting. Just like any other "fad" diet.

<comment><USER25> I was also looking for a mention of such a statistic.

I have been vegetarian for 2+ years, occasionally cheat with sea food, but the idea of eating animal flesh grosses me out and i don't think I'll ever turn back.

<comment><USER26> I've been vegetarian for 10+ years, "lapsed" for a few months after my life was turned upside down by a series of events but quickly just went back to vegetarianism because it was easier for me. Once you get into a routine, you'll probably stick with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> After I watched Forks Over Knives on Netflix it took me about 2 years to become 100% plant based, but I've been doing it now for over a year and I can guarantee you I'll never go back.

I work in an industry where I see the side effects of the Standard American Diet, and if you saw the health effects I see you'd switch too.

Here in Austin we have several monthly potlucks based upon the Plant Pure Nation pods idea, which makes it easier to find like minded people and new recipes. Also, Facebook groups like McDougall Friends is great for support, if you need it.

<comment><USER28> If emergency room doctors made laws, motorcycles would be illegal.

We're all susceptible to being deluded by our naive realism. Like how I think anyone driving faster than me is a maniac and anyone driving slower is a moron. The objective reality is that _everybody_ thinks that.

<comment><USER29> This study found that 70% of drivers think they're "above average": [http://www.theaa.ie/blog/70-of-drivers-rate-themselves-as- ab...](http://www.theaa.ie/blog/70-of-drivers-rate-themselves-as-above- average/)

<comment><USER21> So 71% of the predictors are actually correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been a vegetarian for basically my entire life although I'm not nearly as strict as vegans, these days I have adjusted it for protein availability and cruelty concerns. I eat probably 80% plant based but I eat eggs (farm raised ideally, free range and then cage free by order of priority) some cheese and some fish (though more and more I'm looking to cut that out entirely).

When anyone I know decides to try being a vegetarian they usually ask me about it (or just tell me about it) and my observation has been that a lot of people decide they want to be vegan and will do it for a few months before they drop back to just being a normal vegetarian and maybe a few months of that they drop back to just a reduced meat diet.

I try to warn people to not go from a high meat diet to vegan because a) afaik its not good for the body and b) its much harder that way but people rarely listen. The end result is OK in that they reduce their meat consumption but its much easier to do if you have realistic goals. You are not going to decide to run a marathon and just immediately do it, you need attainable goals along the way and that is what I think a lot of people miss. That and the more restrictive you are the harder it is socially (going out to eat, parties, etc) although that has gotten a LOT better in the last 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER31> The vast amount of smokers who quit smoking eventually return to the newsagents to pay lots of money for some tobacco. However there is a second category of people that have never smoked, and are totally unlikely to do so.

Vegetarian/vegan dieting is a bit like this. There are lots of people that try going vegan and then they only last so long at it, probably boring everyone to death with their 'meat is murder' views.

Meanwhile, in India and plenty of other places, are those that actually are vegetarian, having grown up that way and not indoctrinated at a young age into the meat eating cult. For these people the logic of suddenly starting to eat meat makes as much sense as taking up smoking, after an impressionable teenage this does not happen.

Disclosure: yes I am vegetarian and I own a leather belt!!!

<comment><USER32> > in India and plenty of other places, are those that actually are vegetarian, > having grown up that way and not indoctrinated at a young age into the meat > eating cult

On the other hand, they are indoctrinated at a young age to not eat meat (and to look down upon those that do).

<comment><USER33> Not necessarily. There's so much variety in india wrt nutritious and tasty vegetarian and vegan foods, indoctrinitaion is tougher. The only non Indian cuisines that have some veggie options are probably Ethiopian and Mediterranean. But I haven't seen many varieties of those in US.

Meat eating is expensive (comparatively) and hence it's an another great barrier for many people to try.

I'm so pro veggie food even after consuming dairy products, chicken,eggs and occasional beef and pork. That's primarily because I grew up in India and I believe veggie food in India is way better than any other non meat cuisine.

<comment><USER34> This. Eating indian food is the only time I don't miss meat. There's delicious (authentic) meat-less Mexican food too, but it is so freaking high on carbs that I just can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Two hopefully interesting factoids:

1) The words "vegetarian" and "zoophile" used to be synonymous (because literally "animal lover"); but 2) the modern group of that name (animal fanciers) are vegetarian or vegan with _exactly_ the same frequency as the general population, to within the margin of error of the survey.

I'm a vegetarian. You might be surprised how often this comes up when people try to convince me to eat meat. Completely fails to convince anyone, of course.

<comment><USER36> The animal lovers who _aren 't_ at least vegetarian bewilders me. There's a woman on my FB feed who rescues unwanted guinea pigs and rabbits and fights against horse slaughter. Loves meat. I totally can't get it, but I don't need to start fights in my social circle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> being plant based these days is way easier and simpler than it's ever been (at least in North America), there are so many plant-based alternative foods one can buy in stores which makes it extremely easy to do so.

The main, major issue being plant based full time is eating out with others: if you are plant based every single meal there will be comments and discussions about how you eat, why you eat something vs something else, how your interlocutor could be eating better but they don't have time/money/... to do so and on and on.

Some former plant-based people will tell you that one of the best side-effects of not being plant based anymore is that during means you can talk about "something else".

This is magnified if you have to regularly eat out for work / with clients, where you can easily be put in the situation that you have to decide if you want to be plant based full time or plant based in private only.

To me this is the main difficulty with transitioning to a full time plant based diet: unless your circle of friends is ok with that (even better if they are plant based themselves) and unless your work situation is compatible with that and unless your coworkers are ok with that, it is very likely that in the long run you will fail due to having to decide between eating how you want, and having an easy time in your social/work life.

In my opinion this is why health-based plant based folks stick with the diet less, because unless you truly have a deep belief in what you are doing, it is really easy to say "it's not worth it" and it's a lot more likely you can have a strong belief in the ethics of being plant based than in an abstract concept of healthy eating

</comment><comment><USER38> The title should be changed to reflect that this is in the US only.

<comment><USER39> This is very important. India probably has more vegetarians than the rest of the world combined. If you are culturally vegetarian, born and raised in a vegetarian household, had vegetarian meals your whole life, and surrounded by vegetarians, there is little chance that you would start eating meat anytime soon. However, in the US where almost everyone is non-vegetarian, it is understandable why people who convert to vegetarianism might convert back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think "US" needs to be added to title. The majority of vegetarians live in India and Indians have been living this way for over 2000 years.

</comment><comment><USER41> Being vegetarian really changed my "biology" and "mentality". After a few years I was super sensitive to meat. Could smell it, even just broth, in food. It would make me somewhat sick if I ate it. I think you loose enzymes needed to break it down. Meat stopped being food to me. Was not hungry for it, did not think mmmmm when I smelled it. A few more years and I was repulsed by site of raw meat. When I saw chicken on bone all I could think of was muscles and bones in my own arm and how I wouldn't eat that!

I started (and ended) being vegetarian for health reasons. Somewhere along the way I concluded it was morally wrong to eat meat esp mammals. No one convinced me, it just arose from mental and physical changes. I was / am kind of shocked I feel that way.

After 12-14 years being vegetarian I started eating meat again. I still believe it is morally wrong. I actually went to aqurium to tell fish that I was sorry that I was going to start eating them. Guess I was resolving guilt i felt. I struggle a lot with depression. After trying many things with no success, I decided I needed meat. Can't be sure correlation, but health is better now. I feel guilty eating animals, but I'm selfish enough/depression sucks enough for me to put my health before (some of) my morals.

That's me, YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER42> I recently started eating meat after over a decade of being a vegetarian. I simply got sick of the available selection of food and how extremely expensive and poor it is. If you cook very little, like me, it's very likely a vegetarian diet is less healthy simply because of the food that's available, often processed things filled with sugar. Either that, or you're spending serious money every day eating out with no guarantee that the food is nutritional either. Ironically, while leaving the US increases the quality and variety of many foods, the variety of vegetarian food available in many countries abroad is even worse. The market simply does not serve vegetarians well. Or perhaps, the market simply does not serve anyone who doesn't cook/cooks little well. I think it's probably a bit of both. These types of day to day logistical challenges of being a vegetarian are the most difficult to overcome, IMO. If restaurants with a variety of healthy, vegetarian, decently-priced food existed, I likely wouldn't have quit.

<comment><USER43> Did it just sort of happen or was it a conscious decision by you? It is no coincidence that eating rules are common in many religions, adhering to a special diet is practically a ritual, so I wonder if it was a big deal to you.

<comment><USER42> Oh, it was very conscious. I think the decision had been building up for some time, however, probably subconsciously. I first went back to eating fish for half a year (I was a pescatarian for five years before being a vegetarian) and when that seemed ok, I decided to eat any meat. This latter decision was even more deliberate as I had just moved out and no longer lived with someone who cooked delicious vegetarian stuff every day. I try to limit sugar these days, at least keeping it to one dessert a day. That was, I think, the main motivating factor. I'm in no way low-carb, but cutting out as much sugar, especially from non-dessert foods, has definitely been a huge win.

Morally, my views have not changed at all. In my moral framework, my own needs always must come first. So nothing has changed morally and therefore, it hasn't been an actual problem. I'm not saying it was totally easy and that I didn't think a lot about it both before and after, but it has been quite beneficial to both my mind set and waistline so accepting it has been easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The vast majority of people trying to form any new habit will revert to their old behavior. This is human nature and has nothing to do with diet.

</comment><comment><USER45> Side note I think if you are going to eat meat its of value to actually kill an animal yourself for food a few times (legally). Specially something large like a deer etc. I found it sad and sobering but in a personal growth sort of way. I find its helpful to grasp the reality of animals dying so you can live. Even something like raising chickens then having to kill one can make you think.

I enjoy meat and eat it but do so less now. Actually harvesting my own meat sometimes keeps the sobering practice in mind and also keeps me very cognizant of their lives etc. I dont take the practice for granted at all and I find it helps my perspective.

Also I find I want to use every part of the animal when I do that. Keep skin if applicable for leather etc, learn to cook the organs that you may not buy from store. Even cook marrow and carve bones etc. I find it sort of the respectful thing to do if I am going to kill something so I can eat.

<comment><USER19> There's nothing so delicious as fresh backstrap, tenderloin and heart out of a buck that's been fattening itself up all summer on your vegetable garden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I consider myself to be a "closet vegan" because I only buy plant-based groceries to prepare and cook at home.

It's when I go out that I eat meat/dairy to fit into my social circles. It sounds sad, but it's my reality: I've moved to a new city and I need friends.

I've had moments in the past when I've attempted to dive into full vegan and failed, mostly because I (a) had no idea how to cook food in the first place, and (b) didn't know the first thing about nutrition.

I feel like what I'm doing now is a good first step. Whether I become a full- time vegan or not is left to be seen.

</comment><comment><USER47> Does this include people who grew up vegetarian? I suspect people who are vegetarian for cultural reasons (e.g. myself) would have a much lower chance of "returning" to Meat (don't know if I would even call it returning) than those who initially ate meat, became vegetarians, and then went back to eating meat. Also surprised that only 2% of Americans are vegetarian, but probably because I've lived in California most of my life.. I also wonder what percent of Americans eat meat 1 or more days / week, 2 days / week, etc..

</comment><comment><USER48> This really ought to be at least compared to the rate people stick to other diets. Diets are super difficult to stick to, they are a lifestyle change that is more difficult to make than most people who start them are actually prepared for. I say this after having not stuck to "several" diets.

After reading the article, the title feels really click-baity. The actual national trend discussed in the article is in the direction of more meat- eaters trying out a vegetarian diet. To summarize this as veg diets failing is to mischaracterize the trend.

</comment><comment><USER49> While I'm not technically a vegetarian (chicken stock on a fairly regular basis). I'm 35 and haven't eaten any meat/fish since I was about 12, saying a few months to a year doesn't sound like being a vegetarian. It seems more like trying out a vegetarian diet then anything else.

Personally I just find the thought of eating meat disgusting, Though I could care less if anyone else around me eats it.

</comment><comment><USER50> Vegetarian here, no plan to return to meat... ever.

Got to love the anti veg propoganda though by the food industry heavily lobbying (and worried) about their profits.

</comment><comment><USER51> Some of the comments about reducing meat consumption reminded me of a short TED talk about being a Weekday Vegetarian, which is pretty self explanatory.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian](https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian)

</comment><comment><USER34> My wife recently became a vegetarian (as recent as a couple months, after years of wanting to) and it is super hard. I want to support her but it is oh so hard. My guess is that it is easier in some other countries but in Mexico it is super hard, specially considering we are on a low-carb diet (I'm a type 2 diabetic).

I'm eating dramatically less meat because of this, but it made me realise that I could not ever be a vegetarian or --gasp-- a vegan. I'm not dumb, I understand the ethical implications but I had to accept that I'm a selfish bastard in this regard. I have no vices, I can't already eat sweets or cakes, I don't want to give up meat too.

It's pure selfishness.

<comment><USER52> It's actually Mexico. I've been vegetarian for 16 years and have been all over the place and it's really been the hardest in Mexico.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> What's with all the -isms?

I don't eat meat. It's an ethical thing. And I really, really do not need to box myself into some defined ideology.

</comment><comment><USER54> Even by reducing meat consumption you need to know that a poor animal had to die just because of your taste.

</comment><comment><USER55> when choosing when and where to eat meat, please consider the the living conditions of the animal. Free range chickens (and their eggs) and pasture- raised grass-fed beef are ways to vote with your dollar for cleaner water and healthier animals.

</comment><comment><USER56> Post from 2014 linking to research that is no longer available.

<comment><USER57> [https://faunalytics.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/Faunalyti...](https://faunalytics.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/Faunalytics_Current-Former-Vegetarians_Full- Report.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> former meat eater, turned vegan about 3 years ago, what other vegans fail to you is... it's a trap, why you ask?

1\. the constant hunger 2\. need for b12 supplements 3\. oh, you enjoy traveling the world, good luck finding vegan food in villages of Philippines, or Bratislava. Personally, suffered in these cities among others 4\. better start liking those salads and bland pastas and pizzas without cheese, either that or fries in some restaurants here in Sweden

It is not a easy life, so I understand why some give up, quite surprised that I haven't (yet!).

P.S : Bratislava does have one awesome vegan kiosk

</comment><comment><USER59> Vegetarians and vegans, unlike catholics, don't have a comunity of people who will call them up and ask them why they haven't been attending service. Being vegetarian and vegan is also much more involved than christianity. You can be a serial killer and still be a christian, but you cannot be a vegan if you eat meat once. We also lack a confessional culture in which sins can be forgiven and stray sheep can come back to the fold. That's something we really need. Too many people slip up once and feal that they are carnivores again.

<comment><USER60> > Too many people slip up once and feal that they are carnivores again.

Well, aren't they?

If you have a moral conviction for abstaining from meat, shouldn't that be enough to keep you coming back to your straight and narrow?

Humans have eaten meat for so long that it's engrained into our biochemistry. I imagine that trying to adjust to a diet that isn't based in our evolutionary framework requires some form of personal conviction and a social structure that reinforces it.

<comment><USER61> > Humans have eaten meat for so long that it's engrained into our > biochemistry. I imagine that trying to adjust to a diet that isn't based in > our evolutionary framework requires some form of personal conviction and a > social structure that reinforces it.

I don't believe that we have any instincts for eating meat like you suggest. It's not like a human is even capable of ripping fur and skin apart with our mouth, crushing bones with our teeth and tearing fresh meat off an animal and eating it. Well, not without getting sore in the jaw, broken teeth and probably a lot of sicknesses leading to death from the uncooked (or handled in any way) meat. If you put a baby in front of a animal, the baby won't think of it as food. We are not carnivores. We have simply learned to also eat meat. There's nothing about us requiring us to eat meat as long as we can get food from another sources.

I've been vegan for 3 years. The only hard thing about it is other peoples comments and not as many vegan friendly restaurant, although already in 2017, two new places have opened in my town, and it looks like it's a trend that will continue.

<comment><USER62> There is massive anthropological and biological evidence to suggest that animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human diet.

On a personal note, I was a vegetarian and later a vegan for a decade and I am familiar with the sort of "I feel it must have been this way" appeals to emotion (like referencing a baby and a presumably cute little animal) of the sort you're making. Arguments like yours are simply not supported by science.

<comment><USER61> > There is massive anthropological and biological evidence to suggest that > animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human > diet.

I feel like you should post some links to all that evidence. As far as I'm aware, we've been eating plants a lot longer than we've eaten animals, and the human body also suggests that being that we look (appearance and anatomically) much more like frugivores than carnivores.

> On a personal note, I was a vegetarian and later a vegan for a decade and I > am familiar with the sort of "I feel it must have been this way" appeals to > emotion (like referencing a baby and a presumably cute little animal) of the > sort you're making. Arguments like yours are simply not supported by > science.

It's a logical as well as scientifically agreed upon conclusion as far as I'm aware. Humans don't have an instinct for eating animals like carnivores do. A lion cub has the instinct, a human baby doesn't, it has to learn it. If you have relevant science, please link it.

<comment><USER60> > I feel like you should post some links to all that evidence.

This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: [http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism- evolution/](http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/)

> As far as I'm aware, we've been eating plants a lot longer than we've eaten > animals

Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing those calories and nutrients even easier.

> Humans don't have an instinct for eating animals like carnivores do.

If you're under no selection pressure, that becomes the case--especially when you have Oreos (which are vegan, of course) conveniently available at a super market.

But when you're a hunter gatherer, or simply starving, you fathom ways to get energy. Hunting has the highest ROI, and you can find endless examples of this in the form of modern day tribes.

Hunting is ritual. It's not instinct, but it's part of what humans are.

You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong.

<comment><USER61> > This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search > returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: > [http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism- > evolution/](http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/)

I don't believe that article contradicts anything I said.

> Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the > evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and > even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing > those calories and nutrients even easier.

Indeed, more carbs were able to go to the brain instead of other parts of our body, which enabled the brain to develop.

> You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to > damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong.

I didn't say it was unnatural. I said we have no instincts to do it. It made sense when we needed to, so we learned to, and taught our children the ways and so on to be better at survival. Today, we neither need to and it's also the single biggest contributor to climate change, animal suffering and the heart disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and (partly) cancer epidemic thats the number one human killer globally.

For all the talk about how meat helped us develop our brain and become intelligent, it seems exceedingly unintelligent that we have not yet stopped when it's so damning to our existence.

<comment><USER60> > I don't believe that article contradicts anything I said.

You were asking for evidence of this:

> animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human > diet

That article directly supports the importance of meat as a foundation to the modern humans diet: "It was about 2.6 million years ago that meat first became a significant part of the pre-human diet."

> Indeed, more carbs were able to go to the brain instead of other parts of > our body, which enabled the brain to develop.

No, not just carbs. Energy and nutrition are the prerequisites to the human brain--and saturated fats play a HUGE role in the health of mitochondria. Without an energy and nutritionally rich diet that is both diverse in micro and macro nutrients, the human brain wouldn't have developed.

Not to mention how carbs were rare, and how the human brain can run on both glucose and ketones for a reason.

> Today, we neither need to and it's also the single biggest contributor to > [...] heart disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and (partly) cancer > epidemic thats the number one human killer globally.

This is just flat out wrong and based on outdated science. It's well known that stress, inflammation and insulin resistance due to our modern primarily processed diet are the culprits here. Blaming meat is ill informed and just not factual.

> it seems exceedingly unintelligent that we have not yet stopped when it's so > damning to our existence.

If we're talking factory farming, yes, I agree with you. But to blame meat for the methods of supporting a ballooning population is not the solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I used to be vegan, for three plus years. I can't recommend the diet.

It was extremely unhealthy for me, personally. Over a period of time I developed allergies to both soy protein and gluten that I never had in my early twenties, allergies that never went away after I returned to eating meat. YMMV

From an ethical perspective too, I no longer believe the hype that diets should be "more efficient." I believe humans are too efficient already, and what more efficiency provides us, practically speaking, is simply more humans and more over-population, with worse living conditions long-term for most of those new people.

India is often touted as a very vegetarian country, but I can't believe that sort of population density is a good thing. I'd prefer everyone eat a rather "inefficient" diet with lots of open space for animals to graze.

<comment><USER61> Did you try simply stopping with the soy protein and gluten consumption?

In any case, I hardly see how going back to an animal-including diet changes anything on that front. Soy is not vegan-only, and neither is gluten. You can easily live on a vegan diet without those things, and you can easily live on a non-vegan diet including those things. Seems more like a weak excuse if you ask me.

<comment><USER63> To be clear, you think it's "easy" to live on a diet without any animal products, and also without soy or gluten, and that I'm "weak" for not doing so, despite other health issues I had on the diet?

This is another aspect of veganism that really turns me off, the pervasive self-righteousness within the community at large.

Please tell me what restaurants I could visit with those dietary restrictions? And what quick lunches / fast food I can buy on that diet, on say a 30 minute lunch break, for instance...?

<comment><USER64> > To be clear, you think it's "easy" to live on a diet without any animal > products, and also without soy or gluten, and that I'm "weak" for not doing > so, despite other health issues I had on the diet? This is another aspect of > veganism that completely turns me off, the pervasive self-righteousness > within the community at large. Please tell me what restaurants I could visit > with those dietary restrictions? And what quick lunches / fast food I can > buy on that diet, on say a 30 minute lunch break, for instance...?

People don't really realize what they eat, especially when it comes to gluten and soy. I developed a wheat allergy after college (which my doctor said was caused by stress and working in a pizzaria full of wheat) which caused me to have to switch to a gluten free diet. That means your prepared meal options are massively reduced, more of your time is spend cooking (which imo is a good thing, I'm conscious about what I eat now), and if you do eat out, take on a "gluten-free tax".

People who go on these holier-than-though fad diets don't understand what people who actually have dietary needs go through. There is no wiggle room for us. If we don't follow our diets there are real and serious medical consequences. We don't just "feel down on ourselves" for not following the diet and the strictness with which we must follow our diets cause real inconveniences.

<comment><USER65> The parent seems to be suggesting that a vegan diet didn't work for them for health reasons. But countered objections to this by saying that it's difficult. (Which it is. Stupidly difficult to eat meat, gluten and soy free in my experience) But convenience is a different argument from health. Which is it? If the issue is convenience, I concede. If it's health there may be room to explore other options.

Though I admit there is nothing inherently healthy about eating vegan (oreos are vegan and I've gained weight while still being vegan while learning how to bake) I'd argue that choosing a diet on the availability of fast food choices is an indicator of an unhealthy decision.

<comment><USER64> > The parent seems to be suggesting that a vegan diet didn't work for them for > health reasons. But countered objections to this by saying that it's > difficult. (Which it is. Stupidly difficult to eat meat, gluten and soy free > in my experience) But convenience is a different argument from health. Which > is it? If the issue is convenience, I concede. If it's health there may be > room to explore other options.

Why can't it be both? A diet can be both medically necessary and inconveniencing. See my own example or a diabetic diet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> To sum it up: people are weak. Who knew?

> In other words, from the advocacy group's perspective, health can be an > effective "foot in the door" approach to increasing the number of > vegetarians and vegans, but often not enough to keep people animal-free for > the long-term.

Not even their own health is a big enough factor for them to control their lust.

> "The latest findings once again show that a message focused on reduction > instead of elimination of animal products may be more effective to create an > overall decline in animal product consumption," the report says. "Advocates > would be well advised to soften their appeals to avoid suggesting the choice > is all or nothing."

I wonder if those vegetarians/vegans that returned to eating animal products returned 100%, or in a reduced manner. That's the really interesting bit unfortunately missing from the article. If people reduce their animal products usage with, say, 50% vs someone going vegan for a few months and then returns to animal products with a 50% reduction, they will ultimately have had a bigger impact than people "only" doing the reduction. Personally, all the vegetarians/vegans I know that have gone back have done it because it was too hard in social settings, but the experience have resulted in them reducing their use of animal products to "rarely" or "at social occasions" or "when it's not hard to skip on it", and that's a pretty big reduction.

<comment><USER66> As someone who grew up vegetarian, I take a bit of offense at you calling it "lust" and that those who return are "weak". That's a very black and white view of an issue with a whole lot of grey.

I'm one of those people you mention who went back because it was hard in social settings. For context, I stopped being vegetarian because I wanted to be more free to eat with my friends and family. It was incredibly hard growing up, as I could rarely have dinner at a friends house or eat meals in Boy Scouts. People didn't want to eat food that I cooked because there wasn't meat in it, so no one ate at my house. Even going out to restaurants was hard. Telling people I didn't want to go to their favorite burger joint on a road trip is challenging when you do it all the time. I had to either bow out of social situations and do my own thing, bring my own food, or not eat.

Going through that for my entire childhood definitely changed me. You have to fight against the ingrained American mentality that meat always belongs at the table. You have to make people leave their comfort zones or do extra work in order to accommodate your needs. You have to be comfortable being "that person" who isn't normal. It wears on you over time, and at some point it just wasn't worth it any more.

Now, I eat meat occasionally when I go out and I cook it for special occasions at home. Otherwise my meals are vegetarian most of the time. I enjoy meat in a limited capacity, and I personally want to keep it that way. I wish those who advocated for vegetarianism and veganism had some more capacity to see consumption reduction as aligned their cause. Black and white views exist on both sides here, and I think the solution is somewhere in the middle. Eat meat when its special. In my opinion it tastes better and you appreciate it more!

<comment><USER61> I don't see how any of that is relevant. If your health is not enough to get you off something, you are as weak they come.

<comment><USER66> Just because something is healthy, doesn't mean its required. The human diet isn't ruled by absolutes.

I see from your comment history that you are a vegan yourself, and your behavior is exactly what turns people away from it. What's right for you isn't right for everyone. Take your arrogance elsewhere, and learn some compassion.

<comment><USER61> It's still doesn't change the fact that if you can't even control your lust for the sake of your health, you are as weak as they come.

And to that extend, it's universally agreed upon by science and all mayor and respected health organizations that a vegan diet is at least as healthy (and quite possibly healthier) as any non-vegan diet, and that animal agriculture is the single biggest contributor to climate change, and it's obviously better for the animals, so objectively, it's the superior choice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Smartphone usage is a threat to essential components of our humanity - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2020/05/13/computer-smartphones-screens-communication-relationships-talking-in-person/ <comment><USER2> A lot of these same objections apply to books and reading.

But a headline "Books and reading are a threat to essential components of our humanity" would not be regarded as serious.

<comment><USER3> [https://books.google.com/books?id=KotNfPWeoO0C&pg=PA1115&lpg...](https://books.google.com/books?id=KotNfPWeoO0C&pg=PA1115&lpg=PA1115&dq=the+bane+of+cheap+reading&source=bl&ots=okRVoi9mya&sig=ACfU3U3AnVijZevXdDbpZNjowjcaHLfgGw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiYz833hrLpAhUiZjUKHY6qDRIQ6AEwBXoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20bane%20of%20cheap%20reading&f=false)

It's a sentiment pretty much as old as time.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Truly NoFrills Quadratic Equation Solver - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/quadratic-solver <comment><AUTHOR> I recently published my first JavaScript package on NPM (available as a library on unpkg.com/quadratic-solver) which on one hand is pretty basic in terms of functionality it offers, and on the brighter side, uses modern practices and uses Babel and WebPack to package it for compatibility. It surprisingly reached around 450 downloads (at least according to NPM) within two days of initial release). Coincidentally, this is my first HackerNews post. Show your love and generosity by using it in your projects, sending a PR on GitHub or even star the repository. It would motivate me to learn more and contribute to the community as a whole.</comment>


Files by Name (Minix 3 Filesystem) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stephenmarz.com/2020/06/08/files-by-name/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just so you know, this is part of a larger tutorial at [https://osblog.stephenmarz.com](https://osblog.stephenmarz.com) where I write a RISC-V operating system using Rust.

Let me know if you have any questions!

<comment><USER2> Curious what kind of hardware are you using? I'm interested in trying out RISC-V for myself, but aside from Qemu I'm not sure where I'd start.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use the Kendryte K215 which is a dual-core, RV64GC inside of the Sipeed Maixduino (Arduino form factor):

[https://www.seeedstudio.com/sipeed](https://www.seeedstudio.com/sipeed)

<comment><USER3> Have you found the TRM yet? I really like the idea of this chip but the released documentation for it is woefully incomplete.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately no. I've been reverse engineering it from their BSP. It's slower than I'd like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like Minix is underappreciated. I'm reading Tannenbaum's Modern Operating Systems at the moment and he makes a persuasive appeal for some of its unique takes of the *nix OS family.

<comment><AUTHOR> Minix 3 has taken on a life of its own and is maintained here: [https://minix3.org/](https://minix3.org/)

I had trouble finding really good documentation on the filesystem itself, so it took a bit of trial-and-error to figure out the structure.

<comment><USER5> From the website, it looks like development stopped in 2016.

I read some of the papers on Minix3, and the Loris storage stack. From the bits I understood, it looks pretty interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wait so this is an alternative Minix 3 FS written in Rust?

<comment><AUTHOR> Alternative? No. It's a component of the full RISC-V operating system.

<comment><USER6> ah ok</comment></comment></comment>


This computer costs just $13 [video] - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/11/10/single-board-computer/

<comment><USER2> They are intended for really different purposes:

Raspberry Pi: 512M RAM, ~700 MHz @700mA. Usage: replacement for desktop computers or media centers. Stellaris: 32k RAM, 80 MHz @30mA. Usage: Embedded systems, sensor networks. Good luck trying to mount a Debian-like OS in the stellaris.

Anyways, another "great" technical article from Mashable.

Disclaimer: I use Stellaris, msp430 and other TI tools daily.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not a general-purpose computer, this is a microcontroller. This Stellaris LaunchPad is comparable to many other small devices such as the Arduino family. These boards are used for embedded development and are not able to run a full-blown desktop operating system such as Linux, but instead run smaller programs with the purpose to control LEDs or motors.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is called "Stellaris Launchpad":

[http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/stellaris_head.html?DCMP=s...](http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/stellaris_head.html?DCMP=stellaris- launchpad&HQS=stellaris-launchpad-b)

</comment><comment><USER5> Wired's Geek Dad has a better write up of same board ([http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/11/a-13-arm-single- board-c...](http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/11/a-13-arm-single-board- computer/))

</comment><comment><USER6> I found the phrase "just like DOS" kind of funny - presumably the writer has a Mac, and has never touched Terminal.

<comment><USER7> Yea that phrase also caught me off guard and had me wondering what year this was.

<comment><USER8> Why? DOS is probably the CLI by far most people know. Naming anything else would be pretty stupid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems very similar, and at a similar price, to a family of ST boards, which have been out for a while: <http://www.st.com/jp/evalboard/product/252419.jsp>

</comment><comment><USER10> I did one of the TI seminars and got one of their eval boards for free. Their 'StellarisWare' which was basically a bunch of code which did the basic stuff you needed (like init all the registers and what not, provide a simple printf() etc) was really handy. And GCC support was pretty complete, unpacked the archive and blam, was using gmake to build demos on my Linux box. I still fired up the Windows VM to run the downloader as it worked better than the tools on Linux but still, very nice kit. I have encouraged them to add a bit more RAM to their line.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pretty cool, but has no graphics out, which excludes a lot of what people are using the raspberry pi for.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it's bit a stretch to call Cortex-M series MCU a "computer". Can you even program it on itself?

</comment><comment><USER13> I got mine for free.</comment>


Nth commit must have commit hash with N leading zeros - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seungwonpark/kudeki-chain/ <comment><AUTHOR> The most recent commit [1] which id has 13 leading zeroes is believed to be the lowest SHA-1 hash in Github in my cursory analysis.

[1] [https://github.com/seungwonpark/kudeki- chain/commit/00000000...](https://github.com/seungwonpark/kudeki- chain/commit/00000000000004a9b86e267361898666ede4eaaa)

<comment><USER2> Do you work for github or is there some other way to view commit hashes across the whole of github?

Also what happens if two unrelated git hashes collide on github?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have verified the fact via ghtorrent [1] when the previous commit (with 12 zeroes) was introduced (Korean tweet with a simple script [2]). However I haven't verified the current commit yet, hence the "cursory" analysis.

On the git commit id collision, I don't know about the actual mitigation deployed in Github but they are certainly aware of the possibility [3].

[1] [http://ghtorrent.org/](http://ghtorrent.org/) (Note that what I really used is a stripped down version with only commit ids, so this also contributes to a word "cursory" in my cursory analysis.)

[2] [https://twitter.com/senokay/status/1131826418340356096](https://twitter.com/senokay/status/1131826418340356096)

[3] [https://github.blog/2017-03-20-sha-1-collision-detection- on-...](https://github.blog/2017-03-20-sha-1-collision-detection-on-github- com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Funny.

This is similar in concept to how Bitcoin defines its hardness, though it uses a different hash and block structure of course. I wonder if successful commits in this repo are coming from that world or maybe from SHA1 cryptographic weaknesses.

<comment><USER4> I have been bringing up this point in conversations about blockchain for a while now. Git is essentially a chain of commits, and the hash of a commit will change based on what you're applying it on by including the previous commit's hash in the body that gets eventually hashed into HEAD.

Also reminds me of that time back when we were using 8-char truncated git hashes as deployment tags and we eventually begun getting collisions. We also had an interesting bug when all 8 chars were numeric and Python (or the framework/library that was used) ingested what would be a string it as a number.

<comment><USER5> Python is mostly strongly typed. You can get a mix of floats and ints from e.g. parsing JSON, but your library's authors must have been pretty explicit on wanting to confuse strings with numbers.

<comment><USER4> I know, I was surprised too. But I guess if it comes in as a number from the get-go, it will simply continue as a number until we tried to slice it or something, which made the deployer abort. :)

<comment><USER5> I mean, of course the library in question could contain something like this:

        try:
            hash = int(raw_hash)
        except ValueError:
            hash = raw_hash

But WHY? Can you think of something one could do accidentally to achieve the same effect?

<comment><USER4> Maybe a migration from SVN and some legacy code somewhere. Since revisions will have r12345678 kind of format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I ran a computer and network security course back from 2010-2013 and the simplified version of this was part of our wargames. The difficulty scaled with recency of the last commit.

Admittedly we had to minimize the number of points awarded for this as it'd be a "money for marks" conversion otherwise but it was fun enough to prove a concept.

Nth commit needing N leading zeros ups the ante a fairly hilarious amount ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is PoW Gitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could somebody explain in plain words what happens here?

<comment><USER9> (From my very limited understanding) making commits requires you to find a specific hash, thus making new commits exponentially harder over time.

At some point it would cost significant money (besides the developers time) to make commits. It's basically an economic game like bitcoin, that those people who have economic interest in the code, get to decide what's in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> HNers with long memories may remember the very similar XKCD "Alma mater" challenge from 2013[1][2] (which is no longer active). There is a sort of continuance of that online at [https://beatthehash.com/](https://beatthehash.com/) .

The goal of that challenge was similar: find some input string by brute force, such that the Skein-1024( input ) XOR a provided "target" has more zero bits than anyone else. (At the time, Skein was a SHA-3 finalist.)

Git commits must be marginally structured, whereas the Skein challenge input was arbritrary, but that doesn't change the problem much.

[1]: [https://xkcd.com/1193/](https://xkcd.com/1193/)

[2]: E.g., [https://web.archive.org/web/20130403124655/https://xkcd.com/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130403124655/https://xkcd.com/1193/)

</comment><comment><USER11> The "global-warming" tag of the repo is appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER12> This software _so_ should be a rewrite of the Apollo 11 guidance computer software...

To The Moon!!!</comment>


Ask HN: Can we have a YC Application sandbox? - <AUTHOR>

I think it'd be beneficial for the fund and founders in general if you could fill out the latest version of the YC app anytime. It seems you already have draft functionality, why not keep this open and allow users to create draft applications throughout the year?
I personally use the application as a way to test out my understanding and boiling down communication of ideas. I understand and have copied all the questions to a doc and use that regularly, but theres something about filling out the application on YC that makes it different.
If you allowed founders to use this application as a sandbox for all their ideas, this data would be insanely valuable. Seeing multiple draft applications from someone would give  indicators about thought process and more importantly progression. Not to mention a wider understanding of markets that entrepreneurs are thinking about.
Product of not being able to fill out the application for a side project, headed back to github. <comment><USER2> I like this idea. We're currently in the middle of migrating to a new application system for the next round of applications, but it seems like a reasonable feature to add afterward.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since questions on the YC application rarely change, I normally just keep a Google Doc with all the questions on it. For any idea I'm working on, I copy the doc and answer the questions. As the OP touched upon, this helps me understand and boil down my thoughts into concise statements. The document usually changes a lot, but I haven't ever really considered version controlling it until now. Maybe I'll Markdown + Git it instead.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mad support for this sandbox suggestion. It would be amazing!</comment>


Faster Copilot with faster Internet traffic - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/02/05.html <comment><USER2> I would have like to see some technical notes in there. It almost comes across like a glorified sales pitch for two products!

First Joel says that they don't deliver static files and that edge caching won't help. And then they swap out some IPs, cuddle up to Akamai and bam -- suddenly the Internet delivers.

<comment><USER3> My impression is that Joel has no idea how this Akamai IPA thing works; he is treating it as magic. I would never buy a service that is advertised as magic, though.

There is a little technical stuff here: <http://www.akamai.com/dl/feature_sheets/FS_IPA.pdf> It looks like a fancy TCP reverse proxy. I wonder if it's based on the MIT RON project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hiya. I'm one of the Copilot developers, so I thought I'd answer some questions.

The Akamai IPA thing is not "magic," and none of us think it is, but dumping a rambling technical diatribe onto Joel's blog would alienate a lot of its readership. We're talking on Hacker News now, though, so read on if you're curious what's going on and how Akamai's helping us.

There are two ways that an Internet connection can be slow: you can have insufficient bandwidth, and you can have bad lag. With Copilot, we're already doing just about all we can to minimize bandwidth with our raster-based format. We've got pretty fast compression algorithms, we dynamically pick compression levels on-the-fly, and because we're using existing VNC code under-the-hood, we do a good job sending across just the differences in your screen. Switching the protocol to be command-based (like X, or RDC) is the only real way left to improve bandwidth--and with our current developer resources, that's simply not feasible. The good news is that this discussion mostly ends up being a non-issue: relatively few customers actually have bandwidth saturation issues, and internet connection speeds are steadily increasing, so bandwidth's not generally a big concern.

That leaves lag. Most of the time, when customers complain Copilot is "slow," they're complaining about lag. Copilot gets lag in two places: on the network connection itself, and on the glorified echo-server (which we call the Reflector) that we use when none of our firewall bypass tricks work. We try really hard to ensure you connect directly, but sometimes you simply can't, so it's very important that the Reflector be very efficient.

About a year ago, I did some analysis to see how we could speed things up, and found that our Reflector introduced nearly a quarter second of lag in some circumstances--not terribly surprising, since it was literally the very first thing I wrote at Fog Creek, back when I was an intern. The design used one dedicated thread per connection with blocking I/O. On Windows, that type of design is very slow. I took a few weeks out and rewrote the Reflector to use overlapping I/O with thread pools. The resulting Relector now introduced virtually no lag, and as an ancillary benefit, used a fraction of the CPU and proved far easier to maintain. For the time being, our customers were really happy.

Unfortunately, over the last year, customers have complained that our performance is still sub-optimal. The problem's been compounded because firewalls are getting smarter, which is making our firewall bypass tricks fail more and more often. Even if the Reflector truly introduced no lag whatsoever, you're still gaining a lot of lag when you have a reflected connection, simply because your data has to make a full round-trip from you to the reflector to the other party.

That's where Akamai comes in. The main thing that Akamai's doing for us is dramatically reducing lag between our data center and our customers. That means your keystrokes get to the other side faster, the machine starts responding faster, and you get the graphical updates faster. Even though bandwidth hasn't increased, your Copilot experience suddenly becomes _far_ more pleasant, because the machine feels much more responsive.

We're still monitoring our clients to see how much of a difference Akamai's making, but in general, what we're seeing is great. The bitrates for Akamai- enabled connections has gone way up, since the higher response rate allows our users to get more done in less time, and we've been able to pull of some stunts--like watching YouTube videos via Copilot--that were previously impossible over reflected connections.

Akamai's not a panacea, and what they're doing isn't magic, nor is it useful in all circumstances, but for a real-time application such as Copilot, it can yield a pretty dramatic improvement in exchange for very little developer time.

[EDIT: Fixed some snafus I caught when re-reading.]

<comment><USER5> _The design used one dedicated thread per connection with blocking I/O. On Windows, that type of design is very slow. I took a few weeks out and rewrote the Reflector to use overlapping I/O with thread pools._

How'd you become enlightened as to the terribleness of your original design?

From what I can tell "overlapping I/O" appears to be windows-ese for good old poll(2) -- non-blocking asynchronous I/O with level-triggered notification. Does Windows not have a way to do edge-triggered notifications like Linux's epoll(7)?

Also, is there some incentive on Windows for using a thread pool instead of a handful of independent processes per box? Realistically you'll have the server running on multiple machines just for sanity's sake, and you'll have a way to distribute clients across them with failover, so why have two levels of indirection when one will do?

<comment><USER6> FWIW, it's not obvious that the one-thread one-connection blocking I/O design is terrible. How terrible it is is a function of address-space starvation from too many threads (a non-issue in 64-bit code), and the overhead of the OS thread scheduler. In a green threading model, I/O can be implemented behind the scenes as non-blocking I/O, but still give user code the ease of use of blocking I/O.

Back to Windows: overlapped I/O is not equivalent to poll, it's much better than that. It is edge-triggered, but Windows manages the threads itself, and tries to ensure 100% CPU utilization in user code, rather than in thread switching logic.

Windows overlapped I/O is effectively a way to write efficient I/O intensive applications in continuation-passing style. You don't need to manage the threads or dispatch loop yourself.

As to why use threads rather than processes, the issue is largely the awkwardness of duplicating the connection handle for a child thread. In Posix land, there's the fork function that makes handing off the handle fairly easy. WSADuplicateHandle can create a new handle that can be used by a child process, but you need to know the child process's ID first, so you need to perform IPC to just to send off the handle.

On the other hand, shared memory concurrency has its advantages too.

<comment><USER5> _FWIW, it's not obvious that the one-thread one-connection blocking I/O design is terrible._

Any time you're using a 'thread' idiom, even if they are green, something has to be maintaining their individual execution state (stack frames, thread-local address space, etc.). I like to think of it as being analagous to unoptimized tail-recursion, with a purely event-driven callback model being like tail-call optimization.

Thanks for explaining Windows' overlapped I/O, it's way better than I thought it was from reading the documentation. I didn't realize that it does all the thread-pooling stuff all by itself -- I guess it makes the most sense not to fight it, and just accept the free utilization (even if it does give a slight latency hit).

<comment><USER6> No - not tail call - event driven callback model I/O _is_ continuation-passing style (CPS). The two models are equivalent. Code written in the thread idiom can, in principle, be mechanically transformed into CPS and thereby use the event-driven callback model.

In the event callback style, the state that would otherwise be on the stack is held in the callback closure.

In the .NET space, F# does this transformation automatically with what it calls asynchronous workflows ([http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2007/10/11/introducing-f...](http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2007/10/11/introducing- f-asynchronous-workflows.aspx)). It uses the 'let!' assignment as a dividing point between the call to the asynchronous method and converting the remainder of the method body into a continuation that gets passed to the asynchronous call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Like Joel, I only knew about Akamai's CDN services. Are there any other companies (CDN or otherwise) that provide a similar service?

<comment><USER2> What media are you trying to deliver? Traditional CDN are very expensive -- like cell phone minutes, you pay up-front for X number of GB. If you buy 1000GB and burn 20GB, you still pay your $10k/month bill.

Amazon is making a big play in this space, and doing a 'pay for what you eat'. Hopefully this will encourage CDNs to take a look at their pricing schedules.

<comment><USER7> Not CDN service or delivering media. More like this proxy-type service he describes where you cut out a lot of middle-tier routing and pay for better backbone transit.

For personal use, this would be a great way to proxy your own traffic when using the Internet overseas, where accessing US-based sites can be very slow. Or even for setting up a faster coast-to-coast VPN within the US.

<comment><USER3> It's been tried: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamerail>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Akamai is violating net neutrality!

<comment><USER9> Nope. They don't own the lines.

<comment><USER8> Akamai either owns the lines on the "superfast superclean superhighway" (Joel's words) between the Akamai nodes, or they have purchased preferential traffic treatment from someone who owns those lines.

<comment><USER10> "superfast superclean superhighway" means "we have a private network." There's nothing special going on. Call up your telco and say you want a 10 gigabit connection from new york to LA and they'll be happy to oblige.

Just because two computers in the world are talking doesn't mean they use the big-i Internet.

<comment><USER8> Such a purchased private network is what I meant by "owns the lines" (even if in practice such connections are rented from telcos).

Which leads me back to my main point: why should 'neutrality' regulations care whether a telco offers a 10 gbps dedicated line, or preferential routing for 10 gbps worth of traffic on their shared lines?

And if the motivation for buying either of those is the exact same value -- snappier service for your end users -- that Akamai sells, why is Akamai's service celebrated, but alternate services based on traffic shaping considered a 'neutrality' violation?

<comment><USER11> Because when your local ISP does it, they are abusing their monopoly.

If it was actually an open market with real competition, then I wouldn't care about net neutrality, because there would be plenty of options for non-broken internet access. However, if I can only get access through one or two providers, then those providers have an incentive to extort money out of websites by threatening to degrade access to their sites.

I think the real fix to the net neutrality problem is to open up local access so that the phone/cable company only provides the wire, and an unlimited number of ISPs compete to provide the net access. The phone/cable company probably shouldn't be allowed to provide the internet access, since they will inevitably abuse their monopoly (and necessary monopolies should be kept as limited as possible).

<comment><USER8> Agreed 100% that local competition is the best fix, either by enforced sharing of the scarce last-hop wires, or introduction of new paths (new wires or wireless technology).

Enforced 'neutrality' could push real competition further away, by limiting the kinds of offerings and profits that attract new entrants.

Also, for a sense of proportion: even though local access in the US is usually a cable/dsl duopoly, and total speeds lag some other national markets, prices continue to fall and speeds continue to increase. No last-mile ISP has 'extorted' websites with threats of degraded access.

So there's no urgent need for legislators and regulators to start dictating how service is delivered, as if there will never be competition. If they want to help, they should adopt policies that spur new entrants, not tie the hands of current providers.

<comment><USER12> Historically we've had real neutrality without any regulation. In the last few years the local monopolies have made a number of moves to turn that neutrality off, and in some cases there have been serious abuses; and they've also started trying to persuade politicians that neutrality is a bad idea. Regulation that maintains the status quo of network neutrality is going to be a lot easier to achieve than regulation repeal to strip local phone and cable providers of their legal regulated monopolies.

<comment><USER8> _Regulation that maintains the status quo..._

...is almost always a bad idea. We need new services, new investment, new entrants.

Opnnness can defend itself -- it got this far. If any of the alleged 'abuses' truly became 'serious' that would give a marketing coup to competitors and spur to new entrants.

The idea that regulating the existing monopolies is 'easier to achieve' than true competition is a self-fulfilling prophecy. New regulations entrench present-day services, and flatter regulators into thinking only they, and not competition, can protect customers.

If a shortage of competition is the real problem -- and it is -- policies should address that, not enshrine the current lack of competition in regulations.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>