WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/26/bacon-ham-sausages-processed-meats-cancer-risk-smoking-says-who?src=hn <comment><USER2> This seems pretty misleading. The WHO put these meats in the same class in terms of _certainty of being_ a carcinogen in humans, but I don't see any claim about the _rates of cancer caused_ by each being comparable. That is, they're convinced that it causes some nonzero amount of cancer, but how many cancers it causes is a separate issue.

Also, the picture at the top shows a cheeseburger, but ground beef is never actually mentioned in the article as an example of "processed meats". It represents an older consensus (seemingly unrelated to the current topic apart from the shared theme of "meat bad") that excessive red meat intake contributes to health problems.

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's the Guardian's fault. The BBC article ([http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34620617](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34620617)) does mention some numbers:

> Is meat as bad as smoking?

> No.

> Estimates suggest 34,000 deaths from cancer every year could be down to > diets high in processed meat.

> That is in contrast to one million deaths from cancer caused by smoking and > 600,000 attributed to alcohol each year.

<comment><USER4>
      600,000 attributed to alcohol each year.

That number is a bit misleading. Does that include the deaths say due to DUI,, liver damage, poisoning?

It ideally shouldn't as we are discussing carcinogens.

Edit: Added additional alcohol related deaths.

<comment><USER5> There are only about 30000 fatalities from all car driving per year.

<comment><USER4>
      The report indicates that worldwide the total number of road traffic
      deaths remains unacceptably high at 1.24 million per year.

[http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_st...](http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2013/en/)

<comment><USER5> In America [0] (I thought the other stats were American ones too), it actually says in [1] 480000 cigarette deaths which disagrees with the previous stats of 1 million, but a million isn't enough for the world surely?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

[1] [http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/healt...](http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's important to understand what "increased risk" means.

From the linked article:

> The IARC's experts concluded that each 50-gram (1.8-ounce) portion of > processed meat eaten daily increased the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%.

From a related article:

> To put this in perspective, the lifetime risk of colon cancer is 5 percent. > If you have a hot dog every day, your risk goes to 6 percent.

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-sausage-red-meat-world- he...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-sausage-red-meat-world-health- organization/)

<comment><USER7> The way the 18% figure is used in THIS article is extremely misleading/unhelpful. Thank you for clarifying exactly what they mean by that (the 5-6% thing puts it into perspective).

<comment><USER8> Meat has been linked with colorectal, prostate and breast cancer not to mention heart disease. So if you take more of an holistic view.. it is quite damaging to yourself.

<comment><USER9> Be aware that this doesn't count for all meat. Grass-fed red meat is actually healthy, partly because it contains way more Omega-3 compared to Omega-6 and seems to prevent cancer.

See also here: [http://www.anh-usa.org/you-are-what-your-food- ate/](http://www.anh-usa.org/you-are-what-your-food-ate/)

<comment><USER8> You may get more benefits from what the cow ate, but it is still probably a carcinogen. To avoid eating carcinogens, cut out the middleman and eat vegetables and leafy greens yourself.

<comment><USER9> No it's not. It's the opposite of a carcinogen. It becomes carcinogenic because of the food, grass-fed meat has anti-inflammatory properties, and therefore helps preventing cancer.

Vegetables and leafy greens are not the holy grail, because for this goes almost the same as meat. They can be full with pesticides and be nutrition deficient because of industrial farming.

Whatever you eat, if you want to avoid or lower your risk of getting cancer, eat only organic, non-processed food, ban sugar, and drastically limit the intake of fructose-rich fruits.

And for those who don't care, eat whatever you want, nobody stops you from doing so :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "No, processed meat has been classified in the same category as causes of cancer such as tobacco smoking and asbestos... but this does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous. The IARC classifications describe the strength of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than assessing the level of risk."

[http://www.iarc.fr/en/media- centre/iarcnews/pdf/Monographs-Q...](http://www.iarc.fr/en/media- centre/iarcnews/pdf/Monographs-Q&A_Vol114.pdf) <\- link seems to be down at the moment

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands " _and if you are a hairdresser or do shift work (both class 2A), you should seek a new career._ "

This line at the end of the article irked me. A friend of mine who was a hair stylist for 20 years is dying of brain cancer and her doctor's are pretty sure her exposure to chemicals on a daily basis had a role in her cancer.

While I understand the comment's attempt at humor, the risk these people have with their exposure to harmful chemicals is very real.

<comment><USER11> Never though about it that way. There are many other jobs that expose their workers to airborne chemicals. One that comes to mind immediately is anything near urban traffic.

Could society adapt for those workers to start wearing masks or similar protection. Doctors do that all the time, why not hairdressers?

<comment><USER12> Because doctors don't wear masks to protect themselves. They wear them to protect the patients and avoid spreading diseases.

<comment><USER11> _Because doctors don 't wear masks to protect themselves._

Of course they do, because they are also humans vulnerable to diseases. Even more so because they are exposed daily and are usually not the ones introducing diseases into the environment. The masks protect both the patient and the doctor. Mask can also protect doctors from chemicals they might be routinely exposed to.

In any case, they wear masks. Your comment is a red herring. The important part is the social stigma of (not) wearing masks and how to prevent it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      a member of the Meat Advisory Panel... said ""The top priorities
      for cancer prevention remain smoking cessation, maintenance of
      normal body weight and avoidance of high alcohol intakes.""

      emeritus fellow at the Institute of Food Research, also said the
      effect was small.

      The North American Meat Institute said defining red meat as a cancer
      hazard defied common sense.

Due to economies of McDonald's, Burger King et al, there appears to be an intense lobbying group

which would go against any attempt to bring forth discussion on this topic.

I won't be surprised if a decade or two from now we see the issue in the same light as Lead

poisoning primarily due to someone's[1] fight against the status quo.

On a related topic, there is an interesting documentary Cowspiracy [0] (available on Netflix)

which talks about the carbon footprint caused by the animal husbandry. Although it's feature

length, I think the first two acts are compelling.

[0] [http://www.cowspiracy.com/](http://www.cowspiracy.com/)

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

Edit: Flow.

<comment><USER13> "McDonald's, Burger King et al" aren't really affected by this. This is about smoked, salted or otherwise preserved meats. "Processed" doesn't covered mincing/grinding. They may be covered by the weaker claims about red meat in general.

<comment><USER8> Burgers count towards processed meats. Especially when it comes ready made from a factory for the staff in the restaurant to heat up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ok, so "processed" meats are bad... but what's the "processing" that makes them bad?

<comment><USER15> It's from nitrate curing. Ham, bacon, mamy sausages, and most lunch meats go through this process. Sometimes the chemical is added directly via saltpeter, and sometimes indirectly via stuff like celery juice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Basically: Don't eat anything because it will give you cancer. I've been living by that rule for about 15 minutes now, but I'm starting to get hungry.

<comment><USER17> I keep seeing this ridiculous (if jokey) strawman, but it makes no sense. Processed meat has been a known risk for a long time.

Need a list? [http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy- eating-p...](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating- plate/)

<comment><USER18> I agree. It's a legitimate concern though. People are bombarded with what is healthy or not. With fad diets and such. Who do you believe?

ED: oops... I should learn to read good. It says _avoid_ processed meats. I think it would be clearer to leave stuff off the plate which we are supposed to leave off our plate.

<comment><USER19> > _ps. Lol. That page lists processed meats._

Yes, as a thing to avoid:

 _Limit red meat, and avoid processed meats such as bacon and sausage._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone have a good source for articles that eschew the political commentary in favor of just presenting the study findings in a concise summary?

Does anyone actually care that the global lobbyists for meat don't agree that meat is a carcinogen (or that any lobbyists against meat would care that it is)?

<comment><USER21> This is the plight of today's journalism. Students are taught to find both sides of the issue and treat them equally, despite the fact that one side has a clear conflict of interest.

<comment><USER22> All sides in such arguments usually have a conflict of interest. The meat lobby is after money. The "regulate everything" crowd is after power.

<comment><USER22> _Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron 's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience._

\-- C.S. Lewis

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> But what specifically is it about processed meat that makes it more of a risk than fresh cuts of meat?

<comment><USER24> The nitrates used to preserve the meat. Although, your risk is elevated only a tiny fraction compared to say, smoking cigarettes.

<comment><USER25> Nope. The nitrates themselves aren't the issue.

It's the cooking that's the issue because the nitrates convert to nitrosomenes under high heat.

If nitrates were the issue, then we should stop eating celery because that's where the nitrates in processed meats come from, celery juice.

<comment><USER26> I'm pretty sure the concentration of nitrates is way smaller in a raw celery (as in taken from your garden) than what they actually put on meat.

<comment><USER27> Many (most?) supermarket brand bacon (and many other cured meats) are cured in celery juice. So I'm not so sure that's true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The article mentions bacon but doesn't differentiate between cured and uncured varieties. I was under the impression that uncured bacon avoided some of these issues mentioned in the article.

Edit: Assuming you don't have any issues with animal fats and regular salt (I don't).

<comment><USER9> Industrial farms feed their animals soy and corn, which is stored and therefore contains molds, including Ochratoxin A.

'Uncured' bacon is usually treated with celery salt and a bacteria culture. The bacteria transform the nitrates from celery salt into nitrites, and end up containing up to twice the amount of nitrites than their cured counterpart.

Obligatory links:

[http://www.foodsafetywatch.org/factsheets/ochratoxins/](http://www.foodsafetywatch.org/factsheets/ochratoxins/)

[http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/soy-alert/save- you...](http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/soy-alert/save-your-bacon- sizzling-bits-about-nitrites-dirty-little-secrets-about-celery-salt-and-other- aporkalyptic-news/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> All I want is a quick summary of the data (and methodology) the people mentioned are using to come to their conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is extremely odd that this article has a burger at the top of it. As far as I know burger patties aren't normally processed, someone correct me if I am wrong?

A lot of people find it surprising that aside from the veggies the patty is the next healthiest part of a burger. It is the bun and sauce which will kill you (both have a lot of sugar/complex carbs), and then maybe the cheese in third worst.

Just for an example, a Big Mac has three layers of bun (2x patties), while a McDouble has only two layers of bun (2x patties also). The McDouble has 7g of sugar, while the Big mac has 9g of sugar. Now, yes, the sauce will account for some of the delta here, but my point is those buns are extremely unhealthy.

As a strange result, it is often healthier to get smaller but stacked patties rather than a single patty that is larger since the buns, sauce, and cheese will be smaller also. That's why if you look at the Quarter Pounder (1x patty) at McDonald's it is much more unhealthy than the McDouble (more so than you'd expect), the McDouble (2x patties) is 7g of sugar, the single layer Quarter Pounder is 10g(!) of sugar.

</comment><comment><USER30> The same site in the "Related Content" section show articles saying processed meats are bad in 2009, 2010, 2011 as well.

Then another related article says increase of eating fruits and vegetables does not significantly help reduce risk of cancer either.

No meat. No fruits. No vegetables. Good thing the air we breath and water we drink is clean and doesn't cause ... hmm, nevermind. We're all screwed.

<comment><USER31> You realize there are meats that aren't processed? Fish, poultry and such are healthy and recommended.

Not sure how "fruits and vegetables does not significantly help reduce risk of cancer" is relevant. Do you only eat things if they _reduce_ the risk of cancer?

Vegetables are healthy and will help you live longer (fruits are also good but are a bit high in sugar if you consume a lot).

<comment><USER30> I merely pointed out the same site's "related content" area had a few more articles on same subject for a few years and then one about vegetables not reducing risk was "funny".

It may have been intended as a dark joke. We're all screwed. Har har har.

I do realize there are meats that aren't processed.

I do realize that fruits and vegetables are good for you.

How did you not .. I don't know .. get it? Instead of picking it a part literally?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What about smoked fish?

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder where roasted marshmallows rank?

<comment><USER19> Well, apparently wood fires aren't great for you, so unless you're roasting it over a gas flame, probably fairly high: [http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace- delusion](http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion)

<comment><USER34> I remember when that article first came out. As I note elsewhere, the fundamental flaw in his logic is thinking, 'if something is worse than tobacco smoke, then it must be banned!' My own thought is, 'if tobacco smoke is less bad than wood smoke, then it must not be banned!'

A world without wood smoke would be a poorer, sadder, less pleasant-smelling world. Yes, it's a pollutant. Yes, it's carcinogenic. But it's one of the things which makes life worth living.

<comment><USER35> > A world without wood smoke would be a poorer, sadder, less pleasant-smelling > world.

It would also be a world without trees, because that's the only way to avoid ever breathing wood smoke. Forest fires are a natural phenomenon and there is no known way of entirely preventing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> And wood smoke is more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke.

So what? I don't want to live in a world without bacon, sausages, roast beef, pipes and cigars!

The fundamental fallacy is the idea that tobacco is so dangerous that it, and anything comparably dangerous, must be banned. Tobacco's dangerous. Cigarettes are a really bad idea. Eating meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner is a pretty bad idea. Don't do that so much.

But you, I and everyone else on earth _will_ die sometime, of something: whether it's cancer, congestive heart failure or something else entirely, we _all_ die. The question is, will we live before we die?

<comment><USER36> > The fundamental fallacy is the idea that tobacco is so dangerous that it, > and anything comparably dangerous, must be banned.

Please name a country where selling or buying cigarettes is not legal.

> But you, I and everyone else on earth will die sometime, of something: > whether it's cancer, congestive heart failure or something else entirely, we > all die.

Strawman. By that logic we would not use safety belts or cars.

<comment><USER37> Really, we shouldn't use cars nearly so much as we do. But if we must, then the very modest inconvenience of having to wear a seatbelt is well worth the improvement in outcome should a crash occur.

That said, there's still plenty of controversy about all the laws around graduated carseats for children—that the carseat industry seems much more interested in emotional appeals than hard data is an obvious red flag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I guess this is important since we might start seeing class action law suits citing processed meats as a cause of cancer? The question is can you tell that the type of cancer was causing by the consumption of processed meat? When tobacco or asbestos is the cause, it seems to be fairly easy to tell what was the cause of cancer. Will we see warning labels pop up on our meat products?

</comment><comment><USER39> This confirms the findings described in the book "The China Study". It describes a massive long term survey done in china. Animal proteins is harming.

<comment><USER40> The China Study has been very thoroughly debunked. I think this article is probably the most highly thought of [http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the- china-study-fact-or-fal...](http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study- fact-or-fallac/)

<comment><USER41> It seems Denise Minger has changed her mind: [http://rawfoodsos.com/2015/10/06/in-defense-of-low-fat-a- cal...](http://rawfoodsos.com/2015/10/06/in-defense-of-low-fat-a-call-for- some-evolution-of-thought-part-1/#modern)

<comment><USER42> Up to a point: "Though in case you're wondering, I stand by my criticisms of the China Study and Campbell's rat studies. Nothing in this post supports the idea that animal protein is uniquely harmful, and acknowledging when some parts of the plant-based movement are legit doesn't give a free pass to the ones that aren't!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> In other news: reading books causes rectal cancer too. All tested groups that got cancer were reading books at least 1 cubic centimeter in volume per week</comment>


Facebook ends platform policy banning apps that copy its features - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/facebook-allows-competitors/ <comment><USER2> Reminded of this Chamath quote attributed to Bill Gates in an interview with Semil Shah about Facebook's platform.

"I remember when we raised money from Bill Gates...and Gates said something along the lines of, 'That's a crock of shit. This isn't a platform. A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it's a platform.'"

[http://haystack.vc/2015/09/17/transcript-chamath-at- strictly...](http://haystack.vc/2015/09/17/transcript-chamath-at-strictlyvcs- insider-series/)

<comment><USER3> > "I remember when we raised money from Bill Gates...and Gates said something > along the lines of, 'That's a crock of shit. This isn't a platform. A > platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the > value of the company that creates it. Then it's a platform.'"

Interesting. But Facebook's platform != Facebook, so I don't understand the maxim that "the value of everybody that uses the platform must exceed the value of the company that created it" in order for it to be true.

You could say Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store are platforms, they even offer services (api/web-services, libs, frameworks, etc.) and devs build on-top and make living off it. But that ISN'T the company. Google has search, cars, ads, etc. Apple has it's own crap going.

Furthermore, Apple is worth 1 trillion dollars. Must the value of the platform as determined by "everybody that uses it" exceed 1 trillion? Or must it exceed the yearly revenue of Apple instead?

<comment><USER4> I believe this use of the word "platform" in this context is a much more specific meaning where it's a counterpoint to the idea of an "aggregator." It comes up in discussions about modern large tech companies being "aggregators" or "platforms," and this is the point (allegedly) Gates is making here, that Facebook is much more an aggregator of content that users bring into the walled garden than they are an economic platform for other businesses, which is what Microsoft was/is.

<comment><USER5> If you believe that all this advertising spending and social media marketing activity actually adds more to companies on Facebook than it does to Facebook itself, then you sort of could call Facebook a platform per this definition. An advertising platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The move will significantly reduce the risk of building on the Facebook > platform.

What's to stop them from reversing the policy change? Once bitten, twice shy.

<comment><USER7> They put an enforceable promise in there that they wouldn't do that. Wait no, they could have but didn't.

<comment><USER8> Why would a company ever impose binding restrictions on itself?

<comment><USER9> It's a PR move. Probably proposed by one of many third party agencies that Sandberg 'wasn't aware of but takes full responsibility for'.

<comment><USER10> I think it's more likely this is to avoid problems with the slew of dating apps that depend on Facebook now that they're starting to roll out their dating feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good idea, they'll get even more data on emerging competitors than they used to get from their traffic-sniffing VPN app before Apple pulled it from the App Store a few months ago: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-starts- pushing-it...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-starts-pushing-its- data-tracking-onavo-vpn-within-its-main-mobile-app/)

<comment><USER12> a Facebook VPN? what an oxymoron. how is this not a bigger story/discussion?

<comment><USER13> It was pretty big news at the time, but this being the year of outrageous news and all...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great, if anyone has any spare cycles - please rip out Events from Facebook into another app so I don't have to open Facebook anymore.

<comment><USER15> They did, check out the Local app they released.

<comment><USER16> You still can't create events via third-party apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They _had_ a platform. Then they killed it by killing anybody who did something better than them on the platform. Now they have a burned out husk of a platform. Who wants to live and work in that? The kids don't even like facebook, anymore (perhaps partly because it's been stagnant due to lack of fresh outside ideas, I dunno...it's not really my area, and I've always been ambivalent about facebook even when it was still cool).

<comment><USER18> "I hated Facebook before it was uncool" is certainly a new twist on an old trope.

<comment><USER17> "Ambivalent" is the word I used. I'm older than the original facebook demographic. I was well into adulthood when facebook took off. It took me a few years to even open an account, and then only because friends, mostly younger friends, were using it to organize stuff that I wanted to be involved in. I didn't hate it, I just didn't really see the point in it. I figured it was yet another social network that I could ignore forever, because it would fail in a few years to be replaced by the next social network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Alas, they can still add and remove such a policy, or tuned variants thereof, at their own discretion at any time. And have done so in the past. And would be keenly motivated to do so in the future.

So them not-having-the-policy on a particular day N isn't really much comfort for those who'd like to build functionality for day N+1, when Facebook may have rewritten the rules to its own advantage again.

Will they contractually commit to a policy for a specified period of time?

</comment><comment><USER20> This is great timing.

My new startup, EvilCorp is just about to launch a new social platform where we give your private data directly to Russians trying to subvert our Democracy.

Now we can just launch directly on Facebook since they no longer ban us from copying this core feature.

<comment><USER9> Even if you were targeted with racist misinformation, isn't it your responsibility not to be easily convinced?

<comment><USER21> I would say it's our responsibility to have an electoral system that can't be so easily fooled

[https://outlookzen.com/2018/11/18/a-democracy-that-cannot- be...](https://outlookzen.com/2018/11/18/a-democracy-that-cannot-be-hacked/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So Facebook copies every major app and service and then destroys its lifeline immediately killing the work of creators who innovated. Immediately after that Facebook copies the exact same service resulting in little risk, ingenuity and an almost certainty of success.

Sad truth is many great developers will trust them again because there's a huge opportunity here but they'll be smarter this time around. Don't put all the eggs in the same basket and plan ahead a solid pivot when (not if) Facebook renegs.

<comment><USER23> >they'll be smarter this time around.

Nah. There's a fool born every second. Just 5% of developers actually follow tech news. The rest have allowed their jobs to take over their lives.

If people bothered to pay attention to the past, the world would be a much better place. Google, Apple, FB... wouldn't be this dominant because we would have learned from the recent past.

<comment><USER24> Source on that 5% figure? Can't find it with a couple of quick searches.

<comment><USER23> Made an estimate from my personal experience. Simply saying, "only a fraction of developers..." would be a weaker statement.

<comment><USER25> I consider more accurate statements to be stronger statements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Of course Facebook would made this change now. They have the freedom to do this now. They have effectively won social at this point. They control 3 of the biggest mobile social apps in the world: Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook itself. No startup really poses a realistic threat to them anymore. This policy change is just FB saving face in the eyes of regulators (and developers like here on HN).

<comment><USER27> I think you're getting ahead of yourself. TikTok stands a real chance to dethrone them over the next X years.

<comment><USER28> I thought TikTok was sort of like, Vine mixed with Musical.ly - is it a robust enough offering to do messaging/events/groups/marketplace, etc?

<comment><USER29> I dont see my HAM radio group making the transition from FB to TikTok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is awesome. Maybe then we can finally have a separate group / events app without getting the crappy Facebook feed and notifications. I think most people use facebook either for messenger, or for the group and event features.

<comment><USER31> Funny, I use Facebook for the exact inverse of this. I actively avoid messenger, group, and event features. I use it to keep in touch with family and share family photos.

<comment><USER30> Don't you share your family photos in a group? Then you and I have the same use (except for the events).

Or do you share your family photos with all your friends?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think this is facebook getting scared of regulation and so thinking that if facebook's "features" get adopted more so, then they can be pinpointed by authorities less. My thoughts only.

<comment><USER33> This announcement comes just days after FB hired a crack team of anti-trust defense lawyers, of course it's a move to defend against potential regulation/litigation. I'm not saying their defense team caused this change either, just that there this fits a pattern that shows FB's leadership is very concerned about potential government action against them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd have to read the actual policy, but i think this would enable two cool things:

\- Third party Facebook and messenger apps

\- Bridges between Facebook and other social networks (where you have a FB proxy account that you don't touch manually)

Thinking of it, it seems unlikely that this is actually going to be allowed. More likely, they are talking about if Facebook makes e.g. their own Candy Crush, you are still allowed to keep the original on FB.

<comment><USER35> I'd love a 3rd party Messenger client. I absolutely despise their app. It isn't even an IM client anymore - there are tons of irrelevant features that make it hard to use, e.g. the Games tab, the tab with bots and the Days.

And for the love of whatever, please let me use my phone's camera app.

Before you try to prove me wrong - are you sure you didn't just get used to it? Because I don't like to get used to stuff I don't like.

<comment><USER18> I switched to Facebook's own Messenger Lite app a while back and it's a huge improvement. I think it's aimed at third world users but it does everything I need it to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anybody that builds an app on a "platform" that can be taken away overnight is a fool. Facebook has made it clear that if they want to change a policy, they could care less about your "business".

<comment><USER37> Off topic, but as a non-english native speaker the phrase "could care less" always bothers me as I read it literally to mean someone does indeed care, since they can care less. Is this one of those cases where the meaning changes through actual use like "literally" now meaning not necessarily "to be taken literally"?

<comment><USER38> No, people just say it incorrectly. It should be 'couldn't care less'.

<comment><USER39> But if enough people say it incorrectly long enough, it becomes correct, no?

Not that I disagree that it hasn't happened yet. I too find it quite annoying when people say they "could care less".

<comment><USER40> Exactly!

It really is suppose to be "couldn't care less". Meaning, that they are at level 0/100 of the caring meter.

But as languages go, we tend to move towards an easier way to say the same thing.

"could care less" sounds similar, means the same, and that most people associates it with the former phrase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "It's a trap!"

Facebook is a software company and any successful software built on top of it will be copied and integrated into the core platform. They are just looking for their next "inspiration"

</comment><comment><USER42> So Facebook realizes that it's namesake website isn't producing as much value as it used to, and that by enabling users to customize their experience they retain control of the data. But how can they monetize the third party apps? Acquisitions? Betting most users will continue using the core website?

<comment><USER43> > Betting most users will continue using the core website?

This is my guess. A desperate attempt to bring back its core users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Facebook: The Last Chapter

They're becoming Yahoo...they need insane qtr to qtr growth or else its stock gets smashed, and takes everything else with it. Who wants to work for a has- been?

Google escaped it by adding ads virtually on 100% of the page and added ads one by one on mobile pages and didn't do them much harm. How many ads are now on mobile, 4 or 5? Google still can monetize Maps and Translate and people are doing more of their stuff online.

I guess FB can add more ads but "everyone" has or had FB so adding new users is a challenge. Not sure how Whatsapp can be monetized, in a way that is worth trying.

</comment><comment><USER45> Cue the beginning of the end. This is a strategic, not tactical decision, and one I wasn't expecting Facebook to make anytime soon...unless they are in worse shape than even the naysayers suggest.

</comment><comment><USER46> That's it. I'm leaving anything related to facebook. I mean a company should have minimum level of ethics. This is a absolute trash of a company.

<comment><USER47> So you didn't leave when they HAD the policy banning competitors, but decide to leave when the remove the ban?

<comment><USER48> Sounds rational to me. To GP's point, at least the former policy was somewhat honest. By announcing this "reversal" it's like a lie that involves time travel. That is, they just lied again, and will prove it so at some future point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Given all the awesome tech to come out of Facebook, I often wonder why their platform can be so hard to build against.

I want to like this move, but a platform is only as good as its API, and for years their API offers have been poor. The Cambridge Analytica scandal didn't exactly help in this regard.

This feels like a mixed message. One of wanting to be open, but also one of knowing that they can't allow access to personal data because they cannot (or will not) police its use. The cynic in me (and everyone else it seems) believes this is a regulation thing, and nothing to do with letting people build on their platform.

</comment><comment><USER50> What next? FBML again?

<comment><USER51> Heavens no: FBSON FTW!

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Just check my article regarding Facebook Live [https://thinkery.me/mayurbhattseo/5b7fddd81cb602f862000c50](https://thinkery.me/mayurbhattseo/5b7fddd81cb602f862000c50)

</comment><comment><USER53> Facebook is acting scared.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wait. There are apps on the Facebook platform? Haven't they crippled any and all capabilities of the platform by ensuring that you can't build anything useful on it?

</comment><comment><USER54> Deleted my Facebook account long back, so I'm curious: are FB apps still a big thing? Is the quality any better because of stricter rules or is it pretty much the same?

</comment><comment><USER55> The amount of companies that have been burned from Facebook is staggering. And it not just fasgarewq

</comment><comment><USER56> too little, too late.

the exodus has already begun

</comment><comment><USER57> Yeah...ends the policy just to restart it later!

</comment><comment><USER58> "We've run out of ideas for how to improve Facebook. Maybe we should let developers come up with some ideas again so we can copy them."

<comment><USER59> Exactly what I thought. "... and then, once we are satisfied for a couple more years, we can put the same policy back into place"

<comment><USER60> I doubt they need to, copying successful features is enough since their own version is the default and they can jam it in users faces in ways that third parties can't.

And just like their acquisitions based on Onvao data, they'll have a whole lot of information on what ideas are worth stealing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Facebook API are becomed more irrilevant year after year. This change want change the situation.

</comment><comment><USER62> Could lead to turtles all the in..

infinite recursion to the centre...</comment>


The quest for an infinitely patient tutor - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fjmubeen/the-quest-for-an-infinitely-patient-tutor-3efd9e682c6b#.i6sne5bc7 <comment><USER2> I think the most important attribute of a good tutor is time. I tutored introductory courses in CS during undergrad and found if students saw their tutor making a time commitment to their studies they would often make an equal or greater commitment themselves. If students saw a tutor slacking off or frequently rescheduling appointments they would often disengage entirely.</comment>


Toronto couple takes up #vanlife as a way around skyrocketing rents - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestar.com/life/2017/10/20/escaping-torontos-rental-crisis-with-vanlife.html <comment><AUTHOR> The Youtube video[1] linked from the article is pretty wild - describes how they built the van and what materials they used.

[1]: [https://youtu.be/obQt4WxTYV4](https://youtu.be/obQt4WxTYV4)</comment>


OKtrends: The Best Questions For A First Date - <AUTHOR> http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-best-questions-for-first-dates

<comment><USER2> Anyone spot an inverse relationship between religion and literacy on that last picture? haha</comment>


Memory Model Verification at the Trisection of Software, Hardware, ISA (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.07547 <comment><USER2> The paper looks interesting (though I'm not sure how practical it is) but what prompts me to comment is the horrible neologism "trisection".

A "dissection" is to take apart (to transitively section, in other words). If it were to section something in two there would be only one "s". And even reading the paper, the word the authors should have used is good old "intersection".

<comment><AUTHOR> What do mean by practical? They find problems with the RISC-V MCM and also with the C11 -> Power and ARMv7 compiler mappings.

<comment><USER2> That's a good question -- I should not have been so terse/flip. I agree they _do_ find some interesting issues and that's why I liked the paper.

On the practicality side: If I read the paper correctly this is a lint like tool for finding suspected problems (hence e.g. the "litmus tests" \-- the tool iterates out the possible states, which is great). It isn't a tool for finding new problems. The compiler testing is interesting (I'm an former compiler guy) but reading Sec 7 didn't lead me to believe it could identify code generation problems in cases of very high optimizations.

Also a lot of recent security issues have been in the implementation of the microarchitecture (not just microcode bugs but functional unit errors such as the recent hyper threading leaks).

Maybe I am being too harsh?</comment></comment></comment>


Reservations for Taco Bell's hotel sell out in 2 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/27/taco-bell-hotel-reservations-sell-out-in-2-minutes.html <comment><USER2> That place is going to be crammed to the gills with Instagram "influencers."

Recommendation: nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hope the toilet paper is soft.</comment>


SonarSnoop: Active Acoustic Side-Channel Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.10250 <comment><USER2> If anyone wants to try a demonstration of sonar on their own laptop and learn how it works along the way by coding part of it, one of the classes I took and later graded labs for has a Jupyter notebook you can download for Lab 1: Laptop Sonar here: [https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee123/sp18/labs.html](https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee123/sp18/labs.html)

It is an assignment but I promise it's fun :)

You'll want to have the appropriate anaconda installed for python 2.7 to be able to run it, and pyaudio.

edit: clarification

</comment><comment><USER3> Some previous discussion here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17916200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17916200)</comment>


Shell Scripting with Objective-C - <AUTHOR> http://blog.manbolo.com/2014/06/01/shell-scripting-with-objectivec

<comment><USER2> Decided to give it a shot in bash.

        #!/bin/bash
        set -eu

        curl -s "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/manbolo/appicon/master/mask.png" >"icon_mask.png"

        for app_id in "$@"
        do
            metadata=$(curl -s "http://itunes.apple.com/us/lookup?id=$app_id")
            icon_url=$(echo $metadata | jq -r ".results[0].artworkUrl512")
            name=$(echo $metadata | jq -r ".results[0].trackCensoredName")

            icon_base="icon_$name"
            curl -s "$icon_url" >"$icon_base.png"
            convert "$icon_base.png" "icon_mask.png" -compose copy-opacity -composite "$icon_base.png"

            for size in 1024 512 120 114 60 57
            do
        	convert "$icon_base.png" -resize "${size}x${size}" "${icon_base}_${size}x${size}.png"
            done
        done

        rm icon_mask.png

Run like

        ./appicon.bash  400274934 598581396

Notes

\- didn't replicate the slugify

\- dependencies: imagemagick, jq

\- here without spaces: [http://pastebin.com/yBPwHwdk](http://pastebin.com/yBPwHwdk)

\- to get the same clarity as the python & Obj-C samples, I'd probably be approaching the same length.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here, the bash version is too beautiful: compact and clean! I will include it in the article if you're ok!

<comment><USER2> Sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is very cool! The amount of functionality in modern application frameworks like Cocoa is really amazing, and it is a shame that it tends to be ignored/inaccessible for scripting tasks.

Here is an implementation in Objective-Smalltalk ([http://objective.st](http://objective.st)):

        #!/usr/bin/env stsh
        #-<void>processIconForApp:appId
        framework:AppKit load.
        framework:EGOS_Cocoa load.

        nonChars := NSCharacterSet letterCharacterSet invertedSet.
        str := '_'.
        [ :self  |
           ((self componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:nonChars) componentsJoinedByString:str) lowercaseStri
        ] installInClass: NSString  withMethodHeaderString:'slugString'.

        mask := http://raw.githubusercontent.com/manbolo/appicon/master/maskInverted.png.
        appInfo := ref:http://itunes.apple.com/us/lookup  getWithArgs id: appId

        iconURL := var:appInfo/results/0/artworkUrl512.
        name := var:appInfo/results/0/trackCensoredName.
        icon := context evaluateScriptString: iconURL.

        #(1024 512 120 114 60 57 ) do:[ :width  |
          c := MPWCGBitmapContext rgbBitmapContext: width @ width.
          c scale: width / icon pixelsWide.
          c maskedBy:mask draw:[ :aContext | aContext drawImage:icon. ].
          scaled := c image.
          outname := name slugString ,'_', width stringValue, '_', width stringValue , '_.png'.
          file:{outname} := scaled representationUsingType:4 properties:nil.
        ].

This processes a single icon per call. The only dependency apart from AppKit (and obviously Objective-Smalltalk) is MPWDrawingContext, which I load via EGOS_Cocoa.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ok, `NSImage initWithContentsOfURL` is _awesome_. I haven't ever done much GUI coding, is that a standard type of thing in GUI toolkits?

(also, the pedant in me would like to point out that this is not "shell scripting" as you're not scripting a shell, but it's super cool regardless)

<comment><USER5> Shell scripting usually means writing in your shells (e.g sb, csh, zsh) native script. The author is using it to mean small scripts that he runs in a shell, which is fine with me.

I'm starting to use Go for these sorts of things because it's really fast. I'd try objc but if I want to move my programs to a Linux server, I'm out of luck.

<comment><USER6> You're not out of luck when it comes to using objc on linux, you just have to forgo a lot of the newer APIs. But if you're using it on a server, chances are you won't miss the GUI APIs that GNUstep lacks.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, I had an entire server blog engine written in objc, I had it running quite well on a Mac VPS (Lion running on vmware on Xserves), that I intended to move over to a Linode.

But I wanted libdispatch, blocks, all the stuff in the newer objc runtime, etc. Back then that meant playing all sorts of games compiling a specific objc runtime (there's more than one outside of apple), in a specific order with other things from GNUstep, using clang at certain steps instead of gcc to compile it all. It was a mess, but if I had really wanted to I probably could have pulled it off, and now I'm sure things have improved. I moved the entire thing to python and forgot about it though.

But I've always liked the idea of writing little things that have no GUI of any kind in objc, I wrote a few commandline utilities in objc and loved it. Background services on the system (mac or linux either one) would be fun too I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This bit about summed it up for me:

"You can say that [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:resultsData options:0 error:nil]; is more verbose than r.json() but verbosity is an Objective-C convention, for the better or the wors[e]"

For this sort of task, like one of the other commenters, I would almost certainly write something quick and simple (and fairly unstructured) in bash; if it needed to be more maintainable, I'd write it in Ruby. Using a verbose, static typed language just seems wrong here.

Of course, for any given programmer and any given task, using the language with which they are most familiar is often a very good option (obviously only in circumstances where it is possible to perform the task in that language and its specific attributes don't jeopardise the successful running of the task).

</comment><comment><USER9> The objective-c with ARC support really enjoys some advantages script programing languages enjoy. Apple added many syntax sugar such as `@[]` to build array and `@{}` to build dictionary, which makes it easy to write.

So I am not surprised someone is trying to use it as a so-called shell script. The cocoa frameworks really contains a lot of convenient API (ex. when it comes to python, you have to install PIL or something else to process images). But on the other hand the objective-c shell scripting can not be used on platform other than OSX. That is a disadvantage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi author here!

It was more a play experiment than a true try to replace Python/Ruby/Go scripting. I was very intrigued by "Objective-C Minimalism" [http://bou.io/ObjectiveC-Minimalism.html](http://bou.io/ObjectiveC- Minimalism.html) and wanted to see what would be scripting in Objective-C with all new features (Objects literals, ARC etc...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cringed when opening the link, expecting to find AppleScript. Things turned out better than expected!

</comment><comment><USER11> Author could combine both worlds with pyobjc. Might be interesting to add that as a comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, I didn't know pyobjc at all, sounds very cool: power of Cocoa with expressiveness of Python!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Personally I find the objective c stuff to take longer to read and understand just because there is allot more text.

<comment><USER13> What is going on in the below line?

        c = [t v]

Can you tell me what c represents, and where it got its value? Sure, from [t v], but what are those? No, you can't. You finished reading it really quickly, but you understand very little about what is going on.

"A lot more text" is there for a reason: to explain what is going on.

How about:

        cellsToUpdate = [tableView visibleCells]

This code tells you exactly what each item means. I find clear naming really nice to work with. Not that I would necessarily use exactly that line as a way of doing things, but hopefully you get the idea.

<comment><USER14> I like Objective-C a whole lot, but this is a shitty example. You didn't show what "a lot more text" looks like, you showed everyone what "proper variable names" look like.</comment></comment></comment>


The senators who say linking to certain sites should be a felony - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110513/11210514265/senators-who-say-merely-linking-to-certain-sites-should-be-felony.shtml <comment><USER2> Let's take this speculative legislation down the slippery slope, shall we? Next stop: full-speed collision with the First Amendment!...

Putting the URL in question on a website... but it's not actually a hyperlink, just plain text? Felony or not?

Printing the URL on a t-shirt and selling them? Felony or not?

Passing out pamphlets that list the URL? Felony or not?

Mentioning the URL in a news publication? Felony or not?

Telling your friend the URL? Felony or not?

<comment><USER3> Let's substitute one criminal activity for another. Let's say instead of linking to a site that allows you to download copyrighted material, we were talking about linking to a site that allowed you to order a hit on your wife/husband. Or a site that allowed you to order custom-made child pornography. (1)

I'm pretty sure that, if that were the site in question, many of your rhetorical questions won't seem quite as ridiculous. In fact, I'm pretty sure even the last question you pose, telling a friend the URL, can in some cases be construed as illegal, and certainly immoral. Again, not all cases, but some cases.

And if we forget the slippery slope fallacy and focus on just the linking, how would you feel if a news website actually linked to a site that allows people to download child pornography? Or allows people to order a hit on someone?

1 - I'm _not_ saying copyright infringement is anywhere near the level of wrong I'm talking about. It's just that using something that is clearly considered wrong to all people, is a great way to clear up, in your own mind, whether what you're objecting to is the text of the bill, or the fact that it's talking about copyright infringement. I'm guessing most people here would be all for a law that banned passing out the URL of a site that solicited murders, etc. But when talking about copyright infringement, your preconceived notion that copyright infringement is OK gets in the way.

EDIT: Minor fixes.

<comment><USER4> _Let's say instead of linking to a site that allows you to download copyrighted material, we were talking about linking to a site that allowed you to order a hit on your wife/husband._

These sites don't need any special laws about linking: once law enforcement gets wind of them, they will be gone instantly. All an investigator needs to do is order a hit and then arrest the dude that shows up to execute it. That's the end of that business.

Copyright infringement is hard to enforce because it's peer-to-peer and can happen outside the US' jurisdiction (see TPB). This makes it hard to build a case against someone: uploading 10MB of a movie to someone on the swarm is hardly massive copyright infringement, and if they're outside of the US, you can't do anything anyway. So making linking illegal is their last hope: maybe people won't find the tracker sites and P2P will die.

Not bloodly likely. The links will just move out of the US too.

<comment><USER3> "These sites don't need any special laws about linking: once law enforcement gets wind of them, they will be gone instantly."

But you said it yourself in the next sentence - what if the sites are operating outside the United States, in a country over which the US has no control at all?

Let's say I can order a hit from a site in Country X, and the US can't stop the site. Should I be allowed to spread a link to that site around? In fact, if I were to tell someone the link and he went and ordered a hit, I'm pretty sure I could be jailed as an accomplice.

IANAL by any means - am I wrong? Would love a lawyer to weigh in here.

<comment><USER4> Yes, you should be able to spread the link around. Hits happening outside of the US' jurisdiction is not the US' problem.

<comment><USER3> To clarify, I'm talking about hits happening in the US, but ordered from a website outside the US, over which the US has no jurisdiction, and therefore can't take down.

(Look at my other comment in this thread for another example).

<comment><USER4> You should still be able to link to the site. Censorship is censorship.

If the site is outside of the US but is designed for people in the US to use, it's going to need to accept payment from people in the US. The way you make this site go away is by stopping the flow of money, not by telling people not to tell other people about it. The first way works. The second way does not.

To bring this back to P2P, the reason they can't go after the money is there is no money. That's what annoys the governments so much; people are trading movies for free. This makes it not-very-illegal and very hard to stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once again, these are not the senators who think linking to a website should be a felony, these are the senators who have no idea what they are doing and are supporting bills handed to them by the copyright lobby.

Not that that's any better.

<comment><USER6> Don't let them fool you, these people are not dumb. They know exactly what they're doing.

<comment><USER7> In that case, I don't understand their motivation.

<comment><USER8> They obey the name on the check, and yours isn't on it. <http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Senator's campaign contributions from entertainment lobby

* Diane Feinsten: $1,278,337

* Patrick Leahy: $897,666

* Al Franken: $802,573

* Charles E. Schumer $490,400

* Lindsey Graham: $224,161

* Sheldon Whitehouse $201,100

* Orrin Hatch: $143,826

* Chuck Grassley $116,650

* Amy Klobuchar: $171,514

* Chris Coons: $86,900

EDIT: numbers from OpenSecrets.org

<comment><USER10> What amount do senators not on this list receive, for comparison?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nothing bad can come from that bill...

We should make it mandatory that the legislators actually read the proposals and have pop quizes on them. If you cannot pass the quiz then you do not get to vote on it.

<comment><USER12> That's okay, they'll just ignore the rules as needed anyway

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IJDQCYMM-A>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Personally - and this may be optimistic of me - I look forward to the day when the Internet generation gets into Congress. I think - hope? - that maybe perhaps we will see slightly less ridiculous legislation.

Odds are that our generation will create just as asinine rules, but _about something different_.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a tech-savvy "Internet generation". Most of those kids who know how to use Facebook inside and out would be just as clueless as today's senators are, if they had to deal with anything remotely technical.

<comment><USER13> That's very true. But at least they won't be in the situation of having their wife look stuff up for them[1]. I don't think it's a far stretch to expect that today's facebook-ites have an intuitive idea of what a 'link' is.

[1] [http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/13/john_mccain_tec...](http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/13/john_mccain_technology/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting observation: for everybody who wishes that people could come together from all political sides to pass laws, your wish has been answered. This list includes characters from every part of the political spectrum.

<comment><USER16> As the saying goes, we have an evil party and a stupid party. Every once in awhile, they work together and produce public policy that is both evil and stupid.

<comment><USER15> I like this because it accurately reflects the customers -- voters -- views, yet it is also completely non-partisan. My party is always the stupid one, the other party is always the evil one.

In this case, several of the folks are prominent representatives of their party. Guys we might see on TV explaining to us why policy X is good and policy Y is bad.

Paying for laws is done this way -- buying off the prominent members -- so that the status quo is maintained, i.e., I still keep thinking my guys are acting stupid and the other ones evil and you keep thinking the other way. If it had only been lesser members sponsoring, it wouldn't work that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I must admit, I expected better from Al Franken.

<comment><USER18> Make no mistake, anyone who achieves an elected (or unelected for that matter) position has power as their number one motivation.

If you view any high ranking government official in any idealistic light, you have been tricked. These guys are marketers of the first order, and what they market is idealism.

<comment><USER17> _what they market is idealism_

I am so going to steal that phrase every chance I get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Since presenting a link to such a site is illegal, wouldn't it be difficult for the government agency to communicate the information within it's own agency?

If they decide that certain means of communicating the information do _not_ form a criminal act, then what would prevent the arbitrary individual from forming the same means, and giving a link to that, instead?

Or, are law makers and their proxies inherently immune from their own laws?

</comment><comment><USER20> Alternate headline: Senators do not understand the first amendment, and should be fired.

</comment><comment><USER12> aaaaand this is why we have a Supreme Court that decides the constitutionality of laws our ridiculous congress passes.

<comment><USER21> Except that (a) they've found a way of passing laws recently that remove their subject matter from the purview of the courts; and (b) the courts have removed themselves from some areas, as with their refusal to judge the merit of blight declarations in takings "for public use".

<comment><USER22> Article III, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution is not exactly "recent" and if you want explicit examplea of Congress removing appellate jurisdiction for a specific law you need look no further than Ex parte McCardle (1868).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting. Is there real-world precedent for this kind of thing?

For instance, if I know a real-world address where you can go in order to participate in some criminal activity X, is it illegal for me to tell you that address? For any value of X?

<comment><USER24> It can be.

I had jury duty for a case that involved an undercover cop asking a man on the street where he could buy crack, the man asked for money, the cop gave him some, and then the man pointed to another man down the street. The original man was on trial for conspiracy to distribute drugs, even though he wasn't actively in league with the actual dealer.

<comment><USER25> Except copyright infringement is a civil matter. Drug usage is (unfortunately) a criminal offense. I'm not aware of any precedent that would make it illegal (in a criminal sense) for one to do something which might cause a third party to sue.

Then again, IANAL.

<comment><USER26> > Except copyright infringement is a civil matter.

Copyright infringement is a felony if:

1\. it is for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain by the reproduction or distribution during any 180-day period of 1 or more copies of 1 or more copyrighted works which have a total retail value of more than $1000; or

2\. it is the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if the person making it available knew or should have known the work was intended for commercial distribution.

<comment><USER27> Adding to that, I think that the NET ("No Electronic Theft") Act made it so that trading in copyright infringing works could be considered 'commercial' in some circumstances, though I don't remember the details offhand. This would go hand in hand with point #1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The full title of the bill is: "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011"

Why do they want to prevent threats to theft of intellectual property?

<comment><USER29> It should be parsed as "(Preventing ((Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity) and (Theft of Intellectual Property))) Act". The threats are to econonic creativity; the theft is a separate object.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wonder how google would stay in business if this passed. How to stop the engine from knowing that it's indexing an illegal website?

<comment><USER26> The law has no trouble distinguishing between something that happens as a side effect and something that is intended.

<comment><USER31> I don't believe you in the slightest. The people who wrote the bill in question either didn't think of what happens to Google, or they want it to happen to Google, or they consider it something like "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> be thankful that uncle Rockefeller has allowed you yo use internet so far, he said internet should have never existed

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY>

<comment><USER33> If you'd bother to watch the video you linked, you might notice he doesn't actually say that... in fact he says that is a stupid thing to say.</comment></comment>


SECURING YOURSELF FROM A WORLD OF HACKERS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.icyse.com/2011/02/07/how-to-avoid-the-most-common-and-dangerous-passwords/

<comment><USER2> From the guidelines:

        In Submissions

        Please don't do things to make titles stand out,
        like using uppercase ...

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

Additionally, the item seems totally content-free. Am I mistaken? Did I miss something?</comment>


Linux Seeks Help From More (And More Diverse) Coders - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/09/linuxcon/

<comment> vezzy-fnord Gender and ethnic diversity is completely irrelevant to building software of good calibre. I don't see why people are so occupied with making everything multicultural and "diverse" nowadays. A diversity of minds might be useful for the kernel, but a diversity of physical attributes is just superficial and a red herring.

<comment><USER2> Do you have a citation? I'm not sure about software specifically, but here are citations that suggest that diversity improves financial performance, team performance and innovation:

Beryl Nelson (Google) had a talk in March at a conference called "Voices - Creating Global Connections":

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMU5RmkxOc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMU5RmkxOc)

Here are a few instructive slides from the first 7 minutes:

* Financial Performance: Companies with a higher proportion of women in their top management have better financial performance

..* from Georges Desvaux, Sandrine Devillard-Hoellinger, and Pascal Baumgarten: Women Matter: Gender diversity, a corporate performance driver, McKinsey Report, 2007; similar results in Catalyst study; and for differences in race, by Cedric Herring

* Better Innovation outcomes (Page, 2009, Cox 2001)

..* Mixed gender tech patents are more cited (Ashcraft et al, 2007)

* Teams with gender diversity are more productive; better decisions:

..* Malone et al, 2010: women make teams smarter

* Gender in teams and collective intelligence (higher collective intelligence is correlated with higher percentage of women)

..* Anita Woolley and Thomas Malone: Defend your Research: What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women, Harvard Business Review Report, June 2011</comment></comment>


The Node Beginner Book - <AUTHOR> http://nodebeginner.org/ <comment><USER2> Hi all,

I'm the author of The Node Beginner Book. Thanks for discussing it here.

Your input is a great help. I see the points WA makes regarding the bad things.

It's true that it's yet another Node tutorial chewing around on the web server / web app stuff; but I think for the people I'm addressing it's still the most useful scenario because it allows to understand how a full fledged app is put together, and is a great example to explain all of the fundamental concepts, new JavaScript ones and conventional ones (because it might makes sense to understand what stuff is done differently and what is done in a known fashion).

So nothing really new here - I hope where this tutorial differs is that it (arguably) might be the first "one-stop" tutorial for Node to get beginners started. Not more not less.

Every other resource I could find forced me to google around to fill the gaps - while this is not a bad thing per se, I think sometimes it's nice to have something that really guides you from A to Z.

Like, for example, <http://ruby.railstutorial.org/>. If I manage to create something that's only 10% as cool, I'm going to be very happy :-)

<comment><USER3> More node resources the better at the moment. A simple CRUD application guide would be very helpful. The java Play! Framework site has a really nice basic blog tutorial which is perfect for understanding the entire process.

I plan on starting my first node app in 6 weeks so please hurry up ;)

<comment><USER2> Hi,

6 weeks should be doable, I started the site last friday :-)

<comment><USER3> Well I really enjoyed what I see so far. Partially just from the great links you recommended!

If you do have a CRUD style app I always like being able to download the finished version for when I am stuck (which is often), nothing quite like looking at the entire code to see where I am going wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good things:

\- Tells me what I'll make with the tutorial right up front.

\- Lets me know exactly what prerequisite knowledge is (I can tick all those boxes, good).

\- Aimed at folks who know traditional backend languages and some JS but aren't JS Gods (a lot of node tutes seem to assume complete JS mastery).

No bad things so far!

Thanks Mr Dumas.

<comment><USER5> Bad things:

Shows the very same tutorials over and over and over again. Last week, I tried to get my hands on NodeJS in a reasonable short time. That means, I wanted to write a basic web app with some AJAX in NodeJS having 1 or 2 days to actual learn it and another 3 days to implement the app. As much as I would love to see NodeJS to become more widespread, it's not gonna happen with these sparse amount of information around. It is simply not possible to learn NodeJS from tutorials at the moment, because almost all tutorials deal with a) getting a webserver up and running in 20 lines of code or less or b) uploading a file.

Seriously, either I want to deal with Node.JS to build network apps (then why all the tutorials about building web apps) or I want to use a framework to get my web app up and running in no time. But I really have no interest in writing a webserver and dealing with the routing on my own.

There is Express, but tutorials are outdated or don't cover it in depth. Furthermore, Node.JS is very cumbersome to install, as you need to compile it, compile a packet manager and a thousand other things before it is ready to go (if you want to use it for web development).

As long as people keep repeating the same tutorials over and over again, I don't see Node.JS becoming a popular tool for building web apps in the near future (which is sad, because I do kind of like Node). What I would like to see, is either a tutorial that focuses on building a framework from scratch or one that focuses on the use of an existing framework.

<comment><USER6> The DailyJS tutorials are a great starting point for this: <http://dailyjs.com/2010/11/01/node-tutorial/>

That being said, I agree with most of the issues you raise. Lack of backwards compatibility, rapid changes in APIs and the need to build from source make building webapps in Node more complicated than it needs to be.

We're trying to address this at Akshell (<http://www.akshell.com>) by making it as easy as possible to get started, providing consistent documentation & core libraries and favoring synchronous I/O.

It would be great if you had time to check it out and give us some feedback: <http://www.akshell.com/docs/0.3/intro/>

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I'll check it out tomorrow and give you some feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This will be an invaluable guide in the future but I think it needs more work. Hello World has been covered everywhere so it's utility as an intro is pointless if you are already a programmer or are familiar with programming.

The guides I find most useful, in addition to references, are the ones that have you build an application from the ground up. So that you start to understand the pros and cons of the language you are trying to learn. I already know how to do Hello World, I already know how to create a node server, what I want is a bit more context, like building a simple messaging server, how to create and use simple frameworks, whats even more appreciated is tutorials and samples about the stuff already built-in.

This is one of the reason why I like working with Apple and Microsoft. They give you tons and tons of sample code that compiles and work. Want access to process information? Here's how. Want to use the camera? Here's how.

It would be great to have a simple CRUD node app that connects to MySQL. That usually gets me 75% of the way there.

<comment><USER2> Hi yardie,

I agree, which is why I only very briefly bring up the Hello World stuff (it's a tradition after all :-)), and then state "Ok, this stuff is boring, right? Let's write some real stuff."

And the rest of the tutorial is about building something real and complete (albeit simple). Maybe I should extend the example app a bit, and talk about databases, too.

Oh, and please note, the "book" is only about 35% complete, so there is more to come!

<comment><USER7> I've just started to get into it, it's a fantastic job so far so please keep it up. I think you, the nodejs team, and webos are doing a great job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm still trying to understand how node actually works. I'm just about to start digging through its source code. It seems most people view node as a magical mystery that they don't understand why it works, just that it does. How is a single threaded app doing things in parallel? Is it like a game loop where it iterates through all its pending operations and gives each a slice of time to progress forward? Are deeper parts of node multi threaded? The callbacks being called serially makes perfect sense, its the parallelness of the actual operations that confuses me.

<comment><USER9> I think that this SO thread is helpful: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3629784/how-is-node-js- in...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3629784/how-is-node-js-inherently- faster-when-it-still-relies-on-threads-internally)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I suggest using syntax highlighting in code examples.

<comment><USER2> Hi d0m,

that's a very valid point, I will work on that soon!

<comment><USER11> You can use <http://code.google.com/p/google-code-prettify/>

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I'll give it a try!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 A little confusing that the title refers to "Node" rather than "node.js".

<comment><USER12> Node is actually the real name. It is often referred to as node.js just to distinguish it from other concepts and stuff named "Node". If you go on nodejs.org, you'll see that they always refer to it as just "Node" in the About section.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've asked this already (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2447840>) but what books on JS are good for someone who wants to go into development with Node? Most texts that I know of deal with client-side JS. Right now I'm just reading Eloquent Javascript + JavaScript: the Good Parts, but I would like to see if there's any other books that would be good, especially for someone new to closures.

<comment><USER14> I think newer Javascript books are beginning to add or expand sections on client-side uses and node.js in particular. Two that I know have sections are _Test-Driven JavaScript Development_ [1] and _JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Sixth Ed_ [2]. The TDD chapter on node is probably already out of date in some respects, the Definitive Guide no doubt will soon be out of date, and both are smaller/smallish. There is also Tom Hughes-Croucher's _Up and Running with Node.js_ [3], which is in progress and available through O'Reilly's open feedback system.

At the moment, blog posts and online tutorials seem to be the way to go, though you have to be careful there too. Node seems to be moving very, very fast, so things will likely require a medium amount of tinkering, even if they were written two weeks ago.

[1] <http://tddjs.com/>

[2] <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596805531>

[3] <http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449398583/>

<comment><USER13> I think what I'd just like is a JS primer that goes through certain features in the language that could be useful for server-side things, including Node. Especially closures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was a well-written, easy-to-follow introduction, but I'd gladly pay money for an actual Node book that takes the reader from introduction to mastery.

<comment><USER2> Hi Ryan,

The Node Beginner Book is still work in progress, it's currently about 35% done.

So, there is more to come, but bringing people from introduction to mastery is a completely different story of course.

We will see how things develop :-)

<comment><USER15> Like I said, I would consider paying for a copy once it's finished. :)

<comment><USER2> I'll get back to you when it's pay day ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I second the need for a good CRUD example. Also "clear" instructions on running NODE on Windows would be a big help.

<comment><USER17> Easiest way to get going on Windows is precompiled with Cygwin packaged in:

<http://node-js.prcn.co.cc>

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> For your consideration: I've just added the chapter on how to integrate request handlers into the router:

<http://nodebeginner.org/#routing-to-real-request-handlers>

</comment><comment><USER18> Kind of off-topic, but I don't really understand what Node.js is about until this presentation.

<http://jsconf.eu/2009/video_nodejs_by_ryan_dahl.html> <http://s3.amazonaws.com/four.livejournal/20091117/jsconf.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER19> Though I learn only a little JavaScript, I will try it while I have a block time. Now, just save it to my personal archive.</comment>


Network Latencies and Speed of Light - <AUTHOR> https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/network-latencies-and-speed-of-light/ <comment><USER2> Money is no object to HFT firms when it comes to reducing latency. A recent technique involves laying optic fiber cables with hollow interiors, so that the internal refraction of light spends more time in a vacuum and less time slowed down by the pesky glass medium.

<comment><USER3> Which is why the regulators really need to get sharper with them vs. what they are doing to the economy. They are front running, destroying value and spending the money on a whole load of tat - a massive case of misallocation of capital. They need to be shuttered.

<comment><USER4> HFT, or Bitcoin?

<comment><USER5> Stop shoehorning and derailing the conversation please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's another key issue: peering. Minimum rtt between nearby ISPs can be huge, when nearest shared peer is a few hundred km away. That's so for parts of Hong Kong vs mainland China. Also Salt Lake City and Zurich.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's some academic work that goes into much more detail about this topic: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.03449](https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.03449)

</comment><comment><USER8> Very Naive Questions.

There are now fibre that has hollow core instead of light travelling through glass. Assuming we could do that in long distance, that is close to 0.98c, we should have +40% latency improvement right?

i.e Someday if we needed more capacity and this tech is available, we could lay this new fibre along side the same router as the current fibre. And enjoy some improved latency?

How much latency does each network hoop adds? 0.05ms?

How much latency does our own machine add? Are the 70ms actually all spent within the Network? Or would there be 0.5ms just coming from the Ethernet Controller, buffer or what ever?

</comment><comment><USER9> Serious question: for a transatlantic network, would it ever make sense to do something along the lines of buoy + helium balloons + laser or microwave? Or in a similar vain, would it make sense to attach microwave 'towers' to shipping vessels?

I could see something like that work really well for the HFT world, where some clever hacks could make use of an unstable, but extremely low latency connections.

<comment><USER10> I doubt that would be lower latency. Even forgetting the physics and curvature issues, you'll end up with many more hops which is going slow it down due to processing and retransmission delays.

<comment><USER7> Microwave is faster even though it requires more hops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Depending on how your Bond-villain vacuum tunnels and repeaters are set up, it's possible, i surmise, to create a tunnel way that can repeat without adding an interminable delay node or nodes. Imagine the One Way Valve Nikola Tesla patented, except with microwave repeaters shelled and pocketed into the sides of the tunnel passage instead of water-holding empty pockets.

Although I think that this is very nice, I always like to go to the "ultimate level" and consider what we would do if there was a way to send informative electrical signals using the earth as a resonator, and that idea chiefly brings me back to Wardenclyffe.

Did you know that the magnetic field of mars is weirdly shaped? It is only magnetic on the "Southern Half" of the ball that is Mars and has a slight gradient. So, assuming we can create some sort of information share that could function on the dynamic magnetic shielding of the earth, we'd have to rethink it for Mars, and any planet with a non uniform magnetic field from pole to pole.

Thanks a lot for your creativity. Keep writing, together we got this!

<comment><USER7> Don't forget neutrinos. They pass right through the earth, no tunnel needed.

<comment><USER11> Hmmmm can we encode information in neutrinos? I thought they were so few and far between it's difficult to reliably harness them.

<comment><USER7> But you can produce them artificially. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2847](https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2847)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why aren't HFT firms using short wave radio (DXing)?

I suppose low-orbit satellite-to-satellite would probably beat fibre for anything over ~4000km too.

<comment><USER13> > _Why aren 't HFT firms using short wave radio (DXing)?_

They are. See mshook's response, with nice reference links downthread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16196339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16196339)

<comment><USER12> Those are microwave which basically need line of sight? I was thinking of lower frequencies which can sometimes go hundreds of kilometers without repeaters.

<comment><USER14> Bandiwdth, mostly.

The lower you go in frequency, the less bandwidth is available.

The entire "HF" spectrum is ~30 MHz. My Wi-Fi at home uses a wider channel than that.

The lower frequencies -- that will travel across the ocean, unaided -- don't have anywhere near the bandwidth necessary (to support the throughput that they need).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about all the hops your signal has to take to make the round trip? Couldn't those be optimized or sped up? Is copper latency really equivalent to fiber?

<comment><USER16> > Is copper latency really equivalent to fiber?

Notwithstanding differences between specific types of cables and transceivers, yes, the rule of thumb is that they're roughly equivalent. The big advantages with fiber mostly come with being physically smaller for a given bandwidth (e.g. more bandwidth per square inch of conduit cross-section, more bandwidth per cable weight for vertical or suspended runs) and needing less active equipment between any two points in the network (e.g. PON, long-haul single- mode runs).

<comment><USER17> An old style copper ladder line is ~0.95c and optical fibre is ~0.66c:

Old style, pre-coaxial, undersea cables may have been ~0.45. Newer coax is sometimes ~0.87c.

YMMV: [https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/05/lines-radios-and- cab...](https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/05/lines-radios-and-cables-oh- my.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like directional radio/laser-in-tube would get you back that 1/3 by avoiding the internal reflection problem altogether.

<comment><USER19> That's why companies doing HFT or stock exchanges often use microwave links... Just to crank it to eleven err to gain that 30% back.

Information Transmission Between Financial Markets in Chicago and New York: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5966v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5966v1.pdf)

Time is money when it comes to microwaves: [https://www.ft.com/content/2bf37898-b775-11e2-841e-00144feab...](https://www.ft.com/content/2bf37898-b775-11e2-841e-00144feabdc0)

Trading Fortunes Depend on a Mysterious Antenna in an Empty Field: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-12/mysteriou...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-12/mysterious- antennas-outside-cme-reveal-traders-furious-land-war)

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/11/priva...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well, we already have tech that can provide us with virtually lowest latency physically possible without having to dig any tunnels - high frequency radio waves :) Of course bandwidth could be a problem but for pings it should be enough.

<comment><USER21> The point isn't to optimize for pings. It's to optimize for real use cases - video chat, web browsing, music and video streaming, etc. Most of these applications need at least a moderate amount of bandwidth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Obligatory link to "The case of the 500-mile email":

[https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html](https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html)

<comment><USER23> My favorite part: "I diffed it against the sendmail.cf in my home directory. It hadn't been altered--it was a sendmail.cf I had written. And I was fairly certain I hadn't enabled the "FAIL_MAIL_OVER_500_MILES" option."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> going through the earth is a shorter distance but unfortunately light speed is slower that way

<comment><USER25> Why is light slower that way?

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure if this is what he's referring to, but light (and the passage of time) is slower in a gravity well. A geodesic in spacetime will minimize the time it takes for light to travel between two points. In the case of going through the Earth, the geodesic will be only slightly deflected from what you would consider the straight-line path through a sphere in a flat spacetime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> He mentions an overhead of about 11ms in a cross-country network, which may be insignificant in the 35ms overall latency.

But, much of the infrastructure is communicated to regional servers or local CDNs, not cross country. A game server might split loads across east-coast servers and west-coast servers to improve responsiveness. In those cases, it's not unfeasible to see a 2ms-5ms speed-of-light latency. And that's where those 11ms really starts to affect user experience, since now you're looking at latencies that can cut into your 60fps frame rates. (or local video-chat services or even websites)

<comment><USER25> FPS won't be reduced by latency increases, responsiveness will though.</comment></comment>


Apple's carbon footprint - <AUTHOR> https://esg.censible.co/companies/Apple <comment><USER2> This site has much broader metrics than just carbon footprint.

I don't see any indication that the carbon release from their major manufacturing _subcontractors_ (e.g. Foxconn) is included.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool to see this type of overall analysis for Apple. I've seen several different attempts at this type of quantification in terms of sustainability/impact/whatever it's called. This eval looks user friendly and has the categories I would expect.</comment>


An introduction to Clean Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://www.theodo.fr/blog/2014/12/sfpot-paris-2014-12-12-pepiniere-27/

<comment><USER2> > _In a few words, it's an evolution of Domain Driven Design, with more > abstractions. It's based on UseCase Drive Design and Hexagonal > Architecture._

Lost me here ...

What happened to K.I.S.S. ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with your point, it's definitely not simple. That's why it's probably not fitted for a lot of projects (IMHO, you need inherent complexity in your project to make it profitable).</comment></comment>


All emails containing DropBox links being blocked by GoDaddy (another reason they suck)  - <AUTHOR> http://devver.net/blog/2008/07/crappy-email-filtering-on-godaddy/

<comment><USER2> Wow. Wish we knew about this sooner... Are all emails referencing a Dropbox URL filtered out by GoDaddy?</comment>


Asking the right question is more important than getting the right answer - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2018/12/06/asking-the-right-question-is-more-important-than-getting-the-right-answer/ <comment> GuB-42 We all know the right answer is 42 ;)

Anyways, asking the right question is just a consequence, not a cause. If you are searching for the "right question", you won't find it, it is something that comes naturally with knowing about things.

In the penicillin example, he asked himself the right question "why did the mold kill bacteria" only because he knew about how bacteria and mold proliferate, and that he was confident in his experimental results.

To make an analogy, if you roll a dice and get a 7, you will definitely ask yourself the question, inspect the dice, etc... But that's only because you know that dices only go up to 6, that question is a result of you knowledge of dices. Now imagine you know nothing about dices, you wouldn't even ask yourself the question: the last roll was a 6, so why not 7. Worse, you may find yourself questioning the next roll, a 1, because by chance, you never rolled it before, and by the time you finally understand that it is normal, you have forgotten about the 7.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't say it comes naturally. It comes from noticing points of confusion in the world and making an effort to ask the big Why? question.

And then refining your question to arrive at a different question, which may be a better question.

E.g. Why is my father in law so difficult to get along with -> Is my father in law difficult to get along with? Well, he gets along just fine with others... -> Why is it so hard for my father in law to get along with _me_? What is different about our dynamic?

One question leads you to the next, but you have to put some effort into the process.

An excellent book on the topic: A More Beautiful Question [https://www.amazon.com/More-Beautiful-Question-Inquiry- Break...](https://www.amazon.com/More-Beautiful-Question-Inquiry- Breakthrough/dp/1632861054)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting but you can only know if you're asking the right question in hindsight when the right answer is generated.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wholeheartedly agree, asking the right question helps in getting closer to the right answer. In my undergraduate Mathematics curriculum, "The Art of Problem Posing" (Brown and Walter) was required reading alongside "How to Solve It" (Polya and Conway).

</comment><comment><USER5> Secret questions are why computer science advances by standing on toes not shoulders of Giants.

Secret questions imply differential reward to answering.

Secret questions imply harvesting public knowledge of public questions you know to validate the worth implications of holding your secret back.

</comment><comment><USER6> "In mathematics, the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it."

\- G. Cantor

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this might be related to Eric Weinstein's discussion about excellence. (Eric works for Thiel Capital)

[https://youtu.be/EzdLBGPidAM?t=28](https://youtu.be/EzdLBGPidAM?t=28)

</comment><comment><USER8> Which must be why, during most tech interviews ...

the emphasis is completely the opposite.

<comment><USER9> A good technical interview should spend as much energy on the path as the solution, if not much much more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My high-school physics teacher was always telling us to keep asking questions.

Not until later did I (happily) realize what a big damn radical he was.

</comment><comment><USER11> _" In computer science, we had the XML craze at the turn of the century."_

I'm amazed at how much shade gets thrown at XML (still).

The biggest company in world (MSFT) defines their entire office suite in XML. SOAP on the wire is the most efficient M2M protocol for conveying strongly typed message payloads.

But to the Author's point, maybe some of the "questions" asked of XML were incorrect.

<comment><USER12> _The biggest company in world (MSFT) defines their entire office suite in XML. SOAP on the wire is the most efficient M2M protocol for conveying strongly typed message payloads._

That does not point to a particular excellence of XML. XML was designed as a markup language and thus people came up with XML-based domain specific languages with which they could define trees of data and metadata for storage and payloads.

So, in effect, what these people are sending back and forth is trees with metadata. You can encode the same information in JSON or S-expressions, and people have already done all that. You just need to agree on conventions for the semantics but that holds even for XML.

XML has the benefit of wide support across platforms, good reference implementations originally, various standard schemas for different data, but technically it has nothing revolutionary: rather, as people who do know XML inside out it's overly complex as a base format for data encoding. Writing a parser compliant to the spce is not trivial.

XML's best feature is probably the fact that the complexity in the structure and syntax of the language is not enforced and you can easily keep your XML simple. That is what most people actually do.

The fact that you can define an office suite in XML is not particularly a merit to XML: Microsoft just decided to use XML to encode their previously binary documents in plaintext. It's not as if they couldn't have done it without XML but some other format, or, defining their formats in XML would somehow make the documents available for anyone to interpret who has an XML parser. The meat is still in the semantics which you have to implement in your export and import code. Whether those semantics are then applied in the form of JSON or XML or pickled Python dicts or whatever is the trivial part.</comment></comment>


Errors Trigger Retraction of Study on Mediterranean Diet's Heart Benefits - <AUTHOR> https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=619619302 <comment><USER2> There is science which involves studying objective, physical things that have been repeatedly evaluated by independent scientists and proven time and time again.

And there is this new class of 'science' which is tantamount to p-value hacking and only slightly better than social engineering.

Coffee cures cancer. Year 2010 Coffee doesn't cure cancer. Year 2011 Black chocolate prevents heart attacks... And so on

Most of these studies read something like this: 'we asked a hundred people what they ate for the last month'. I don't even remember what I ate for my evening snack yesterday.

It's really poorly controlled and definitely not the rigor that goes with proper science. This should not even be taught in schools let alone treated as 'research'.

<comment><USER3> To be fair though, in this case the results are still the same when correcting for the methodological errors that happened in the study.

From TFA:

> It turns out approximately 14 percent of the more than 7,400 study > participants hadn't been assigned randomly to either the Mediterranean diet > or a low-fat one. When couples joined the study together, both had been > picked to follow the same diet. At one of the 11 participating study sites, > the lead investigator had assigned the same diet to an entire village and > didn't tell the rest of the investigators.

> "This affected only a small part of the trial," says Martínez González. When > the researchers reanalyzed the data excluding the nonrandomized people, the > results were the same, he adds.

> Still, because everybody wasn't randomly assigned to different groups, the > study can no longer claim the diet directly caused those health benefits. > "We need to tone down the results, but it is just a little bit," he says.

> Many other studies have shown that people eating the Mediterranean diet have > lower risks of various ailments, without claiming cause and effect.

In this case, since it wasn't fully random, they weakened their claim to remove the cause-effect link, instead of p hacking as you mentioned.

<comment><AUTHOR> also from the article, the study author had over a hundred studies retracted because of poor analysis

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The revised paper says only that people eating the Mediterranean diet had fewer strokes and heart attacks, not, as the original paper claimed, that the diet was the direct cause of those health benefits."

A typical wording for that sort of research, not really a retraction.</comment>


Hubble's Panoramic View of a Turbulent Star-making Region - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1206/ <comment><USER2> I wish Stargate was real</comment>


Flow Fields - <AUTHOR> https://tylerxhobbs.com/essays/2020/flow-fields <comment><USER2> Taking the curl of a noise field will get you a divergence free flow field[1]... which is an easy way to get something that _looks_ like fluid dynamics, but isn't.

I've use this to great effect on the surface of a sphere to generate textures for gas giants[2]. Some example output: [https://imgur.com/a/9LipP](https://imgur.com/a/9LipP)

1\. [https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rbridson/docs/bridson- siggraph2007-cu...](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rbridson/docs/bridson- siggraph2007-curlnoise.pdf) 2\. [https://github.com/smcameron/gaseous- giganticus](https://github.com/smcameron/gaseous-giganticus)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it would be interesting to add a z dimension so you could sweep through it with the plane to look for the best aesthetic in the field. Kind of like passing a line laser through smoke. You could even slice along a spline or some other function (e.g. spiral) to get more effects.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Really cool explanation! Some of the generated forms remind me if Julie Mehretu stuff: [https://www.artsy.net/artist/julie- mehretu](https://www.artsy.net/artist/julie-mehretu)

<comment><USER5> that's beautiful! thank you for the link

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This can be generalized to scalar and vector fields in any number of dimensions. These things are everywhere in generative art. The discretization done by the author here is often not necessary, though.

The graphical programming environment vvvv has a pack of nodes ("field trip") for manipulating these in 2D and 3D. Fun to play with, and it's been used to create many beautiful pieces.

</comment><comment><USER7> Flow fields are also great for reducing the amount of computation required to generate pathfinding for a large number of entities in a game world. I implemented flow fields as the pathfinding for the enemies in a game I was working on last year and it works really well.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a big fan of the artist. He's at the forefront of the contemporary generative art movement.</comment>


Gigaom conversation with Dan Hesse of Sprint - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/mobile/a-gigaom-conversation-with-sprints-dan-hesse-on-five-harrowing-years-as-ceo/

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the story consistent with the 5 year performance of the stock?

[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=S+Interactive#symbol=s;ra...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=S+Interactive#symbol=s;range=5y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined);

Quoting the article, "When Dan Hesse took over the reins of Sprint on Dec. 17, 2007, he had quite the mess on his hands. That fourth quarter, Sprint was getting ready to announce not just an exodus of 683,000 subscribers but also an astounding financial loss of $29.5 billion, one of the largest ever recorded by a major U.S. company.

Sprint's acquisition of Nextel two years earlier was a heavy albatross around its neck. Its customer service had gone down the tubes, employee morale was low, and the company culture fractured; worst of all, Sprint's once loyal subscribers were fleeing in droves. Hesse knew he was taking over a struggling company, but in an interview with GigaOM he admitted that even he didn't realize the magnitude of Sprint's troubles until he arrived. "When I took over the assignment the problems were more severe than I anticipated," he said.

Hesse staring in one of many Sprint "Simply Everything" commercials

Fast forward five years, and it's plain to see Sprint has turned several corners. "</comment>