IMF cuts U.S. growth forecast, warns of crisis  - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43439087/ns/business-world_business/

<comment><USER2> Great. IMF is warning global governments that "austerity" is needed. Is this surprising that Dominique Strauss-Kahn (a front-runner for the socialist party nomination in France) having resigned from IMF, and now the IMF is tacking to the right on austerity?

The root cause isn't government budgets but the banksters who caused all the problems with shady ratings and shell-games masking bad debts as AAA rated investments.

They got off scot-free and now are shaking down the governments asking for more money... at some point, this is likely to cause a world economic implosion.</comment>


Hash: Simulation For Everybody - <AUTHOR> https://hash.ai/about/mission <comment><USER2> Joel Spolsky is one of the founders and blogged about it [1].

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2020/06/18/hash-a-free- online...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2020/06/18/hash-a-free-online- platform-for-modeling-the-world/)

<comment><USER3> I originally put the current submission in the second-chance pool (described at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)), but perhaps that blog post, short as it is, provides a better intro.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which US tech events in Jan-April are worth going to? - <AUTHOR>

I have been asked to talk at a conference in the US in February next year, so I'm going to go out for three months and plan to work from anywhere with WiFi.
Is there anything that you can recommend as being particularly worthwhile? (Or, alternatively, are there any HNers on route who I should visit.)
The rough itinerary is:
Jan - NY, Boston.
Feb - Atlanta, Boulder.
March - California.
April - back to Boston/NY.
I'm still bootstrapping so low cost suggestions are more welcome :-) <comment><USER3> Not terribly far away from your April location, jsconf 2010 will be in Washington DC around mid-April.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Click-able link to a map and more information: <http://theplanis.com/trip/>

I'm really impressed with how well Raphael JS works for animations - <USER2> it working on IE6 only required one tweak.

</comment><comment><USER4> PyCon is in Atlanta in Feb.

<comment><AUTHOR> Planning on going to this one, thank you :-)

<comment><USER4> Figured, but would have been nice if you listed the one you were thinking of, at the least so we know _which_ technologies. I can recommend some chemistry software conferences, after all, which occur during that time. ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Death Watch – Fall 2012 Update, Part One - <AUTHOR> https://therealmadhatter.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/microsoft-death-watch-fall-2012-update-part-one/

<comment><USER2> Monopoly. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

<comment><USER3> well done</comment></comment>


From Babylon to Pascal with Perl 6 - <AUTHOR> https://perl6.eu/regular-pascal.html <comment><USER2> I see Perl 6 trending a lot around here lately. As someone who has never touched it is there some reason for excitement around it? Or is it primarily people who already use Perl often?

<comment><USER3> Perl 6 a new Perl-ish language with grammars powerful enough to parse and run itself. You can use it to write FP or OOP or imperative or reactive code, or all of the above in the same program. Despite the sprawling feature set, there's a clearly defined specification, and it's written in the form of tests. Currently there's only one implementation that runs 6.d, but that implementation runs on MoarVM (C lang), the JVM, and (in progress) Javascript.

And of course the best thing that they fixed from Perl 5 is the community. If you have an interest in learning more about the language, come by on #perl6 on freenode and we'd be glad to help you out.

<comment> dan-robertson What was wrong with the perl5 community? I never really interacted with it.

<comment><USER4> One thing that I hope is a priority for "fixing" would be interaction with libraries. In 3rd year/Honours I had to code in Perl and I remember abandoning using some of them.

<comment><USER3> [https://docs.perl6.org/language/nativecall](https://docs.perl6.org/language/nativecall)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _4 2^3 x 3^0 x 5^0 (1 x 3 x 1)_

Should be _4 2^2 x 3^0 x 5^0 (4 x 1 x 1)_

<comment><USER5> Insert grousing at the HN markup input and parser here

</comment></comment><comment> grayed-down Wait a second! Is this really Perl 6 he's talking about??

<comment> grayed-down Ugh, what a humorless bunch!

<comment><AUTHOR> Humor was one of the things that needed breaking.</comment></comment></comment>


Blogging your way into graduate school at MIT. - <AUTHOR> http://andysresearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/news-and-some-number-theory.html

<comment><USER2> The title here is a little bit too harsh methinks, give the guy credit for being a recreational academic</comment>


Live Stream: How to Start a Hard Tech Startup with Sam Altman, 6:00 EST - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7HyWFJMAxg <comment><USER2> Why is this being streamed from an unknown YouTube account vs. an official YC/MIT organization?

EDIT: Stream is actually real

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure. But it's the one that was posted in the official Facebook event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Preliminary notes jotted down on the fly. If something seems odd or silly, I probably didn't hear well or mixed things up.

 _YC: \- 11 years.

\- 1200 startups.

\- Recently started to fund "hard tech" (few are funding them).

_How to start a hard tech company:

\- What do you need to do differently than a software startup:

        - The least amount possible. You're not that different.

        - Same principles apply.

        - They were first segregated at YC. Turned out to be bad.

        - Most important change:

            - YC & the market don't care: Create value or fail.

            - Don't think you're that different:

                - "But my idea takes 10 years!":

                    - What can be done in 3 months?

                    - Consistent incremental wins compound.

                        - 10% every week for years.

                        - Find something small and get it done.

\- Advantage:

        - 11,000th photosharing app is hard.

        - Competitive advantage (4 nuclear fusion companies in North America).

            - Tesla, SpaceX, etc. cf. Michael E. Porter.

\- Pay attention to what software companies did well/right:

        - If in doubt about a field, 2 important things (good indicators):

            - Cost down.

            - Cycle time is getting shorter.

\- Difference:

      - SW companies are usually "clearer" than HW.

\- It's a great time to start a HW company. Make sure:

        - Weekly wins.

        - Keep costs down.

\- Make peace with the "world":

        - "Big companies don't play by the rules":

             - Make peace with that.

             - No excuses.

             - Your duty as a founder to get that 10%/small wins consistently.

             - Keeping cycle times down is important because:

                 - Maintains *momentum*.

                 - Avoids mistakes (typically made by bigger companies).

             - Establish a culture of winning from the beginning, no matter how small.

             - Momentum attracts good people:

                 - People want to join a winning team.

             - How?:

                 - SW startups drive cycle time down by getting closer to the customer.

\- Detours:

        - Sometimes you can't reach "final" goal directly.

            - ex: Tesla - Roadster (revenue) --> Model S --> Model X --> Model 3.

            - Not from 0 to mass produced car. SpaceX: Not from 0 to colony on Mars.

        - Even if you're not in YC, you can adopt this model.

        - More people fail because of "grandeur" than because they did small things.

\- Raising capital:

        - Too much money can kill you. (ruins your focus, for example).

        - Statistically (YC):

            - Companies that raised $40MM tended to fail.

\- Business side:

        - Don't be all hardcore science and bad at everything else.

        - Someone should take care of the business side.

        - Not hard: you can do science, you can do business.

        - It can be boring for some, but it needs to be tended to.

\- Many will do the thing everyone is doing. Think of a worthy problem. (?)

\- U.S. Context:

        - Centuries of abundance and massive growth.

        - Not so much recently (2%) --> Democracy works badly in this context.

        - The only hope is innovation (and a more important growth).</comment>


Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://brucelevine.net/how-societies-with-little-coercion-have-little-mental-illness/ <comment><USER4> Another point that this article does not discuss is that in many of the "less coercive" societies, schizophrenia or related diseases are not seen as a disease or problematic at all.

McKenna writes: "A shaman is someone who swims in the same ocean as the schizophrenic, but the shaman has thousands and thousands of years of sanctioned technique and tradition to draw upon. In a traditional society, if you exhibited "schizophrenic" tendencies, you are immediately drawn out of the pack and put under the care and tutelage of master shamans. You are told: "You are special. Your abilities are very central to the health of our society. You will cure. You will prophesy. You will guide our society in its most fundamental decisions."" [0]

[0]: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/12470230/Eros-and-the-Eschaton- rou...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/12470230/Eros-and-the-Eschaton-rough-copy)

See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_schizop...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_schizophrenia)

<comment><USER5> I love McKenna's raps but I really disagree with him here. I doubt he had much experience with actual schizophrenia, which is horrific and debilitating, and I doubt shamans present or past actually had it. Psychedelic drugs induce a superficially schizophrenia-like state but it's transient and may not _actually_ be much like schizophrenia at all. Visionary, trance, and highly imaginative states are not schizophrenia or even indicative of mental illness.

Real schizophrenia is a hell of paranoia and anxiety and I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art or any of the other things a traditional shaman might do.

<comment><USER6> Agreed completely. I was sympathetic to arguments like his right up until the time when my brother began acting weird and fell into a downward spiral that ultimately led to a schizophrenia diagnosis. What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease - not just paranoia and delusions but a total breakdown in verbal and reasoning abilities. What my brother suffers from really is more comparable to Alzheimers or even forms of brain damage or post-stroke states than other mental illnesses I've encountered - it's not so much a visionary state as it is a crippling disability. Really grim stuff, and I suspect that many people who glamorize it don't have firsthand experience with the destruction it can cause.

To end with a somewhat more positive note, the late Oliver Sacks has written beautifully and with great sympathy and humanity about his brother's battle with schizophrenia - I think it's mainly in his "chemical memoir" _Uncle Tungsten_. I've often wished that he wrote a whole book on the subject but I guess it hit a little too close to home for him.

<comment><USER5> > What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease

Absolutely... there's an _incoherence_ to true (not armchair diagnosed) schizophrenia. The mind falls apart.

Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant wordsmithing is the polar opposite of what you see with degenerative mental illness.

<comment><USER7> Given this is on the level the speculative, one thing to consider is that the initial condition of the schizophrenic might be delusion, hallucination and the disintegration of one's sense of reality - and when that happens, the result in a modern society with no support for the phenomena could be massive _stress_ , stress being a factor which many are today blaming for much mental illness.

That is to say that shamanic rituals and such might be a way to prevent those on the cusp of the classical symptoms of schizophrenia from progressing to full-blown schizophrenia.

<comment><USER8> As someone who has dealt with some mental health stuff ("crap in my head" /technical term), I can testify firsthand that a) how it gets framed and b) how others around me respond to it make a really huge difference in how it impacts me -- anywhere from "weird, but functional" to "odd source of useful insight" to "losing my shit and I think I shall go play in traffic now."

<comment><USER9> Indeed! I've been able to compare friends with similar issues either deal with them as a problem to fix or suppress (therapy, medication, etc.), or as a 'weird, but functional' state to 'live with'. The latter, assuming they were functional enough and assuming they found a place, social group and general environment where their 'issues' were accepted, _always_ were much better off.

That's not an argument to avoid therapy or medication, far from it, but at the very least it's should make one pause and think about finding a balance between 'fixing the person with the issues to fit in his current environment' and 'finding an environment/approach for that person to be happy _with_ their issues'. Too often I feel that we err on the side of 'fixing'.

It reminds me a bit of the way bloodletting was once a solution to many things. Turns out that it often made things worse, and only in specific cases actually helps. Let's try to not make that same mistake.

(Also, more recently I've experienced this phenomenon personally, and I notice the same thing. The more I focus on 'fixing' or 'fitting in', the worse I'm off and the worse my problems are. On the other hand, the more I focus on finding a way to be accepted as I am, the better I am able to actually counteract my problems')

<comment><USER8> Sometimes, a "crazy" person needs justice. Their life needs to be fixed, not their head.

Some of my mental health stuff was rooted in being molested at age 3 or 4. I suppressed those memories until I was in therapy on a different continent, and thus felt safe enough to deal with it. Prior to that, there were clues to the suppressed memories in the form of bad dreams and bizarre thoughts.

I kept a dream journal while in therapy. I still find that talking about my dreams or recording them is useful, yet I have had people tell me "dreams are just gibberish and do not mean anything." These are often smart people who basically swear on a stack of scientific books that they are driven by logic (or well-educated Christians, who fail to see the hypocrisy and irony).

In short, I have been in situations where the truth was so unacceptable to other people that it created mental blocks in me. So, I feel very strongly that dismissing another person's reality is literally crazy-making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The evidence he supplies doesn't actually prove the coercion is the cause. There is no scientific data presented, just speculative statistics and linkages to possible causes. The neurobiologist D.F Swaab wrote a book called "We are our brains" that talks about the issues outlined in this article and provides scientific proof to show how various illnesses like schizophrenia can come about. Many of these illnesses have biological and physical connections to be brought about in a person.

I am not advocating for coercion being a good things, but manipulating a person to do something is not the same as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the majority, like going to school.

<comment><USER11> > as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the > majority, like going to school.

Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion.

Also, there's no popular alternative to school so that we can compare enough data and prove that school is beneficial. Unschooling exists and seems to healthier, efficient and beneficial compared to school but there's just not enough data.

School was a great alternative at a time when it was the only place to get information. This is no longer true.

<comment><USER12> "Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion."

There are lot's of things which are non-negotiable for children. Things like brushing teeth, going to bed and washing hands after toilet. All of which have some intrinsic value beyond tradition.

Coercion is _the action or practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats._. There are other means of guiding children to do something. These include gentle reminders, routines and and just agreement.

And, yes, coercion as well, when all other things fail. Hopefully not that much.

If a child goes routinely to school I would not call this an action under coercion, unless the child has learned e.g. that he needs to go to school so he does not turn into a destitute when he grows up.

"School was a great alternative at a time when it was the only place to get information. This is no longer true."

I don't think there ever was time when "school was the only place to get information". I would claim this is location based (if true even then). I.e. rural villages with low rate of literacy vs. a literate society with access to books.

Or, in pre-literate societies, just having access to a sufficient number of people would probably provide a venue for some information access.

Besides, providing information is not the only function a school has. My kid internalizes all math he is taught immediately and combines all new facts he learns into a logically cohesive model of the world which he has structured in his head.

However, he does need to learn how to live in a society and how to work with other people and school provides a good place for that.

<comment><USER13> > If a child goes routinely to school I would not call this an action under > coercion

I'm actually young enough to remember what school looked like and I'm sure as hell many of the kids wouldn't attend if they didn't know that they are going to be forced by their parents or the nanny state anyway.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, I'm a bit of a pedantic in discussions here.

To simplify the situation let's claim that children do not go to school unless prompted by their parents. This is then an influence attempt by the parent to make the child follow with their directives.

Such an attempt has usually three possible outcomes: commitment, compliance or conflict.

Just because coercion can be used as an influence tactic does not mean it's always necessary to do so. Also, it seldom leads to the most preferred outcome (commitment).

The point was - not all influence tactics can be categorized as coercion - <USER2> that the hypothetical child would not need external influence to attend school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stress and alienation/isolation have been directly implicated in depression, anxiety disorders, and addiction.

Perhaps these sometimes result from what might be described as coercion, but I think that to characterize, for example, the problem of parents who physically abuse their children as one of coercion misses the point. Coercion is a catch all, and in many cases coercion does not result in stress, trauma, etc.

That and holy shit, when did basing arguments on the notion of the noble savage come back in style?

<comment><USER15> "when did basing arguments on the notion of the noble savage come back in style?"

When did it leave?

<comment><USER16> It left when more people started traveling and meeting other cultures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The societies described in the article have many dissimilarities with modern Western civilization. Why attribute the level of mental illness (a somewhat difficult thing to measure in a primitive society) to the "level of coercion" (an extremely difficult thing to measure in any society)? Why not correlate it with the number of cars, or the number of zoos, or the average diet? Such cherrypicking is generally a strong indicator of a pre-existing bias.

</comment><comment><USER18> I imagine its hard to get good data on mental illness let alone a good definition of what "mental illness" is across societies. Is homosexuality still considered a mental illness in most of the world?

<comment><USER19> Homosexuality was listed in ICD 9 and earlier. ICD 9 was created in about 1975 - 1978.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Clas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Classification_of_Diseases_and_Related_Health_Problems#ICD-9)

Homosexuality was removed from ICD 10. ICD 10 was created in about 1983 - <USER3>

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Clas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Classification_of_Diseases_and_Related_Health_Problems#ICD-10)

Individual countries may be using their own definitions. EG US uses DSM.

DSM included homosexuality in the first version published in about 1952, but it was scrutinised early and homosexuality was removed from DSM in 1973.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Psychology)

Things like conversion therapy have been weirdly hard to stop, even with clear advice from professional bodies and regulators that it's probably harmful and has no evidence of efficacy or usefulness.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The author makes a good point about re-examining our approach to treating mental illness. I think the viewpoint that "Big Pharma" has psychiatrists in their hands is a bit too conspiracy-ist for me. What's really happening is mental healthcare is being excessively quantized and dehumanized. We're too concerned with the symptoms and we have studies that lump a variety of people under the ridiculously general label: 'depression'.

We're going too fast, the brain and human spirit is hopelessly complex, and it takes a holistic, humanistic treatment that doesn't reduce the patient to a set of symptoms to make a change. A book I recommend concerning this is "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" by neurologist Oliver Sacks.

</comment><comment><USER21> Coercion and compliance are basically high-signal low-content terms. It's sort of dose-makes-the-poison in that you can't reasonably compare something like taxation (which is often described as coercion) to something like forced medication.

<comment><USER22> what do you mean by high-signal and low-content? i don't know about signal and content, but typically the word coercion is used to refer to forcing people to do something using violence and the threat of violence.

<comment><USER21> high-signal low-content... for example, if you say a term like "gun control" to a collection of people, and every person in the group has a clear idea of what it means, and yet the definition might be different for every person. So, the content of the term has low meaning overall, while as a signal it evokes a strong response.

<comment><USER23> So, I get what you're saying, but I don't think "signal" is a great term for that, because it comes from information theory, and there its definition more closely matches what you're calling "content".

I'm not sure what you could call emotional impact to make a similarly pithy description though.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, that's a good point - I have heard "signal" used more in this context in social sciences, like "dog whistle" in politics. But it'd be nice to come up with something clearer and just as pithy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not clear to me if the article implies that totalitarian societies have more coercion - but if it does, should a country like China have more mental illness? I don't know if thats the case, at least in percentage of entire population. What does that mean for the central hypothesis of the article and its validity?

<comment><USER25> China is an interesting case of thousands of years of relatively modern social order with high coercion in many ways.

However, it's also a society that maintained high levels of family and clan based organization which counterbalance the atomization and individuality that you see in modern "Washington Consensus" societies.

I highly recommend "The Search for Modern China" if you are truly interested in thinking about these things in context. It's very pleasing and readable.

Modern China isn't as straightforwardly authoritarian as you might want to compare against.

North Korea might be a better choice.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FTA: "Throughout history, societies have existed with far less coercion than ours, and while these societies have had far less consumer goods and what modernity calls "efficiency," they also have had far less mental illness. This reality has been buried, not surprisingly, by uncritical champions of modernity and mainstream psychiatry. Coercion—the use of physical, legal, chemical, psychological, financial, and other forces to gain compliance—is intrinsic to our society's employment, schooling, and parenting. However, coercion results in fear and resentment, which are fuels for miserable marriages, unhappy families, and what we today call mental illness."

How many great people did we lose because they weren't 'compliant' enough to conform properly? I can sure think of a few.

<comment><USER26> I'd like to see some concrete evidence that people in the past did in fact had "far less mental illness", and it is not just a result of them not being diagnosed. Most of the mental illnesses we know have been _defined_ within last 100 years. In the past they may as well have been known as anything from demonic possession, and magic, to being stupid, being a brawler or a person ill-disposed.

Secondly, I wouldn't underestimate the amount of coercion that was going on in the past. Sustenance farmers probably didn't feel much direct coercion (besides the days when the nobility showed up to collect their dues), they were just mostly scared of going hungry. But factory workers in the early Industrial Revolution? Miners before, during and after that? Militaries of various times? If coercion causes mental illness, it should be reflected in the historical records. It's probably worth checking.

<comment><USER27> > I wouldn't underestimate the amount of coercion that was going on in the > past.

Don't forget about the Inquisition. Most people hear that and think of the burning of witches and heretics, but that institution alone had a much wider array of non lethal punishments for all sort of behaviors considered "undesirable".

I have been in the Inquisition museum at the city of Guanajuato during the holidays, and they had a remarcable number of painful or even midly unconfortable artifacts that got used on people doing the pre-modern equivalent of littering. Victims would not face lasting harm, but the judicious infliction of pain plus public humiliation [1] was enough to keep them toeing the line more often than not.

[1] A remarkable example was a sort of iron flute. It was heavy and it had manacles for both hands and neck so that the transgressor would be forced in position as if playing it. They would attach it to the victims and send them back home for a few days to reflect on their sins, which was alteration of public order, or "wild partying".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Mental illness is a complex entity. Beware of any simple "definition of insanity"

I recently discovered I have a mutation which makes my verbal intelligence too high to measure but has negative effects in other areas. Other people have similar variations.

Some kinds of mental illness such as schizophrenia seem very much to be a biological phenomenon, but stress and particularly the way stress is structured has a definite negative effect on the origin. You can become stronger and more capable in many areas by applying stress in the right way (athletic and military training, for instance), but stress without time to recover has negative effects on body and mind and certainly surplus coercion leads to surplus stress.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you talking about the Met-158 mutation? If not, which?

I agree that the real culprit is stress-- biological differences to processing and coping with stress are likely the actual mechanism at play rather than generalized "coercion" like the article suggests without providing evidence. Our society is intensely stressful, and provides no real permanent reductions in stress level.

<comment><USER28> I don't have Met-158 thank god I am not like that crazy killer family from the Netherlands.

I am hetero at SNP rs1800497.

<comment><USER29> How did you find out?

<comment><USER28> 23andme. It's funny because I always thought I was some kind of X-Man.

<comment><USER30> Your mental superpowers are caused by a rare mutation shared with 40% of all people?

<comment><USER31> Yep. This must be why 40% of the population has a "verbal" intelligence that can't be measured.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> With response to "The 1916 book The Institutional Care of the Insane of the United States and Canada reports" paragraph. Schizophrenia is by no means easy to diagnose and there is a lot of debate over when someone is or isn't Schizophrenic. I have known two people (one a family member) that some would call Schizophrenic and after many years I'm still not sure if that is a fair diagnosis or not. I think it might be a bit much to expect a society with little social expectations to evaluate this well.

In our society we suspect people to have mental illnesses but it takes years to get a good diagnoses and sometimes they never get a clear one.

</comment><comment><USER33> Identity is harder to come by in today's society than in the forests of New Guinea or in our own recent history. At the same time diagnosis of mental illness is easy to come by, as is anxiety provoking news media, and identity models of narcissistic, sociopathic and borderline celebrity personalities. Our young people, identities still forming, have many traps in which they can fall and most are alone with their thoughts. I think the author's hypothesis is the polar opposite of what is actually occurring... we've given our young people too little structure and not enough direction.

</comment><comment><USER34> A great book to read in this context:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Sleep-There-are- Snakes/dp/18466...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Sleep-There-are- Snakes/dp/1846680409/ref=sr_1_1)

or indeed, any context. It's a fabulous book about the good and bad in societies untouched by civilization, and about one man's attempts to understand a language with no reference points. And his struggle with his Christian mission, ending up in his atheism. It's got everything, and would make a great film.

<comment><USER35> Terrific book. Was mind expanding for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think the author jumps to some conclusions here - not sure what is cause and effect.

Is it possible that people stricken by serious mental illness in these societies simply die? I have some experience with mental illness and I can see how someone 'out of their mind' could easily die young when exposed to the elements.

I don't have direct evidence, but I believe the mortality rate in rural / isolated societies is higher than in more cultivated societies.

</comment><comment><USER37> A while ago I read that societies around the equator have almost no schizophrenia. This was linked to vitamin D or UV-B, which we lack in the western world.

</comment><comment><USER38> On the subject of schizophrenia, the most interesting and insightful thinker I have read is John Weir Perry: [http://global- vision.org/papers/JWP.pdf](http://global-vision.org/papers/JWP.pdf) His notion is that schizophrenia is a normal process to reorder the mind to heal from severe psychic trauma, which neuroleptics interrupt and prolong.

</comment><comment><USER39> The article was a bold, confident, hypothesis with possibly cherrypicked examples rather than a serious study. YMMV

</comment><comment><USER40> For all we know it could be as well the food : there's a lot of people that believes that highly processed food is toxic for the organism and is the source of most of our ailments.

They're generally heavy on beliefs and light on science, but empirical evidence suggest that they might be right.

</comment><comment><USER41> Define "coercion".

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd rather be smashing imperialism

[http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ed-stamm-and- others-c...](http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ed-stamm-and-others- consent-or-coercion)

<comment><USER43> You said it, man! Nothing is more fun than smashing imperialism. I think I'll close the tab and go smash me some right now.</comment></comment>


Reduce Bounce Rate of Your Web Pages – Imprace Improves the First Impression - <AUTHOR> http://imprace.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Javascript snippet is required to use imprace.com</comment>


Google Cloud Morning Coffee – Google Meet with Serge Lachapelle - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/ftYkQRy_9_U <comment><AUTHOR> Some nice insights on Google Meet's direction in 2020...</comment>


Google 2010 Zeitgeist - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2010

<comment><USER2> I don't understand how Katy Perry can be on the general fastest rising list, but not on the entertainment fastest rising list? Is this a judgement on Google's part that she isn't entertaining?

<comment><USER3> A plausible (if not likely) explanation is that a large number of the searches for Katy Perry included other terms that caused Google to identify the searches as "not entertainment".

<comment><USER4> Depends on whose entertainment we're talking about I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The world is not flat, but it is shallow.

</comment><comment><USER6> Off topic, but everytime I run across a Google site that I haven't seen before I can't help but marvel at the beautiful simplicity of its design.

Combine that with the knowledge that Google A/B tests designs constantly, and it makes you realize how important a simple design must really be.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Fastest falling: 8. myspace layouts

So long myspace, we hardly knew you...

</comment><comment><USER8> Google has certainly upped the ante on its design efforts, everything they've been releasing lately looks beautiful

</comment><comment><USER9> So does pornography not count as entertainment? I'm surprised not to see porn represented on this page at all.

<comment><USER10> >I'm surprised not to see porn represented on this page at all.

I'm surprised that you're surprised. You expect Google, in what amounts to a press release, to direct people to pornography sites?

<comment><USER9> So you're assuming Google is editing out the porn sites. I was assuming porn sites legitimately didn't make the page, and I was surprised by that.

<comment><USER11> They filter out pretty much anything that has to do with sex, whether it's removal from Suggest or disabling instant search ("Press Enter to search").

It's hardly surprising that Google would remove it from these lists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If "nicki minaj" is directly under "justin bieber" in fastest rising, why is there a bunch of other stuff between those terms in "fastest rising in entertainment"?

</comment><comment><USER13> In video review form <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0QXB5pw2qE>

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice charts. They seem to be fancier then what they provide in the visualization API. [http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gall...](http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery.html)

It would be nice if they shared more of what they used internally.

<comment><USER15> Give them time. I thought that about the Google Finance charts, which are now a part of the visualization API, but they weren't for quite some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16>
      Fastest Rising Translations:

      5. beijing apartments

This is something I've noticed recently: Moving to China is something that is becoming a much more popular among Americans.

<comment><USER17> I'm surprised. Considering most of what I hear about China is in relation to their government/censorship and manufacturing, what makes it an attractive place to move to? I understand they're rising in educational prominence (there was a story about that here recently even), but wouldn't the lack of freedom of speech and press be a turn off? I don't mean this as a diss to China, I seriously don't understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I prefer this interface <http://www.google.com/insights/search/#>

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting how South America seemed to care more about the ash cloud over Iceland (which I guess effected travel internationally, so it was an important thing) more than the gulf oil spill (which was popular even in Asia).

But there's always funny little quirks in data you'll find like that. Trying to draw too much from them will drive you mad.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting to compare product searches to actual sales data (we've been looking at this with a client: [http://blog.reevoo.com/2010/12/datamining- santas-grotto-pred...](http://blog.reevoo.com/2010/12/datamining-santas- grotto-predicting-christmas-sales-with-real-data/)).

[Starts digging around in Excel...].

</comment><comment><USER21> Could somebody from Russia explain this "как жрать суши" (Translation: "How to eat sushi?")? Why it is fastest rising?

<comment><USER22> Seems like a meme: people encourage others to google for "как жрать суши" and look at the first link. The first link reads "Stop eating sushi, dumbass -- eat borsch and don't show off".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why don't they translate the foriegn words? And is this supposed to be worldwide? Am I to understand the most popular search terms across the world are in three languages and amost all englsih? If it's not worldwide report why include the foreign terms?

Someone really dropped the ball on this one.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's interesting.

Normally one would say that visualizing the data would increase it's legibility and ability to interpret it.

With this I actually feel that the most interesting and understandable thing is the listing

</comment><comment><USER25> Wait a minute WikiLeaks isn't there..! ;)

</comment><comment><USER26> Using which tool was the video made ? Can it me made with Google's Cloud tool ?

</comment><comment><USER27> Fastest falling: Wamu -- LOL.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the other companies you'll never work for? - <AUTHOR> What are the companies you should absolutely avoid?<p>Why? Culture? CEO? Management? Customers? <comment><USER2> Brightcove. Completely terrible company - some of the most cliquey, horrible people I've ever had the displeasure of working with.

</comment><comment><USER3> CEO and culture will make me do better homework before and during the interview process, but will not stop me from working for such a company.

I would avoid everything related to betting, I can't justify to myself abusing people's weaknesses. There are grey areas like esports involving money

I would have to think twice about companies or teams building "content recommendation", online ads or anything else that spies on individuals for the soul purpose of making more money

</comment><comment><USER4> I can give the same answer here that I give to recruiters. The job I do has to improve the world somehow. It doesn't have to be some profound world-changing project, but it has to be a net positive. For example, the project I've been on for the last 7 years moves paper-based processes in small government to online processes. Less waste, saves them money. Doesn't solve the big problems of the world, but at least is one small positive step.

I will consider any job that can make that same claim. And I'll reject jobs that cannot.

</comment><comment><USER5> My personal opinion on what I would avoid:

\- FAANG / BAT: too large, I don't want to tell people that my work was handling validation of 17th form in Adwords extended preferences screen for Tier-3 partners;

\- any kind of surveillance / anti-privacy tech, including all those "we help companies understand their employees better" and "we make workers more productive" etc, all kinds of ad-matching platforms, behavioral analysis and so on;

\- generally anything advertisement-related;

\- anything military- or defense-related;

\- anything by ex-Wework and Uber because of how toxic work culture was / is in those (just IMO);

\- sweatshops like Luxoft, Crossover etc;

\- probably would avoid corporates like Citi, McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte etc;

\- anything that produces cheaply in China and sells outside;

\- would be very careful with anything invested by Softbank directly or through a proxy fund...

Hahaha, so probably starting a business or working for a NGO with a good cause is the only way.

<comment><USER6> BAT = Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent?

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I search for it and all I could find was "British American Tobacco"</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A curated list of great puzzles - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sharkdp/great-puzzles <comment><USER2> A small suggestion: instead of just puzzle.md and solution.md, it'd be nice to have hint.md or even hint1.md, hint2.md, and so on. Right now your options are either solve it completely yourself or have the answer given to you, and providing various levels of hints help people get some of the enjoyment of solving it even if they don't have that initial eureka moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea. For some of the puzzles I can certainly come up with some hints which are helpful and not too revealing. Thank you for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've read the first one ("Grouped by Color") and isn't the solution more complicated than it needs to? It seems to me, that essentially the same process could be described by one simple rule: every dwarf should take place directly to the right of the rightmost dawrf with blue hat or to the left of the leftmost dwarf with red hat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, this looks like an easier description. Beware, however, that "directly to the right" could be misunderstood. If the first two are B and R, the third has to go between them... but I still like your rule. Will think about it, Thanks!

<comment><USER3> > first two are B and R, the third has to go between them

Yes, exactly, and that is directly to the right of B. I assume that dwarfs can always "fit in" between the others.

Actually, the rule "directly to the right of the rightmost blue one" would be enough if not the possibility that the first one can be R and then second one doesn't know where to stand and can take the place to the right wearing blue hat himself, which would fuck up the whole algorithm. Hence "to the left of the leftmost red one" part.

And it still a little bothers me that, strictly speaking, separation will never happen, as the last dwarf will stand just on the right place, but will never know himself if he wears red or blue hat (others will know though).

<comment><AUTHOR> > > first two are B and R, the third has to go between them > Yes, exactly, > and that is directly to the right of B. I assume that dwarfs can always "fit > in" between the others.

I'm okay with that, just saying that it could be misunderstood/disliked because some people would probably prefer a scheme which works for actual dwarves instead of pointlike :-)

> Actually, the rule "directly to the right of the rightmost blue one" would > be enough if not the possibility that the first one can be R and then second > one doesn't know where to stand and can take the place to the right wearing > blue hat himself, which would fuck up the whole algorithm. Hence "to the > left of the leftmost red one" part.

Yes... or if the first k ones are all red.

> And it still a little bothers me that, strictly speaking, separation will > never happen, as the last dwarf will stand just on the right place, but will > never know himself if he wears red or blue hat (others will know though).

True, but from a observer perspective, they definitely managed to order themselves into groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favorite site for these kinds of puzzles is [https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/intro.shtml](https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/intro.shtml)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the reference. I have never seen this page. Looks very promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A pretty good list you might find things from: [http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/Puzzles](http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/Puzzles)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, "Ants on a meter stick" is from this page - it's a really good collection. I should add a list of resources. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In short, the idea behind this list is the following: Puzzle solving is great fun, but often it is really hard to tell if it is worth to invest time into a particular puzzle (without seeing the solution).

For the puzzles on the list, I definitely think it was worth to invest some time thinking about them. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure if I understand the Rational pirates puzzle or it might need clarification. Specifically "the oldest pirate alive will propose how the coins will be distributed among the pirates,......"

"Otherwise, the pirate proposing the scheme will be thrown overboard".

I read this as the pirate who proposed the breakdown (the oldest remaining pirate), but in your solution, it sounds like the person who voted against it thrown out.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you read that correctly in the puzzle description. The oldest pirate will be thrown overboard. My solution was written in a slightly misleading way. I just updated it. I hope it is clear now. Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome list. I have a couple I'll add as well.</comment>


Can We Trust Monsanto with Our Food? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-we-trust-monsanto-with-our-food <comment><USER2> This very brief article doesn't really cover much at all, only covering that we generally know that a GMO food won't kill you if you eat it. While there are a minority of individuals who needlessly worry about this, this isn't really the issue. It certainly does not address the key issue of whether or not Monsanto should be leading the field.

The real concerns involve sustainable agricultural concerns such as pesticide resistance or overuse, gene contamination, and freedom of research, and specifically if Monsanto the company has really shown themselves to be the most responsible steward to retain near-monopolistic control over the execution of these sensitive practices, as well as a vast proportion of the world's seed supply.

For lots of in-depth discussion on these issues, I recommend this series by the Union of Concerned Scientists: [http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing- food-...](http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food- system/genetic-engineering/) Articles specific to Monsanto are here: [http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing- food-...](http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food- system/genetic-engineering/promoting-resistant-pests.html) [http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing- food-...](http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food- system/genetic-engineering/spreading-gene-contamination.html) [http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing- food-...](http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food- system/genetic-engineering/suppressing-research.html)

Disclaimer: I am not a farmer, or a scientist, or someone who knows anything at all. I am merely pointing out that this article says nearly nothing useful, and referring to a series of articles by a reputable, if not opinionated, organization of experienced scientists and researchers.

<comment><USER3> Also, while reading these, take the time to watch "Kingdom of Men" again to get a feel for what the real issue actually looks like. Living organisms appear (IMO, and subtly in other research) to be able to detect code base tampering, and reject it. How do they reject it? Infertility.

I _am_ a farmer and it is difficult as hell to create a non-GMO farm (non-GMO contaminated mulch and compost, non-GMO animal feeds, non-GMO source animals, non-GMO seed). The OP is correct in all points about Monsanto's power over seed production, but misses what SciAm (and almost everyone else) misses:

 _Genetic material is code being used in a production environment!_

As such it needs to be protected. Code contamination (forks) need to be registered publicly and isolated with extreme prejudice from the production environment. We didn't write the code, and as far as I am concerned, I feel that Monsanto as a policy maker (by default or by lobbing) and any of the most advanced geneticists are script kiddies on a Galactic scale. We will get to adequate understanding it time, but that time is not now. Who gives a fk if you or your grandmother can live a longer or more pain-free life if the result is a global genetic seg-fault? I don't.

My answer is to set up my own isolated farm, as free of GM as I can make it. As I see it, existing organisms do have a genetic conversation (via viruses and other single cell organisms) and will resist and correct some amount of genetic contamination. Honestly I have my doubts that even this will work, but its the most I can do.

Food for thought.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I follow, you say "Genetic material is code being used in a production environment!" as far as I understand it we have been researching for decades and haven't found real problems, at least not more then with older alternatives like radiation and chemicals to speed up the production of genetic changes.

It confuses me that people are ok with, like the article calls it, the shotgun approach (radiation, chemicals) but not with the surgeon approach (using a scalpel and replacing only the genes we want to), I honestly don't understand why.

<comment><USER3> I am not saying that we should eliminate genetic research. I am saying that we need to isolate genetic modification from the general genetic pool until we understand what we are doing. Until half a year ago "we" (geneticists) thought that upwards of 80% of the genome was junk DNA... oops, I guess not. I think that we have to be a little more cautious. A lot more cautious.

If (as I feel is the case) genetic material is code, and we (all Earth based life) is a production environment... I just cannot express how sloppy I feel we have been in the last 20 years. Policy, research, implementation... its not like we don't know how to run a clean software environment, how to do safe development... but in the genetic world? Hack, reverse engineer, install trap doors, holy fuck, we brought down a root level dns server? Cool! We are awesome! We must be geniuses!

We are 13 and loving it.

<comment><USER4> I just wanted to say that we do far more dangerous stuff with the radiation and nobody demands we should isolate those until we understand what is going on. But when it comes to GMO people suddenly are terrified, that is what confuses me.

<comment><USER5> To amply on jeena's point, we used to do this by exposing seeds to e.g. cobalt 60 gamma rays, and breeding the surviving mutants that seemed promising. If you eat all but I assume the very best sushi in the US, the rice is probably a Calrose, do a search on calrose radiation (funny, the Wikipedia article doesn't mention this at all, then again I'm not 100% sure current day Calrose is derived from those earlier varieties).

<comment><USER3> Yeah... I was not aware of this. Another food source I will have to investigate. Chickens, I have found, love rice.

<comment><USER5> Look into the Green Revolution, e.g. start with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution) ; if you're growing or using a cereal that's from a dwarf/semi-dwarf plant variety, before modern genetic engineering it probably had untold horrors committed on it to achieve higher yields.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believed Scientific American was a scientific magazine.

Instead I find this as a shill article complete void of data or any other information whatsoever. It seems like a paid placement article for me.

In science "you don't trust anything", you make experiments and get data.

Personally I am fine with GMO provided 1 thing: You label your food as GMO, and then if people decide they want to be guinea pigs of new developments with their own money so be it.

But they don't want letting people to choose. In the US you can't choose. As the article says "hey, it is making Monsanto lots of money so it is very good".

<comment><USER7> > Instead I find this as a shill article complete void of data or any other > information whatsoever.

I don't see any data in your comment either. Shall we classify it as a shill as well?

It's pretty clear that the article has a single argument. We have been genetically modifying foods for thousands of years and there is no fundamental difference between what we're doing now and what we did before, other than the tools we're using to do it.

How can you provide data for that?

> You label your food as GMO ... In the US you can't choose

WholeFoods is advertising all over their paper bags that they will begin doing this. That said, everything consumed by human beings in the last few thousand years is GMO. Especially our livestock, which has been forced down an evolutionary path that is not sustainable in nature in the slightest. If we become extinct for whatever reason, you will not find chickens and cows roaming about. They will be gone and they will be gone very quickly.

<comment><USER8> > That said, everything consumed by human beings in the last few thousand > years is GMO.

And most people in the anti/label-GMO movement know this an acknowledge that to be the case and love that. What they DON'T love is the intentional irradiation/gene gun/cross species GM techniques that have been employed in the last 30ish years. On an evolutionary scale there hasn't been enough time to determine if modern GM crops (specifically the cross species variety) are deleterious or not. That's where the concern lies.

<comment><USER7> > On an evolutionary scale there hasn't been enough time to determine if > modern GM crops (specifically the cross species variety) are deleterious or > not.

I agree and what we need is version control. If at a later time we do find that we went down the wrong path, we should be able to revert to a prior state with a click of a button.

I would be quite shocked if Monsanto and the others weren't sequencing all of their products, in all of their iterations. That will allow us to revert to a previous state if necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> GMO crops hold incredible potential to feed a world population that continues to grow by leaps and bounds. It has the power to do that with reduced pesticide use, taking pressures off of endangered species, and by bringing crops to parts of the world where they will not grow. There is ZERO evidence that GMO crops have any detrimental health effects, and as hackers we have to stand up to this anti-science nonsense[1].

As for Monsanto. After the Organic Seed Growers brought a class-action suit against the company for unjustly suing innocent farmers whose crops were inadvertently cross-pollinated, I found it incredibly damning that the judge had to throw the case out because the organic farmers could not produce one single example of this ever happening[2]. Nevertheless, this case being dismissed for lack of a victim has actually been used as more proof of Monsanto's control over all branches and departments of government by the tin- foil hat brigade.

[1] [http://ideonexus.com/2011/12/05/gmo-foods-and-the- promise-a-...](http://ideonexus.com/2011/12/05/gmo-foods-and-the-promise-a- second-green-revolution/)

[2] [https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B83aJv4L7U-iYzYyMzQxOTktZjY5...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B83aJv4L7U-iYzYyMzQxOTktZjY5Mi00MDA1LWE0NjgtNjg2YTgzY2MxMDAy/edit)

<comment><USER10> > as hackers we have to stand up to this anti-science nonsense

As hackers we have to question everything instead of being true believers (in science or anything else).

<comment><USER11> Perhaps its a semantic thing, but isn't questioning everything instead of being a true believer the basis of science?

<comment><USER10> In theory, yes, but in practice it's highly unlikely that the vast majority of people would be able to duplicate experiments and verify results. And I'm not talking just about the "I fucking love science" crowd. Even people working in labs will have a very hard time finding resources to repeat an already published (and presumably correct) scientific experiment instead of doing new publishable work.

For the rest of us it all boils down to trusting those held in respect by their peers and that is a belief system. Occasionally reinforced by shunning the nay-sayers as "anti-science"...

<comment><USER5> You don't have to reproduce the results to implicitly verify them. As I understand it, the normal pattern is that if the results are important, researchers will do stuff based upon then, and if the results were wrong their experiments won't go right. Eventually they try reproducing the original to figure out what's wrong, and that can lead to people deciding the original was wrong.

If the results aren't important, they don't tend to get built upon, they mostly just matter for someone getting tenure, the next grant, whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Crop engineer here (the humanitarian kind, not the for-profit kind). Dammit Nina Federoff, that's one poorly written article. All the facts she states are true, but her thesis (that the myths are disproven by GM crops' increasing market share) is stupid.

If anyone wants to ask any GM crop technical questions, or wants any references, I'll do my best.

<comment><USER13> What's more dangerous: manipulating genetics of crops or spraying roundup onto the food crops?

Isn't the most common genetic modification the one that makes the plants immune to roundup?

Wikipedia seems to say that glyphosate is harmless to humans in small doses, but the talk page references the combination of glyphosate and TN-20 which is included in roundup and this link is about the human toxicity of that combination: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23099315](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23099315)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> (disclaimer: im a farmer)

GM food isnt toxic but GM food company lawyers are. the article mentions being sued as a result of cross-pollination in the intro and never speaks of it again, but thats the real GM crop threat.

<comment><USER15> Can you name any cases at all where farmers were sued for cross-polination claims? As a farmer in the industry, this shouldn't be hard, right?

There is one notable example where a farmer intentionally and willfully planted seeds that he knew were Monsantos, but I'm unaware of any pattern of litigation against farmers for the actual unintentional use of Monsanto seed.

<comment><USER16> This is one area where I commonly see farmers with this worry being told "yeah but that has never happened!"

We worry about a lot of things in computer science that has never happened and may never happen. There's common discussion several times a year on HN about the ethical rights of artificial intelligence or lab-grown brains. It's still important to worry about things that haven't happened and may never happen, if only to ensure that they really do never happen.

It's completely plausible that a company could sue over this farmer's fear. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't happen, or that we shouldn't worry about it.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's "completely" plausible, e.g. look at how much bad press they're getting for unfounded claims of this.

<comment><USER16> Bad press doesn't mean everything. Microsoft still reaps profits from undisclosed Linux patents from suits against Android handset makers (although they promised not to sue Linux developers in a previous deal with Novell). Monster Cable still sues small companies for using the word Monster, even though they get a ton of bad press for it.

If the financial hit from the bad press is outweighed by the financial gain from whatever is causing that bad press, which do you think a company would pick?

<comment><USER5> Which is why I focused on the sweeping claim of "completely", which is similar to the word "everything".

<comment><USER16> "Completely", sure. That's too much. "Completely plausible", on the other hand, means something else altogether. Completely plausible means it could conceivably happen. It's entirely within the realm of possibility. Not saying it _will_ happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

At any rate, I think you and I are in violent agreement and aren't actually disagreeing, so we'll leave it at semantics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Terribly written opinion piece; the author apparently forgot to kill all the strawmen they erected, let alone provide any kind of serious treatment of the issue. Despite the author's attempts to shroud it in a veil of balanced reporting, this article is unworthy of discussion on HN.

<comment><USER18> The author is a scientist working in the domain and not in employ of Monsanto or any other major GM market player today. She wrote 3 books on the subject, with extensive footnotes and references.

If anything this a summary treating the subject at the level of depth that can be expected of a short article. Not reporting but a summary, please read her books & papers if you are actually open to those details you request.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would hope that an article from "Scientific" American would cite "scientific" studies which back such claims. As it stands, this article is more bro-science than real science, and it's a damn shame.

<comment><USER20> That article is in agreement with the National Academy of Sciences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is an opinion piece. I'm not qualified to say whether the claims and counter claims made in the piece are accurate or not. But be aware, since it's an opinion piece there are no linked references or research in it to backup the claims it makes.

</comment><comment><USER22> >Humans began genetically modifying plants to provide food more than 10,000 years ago.

There's a difference between selecting and breeding specific plants in your corn crop, or crossing corn with a slightly different variety of corn, and crossing corn with a fish, ginkgo tree, or bacteria.

<comment><USER23> They are different in degree and method, but fundamentally they are the same thing. In the end they are both humans causing the genes of a good crop to change over time. Direct genetic engineering is going to be faster, but the end results could still be the same as indirect breeding and hybrids.

<comment><USER22> A species, the lowest taxonomic classification on the tree of life, is defined by the ability to crossbreed. [0]

Previously, any crossbreeding between plants, by necessity had to belong to the same species. Since this is the lowest taxonomic classification, the vast majority of the genome was shared.

Now, a plant can be crossed with any other species on the tree of life. That's a significant difference.

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

<comment><USER24> All you need to say is that without modern methods of direct gene alteration (and perhaps mutagens), organisms had to be able to breed to have their genes crossed (fertile offspring make the cross more interesting). Talking about species just muddies it up.

Of course, GMOs can also pass the tests of successfully maturing and reproducing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm scientifically minded. I've loved science all my life. I'm decently well versed in many areas of science. GMO crops concern me because there is so much that we don't know about their effects and we don't really have an exit strategy if it turns out that they are, in fact, dangerous.

From my point of view we don't have enough data to be able to make a determination one way or another, so the only logical way forward is to be cautious. At the very least that means labeling whether or not our food contains food that was genetically engineered in the modern sense (gene-gun or irradiation, primarily).

The evidence we do have about modern GM crops is almost completely provided by the industry itself. In my opinion, there is enough circumstantial evidence from studies done by third parties, even if those studies aren't perfectly executed, to be wary of unleashing GM foods onto the global population. We shouldn't be so cavalier when we are dealing with the foundations of life. We don't fully understand the genome and we require food to eat. Those two facts should be enough for us to tread very carefully down this path. Let's do the science (beyond animal feeding studies). Let's find out. But in the meantime, assuming that everything is above-board from the very people who are going to benefit from the introduction and adoption of GM crops seems irrational when the potential harm is so great.

</comment><comment><USER25> I see several comments are decrying this interesting commentary article from Scientific American for not providing detailed citations for such basic facts as

"Humans began genetically modifying plants to provide food more than 10,000 years ago."

(This has been well understood ever since the Young Earth Creationism view of the age of the earth was set aside.)

"For the past hundred years or so plant breeders have used radiation and chemicals to speed up the production of genetic changes. This was a genetic shotgun, producing lots of bad changes and a very, very occasional good one."

(One example of this that is very familiar to me is the variety of sweet, pink-fleshed grapefruit grown in Texas, which was developed by irradiating grapefruit seeds.)

"Most early alarms about new technologies fade away as research accumulates without turning up evidence of deleterious effects. This should be happening now because scientists have amassed more than three decades of research on GM biosafety, none of which has surfaced credible evidence that modifying plants by molecular techniques is dangerous. Instead, the anti-GM storm has intensified."

If someone wants to disagree with this aspect of the article, the thing to do would be to cite evidence that there is any danger to GMO technology. As I type this, no one commenting in this thread has yet done so.

"Insect-resistant GM corn also decreases human and animal exposure to mycotoxins, highly toxic and carcinogenic compounds made by fungi. The fungi that produce mycotoxins follow insects into plants; insect-resistant plants have no insect holes for fungi to enter and therefore no mycotoxins."

This is a fact new to me that I learned from the article kindly submitted here. All living things are in biological competition, and most living things are toxic, by natural selection, to some or many of the other living things that might eat them. GMO technology allows human eaters to enjoy safer food.

"Farmers don't have to buy Monsanto seed, nor is anyone preventing them from saving and replanting any seed they want, except for patented seed they've signed an agreement not to save and plant. Farmers buy seeds from Monsanto and other ag-biotech companies because their costs decrease and their profits increase. If they didn't, farmers wouldn't buy them again."

Most of my uncles and cousins are farmers. The quoted statement is true. Farmers buy products if the products offer a good safety and effectiveness profile for sustainable farming. Agricultural products that don't work don't get a lot of repeat business from farmers. The people who are still farmers in the United States feed the entire country they live in and have enough surplus production to feed much of the rest of the world. Farmers in other countries have also enjoyed increased productivity as a result of agricultural research and free enterprise in agricultural products. The whole developed world is seeing rising life expectancies and reduced disease burdens at all ages,

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity- why-we-die-global-life-expectancy)

so whatever is new about agricultural practices in the developed world seems to working well so far.

<comment><USER17> It's ridiculous to say that because we've been using genetic modification techniques for three decades without catastrophe, GMOs are safe. GMOs encompass a large and expanding range of techniques and implementations, and it's never too late for someone to screw up and give the entire field a black eye.

The question I have is largely of containment, given the potential delay between the time a GMO product is introduced to the market, and the signs of health problems appearing. If by the time a serious problem is discovered, the genetic material in question has spread to the entire gene pool for that species, then it becomes extremely difficult to address. If the unwanted presence of a modified gene prevents farmers from labeling their product organic, or exporting to certain countries, as was recently the case with Oregon wheat farmers and Japan, then it's currently having some very real consequences for people which shouldn't be dismissed.

I'm all for progress; I'd just rather let others be guinea pigs when possible, and always keep an exit strategy.

<comment><USER18> Actually what the article says is that we have been using genetic modifications since the dawn of agriculture. Four hundred years ago carrots were not orange, broccoli did not exist. Countless varieties were produced using aggressive methods inducing mutations as well as selection by humans over the accidental mutations.

None of these new breeds were subjected to the same rigorous standards of verification and safety as the produce labeled as 'GMO' today. Worse all new varieties produced with the same forced shuffling are similarly not tested with the same standards as GMOs are.

There have yet to been someone poisoned by 'GMO' varieties whilst there are plenty of such accidents in case of 'classic' breeding. A very good book on this subject is "Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Food", that by no accident was written by a scientist and not an activist.

<comment><USER5> Heh, based on a hint by zsombor below that the author of this item has written 3 books the general subject, I discovered that she's the first author of _Mendel in the Kitchen_ : [http://www.amazon.com/Mendel-Kitchen-Scientists- Genetically-...](http://www.amazon.com/Mendel-Kitchen-Scientists-Genetically- Modified/dp/030909738X/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "What are the facts? Monsanto and the other big ag-biotech companies have developed reliable, biologically insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant commodity crops that benefit people, farmers and the environment, and are nutritionally identical to their non-GM counterparts."

Whoa boy, there goes any credibility that article had. To be fair, at least they are upfront about where they're coming from.. This article probably tells us more about SA than MON.</comment>


Fernvale: An Open Hardware and Software Platform [video] - <AUTHOR> http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6156_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412282145_-_fernvale_an_open_hardware_and_software_platform_based_on_the_nominally_closed-source_mt6260_soc_-_bunnie_-_xobs.html

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fernvale#!/story/forever/0/fernval...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fernvale#!/story/forever/0/fernvale)</comment>


The $1-a-week school - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21660113-private-schools-are-booming-poor-countries-governments-should-either-help-them-or-get-out <comment><USER2> I can't really picture a system where 20% of teacher are absent on any given day... and since I can't picture it I feel like I'm not really getting the whole picture. The article just gives a single paragraph to blame the unions and doesn't really dive into the issue. So I looked into it:

[http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/pdf/outputs/systematicreviews/Q39Teac...](http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/pdf/outputs/systematicreviews/Q39Teacher_attendance_2012Guerrero.pdf)

The primary reasons for absenteeism seem to be personal/family health (which, granted, that _could_ be bullshit if it was self-reported) and work related requirements (training, etc.)

Several studies showed correlation between poverty and absenteeism, which suggests to me that teachers who have less financial resources to deal with personal issues are going to miss work more often to go deal with those issues.

It was also noted that administrators were absent more often than teachers and the author suggested this as being a factor in teacher absenteeism.

<comment> barry-cotter I regret I accidentally upvoted you when I meant to downvote, please excuse the Sony fat fingers. (Don't buy unless it's Nexus or iPhone, kids.)

Your background assumption outside the first world should be that most people are trying to cheat you, most of the time. If this wasn't true the country would already be at least middle income, absent massive fuck ups, (communism included) or recent wars. If you doubt me I invite you to move to the richest city in any poor country.

All that said education isn't as wonderful as one might naively think. Kerala in South India is anomalously well educated compared to its neighbours but about as poor. The main thing motivating their teachers to show up compared to their neighbours is that Keralan parents beat up teachers who don't at least show up for work.

<comment><USER3> Presumably you mean the reverse (meant to upvote); the GP post seems pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have a monopoly, you charge excess rents and stop innovating. People accept this easily as a fact of private enterprise, which is why we have the state intervene to break monopolies.

Why people can't take this obvious fact and apply it to state-mandated monopolies, like education, is perplexing. There should not be 1 provider of education. We need competition and innovation in education.

<comment><USER5> State education doesn't have to be bad. It's not like they are granting a monopoly to a private company. Finland for example "ranked sixth in math, second in science and third in reading. By comparison, U.S. students ranked 30th, 23rd and 17th, respectively, of the 65 tested countries/economies."

[http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/january/finnish- schools-r...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/january/finnish-schools- reform-012012.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Teachers unions are an artifact of a system modeled on the way things work in wealthy nations where there are a surplus of qualified teachers...e.g. the US where states have factory scale colleges of education in order to churn out new teachers and thereby suppress wages (and historically to provide respectable jobs for women from "respectable" social backgrounds).

It's a model where schoolmasters have Doctorates of Education; local government administrations tend to be relatively less corrupt; the overall cultural identity relatively free from hereditary entitlement; and with a historical ideal of universal franchise.

The idea that education can be provided for $100 per pupil per year doesn't fit the model, and the skew is in economic assumptions in general.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you want a good book on the subject, check out the Beautiful Tree - [http://www.amazon.com/The-Beautiful-Tree-Educating- Themsleve...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Beautiful-Tree-Educating- Themsleves/dp/1939709121?tag=joshdanc-20)</comment>


Using virtual reality to desensitize troops - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/17/6994793/using-virtual-reality-to-desensitize-troops

<comment><USER2> At a certain level things like these ask the question what it is to be human, and should we tamper with it because it is perceived as an impediment to our political goals. Perhaps, one shouldnt be getting into these unnecessary wars in the first place !

A telling anecdote might be the following: before mass extermination had been perfected, a method that used to be followed by the WWII Germans was to machine gun the victims packed in a pit. There have been several letters found to have gone back and forth among the higher ups concerned with the emotional reaction of the underlings doing the actual machine gunning. They considered their emotional reaction to be the principal problem and sought out alternatives, not that the concept of mass extermination itself was the one that was questionable, quite preposterous !

Lest anyone jumps at it, I am by no means making a claim for moral equivalence here.

@PavlovsCat Wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. Strange as it may sound coming from someone who harbours anti-war sentiments, I for one support mandatory military service for the reasons you mention. Without it, it is easier for one set of people to encourage war with little risk or cost to them. Or even better, those who are in favor of, or vote for war should be required to take up proportionate risk. But exactly as you said, thing are not simple, there is a thin line between what I proposed just now and war profiteering at a national scale.

<comment><USER3> It begins with assumptions that pretend to take the whole view into context, but do not, as you suggest with the WWII comparison. The side effects are pernicious and systemic.

I think the important thing to remember about PTSD and other mental illness - numbing and desensitization are not the same as healing. Whether these things occur as preparation or as treatment; I am not so certain this matters as much. The events still occur. The thoughts and memories still exist.

Just because a person can not visibly show an emotional reaction or feel one, does not mean the emotion has vanished, been extinguished, or that the person has somehow been protected. The idea that this is effective preparation can lead to further confusion, both for the individual affected and those observing.

I agree with learning a certain kind of preparation up to a degree. I believe doctors need a certain amount of preparation and experience in order to act during crisis. I wish people would put more effort towards creating peace, rather than assuming that war and violence are permanent conditions of the social psyche.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disclaimer: I've been in some pretty intense situations in my life.

At some point, no amount of VR can get past "this is not real". I suspect you would need something that supercedes the psychological barriers in place which keep telling a person "this is not real". For example, MDMA-assisted VR therapy. Additionally, this seems just another form of what's called "prolonged exposure therapy", which is why they state "That's part of why VR therapy doesn't work for everyone". At the risk of downvotes, I think the real silver bullet here would be to create and enforce stronger barriers to going to war in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember MGS 2 brought up this possibility, when they compared Raiden's VR training with normal live exercises. And how even in real drills there is a chance of someone dying, while VR training makes you think war is a game.

</comment><comment><USER6> Next up: virtual reality as a tool for information extraction.</comment>


Explain Ethereum like I'm five - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/ben/explain-ethereum-like-im-five <comment><USER2> You put your money in a ""smart" contract." You discover there was a bug and all your money has been moved to a "better" programmer. You contemplate why they didn't give you an environment harder to make "safe" programs in.

This is has some nice language theory stuff: [https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4p0gq3/why_turingcompl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4p0gq3/why_turingcomplete_smart_contracts_are_doomed/)

This is why you might prefer bitcoin to ethereum if you're just value routing: [https://medium.com/@richardheartauthor/9-reasons-you- should-...](https://medium.com/@richardheartauthor/9-reasons-you-should-be- worried-about-ethereum-right-now-353c4ca0064a)</comment>


An Epitaph for Newsvine - <AUTHOR> https://medium.mikeindustries.com/an-epitaph-for-newsvine-5a1ab2a44519 <comment><AUTHOR> Newsvine was great during its heyday. I never partook in the citizen journalism side of the equation, but took great pride in curating interesting submissions and the discussions that ensued. For at least one period at the end of 2008, when I was a senior in college, I was at the top of the leaderboard and harbored ambitions of moving to the west coast and working for Newsvine in technology. Alas.

The discussion is what made Newsvine for me. It was friendly, well-informed, and Made Everyone Smarter. These days, I don't even think about wading into the morass that is the comments section on news articles. I miss that, though it's certainly tied to the size of the community—which itself is tied to the ability to moderate effectively. Much credit to Tyler and the team for keeping us on the rails.</comment>


Deutsche Telekom to Push for National Routing to Curtail Spying - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-14/deutsche-telekom-to-push-for-national-routing-to-curtail-spying.html

<comment><USER2> I'm deeply moved by this oh so socially responsible attempt to force German internet traffic through specific networks. I'm sure it has nothing to do with Telekom operating one of the largest backbones in the country, and the hefty peering fees they ask for.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup: Bill On Site - <AUTHOR>

http://www.billonsite.com/
Bill On Site is a web-based invoicing system, with a unique twist: you can use Bill On Site on your mobile phone, enabling small business owners to send invoices to their customers while still on their client's site.  All you need is a semi-recent phone – one with a web browser on it – and internet access on your phone.
This used to be my part-time gig, but then I was laid off and have used much of my time and severance since getting it to "release-ready" status.  I just released it the first of this month, and I'd really appreciate any feedback. <comment><USER3> You should have a 'free plan' option. I use Freshbooks for all my invoices and I used their free plan until recently. Their free plan really sold me because I was able to use it for 6 months to make invoices, and when I needed to do more, then I was more than willing to upgrade to a paid plan.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just took a quick look at the plan selection page, I noticed the following:

\- The numbers for the basic and premium plans seem to fade into the background and are hard to read.

\- The "Serious" name for the plan was a little off-putting for me. To me it implied that the other plans were for amateurs, which was even a bit more confusing since it is the middle plan. (I'm not really your target audience so take this advice with a grain of salt.)

<comment><AUTHOR> These are all good points. I didn't notice the number fade until you mentioned it. I'll play around with the colours.

And I have worked quite some time at coming up with names for the plans - it's hard! I have competitors with plans names like "Time Machine, Limousine, etc." and I wanted something a little more professional than that. But on the flip side, I wanted something better than the traditional "Bronze, Silver, Gold".

Also, there's the pricing advice that I keep hearing, that you have a premium option so that people buying your middle option feel good that they saved money, and you have a cheap option so that people buying your middle option feel good that they're not cheap.

I think the first and last tiers I have are good, but yeah, the middle one needs work.

<comment><AUTHOR> There. Hopefully that's a little less jarring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think that paraschopra is right in the determining whether there is an existing need for this. Though, my approach is - what's the application that this could be really great for? Whether it exists, or is exactly on-site billing at a client -I think the answer is - where is this a killer app? Isn't there a great application for pop-up sales events? Fairs, trade shows, etc?

</comment><comment><USER6> Clickable link: <http://www.billonsite.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Shoot - shoulda done that myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just curious if you did a study/survey in your target market and found that the inability to bill at client's site is a big frustration point for your users. I don't know much about small business owner market but s this differentiator strong enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> No formal studies of that kind, no, but I spoke with a few small business owners who thought it was a great idea and that they would love to have it.

I also did some market testing last December where I threw up a simple test page under what I _was_ going to call the product: "Mobilliti". I ditched the name (seriously, look at all the i's and l's, it's completely unreadable), but kept the feedback. I spent $50 on Google Adwords, and got a several people who were interested enough to click through all the way to the "Sign up" button, and then fill in contact information about when the product would be available.

<comment><USER8> (disclaimer: i'm the author of a competing product - <http://corduroysite.com/> which has an iphone/mobile interface in development)

i've also been told by my customers that a mobile interface would be great and generating invoices at a client's location would be useful, but i think the important thing is that it's just a feature of a bigger billing system. when they get back to their office, the normal web interface to the system still has all of the tools they need to work quickly.

do you see your product as being a company's only billing system where they do everything through a mobile interface or is it intended to be a small invoicing system that works in tandem with their existing billing system like quickbooks? i ask because your site is heavily pushing the mobile part without really detailing the rest of the system.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an excellent point. I've already got someone using it for the web interface despite the heavy mobile use I'm pushing, but I can see how my copy comes off as missing the "complete picture," as it were. Something I'll have to work on.

And no worries on being a competitor - there's tons of guys like us! FreshBooks, CurdBee, Ballpark, Ronin, The Invoice Machine, Cannybill - <USER2> list goes on. And Freshbooks has an iPhone interface, even.

This is - I'm told - good news. A large market with a fractured user base is a good place to enter, provided you can target a niche that nobody else has made their own... which is what I'm trying to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hard to read the text in the footer. It also seems there is an extra box below your footer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Browser? Operating system?

I'd love to fix it, but I can't see it in any of my configurations (Linux/Windows, Opera/Firefox/Chrome/IE.)

<comment><USER10> I get the same extra box.

Using Safari 4.0.3 on Snow Leopard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hurk. Don't have a Mac. I'll see what I can do, though. I have an idea what's causing it.

<comment><USER11> I was able to reproduce with Chrome 22.214.171.124 on Windows; it's happening because Clicky Web Analytics has an image inside of a
, and you've styled p in footer to have a background image. I was able to get it to go away by removing the style, or by removing the p around the image in the footer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Which payment processor are you using ?

<comment><AUTHOR> PayPal. Easiest integration.

Paying invoices works largely like Etsy's integration with PayPal, too.</comment></comment>


The First True Scientist - al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham born 965 A.D. - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7810846.stm

<comment><USER2> No one is denying Archimedes/Ptolemy or any of these great scientists. The point the Western world must ask itself is why does it present science in such a way so as to indicate that during its Dark Ages, the scientific world was infact flourishing. Muslims built on this history and w/o us, modern science would have stagnated courtesy of popes and bishops.

It must also be thought, how come after so many years in darkness then all of a sudden Europeans made these discoveries. Not for one moment do I believe that Leonardo DaVincis discoveries were inspirational and not built upon past work.

<comment><USER3> B/C it didn't actually happen that way. The "Dark Ages" is a myth perpetuated in elementary school to children. The "Dark Ages" referred to the 100-200 year period immediately after the fall of Rome, during which Western Europe was thrown in _relative_ chaos. After that however, Europe was fairly vibrant, and new inventions were churned out over the next several centuries (mostly military, agricultural, and metal working technologies). Italy never lost its luster as a center for science and research; even after Rome's fall, the climate, location, and trade made it attractive to inventors, architects, and artists--the Vatican did not fall. For example, the earliest patent systems, (yes, plural) predated the reintroduction of Classical texts into Europe. Many European scientists and mathematicians independently came up with ideas similar to the Ancient Greek dudes, but don't get popular credit for this because they weren't first.

<comment><USER2> Actually, in the 'Dark Ages', it was Islamic science that was at the forefront of the science - algebra, a new discipline, was invented by a Muslim from Persia. It was not until 1500's that European's made inroads into science and when Newton came along simply took science to the next level. I have no problem admitting to facts - but what gets my goat is when Europeans present science as something dynamic during the tmie of Greeks and then stagnant for some period and then the boom. At least acknowledge it a bit - may even help the world political situation !!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Western culture owes more to the Muslim scholars of the middle ages than many realize. Aristotle, whose works had been lost in the west, was reintroduced by Arabic scholars translated to Latin from Arabic rather than Greek. This had a profound impact on the development of science.

</comment><comment><USER5> What about Archimedes? His pure mathematical works have survived to the present better than some of his scientific works, but he is not alone among Greek-speaking people of his era in being scientists. Eratosthenes must fit, I think.</comment>


An Adventure in the Nth Dimension (2011) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.americanscientist.org/sites/americanscientist.org/files/201110101628308738-2011-11CompSciHayes.pdf <comment><USER2> Previous, related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1846682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1846682)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3995615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3995615)

Neal Gershenfeld's book on mathematical modelling (from 15 years ago) mentions that points in distributions/objects in higher dimensions are always close to the surface -- as dimensionality increases, the degree of bulk and interior space goes away.

<comment><USER3> there was discussion also on threads about the book "Foundations of Data Science" by Hopcroft /Kannan/Blum but i can't find those threads

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An intuitive answer has to do with the fact that a unit volume is defined by a "box" of unit side length. While a sphere with unit diameter would touch the walls of the box, the box has an exponentially large number of corners (2^dimensions) where the sphere has no presence. That is why the volume of a unit diameter sphere is much smaller than that of a unit box in high dimensions.

</comment><comment><USER5> An extremely accessible article on higher dimensional geometry!</comment>


Steve Blank: The Sharp End of the Stick - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/05/04/the-sharp-end-of-the-stick/

<comment><USER2> How does this argument mutate when considering "self-service" applications like, say, a lot of SaaS out there?

My feeling is that the product development team (with a focus on optimising for more sales) is the equivalent of the sales team in that case...

Would love to hear other people's thoughts on this though.

<comment><USER3> For most business applications the only thing thats self-service with SaaS is usually the purchasing process. They can begin using the software with little involvement from the company.

But that only comes at the end of the sales process - you would still need marketing/sales to get to that point.

Although, if your targeting a technical crowd then having a great product and some PR would most likely make the product dev team most influential in a sale.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is vim considered a better editor in comparison to emacs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It isn't.

Emacs vs Vim is more a matter of personal taste.

I have used both, here are my opinions.

Note: I was a vim user that switched to emacs.

Vi/Vim:

</comment><comment></comment><comment>=

It _IS_ worth learning because it is the de-facto standard editor on most unix and unix-like systems, and most of the times it comes preinstalled. The basics can be learnt in half an hour or so.

The nice thing about vim is that it fits very well in the Unix environment doing basically one thing and doing it fairly well.

Please note that vi and vim are two different things: 'vi' is more of a family of editors, with vim being the most widely used one. Most vi-like editors share the same keybinding and stuff, and you can use most using the same of keybindings and concepts.

One of the things where vim falls short is that its scripting language is quite crappy, and it's quite a PITA to work with. Plus once you learn it, it is quite useless outside vim.

GNU Emacs

</comment><comment></comment><comment>=

GNU Emacs is a radically different approach to editing text and it resembles one of the early lisp machines: you have a bunch of functions lying around and you call and compose them as you need them.

The learning curve is quite steep but it is very flexible, it has a reasonably nice scripting language that you can use even outside (well, most of the syntax).

The thing I like about emacs is that it gives you a coherent environment to do most of your things, and a scripting language to customize most of its aspect.

So what?

</comment><comment></comment><comment>=

Well, nothing. Try them both and stick with what you like.

I think it is really worth to learn at least the basics of both.

To be fairly honest, I have some pain points with both of them... But that would be OT, and better suited for another post :)

</comment><comment><USER3> who says that vim is better than emacs? both are equally good in their "world" its just a matter of user preferences more people like vims shortcuts

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't feed the troll.</comment>


Show HN: Download Free Hi-Res Art, Posters and Illustrations - <AUTHOR> https://www.artvee.com <comment><USER2> So what does it mean "public domain artworks" say if I wanted to put this in an APP or in a picture frame for myself could I do this?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are no license restrictions, so you can use the images for whatever you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a really deep collection - nice presentation too. Would be nice if you could order a print from it too.</comment>