Educate Your Immune System - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/opinion/sunday/educate-your-immune-system.html <comment><USER2> Nice little article! And it confirms my anecdotal evidence, so it feels good. ;)

I had a wild childhood: it happened to me to eat hamster food from his cage, eating dirt, eating sand, raw tomatoes directly from the plant, drinking waters from random streams; drinking raw milk without boiling it few minutes after milking it by hand, eating raw eggs, and when I wasn't in school, like during the summer, I had one shower per week, or less...

Don't worry: growing up I am back to civilization. But I have to say that I am _never_ sick. Also during winter.

I pity all those kids and their urban childhood, they will have to endure weird intolerance to random things. I am grateful to my parents.

Back then growing children was still a simple thing, nowadays mothers and fathers are so scared by society.

<comment><USER3> I promise there are plenty of patients with autoimmune disease who had childhoods just like yours. I don't want to sound hostile but "I am not sick, because I do/did X" is a) not scientifically useful and b) somewhat insulting to patients who suffer from chronic illness. The truth is everyone has risk factors for most diseases and there is still an incredibly large probabilistic element involved - some people are just lucky. This will likely change in the future as true causes are identified of course.

The hygiene hypothesis is interesting but it's far from proven and there are competing theories for many autoimmune diseases involving pathogens. The trendy attitude of "people were so healthy back when society was simple", however, is blatantly false. People overall, by any reasonable metric, have better health today than they have even had in the past. As we invent vaccines and improve treatment options we simply forget about the burden of diseases that no longer exist.

<comment><USER4> > not scientifically useful

This isn't a peer reviewed journal, we're just a community chatting about stuff, so that's not really a germane standard. Anecdotes are a perfectly reasonable input into our personal Bayesian inference filters, since no one has all the answers yet (not even close).

<comment><USER5> But beyond being a humblebrag, it's also bordering on a just-world view of the universe that's basically superstition.

Without reference to a larger dataset, the inference "I"m never sick because I played in the woods and ate weird stuff. If you get sick a lot, it's partially your fault because you didn't do that." could easily be replaced with "I'm never sick because I prayed to the right god every day. If you get sick a lot..."

<comment><USER2> > it's partially your fault because you didn't do that

I never implied that. If something, I said that too much pressure by society is making parents work harder, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

<comment><USER6> I'm wondering why you are downvoted for this comment?

<comment><USER5> It's placing blame for a general problem on the decisions and values of certain people and societies.

In terms of logical structure, taking an anecdote and universalizing it without a falsifiable explanatory mechanism is indistinguishable from blaming faraway natural disasters on other people sinning against the gods.

In both cases, people and society are held to be at least partially culpable for something bad that happened to them without presenting any evidence other than that they don't do all the same things that you do, and you're doing fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A wild hypothesis here. One thing I noticed in "pre-Western" diets that's absent from modern ones is unpasteurized dairy. All milk sold in Western countries is pasteurized (treated thermally to kill most of its bacteria). If you leave on a shelf, it will remain unspoiled for quite a long time compared to unpasteurized, but when it does spoil, it becomes completely undrinkable, with foul smell. Unpasteurized milk, on the other hand, has a much shorter shelf life, however the spoiled product is acidic and yogurt-like, has no foul smell, and is (mostly) safe to consume, even by people with some degree of lactose intolerance (it has had most of its lactose converted to lactic acid, hence the sour taste). This so-called Soured milk ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soured_milk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soured_milk)) is extremely commonly consumed in many Eastern European countries that don't have Western food safety standards.

While there may be other beneficial (to the immune system) things happening in Russian Karelia, I can't help but wonder if the absence of unpasteurized dairy is the single massive thing that causes failure of gut microbiomes in the modern world.

<comment><USER8> Considering that eating dairy at all is a relatively modern invention (post- agriculture), I suspect not. Is there any evidence at all for the beneficial effect of bioactive dairy products on the gut microbiome, beyond yoghurt commercials for middle-aged women?

<comment><USER9> Name one mammal besides humans who drink milk as adults?

P.S. I love cheese and will forever eat it but I don't drink milk.

<comment><USER10> I find it really interesting that all of the replies to this comment take the fact that animals will consume dairy _if it 's available_ as an argument in favor of human consumption of it. Humans are the _only_ animals, that _as adults_ , _take_ the milk of another mammal for their own consumption.

For that matter, other than the isolated, exceptional cases of a lactating mammal adopting the orphans of another mammal and nursing them, humans are the _only_ mammals that consume the milk of _a different species_.

Cats drinking from a saucer of milk put on the floor in front of them is _nothing_ like milking a cow — except, I suppose, at the level of digesting lactose.

<comment><USER7> What _I_ find interesting is that the health benefit (or non-benefit) of milk for _adult_ humans is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Autoimmune disease (the topic of the original article) develops at a very early age.

<comment><USER11> Many autoimmune diseases develop in adults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The scientists had periodically sampled the children's microbes, and when they looked back at this record, they discovered that the microbiome of children who developed the disease changed in predictable ways nearly a year before the disease appeared. Diversity declined and inflammatory microbes bloomed. It was as if a gradually maturing ecosystem had been struck by a blight and overgrown by weeds._

I wonder if they looked at antibiotic use. Wealthier countries often have better medical access. Perhaps it isn't that poor countries are "dirtier" so much as that when kids do get ill, they are less likely to get nuke-em-from- orbit antibiotics, use of which is known to have a scorched earth effect on the gut. The gut is about 70 percent of the immune system.

I really dislike the hygiene hypothesis. I have reversed a lot of the symptoms of my so called auto immune disorder in part by staying impeccably clean and avoiding exposure to germs as best I can. To me, this "a dirtier world is better for you" line of reasoning just does not make sense. It would make a great deal more sense to me if the conclusion was that casual use of antibiotics does egregious harm to the biome in the gut, from which some people never recover. Modern doctors are perfectly happy to prescribe antibiotics and I don't think I have ever had one tell me that I need to consume yogurt afterwards to foster healing of the damaged gut biome.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting parallel study I saw recently:

Autoimmune disease rodent models don't translate well to the clinic, so an academic group tried to look for reasons. They found that normal, healthy humans have far more memory B cells than lab mice, which may be a major factor.

So they looked at wild mice and pet store mice. Wild mice had a lot of memory B cells, but pet store mice had the most. They found you can house pet store mice with lab mice, and the lab mice will eventually increase the number of B cells, but you lose about 20% of them.

<comment><USER14> Do you lose 20% of the lab mice, or the pet store mice, or the B cells?

<comment><USER13> Sorry for being unclear; you lose 20% of the lab mice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Few known facts (About Finnish children);

\- In Finland 80% of 3-year olds have had ear infection.

\- 53% of 2-year olds are in daycare. Due to various reasons group sizes are getting bigger and bigger, new normal can be around 30 kids in a single daycare group (=constant infections...)

\- Half of the kids have private health insurances (public outpatient care has some issues..)

\- Typical treatment for ear infection(although many times unnecessary) is antibiotics.(=to keep parents happy / easier for the doctor)

</comment><comment><USER16>
      These findings are very preliminary, but they support a decades-old
      (and unfortunately named) idea called the hygiene hypothesis. In
      order to develop properly, the hypothesis holds — to avoid the
      hyper-reactive tendencies that underlie autoimmune and allergic
      disease — the immune system needs a certain type of stimulation
      early in life. It needs an education.

George Carlin (RIP) also had a nice little piece on this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s)

I think it's funny that we Western people get so quickly sick from street-food in Asian countries (e.g. Thailand), while most locals have no problem eating the food.

<comment><USER17> > I think it's funny that we Western people get so quickly sick from street- > food in Asian countries (e.g. Thailand), while most locals have no problem > eating the food.

I can eat food in Shanghai without suffering from traveler's diarrhea afterward. It took a while to get to that point.

With exposure, you'll develop tolerance for the local food. Hopefully, all of the locals have already had that exposure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > After three years, 16 Finnish children and 14 Estonian children had these > antibodies; only four Russian children did.

I am not a statistician, but wouldn't this be underpowered relative to what you would need to draw a solid conclusion?

<comment><USER19> Depends on effect size and variance.

[https://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/statmistakes/FactorsInfl...](https://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/statmistakes/FactorsInfluencingPower.html)

A study with low power is perfectly alright for an exploratory study that is not meant to prove anything but to check if it's worthwhile to spend a lot of resources on an idea in the first place.

[http://lynn-library.libguides.com/researchmethods/researchme...](http://lynn- library.libguides.com/researchmethods/researchmethodsd8)

> 1\. Exploratory research generally utilizes small sample sizes and, thus, > findings are typically not generalizable to the population at large.

> 2\. The exploratory nature of the research inhibits an ability to make > definitive conclusions about the findings.

> ...

The problem is when exploratory studies make it to the media and people confuse them with studies meant to settle questions rather than just raise them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> >The newborns were equally divided among Finland, Russia and Estonia, where the prevalence of Type 1 diabetes is on the rise, but still well below Finland's.

very telling giving the history of Estonia during last 25 years.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder why they don't have Epstein Barr Virus vaccines yet.

<comment><USER22> No money in it?

<comment><USER23> Dark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "It was as if a gradually maturing ecosystem had been struck by a blight and overgrown by weeds."

An unfortunate analogy. It is exactly weeds that our microbiome needs. Not manicured lawns.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Preventing autoimmune disorders may require emulating aspects of that > "dirtier" world: safely bottling the kinds of microbes that protect the > Russian kids, so we can give them to everyone

Ok, so where's the productization? Where's the startup?

Surely this product/service already exists in some form or other, _somewhere_

<comment><USER26> I like your thinking, kinda surprised you got downvoted on HN for it.

One angle is the use of parasites to treat autoimmune diseases. It wasn't mentioned in the article, but hookworms are being studied for their ability to secrete a wide range of immune-modulating molecules. Companies are trying to determine which molecules are especially useful, and in what combination, so they can synthesize them and sell them.

But, you can get their beneficial effect right now, which is very appealing to people with major autoimmune diseases. Some companies are selling parasite eggs by mail to people who otherwise can't get them. I have MS, I take them.

It's not a lucrative business, and there are a lot of regulatory hurdles, but the treatment is quite safe.

Most people are disgusted by the idea of infecting their self with parasites. The reality is that humans evolved with parasites constantly inside of their bodies. It's only in the last 100 years that widespread anti-parasitic medication has wiped them out.

That did a lot of good for society in general, but we took it too far, essentially, by wiping out parasites entirely. There are a lot of benign "parasites", which should be thought of as symbiotes.

The way that big pharma is dealing with this is as mentioned above: they're trying to synthesize the right stew of immune-modulating chemicals to deal with this. But the immediate solution is to educate people, and sell them clean, safe parasites (or their eggs).

It's also nice if they live a long time in their host, and don't reproduce inside of the host. This is why Necator Americanus is mostly used; it fits all of these characteristics.

<comment><USER27> _The way that big pharma is dealing with this is as mentioned above: they 're trying to synthesize the right stew of immune-modulating chemicals to deal with this. But the immediate solution is to educate people, and sell them clean, safe parasites (or their eggs)._

Coronado Biosciences was running clinical trials using pig whipworm ova to see if it had an impact on inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's and ulcerative colitis). Turns out there was no observable effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Animated pic gives me formication. Perhaps not inappropriately...

<comment><USER29> Animated pic made me motion-sick and prevented me from reading the article.

Edit: read it on mobile with JavaScript off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thank's for your valuable anecdote. We can now safely ignore all the people who _did_ get a disease or toxins doing the same.

<comment><USER30> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.

<comment><USER19> Why would I not say that face to face? Do you think any negative reply to anyone is bad? What horrible rose-colored world do you live in? How about _you_ adjust your sensitivity setting? It's on an unhelpfully low level that prevents normal function and utilization of normal communication.

I also find it how remarkably consistent my experience is that people who complain about "tone" never, ever have anything to say about the actual subject.

<comment><USER31> You could have communicated the same idea without petty, hostile sarcasm.

<comment><USER19> Sarcasm is a valuable tool in the human communication arsenal. If you want to do without it, be my guest, but don't try to dictate your subjective preferences to others who have what I would claim is a more mature and more healthy attitude towards the beauty and variety in human language.

And the "petty" is all in _your head_. There are too many people who blame others for what's in their own head.

<comment><USER31> Sarcasm can be very valuable. It can also be used to contemptuously insult someone when a simple rebuttal would suffice.

The latter is an immature, weak intellectual position (see Appeal to Ridicule and Question Begging Epithet) that says nothing more than "you are so wrong as to look asinine".

This only fosters more emotional, insult-riddled dialogue, which is why the user above quoted HN guidelines, which you are now impotently raging against. This is a pretty civil place, we like to keep it that way.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple Updates Final Cut Pro X - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/01/31Apple-Updates-Final-Cut-Pro-X.html

<comment><USER2> So Multicam is back… Will the "Pro" community be happy again? Has FCP 7 stopped working during this months?

For a $300 USD software, looks amazing, if you ask me.</comment>


Stop trying to make maths "fun" - lessons also for coding? - <AUTHOR> http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/debate/columnists/rob_eastaway_fun_subtracts_from_the_real_joy_of_maths_1_3068562

<comment><USER3> "Making math fun" is fine, but most teachers interpret it as "mixing fun stuff into math, which is inherently painful and boring," because they're focused on the kids who aren't doing well. To them, making math fun is the same idea as bringing a clown into the pediatric burn ward: "Let's make this suck a little less." That attitude rubs off on the kids.

What those teachers don't get is that math is most fun when you are using solid, polished skills to explore an area where you're still learning. The teachers are stuck in the standard educational mindset, which is that getting enough practice at anything to develop polished skills is "rote" and horrible. Plus it slows down their curriculum. So they move on and just do some review now and then, and the mediocre students end up with _no_ solid skills they can rely on. All their skills are a little iffy, so they can't do _anything_ with confidence, and everything is stressful.

</comment><comment><USER4> If I was taught programming in high school the same way I was taught math, I would've hated it, _deeply_.

Most of math was about number crunching and the application of arbitrary formulas to arbitrary equations.

I can imagine, 20 years from now, a high school student will have to solve the following question:

"Write a recursive function in C that finds the minimum number in an array of integers".

Then imagine the teacher himself/herself has absolutely no interest in programming what so ever, and is only teaching it because the board of education decided that children must learn it.

<comment><USER5> That's actually a reasonable question. What's a lot more likely:

"Here are fifteen for loop headers. For each one, write how many times the loop body will execute."

<comment><USER4> It's reasonable for us. Most people (who are not into programming) would find it ridiculous and pointless.

<comment><USER3> It's a reasonable way (the only way) to develop a skill -- even after you have a conceptual understanding of how to do something, you still have to practice a little bit at it. Practice is required first of all to clarify your understanding, but even then practice is necessary to polish your skill enough that you can use it to accomplish something. (I.e., you have to be able to execute the skill and have enough attention left over to understand something else.)

So many problems in education come from the stigmatization of anything resembling practice as "rote" and "unstimulating." When you stigmatize repetition, you make it very hard to develop skills. In effect, students are expected to develop "understanding" (the fun, easy part) without developing any skills (the boring, repetitive part.) Unfortunately, working without any polished, dependable skills is awful. It's anxiety-inducing. You have a little bit of doubt about every single step, and as you complete step after step, your confidence in getting the right answer goes down and down. Having a set of solid skills gives you base of confidence, a security blanket that reassures you while you tackle new ideas.

<comment><USER4> I think you missed the point.

Most people find first year of computer science very hard. For me it was easy, but plenty of people found it hard, and I think many people changed majors because of that.

Now imagine if it was mandatory in high school. Teachers probably won't understand it much. The curriculum will probably focus on "formula"-like things (perhaps, patterns?), syntax maybe, and a whole bunch of boring details, and ignore the most important part: problem solving.

Students might study (read: memorize) all kinds of functions for doing things.

Grade 8: loops for sorting numbers, loops for finding min and max numbers, loops for calculating factorials. for-loop synatx in C. for-loop syntax in python.

Grade 9: recursive functions for sorting (e.g. merge sort), recursive functions for calculating factorials, recursive functions for finding min/max numbers in a list.

I only realized this very recently, but math has a lot in common with computer science. Its core is about problem solving. Unfortunately, that's not how it gets taught in high school. In high school, math is a set of arbitrary formulas you have to memorize and use to "solve" arbitrary equations. We were given a lot of "practice problems"; they were the most boring thing in the world. They didn't teach you anything; their only purpose is brush up your muscle memory so that when you see a problem of the form "A B C" you know which formula to use and how to use it.

<comment><USER3> Problem solving relies on a lot of muscle memory. Imagine doing a calculus problem when you have to painstakingly work your way through every algebraic operation:

      x^2 + 3x - 3x^2 + 3x + 5
      x^2 - 3x^2 + 3x + 3x + 5
      1x^2 - 3x^2 + 3x + 3x + 5
      (1 - 3)x^2 + 3x + 3x + 5
      -2x^2 + 3x + 3x + 5
      -2x^2 + (3 + 3)x + 5
      -2x^2 + 6x + 5

Okay, what problem was I solving again? What does this have to do with what I was learning? What was I going to do next?

When you have to concentrate on grouping and reducing polynomials, it's next to impossible to solve any kind of interesting calculus problem, much less learn anything, because you don't have any time to think about calculus. It's boring to do math that way, not to mention anxiety-inducing, because you spend all your time worrying about getting the old stuff right. But that's the way teachers are supposed to teach math: once the kids can work their way through one kind of problem somewhat reliably, they are supposed to move on before it becomes routine. That leads to a pretty sorry state of affairs -- the kids have to think hard about _everything_ they do. You shouldn't think hard about algebra while you're doing calculus. When you can do the algebra quickly using your muscle memory:

      x^2 + 3x - 3x^2 + 3x + 5
      -2x^2 + 6x + 5

Then you get to spend your time actually thinking about calculus, the stuff you're supposed to be learning and exploring.

The thing about problem solving is that it's just one end on a continuum from exploration to mastery. When you say "the core of math is problem solving" you're basically saying all the fun and glory is in exploration. It's true! I don't disagree at all. All I'm saying is that you can't have exploration without mastery, because you explore new territory using the tools you've previously mastered. Trying to learn calculus when you haven't mastered algebra, when algebra isn't part of your "muscle memory," is backwards and frustrating.

My favorite example of this is freshman college physics. Different people have vastly different experiences of freshman physics. For kids who are pretty good at calculus, freshman physics is amazing. It's a year-long parade of learning cool, powerful ideas and using them to solve challenging problems. For kids who haven't mastered calculus, freshman physics is a horrific calculus death march. They spend ten minutes setting up some equations (the only part that relates to the fascinating new stuff they learned in class) and then spend an hour trying to make the answers come out right. They spend ten hours doing the weekly problem set and wonder why it's so boring and why they're having such a hard time learning physics. It's because in that ten hours they spent one hour thinking about physics and nine hours struggling with calculus! When students spend ten hours working and only get one hour's worth of exposure to the course material, it's no wonder they struggle in the class. The kids who _enjoy_ physics are the ones who spend ten minutes setting up the equations and then five minutes solving them. Those kids get to spend most of their time thinking about the fun stuff: interesting concepts and problems.

The difference is that the first group of kids "sees a problem of the form 'A B C'" and just solves it. The second group of kids, when solving the calculus equations, has to think through the concepts and "problem solve." That would be great if they were learning calculus, but since they're trying to learn physics, it's an interruption that detracts from their learning. A skill has to feel routine, even boring, before it can serve as the basis of learning another skill. Shaky fundamental skills are like the intrusive noises in "Harrison Bergeron" -- they make it very hard to maintain a coherent train of thought about anything else.

So you can't problem-solve and have fun in freshman physics until calculus is routine. How do calculus computations become routine if, in calculus class, the teacher is supposed to stop drilling you as soon as you figure out how to think your way through each problem? If the goal is for the computations to become routine, then boring practice problems are exactly what you need. (I suspect in your case, the problem was that you needed less practice than the other kids, and you had to keep practicing long past the point where it really would have been appropriate to move on.)

You might say that if some kids are never going to go beyond calculus and will never do any hard-core science coursework in college, then it's appropriate to just teach them the concepts of calculus and not worry about their ability to solve problems. Well, that's fine. But they will have a hell of a time learning the concepts of calculus if algebra and trigonometry monopolize their attention. The only class where it is appropriate to shoot for "understanding" without skills is the last math class a student will ever take.

<comment><USER4> The details are important, but high school maths focuses _only_ on the details, and the bigger picture is always lost.

What you're saying is true; practice is important, and muscle memory is important, but they are details.

I hated high school math because there was never a bigger picture.

I actually liked elementary and junior high math (I didn't study it in North America, but in the Middle East. Not sure if that's a part of the reason).

Some of the high school math was tolerable, but a lot of it was just details details details with no bigger picture behind it what so ever.

What I'm saying is, if computer science was taught in high school the same way math is taught, students won't learn how to program at all. They will just hate it.

To use your physics example. First year physics in my University was pretty much the same as high school physics (at least the courses I took). In high school, I had the privilege of having a really good physics teacher (IIRC he had a Scottish accent). He focused more on the theories and the ideas. His teaching style focused more on problem solving than just formulas. I liked his course and did really well in it.

In contrast, the university physics course was horrible, in the same way that high school math was horrible. It was boring as hell. I was just so disengaged that I think I got a D and had to retake the course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like math teachers have a fundamentally different task than coding teachers. Everyone needs at least a low level of proficiency in math - <USER2> able to make change correctly and balance your checkbook. Not everyone needs a low level of coding proficiency.

If you've reached the level in your education where you _need_ to learn to code, then you've probably already advanced past the point where everything has to be presented as "fun" before you'll learn it.

<comment><USER4> Hey, there was a time when most people could get by just fine without even knowing how to read and write.

With the proliferation of computers into every aspect of life, it's not unimaginable for programming to be considered essential knowledge that should be taught in schools.

<comment><USER6> I'd agree with you if it weren't for the iPad. Computers have proliferated, but they're also evolving in a way that makes programming knowledge _less_ important (at least for the majority of people).

<comment><USER4> Math knowledge beyond 5th grade is not important for the majority of people, but it still gets taught in schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > if you have to tell somebody that something is fun, it means that you have > lost the argument.

Couldn't agree more.

</comment><comment><USER8> This "Mathematician's Lament" is (by far) the best critique of the modern mathematics education that I've seen to date:

<http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER9> Hmm. Finding maths so dull was probably one of the main reasons that I didn't peruse a degree and CS or physics. Which was a disastrous decision for me personally. Not that I just couldn't face studying anything unexciting per se, but that I (wrongly) assumed that if I didn't find something interesting then i could never be sufficiently good at it. At high school I was 'streamed' into one of the lower tier math classes, which I resented - result was getting a higher mark in the end than most of the top-tier students. But perhaps I would have been better off in a more advanced class where I'd struggle more but at least find the stuff interesting.

Anyway my point is it's a shame to turn people _away_ from maths by offering such stale curriculum.

</comment><comment><USER10> Eeee, when I were a lad, maths weren't fun! You did 14 hours down't mine and only then were you allowed to try yer 'and at partial differential equations. And if yer got one wrong'un, teacher'd beat you with a wooden pole (etc etc) (yorkshire post, scnr)

</comment><comment><USER11> >But I'm convinced that almost anyone can be drawn into maths if they are presented with something intriguing or surprising which prompts them to want to investigate

That's what I used to think when trying to get other students into programming -- like getting a kid do say 'Holy crap, I just created multiplication'. But it doesn't seem to work that way.

I've come to be used to the concept that other people think on a completely different plane than me, so it's pretty hard or often just doesn't work at all to try to find this 'intriguing or surprising' thing that can get them others to be interested.

<comment><USER12> I agree with you. But I have to add that there's a big difference between math anxiety and disinterest in pursuing a graduate degree. There's nothing wrong with someone choosing to pursue something else even when shown the intrigue and beauty of math (or programming). But there's _everything_ wrong with the mind-numbing approach to math taken now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have very fond memories from when I was 9 or 10 about a book called I Hate Mathematics: [http://www.amazon.com/Brown-Paper-School-book- Mathematics/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Brown-Paper-School-book- Mathematics/dp/0316117412)

It was the thing that really made math fun for me. So sure, stop telling kids that "math is fun", but don't stop trying to make it interesting; it's definitely possible.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you like this, you might be interested in these:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2209991>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2209970>

</comment><comment><USER14> Agree with the argument but the title (on HN) doesn't sound right.

I suggest, _Stop trying to make maths look "fun"_

</comment><comment><USER15> My oldest son has dyscalculia and just sucks at crunching numbers. He had a terrible, terrible time with math in public school and really hated and dreaded the subject by the time we pulled the kids out to homeschool. It was clear to me he would not be able to memorize his way through math like his mom had. (I was in my thirties when I discovered some of this stuff had actual uses. sigh) My top priority for math with this child was to teach him "math is your friend". He's a science geek (which is tough when math is not something you are good at) and loves physics. He taught me most of the physics I know (speaking in little words and repeating himself a lot) when he was 14, which stood me in very good stead when taking certain college classes later on.

A few things we did:

Chapter books, full of discussion about math and light on formulas.

Let him choose a statistics track over an algebra/geometry/trig track. (We did some algebra and geometry but not too much.)

Read about halfway through "A tour of the calculus". I dropped out of calculus my first quarter in college and never wanted to see the subject again, after having been inducted into Mu Alpha Theta in 11th grade. He would spend an hour on this with me because it was the only math that made more sense to him than to me and he was happy to watch me get a headache (which I played for all it was worth). This book was chosen because he loves physics and calculus is the math of physics and because calculus really requires you to learn all that algebra/geometry/trig stuff he wanted nothing to do with. I knew I had won the battle when he was whining and complaining one day about not wanting to do math and then got all perked up at the idea of working on reading a couple more pages of this book with me.

We also did "fun" stuff, like card games and such in place of workbooks and that did have some value. But reading part of "A tour of the calculus" was the single biggest thing I did to get him past this mental and emotional block. Which I guess largely agrees with this article, though perhaps framed a little differently.</comment>


Get iCourage. The Rejection Therapy iPhone App is Here - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/app/rejection-therapy/id408405656?mt=8

<comment><USER2> Can I get a discount on this app?

<comment><USER3> No!

<comment><USER4> That wasn't so bad, and here I thought you were about to wage holy war against me just for asking...

<comment><USER5> Hunh. Well, I don't need the app anymore. In fact, I reject it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Getting rejected builds character.

<comment><USER7> Maybe, sometimes. I am not sure if practicing to ask for discounts builds character, though?

What if the process turns you into a sleazy salesman?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> People are now advertising their iphone apps here? The poster's handle had 3 karma points before this post, and was created 42 days ago.

<comment><USER8> ..And to make matters more interesting, I'm getting downvoted for my observation. (Probably by the guy who is trying to promote his iphone app here)

<comment><AUTHOR> How could I have downvoted you? I only have 3 karma points (well, it's growing a bit now, but still).

<comment><USER9> Through the power of multiple accounts.

Assuming you are just spamming your app, are there any interesting technical details you might like to share to make this less about spamming and more about sharing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's a great app idea but that bothers me to pay for suggestion cards. I understand there is work behing the hood for the iPhone application but still. Does anyone know a website with some free example cards decks to print out ?

<comment><USER11> Not exactly "cards", but there was an effort made on a previous topic to create a list of ideas: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755561>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sweet. I noticed there's 6 more suggestion cards in the app. The Game Crafter deck only has 30.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is freak'n awesome.</comment>


iOS 10 is a pleasant surprise for the iPhone 5 and 5C - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/good-news-ios-10-runs-pretty-well-on-the-iphone-5-and-5c/ <comment><USER2> ELI5: How is it a pleasant surprise if it runs slower? I'm sorry I'm not all that happy my iPhone 5 is getting slower and slower before eventually killed of.

Should I be happy since "It could had been worse"?</comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite book written before 1900? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Count of Monte Cristo has to be way up there. Compared to the plodding, sententious pace of his contemporaries, Dumas was the veritable Michael Bay of nineteenth century writers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Candide by Voltaire

The History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison By Henry Adams

</comment><comment><USER4> I much enjoyed Ben Franklin's autobiography.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Mad Trist_ by Sir Launcelot Canning.</comment>


American Airlines loses $3.3 million a day - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/28/magazines/fortune/gimbel_american.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008043011

<comment><USER2> this combined with the housing crisis; makes me believe a deep recession is coming. (everyone hold on tight) ;) see you on the flip side

</comment><comment><USER3> airlines are in a real struggle. curious how they are going to get out of it.</comment>


Twenty Dollar Ideas (submit your ideas and vote) - <AUTHOR> http://twentydollarideas.com/ <comment><USER2> I've been thinking about the iFundedThat.com idea for a while. Have you come up with a solution to get around the regulatory hurtles? In general, you can't publicly solicit the sale of securities on the internet without having to deal with the SEC. If you want to talk you can email me at thomaspaine at gmail dot com.</comment>


The popular Iranian tradition of using Hafez's poems for divination - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181023-irans-fascinating-way-to-tell-fortunes <comment><USER2> Reminds me. Few months ago a friend was wrestling with one of those big life changing decisions everyone faces sometime or the other. He spent a whole lot of time meticulously analysing pros and cons, but just couldn't decide one way or another. Then one day he does this "remote" tarot card reading session (facepalm) and bam! Decision made. I was shocked. Don't know how many times I had to then hear, "...but dude just look at what the tarot card said". Psycologists really need to figure out how this "magic" works and how we can use it more effectively.

<comment><USER3> You don't even need tarot for such a case usually. Just promise yourself you are going to do what it decides and flip a coin. As soon as the coin falls and demands you to go particular way you will feel either joy or sorrow about the fact it has fallen this way and you are to obey. This will make it clear what do you actually want. Now you can forget about the promise and go the way you know you want now.

It also doesn't take to be particularly irrational magically-oriented mind to make use of some astrology, numerology, tarot or whatever of this kind occasionally - trying these and getting some shockingly precise data about yourself and predictions about events in your life is enough for a mind that is predominantly pragmatic although rational).

<comment><USER2> Interesting point. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also: Parrot Astrology of India - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot_astrology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot_astrology)

<comment><USER5> Where do the stars enter into the equation in this parrot astrology?

<comment><USER4> Astrology is actually a mistranslation. Indian languages usually use the same word, _Jyotiḥśāstra_ to refer to both astrology and and fortune telling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really believe in this tradition, you should try it: [https://www.hafizonlove.com/fal.htm](https://www.hafizonlove.com/fal.htm)

There's always a fresh perspective and amazing poetry, it has given me insight many times in my life.

It's not only bards that offer divination's from the divan, in Tehran the street kids sell a page from the divan for a dollar and in general I'd say the dominant religion in the country is the wisdom of its poets (the greatest ones being Rumi, Saadi, Omar Khayyam and debatably the most popular, Hafez).

I wish I had the time to go learn the language so that I too could appreciate the depth of their poetry.

<comment><USER7> The English language simply can not convey Hafiz. Shahriari has made a very good effort but his personal faith (he is a Zoroastrian) colors his rendition of some of the poems.

Also as a note, as C. G. Jung warned in his introduction to the Wilhelm translation of the "I Ching", divination is not without hazardous consequences.

There is no free lunch in the universe. You are not getting "free information" here. Remember that before you decide to weaken your faculty of Choice when using divination tools.

[p.s. Hafiz is also very much coded with Sufi terminology. You can take it at face value and admire his mastery of the Persian language but the embedded messages require exegesis.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very cool. 10-20 years ago it was quite common in Istanbul to see a similar method of divination but done with a rabbit! Haven't seen them for some time but here's a recent video of the operation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KFKbieSe8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KFKbieSe8c)

</comment><comment><USER9> Another tradition of divination in Iran is called fal-gush. You hide behind a fence and listen to the conversations of people passing by and use it to answer your questions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fāl-gūsh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fāl- gūsh)

<comment><USER7> And this pretty much explains why a nation like Iran is stuck where it is (for the past n 100 years). No shortage of brains but a corrosive fatalism that became ingrained in the very culture, likely as a consequence of successive disasters of Arab and Mongul invasions. The Persians of lore that managed 3 empires were not fatalistic fools.

[Fair disclosure: born Iranian.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So much better, cooler, more romantic than 'Ask again later'. We settle for so little. Sigh.</comment>


Show HN: Unimersiv – Learn through virtual reality - <AUTHOR> http://unimersiv.com/?utm_source=HN

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN,

Since the first time I used my Oculus DK2, I've been convinced that virtual reality could disrupt education as we know it and some amazing experiences like Apollo 11 just proved that...

That's why I'm building Unimersiv, a platform dedicated to virtual reality courses on which VR developers will be able to share and sell their educational content. I envision a world where people will be able to learn anything faster (sports, sciences, history...) through their VR headset.

I would love to know what you think about this idea, is VR educational content something you appreciate? As a developer, would you publish your educational content on Unimersiv? (btw, don't hesitate to contact me if you are currently working on a VR courses).

Thanks!</comment>


What's the best place to follow news on data warehouse and databases? - <AUTHOR> I want to be updated on the most updated databases news and data warehouse. also i'm looking for best forums to read discussions and learn from it <comment><USER2> Try this [https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8267275](https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8267275)</comment>


Amadine – Vector graphics software for Mac - <AUTHOR> https://amadine.com <comment><USER3> Although I don't have much use for vector graphics software, it is _great_ to see people building new native mac apps which take advantage of the unique features of the platform instead of targeting a cross-platform lowest common denominator!

<comment><USER4> Yes, there's so many great Mac/Apple only applications that beat the pants off of any cross-platform apps, especially stuff built with Electron.

I use some great apps on a daily basis that are Mac or Apple ecosystem only.

Acorn - Image editor

OmniGraffle - <USER2>

OmniFocus - Todo list for GTD

Sketch - UI prototyping

Plus Apple's productivity software, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. I honestly don't know how people manage with G Suite.

There's also a ton of apps I don't use on a daily basis, and won't bother listing.

It really is awesome to see new native Mac apps. Please keep building them, and I promise to keep buying them. I'm giving Amadine a try today.

<comment><USER5> The irony of Figma being better than all of those applications, while having been built with Electron, will not be lost on those who have used it.

<comment><USER4> I doubt that claim so much. Every Electron application I've ever used is seriously deficient in many ways. First every app has its own set of UI controls, so right there you loose one of the best things about native Mac apps, consistency. Next I've yet to find a single Electron app that doesn't break some core Mac feature such as copy/paste, system wide spellcheck, system wide dictionary, the emoji picker, system wide settings, scrollable area bounce, zoom, tabs, windows, menus, keyboard shortcuts, drag & drop, screenshots, and so on. Third every electron app consumes way to many system resources and almost all are painfully slow. But, hey I'll give Figma a try and report back.

<comment><USER4> \- Empty window stoplight controls (breaks HIG).

\- I been waiting over two minutes for it to open a blank document created in the web version...three minutes still blank.

\- Had to close and re-open. Still takes a few seconds to load a blank document.

\- System wide spellchecker doesn't work.

\- System wide dictionary doesn't work.

\- Uses CPU time when it should be idle.

\- One object on screen and it is already using more memory that any other process on my machines (and that includes Discord).

\- It spawned 8 processes!

\- Copying an object and pasting into another application doesn't work.

\- Doesn't respect copy/paste with style and "Paste and Match Style."

\- Doesn't support standard macOS accessibility.

I can probably go on, but honestly I'm not impressed and I'm bored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Still a little rough around the edges but these guys get it!

I've been looking for something like this for ages. A simple lightweight vector graphics software with the best parts of illustrator and none of the fluff. Also, completely macOS native. No web app or Electron based crap.

It even has proper group isolation mode, which neither Sketch nor Affinity Designer have implemented after years of users requesting it. This is for me the most important feature in any vectors software since I very rarely use layers. Groups are so much faster.

Hopefully they will keep polishing it, but it looks very promising and for $20 it's a steal.

slowclap.gif

</comment><comment><USER7> I bought iDraw (back before AutoCAD bought Indeeo). I bought Affinity Designer. I tried demos for everything else I could get my hands on. I even tried Inkscape.

They all have flashy demos and claim to be great Mac apps (well, except Inkscape). A couple weeks later, I end up regretting my purchase. They just aren't terribly Mac-like, and they have all sorts of little bugs that never seem to get fixed. Being a small company in a huge market, their support suffers. There's 10 little obvious things it's missing that you assume will get added real soon, but it turns out there's actually 1000 things it's missing, and they keep picking _other_ little things. Hell, Affinity Designer is 5 years old and arrowheads are still on their to-do list.

After 20 years of futzing around with Mac graphics apps, Illustrator is still the best vector graphics app I've ever used, and the newcomers aren't even more Mac-like (which seems like it'd be a low bar). Adobe had a 30 year head start. No matter how swanky the new CoreImage APIs are, you're not going to catch Illustrator in a year or two. Their manual is an inch thick (or, it was 20 years ago) and extremely well-written. If you haven't read it, you don't know half of the little usability tricks that they've packed in there. I love to hate on Adobe as much as anyone, and it's definitely not a very Mac-like user experience, but when it comes to making graphics, Illustrator is an absolute beast.

The price of Amadine is a turnoff: $20 is simply nowhere near enough to support the depth of features that a vector graphics app needs. I can tell this is going to be severely underpowered.

I've read about "Javascript fatigue". I have "Mac vector graphics app fatigue". Never again.

<comment><USER8> I don't consider any adobe app that I've ever use to be Mac-like honestly. For 95% of my usecases, sketch and pixelmator do the job. I'm hoping this program takes care of the 5% gap in features i need for very specific vector drawing.

I don't use the advanced features of illustrator, partially due to my design style and partially because I'm too lazy to learn them. I'm glad alternatives to Illustrator exist in the market. It's nice that I don't have to pay 50$ a month or whatever absurd price adobe charges for cc these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any recommendations for an iPad + Pencil vector app? This app has a note that an iOS app is coming soon, wondering if anyone has any existing apps they like.

<comment><USER10> I enjoy Affinity Designer on my iPad. I use it on Windows desktop for most of my logo designing. For work I use Illustrator, so I'm use to both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> WOW! _This almost feels as good as Fireworks did back in the day!_ I'll probably use this for my upcoming web coming. Waaay nicer usability than Affinity (which was way nicer to use than Illustrator already): special path width control points, multiple strokes and inner shadows etc. on same shape...

For someone with a bit of an artistic side, but who also likes to draw "logically" with exact control of the shape but also without introducing 100 new objects in the picture, this seems amazing.

It lacks the "mixing vectors and pixels" part of Affinity Designer which is sort of cool, but the _core_ part, _pen and drawing tools_ seem to be both intuitive and powerful...

Will play with the trial more, if it doesn't crash much and doesn't lack any essential feature for me I'll buy it 100%! _Keep up the good work!_

</comment><comment><USER12> OT, but does anyone know of a vector drawing program that allows me draw in a similar that Fusion360 or SolidWorks does with their 2D CAD sketches?

It also needs to export to some standard format to be used for print, so using SolidWorks of Fusion360 isn't really an option, I can't export the vector 1-to-1 onto a pdf and do proper colors with those.

I cannot for the life of me figure out bezier curves to create arc sections with proper radii that blends into another line, and abusing adding and subtracting shapes from each other is a cumbersome process and editing the final shape often requires me to start all over creating that composite shape.

I would like to have more technical and fine-grained control over the way my drawings are made, than what pulling with my cursor on those handles gives me.

<comment><USER13> It's not exactly what you want but I have made a little software that is a sort of mix between Inkscape and Geogebra in which you can define a lots of shapes geometrically ([https://www.ludigraphix.org](https://www.ludigraphix.org), recent show HN : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19942367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19942367))

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Love the sales page and all the illustrations, especially the drawing of the Mustang. I have the same set of performance pack wheels on a shelf in my garage.

It's nice to see more and more of Adobe's lunch getting taken away by indie shops and products.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow! Really a great tool.

At the crossroads of Web an Vectorgraphics, I'd love to see a "wysiwyg" svg editor with the visual interface of a great drawing tool like amandine and at the same time a split window pane like the chrome inspector to modify a resulting svg code and having changes there be immediately visible in the visual interface…

Imagine I'd be amazing to get a hang of svg and as a result be able to build some great stuff for example by hooking up d3js…

<comment><USER16> Inkscape seems like it matches that description. The code part isn't as nice as Chrome or Firefox, but it's there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Developed with precision and attention to what users need

Affinity Designer also promises precision, but when it comes down to it I find it embarrassingly imprecise, buggy, and lacking in basic functionality. It can't even do an acceptable job of joining two shapes at a point.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Amadine. I'll give it a spin, and fingers crossed it lives up to its promise!

</comment><comment><USER18> I just started using Affinity, how does this compare?

<comment><USER19> I'm also curious. Affinity is compatible with Windows which is a huge advantage. It looks like affinity has more features but is also 30$ more expensive, which is not a big deal considering how powerful it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been wanting to learn Illustrator in order to create a children's book but never got around to it. Will give this a demo.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sorry, no, Figma way better [https://www.figma.com](https://www.figma.com)

<comment><USER22> And probably way slower. Figma is awesome but most of these complicated vectors would stall figma to unpleasant experience.

Also vector drawing in figma is super basic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Mac native app is released.

Some people: "applause for native instead of bloated Electron crap".

Also some people: "wtf why only Mac?"

</comment><comment><USER24> Am curious why some vector rendering products (Amadine, OmniGraffle, Paper 53 etc) end up being Mac / iOS only? Are there some APIs that are Mac only? Why would devs who take an effort to write such a substantial app not ifdef away the rendering bits to make the app work on Windows.

<comment><USER25> The entire UI is OS-specific. If this was a matter of #ifdefs, we wouldn't have 50 page weekly discussions on the merits of various cross-platform technologies.

<comment><USER24> Ive been surprised because in codebases I have worked on, you usually have an abstract rendering api at the bottom with multiple implementations for each platform. Ive been curious why you couldnt abstract out things like window creation, layout, rendering and implement the abstract api for multiple platforms.

<comment><USER7> The very concept of "a window" is pretty different across platforms.

MacOS is the only one with a concept of proxy icons. It has a distinction between the _key_ and _main_ window. There's a responder chain for event handling. Toolbars have a built-in editor. There's QuickLook for easy previewing of sub-files. There are standard popovers, which can be torn off.

On the Windows side, I'm sure they've got their own set of unique features and constraints that the Mac doesn't have. (The Ribbon and keyboard navigation come to mind.) Same with Linux.

Lacking a feature often means you need to design the UI different elsewhere. Without proxy icons, you might need to add a menu item to mimic that functionality, for example. These things domino into each other. There's a reason that good Mac apps and good Windows apps don't tend to look identical.

English and German are fairly similar, as languages go, but you can't just do a word-for-word replacement of English and get a good German paragraph, or vice versa. Not infrequently, you need to re-arrange everything to make it work. The pieces you have to work with are just different.

2D/3D graphics APIs (if that's what you're referring to) aren't like this. For the most part, they're all playing with the same basic pieces. When my Mac traded OpenGL for Metal, I barely noticed, even as a developer writing graphics code. When my Mac switched from Carbon to Cocoa, everybody needed to rewrite almost everything.

<comment><USER24> Completely agree with everything you said but the curiosity that drove my initial question still stands. To be specific do you think Sketch / OmniGraffle are unimplementable on Windows? Why would the creators of those apps after achieving such success on OSX, be unwilling/unable to address the windows market. I am convinced there are good rational reasons for this, I was hoping that someone from one of those companies could comment on this. [It is possible that in their target demographic everyone uses OSX, but is that the case?]

<comment><USER26> If the app is a native Cocoa application, it's been written in Obj-C or Swift. Cross-platform apps and frameworks are usually written in C++ with a UI implemented in a common framework like Qt.

To port the application to Windows, you'd lose a lot of the Mac-specific features, or have to do a substantial amount of work implementing platform- specific UIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anyone know if there are differences between the App Store version and the standalone purchase? I like to buy from the App Store when it's available, but sometimes apps have to gimp certain features to deal with sandboxing, etc.

<comment><USER28> Usually if there's a difference the site will list it. I can't think of any sandboxing limitations off the top of my head that would affect a vector graphics program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can it draw curves with arrow heads? If so, I'm ditching Affinity Designer...

<comment><USER30> Oh yes, please someone answer this. I have used adobe illustrator for 15 years - then affinity designer for a few more years. I just want vector graphics with arrows without enormous subscription fees - damnit!

<comment><USER31> Pretty sure inkscape can do this?

<comment><USER29> Don't know if it can.. However inkscape is HORRIBLE across the board when compared to commercial apps like affinity designer and illustrator.

The $50 one time cost for affinity designer is essentially free, when factoring in its improvements over inkscape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How does this compare to Autodesk Graphic? (I haven't looked at Affinity; I'm not one of the cool kids; I'd be interested in hearing if that's way better than Graphic as well).

</comment><comment><USER33> This is really well done, and very powerful, wow! The attention to details, and the nice UI, so neat, and smooth. Thanks, bought it!

</comment><comment><USER34> Off topic, but I'm curious who did the skateboarder illustration. It matches an aesthetic that I have a need for.

<comment><USER35> It's in their instagram: [https://www.instagram.com/p/BsqFlu- lKYf/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BsqFlu-lKYf/)

<comment><USER34> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've wanted something as good as Inkscape, but native on OSX, this looks interesting

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm not the least bit artistic but this looks really nice and approachable.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm curious about what the name means...anyone know?

<comment><USER39> It sounds like a chemical to me, probably because there are many other compounds with a -dine suffix, e.g.:

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Any plans to bring it to other platforms, possibly Linux?

</comment><comment><USER41> Pixelmator has a vector graphics mode Command-Shift-V

</comment><comment><USER42> Would that finally replace Fireworks in my hearth?

</comment><comment><USER43> Ugg why are people still making Mac only software. It is so easy these days to target the Unix operating systems together with roughly the same codebase.

<comment><USER44> Not for high-quality software with a GUI.</comment></comment>


Built-in replacement for SettingsSync in VSCode will require Microsoft account - <AUTHOR> https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/settings-sync <comment><USER2> I'll keep using the Sync Settings plugin that does the job through a gyst, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> No thanks. Will keep settings sync.

</comment><comment><USER4> Link a GitHub account to a Microsoft account?!! No, thanks. :(

<comment><USER5> You do realize Microsoft owns GitHub, don't you ?</comment></comment>


A petition to allow all office workers to work from home at least one day every month - <AUTHOR> http://www.onedrum.org.uk/ <comment><USER2> Why? frankly. My work environment is very relaxed and i often work from home (as the office is closed).. there is no particular benefit and I tend to get less done...

Most people I know prefer to work in the office..

Perhaps a BETTER idea is to try and improve office conditions....</comment>


GNU Toolchain Update – GDB now supports Rust - <AUTHOR> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2016-06/msg00030.html <comment><USER2> I wish GDB is modular, and language supports are just plugins. This way adding language support doesn't have to go through upstream GDB developers

<comment><USER3> That's pretty much what lldb is (or will be, for some reason it's not yet final though it's been out for a while) for.

lldb is to llvm/clang what gdb is to gcc and co.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> gdb has technically supported Rust for some time, although Rust has distributed a pretty-printing wrapper (rust-gdb) to fix variable naming and some other items, but having upstream support is pretty awesome.

<comment><USER4> Well, gdb used to "support" rust in that we pretended to be C and it supports C :)

Upstream support gets us:

\- Native pretty print

\- Expression evaluation. You can now `print foo(bar).baz().1` and it works

<comment><USER5> How smart is the evaluation?

<comment><USER4> What do you mean by "smart"?

It doesn't support running arbitrary rust code. But you can access fields and make calls and use indexing/ranges/etc. You can't do things like use an if block.

<comment><USER5> I mean what sorts of expressions it supports, and how lax are the typing rules of them, basically.

Ok indexing and function calls, makes sense. It won't dispatch on types at all for polymorphic functions I assume.

<comment><USER4> Right, types aren't involved much. IIRC method dispatch on preexisting monomorphizations work. Gdb will not monomorphize for you.

Trait methods don't work, though you can call them directly as functions if you wish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish GDB was a bit more like Acid, in that the debugger was really just a scripting language* that let you do things like set breakpoints at an address, read the symbol table and parse DWARF debug info, set watchpoints, and not much else.

Basically everything else that you would use at the source level could be built on top of those.

Maybe this is the start of a new underwear project: A debugger in [part of] the spirit of Acid, but built on top of the lldb library.

<comment><USER7> GDB can be extended using Guile Scheme. I am pretty ignorant when it comes to GDB, but I've seen people write Scheme extensions to help with V8 development and inspect certain C++ data structures more easily.

<comment><USER6> I've looked at the Python API, and it's not exactly good. I can look at the Scheme API, but after seeing the Python attempt, I'm not optimistic.

...I put in the star to say that the Python API didn't count, but forgot to actually elaborate on it.

<comment><USER8> I use gdb's Python API all the time, and I'm really happy that they have it. It's good for custom pretty-printing (well, almost - I wish p vec[6] worked well and not just print vec if vec has a pretty printer defined for its type) and it's good for commands needing to access a bunch of state and print a custom summary/run external commands based on that (for instance, view an image object graphically.)

So when you say it's not good I guess you want to do other things (which?) - or else you mean that it's messy (if so I ought to say that I've seen much worse and in relative terms I'd say gdb's API is rather lovely.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope this is indicative of plans to revive the rust gcc frontend. The existence of that frontend was a major plus for the language as a stable standard.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it is, this was an effort by Tom Tromey and me on the side, not something the gcc/gdb community decided to do.

Also, without a stable abi I'd caution against having a separate frontend. The language "standard" isn't ready yet, either; it doesn't exist as a single document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is why I always dowload mingw runtime of rust on windows.

</comment><comment><USER11> Url changed from [https://www.protocol96.com/blog/gdb-debugger-now-supports- th...](https://www.protocol96.com/blog/gdb-debugger-now-supports-the-rust- language-other-gnu-toolchain-improvements/), which points to this.

<comment><USER12> Seems good. Just as a random note: I tried to submit this URL, and so just upvoted. But the reason I originally chose that URL over the one the story is now about was because it focused on the Rust bit, whereas linking to the general notes and only pointing out Rust felt wrong. So good call, but just thought I'd mention that...</comment></comment>


Feds: TSA Worker Tried to Sabotage Terror Database - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/tsa-worker-charged-with-attempted-sabotage/ <comment><USER2> i think the real story is "TSA employee allowed system access for two weeks after termination notice"

that's unadvisable in any context and grossly irresponsible in this one.</comment>


Staying alive: background tracing and the NHS Covid-19 app - <AUTHOR> https://reincubate.com/blog/staying-alive-covid-19-background-tracing/ <comment><USER2> Great article.

This seems like a pretty ringing endorsement - the app seems likely to work despite iOS restrictions, gets a more or less clean bill of health privacy wise, and was released earlier than Apple's own product.

It's surprising to see the app get so much negative press, but I've not seeing anything credible contradicting the articles claims.</comment>


A Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and Covid-19 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf <comment><USER2> Figure 7 of the paper appears to show a large spike in cases in the "high inflow" counties, at 18-23 days and 24+ days post-Sturgis start (Aug 3).

However, a quick review of the maps in Figure 1 identifies those counties as Clark, NV (Las Vegas), Maricopa, AZ (Phoenix) and Jefferson/Arapahoe/Weld, CO (Denver Metro). None of those counties' own data reporting seems to match up with this supposed spike in cases that the paper suggests, starting around Aug 21.

[https://media.southernnevadahealthdistrict.org/download/COVI...](https://media.southernnevadahealthdistrict.org/download/COVID-19/updates/September/20200908-COVID-19-Trends- Clark-County-PUBLIC.pdf)

[https://phdata.maricopa.gov/Dashboard/e10a16d8-921f-4aac-b92...](https://phdata.maricopa.gov/Dashboard/e10a16d8-921f-4aac-b921-26d95e638a45?e=false&vo=viewonly)

[https://www.jeffco.us/4007/COVID-19-Case- Summary](https://www.jeffco.us/4007/COVID-19-Case-Summary)

Clark and Maricopa are clearly heading downwards. The Denver Metro graphs are a little more vague, you could maybe suggest there has been an uptick in cases but you'd be hard-pressed to definitively say there is a "spike" that contrasts with the long-term trend.

I'm having some difficulty squaring the paper's case data with the county governments' own counts.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you look at the parameters for the "valuation" of a SARS-CoV-2 infection, they are hard to take seriously. They are based on a mapping of typical workplace injuries to viral infections. This is the paper referenced: [http://ftp.iza.org/dp13632.pdf](http://ftp.iza.org/dp13632.pdf).

A purely asymptomatic infection is valued at $11,000

A symptomatic but non-hospitalized infection is valued at $33,000

If you are in the hospital for any reason with an infection, $512,000

If you are in the ICU for any reason with an infection, $1,100,000

If you are in the ICU on a ventilator, $2,900,000

<comment><USER4> > they are hard to take seriously.

Why? What convention would you use?

If you think these are estimates of related healthcare costs, you should probably re-read the paper.

<comment><USER3> I would not value the public health cost dollar estimate of an asymptomatic infection at 11k. I would not value the public cost dollar estimate of a non- hospitalized infection at 33k.

<comment><USER5> They do have some discussion in there about the option of valuing asymptomatic cases at $0. So it's not like they didn't think of this option. But they went with $11,000 as the default option in their model, anyway. This leaves me thinking we may be looking at a Chesterton's Fence situation: the reason isn't obvious to me, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or isn't a good one.

I'm guessing there is some subtext here that an armchair analyst isn't going to catch from reading just this paper. Perhaps, for example, the cost of asymptomatic cases is there because "asymptomatic" doesn't actually mean "no symptoms at all", it means "the patient didn't subjectively feel ill enough to seek care." In which case there probably is some real cost to factor into the average. Or perhaps the argument is that asymptomatic cases still carry some risk of secondary effects such as myocarditis that absolutely need to be taken into account and averaged into the group from a public health perspective.

It's hard to say for sure, since the paper clearly isn't written for a non- expert audience and therefore doesn't spend much time on defining jargon.

<comment><USER3> I'm probably going to perma-delete my HN account after this, but this is my main complaint with popularized scientific research being parroted for political purposes. "The paper isn't written for a non-expert audience" yet one of the authors is going on Anderson Cooper tonight to talk about it to a non-expert audience.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't that be the best way to communicate this to a non-expert audience? Bring the expert in to explain the report and fill in the context that the layman is missing compared to an expert?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> " _Furthermore, event organizers ... warned attendees that some "South Dakota tribal lands may be restricted with checkpoints to protect residents from COVID-19 exposure"_ "

I bet that was fun.

" _Using a synthetic control approach, ... [f]or the state of South Dakota as a whole we find that the Sturgis event increase COVID-19 cases by 3.6 to 3.9 cases per 1,000 population as of September 2nd 2020. This represents an increase of over 35 percent relative to the 9.7 cases per 1,000 population in South Dakota on July 31, 2020 (South Dakota Department of Health 2020)._ "

That's pretty substantial.

</comment><comment><USER8> The amount of travel involved in this thing is staggering:

> The cellphone tracking data showed about 10% of Sturgis attendees hailed > from within South Dakota, with about 19% from border states and 72% from > across the rest of the country, with heavy attendance from Arizona, > California, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Washington and Wyoming.

I find this aspect far more upsetting than the stupidity of the event itself. It's one thing when a bunch of locals decide to congregate in an environment they really shouldn't be, but another thing entirely when it's 400,000 people biking across the country.

Ironically - or perhaps not - I saw an NPR article ~a week ago[1] indicating the infection rate _in_ Sturgis and its county, while certainly higher than it was before the rally, wasn't as catastrophic as you'd expect. Apparently, many people who live in Sturgis left town or just tried to avoid contact with anyone that weekend. Can't find any up to date information on whether the infection rate has increased since then with more time/testing, though.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/09/02/908874086/states-report-coronavirus-cases-linked-to- sturgis-s-d-motorcycle-rally)

<comment><USER9> Arizona saw this early in the pandemic in cities along the California border like Lake Havasu.

They had zero mask restrictions for a while, and cases were low.

Then they opened restaurants and bars, which were flooded by thousands of Californians coming across the border every weekend and not taking any precautions and Arizona's ICUs quickly reached capacity.

[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-11/californ...](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-11/californians- are-crowding-arizonas-lake-havasu)

"While many locals are grateful for the tourism dollars amid a global downturn, some are worried that the crowds could cause a rise in coronavirus cases locally and overwhelm the city's only hospital, which has just 16 ICU beds for its 55,000 residents."

<comment><USER10> The article and the quote from the article you linked do not support your statement: "Arizona's ICUs quickly reached capacity".

The article is dated May 11.

[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&pto=aue&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=sv&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2020/influenzasasonen-2019-20-var- en-usadvanlig-sason&usg=ALkJrhjlxz7caWLvMrg-oZ7dyGrtYn-xdQ)

2822 excess mortality for Denmark in its flu season of 2017/2018\. Extrapolating Denmarks population to Swedens population we would expect 5000 excess mortality for a comparable bad flu season. Current Sweden COVID related deaths are 5800. Less than 16 deaths a day in Sweden since July 2. Less than 8 deaths a day since July 19.

Swedens COVID related deaths will not go above 6000. Seems to be a 0.06% mortality rate, heavily weighted towards the aged. 6000 deaths is still a lot, yes.

<comment><USER9> So, article was May 11 when the influx started.

This is June 25th.

"Fewer than 200 ICU beds available in Arizona as state reports more than 60,000 coronavirus cases."

[https://www.abc15.com/news/state/fewer-than-200-icu-beds- ava...](https://www.abc15.com/news/state/fewer-than-200-icu-beds-available-in- arizona-as-state-reports-more-than-60-000-coronavirus-cases)

This is July 3rd.

"State health officials say the capacity of hospital intensive care units is at an all-time high of 91%.

The number of people hospitalized Thursday due to a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19 was 3,013, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. It's the first time reaching 3,000."

[https://apnews.com/46a23bcf72b624dc25d7703dc269c727](https://apnews.com/46a23bcf72b624dc25d7703dc269c727)

That's a pretty scary timeline. Things got real serious real quick in less than a month.

<comment><USER10> Interesting, I agree the 91% of ICU capacity does seem alarming, but what aspect of that is hospitals optimizing for maximal usage of beds for financial reasons? I would want to see how much an ICU was used in previous years and how often it reached 90% capacity.

Also given it was 91% on July 3rd, I'd be interested in knowing what the situation was on August 3rd and September 3rd.

<comment><USER9> That's a great question.

I found this plot from Arizona Department of Public Health.'Hospital Bed Usage & Availability' sub-tab 'Number of Intensive Care Unit Available and In-use at Arizona Hospitals.'

[https://azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease- control/...](https://azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease- control/infectious-disease-epidemiology/covid-19/dashboards/index.php)

Everything is reported in percentages, so I don't know how the absolute number of beds shifted as a result of temporary increases in ICU capacity.

<comment><USER10> Great graphs on that site, 57% of ICU in beds in use by COVID patients on 7/13 to 13% on 9/7\. Seems like the peak has passed, but like you said it could be due to an increase in beds provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK2FBEpmlUo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK2FBEpmlUo)

If you'd like to have a better idea of what the rally itself was like and its attendees, All Gas No Brakes did a bit on it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I doubt as many people were infected as they state as only one death has been reported so far. If as many were as infected as they claim many more deaths would have occurred by now.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Experts": 400K people for a few days is a "superspreader event"

Also "experts": there is "no evidence" hundreds of thousands of people yelling slogans in the street for 100+ days are spreading COVID.

The two can't be true at the same time.

<comment><USER14> Sure they can - read this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24411270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24411270)

<comment><USER13> No evidence was presented in that comment, other than evidence of political bias.

<comment><USER14> In the second paragraph, yes. The first paragraph pretty clearly explained the difference:

"The inside/outside dynamic is not the only part of the location that matters for the dangers these events present. The big protests mainly occurred in big cities and were mainly attended by locals. The Sturgis rally happens in the middle of nowhere, people come from all over, and then head back home to places that are generally more rural. Sturgis is therefore much more likely to spread the virus to people and places who wouldn't have had much exposure otherwise."

<comment><USER13> > mainly attended by locals

Significant percentage of the arrestees are _not_ locals. Look it up. Booking records are public.

<comment><USER15> ...which is pretty much completely irrelevant when it comes to the percentage of locals at a protest, because the number of people arrested at a protest is only a tiny percentage of the number of attendees and is not a random sample.

<comment><USER13> It's not "irrelevant" when it comes to spreading COVID though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In Texas, thousands of people attend drag races without masks.

[http://twitch.tv/murda](http://twitch.tv/murda)

Attendees do not seem to care, the venue does not enforce their policies, authorities do not take action...

I would not be surprised if there is a massive outbreak COVID-19 in that town.

</comment><comment><USER17> really? And many thousands of protesters all across the country (many not wearing masks and certainly not social distancing) aren't a 'superspreading event'?

I don't think I've even seen one article mentioning it...because racism.

<comment><USER18> Almost every bit of protesting footage I've seen has the majority of people wearing masks, which is a huge deal. In the footage of the motorcycle rally in sturgis, I have seen almost no one wearing masks. On top of this, people protesting were almost exclusively outdoors whereas there are tons of stores, bars, etc in sturgis that people went in.

Your comment is just ridiculous political pandering, trying to focus the topic other events that aren't similar in the slightest.

<comment><USER19> >On top of this, people protesting were almost exclusively outdoors whereas there are tons of stores, bars, etc in sturgis that people went in.

The inside/outside dynamic is not the only part of the location that matters for the dangers these events present. The big protests mainly occurred in big cities and were mainly attended by locals. The Sturgis rally happens in the middle of nowhere, people come from all over, and then head back home to places that are generally more rural. Sturgis is therefore much more likely to spread the virus to people and places who wouldn't have had much exposure otherwise.

Also we can't have this conversation while ignoring the false equivalency of these two events. There is a fundamental difference in the urgency of attending a protest versus attending the Sturgis rally. If they both presented the exact same danger to the population, Sturgis would still be a more egregious gathering due to being an entertainment event. We are in the middle of a pandemic. We can cut down on these large entertainment gatherings whether it is Sturgis or Coachella.

<comment><USER20> > There is a fundamental difference in the urgency of attending a protest > versus attending the Sturgis rally.

The constitution deliberately makes no such distinction.

<comment><USER19> How is that relevant? No one is talking about the Constitution. Neither I nor the parent comments I responded to ever mentioned that Strugis rally should have been shutdown by the government. We can criticize something or point out that it shouldn't have happened without us needing to have the Supreme Court weigh in.

From a moral perspective, getting people killed in order to have some fun is less defensible than getting people killed in support of civil rights. I wouldn't think that is a controversial statement.

<comment><USER20> > How is that relevant?

The relevance is obvious.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BMI: one person listening to his own music via the cloud is public performance - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110506/18425714192/bmi-says-single-person-listening-to-his-own-music-via-cloud-is-public-performance.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> A few observations:

1\. There _are_ well-settled copyright principles that hold a viewing event to be a "public performance" even though a single person only is doing the viewing at any given time. A leading case involved a video-store owner who owned one copy of each film he had in stock and who set up private viewing rooms in his establishment in which he allowed a patron to view a film privately that the patron had rented from the store. This enabled the store owner to buy a copyrighted video once and to set up a business in which he repeatedly displayed that video to multiple members of the public, one at a time. In that case, the court held that the showing of the one copy of the film owned by the video store owner repeatedly to different members of the public constituted a "public performance" (the case, _Columbia Pictures v. Redd Horne_ , may be found here: [http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1713962666875062...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17139626668750628957)). This case is offline law but the principle it articulates is clear. If copyright holders are in business to sell or license their copyrighted works, and if someone buys one copy of such work and sets up a business open to the public to make money from repeated showings of such work (albeit one at a time), the copyright owners are having the value of their works taken from them by the intermediary business owner, who gets to profit from such works without having obtained any right or license from the copyright owners to license such works to others. A leading copyright treatise (Nimmer) sums this up, then, by saying "if the same copy . . . of a given work is repeatedly played (i.e., 'performed') by different members of the public, albeit at different times, this constitutes a 'public' performance." (discussed here: [http://laboratorium.net/archive/2011/03/16/that_zediva_thing...](http://laboratorium.net/archive/2011/03/16/that_zediva_thing_its_so_not_going_to_work)). In this offline context, then, it is indisputable that you can have a "public" performance for copyright-law purposes from what is technically a private viewing.

2\. Logically, the one-copy rule should not apply to the case where I own my copy and merely choose to display it for my private viewing (or private listening in the case of music) through various methods of playback, including by use of a cloud service. And this is what both Google and Amazon are banking on in the way they have set up their cloud music services. Their theory is that the service they offer does nothing more than allow you to upload a song you already own and access it from different browsers and devices. To avoid the one-copy rule, neither Google nor Amazon "de-duplicate" user files, which means that users will literally access the exact files that they themselves uploaded into the service (meaning, therefore, that millions of copies of the same file may exist in the same cloud).

3\. The big test case that is pending in the courts is _EMI v. MP3Tunes_ , and this case will test whether the old offline rules should apply literally to the digital world. That is, MP3Tunes is a music locker that _does_ de- duplicate its files, i.e., stores one copy only of each song (rather than one copy for each file any user has uploaded) and uses that copy to enable users of the service to replay songs they have uploaded into the service (though not literally from the exact file that the user uploaded). It is this case - <USER2> the intermediary business owner is using "one copy" only to enable multiple members of the public to listen to the same song, albeit only for their own private listening - that the EMI lawyer is commenting upon when he says that one person listening to his own music via the cloud constitutes a "public performance." Though tone-deaf on how this must sound to the average person, the lawyer is basically reciting what the offline caselaw held in connection with the one-copy rule. This may indeed be irrational as applied to the digital world (since, in fact, the service is requiring each individual who listens to upload his individually-owned version of that song, which distinguishes this case from the video store owner who bought only one copy in total), but this is why he is calling it what he does.

4\. EFF has a good discussion of some of the key issues here: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archive> (see under the heading "Do music locker services violate current copyright laws?").

The fact that important web-based services are having to use such inefficient means as storing millions of versions of the same file just to deal with current copyright laws shows that is is high-time such laws were revamped for the digital age. The last major revision was in the 1970s. The laws in this area made sense in their day (at least for those who don't oppose IP rights of this type) but are today strained to the breaking point.

<comment><USER3> This argument about de-duplication reminds me of the excellent essay: "What Colour are your bits?"

<http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php>

<comment><USER4> Yes, thanks for reminding this essay. I think though that de-duplication is a lawyer oriented smoke-screen. It is based on a complete misunderstanding of Colour because Colour tracking happens at the wrong abstraction level. Colour does not exist in the computer but it is a property of the whole process. Therfore tracking content ownership doesn't happen at the bit-level of storing a copy or a pointer, but it is rather the consistency of the owner/content association.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ryan-allen A novel way to solve this problem is to stop signing new talent to the big labels.

Some of the music I listen to is signed to smaller labels who have much more liberal views when it comes to distribution and piracy. They host their own online stores that sell DRM-free albums usually at 50% of the cost of what you pay to big labels on iTunes, in stores, etc.

The vast majority of musicians and producers (i.e. not the Lady Gaga's or The Beatles or Michael Jackson) make their money by touring and performing. Selling their music on CD and in digital formats is considered a marketing method and token income at best.

My hope is that Big Music become more and more irrelevant (and less influential) as artists realise that they can do better without them.

<comment><USER5> BMI is not a record company. It is a performance rights organization. Lots of independent label artists have their work registered through BMI (myself included & I get checks quarterly from BMI). This seems crazy/greedy to me, though. How about if I put my work on a website (which I do -- free for listening or downloading)? I would hope that's not considered public performance.

<comment><USER6> It is a public performance, which is within your rights to control as the copyright owner....unless you assigned copyright to BMI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I figured this would happen. I was going to write a service exactly like Cloud Drive and Google Music, but I knew that as soon as I had more than 10 users I would be inundated with angry RIAA lawyers. I guess I was right.

(I would still like to simply see BMI's catalog blocked. If the services are popular but BMI won't allow Amazon and Google to host their music, then that's BMI's loss rather than Amazon's or Google's.)

Also, the record companies wonder why nobody buys music: this is why.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you find yourself having trouble reconciling this with the real world _(1)_ , remember that lawyer world is a little different. You might be looking at a version of the "Chewbacca defense" writ large. A solid legal case can be completely illogical in the real world but entirely internally consistent (and effective) in the legal one.

Think of it from their perspective. BMI is essentially an organization of lawyers. This is what they _do_. If it is possible to twiddle the levers on the legal-political complex and stymie your competitors, why ever wouldn't you? This isn't some dastardly new plot to kill teh intertubes, its the same thing they've been doing since 1940, it just looks really bizarre when done in the 21st century. Kind of like showing up in your 1942 swimming costume for this year's spring break at Daytona Beach.

 _1)_ But its my music, on my storage, played on my device! How can that be...

</comment><comment><USER9> so what he's saying is that even if I paid for the music I store in my amazon cloud drive, just because amazon probably doesn't store a separate copy of each song of my collection amazon should be paying him performance royalty? This dude a moron. Good thing he's going after Amazon and Google, that way his stupidity will cost him a lot in wasted lawsuits.

</comment><comment><USER10> This kind of stance is further proof of their impending irrelevancy.

You know what would be cool? If publishing organizations strove to outdo the hardcore curators out there, to invent a more detailed form of musical notation beyond MIDI, open source the whole shit, and become the de facto standards barer of musical transcription. I'd like to see detailed engineering notes as well, and all the samples and full tracks, with all effects broken out, and timed to the nanosecond, in a zip FLAC file.

If they can achieve technical excellence like that, and give it away for free, I'd sign whatever paper they put in front in me.

<comment><USER11> Nine Inch Nails did that with Ghosts, they provided editable multitrack recordings, and essentially gave it away for free, inviting anyone to edit and remix.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure he got the idea from the same place, Oink and other such OCD pirates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe I'll help out BMI. The hard of hearing use hearing aids! They're illegally rebroadcasting a public performance! SUE! SUE! SUE!

</comment><comment><USER13> I believe in paying for music and artists being compensated for their art etc, but the music industry's constant myopic greed is pushing me away from wanting to pay for music at all.

Way to go music industry.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is like listening to grandpa out on his lawn screaming how he is going to kick all our asses. The war is over, you guys lost, move on.

<comment><USER15> Except grandpa is crazy, has a shotgun, and is friends with the Sheriff (the RIAA, MPAA, their lobbyists and congresspeople they bought).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The music industry have a piracy problem, yet they discourage services created to remove the piracy problem. The labels that get stuck in this eternal fight are going to lose out big time to those that realise that attacking the problem head on is a waste of time and build up a business around the new market conditions.

</comment><comment><USER17> The main source of frustration with this is the fact that they see music as a physical product, while using "intellectual property" laws to prevent any other form.

If it were up to "them" the only way to listen to music is either commercial radio: which pays for licenses, or purchasing physical media and with it the "license" to play it in the privacy of your own home. Anything else is difficult, and DRM and other measures try to institute the same laws governing physical products on digital media (you can't copy your car ;-) ).

This is the argument they get attacked on time and time again, with people saying they don't innovate their business model and try to prevent anyone from innovating as well.

Wait... is it really 2011?

</comment><comment><USER18> If I have a digital music player and digital speakers (amp inside the speaker) in my home, playing my owned music, is that a public performance? Of course not.

Well if the digital music player is now 1000 miles away from my speakers, how is that any different?

</comment><comment><USER19> aaaand, the music industry takes yet another step down the long stairwell to obsolescence. Really guys, we want your product, we'll even pay for it, but you _gotta_ update the delivery mechanism to get with the times.

That's all you have to do.

</comment><comment><USER20> A commenter jokes "It's only a matter of time before we have to pay licenses to listen to the music we've already bought. What?! You think the music you stream over speaker wires and earbuds is free?!"

One word: HDMI.

</comment><comment><USER21> The source of this, <http://www.bmi.com/news/entry/551409>, is the longest piece of bullshit I have ever read. Oh brother.

</comment><comment><USER22> one couldn't play more by the rules of the industry than Zediva. Zediva only eliminated some technical inefficiencies. By attacking Zediva the industry clearly shows itself as just a Luddite fighting to defend the inefficiencies that are source of the industry's income. In 10-20 years it would be just another paragraph here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite>

</comment><comment><USER23> Big record companies seem to be adept at finding novel ways of making themselves anachronisms.

</comment><comment><USER24> So wait, my friend has a copy of your movie. I offer to pay YOU so I can watch his copy of the movie. And that's not okay because...?

<comment><USER6> Because you might pay more to get or rent your own copy of the movie?

That's the primary logic behind BMI's stance.

<comment><USER25> Not really, I already brought the movie.

Or rather I didn't because it wasn't yet available outside the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So if my home stereo is "streaming" music to the speakers in the next room that's considered a public performance too?

</comment><comment><USER27> Article wanted: "RIAA, big labels and performing rights organizations: decimating music since 1999."

<comment><USER28> They've been at it a lot longer than that. Payola, Hollywood accounting, abusive recording contracts, ... all of these things predate 1999 by far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> if a seemingly random stream of bits travels across the internet, from a seemingly random collection of bits on a cluster of virtual machines... does it make a sound?

</comment><comment><USER30> Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana.

</comment><comment><USER31> A private file hosted in rented space that I'm accessing is not public performance and I don't understand how we can stretch the definition of words to get to that conclusion.

Dear Music industry, grow up. Or sue, lose in court and miss out on all the revenue you could be enjoying. It really is your choice.</comment>


Show HN: git reblame - Repeatedly calls git-blame to see full history of pieces - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jolmg/git-reblame <comment><AUTHOR> I had one use-case I often came back to emacs' Magit for, and that was to more easily navigate the history of a file or of a particular function. I wrote this to make it easier to see a function's history from the command line.</comment>