Wikipedia blocked in Turkey - <AUTHOR> https://turkeyblocks.org/2017/04/29/wikipedia-blocked-turkey/ <comment><USER3> I think 2016 will go down as the high water mark for a global Internet. I see a lot of countries looking at the success of China in keeping political control, and the failure of Egypt, Tunisia, etc where the open Internet was used to overthrow the regime and deciding that allowing an open, free internet is not in their best interests. If you think that Western, liberal democracies are exempt from this, just look at the attention "fake news" and "no platform" have been getting. We are going away from the free and open interchange and discussion of ideas (even horrible ideas) to the coercive suppression of ideas (at this point bad ideas, but may not be true in the future).

Add to this that a large portion of the web content is controlled by fewer entities (if Facebook or Google bans your site, you are not going to get very much exposure). Also, we are moving from user controlled general purpose computers to secured, walked garden devices. The government by applying pressure on maybe a dozen companies, can control what type of information the average person is exposed to.

And the whole dodge that the first amendment only applies to the government is dangerous. Freedom of speech is as much a principle as a law. If we get used to large powerful non-government entities suppressing speech we do not like, it will be a brief step to accepting government doing the same or at least pressuring the non-government entities to so it.

<comment><USER4> > the whole dodge that the first amendment only applies to the government is > dangerous

As a supporter of that "dodge", allow me to defend it (though I don't really disagree with your comment in general).

Freedom of speech as a _principle_ has a fundamental tension. One person's freedom to speak must be balanced with another person's freedom to exclude that speech from their private life. Private folks having the ability to go places where they can ignore the people they've chosen to ignore is an important part of why free speech works at all. For instance, we don't need laws against Holocaust deniers, we can simply choose to frequent places where they are excluded.

Freedom of speech as a _law_ is the release valve for this tension. If every private individual and organization in the country has chosen to ignore a person's views, that person is still free to make themselves heard with the government. They can write letters and go to meetings with no fear of punishment for the unpopularity of their beliefs. They can't be legally kept from starting their own private organization where they are not ignored and advertising it to attract others.

Personally, I just find this all to be a very good solution to a difficult problem, so I'm skeptical when I see suggestions that it should be done differently. In this case, the suggestion is that the freedom to exclude (as a principle - there is no law in this direction) should be more tightly regulated. Maybe that's a good idea because of the unique circumstances of the internet, but I'm not yet convinced that it's better than the current regime, which has existed for a long time, and which I think works pretty well.

<comment><USER5> >One person's freedom to speak must be balanced with another person's freedom to exclude that speech from their private life. Private folks having the ability to go places where they can ignore the people they've chosen to ignore is an important part of why free speech works at all.

That's not how it works. The "public square" is supposed to be open to all opinions. If you want protection, you have to retreat into the cloister of a private establishment that disallows this. In the past, it was not possible to bypass the public square, and thus to avoid exposure to the sentiment of anyone who cared to stand there and hand out his papers or cry his opinion. This was a necessary part of travel between private establishments that used their limited property rights over a small piece of land to exclude such stumping within that small parcel only.

The internet is blurring the lines of the public square. We no longer need to traverse the public streets where all views are free to be expressed; via the internet, people are instantly teleported from cloistered space A to cloistered space B. People are starting to feel it is their right to go about their businesses without being exposed to things they dislike, which, whether they realize it or not, is a very worrisome disavowal of the principles undergirding our freedoms. The effect of this on discourse, democracy, and all of our freedoms should not be understated.

Ironically, rather than unifying mankind and increasing sympathy and understanding, we are using network technology to maximize comfort by crafting artificial "safe spaces" where patrons never even have to be _exposed_ to thoughts they dislike. That's bad.

The divide has never been more palpable than during the last election cycle. Nearly half the country was so misinformed that they didn't even believe the outcome was possible, and hostility and misunderstanding are reaching frightening heights, in some cases escalating into violence (post-election rioting, Berkeley).

Whatever is creating those circumstances needs to be fixed, and my belief is that a generation that is used to muting and blocking anything they dislike and spending most of their time in hyper-sanitized environments safe for corporate sponsorship and being coddled in public spaces to minimize corporate liability is no small part in this.

<comment><USER6> I'm interested in why you are commenting in here, rather than (say) Youtube or 4Chan. Might it be because the active moderation here allows for a certain type of discourse?

<comment><USER5> Yes. I don't intend to say that _no one_ should be able to organize their forums or exclude some speech; doing so is a critical part of maintaining something functional and workable.

We don't have to fling to one extreme or the other. There is a moderate position here. And remember, this is about the importance of free speech as a _social principle_. If we don't cherish our rights, they'll vanish. I'm not necessarily advocating any specific legal changes.

HN is a boutique site that targets a specific niche. I would guess it has a few thousand active users. It's developed and designed specifically to facilitate discussion on issues that fit its niche and target audience.

Facebook, Twitter, et al, on the other hand, are platforms that function much like public utilities. They are used by the masses to disseminate speech of all kinds. They target a generic user base and suggest that they can all use the site to follow their individual interests.

Beyond the mere target audience of "everyone", Facebook and Google have _massive_ amounts of control. The penetration of Google and Facebook is probably almost exactly equal with the penetration of internet service (and to some extent, both have projects that take them beyond that sphere). If you use the internet, the likelihood is that significant amounts of your usage are under the direct control of these corporations.

Facebook boasts over 1 billion daily active users. That is 1/8 of the earth's population. That is MASSIVE -- far further reaching than any monopoly in the pre-internet age. Facebook is also the platform that people depend on most heavily for self-expression. It's a central hub that many people visit multiple times each day; some groups and businesses are now run _entirely_ out of Facebook. Functionally, it is not unlike the pre-internet public square, and it's a frequent crossroads for almost all internet users. As with past public squares, it's _possible_ to avoid it if you're trying _really hard_ , but you essentially have to be a digital recluse.

This applies similarly to Google for search, email, and mobile.

As such, it's scary when such powerful platforms that present with such generic mission statements and see such widespread adoption start erasing political speech because they deem it "offensive" at the corporate level.

That is a ridiculous amount of control, and it's something we've never experienced before. Even the broadcasters of the 20th century were limited by the reach of radio waves to specific metros, and they usually had several easily accessible competitors (that people would actually use, unlike FB's direct competitors). We used to worry about the large influence of these people so much that it was illegal to own more than a certain number of major media outlets in the same market (that restriction was removed in 2003, IIRC). [We also used to have the Fairness Doctrine to compel broadcasters to accurately present both sides of the political issues.]

People recognized the damage to the public square posed by moving the discussion off to corporate-controlled broadcast media and wanted a way to check the power of the broadcasters. We seem to have forgotten about that risk, just at the moment when the central control of a small handful of people is most potent.

Imagine that printing press manufacturers had the ability to stop press owners from setting certain things to the page. That reflects the reality of the publishing mediums we depend on today. That should be worrisome.

I'm stopping short of suggesting a legal solution, but just speaking to this as an important social principle, we should all be disgusted with the conduct from the major online platform providers. Such general, widely-used platforms are betraying the public and our principles and values in favor of open dialogue by working to distort the landscape of public opinion and curtail the speech of the political, philosophical, or moral enemies of the corporate overlords.

<comment><USER7> Sheer size can certainly be scary, but consider that Google and Facebook got where they are by excluding stuff people don't want.

Google has used page rank from the very beginning to show popular pages. Since then, there have been a zillion other teaks to search ranking. (Not to mention that Gmail's spam filtering was an attractive early feature.)

Facebook started out excluding people who didn't go to a particular college, and later, the friend graph helped people avoid communication with strangers.

More recently, Snapchat showed that auto-deletion of photos is something people really like, even if it's technically "impossible" to do perfectly securely.

So it's not just about big companies being in control. Filtering is a really popular feature. Companies that did it well attracted users and became big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a canuck who has worked with Turks and has visited Turkey. They're a wonderful people from a beautiful country with a real problem of a person in power. Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, yet they produce alcohol and tolerate its consumption within their borders, even by their own people. Let that fact sink in for a moment. Erdogan is subverting the _premier secular democracy_ of the Islamic world, but nobody seems to _care_.

Turkey is _nothing_ like the common stereotypes we have of it in the West, but Erdogan is a guy who, I think, wants to change that. A wonderful human being who I've had the privilege of knowing is currently in prison in Turkey on absolutely baseless accusations[1]. Nobody in Canada gives a damn because he was an "Imam", and that's a scary word apparently.

People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on Erdogan's regime. There's some seriously scary stuff happening because of this guy.

[1][http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/davud-hanci-turkey- cou...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/davud-hanci-turkey-coup-charge- judge-1.4015590)

<comment><USER9> Plenty of people care, but what are we supposed to do about it? Here in Europe Erdogan makes the headlines from time to time, right before the referendum he made several speeches where he called the politicians of multiple countries "descendants of nazis" and similar. Everybody knows that he cares more about suppressing the Kurds than ISIS. He holds Europe hostage by threatening to release large amounts of refugees into Europe, not dissimilar to what Qaddafi did. We've been hearing about the increasing religiosity pretty much since he took office.

It's one more example of a common pattern where the rural and the urban population disagrees, due to globalization, increased liberal ideas in cities, and a switch from manufacturing to service jobs. It seems to be universal that the rural population is more religious, less prepared for a global economy, and in general more backwards, yearning for times that aren't here anymore.

<comment><USER10> I think we should stop communicating from the top. Many problems right now are because heads of state, not necessarily people. Erdogan, Putin ...

We should try to get real people to talk, about who they are, what they want (peace ? surely .. war ? not so sure). So peoples in every nation start to avoid the national/patriot filter when thinking and voting.

<comment><USER11> Erdogan was democratically elected. He's not a dictator (even if he does act as one at this point) and judging from the referendum results, at least half of Turks seem to like his direction. It's easy to say those voters are uneducated or misguided but the fact is that this is how democracy works. Where I am going with this is that we should not blame just the leader but also the people who put him there.

<comment><USER12> Blaming misguided voters only has merit when freedom of the press is available and people have access to news that does not have significant pro-government bias. Turkey was ranked #155 out of #180 evaluated countries on this year's RSF list [1]. If the government controls the information that the people have access to, it is a little difficult to expect a legitimate democracy, which requires more than simply valid elections.

[1]: [https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table](https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table)

<comment><USER13> Do the Turks in Germany also enjoy no freedoms? Because they actually support Erdogan more than Turks in Turkey.

<comment><USER14> * Many of them identify with their (parents' or grandparents') conservative countryside roots. * A community so much oriented towards Turkey consumes a lot of Turkish (the country) and Turkish (the language) media. * Turkish country media are in Erdogan's pocket. There is not even a semblance of free press anymore in Turkey. * Turkish language media in the EU with an editorial line not pro-Erdogan have been threatened in every possible way, either directly from Turkey or indirectly. Many have ceased to exist. The best example: Zaman in .be and .nl. * Kurdish language media have always been under threat from the Turkish authorities. * The Turkish government has directly ordered the network of Turkish mosques ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Religious_Affair...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Religious_Affairs) ) abroad to create lists of Gülen supporters. Evidence of these practices has led to a diplomatic incident with at least Belgium. * You may also want to read about media repression inside Turkey like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today's_Zaman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today's_Zaman) . [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement#2013_corru...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement#2013_corruption_scandal) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Meanwhile, in the U.S., the administration is taking down government websites in an effort to bury climate data and scientific information. Useful to remember it's not just countries like China and Turkey that try to limit citizens' access to information.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/2017/04/28/epa-website-removes-climate-science-site-from- public-view-after-two-decades/)

<comment><USER16> Important caveat: the US government is reducing _it 's own_ efforts to combat climate change. That's not censorship.

<comment><USER17> I've read through a few definitions of the word "censorship", just now, and I don't think any of them make this particular distinction.

<comment><USER18> There is a distinction between open government and censorship. Not releasing information is different than banning people from sharing information. It's related, but definitely not the same as censorship.

<comment><USER19> The problem is this treats the government as a single entity with a uniform will: yes, if you do that, then the government is merely failing to act rather than deliberately censoring anything.

However the government isnt a single entity, it is many smaller kingdoms. And The King _is_ censoring one of his princes internally: preventing the EPA from releasing data it would like to.

<comment><USER20> We're not a fucking monarchy. The entirety of the executive branch serves at the pleasure of the president.

And he's entirely within his rights to shut programs down; that isn't censorship. Learn your definitions lest you serve as a strawman for the other side of the argument.

<comment><USER21> Erdogan is within his right to censor.

Does that mean he does not censor?

<comment><USER16> Erdogan is preventing journalists and private individuals from publishing (or even talking about in some cases) their opinions. He does it to hide his own crimes.

This is obviously very different from shutting down a government program. Trump is the employer of those people. He can tell them what to do. They are free to go home and say whatever they want, even about these decisions (and they are, in fact doing that).

Censorship would be Trump arresting the journalists that reported this.

<comment><USER21> I consider dismantling environmental agencies criminal in the ethical sense, but US law obviously does not consider it criminal.

Does Erdogan ever actually violate Turkish law? You call what Erdogan does criminal, but I'm under the impression you're using "the letter of the law" as a measure for Trump, and "what's ethical" for Erdogan.

As an aside, Trump and his staff have removed press from press meetings and refused to let certain question be asked. Those actions aren't arrests but they don't particularly cultivate a climate of open debate either.

<comment><USER16> > I consider dismantling environmental agencies criminal in the ethical sense, > but US law obviously does not consider it criminal.

I don't understand that. Surely this was plainly clear during the election ... and the electorate made it's viewpoint clear. Therefore in my opinion it is not just morally right, but an actual moral duty for the US government to at least tone down the climate research.

We live in a government for the people, by the people. It is NOT a government for the climate. US government climate actions are predicated upon a majority of the US population not just agreeing in principle, but willing to pay (a lot I might add) to make it happen.

> Does Erdogan ever actually violate Turkish law?

Yes.

> As an aside, Trump and his staff have removed press from press meetings and > refused to let certain question be asked. Those actions aren't arrests but > they don't particularly cultivate a climate of open debate either.

I fail to see how this is even a little strange. Did you know Obama did the same ? And so did Bush and Clinton. All have removed reporters and refused questions.

And frankly, in most cases, for pretty good reasons. At least in the Trump and Obama cases I've seen the videos, and ... I mean sorry. I may not agree with Trump, but I agree that those reporters went too far, were warned a few times, and when they insisted, the president walked away. That, to me, doesn't seem controversial at all. I don't think I'd have similar patience, I especially would not have the patience Obama had with reporters (remember ? The birth certificate. Perhaps (being flexible with perhaps) it was a newsworthy question for a week or two, but 2 years later they were still pestering him)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents#English_W...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents#English_Wikipedia)

A data dump of all English Wikipedia articles as a torrent. In case you are not able to access that, here's the direct link: [https://itorrents.org/torrent/6434C646E33D02F3CDCB9C15F9DF11...](https://itorrents.org/torrent/6434C646E33D02F3CDCB9C15F9DF11A6C2064624.torrent)

On a side note, I think it's fantastic that we have the entire Wikipedia, possibly the greatest effort towards organizing the world's information, at our fingertips.

<comment><USER23> Further, there are good open-source solutions to read these dumps offline. For instance Kiwix [http://www.kiwix.org/](http://www.kiwix.org/) which has a dedicated reader application but also an HTTP server (very useful if you want to run a local mirror), and Aard Dict on Android [http://aarddict.org/](http://aarddict.org/)

<comment><USER24> Thanks for those suggestions. I wasn't aware of Kiwix. It sounds similar to XOWA, which has worked well for me: [http://xowa.org/](http://xowa.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As suggested by others, it's a court order. Turkish officials demanded a few things from wikipedia. The main item was to remove all content where Turkey is shown supporting ISIS, but they didn't receive a response, and the repercussion was blocking access nationwide.

<comment><USER16> In case anyone doesn't know, Erdogan is enriching himself and his family by having Daesh/ISIS/Islamic state deliver oil to him at bargain prices and selling it, mostly within Turkey:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle- east/wikileak...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle- east/wikileaks-turkey-isis-oil-minister-email-cache-leaks- claims-a7460736.html)

(and Google for it, there is a lot of proof of this)

So let's stop pretending that this is done due to justice or even legal "right". This is being done to hide the crimes of the people in power. In this case, yes, crimes, specifically the government selectively applying the laws, corruption, and the like.

It is not being done for justice, to protect anyone's reputation from falsehoods, or ... it's just being done to hide crimes by the government.

<comment><USER25> I wasn't defending what happened, was rather reporting their reasoning for the curious. In Turkey justice has become synonymous with Erdogan's and his party's interests unfortunately.

They prey on the less educated, and banning a major source of knowledge seems like a very smart move by them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> To what degree is Erdogan's regime a problem of not enough democracy, as opposed to a fundamental problem with democracy itself? (Where democracy = 51% wins)

<comment><USER9> That definition of democracy, where the winner takes all, is from what I've heard a big problem in Turkey. I think a strong opposition and having several political parties in the parliament is the best way to avoid the tyranny of the masses, but the recent referendum in Turkey takes them in the exact opposite direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm assuming Tor circumvents the ban, correct? I'm going to tell all my Turkish friends to install Tor and signal, and be sad that Turkey has reached this point.

<comment><USER28> AFAIK, Tor is blockable because the list of relays is public, and accesses may invite scrutiny from the authorities. This is a dictator who's reportedly already imprisoned thousands of common people.

What I do is buy inexpensive server time from common providers in US or Europe, run a SOCKS tunnel over ssh to that server, and bypass blocks. It'll appear to be like any other SSH access.

If I need to post something to a website that should not be tracked back to my own address or my server address, I run tor daemon on the server and use it as a second SOCKS proxy to proxy the requests the server is forwarding.

I'm not in Turkey but I'm in a country that's taking an authoritarian turn and may become like Turkey in 5 to 10 years. Good idea to keep all the tools and know-how ready now, and start covering tracks early.

<comment><USER16> Reportedly ? Turkey has published exactly how many they arrested. The counter currently stands on over 100000 people that have at least been fired. At least 30000 have been arrested and imprisoned.

And Diyanet is back. If you don't know. The Ottoman empire, Turkey's predecessor, felt the need for iron control over mosques. So anyone who attempted to have mosque without "official curriculum", even a tiny personal one, in Ottoman territory would quickly find themselves arrested. And to drive home how serious they were: it is said that nobody got arrested twice for this. Nobody.

Now Erdogan is famous for directly threatening European leaders for not doing the same. Essentially, he demands to see European non-Diyanet mosques attacked if any Turk goes to them, and there are reports of kidnappings and disappearances (NOT in Turkey, in Europe).

Additionally a whole bunch of Islamic schools (Gulen-movement schools) have been closed and again there are threats against foreign governments not doing the same.

Censorship is the least part of this. Sad part is, much of Turkey appears to agree with these actions.

<comment><USER20> > Sad part is, much of Turkey appears to agree with these actions.

What? jeez, why? That's gotta be a pushback/countermovement to something.

What is that majority concerned with/about, immigrant issues or something? (bad world citizen here, I haven't been keeping up)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Much of this problem comes not from the top, but from the bottom. It's a terrible idea that people can actually suck, and suck en masse, but it truly is the case. The bad leader is an emergent consequent of the bad people crying for him. Shitty leaders aren't the sole purview of Islamic states, but they seem to be better at generating them than anyone else in recent history.

How do you fix millions of people, so they stop desiring terrible things? Well, by having a culture that pays better, and marketing it well. And it's delicate, because their "better" detector isn't working properly already.

</comment><comment><USER11> What triggered this?

Usually Turkish government blocks sites right after a terrorist attack or in the case of the coup attempt. Is something about to happen?

<comment><USER30> I'd say it is just some random court order, maybe somebody edited page of Erdoğan to add some insults, which gave ideas to some judge to get government reputation.

<comment><USER31> This, maybe?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recep_Tayyip_Erdo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan&type=revision&diff=775815513&oldid=775814082)

<comment><USER11> probably, but if that's the case their reaction is a bit late..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Are torrents being blocked? What about Kwix and a torrent of Wikipedia?

[http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page](http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page) [http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages](http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages)

</comment><comment><USER33> Isn't one of the requirements of being in NATO a democracy?

With moves like this from Turkey, what will happen to the NATO membership?

</comment><comment><USER34> There is some irony in Erdogan's desire for EU membership, last decade, creating such a primacy of elected leaders (at the EU's behest and guidance) that the previous guardians of Turkey's secular heritage, the military, is no longer able to stage a coup against the emerging despot.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm seeing a lot of comments about this structure vs. that structure, but to paraphrase an old Sufi proverb someone told me, it doesn't matter what the cup is made of (gold? wood?), it matters what's in the cup (good water?). It doesn't matter what your government or family structures look like if they aren't able to facilitate healthy individuals and groups. If they are facilitating the health of some and the detriment of others, well then they are wittingly or unwittingly engaging in _selection_. It doesn't matter if she's your wife or your girlfriend. Is it toxic or growing?

</comment><comment><USER36> Before Erdogan, Turkey had no middle class. You either lived in remote villages and lacked education OR you were "rich" thanks to high level of nepotism. Well, Erdogan changed all this, he moved people to into cities and these people didn't forget and started to vote for him.

Before then, the Kemalist or secular people were very relaxed, they knew from history if some how they lost the government, military coup will restore power. Again, Erdogan changed this.

Even by anti-erdogan majority, Erdogan is seen as the only true politician in Turkey, he knows how to convince or play people/groups. Just ask Gulen Movement!

</comment><comment><USER37> How come that all dictators have one thing in common?

They don't understand that the more you forbid certain things, the more people are willing to fight for it.

They should do exactly like in the West: give us the feeling we are free, while a few companies decide what we have to do, what we have to wear, what we have to eat :)

This way, your economy flourishes, you are not perceived as a dictator, and neighbor countries don't want to invade you because of human rights :D

</comment><comment><USER38> I would understand blocking WikiLeaks but blocking Wikipedia is a whole level of cenorship. Turkish people should reconsider their freedom. I don't live there and I am not Turk so I can't make more comments not knowing what's really going on there. God bless.

</comment><comment><USER39> I love the Turkish people and the rich cultural heritage of the country, but everything I hear about Erdogan is pretty scary. My only beef with the people of Turkey is I wish they'd take a leadership role into making peace with the Kurds.

</comment><comment><USER40> First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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

</comment><comment><USER41> So, the question is: What can we do as a community? Come on guys. We have probably many of the smartest people on this planet reading this shit here right now.

What can we do? What could be a cool tool, solution, initiative? Ideas anybody?!

</comment><comment><USER42> It seems it is forbidden for the Turks to get cultivated like other people in the world... We live in an era of lack of information (which is probably like all other eras)

</comment><comment><USER43> Does anyone know which article in particular triggered this?

<comment><USER44> This person seems to have more information: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14225719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14225719)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Turks which knows wikipedia, already know how to use a vpn. It's a ridiculous decision. Our ruling should find better solutions for such problems

<comment><USER46> What problems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> not quite sure about world politics, but it seems Turkey is backpedaling fast these days? Maybe one day they can license China's greatwall-firewall IP?

</comment><comment><USER10> Any alternative ? mirrors ? slimmed torrent distribution ?

<comment><USER31> [http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content/tr](http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content/tr)

Kiwix is one. I'm currently torrenting Turkish and English wikis ([https://s.ave.zone/d5a.png](https://s.ave.zone/d5a.png)) and will be seeding for as much as I can.

I kindly as any person who currently resides in Turkey to do the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> hn gets useless in threads like this. we badly need a collapse comment tree feature.

so much off topic flame wars when everyone should be setting up tor nodes.

<comment><USER49> >we badly need a collapse comment tree feature

It's been implemented for a while now. Do you have js disabled?

<comment> zupa-hu or maybe s/he just didn't notice the [-]

<comment><USER48> lol. changed my noscript addon and forgot to whitelist HN. thanks for reminding me

<comment><USER50> it's true though, the self-absorbed Americans dominating the top thread with an argument about (the USA legal definition of) free speech and how it relates to US specific racial tensions... because they'd rather loudly proclaim their position in a known argument they've had before than sit back, shut up and maybe learn something new about a country they don't know about, with a big problem that can't be explained as "just like in US except for XYZ so they should just PQR" ( _if only_ , in reality three comments down in the top thread everyone's forgotten Turkey as the main topic of discussion)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Oh, poor the students there.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is idiocracy!

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm pretty disappointed by some of the comments here. Because Turks voted him in that makes Erdogan's autocratic rule OK? There is no free press, hundreds of thousands that have had any association with opposition groups have been jailed, the referendum vote has been widely discredited as fraudulent. Hitler was voted into office too, I guess that just ended up being the German's problem? Democracy doesn't die without a majority of the population allowing it to, that doesn't make it right and that doesn't excuse some of the blase attitude I see here. You know you can care about something without wanting to go to war over it.

<comment><USER54> On a side note, Hitler was not elected into office but came in second in the election for "Reichskanzler". The NSDAP came out strongest party with 33,1%. Politicians at that time thought they could tame him if he becomes part of a coalition. They guessed wrong and he assumed full power.

If you play the Hitler card at least get it right.

<comment><USER55> Some further explanation:

In the Weimar Republic (the German state between the two worlds wars) the Reichskanzler (head of government) was not elected directly by the people. Instead, people voted for parties. The head of state was the President, and it was him who appointed the Reichskanzler.

In January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reichskanzler of Germany.

<comment><USER56> And that post had very little power. Hitler more or less became an absolute dictator with the passage of the Enabling Act a few months later. Getting that act through parliament involved arresting a bunch of opposition members and intimidating the rest using armed men, so it really wasn't a democratic process.

<comment><USER55> ...which, as one could argue, brings use nicely back to the original topic of Turkey.

\- [https://news.vice.com/story/erdogan-is-still-arresting- his-o...](https://news.vice.com/story/erdogan-is-still-arresting-his- opponents-in-massive-purge-that-has-surpassed-113000-people)

\- [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey- refere...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-referendum- intimidation-unfair-campaigning-watchdog-observer-european- council-a7687206.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Consider if you will - a diffrent approach to infrastructure altogether. There are no cables, no centralized Servers - just wifi capable devices.

How does it route, i hear you asking? It routes by likelihood of connection to social plankton. Social plankton is every group your device ever connects to- and is constituted by those members of the group, which who can gather the most "Yes"-votes about theire prediction, of the behaviour of the group. Take a bus filled with people driving to work. They always constitute from slightly diffrent devices, but the time is always the same, the amount of devices is always the same- and there is always that one deciding device - belonging to the social plankton "transportation-company" without the plankton would never come together.

Now lets take the greatest possible counter example: A convention of bus drivers, riding on a bus to the first convention of its kind. They would debate alot, and agree upon it beeing a bus- but neither could secure a majority - which bus it is. None of the driving by social plankton - <USER2> houses and cars, is able to identify the bus of busses, thus a new social plankton class is created.

How does a adress in this add-hoc net look like? It consists of a Unique identifier, wrapped into layers of social plankton, sorted by likelihood. The social organism city is likely to know the social organism university within. The key ingredient is, that inner-plankton, can be encrypted and decrypted only after arrival at the outter plankton.

So this allows for -extremely slow, in extremely big burst- communication to happen. Without any IP-Provider or Infrastructure Controll authority having a hand on it.

Even better, it allows for Meta-Organisms to host services. Lets say, i have a shard of Wikipedia on my cellphone, and im part of the opt-in plankton "FreeSociety", any request to a wikipedia server, that bounces with no return off the web, could bounce back through the social organisms internal, until it reaches me, gets a package returned, and the web is down but the gate is up.

<comment><USER58> I believe you're on to something, and there is a technical solution here. (Mainly I believe that because it's something I've been saying for years <g>)

Here in the states, the NSA was allowed to view data on telephone calls 3 or 4 levels out from a terrorist. So, for instance, if a terrorist called A, and A called B, and B called C, and so on? The NSA could track C or D.

The argument against that is that it would cover something like 80 or 90% of the population.

Well, there you go. Assume one trillion connected devices and each device is accessible through a "path" of connected devices over 4 or 5 hops, with a percentage_success and average_network_lag time tracked for each path.

Add in a few GB of buffering and the requirement that every connected device use up 10-20% of its bandwidth on public, anonymous access, and you've got a mesh system that's decentralized.

The only other limit I'd add is probably some kind of rules to prevent DDOSing, say a 64Kb message size and a few other things like that.

It's just a math problem.

<comment><USER57> You are right there- but its not just a math problem. Once people would use it, the usual suspects would show up and start to warp this distributed web.

Despots would add sinks that suck in all messages, by pretending to be a known plankton/connection.

Also assume that traditional isps would first try to subvert it and then try to replace it by providing a similar walled in service - warning from the dangerous open source network.

The whole thing would have to be constructed in away like the TOR-Network, preventing the identification of sender and reciver before Arrival.

Finally i think the problem remains, that any sufficiently enough supressing regime, would force its citizens to uninstall such software.

<comment><USER20> > Finally i think the problem remains, that any sufficiently enough supressing > regime, would force its citizens to uninstall such software.

Not force to uninstall - rather regulate, requiring licensure for operation; giving people a reason to be complacent. (Likely in the name of counterterrorism/child safety/etc)

Still, you have a decent grasp of the situation, which is much appreciated. Anyone who still thinks interpolitical issues can be swept away by some "just invent X" has either not lived long enough to know better or are doomed to the delusion that "it's the next one" until they die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Why can't there be some sort of peer-2-peer Wikipedia or in fact any database that keeps people from blocking it?

</comment><comment><USER60> >People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on Erdogan's regime. There's some seriously scary stuff happening because of this guy.

Honest question, why should the west care about every single problem that happens anywhere in the world? Why should we spend billions in wars, shed lots of our own blood, etc? Haven't we had enough of that?

<comment><USER21> In the case of western Europe, we should care because we don't have internal OR external border controls, and Turkey is a neighboring country with a lot of refugees to dump on us.

I wish I understood why there isn't a move to reinstate border checks in the Schengen area.

It seems ludicrous to me to keep internal borders open when it is clear that the external borders have failed.

<comment><USER61> All borders should be abolished. No human being has the right to tell any other human being where he can or can't go (with the exception of trespassing on private property, of course).

<comment><USER62> >(with the exception of trespassing on private property, of course).

This ought to be removed too, along with the whole concept of property.

<comment><USER21> Be the change you want to see!

Go ahead and abolish all your own property, you're free to do so.

Or was it more about you wanting to be entitled to product of your fellow man's labor?

<comment><USER62> >Go ahead and abolish all your own property, you're free to do so.

I do not own any private property.

>Or was it more about you wanting to be entitled to product of your fellow man's labor?

No; in fact, the exact opposite. It is about the worker owning the product of his own labour, rather than having it appropriated when production has finished. To each according to his labour.

<comment><USER63> You've figured out something very important, which is that as an employee, you never get to see most (ie. _all_ , beyond the limit of your wage) of the value you create.

<comment><USER62> Well, I didn't figure it out as much as Marx, Engels, Kropotkin and Proudhon did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Another North Korea?

<comment><USER65> There's a long long path before a country becomes "another North Korea". Turkey is currently at risk of becoming on par with some of the Gulf states or maybe a Central Asian republic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Governments yield too much power, meanwhile citizens keep funding said governments with ridiculously high taxes.

Trying to fix governments is counterproductive, just need to decentralize things imho.

<comment><USER67> What do you mean by "decentralise"? Smaller-scope government at a local level? Anarcho-syndicalism?

I suspect many of the same issues would appear.

<comment><USER68> > What do you mean by "decentralise"? Smaller-scope government at a local > level? Anarcho-syndicalism?

Yes.

> I suspect many of the same issues would appear.

Nope. When democracy is small enough, the leaders are very close to their voters. This changes everything. See small democratic countries, they do much better at being democratic! I think we can make it smaller, and have the democratic process at neighbourhood/village level. Then go up from there with committees filled with delegates from the local-democracies that are for a specific topic (hospitals in the region, roads, schools -- anything local- democracies want to collaborate with others upon). All taxation and voting should happen on the lowest level.

<comment><USER69> > All taxation and voting should happen on the lowest level.

While I too am tinkering with these ideas, the trouble with this is that we _need_ massive infrastucture work even outside the context of totalitarian self-promotion; and this is not achievable with small-scale local governments. Nowadays nobody is self-sufficient, as even the most simple things we use require material and labour from all over the world [1] that needs to be excavated, processed, produced, moved, bought and sold. I think that if we were to limit all governments to city-state like beings, economical macro- structures that will be more powerful than those states would form in no time.

Also, as today the term _worker_ has so less to do with the worker of the past two centuries, most of the theories become more and more irrelevant. If we want a better today, we need newer theories. That's exactly what the totalitarians are doing, they're using new methods and theories of marketing to succeed their way to domination of economical systems.

Many utopias are possible, but at the end of the day, if it's not utopia everywhere, it's utopia nowhere. A country cannot isolate itself from the outer world in their excess of happines because that last one depends on global welfare today. It's not the ages that you could stay safe when there's conflict thousands of kilometres away anymore.

[1] a nice illustration of this is the famous I, pencil: [http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html)

<comment><USER68> > the trouble with this is that we need massive infrastucture work

Sure. :)

But there are two options. Small steps in the right direction (need a lot of work), or revolution (needs even more work).

> I think that if we were to limit all governments to city-state like beings, > economical macro-structures that will be more powerful than those states > would form in no time.

Ok. In some cases these structures maybe beneficient, even started on behalf of the small-scale super autonomous self-governments. If not those small-scale govts can just ban (or not give them money anymore) them; they are autonomous.

> Also, as today the term worker has so less to do with the worker of the past > two centuries

True in the west. Workers here are now "priviledged workers", our economies in the west in need of cheap labor in other places. There the "worker" still exists in its classical form. Here we have a new form, but if you look closely you still see many. To me it is simple, I see capitalists (defined as never "have to" work to survive a fancy life time), and non-capitalists (used to have been referred to as "workers").

> Many utopias are possible, but at the end of the day, if it's not utopia > everywhere, it's utopia nowhere.

That raises the bar very high. I look more at it as a one village/neighbourhood at the time kind of thing.

Do you know "I pencil" from Corbett? He's an agorist I believe, dunno. I'm more towards mutualism/anarchism/market-socialism; as I think private property should have limits (otherwise those ideologies are quite similar).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A judging system that can score a routine from the angles of a gymnast's joints - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/fujitsu-plans-to-support-professional-judges-with-lidar-and-ai-at-gymnastics-meets <comment><USER2> Judging in gymnastics already seems backwards to me: One person performs an amazing routine and then gets a low score when they stumble at the end. The next person performs a relatively average routine but gets a good score because they never stumble.

Analyzing joint angles seems like it would just further remove any sense of "soul" from the scoring criteria.

<comment><USER2> Thinking about this further, I think that maybe this is a fundamental problem with taking performance and making it a competition. Competition demands an objective standard when the quality of a performance is really about the subjective qualities like showmanship.

I see the same thing when games/sports become professional. It becomes about winning rather and gamesmanship than the characteristics that make the game/sport fun/meaningful/significant to begin with. For example, e-sports that remove the random aspects that make a game exciting because they aren't "fair". Or Mayweather vs. Pacquinao fight where Mayweather won using a defensive strategy; effectively winning by not fighting.

<comment><USER3> I've been saying for a long time that events that are based on someone else's subjective opinion should be removed from things like the Olympics. Gymnastics, figure skating, things like that.

If you can't measure the results it's not a competition; it's a popularity contest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This could also have application in a Dance Dance Revolution revival.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of the "Everybody Dance Now" pose estimation algorithm. I'm not sure how they'd program in what a correct pose would be throughout all the duration of a single move, though.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it might change the sport a bit as gymnasts seek to emulate the machine's ideal. Might become a bit stale.

<comment><USER7> Goodhart's law!

<comment><USER6> Good connection! I looked it up, and it's interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now no one will be perfect!

I wonder if they'll calibrate the scores against past 10.0 performances

<comment><USER9> The tolerance is 1 cm so maybe someone can</comment></comment>


23andMe Begins Selling DNA Data - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/of-course-23andmes-business-plan-has-been-to-sell-your-1677810999

<comment><USER2> This has me rethinking ordering that $30 DNA testing GroupOn.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is huge, it may not look like that but it is. Anyone know if this is legal? I'm pretty sure they already thought out their alibi, but this still could be a really messy subject. I'm also pretty sure that if they were honest about the real business plan behind 23andMe from the beginning, much less than 800,000 people would've spit for them; that's some really low foul play there and definitely 'evil' [1].

The reason why this is huge is because DNA (and samples) can be easily and cheaply preserved for relatively long time (which is what they obviously did). Right now, whole genome sequencing is 'apparently' still very expensive but there's not a doubt that it will become ridiculously cheap as time goes on. If 23andMe is completely authorized to do whatever they want with those samples (which I'm pretty sure they do, because I can't think of something more flagrant than selling their data) there's nothing stopping them to sequence all of them when the cost is low enough. What happens next could be the subject for many science fiction novels but it's real. If they do sequence those samples they would have BY FAR the largest amount of genomic information that humanity has ever gathered together; along with capable researchers, this is the kind of thing that could change the fate of our history. And... this tremendous amount of knowledge and power is all going to be in hands of a private business, a business with very dubious ethics and 'very close' to another company that makes it's living taking advantage of every piece of data they can put their hands into. This needs regulation like RIGHT NOW.

Also, from the comments:

>In essence, 23andMe got you to pay for their startup costs, and now they're looking to make a mint on the personal data you paid to give them.

[1] For those who are not aware. 23andMe's founder and CEO is Sergey Brin's SO.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. The potential benefits far outweigh the vacuous 'evil' you describe above. Lets first have the technology and capability that could _possibly_ be abused before we try stopping that tech from ever happening... So what if they have the largest amount of genomic information that humanity has ever gathered together ? And obviously they should do their best to change the fate of our history what would you have them do with it ?

<comment><USER3> There are no benefits. That data is not meant for public research. The only benefit I see is the birth of a new giant monopoly business centered on genomic therapies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A fearful number of startups seem to be premised on the idea that we will enter a big brother-esque dystopia in exchange for an infographic / collage.

I'm not saying they're incorrect, mind you.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Since 23andMe started in 2006, it's convinced 800,000 customers to hand over their DNA [...] But 23andMe wasn't going to find a big business by selling spit kits at the cut rate of $99."

Isn't $80 million USD big?

<comment><USER7> They took over $100M in investment and have dozens of employees. So in that way, no $80M is not big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent news. The more companies get access to large current datasets the better for all people that find dying inconvenient.

</comment><comment><USER8> Got a 23andMe spit-kit about a year ago, and never worked up the comfort with turning over my DNA.

It reminded me that the hospital where my first was born was engaged in some sort of genetic research at the time. They requested her DNA and assured me that it wouldn't be used for, say, future health insurance underwriting, etc.

What really made me uncomfortable was, not only how the DNA could be used at the current time, but how it might be used in the future, especially given the rapidly-evolving technology. And, it's not only the technology that will evolve, but privacy and other laws that currently limit DNA usage might also change in the future.

Of course, it occurs to me that if someone really wanted our DNA, they could capture it in, say, any random blood test, etc. But, it just seems safer, for now, not to "give" it away for questionable value in return.</comment>


DARPA: reconstruct shredded documents, win $50,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.shredderchallenge.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this is a solved problem. That isn't the point of the competition. From the site:

"Today's troops often confiscate the remnants of destroyed documents in war zones, but reconstructing them is a daunting task. DARPA's Shredder Challenge calls upon computer scientists, puzzle enthusiasts and anyone else who likes solving complex problems to compete for up to $50,000 by piecing together a series of shredded documents. The goal is to identify and assess potential capabilities that could be used by our warfighters operating in war zones, but might also create vulnerabilities to sensitive information that is protected through our own shredding practices throughout the U.S. national security community.

Presently, a variety of techniques exist for reconstructing shredded documents including manual assembly, fully automated (computerized) algorithms and hybrid operator-assisted approaches. DARPA hopes to gain new insight into which of these or other innovative techniques are quicker and more efficient, and, whether the wide availability of high resolution photography, communication and crowd-sourcing strategies offer unexpected advances.

"The ability to reconstruct shredded documents will potentially yield information that may save lives or offer critical information about an adversary's plans," said Mr. Dan Kaufman, Director of DARPA's Information Innovation Office. "Currently, this process is much too slow and too labor- intensive, particularly if the documents are handwritten. We are looking to the Shredder Challenge to generate some leap-ahead thinking in this area."

The Shredder Challenge is composed of five separate problems in which the number of documents, subject matter and the method of shredding is varied to present challenges of increasing difficulty. To complete each problem, participants are called upon to provide answers to puzzles embedded in the content of reconstructed documents. The overall prize awarded depends on the number and difficulty of problems solved.

Registration is open to all eligible parties at www.shredderchallenge.com, which provides detailed rules and images of the shredded documents for the five problems. The twitter hashtag for this event is #shredderchallenge. Participants are encouraged to build teams using the event forum and to monitor www.twitter.com/darpa_news for the latest news updates."

<comment><USER2> Alternative hypothesis: the point of the competition is to make people think that reconstructing shredded documents is harder than it is.

Why? So that the enemy will keep on shredding documents instead of burning 'em.

<comment><USER3> If that's the case, it reminds of Enigma, and how the allies were sending spy teams trying to steal an enigma, while they already had one.... Hmmm....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For $50,000? Is that all this is worth to them?

I would say it is certainly technically possible with modern tech, but seriously...$50k?

Change the prize to a million dollars and you'd get a solution overnight.

<comment><USER5> It's more about generating publicity for DARPA than an actual solution. Just look at the website design and the language. I mean seriously, a forum?

Most public DARPA projects are awarded via grant application from serious labs, and the funding often goes out before you reach a solution, since they fund high-risk projects with a low enough likelihood of a solution that profit-seeking companies won't want to try it otherwise.

<comment><USER6> >I mean seriously, a forum?

it sounds like you somehow missed the Grand Challenge trilogy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> germans already solved this to recover shredded stasi documents. take german solution, profit.

<http://www.iiconservation.org/news/?p=55>

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/unshredding_1....](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/unshredding_1.html)

<comment><USER8> wow, fascinating stuff. thanks for posting

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm probably in the upper range in terms of regular-folk-paranoia, but even after shredding my documents, I usually mix it in with food and regular garbage so that the information is destroyed. I also don't just shred important documents, I shred everything so that it's even harder to discern what is important and what isn't.

The irony, of course, is that despite my paranoia, my identity has been stolen because of a screw up with the credit agencies and I've been dealing with all 3 credit agencies for months trying to resolve this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Today is a fail. First I got invited for a lunch at HUD HQ in DC for a meet and greet but instead of lunch they had cookies and water and now DARPA only offering $50,000 for document reconstruction?

I guess govt cuts really are strict.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why don't "challenges" such as this get the same hate as "$300 for the best logo" contests?

It's purely spec work, and in this case requires much more time and effort in comparison the the shallow work done on 99designs or elance.

<comment><USER12> You can keep the work though from what I can tell - if you have a shredded documet reconstruction system then you can simply scan five docs and get $50k ... they don't keep the thing that's valuable, the system.

In a logo comp the only thing created of value is the output itself. The equivalent would be if the logo competition was to create a machine that created logos on demand and then only give you a small price for that machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am not sure the window here is long enough to develop a method of reconstructing these documents that will scale to the what the DOD would need. Honestly this feels kind of like the old myth about carrots making your sight better(a ruse to keep RADAR a secret from the Germans). I am virtually certain the gov't already has this technology perfected, but this is a way to make people think we don't.

</comment><comment><USER14> My intuition suggests that all of these documents being on lined paper would make the problem quite a bit easier, by providing clear features that have to line up between fragments.

At any rate, it makes you wonder if most documents are on lined paper, or if it's more common to see things on, for example, white printer paper.

<comment><USER15> Or if paper in general has some sort of "grain" created during its manufacturing process?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find it mildly disconcerting that DARPA's server infrastructure is clearly not scaling well for this announcement.

</comment><comment><USER17> While a neat puzzle doesn't anyone else think that the NSA was able to do this decades ago?

<comment><USER6> by making all shredders to contain secret mini scanner

:)

<comment><USER18> Do you have evidence that this has been done? I am reminded of the secret identifying marks that printers leave on their documents.

[https://www.eff.org/wp/investigating-machine- identification-...](https://www.eff.org/wp/investigating-machine- identification-code-technology-color-laser-printers)

<comment><USER19> <http://editinternational.com/read.php?id=47ddf19823b89>

"Roy Zoppoth stands over a Xerox 914 copy machine, the world's first, which was used in soviet embassies all over the world. The machine was so complex that the CIA used a tiny camera designed by Zoppoth to capture documents copied on the machine by the soviets and retrieved them using a "Xerox repairman" right under the eyes of soviet security."

<comment><USER20> I found this paragraph even more interesting:

 _"From the numbers of cameras ordered, we later realized the CIA had placed secret cameras in every Xerox copy machine in all embassies in the world – friend and foe alike."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Entries may only be submitted by a registered participant, who must be a permanent resident or citizen of the United States_

Shame - I don't know why they would not want entries from people outside the US.

<comment><USER22> You don't know why our war department would not want to pay foreign nationals for code that they intend to use in a battle situation? Is it honestly that hard to figure out why that restriction might be in place?

<comment><USER5> DARPA has a ton of research done by foreign nationals. (I have worked in labs which have foreign nationals who get paid to write code for DARPA projects).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Netflix offers $1MM to improve their algorithm by 10% and $50,000 is all that DARPA can offer for a _harder_ problem?

<comment><USER24> It doesn't appear you even need to provide an algorithm. You can solve it manually and still win the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If the shredded documents are of the same type as those in the picture, this isn't much of a challenge.

I was hoping to see some sort of ridiculous challenge to piece together documents that were destroyed by a high end unit that was specifically designed for sensitive documents. They basically spit out sawdust.

</comment><comment><USER26> If this is for the "warfighter" is shredded document reconstruction really a commonly encountered problem in the US's current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Its seems that in Afghanistan, for example, they don't even have electricity in the majority of the country let alone paper shredders.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seriously DARPA? 50K? That's no Netflix prize.

</comment><comment><USER28> Your password policy (and error reporting) for registering is so stupid I don't want to work with you guys anymore, ok? Don't get in touch.

</comment><comment><USER29> Personally, I shred documents to make sure they're destroyed. Why would I ever want to help DARPA come up with a way to reconstruct them?

<comment><USER30> Because you can't read the first sentence of the damn article?

<comment><USER29> I find the first sentence to be inadequately motivating.

Besides, if DARPA _does_ invent this who's to say they won't turn it on the American populace? And who's to say that folks won't go back to burning their documents?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You know will go "missing" once you have put it back together and seen the document.</comment>


Ask HN: Should we be doing everything we can to bring about the AI singularity? - <AUTHOR> AKA was Ted Kazinsky right? Obligatory "not the murder part"
There is more suffering in nature than we can probably even imagine. I don't believe in an afterlife because the logistics of it don't make sense. Do dim humans have an afterlife? What about bright animals? Is there a cut off limit where all of a sudden you don't get an afterlife? So I think it's probably just this life. When I think of all the humans who never get to live up to their potential, who unjustly fade away unfulfilled, who never live an intellectually rich life, who find themselves on the wrong side of society or the law, etc. it makes me want to do everything possible to help the technilogical singularity arrive as soon as possible.
For a long time this is how I thought. I even started a college-level site devoted to math education and retention (had to pause it because I needed to take on projects that had a better chance of making money).
Lately I have been thinking a lot more about society (perhaps because of the covid19 insanity). Has technology really made life better for us? I'm not interested in statistics about age of death or personal wealth because I doubt those are the right ways to measure well being. Technology seems to concentrate wealth and well being. We've built cities around the automobile and in the process lost our communities. A large part of the internet has turned into a mind control and censorship industry. etc.
I'm starting to have doubts that we will be capable of creating a benevolent AI. ...if Musk makes it, possibly. If Bezos makes it, welcome to the dystopia.
Do you have any thoughts about any of this? <comment><USER2> What do you mean by this "I don't believe in an afterlife because the logistics of it don't make sense."?</comment>


Show HN: Tech job board for over 30's in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.30plusjobs.co.uk <comment><USER2> "The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate against employees, job seekers and trainees because of age" [1]. (I can't tell how you're dealing with this because I get 'Server not found').

[1] [http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1841](http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1841)

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with having a site for experienced staff. The BBC are employing minority groups and this is not unlawful, what about jobs for juniors that's not unlawful, what about jobs for apprentices that's not unlawful, you can't pick and choose what suits.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can't resolve the site name...

</comment><comment><USER5> How are you monetising this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Idea was that companies looking for experienced workers over 30 (in the UK workers 25 and under get a lower wage) pay £30 to advertise a job for 30-days paid via PayPal.

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing that as I can't reach your site, you've realised that it would be illegal for UK companies to advertise on it?</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's Financial Black Hole - g-garron http://parislemon.com/post/26660666648/microsofts-financial-black-hole

<comment><AUTHOR> This has been reported and commented on previously: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4191024></comment>


Reston's Ebola Hot Zone ─ 20 Years Later (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://ispub.com/IJPRM/2/1/12768

<comment><USER2> I went to school at a small startup private elementary school (~6 kids in my grade) that was located ~500 meters from the Monkey House, but it left the site in 1989, just prior to the Reston Ebola situation (Great timing!). FWIW, the startup wound up being wildly successful ([http://www.nysmith.com/](http://www.nysmith.com/)). Also, this school taught coding (LOGO, then BASIC) as soon as you learned to type; wrote my first computer program at age 6.</comment>


How Dumping TV Allowed Me to Quit My Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.savingadvice.com/blog/2007/07/17/101625_how-dumping-tv-allowed-me-to-quit-my-job-create-an-online-business-and-fund-my-retirement-account.html <comment><USER3> Excellent post! Especially relevant to this audience.

When I read "How to Get Rich" by Felix Dennis, I made a list of 10 things I had to do to affirm my commitment. "Get rid of my TV" was #1. I did it and it has made a huge difference. A few points:

\- I put a radio next to my computer. It's much easier to work with radio than with TV.

\- I watch a couple of shows with my mother and SO on _their_ TVs, not mine. 2 to 3 hours per week.

\- I only watch sports at a sports bar. If I'm going to spend 3 hours and $50, I think long and hard about _which_ games are really important. I have also made lots of new friends at Steeler bars. I can't imagine watching a game alone ever again.

\- Someone please let me know if Michael and Lincoln are still alive when "Prison Break" ends its run in 3 weeks. This was my last "favorite show". There will not be another.

<comment><USER4> I also watch sports at my local bar.. now I have a whole different 'genre' of friends who happen to not spend their day in front of a computer. Socially, it has been quite a learning experience!

If you lack self control with regard to TV watching I can't recommend enough how much better your life will be. If your scared, try cutting the AC power cord. Give it a week.

<comment><USER5> _If your scared, try cutting the AC power cord._

Be sure to unplug it first :)

<comment><USER6> Be sure to unplug _and_ if it's an old crt, wait for an hour or so - <USER2> tubes can carry a heck of a static charge!

<comment><USER7> It will not discharge on AC cord.

<comment><USER6> That may be the theory, but believe me, in practice it's not always true. I ended up with a reprimand on my service record when a technician working for me in the Air Force did precisely this, cutting the ac cord, with a pair of uninsulate scissors, which then went flying across the room. The reprimand was because I hadn't put measures in place to stop technicians using uninsulated scissors for technical work - fair enough.

I'm guessing that the ground wire in the cable hadn't been correctly hooked up to the ground pin in the plug, a not uncommon flaw in cables...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great article! Recognize though that time is not fungible. For example just because you stop watching tv from 9pm to 10pm doesn't mean your going to be productive <insert task> in that same block of time after working a full day at your day job.

Based on a lot of our responses, I think a lot of us are just substituting web surfing for watching tv (self included). So how do we keep from just substituting another time sink for tv? How much time do we waste "web surfing" in the evening when we could be doing something else more generative?

<comment><USER9> > So how do we keep from just substituting another time sink for tv? How much > time do we waste "web surfing" in the evening when we could be doing > something else more generative?

It's not necessary. I personally just do what I want, whenever I want, and don't concern myself with "productivity". If I feel like watching TV for days, hell, I do. Other times I feel like creating something: well, I just take out my Emacs and start coding for hours. If I feel like working, I'll work and earn money, if I don't I just quit and spend money.

That's the good part of being a grown-up. You get to do what you want :)

Life is too short to waste it on meaningful things. And usually meaningful means "following what other people say" anyway :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So people would be more productive if they worked during every waking hour? Amazing. I enjoy watching a good movie or ball game. Life isn't just about working. You have to spend some of the time you have here enjoying yourself.

<comment><USER11> Uh,

I agree with the point that you shouldn't spend all your time _working_ instead of watching TV. But I would object that TV often only gives an illusion of pleasure and relaxation.

[http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=television-addiction- is-...](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=television-addiction- is-n-2002-02&page=1)

<comment><USER12> _But I would object that TV often only gives an illusion of pleasure and relaxation._

Sorry for nitpicking; This is a little confusing use of the word object. You are actually saying that "TV often only gives an illusion of pleasure and relaxation.". Using 'I would argue/say' instead of object would have been better.

+1 for the reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For me, TV is the opiate of the masses that numbs my brain after a long day quicker than booze, god, or exercise. Replacing it with a second job is about as likely as giving up weekends and vacations.

<comment><USER14> _numbs my brain quicker than exercise_

Sounds like you're not running fast enough. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _Decide on any exempt shows: There may be few shows that you feel are > educational and want to encourage yourself and your other family members to > watch._

That's exactly what I have done. _Family Guy_ is exempt, _Seinfeld_ is exempt if it's one I haven't seen before (I'm new to the US, so I still have that occasional joy)

<comment><USER16> I _only_ watch shows that are exempt, I do this by watching solely on an off- cable medium. Not having the advertising helps to see more shows in less time.

All movies are exempt for me, however again I usually only watch DVD's. I came from the UK where TV always shows complete episodes, not the syndicated crap, and movies aren't cut and edited to death. I believe when I first came to Canada most stations still cropped the picture in movies, I never even knew anyone did that, because on a PAL set the quality is high enough to keep the letter box format, so the switch to NTSC cemented the death of TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Keep your TV. It'll keep you in touch with popular culture for a start. Which is handy if you want to sell things to the 'masses'.

I know it's popular on here to hate TV, but this is bs. If you actually make a conscious decision on what you want to watch, assuming you have access to quality programming, then it's extremely useful. You really can't quantify the amount you learn from movies, educational tv, comedy, music etc etc

The problem is when people go into a state when they just watch something they don't really want to watch, doesn't teach them anything, and just wastes their time. But that's not a fault of having a TV, it's just a fault of those people misusing it.

<comment><USER18> And likewise, watching selectively is even easier with some peer-to-peer networking and file sharing sites. You can see almost any show you happen to fancy at the moment - and you get to skip the commercials or pause when convenient. Also, most of the time your watching habits aren't recorded by shady companies for unspecified marketing reasons. Even better, there's absolutely no chance of accidentally ending up watching something you didn't plan to, which is the main idea behind corporate TV.

Also - as far as this individual is concerned, popular culture is overrated.

<comment><USER17> >> "popular culture is overrated."

My point is that if you want to have a business, that interacts with people, you better understand popular culture.

<comment><USER19> Absolutely correct. That sneering attitude toward the masses is a ticket straight to the poorhouse. I want to understand them better than the understand themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm actually getting rid of my TV when I move. It's not worth the cost, plus 90% of what I watch is on Hulu the next day anyway. I've also thought about buying a Slingbox and hooking it up to my parents cable if I really miss some shows that aren't on Hulu. There are some amazing gems of entertainment on TV but the ridiculous cost is what bothers me ($42 for basic cable, WTF comcast).

<comment><USER21> >I'm actually getting rid of my TV when I move.

I highly recommend this. I've been watching my 'exempt' shows on my laptop for over a year. I'm not quite sure if i will ever have a TV again.

<comment><USER3> "I've been watching my 'exempt' shows on my laptop for over a year"

I thought about this, but for me, this doesn't count. Even if the screen is part of a computer, it is _still_ a "TV". Separating my dev and internet machines has made this a moot point.

<comment><USER21> This is a really good point; I hadn't considered that view. So on your internet machine, do you consider 'mindless internet surfing' watching TV?

I also keep my work and internet machines separate.

<comment><USER3> "do you consider 'mindless internet surfing' watching TV?" No.

      Activity                  Value Reasoning
      </comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>- ----- </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      watching TV                  0  totally passive
      mindless internet surfing    1  you do some initiating
      actively working             9  usually produces benefits
      reading Hacker News         10  basic research :-)

<comment><USER21> We should be friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> By never developing a TV habit and instead relying on the internet to provide me with the few things I find enjoyable to watch, I've managed to reach a stage when I'm surprised that people actually watch TV, given the choice. If you've never done so before, try living for a week without your usual multimedia hit, there's a fair chance you'll like that extra few hours.

</comment><comment><USER22> On the other hand, some people watch TV because they just want to relax and not work every waking hour.

I use the computer for that rather than TV, but still, killing time is killing time.

<comment><USER23> TV doesn't make you relax, it agitates you to no end.

I tend to live overseas every other year or so, and whenever I come back to the U.S. I'm surprised by the abnormal, loud booming voice of the announcers and crass sensationalism. Why are BBC anchors so human, calm and collected, while CNNers come off as very emotionally involved, and almost nudging you to participate and mirror their reactions?

<comment><USER24> TV != news programs.

TV can most certainly be relaxing, it all depends on what you like to watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If Im in front of a screen I prefer to be learning, interacting, creating and or conversing with those in my inner circle.

TV lacks all the above minus learning when watching PBS and other similar channels.

I do watch free Internet TV; a few shows on Hulu & other sites!

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't know about anybody else, but there are only one or two shows that I can handle watching - I don't think I could watch more than 2 or 3 hours a week _total_ , let alone in one day.

<comment><USER27> Same. I might watch an hour of television combined in a week unless they're something specific I want to see. And that's rare these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is probably great for him, I rarely watch TV anymore, but I still watch a lot of series on DVD and such. However, in the space of 60 minutes, I can (for example) watch 3 episodes of The Simpsons or Futurama, not the 2 I'd get on TV.

I probably still watch the equivalent of about 3 hours of TV a day, just it's compacted into 2 hours. The other hour I can read a book, and a lot of the time I leave shows running on my media server just for some background noise.

I hate radio DJ's, so quite young I picked up the habit of using TV not radio as a tool for background noise. It's probably a bad habit, but I find in residential areas (I grew up in the quiet of the country) I get highly distracted by noises outside.

It is a compelling argument that if you dropped the 3+ hours of TV a day, you could make an extra $10K on minimum wage (here in Canada it would be about $16K on minimum wage). However, this advice might work great for one person, however if everyone in the country suddenly decided to cover 30+ hours a week of extra work, it would probably further collapse the economy. There's not enough jobs to go around the people we have already, if people suddenly double their hours then lots of people would likely loose their job.

<comment><USER28> >There's not enough jobs to go around the people we have already, if people suddenly double their hours then lots of people would likely loose their job.

There is not a fixed amount of work to do. If the author of this article just watched TV instead of creating the blog network that he did, he wouldn't have put anyone out of a job.

<comment><USER16> In the immediate, yes there's a very finite number of jobs. If there was an unlimited supply of jobs, not a single person in the world would be unemployed.

Jobs are tied to the economy, until the economy grows there can't be more jobs. The system might handle a flux of 10% new workers (either from a bizarre immigration mistake or a ton of people working over time or double full-time jobs) however, resources are finite. All 300 million people in the USA can't overnight get a second job.

In certain sectors there's probably great ease in getting a second job. However, there's not 300 million minimum wage jobs going.

<comment><USER28> I agree with that point, and perhaps I was a little callous in my original (grandparent) comment. The demand for workers is often very inelastic because it requires someone to figure out new ways to add value that requires workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's been since August that i dont listen TV. It's clear for me that having no TV really forces me to go out more often, think about creative ways of spending my time. I surely have more time for personal hacking projects.

</comment><comment><USER30> I feel ambivalent.

Personally I don't watch TV at all but I do work for TV projects time to time. I started my career in a TV production (part-time CG programmer), and still get projects with some connection to TV time to time. TV industry itself supports quite a few jobs, and the industry depends on those who spend long hours watching TV.

That won't be an excuse to creating dumb content just to make people addict, but suppose all the people stop spending time on passive entertainment and spend it on "productive" activity instead, who will consume their "products"? I just wonder.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's a little harder to get rid of your tv when it has basically been completely replaced by a laptop. I do use my laptop for productive, and so I don't think I would really want to get rid of it.

Otherwise, it sounds like great advice. I'll have to give up tv shows and movies for a few weeks to try it.

</comment><comment><USER32> I saved a lot of time and improved my marriage by paying someone else to have sex with my wife. He is cheaper and better, and now I have even more time to send working!

Really, I'm not trying to say that giving up TV is a bad idea, just that it's easy to forget what's important in life.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been through several phases in regards to TV.

When I was younger, I enjoyed following a lot of shows and comparing notes with my friends. Then I got older and found I had a few favorite shows that I watched whether friends were watching them or not.

I then went through a phase where I felt TV was important for cultural intelligence -- knowing what's popular and what isn't. Sort of a cheap way to fit in with popular society without actually having to meet people.

Then I went through a History Channel/Science kick. I found you could watch all kinds of cool science-related stuff on cable almost ad-infinitum. Curious as to what the world would look like if people disappeared? Cable's got that. Want to know the role of tanks in WWI? Cable's got that too.

It was all kinds of stuff that _appeared_ to have some science value. I could justify it by saying, "Hey, I'm learning important facts about the migratory patterns of African Swallows here."

For the last couple of years I've been in the "I control the input" stage. That is, I watch only things that I have planned to watch ahead of time and only on Tivo/DVD. I hardly ever watch "unprotected" TV -- just me and the remote.

Finally, because of this board, I've decided to cut out TV entirely except for movie-watching every other weekend or so. After a couple of months of doing this, I can attest that it is one of the better decisions I've made in my life -- assuming I can keep it up.

TV is just so much bullshit. All of those years, and all of those tens of thousands of hours, accomplished me exactly nothing. I'm not even sure they were relaxing as much as it was simply anesthetizing. TV watching for peer groups was great if you wanted to fit into peer groups that chatted about American Idol. Favorite shows became dated. Cable was just a big time suck -- like one of those bug zappers except for idle minds. Pop science is eye candy and over-generalizations. In fact, the conclusion I reached is that _TV is something where you will automatically find some kind of reason for watching whether it really provides value or not_. It was all just rationalization.

When I stopped watching TV I had an awful thought -- what would I do now? I was used to feeling just slightly bored and pushing a button and being entertained. I had been trained that feeling bored was somehow abnormal, instead of a natural impulse that makes people do new things.

If you spent ten thousand hours staring at a stump there would be something wrong with you. But you can take that same time and watch all the episodes of the popular shows for the last ten years and accomplish exactly the same thing: nothing. And by doing that somehow that makes you "normal"

</comment><comment><USER34> It's been long a long time I've dropped the habbit of watching TV. Was not much of a fan even when I was a kid & then found this line in a productivity tips article.

"Avoid the tube" - I like to have statements on whatever I do :)

</comment><comment><USER35> Haven't had a TV with capability to watch broadcast for 1,5 years now. Love the way it has freed up time for other activities (sports, reading, browsing), which I actually like more.

</comment><comment><USER36> Clay Shirky did a fantastic talk at Web 2.0 last year on this very topic:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyoNHIl-QLQ>

</comment><comment><USER37> Except if you're in academia, where your success is dependent on putting in all available time but you _don't_ actually make money on it...

</comment><comment><USER38> my generation doesn't really watch TV anymore

TV = video games, facebook/myspace/twitter, general web browsing (ex lol cats)</comment>


Maps Cube - <AUTHOR> http://www.playmapscube.com/

<comment><USER2> Damn thing crashed my browser (Pale Moon) which hardly ever happens any more. Go away.

</comment><comment><USER3> Odd, cannot get the ball/bike to move on the second level at all.</comment>


Best Microcontroller Boards for Engineers and Geeks - <AUTHOR> https://www.engineeringpassion.com/10-best-microcontroller-boards-for-engineers-and-geeks/ <comment><USER2> I like some of these, but the selection seems a bit random and the reasons you'd pick each one aren't well-explained.

In particular, I'm wondering for what application you'd buy the first pick (an Arduino Uno R3) versus some other Arduino-compatible board. It seems to be larger, slower, and pricier than many others.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, "The Amazing $1 Microcontroller" [https://jaycarlson.net/microcontrollers/](https://jaycarlson.net/microcontrollers/)

</comment><comment><USER4> while i agree this is very correct, these aren't very _fun_.

I recommend Meggy Jr. which is pretty old now, but has a great RGB 8x8 LED matrix and a cheap speaker and joystick for lots of fun making cheap games and songs!

</comment><comment><USER5> Great share</comment>


Ask HN: Performance hit for jQuery Download? - <AUTHOR>

I'm using JQuery for the first time on a new site.  I love it, but I had some worries.
I really want my site to be snappy, but it seems that downloading JQuery, even when minified, can cause a decent performance hit.
Is this worry justified?  If so, is there anything I can do?  Can something like GWT do the same basic stuff that JQuery does (and thus reap the performance benefits from less code to DL)?
Also, if this is a problem, and since I see a lot of sites using jQuery these days, why can't the browsers bundle the framework in their browser so the user doesn't have to download it each HTTP hit (of course, using the bundled framework would be optional)?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> if you grab Jquery from Google, you'll get more performance especially in speed, as the browser need to download it only once and then can work with it on all sites

Read more here [http://encosia.com/2008/12/10/3-reasons-why-you-should- let-g...](http://encosia.com/2008/12/10/3-reasons-why-you-should-let-google- host-jquery-for-you/)

</comment><comment><USER3> use google's ajax libraries. they do everything for you, including caching them properly.

<http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Let google host it for you: <http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/>

Using Google's version also means that it will only be cached once between all the sites that use it. This is similar to what you're talking about with bundling it in the browser,

</comment><comment><USER5> You need to set the cache control for the file to some far off date in future. Doing this will make sure the browser doesn't download the file each and every time the users visits your website. If you are using Apache you add this to your conf file.

<FilesMatch "\\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css)$"> Header set Cache-Control "public" Header set Expires "26 June 2210 20:00:00 GMT" </FilesMatch></comment>


Reports of an Earth-Like Planet Around Proxima Centauri - <AUTHOR> http://www.iflscience.com/space/reports-of-an-earthlike-planet-around-our-nearest-neighbor/ <comment><USER2> It will be really cool if we focus our energies in the short-term to interstellar communication vs. interstellar travel. This way we can atleast figure if intelligent life is out there and figure out ways to understand their world.</comment>


Searching for Chocolate's Roots, and Enemies, in Colombia's Wilderness - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/searching-for-chocolates-roots-and-enemies-in-colombias-wilderness/ <comment><USER2> The article makes me wonder what life would be like if cocoa plants all became the victim of the diseases identified. Given a choice, I'd give up my mobile phone before I gave up chocolate.

<comment><USER3> My wife agrees. She says she would give up electricity, indoor plumbing, and antibiotics before giving up chocolate. Apparently death is preferable to life without chocolate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a reason why some historians call chocolate "liquid gold". It was perhaps the most groundbreaking and cultural game changing discovery that came from the America colonization.

<comment><USER5> I would have thought potatoes or corn were, given that they helped support a much larger population</comment></comment>


Humans want to go to Mars. Too bad the journey turns our bodies into mush. - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.03/7g_pr.html

<comment><USER2> Wow. amazing story.</comment>


Evidence suggests that brain activity shifts to increase wisdom as we age - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/36/aging/the-wisdom-of-the-aging-brain <comment><USER2> >he religious traditions of India and China, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism, were thinking about wisdom, emphasizing the regulation of emotion—or emotional balance—as key to it.

What ? This is so misguided. Buddhists are not trying to 'regulate emotions' they are trying to understand what causes internal conflicts and nature of thought.

The western image of the monk suppressing all emotions via meditation is so absurd( even if that was possible by some miracle). Meditation is examination not supression or control.

>"We looked at wisdom and its synonyms, like sagacity, and antonyms, like foolishness, folly," says Jeste. "We wanted to find out how many times those words were used and more importantly in what context in the Gita."

They defined what wisdom means and went looking for it. Classic case of confirmation bias. Their definition of wisdom is so generic (eg:: having pragmatic knowledge of life) that there is no way it could have failed to confirm what they were looking for.

It gets more silly

>Following Baltes' death in 2006, Staudinger has come to differentiate between so-called general and personal wisdom.

Stopped reading after this.

<comment><USER3> > Meditation is examination not supression or control.

Just one clarification on this. I recently listened to a talk by Bikhu Bodhi [1] where he said meditation was partially about the suppression of emotion, He then quickly clarified that suppression is different from repression. In suppression you investigate the root cause and work to understand and eliminate that and once done you have suppressed the emotion that springs from it.

So I think to express it in an operational analogy, suppression is finding and eliminating the root cause of an outage, repression would be turning of the alarm and pretending the site isn't down.

[1] [http://bodhimonastery.org/the-buddhas-teaching-as-it- is.html](http://bodhimonastery.org/the-buddhas-teaching-as-it-is.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe one gets more socially conscious with age as he realizes how much he depends on society? And as for learning efficiency, to appreciate it, don't forget that as you mature, you also need to "unlearn" old paths. But that doesn't imply loss of plasticity.

Reminds me of an old Charles Simonyi's interview where he illustrated his cognitive shift over the years:

[https://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/programmers-at- work-...](https://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/programmers-at-work-charles- simonyi/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The more we live, the better we can approximate the priors for the probability of what is happening to us. These priors disentangle the apparent randomness of day to day life and represent the meaning we give our experiences. Even artificial neural nets can do that, why no humans?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish. At best you learn to avoid some class of mistakes at the expense of seeing everything through the lens of experience. I would trade my "wisdom" in heartbeat to have back the raw computational power and mental flexibility of my youth.

<comment><USER7> Wisdom gives you other things that aren't just replacing computational powers. It gives you an ability to understand the world in a very different way, to put you more in control of it, to make you more grounded, less erratic.

But each to their own of course.

<comment><USER6> I don't feel any more grounded or less erratic than I did when I was 20, but I certainly am dumber. I am not saying that wisdom is not a useful tool (how many time do you really need to make the same mistake), but that I would be more than happy to give it up for my youthful brain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We tend to understand the nuances of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) as we age

<comment><USER9> Understanding them tends to lead to overconfidence and being more affected, in general, actually. We might improve by gaining experience in compensating for them, though.

<comment><USER10> They should add an entry for the "bias awareness" bias. :)

<comment><USER9> It's been a while since I read the list, but I believe there _is_ something like that.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like the bias blind spot: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why is Nautilus content still allowed on HN? I really have a hard time ignoring the daily presence of this kind of "scientific" pieces on the front page.

<comment><USER13> Everything is allowed on HN that's not spam and gets upvoted. The reason Nautilus shows up here is because it started off being really high-quality before taking a nose-dive to quasi-TED Talk levels.

"Wisdom comes from a balance of activity in brain regions." is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard; this article might be better on Deepak Chopra's site. I relate to your annoyance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A fool never learns.

A man learns from his mistakes.

A wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

</comment><comment><USER15> > increase wisdom as we age

Unfortunately, this happens not to all of us.

<comment><USER16> And, doubly unfortunate that most believe that they are wise, whether or not they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This makes some sense, but if it were true then simplistic right-wing societal beliefs would appeal more to young people (e.g., the poor are lazy,homeless people are losers who drink too much, etc.). Then as one ages we would become more centrists or leftists.

My general observation finds the opposite to be true.</comment>


A hunger for organizations that are doing some good for society. - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/indian_companies_doing_well_bec.html

<comment><USER2> Is there a website that keeps track of a company's "social" rating, somehow keeping track of all of the positive things they've done for the environment, healthcare, natural disasters and such, while also giving demerits for negative acts?

If not, then I think this would be a fantastic product to create, and given enough popularity, something that could potentially keep companies in check in the public view.

Currently, the model seems to be what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. For example, Firefox, regardless of all the goodwill they built up the past decade, seemed to be ripped to shreds by some people for one single act of utilizing a company's design without permission.

This would go beyond that to show people the bigger picture of how a company is doing on an overall social level.

<comment><USER3> The problem with the idea of such a website is who decides what is a positive act and what's a negative act ? Maybe some sort of voting mechanism by interested users?</comment></comment>