Dispelling myths about the autistic programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/276428/Dispelling_some_myths_about_the_autistic_wunderkind_programmer.php <comment><USER4> With all the discrimination and bullying going around, I think it is good that someone has something nice to say about autistic programmers. Like Ian Murdock who founded Debian and recently committed suicide had Asperger's Syndrome. Despite obvious impressive technical skills, life probably wasn't easy for him.

Most companies favor hiring average programmers that fit the mold over "weird people" even if they are amazing at their work. If Microsoft is doing the opposite and targets autistic programmers, then good for them! I see no reason to complain about that.

And for the record, the "myth" he is dispelling is a common misunderstanding of statistics. I can say that almost all rapists are men. Obviously that doesn't mean that all men are rapists, it means that the probability that a given rapist is a man is very high. It also doesn't mean that females can't be rapists.

In the same way, I can say that a "genius programmer" likely is on the autistic spectrum, without saying that all autists are geniuses and without saying that you can't be a genius programmer without being an autist.

<comment><USER5> "Most companies favor hiring average programmers that fit the mold over "weird people" even if they are amazing at their work."

Do they? At my company we half-seriously joke when programmers are too socially well adjusted, that _they_ won't fit in. We prefer a bit of spergy.

I don't have any idea what 'most' companies think, or if large companies even have consistent trends in their own thinking.

<comment> nommm-nommm What's a "spergy"?

<comment><USER6> "Sperg" is a derogatory term for people with Aspergers. Jackmott clearly means well, but it's odd to use it in this context.

<comment><USER7> I self identify as a sperg lord. The term is hilarious to me at least (wait.. not realizing something is offensive is a sign of Aspergers?)

<comment><USER6> There's several things I self-identify as that I wouldn't want a stranger calling me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I dont know if autistic people are better programmers, but what I feel that - from 20 years making software - is that people with these personality traits that fit into the spectrum of autism and who happen to end up in the software industry are extremely vulnerable to being exploited by people with certain other personality traits.

Put a narcissistic (or whatever you want to call this type of people - <USER2> sociopathic? I am not a psychologist) CEO or a manager in a room with autistic software developers and you will could have some great things churned out, but there are probably going to be a couple of heart attacks and maybe worse, if you are unlucky. For sure, there will be some very unhappy people.

<comment><USER9> We call this dynamic the nerd vs. nerd exploiter dynamic. Jobs and Woz or Allen and Gates are good examples.

<comment><USER10> Ironically, it's Jobs that has all of the typical Aspy traits, not Woz—right down to deciding on one set of clothes and sticking to it.

If you actually read an S. Jobs bio and are familiar with Aspy traits, he's a textbook case.

What confuses people (if they are confused) is that most people with Aspergers are not artistic, don't like speaking in front of crowds, or running teams.

However, it makes a ton of sense if you understand what the underlying brain differences are. People with Aspergers can be superior at artistic and group endeavors because they can easily ignore human quirks and are able to instead focus on the archetypal aspects. Certainly Jobs did.

A handful of extremely successful film writer/directors are also on the spectrum, and I suspect, for similar reasons. All, like Jobs, are considered to be "assholes" by some, and absolutely loved by others.

<comment><USER9> I have read SJobs bio(s). My father, brother and fiance have Aspergers. My father and brother especially relate more to Woz and are scared of people like Jobs. I relate more to Jobs than Woz, and I am more OCPD. If Jobs is Aspergers, he is also very manic spectrum. My father/brother are strictly unipolar. Here is more on the OCPD thing if you are curious: [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/business_success_from_mental_illness_steve_jobs_henry_heinz_and_est_e_lauder.html)

<comment><USER10> Oh for sure, I didn't mean to imply that Jobs was _only_ on the spectrum.

I work in film (in addition to tech) and know a lot of people on the spectrum that I think people who only meet autistic programmers would have difficulty recognizing.

Even in TFA, one of the descriptors is:

> _They generally marry the first girl they date_

Maybe, but in my experience, that's only one specific kind of person with Aspergers (who I agree definitely exists). However, at least in film and other artistic/people disciplines, that wouldn't describe the "typical" person on the spectrum—I think you mainly see that type in tech/engineering circles. (To be fair, that's what the article is focused on.)

In my experience, at least in the fields I work in, people with Aspergers are "sigmas" (to use PUA terminology for a moment) and have no difficulty whatsoever dating, meeting people, etc. Certainly they don't do it the "normal" way, but they're very successful.

UDPATE: Thinking about it further, most people on the spectrum are not intuitive feelers (in the Myers Briggs taxonomy), they're sensory thinkers. When you find an Aspie who is an intuitive feeler, like Jobs, it's certainly confusing to people: if he's an Aspie, how can he get up in front of crowds? Lead a team? Negotiate? Etc. Unpossible.

It's really just "normals" applying their own biases on what a normal person would/could do, without understanding what makes those on the spectrum—especially those that are more emotional/intuitive—tick.

<comment><USER9> Completely agree with the Sigma thing. I found the PUA stuff (my interest was more evo pysch) so frustratingly irrelevant and misguided until I read about the Sigma reproductive model. I think the difference (clinically speaking) between narcissists and aspergers is the need for admiration. No one I know with aspergers wants any attention, basically ever. I think Jobs is more of an INFJ narcissist. As opposed to more borderline INTJ (Aspergers).

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the comments, I don't find many people who are into this stuff AND don't have cartoonish views of people on the spectrum.

I wanted to share this next bit because you seem like you might appreciate it. At least it took _me_ awhile to figure it out. :)

In my experience, Myers Briggs is most helpful if you think of all eight attributes as independent capabilities each person can have, and then rate each on a scale, say, from 1-10. From each pairing, the one with the highest value determines their type, e.g. INFJ.

So, I would agree that Jobs is an INFJ (let's say that all are "10s"), but that doesn't mean that his ESTP traits are all pegged at zero. Instead, you might say Jobs has E=5, S=2, T=8, and P=6 in addition to I=10, N=10, F=10, J=11.

Mostly what the dominant Myers Briggs type gets you is a way to determine a person's typical problem solving pattern. NFs feel (and get excited) about a solution first, then convince (think) themselves why it's right.

OTOH My wife is an ENTP, and she thinks things through first and _then_ gets excited—the opposite of me. If I wasn't aware of the underlying dynamics, I'd get super frustrated every time I brought her some exciting thing only to get calm analysis and no excitement (at least, at first).

<comment><USER9> Interesting. That is actually quite helpful. My fiance is INFJ and Aspergers, and I am ENTJ and not Aspergers. She gets excited and blurts things out, where as my excitement builds as my mental model of something does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As they say, if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. It's not just that autistics are all different the same way allistics are all different; compared to the breadth of the entire autism spectrum, _allistics are all pretty much the same_. You never know what you're going to get when picking from the autistic box of chocolates. Maybe a savant, maybe a person of average intelligence but remarkable coping skills, maybe a person with not much of either.

As for "autistic programmers": for those of us with the skill to program, programming is a much better career choice than most, but even that is changing. Since the internet bubble of the mid-late 90s, allistic people have taken up programming in droves. The promise of easy money and prestige made programming a much more palatable career choice for allistics than it had been in the past, and now they've pretty much taken over. Programming is now a social activity. Cubicles are a luxury; the boss insists that seating everybody at long crowded tables with enough room for one laptop per seat, where everybody can hear everybody else's noisy conversations, makes the workplace more "collaborative". You are expected to be interruptible at any moment. Meetings are more frequent. ("Stand-up meetings" have had the effect of increasing the frequency of the weekly meeting to daily, while the original promise that they be short is falling by the wayside.) Some shops have enshrined the doctrine of Extreme Programming to such an extent that you are not permitted to get any work done without another person very close at hand, watching every move you make. Articles for employees state, in a very as-it- should-be manner, that the relevant criterion for determining who gets hired, commended, or promoted is not technical prowess but rather "soft skills", which bears out in reality as the number of tech startups founded by bros and hipsters who only hire "cultural fits" (autistics don't really fit in in any culture) increases. And books and seminars tell the boss that the person who prefers long stretches of working alone because that is how they get their best thinking done, is a danger and a threat to the organization and must be eliminated.

So in the modern workplace, hiring an autistic is indeed a very poor choice. Unless you can tailor the environment to their needs -- which approaches impossible unless you know them personally -- you're probably better off hiring the "cultural fit".

<comment><USER12> I like your comment about cubicles being a luxury. I don't know why they became a funny cliche of office horror. You don't have to be autistic to be driven mad by the constant interruptions enforced by office culture. When they tried to make pair programming mandatory, most of us decided to ignore it. Can't ignore the daily standup though. It just means I will not be able to concentrate until 10:30 every day. If that's the way they want it, so be it

<comment><USER13> > You don't have to be autistic to be driven mad by the constant interruptions > enforced by office culture.

There's a difference between finding something completely pointless and stupid (an exaggerated "this is driving me mad!") and completely losing your ability to concentrate ("my productivity is 10% of what it was when I had a quiet room for myself"). I get so aggressive, hopeless and sad when overstimulated that I had to quit the job because open space was too much to handle.

> Can't ignore the daily standup though. It just means I will not be able to > concentrate until 10:30 every day.

I purposely miss the standup meetings and just mail my report in instead. No one has complained, as my work still gets done and I still communicate with the team (although by Slack, not in person).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> IMHO it is the problem of trying to make things black and white: either being diseases (or worse: used as an insult) or a super-power (or: an excuse). Usually it's a combination of special skills, and special needs (and things which are just different). As with almost every other psychological "deviation" from the norm. Hence "neurodiversity" not "neurosuperiority", or the traditional medical distinction between "healthy" and "ill" (and nothing beyond).

See e.g. [http://crastina.se/autistic-traits-science-and-the-nerd- ster...](http://crastina.se/autistic-traits-science-and-the-nerd-stereotype), especially its message:

> Yet, it is good to be aware of the neurodiversity and that other people can > have different styles of thinking than ours, with their pros and cons. It's > not a challenge – it's an opportunity to see word through various lenses! > (As long as we respect other's right to be different.)

<comment><USER15> This is a healthy attitude I think. Like anything, autism comes with trade- offs.

<comment><USER16> Trade-offs. The negatives of autism are pretty clear; what are the advantages?

<comment><USER17> I actually like flapping my hands, nerding out about things, and being me. I wouldn't want to be someone different, even if that different person had an easier time buying pants, and wouldn't have gotten bullied as much in elementary school. Oh, and I read at rates beyond what is commonly cited as the physical limit, after teaching myself to read before kindergarden.

Some people with very real impairments are against being cured, while some people with mild ones want a cure. And yes, being able to have an opinion and not constantly wanting to rip your skin off means you've avoided some bad outcomes: they probably want a cure.

<comment><USER16> I can understand why one would enjoy the release of hand-flapping if one needs it, but I can't really class it as a benefit of being autistic.

Likewise others things that you enjoy; other people enjoy other things. Having preferences isn't some kind of benefit of autism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> People with Asperger's are much more likely to have suicidal thoughts and act upon them.

      http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(14)70248-2/abstract

An obsessive personality can lead to an individual working 80 hour weeks - <USER3> by choice, but by default. They literally don't know any better and are not necessarily competent to make a conscious decision not to this.

I've worked with two suicides, both of which would have scored as Asperger's (a diagnosis in retrospect) and two others that completely broke down from the stress of 80 hour a week software engineering jobs. They didn't need to be taken advantage of, they needed an environment that didn't demand they live under that kind of pressure, and an organization that was in tune to the consequences of applying this kind of pressure to non-neurotypical employees.

I wonder if program's like Microsofts deal with this. These are special needs employees - and its sick to read that business people want to exploit someone's disability to further their own careers.

The social skills issue is often not for want of social connection, but a frustrating inability to be able to participate. Again, this is a disability, not a choice. The social isolation can easily turn to depression and an unintentional withdrawal from society with co-morbid substance abuse problems. Someone else in this discussion mentioned the recent medical examiner findings about Ian Murdock's suicide.

<comment><USER13> > An obsessive personality can lead to an individual working 80 hour weeks - > not by choice, but by default. They literally don't know any better and are > not necessarily competent to make a conscious decision not to this.

It gets even worse. Once someone with Asperger's "clicks" into a specific routine, it becomes a pretty challenging endeavor to change it without some external influence. Same with bad eating/sleeping habits. I'm currently in the "works overtime out of habits" phase and it's extremely hard to snap out of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was diagnosed with Aspergers early on in life. For a long time, I tried to ignore it. But there's parts that you can't. It's difficult to make friends when you can't read people's intentions or read between the lines. I don't have a great interest in hanging out with people because I often don't feel like I fit in.

In my teenage years, it meant that I was a loner who went home at the end of a school days, played games by myself, and that was it. In my adult years, it's been much more difficult.

My background is a complete mess. I got a degree in Computer Networking because programming wasn't available, and then later went on to work retail for several years. In the meantime, I kept working on programming projects.

On the programming side, I have a 5 year project where I built everything myself, and a handful of 1 year projects, most of which the source code has been lost for.

Trying to get jobs in the industry is a joke. Take a look at the above, and you'll see someone who isn't normal, isn't average. I send resumes off and I get "We don't think you'll be a good fit" or ignored. That right there is what hurts the most. I could accept getting interviews and failing them, but being outright rejected before being given a chance, that flat hurts.

I've got a lot of traits that come from Aspergers too. I don't have an interest in much besides computers, so I often spend entire days at home and coding or thinking about coding problems. Doesn't bother me to spend 12+ hours in a day just coding.

Horrible at eye contact, and don't know why. Monotone voice? Check. Sometimes I'll mean to say one word and say another without realizing it, or focus on someone's meaning in one part and miss the others. I don't have that rage though. Used to when I was younger. But the computer doesn't care if you get mad, and it's better to just let logic take over.

I've still got my fingers crossed that I'll find a place that will give me a chance. But if I can't find that, then I'll shrug my shoulders and go back to working retail.

<comment><USER20> can you (have you) put your projects on github ? maybe if you put 5+ non- trivial projects on there people can see your breadth and depth of skills.

<comment><USER19> I have a github account established, and it has a couple of projects on it. One, a telnet client, is missing. I keep forgetting to add that in. I've been meaning to, once the language is more established, to spread the packages out into different repositories.

I know I should have more of a variety there, the trouble thus far has been the 'what'.

<comment><USER21> Contribute to a project with one or more healthy companies behind it. From Linux to Libreoffice or Nextcloud - good chance they will hire you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's the myth that's being "dispelled"?

I see the "Alex St. John's infamous PowerPoint" image, pasted in the article, as more valuable than the entire article. St John is harsh an direct, and seems to contain more objective true than the entire article.

Maybe another trait related to high-IQ+autism is a profound disregard for political correctness. Is St.John diagnosed with autism?

Maybe the part of the brain dedicated to social-political "skills", in an Aspergers-diagnosed brain is really dedicated to abstraction processing or pattern recognition?

Of course that the lacking of social-political skill frees your mind to concentrate long hours on complex abstractions. You shun the "social" world, and then concentrate on the mathematical or algorithmic world, where the "entities" have interesting and also predictable behaviour.

Thanks for pointing me to the St.John article, it looks like a good read.

<comment><USER23> The funny thing is, all of my friends with autism are fiercely political. If you asked me, I'd probably say people with autism were MORE political than those without. Of course, none of my friends with autism work in software.

<comment><USER13> Are we talking about the same kind of politics? Because, from my experience, autistics are more likely to hold strong views and discuss the "big" politics (as in, people ruling the country) while allistics are more into the practical "small" politics (like, say, typical office drama).

<comment><USER23> Uh... that kind of "politics". I can't speak to that, I stay out of office drama, so I don't know who's instigating xD

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think some of the best programmers are very collaborative and not at all introverted. It's just stupid to generalize like that though. When I'm putting together teams I find I get the best results when I have a mix of nut jobs from across the spectrum of programmer personalities... except brogrammers, hate those guys ;)

<comment><USER25> I don't mind collaborating, and indeed enjoy it. But don't force it upon me by an oppressive open office environment. I need quiet and an environment free from distraction and other people to really dig into my code and produce my best work.

Living in a constant state of interruptibility, observation, and distraction will not get good code out of me, and indeed many other devs. I, like many others, can make do, but why pay us so much money if you're going to put us in an environment guaranteed to make us produce sub-par code and products? Seems like a poor use of capital.

<comment><USER26> Everything you said plus having a developer assigned to several concurrent projects. Jumping between different project setups, PM's, software designs, etc. is mentally taxing to an extreme. It leads me to make more mental mistakes. Rapid task switching is not conducive to quality, detailed work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The point at issue doesn't seem to me to be whether autism is conducive to programming ability, but that someone is essentially arguing that a disability is a great means by which to take advantage of someone in a notoriously exploitative industry.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think article is mixing up cause and effect. It is not that autistic people are good developers, but software development is one of a few good jobs for autistic people. There is zero barrier to enter, study materials are free and it offers great flexibility.

Most developers would love to do some other jobs. But the amount of office politics, backstabbing etc is not possible to handle for some people.

</comment><comment><USER29> IMO, whether or not it's true that certain traits of autism make for better programmers is actually irrelevant -- it's not useful for that kind of generalization.

Not all high functioning autistics become great programmers, just as not all introverts are necessarily great programmers. And saying that "all" programmers share one or more of those things just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where you disenfranchise people who don't think they "fit".

</comment><comment><USER30> > "The internet has kind of killed my 'autistic pride,' so to speak," says > Gillmer. "The constant use of it as an insult makes me want to hide it, so I > tend to not bring it up unless it feels like I'm not communicating > properly."

I cannot for the life of me understand why I see "aspie" or "spergy" used as insults on both reddit and tumblr.

<comment><USER31> As far as anti/pro SJWs are concerned, I've mostly seen it as an insult by pro SJWs against white nerdy autistic gamergate basement dwellers.EDIT: which annoys me, since I'm more on the Pro SJW side by default.

<comment><USER11> Queasy nerds make SJWs uncomfortable because they are perceived as much more likely to display shockingly inappropriate sexual behavior. Since women have the right not to fear for their lives or chastity, the reasoning goes, they have the right not to have any contact with queasy nerds, and so they must be expunged from the places in society where they nest (computing, gaming) in order to create "safe spaces" for women.

This is also a subtext in the upcoming 2016 _Ghostbusters_ film: the villain is a queasy nerd who summons ghosts to Manhattan as revenge for getting the mockery and rejection he deserved; so it is up to the Empowered Womyn Ghostbusters to exorcise him so NYC can become a safe space again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "work them "too hard" it's good for them and the only way they get seasoned"

Oh, games industry, never change. I'm sure people will think this is satire - except the ones who worked in gamedev.

</comment><comment><USER33> We've done such a good job with autism awareness that at this point I'm honestly not even sure that people know what autism actually is. Our idea of "autism" has become less Temple Grandin and more the nerds from Revenge of the Nerds. So, yeah. You should probably want to hire nerds as programmers.

</comment><comment><USER34> I fail to see the fallacy in the St John's presentation. The Gamasutra editorial seems to widen the discussion to ALL autistics, which is not what the original presentation was talking about. It then goes on to say that not all Autistics match the "holy grail". Well no shit, Sherlock.

<comment><USER35> There is no fallacy, just a high level of bias towards a specific type of workforce.

Also St John's attitude is quite telling of his manipulative tendencies. That's not someone I would want to work with.

<comment><USER16> You're telling me. "Can't make eye contact". What is going on inside this guy's head that his employees being unable to make eye contact is an advantage to him?

<comment><USER5> He is just a sociopath that fortunately is into making money instead of cutting people up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As someone who perfectly fits the description of an "Aspergers Programmer" I think this is all spot on. Maybe people don't like it, but I will take some introverted geeks who love to code over all other possible applicants.

</comment><comment><USER37> Brahm Cohen (BitTorrent inventor) has asperger's or autism doesn't he?

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm not autistic, i just dont like you.

</comment><comment><USER39> The problem is that the criteria for autism is very loose. If you restricted your search to only low functioning autistic savants then it might be harder to find someone like this.

But that doesn't mean there isn't an autistic savant who is a great programmer/computer scientist.

In the end this is a game for monkeys and typewriters.

</comment><comment><USER40> Given the rate that autism is showing up nowadays, it seems like spectrum disorders are over-diagnosed. People who were once just odd-balls or non- social are now being lumped in with people who have moderate to severe issues, and it's to the detriment of both groups.

<comment><USER13> As someone on the spectrum I don't see it as a detriment. Despite a seemingly vast difference between a high-functioning engineer and a low-functioning child, the strategies for improving the quality of life are pretty much the same. Routine, sensory stuff, avoiding meltdowns, recognizing emotions, all that stuff - it's as real for a brilliant but eccentric programmer as it's real for a non-verbal kid with no particular talents.

Because in the end, it's about improving the quality of life.

I'm on the "eccentric" end of spectrum; for 27 years I've been told that nothing is wrong with me, that I'm just "too smart". I can tell you I was pretty close to joining the 27 club; the piling problems ended up being too much to handle. I came upon the description of Asperger's purely by accident; no mental health professional would even suspect it because I "seemed normal". Finally being able to understand why I'm losing my ability to speak once in a while or getting violent whenever overstimulated wasn't just a relief. It was a life-saver.

If I didn't realize it's ASD, ignorance and stereotypes could have killed me.

PS. Yes, some people will claim they are "a little bit autistic" out of ignorance or attention seeking. Others will lump clinical cases with weirdos. Both don't change the validity of a proper diagnosis.

<comment><USER40> I'm glad to hear you disagree! My concern is that people who might be borderline-or-not-really-spectrum (if that makes sense) will cause people to look at ASD individuals and say, 'well _he_ gets along alright, you're obviously just not trying hard enough.' Despite our best efforts, mental health is a tough topic to educate people on. I still hear 'she's just sulking' to refer to people with severe depression, and it makes me quite sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Found a link to this paper yesterday on the topic and it's very interesting: [http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2016.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2016.00300/full). Not close to the final word on Autism, but it does a good job of showing how both the causes, and the way the syndrome plays out in individuals, are much more complicated than media portrayals.

</comment><comment><USER42> I still believe that programmers are closer to the autist personae type than the average.

Doesn't mean that being a real autist mean you are a good programmer.

</comment><comment><USER43> some real abuse of psychological terminology here. most clinically autistic people don't hold down jobs, certainly not professional roles, even if they have a high IQ

<comment><USER13> This used to be a really damaging stereotype and a de facto standpoint of psychology (and psychiatry) for years. I've personally met experts who wouldn't diagnose ASD in people who managed to get married or get a job. I've personally been dismissed because I "look normal" (whatever that means). I've been given several bogus diagnoses because ASD has been repeatedly ruled out based on nothing but presumptions and prejudices.

There are no family, job, or looks criteria in DSM-IV. I know ASD folks who hold jobs, have families and are more than successful in life. From the outside, they seem pretty normal, maybe a bit quirky or eccentric. From the inside? The way they arranged their lives to work around the social/sensory problems is something to applaud.

The important part? They don't "look" autistic, so most laypeople don't correlate autism with "a possibility for a successful life". Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > States that people on the autism spectrum are not more suitable for > engineering type jobs than people without it.

> Proceeds to turn institution that works for people with autism into a game > development company staffed by people with autism

</comment><comment><USER45> Dispelling the myth that the autistic programmer is much better than more balanced people.

Not dispelling the myth about their existence or character traits, because we all work with at least one!

</comment><comment><USER46> autistic programmers can be great but they can also be a liability. I am not saying this to be mean, it is just my experience. We had a situation once where an autistic person repeatedly did extremely inappropriate things both to people within our company and outside. It got to the point that it wasn't clear whether it was a result of his autism or if he wanted the company to fire him so he could sue for discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER47> Tell that to guys like Igor Sysoev, who outperformed averages by an order of magnitude due to autisticly intense attention to details.

Hint: a mild form of autism, what casuals call Asperger, given that one survived childhood constant bullying and confusion about its causes, is actually good to have.

<comment><USER48> _Maybe_ its neutral or slightly better in adulthood, but only if the autism isn't accompanied by other problems that frequently accompany autism, such as language disabilities and anxiety.

<comment><USER47> Asperger is nothing like Forrest Gump or the Rainman characters, BTW.

It is like Holden Caulfield or Travis the Taxi Driver, or the Deer Hunter, or Rocky the Bum.

<comment><USER49> Or like the people who are unable to have jobs, even programming ones, despite being very skilled at it, because their aspergers causes them so many problems that they cannot work in an environment with other people or to deadlines, so, instead they are stuck unemployed, living at home, and terrified about what happens when their parents die and how they will cope, while people make fun of them for being basement dwellers.

<comment><USER47> Hell is other people. And yes, it is difficult to hold a programmer job in a circus, among self-obsessed, cosplaying sophisticated individualty, bearded and tattooed clowns.

But there are many niches for those who can't stand narcissistic cosplaying mediocrity in charge - craftsmanship of any kind, not necessarily digital. Making good sandwiches will do.

One could be a self-employed, paid open source contributor, a freelancer, a subcontractor, etc. Yes, one probably will never "succeed" in one of valleys sweatshops, but there are always other, less traveled pathways..

Again, Igor Sysoev, who have bootstrapped the project alone, according to his tastes and preferences, and then went back into shadow, leaving all the singing and dancing to those who liked it, is a classic example.

There is also Pirsig's book, Atlas, and a few other good ones.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Debt Collection as a Service? - <AUTHOR>

Let's say that we have a web service called NUCO where you can login and upload a spreadsheet of your debtors or add them manually and you click on "collect debt" button. NUCO then builds a profile of the debtor based on their social media profiles, etc and determines the best channel and the best tone of contact. So for example, if we have a C level executive who seems to be paying all of his other bills on time we would take a moderate, very respectful (almost apologetic tone) however, if we send a collections message to someone who clicks on the link and reviews his debt but does noting, system would increase intensity and "seriousness" of the tone in the email messages/phone calls.
Some context:
Since NUCO is not doing collections itself but is instead giving automated tools to do collections to the creditor - nuco is not bound by the same rules and regulations placed on the collection agencies.
NUCO would take a cut on a sliding scale, based on the age of the debt. If a freelancer or a contractor submits a debt that is "only" 15 days overdue, NUCO would take a small cut (say 5%) however, more overdue the debt is, NUCO would take larger cut (say, 15% for a 90 days old debt).
There would be an API that would also allow people to automatically send someone to NUCO for collections if, for example, debt is over X days old.
Being a smart crowd, what is HN crowd's 2 cents on this? <comment><USER2> I won't even start with my thoughts on the collection business but I will point out you're trying to disrupt a market which is traditionally controlled by criminals. I'd watch out if I were you.</comment>


Yahoo to close it search api BOSS on 31 March - <AUTHOR> https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is going to be a hurdle for me that need a search feed that can be parsed server side. There alternative YPA (Yahoo Partner Ads) is client side only.

Will most people migrate to Microsoft Bing? The results are the same anyway, but the api format differs.</comment>


Nationwide cell phone outage - <AUTHOR> No mention on any news site I know yet. Started around 17:00 EST 3 June 2016 http://imgur.com/9I0ZRaA <comment><USER2> Submitted something similar and got flagged. I would think "cell service not working" would be of interest to the hacker community from both network and functional perspectives.

Fwiw, my Cricket phone started experiencing issues around 4pm. Went from working normally to 'network not available' while sitting in the same spot.

Haven't dug out tools to see what it's doing, but seems to join the network after a reboot and then drop off after a short period (failure to transfer data?).

</comment><comment><USER3> My phone's working.

Image shows outages concentrated in the northeast. What site is it from?

<comment><USER4> I think it's [http://downdetector.com/](http://downdetector.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hundreds of reports is a lot different than a "nationwide outage", no?

My phone is also working, Verizon, Westchester County, NY.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hundreds of thousands of reports, and its still going on. If you look at the Verizon map below, it is all over not just NE. [http://downdetector.com/status/verizon- wireless/map/](http://downdetector.com/status/verizon-wireless/map/) And the fact that all carriers spiked at 17:00 EST is notable as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Portland, OR -- T-Mobile is workin' just fine.

Edit: Well, I mean, as fine as T-Mobile ever works anyway.

<comment><USER7> So just barely better than a poke in the eye with a stick.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best chromebook for travel for frustrated MacBook Pro user? - <AUTHOR> I've used MacBook Pro laptops (usually 15") for 10+ years. The new thin keyboard is driving me nuts. Laptop use is 90% when travelling. At home/work I use desktops. Much of my work could easily be done in Google apps.<p>What's the best current chromebook for someone like me? 15" is not a dealbreaker. More important: light, awesome screen, good keyboard. <comment><USER2> Since Moore's Law has essentially ended, it's reasonable to buy 2-5 year old computers. The 15" Retina MBP (Mid-2015) running El Capitan is an excellent machine that should run well for years to come. It may end up being known as the best laptop Apple will ever make.

<comment><USER3> Relevant: [https://marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop- ever](https://marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever)

</comment></comment><comment> stone-monkey For chromebooks, I still like the original Pixel. You can pick up a refurbished model for about 300 usd.

</comment><comment><USER4> Buy a used MacBook Pro (up to the 2015 model). I've got a 15" 2014 model (bought it used) and it is still very capable. It's my workhorse. It's reliable.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why Chromebook? You can use a MacBook Air which is great, light, and you can get it used for cheap.

</comment><comment><USER6> Acer Chromebook 14.

Bought one for $100 on craigslist. Aluminum construction, 1080P 14' screen, 4GB of Ram 32GB Drive.

Runs Gallium great, even Xubuntu 18 LTS with about 5 minutes of setup.</comment>


IMatix: AMQP 'fundamentally flawed' - <AUTHOR> http://lists.openamq.org/pipermail/openamq-dev/2010-March/001598.html

<comment><USER2> That's rather damning. As a casual but curious user, I "got" ØMQ and was up and running from a one page tutorial. AMQP left me scratching my head for longer. It didn't seem quite as orthogonally structured. It just wasn't UNIX.

<comment><USER3> Yep. ZeroMQ kicks ass; blinding fast! But people shouldn't know about two big caveats:

1) It's a messaging _library_ , and not a server.

2) It has no persistence.

The lisp binding (cl-zmq) is specially attractive, but I ended up using Redis since I knew it well anyway.

<comment><USER4> _2) It has no persistence._

Isn't persistence achieved when you use a Broker architecture, which is supported by ZeroMQ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be nice if they pointed out why rather than a simple "this sucks" with no reasoning.

I tried getting OpenAMQ up and running about a year ago but it was like pulling teeth. On the other hand, I got RabbitMQ installed and working in almost no time at all so I don't think the AMQP standard is what's getting in the way of building a quality messaging product. 0MQ was still in pre-alpha with nothing available to download at the time so it wasn't even possible to use it. It's nice to see that the project delivered something useful.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hrm. I've been talking through a decentralized social web architecture on my blog, with an eye to building an open source project later on, and had intended to use AMQP as the backbone for reliable message passing. This somewhat puts paid to that.

ZeroMQ looks good, but if anyone else has found themselves wanting to shop around, these detailed message queue evaluation notes from the folks at Second Life may be worth a look: [http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Message_Queue_Evaluation_Not...](http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Message_Queue_Evaluation_Notes)

<comment><USER7> Absolutely, I'm working on an MMO, and the complexity/flexibility of the AMQP protocol has been a god send.

However, I do agree that its concepts are somewhat convoluted for a new user, it took me quite a bit of digging to get the basics of what an exchange/queue was and what bindings mean, etc.

However, 0MQ looks attractive but simply doesn't have what's needed for a complex project that spans languages, platforms, and usages beyond the basic pub-sub.

I would compare both protocols as XML vs. JSON, whereas XML may be tedious but it's absolutely necessary for some cases, specially where tight specifications are needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recall some long running misunderstanding between iMatix and RedHat and their roles in the working group.

Is this fallout from not being able to make that work?

<comment><USER9> No misunderstandings... When the AMQP working group was founded, RHAT took a very assertive role over AMQP and created versions that no-one else implemented, and which were pushed through the working group by sheer political force. Read the abomination that is the AMQP/0.9 spec, if you have the courage. The determination of RHAT to create incompatible forks of the spec is a large part of what killed AMQP in our eyes. We spent several years trying to save AMQP from that. We failed. We're a small team, RHAT had 20 people working on this.

<comment><USER10> > We're a small team, RHAT had 20 people working on this.

They should have realized they already failed when they allocated 20 people just do work on the protocol specification. This is another example of a design by committee done by a large enterprise vendor and how it results in a a bloated, inefficient and overly complicated specification.

All 20 people feel the need to justify their time by adding more crap and features to the design. Usually no matter how simple or complicated the actual protocol needs to be, its specification will always be proportional to the number of people * time assigned to work on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to see a quick diagram of what the protocol's look like on the network and compare them to various other MQ systems and other protocols like HTTP etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Hey this thing X is broken our new product solves all problems and is superior in any way."

While I too would like to see AMQP 1.0 rather sooner than later and despite the open standard there are only a few usable implementations, I doubt that this new and great wire protocol will solve all of AMQPs problems which are located in other areas.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget that Imatix has a long history of producing top notch infrastructure software. Their code is consistently, tight, fast, and pretty.

For anyone who wants to improve their C hacking, I highly recommend the SFL (Imatix's Standard Function Library): purtiest code you have ever seen.

<comment><USER9> Very kind of you. SFL is my work.

<comment><USER3> My honor :-)

Several times in my life I thought of sending an unsolicited resume to you guys, but always doubted I had what it takes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How's this different than apache mq?</comment>


Show HN: Crime Doesn't Climb in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gwintrob/crime-doesnt-climb/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> There are a lot of confounding variables here, and others have mentioned a few.

One I have not seen is "proximity to major arterials". Sometimes crime concentrates around major streets and parking lots where cars can be stolen or broken into. (The OP mentions "grand theft from locked auto" as being ~10% of crimes, for example.)

Another common crime, shoplifting and petty thefts, occurs around strips of shops, urban malls, transit stations, or bus stops.

These crimes really don't have to do with altitude, and they are common enough to really affect results. The reason I know this is by inspecting the LAPD compstat maps, which are superior, in many ways, to the linked one. One place to see them is:

[http://www.crimemapping.com/map/region/LAPDHollywoodArea](http://www.crimemapping.com/map/region/LAPDHollywoodArea)

This is Hollywood. You can notice the concentration of crimes along Hollywood Blvd, or the other major east-west streets. (The zoom tool is on the right, and it may be good to increase the time span to a month.) Inspecting the causes show they are often thefts from vehicles, etc., as mentioned above.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is invalid. The numbers calculated are counts of crime incidents, not crime rates. A km^2 block with ten times the population density will have ten times the number of crimes; this doesn't mean it is ten times more dangerous!

<comment><USER4> Crime per km^2 is just as valid as crime per person.

<comment><USER5> If I want to know the chances of someone breaking into my apartment I want the data per-apartment. If I want to know the same for cars I want the data per- car. If I want to know my chance of getting shot I want the data per-person. Overall crimes per person approximates what we care about much better than crimes per unit area.

<comment><USER6> > _If I want to know my chance of getting shot I want the data per-person_

In reality though, it isn't as simple as that. Sure, I don't want to be shot. I _also_ don't want other people to be shot a lot in my neighborhood. If I walk to work and see a car parked on the street has been broken into, that bothers, even though my car is in a secure parking garage.

I don't want to be the victim of crime, but I _also_ don't want to live amidst crime. I don't want to see it, I don't want to hear about it, and I don't want to think about it. Crime per km^2 is nearly as important to me as crime per capita.

<comment><USER7> To put it another way: if you live alone, statistics measured per-person are directly applicable to the chance something will happen to you. If you have a family who lives with you, though, the combined probability distribution of something happening to _someone in your household_ changes quite dramatically.

<comment><USER5> These are rare events, so the chance of something happening to someone in your family of N is close to N times the chance of it happening to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like a map overlay of median _(not average! that means nothing in SF!!!)_ income of those areas. Something tells me higher elevation = way more expensive, especially here in SF.

I don't think the common thief is wandering about on billionaire-row[1]. I think this has more to do with wealth than land-elevation itself.

[http://www.sfcityguides.org/desc.html?tour=34](http://www.sfcityguides.org/desc.html?tour=34)

<comment><USER9> AFAIK, that's traditionally the way its been in SF. Altitude correlates with wealth.

<comment><USER10> Potrero Hill might be the exception.

<comment><USER11> It happens in the southern sections of the city too (which are not included on the map). Ingleside Terrace is considerably more expensive than the OMI (ocean view, merced heights, ingleside). Similarly, Mission Terrace, which not a posh neighborhood, is nonetheless a bit more expensive than the Excelsior, which is elevated ground toward McLaren Park.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about weighted by population density?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. There are a lot of interesting ways to analyze this data (e.g. population, public transportation, home prices, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> More accurately, the MUNI doesn't climb. In the nicer areas there is no light rail service, only a few filthy buses.

<comment><USER14> Are you implying that public transportation causes crime?

<comment><USER15> There's a widely-held view that public transit is associated with higher crime rates, but it's a myth:

[http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/01/transit- sta...](http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/01/transit-stations-may- actually-cut-down-crime/916/)

In fact, the data shows that if anything, introducing more transit will reduce crime.

<comment> UVB-76 > In fact, the data shows that if anything, introducing more transit will > reduce crime.

Careful. The provision of new or improved public transport facilities often coincides with, or precedes, the gentrification of an area.

I'd hypothesize this is the more significant causal mechanism at play; ne'er- do-wells driven out of an area by higher property prices.

<comment><USER13> I think it's just incredibly inconvenient to get from the tenderloin to the ritzy areas of SF by public transit. You pretty much need a car or car service.

<comment><USER16> The TL is immediately adjacent to the rity commercial area (Union Square), to the point where tourists accidentally walk there.

Bayview/HP aren't even that isolated -- the T muni line goes there, along with lots of buses.

At some level it's inconvenient to go _anywhere_ in SF, but Pac Heights isn't too hard to get to by transit. The Marina is low elevation, but separated by some hills, but even that isn't inaccessible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting. I suspect elevation is highly correlated with land value, so perhaps that is the hidden factor here?

I'd like to see this applied to other hilly cities. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER18> Can we see the exact same study, but with SEC indictments and tax fraud/evasion, etc. ?

I'll bet that "climbs" ...

<comment><USER19> Probably for the perpetrators, probably not for the companies involved (which are likely to have the same set of Delaware and/or Cayman mailing addresses) :-P

But sure, I would expect that white collar crime is unsurprisingly correlated.

Maybe not though - boiler room style phone banks of investor fraudsters are a stereotype for a reason, and those aren't necessarily the high rent end of town.

<comment><USER20> Are you counting the crime as happening at the place of business, or at the home of the perp? It'd be hard to quantify, as WHERE a white collar crime happens is not particularly material. You can cook the books at home or at work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Data that reports per-person activity needs to control for population density in each section, otherwise it just becomes a population map.

[http://xkcd.com/1138/](http://xkcd.com/1138/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Hmm... I don't know if equal-area tells you much. As you go higher, you also sometimes/often get _much_ rougher terrain. Population density might be more useful?

</comment><comment><USER22> Pete Warden would like you to use public APIs: [http://petewarden.com/2013/09/09/why-you-should-stop- piratin...](http://petewarden.com/2013/09/09/why-you-should-stop-pirating- googles-geo-apis/) . Also, the association of low ground with poverty is old. Toni Morrison riffed on it in Sula: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sula_(novel)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sula_\(novel\))

<comment><USER20> Very good article! The Data Science Toolkit he pumps as an alternative to pirating google's APIs looks awesome, and deserves a direct link: [http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org](http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Throwaway makes a very valid point that crime per areas isn't very useful. But even beyond that the map is also confusing because for the lower elevations it shows both lower areas AND higher area crime incidents. Then as it goes higher, it just shows the higher ones. In other words, it should really show an outer ring for the lowest elevation (since that's where the lower areas are) and then a smaller ring, etc. Only the highest areas would not have a hole in the center (most likely).

Think of elevation maps and how you would select out one range of elevation at a time - you'd end up with donut like rings. You wouldn't mark an area as 500 feet and show all the rings for 500 feet and up. Doing this makes it seem like there are far more crimes than actual for the lower levels.

</comment><comment><USER24> How about showing it overlaid with a topographical map?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that would be a nice visualization. [http://cartodb.com/](http://cartodb.com/) is a pretty powerful tool for these kinds of maps.

<comment><USER25> TopOSM is Open Data (OpenStreetMap data) and is my go-to place for finding out where hills are. [http://www.toposm.com/](http://www.toposm.com/) (For looking at hills in cities, click the "+" on the right to get a menu where you can toggle streets ("Map Features") on and off.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a fun exploration, but there are just so many plausible additional factors, from population density, to SFPD's selective enforcement, to many others that can be at least as significant if not more so than this one.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive causal analysis. You try to control for land mass, but don't really mention anything else that might indicate elevation to be a less significant factor and I think that does a great disservice to what otherwise is an interesting exercise.

<comment><USER27> "A great disservice"? Lighten up, this was a hackathon project, not a doctoral thesis. And the code is there for anyone to build upon using other factors.

<comment><USER11> I agree. This is a good example of a small project that was worth getting out there. The code is posted, so if it's triggering some ideas, that's kind of the point - by all means, run with it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I suppose the the analysis would be better if it used Census Block Groups for the grid. That it could better account for population density. Unfortunately extracting CBG data is extremely painful. CBG data would also be slightly problematic in that it is residence based, thus a place like NYC's Time Square may show high crime rates per "resident", but is extremely safe.

Does anyone know where you can get a simplified CBG data dump? All you would need are boundaries and population.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is interesting, but on my browser, the map cuts out much of the southern section of SF. Is it included in the numbers? This area may present a particularly interesting section to study elevation changes.

[http://wikitravel.org/en/San_Francisco/Southeast](http://wikitravel.org/en/San_Francisco/Southeast)

<comment><USER29> On "your browser"? It is an animated gif, not a browsable map. All browsers render the animated gif the same way.

<comment><USER30> Though you could just possibly forgive him given that Google Maps-style controls were left in the image?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I guess street crimes are more frequent in areas where there is an higher concentration of people/shops/bars etc.

I can't say I see a definite correlation with altitude: areas that are more secluded from the main SF buzz like the Marina and the west coast show very little crime, and they are basically at sea level.

</comment><comment><USER32> You want population and crime rate included in the analysis? Fine. [http://geosprocket.blogspot.com/2013/09/crime-doesnt- insert-...](http://geosprocket.blogspot.com/2013/09/crime-doesnt-insert- variable.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> Very interesting. Other comments have listed possible factors like population density, public transportation (MUNI). I'd love to see the correlation with:

\- the derivative of elevation (i.e. the slope)

\- the street lightning

</comment><comment><USER34> What about adjusting for the greater probability that a given area is residential the higher the elevation? Perhaps more crime occurs outside residential areas. Just speculating here.

</comment><comment><USER35> skwirl has the correct answer here, but it is buried in a sub-comment:

"I don't think the article is trying to claim that elevation magically has a causal impact on crime rates. It just shows that there is a correlation and claims nothing more. The point is that there IS some underlying root cause (or an extreme coincidence) and that is an interesting point in and of itself."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6355511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6355511)

</comment><comment><USER36> It it all JavaScript I'm looking at?

(I'm only ~halfway through the JS course on CodeCademy and don't know much else programming related).

<comment><USER37> Yes, this is all JavaScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Crime likes a way to escape. Going higher up might just give you fewer ways to get away.

</comment><comment><USER39> The first thing on that page is a GIF. There is no explanation. It is not clear what the GIF is meant to be portraying. I even went on to read the first two paragraphs, which also didn't explain what the GIF was supposed to be illustrating.

After that I closed the page.

</comment><comment><USER40> We were just noting the same about poverty in San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER41> Correlate with population density? Also, the time of day?

</comment><comment><USER42> tl;dr Everyone in San Francisco, buy ladders.</comment>


RedHat Goes Cloud: Launches CloudForms And OpenShift Platforms - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/05/08/red-hat-launches-cloudforms-and-openshift-platforms/

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for something a little simpler, check out Xenadu for configuring and deploying cloud appliances.

<http://github.com/iandennismiller/xenadu>

For an example of Xenadu deploying an appliance to an EC2 instance, see Swandive:

<http://github.com/iandennismiller/swandive>

Swandive is an IPsec/L2TP VPN that deploys to the cloud. Unlike OpenVPN, Swandive is compatible with iOS devices.

<comment><USER3> Those are neat projects. At first glance, xenadu seems to sit somewhere between etckeeper and puppet in terms of power and complexity. However, I don't see what they have to do with Red Hat launching cloud platforms.

<http://openshift.redhat.com/app/> <http://www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud/cloudforms/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not open sourcing this right away is a big mistake, when Cloud Foundry has shown that open source is already going to be where these platforms are. Hoping its just because they cant and have to rewrite code, not because they think they need to.

<comment><USER3> I imagine they've decided to rewrite some of the code they acquired from Makara before releasing it as open source, similar to the ongoing (?) rewrite of the some of the code in RHEV they acquired from Qumranet.

[http://lpeer.blogspot.com/2010/04/switching-from-c-to- java.h...](http://lpeer.blogspot.com/2010/04/switching-from-c-to-java.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> digitizor.com has a couple of off-putting features. Their ad placement is very obtrusive. And when i clicked on the "beta" link it took me to a Microsoft ad which purported to be "informative".

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought they would have gone the way to buy those other Cloud companies like Linode or even better Rackspace...</comment>


Couple found guilty of having sex on Florida beach, register as sex offenenders - <AUTHOR> http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article20191164.html

<comment><USER2> "The convictions carry a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.".

Surely, this is even more silly than having sex in public.</comment>


Why Trump is right to end DACA - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/on-daca-trump-did-the-right-thing-commentary.html <comment><USER2> Clickbait title.

Doesn't actually claim Trump was correct for ending DACA, just goes on to say that it is an opportunity for Congress to pass an actual law on what to do with children brought illegally to the US.</comment>


Ask HN: Help Regarding Anxiery Attack - <AUTHOR> I am a 45-year old male. Around the time the Covid news broke, I woke up one night with a racing heart, and feeling a sense of doom and panic. My wife took me to the hospital and they quickly ruled me out as a Covid potential (no fever, no sore throat, no runny nose) and tested for heart-related issues. All came clean.
Next evening, dinner time, the same pattern repeated. Mouth went bitter and the panic was overwhelming. I went to the local family doctor and he thought it was a panic attack, and gave me Xanax (Alprazolam 0.25mg). I took one, and slept soundly. I am really worried about getting dependent on it and want to use it only as a last resort.
I am healthy, and I burn about 500 calories daily exercising (about 5Kms / 3mil run). I also tried meditating (Mindfulness) and it was useful one night, but on most nights over the past 2 weeks my heart has been pounding, and I sleep only 2-3 hours.
I feel a sense of relief when I am outdoors (no lock-down in the city I live and weather is hot and humid). The minute I enter the apartment, the heart starts pounding again.
My wife, fortunately works from home and this is has been very helpful (we do not have kids).
It will be very helpful to hear if anyone else has experienced this and to hear what helped you.
I am a regular contributor here, but using a throwaway handle.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Panic attacks are terrible.

Different people respond to different things. Consider

* cognitive-behavioral therapy (one of the most clinically proven therapies for anxiety but can be formulaic and impersonal) -- sometimes available by an app

* talk therapy (available online)

* meditation (people say it takes time to develop skill at it, so you might see better results if you can make it a regular practice)

* a psychiatrist can also prescribe an antidepressant such as an SSRI (for some people this can greatly reduce panic symptoms, and it doesn't have the same addiction/dependency possibilities of benzodiazepines like Xanax; note that it can take two weeks to feel the effects and can also require several weeks to stop without withdrawal symptoms, plus you might have to experiment for a few weeks to figure out which SSRIs you do or don't respond well to)

* reading online materials by psychologists and philosophers about coping methods (including grief and acceptance [https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-gri...](https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief))

* some people benefit from increased social contact (and touch!) so consider video calls with friends and family (you don't necessarily have to talk about the panic with them) or more time cuddling with your wife

* some people benefit from keeping a journal (with various strategies about what kinds of things to record in it)

* some people benefit from pursuing a hobby that gives a sense of control or mastery, or of flow/immersion

* being helpful to others can sometimes help too (volunteer work, group therapy, checking in or just chatting with elderly or isolated people)

* some people may like some kind of gentle movement practice (yoga, tai chi, dance), which you can do during a panic attack to try to occupy yourself with something other than the panic or to try to remind yourself of feelings of comfort and familiarity

* you can consider buying a book about dealing with anxiety disorders; there are many "workbooks" for sale online which will give you exercises to work through (usually CBT but also other approaches), and also some overviews that describe different kinds of therapies and coping strategies for you to consider

I hope one or more of these things will help you somehow.

I would also add that you don't need to feel guilty for having panic attacks. Our capacity for anxiety evolved to protect us. While it can be a source of incredible distress, it's a part of our psychology that's there to help us -- and huge numbers of people are struggling to figure out how to deal with uncertainty and problems that are unprecedented in our lives. Anxiety disorders are probably on the rise all over the world; your reaction is not unusual and is something that millions of others have dealt with or are dealing with too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your kindness and a thoughtful and through response.</comment></comment>


Open Graph Protocol is dead? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebookarchive/open-graph-protocol <comment><AUTHOR> The source code of the Open Graph Protocol website had been archived by Facebook. I don't see any announcement about it. Is it still useful to implement it on the website?</comment>


How Google's Instant Previews Reduces HTTP Requests - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/11/15/how-googles-instant-previews-reduces-http-requests.html <comment><USER2> The data URI hack is quite clever.

However, the UI aspect of instant preview lead me to disable it. There are times I'd like a quick preview of a site, but not every time I happen to mouse over something.

Currently, simply clicking on what seems like innocuous plain text puts the results page in preview mode, and it gets annoying fast.

Google does something similar in Google Reader. Clicking on some preview text loads that item. It's completely unnecessary since you can just click the title of an item to load it. Turning large areas of a Web page into links is disrupting on a page meant for perusal and decision.</comment>


Winning a competition predicts dishonest behavior - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/01/25/1515102113 <comment><USER2> Applied to democracy, this means that politicians are more dishonest once voted into office.

Maybe there is a reason why the ancient Greeks drew their leaders randomly from their population

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

<comment> loup-vaillant Nitpick:

Applied to democracy, this means that politicians who are voted into office are more dishonest than all the others who aren't.

Being voted into office doesn't cause dishonesty. It's the reverse: dishonesty helps with being voted into office.

<comment><USER3> You may have made a valid observation about causes of dishonesty in politics. But that conclusion does not follow from the study. In the study dishonest behaviour is shown to be an _effect_ of winning. Not a cause of winning.

<comment> loup-vaillant Oh, _that 's_ new.

Reading the abstract more carefully, I can see that. But then, why does the title says "predict" instead of "causes"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be interesting to do a parallel study so with the follow-up game being more winnable by extra effort instead of by cheating.

My hypotheses is that winning begets a desire to continue winning -- if the only way to win is cheating, the winners are more likely to cheat; however, if the only way to win is to try harder, perhaps winners would do that too.

That would be an interesting outcome because it would suggest a model where the likelihood of cheating by winners is primarily governed by whether the only way to win is to cheat (i.e. the dice game used in the study)

</comment><comment><USER5> ars technica reviewed the article a couple of days ago: [http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/winners-act-as- thick-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/winners-act-as-thick-as- thieves/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, this is really relevant to some experiences I've dealt with, in watching contests that seemingly could only (most easily?) be "won" through dishonest means. I'm specifically thinking about "music contests" where an initial threshold is basically a view-count. Could using dishonest means have down-the line effects on a band or music act?

Here's some sample text from the Vince Gill contest being put on by Guitar Center:

> _ROUND ONE:During the Contest Period, the Contest platform will track each > Submission's popularity using a proprietary ranking algorithm ( "online > activity"). Online activity tracking will be measured weekly throughout the > Contest Period. Each week during the Contest Period, the Contest platform > will identify the ten (10) Entrants with the highest online activity during > that week (the "Top Ten Weekly" and the "Weekly Ranking" respectively). Each > Entrant who's Submission (i) is in the Top Ten Weekly (in the highest Weekly > Ranking) as determined by Administrator and (ii) also meets the Submission > Requirements is guaranteed to have at least one (1) Submission be reviewed > by the Judging Panel in the Finalist Round. In the event that an Entrant has > a Top Ten Weekly ranking in the Weekly Ranking on more than one occasion, > the Judging Panel shall also review the next highest ranked Entrant so that > there are a total of one hundred (100) Entrants that are guaranteed to have > their Backing Track video in their Submission be reviewed by the Judging > Panel in the Finalist Round, additional Submission videos, may or may not be > reviewed. Any attempt by a Designated Agent or an Entrant and/or his or her > family/friends to use fraudulent mechanisms to unfairly affect the outcome, > as determined by Sponsor in its sole discretion, shall give Sponsor the > right to disqualify the Entrant. Entrants will not be notified if they are > being judged in the Finalist Round._

I participated in a similar contest earlier using the same platform (Zedd if you're at all curious). There was rampant click fraud being done by numerous contestants, most of it simple click-for-click type stuff, but there were obvious attempts to get way ahead.

Considering how frequently I come across "services" that guarantee listens/likes/clicks through different platforms (Twitter, SoundCloud, DatPiff, YouTube, etc) I'm highly skeptical of how well such contests are policed.

In returning to the OP article, if dishonest means were the method to winning, and it follows that dishonesty will rise again, I wonder how that plays out in the music environment.

</comment><comment><USER7> The thing is how long does that effect last?

Maybe the winning triggers a bit of feel-good hormone so that the participant finds himself in a situation of enjoying a little bit risk.

There are many behavioral experiments these days. And they'd like to produce "common sense" results.

These results can't be generalised and i think it'd be even amoral to use it to justify hating people. Like, seriously, ethical doings are not that clearly defined anymore. The world has changed so much.

</comment><comment><USER8> The paper isn't explicit about it, but I'm guessing "...among Ivy League college students" is an implicit part of the title.

Drawing from a population that has spent most of their lives competing and winning may skew the results somewhat, relative to other populations...

</comment><comment><USER9> So... I must be the most honest man in the world.

<comment><USER10> So you won the honesty competition?

<comment><USER9> I ... refuse to answer that without my lawyer present.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The study used individual competition. I wonder if they would observe the same phenomenon with team competition.

</comment><comment><USER12> This says so much about the dangers of winner-take-all economics.

</comment><comment><USER13> I smell bullshit when even the first sentence of the abstract is not convincing. But it's not really bullshit, it's only common sense.

> "Competition is prevalent. People often resort to unethical means to win > (e.g., the recent Volkswagen scandal)."

The recent "Volkswagen scandal", where the authors probably mean the recent Bosch/Audi scandal who got caught cheating the diesel emission tests, had nothing to do with competition. When everyone is cheating these tests since centuries (starting with the US companies in the 90ies, and then the other car makers later), it is a purely political problem, but has nothing to do with competition. All the engines are using the cheating device, everybody cheats, there's no competition, the game is rigged.

So when everyone cheats, just as also in competitive cycling, swimming, athletics, or in politics, it's more a scenario how to play the game properly and just avoid getting caught.

But here we went full-cycle, and declare favorable dishonest behavior based on an environment where everyone cheats. The problem is not the winner as declared in this paper, the problem is the whole game, at least the cabal of the top 10 who mostly conspire to keep quiet. But in reality not only the players of the game, also the whole training staff, the media, the judges, the federation.

The rest of the paper wants to disprove the false image of the "good sport", which is sometimes based on unfairness. And the new finding is that winning a competition will favor dishonesty, and not only the other way round. Which explains "corruption".

<comment><USER14> 1) Just because everyone is cheating doesn't mean there isn't a competition. The competition is for clean, high-mileage, high-performing vehicles and it very much is a competition.

2) I'm not sure why you decided to rename it a Bosch/Audi scandal as it is a Volkswagen/Bosch/Audi/Porsche scandal. Volkswagen is simply the combination of most highly distributed manufacturer and highest name recognition in that set.

3) Everyone cheats is not an excuse for cheating. It just means better testing and regulation enforcement is required.

4) I do agree that the paper has it backwards. Dishonesty leads to Competition "Winning" rather than the other way around.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Google Is Hurting Modern Web Apps - <AUTHOR> I just wanted to say that Google's laser focus on "content" is really hurting modern Single-Page Apps. A lot of developers have to insert unnecessary garbage "SEO" text into their interfaces just to make Google happy. Some apps consist of large iframes from other domains (for security reasons) and Google thinks they are spam or "thin content" and might penalize them...<p>All these are holding the web-app ecosystem back. <comment><USER2> > A lot of developers have to insert unnecessary garbage "SEO" text into their > interfaces just to make Google happy.

Lots of developers are forced to add meaningful semantic annotations to their content to help machines discover their content. That helps users in how they are able to jump into the content and systems (not necessarily only the Google bot) to understand what you're trying to serve to the user. If you are building a user facing service, discoverability should be part of your problem statement. SEOs and their crap techniques a decade ago brought the need for these structured mitigations onto the web, not Google.

> Some apps consist of large iframes from other domains (for security reasons) > and Google thinks they are spam or "thin content" and might penalize them...

Would you mind giving examples for this? It's not the responsibility of a search engine to interpret why a marginal fraction of SPAs would do that, security reasons sounds like an excuse for not building sensible integrations between two services. If a SPA is a collection of iframes it's likely that the thing I'm looking for is on the target of one of these frames.

> All these are holding the web-app ecosystem back.

Google, as in the search engine, went to great lengths to support dynamic content in the first place. I find focusing on content pretty sensible, if I search for something I usually expect to find the content I am looking for, not random SWAs for the sake of it. What exactly would you want them to do differently?</comment>


SEC Chairman Wants to Let More Main Street Investors in on Private Deals - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-chairman-wants-to-let-more-main-street-investors-in-on-private-deals-1535648208 <comment><USER2> This is great news for startups</comment>


Show HN: Cocoa native Slack desktop app (kickstarter) - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2137936555/taut-the-fast-beautiful-macos-native-slack-app <comment><USER2> > If this project is successfully funded, I'll check with the Slack company > that there are no issues with this going forwards.

Why not ask them right now, or even earlier than that?

> The Slack macOS app is slow and ugly.

Personally I don't see what's so ugly about this app. And in fact, it is one of the only "html" apps I've not minded using, normally I despise them.

</comment><comment><USER3> there's nothing to show here just a kickstarter link with no mockups or anything.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've never had trouble with Slack's OS X app, what's wrong with it?

<comment><USER5> Yea i agree, Slack's native app is pretty good in terms of design and performance. This is totally unnecessary.</comment></comment>