Jeff Sessions Announces Justice Department Will Increase Asset Forfeiture - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2017/07/17/sessions-announces-justice-department-wi <comment><USER3> Capitalism works because there is an elected authority, the U.S. Governement, that guarantees its citizens their right to own property. Property is one of the fundamental pillars of Western society. Under certain formal processes, property can be taken away (without the consent of the owner). The motivation behind such drastic actions is to balance out economic interests of the involved parties, e.g. in lien those of debtor vs creditor. Or when the government needs to build a road and a land owner is unwillig to sell, there must be a fair process, which must balance the need of the public as well.

So, now, asset forfeiture can be a useful tool to undermine criminal activity (or any activity really) of a specific person. But this must happen in a fair trial (unless danger is imminent, under which one can argue in favor of indemnity). In this case there hasn't even been a charge brought forward. This alone is executive abuse of power, because a independent judicial system must only be allowed to take such actions.

Moreover, this will hit economically weak peak people hardest. Which further increases crime. It's a vicious circle.

<comment><USER4> Not an American but reading all the outrage gives me the impression that police in US is just going around seizing a couple of thousand dollars from anyone they can find to fill up their budget and hope no one will go to court because it'd be more expensive for the accused to hire a lawyer. Nevermind that contingency fee arrangments are widespread and that small amounts of cash, even to the extent of a few tens of thousand dollars can easily be proved as legitimate money if one has a job. Not familiar with US civil procedure but it should involve showing your tax returns and asking for a summary judgment, and later a tort lawsuit against the State for all the suffering caused. I would be interested in knowing the median amount seized by police in such cases. Maybe its just a case of politicians one after another not being ideologues about property right but recognizing the merits of adopting a pragmatist approach to augment law enforcement budget by seizing large amounts of obviously ill gotten wealth without having to discharge a high (and expensive) burden of proof in each case. If so, sounds good to me.

<comment><USER5> If you want additional perspective on how it's actually used, then checkout John Oliver's segment on Civil Forfeiture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This practice (brought back to life by Reagan's "Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984") is not only unjust but unconstitutional at face value.

The cynicism required to double down on this practice is a new low for Sessions, something I didn't think was possible.

</comment><comment><USER7> While I appreciate that it is in vogue to bash Trump & Co. (Largely justified I would agree), we would be mistaken to couch this as something new or some difference between the mainstream political parties. Sessions predecessor had no problem with asset forfeiture either: [https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-04-11/obamas- do...](https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-04-11/obamas-doj-sets- back-justice-with-asset-forfeiture-program)

<comment><USER8> There's a difference between "no problem with" and "actively encouraging". It's similar to how the millions of people we now have in prison as a result of three strikes laws and heavy drug enforcement that was popular politically in the 80s and 90s has come to be seen as a bad and ineffective thing - <USER2> yet a few months ago Sessions released a statement saying the DOJ recommended pursuing maximum sentencing.

> Sessions also formally withdrew a signature part of Attorney General Eric > Holder's "Smart on Crime" initiative, which sought to target the most > serious crimes and reduce the number of defendants charged with non-violent > drug offenses that would otherwise trigger mandatory minimum sentences.

[http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/politics/sessions-criminal- cha...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/politics/sessions-criminal-charging- memo/index.html)

Without even considering the rest of the Trump administration, Sessions is taking this country backwards and encouraging policies we already know don't work.

<comment><USER7> In the US News article I posted, AG Lynch was actively encouraging the practice by reviving the equitable sharing program. A program designed to be sure those that collect the loot get their cut. My informal turn of phrase notwithstanding, the so-called progressives are just as regressive on this issue add their conservative counterparts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Justice Thomas indicated he will vote to strike down the law should the case be brought before him. With him having said that soon enough a lawyer will appear to argue the case, this practice will not last.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2017/03/06/justice-thomas-sharply-criticizes-civil-forfeiture- laws/?utm_term=.3ca89de8853b)

</comment><comment><USER10> Government in this country is completely off the rails insane. At least ten- fifteen, heck twenty years ago you could sort of understand why certain policy decisions were made... nowadays it is like completely impossible to figure out what people in power are trying to actually accomplish.

<comment><USER11> Really? It doesn't seem that hard to understand what motivates Jeff Sessions-- filling up private prisons and using police to terrorize poor and minority communities.

<comment><USER12> The nickname for (former AG under Obama) Loretta Lynch was Queen of Forfeiture, and has a body of work reflecting this when she was working in Brooklyn. It would be insane to think that civil forfeiture was not a problem the past 8 years.

<comment><USER13> Not a single person in this entire thread has claimed it wasn't a problem the last 8 years.

Be better.

<comment><USER14> But there are quite a few people losing their minds now that the "other side" is continuing to do what's been done for years.

Forfeiture, bombing the Middle East, travel bans, etc

So much stuff the current Administration is doing that the last Administration did...

and NOW people are losing their shit.

Just a bit questionable for a large part of the conversation to be started now, eh?

<comment><USER13> The travel "bans" are not equivalent, first off.

Second, try using Reddit's search function or Google's trends app to see just how _devastatingly_ demonstrably wrong your claims about interest in bombing the Middle East or civil asset forfeiture are.

Sort of looks like _you're_ the only one who's just now giving a shit, eh?

<comment><USER14> The Travel Bans are re-markedly similar... based on a list of countries by the previous Administration.

Bombing the Middle East broke all records during the last Administration... not that this one won't continue to break records, but we were at war for the entire previous Administration and will probably remain so for this one...

I know of many cases of CAF during the previous Administration. I'm sad that the current administration doesn't seem to be restoring law and order to the degree I had hoped they would.

I've given a shit for a long time. I live in a heavily one-sided state and I sit on the other side - so, for the most part, my vote doesn't matter.

What DOES matter is that the stuff people are RAGING MAD!!!! about is stuff that, for a large part, is no different from before. You can nit-pick over minor differences between Travel bans... but there was NO care about those bans for the 8 years prior.

My main point here... is people pick a team... and then lose their shit when their team loses. What's important isn't the Travel Ban (or whatever). Whats important is the "Other Guy's Quarterback" is calling the plays. Even if they are the same plays "My Quarterback" would have chosen - or has chosen repeatedly - NOW we are going to "resist".

The hypocrisy is maddening - from both "sides".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can I say this? What a fucked up country.

<comment><USER16> What you currently see, and I find it dramatic: the anglo-saxon world is in decline. Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand might be alive and kicking, but they represent only a minority of people in the anglo-saxon world.

This decline shows itself in people like Trump or the Brexit.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps Trump and Brexit are (likely misguided) attempts to stop the decline rather than the actual decline itself?

<comment><USER16> Ok, not joking now. What Britain and USA are currently doing is giving up power. They have so much internal conflicts that somehow people feel getting on their own will help them. But giving up power rarely made a nation larger and stronger. So they are declining. USA could have been the master of TPP or TTIP, or create some Euro-American superstructure in rememberance of our common roots. They could have been the leader of many things. But instead they just leave and go away. No negocitations. The world will not stop, it will go on, everything else is hallucination. The Chinese are ready to fill the void, and Europe is already bonding with them now that the US don't seem to be interested in anything constructive. So there is no stopping the decline. It is in full speed and it will lead to ugly situations. And as someone who loves(d) the US, this is a pity to me.

<comment><USER17> Well to be fair some people blame the decline on an increase in minorities and pot smoking hipsters. But I'm generally skeptical of "reasons" because people seem to want always blame everyone else.

Besides, I think the "decline" is a bit overstated. America isn't going anywhere. Things start getting tough and the guns will come out and they have a lot of those. Besides maybe Anglo Saxons shouldn't rule the whole world. And really nothing lasts forever. China might supplant the west as global leader, this was predicted I think two centuries ago, but it won't happen for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Soon you have to consider Asset Forfeiture as a 'hidden' tax on the economy. Same when 'revolutionary forces' condemn land from farmers or dictators disown factory owners.

<comment><USER19> This is a good point, and I don't think we see enough economics perspective on this subject.

The problem is that "Asset Forfeiture" appears to work in making drug dealing (and other black market criminal activities) a much more risky business.

The question is how do we balance something that works with restoring property to law-abiding citizens when police make a mistake?

There seems to be little to no process around this.

There will be resistance to installing processes because criminals will use it to reclaim their dirty money and more process will cost time and money, making forfeiture less effective.

<comment><USER20> >>The problem is that "Asset Forfeiture" appears to work in making drug dealing (and other black market criminal activities) a much more risky business.

Citation, I have read alot of reports and studies on this subject none of them support our position

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sessions is so out of touch it's insane.

</comment><comment><USER22> I only hope this increase will lead to the increase in lawsuits, and judicial review of this awful practice.

</comment><comment><USER23> Jeff Sessions is like an evil caricature of what an Attorney General should be. I hope this whole administration goes down and soon. The war on drugs failed decades ago, let's focus on rehabilitation and getting people back to society and things to be excited about instead of drugs (but wait, that problem is so much harder to solve!)

On a trip to Montreal this weekend I seriously considered just staying...

<comment><USER24> I don't like Mr. Sessions, nor do I like asset forfeiture, but I'd like to know more about the efficacy of rehab before heading down that path. I asked for some stats about rehab in the recent opioid epidemic thread, but I didn't receive any. Even as everyone threw forward ideas about free state sponsored heroin and rehab programs.

I really would like to see some stats before forming an opinion on emotions alone. After all, it was emotions that landed us here.

Some people just don't want to rejoin society. Why choose life when you've got heroin? Pretty sure that rehab doesn't have a good success rate in those situations.

<comment><USER25> >Why choose life when you've got heroin?

Heroin abuse is in the extreme minority when it comes to opioid abuse. You need to get rid of the image in your head of the strung-out heroin addict lazing about in a grubby drug den. A majority of the opioid epidemic these days is actually from prescription opioids like Oxycontin , Vicodin, and similar drugs. So there's plenty of high functioning blue and white collar opioid addicts out there with plenty to lose.

<comment><USER26> The only difference between heroin and oxycontin is oxycontin is more expensive. The effect is identical. Most opiate addicts that can get heroin do it because it's a fraction of the cost.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nobel laureate predicts a quicker coronavirus recovery - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-22/coronavirus-outbreak-nobel-laureate <comment><USER2> The article is basically saying "we're going to be fine if we continue implementing extreme social distancing measures".

In other words, if we stop panicking, and big hotspots don't implement extreme social distancing measures, we won't be fine.

A certain level of panic is required to enforce efficacy of these social distance programs, so it seems dangerous to spread this message less people begin to act out of self interest.

<comment><USER3> No amount of panic is useful, not ever.

A certain level of taking life and death situations seriously and doing the next right thing towards controlling the situation is required, from everybody.

cf Anna, "The Next Right Thing" Frozen 2 [https://youtu.be/p5B_EhxqAJo](https://youtu.be/p5B_EhxqAJo)

Panic = people dying needlessly

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like he got lucky predicting 80000 cases and that is reported cases. He predicted the actual people that got tested and positive. He also is another one of those that the flu is worse and not understanding the high severity of many of the Covid cases is the thing that is what is worrying a lot of the professionals. The last thing is that the economics involved that may not make things fine in 1-2 year period, you cannot restart an economy like a light switch.

<comment><USER5> Did he get lucky or did China fix the numbers to his conclusion? China has a suspect history of magically hitting numbers on the mark, every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like the headline is somewhat irresponsible. The framing encourages a "don't worry, be happy" attitude. Reading the article, the message is more like "If we keep doing the right things, we will be fine."

The problem with such a headline is it can be misinterpreted to mean you don't need to make any effort whatsoever for things to "be fine." I think this is not a great signal to send.

<comment><USER7> Exactly: I've actually been somewhat alarmist early on about this virus, but I actually agree with the article. We've had to make some crazy sacrifices in the last 2 weeks, but now that we've done those, things are actually looking moderately optimistic:

Most of the US hopefully isn't going to become a "big Italy", besides a few unfortunate hotspots. Other areas will still see heavy infections, but likely without overwhelming the hospital systems, if we maintain at least some far more moderate social distancing measures for another year.

...I do worry about the Deep South, due to poverty and lack of leadership by governors in that area.

<comment><USER6> I am doing what I can to make resources available online. I've done this a long time. I'm encouraged to see a lot of online resources popping up in response to this.

My hope is that the most vulnerable areas will get some relief from local issues because of the availability of online resources.

I run a Citizen Planners subforum. I write a bit about making money online. Etc.

There's a lot of free information available online and the internet proved to be a hugely helpful thing for me when I was homeless. It's proving to be a big deal for helping people cope in the face of quarantines, etc.

I'm cautiously optimistic -- assuming we continue to take it seriously and don't decide it's time to dance in the streets and party like it's 1999.

<comment><USER8> As a general response to this thread: it's a big problem over here in The Netherlands that apparently tons of people are not properly practicing 'social distancing'. There have been quite a few frustrating images shared that showed a sign imploring people to keep 1.5m distance with a huge crowd right next to it waiting to be let into some particular section of a park. Also pictures of health care workers expressing their frustration at dealing with things while the rest of the country acts like it's just a big vacation.

I expect that possibly tonight the government will impose a stronger quarantine as a result, which is a shame. I had hoped we'd collectively better at following advice.

More specifically in response to you: is there a way to discuss with you one of these days what you're working on and perhaps in particular how perhaps advice on how we might help the homeless here? I'd very much like to chat about that, whether via email or some other channel.

<comment><USER6> You are always welcome to email me about my work. My email is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can already see this playing out on this site which tracks the rate of new cases along with the total cases: [https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en](https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en)

I think the bigger issue that we'll need to address after we handle the case influx is how we'll go about achieving herd immunity.

I'm starting to think it might be wise to consider letting small, not-at-risk populations out with the intention of allowing the virus to spread in a fashion that wouldn't overwhelm the health systems. A controlled burn, if you will. I'd definitely join in to something like this.

<comment><USER10> that's called a vaccine... and it is 12-18 months away...

you can start now by volunteering to join the vaccine trials....

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's to hoping he is right.

Question to the virologists on HN: human cells have some limits on how many generations they can be copied, have there even been similar mechanisms observed in viruses?

<comment><USER12> I'm not a virologist, but I did pay attention in biology class fwiw.

Evolutionary, a virus that can only replicate a few times is a dead end. That'd be like mule, a viable life form, but one that cannot reproduce successfully.

Think about the mechanisms of cells with generation limits, I'd intuit that they preform functions related to morphogenisis (we only want this bone to be this long), and forcing evolutionary iteration by limiting the maximum age of a individual. I'd posit that extreme longevity is an affront to evolution.

I could be totally off my rocker with the second part, but I'd like to think that a basic knowledge of biology and an obsession with cellular automata might have given me a useful intuition.

<comment><USER11> I was thinking more along the lines of a virus that is able to reproduce indefinitely in one species, but after a species jump ends up being able to reproduce only a limited number of generations due to the copying mechanism being subtly different in the host cell of the new species. But you're right that from an evolutionary standpoint such a virus would be a dead end if it happened in any species.

It would very much depend on how - and if - the different ribosomes and other cell mechanisms responsible for copying the viruses RNA (or DNA in some cases) would deal with the virus.

The effect you'd see would be a species jump, followed by a very virulent episode fizzling out when the copy errors accumulated to the point that the copies would no longer be viable.

<comment><USER13> This is an interesting question!

Note that human stem cells and cancer cells do not have a limit on how many times they can divide. This is because they possess the enzyme telomerase.

Also, note that in human reproduction, there is an unbroken lineage of cell divisions through generations (egg and sperm are produced by specialized cell divisions called meiosis, and combine in sexual reproduction to develop a new human who can eventually produce more egg or sperm).

However, it is true that differentiated somatic cells (most of the cells in your body) cannot divide indefinitely.

A virus, unlike a differentiated somatic cell, does not have an intrinsic limit to how many times it can replicate. It hijacks cellular machinery to make an exact replica of itself (+/\- any replication errors a.k.a. mutations that occur).

However, a virus that becomes evolutionarily unfit could go extinct. If you look at phylogenetic trees of viruses, there are many branches that go extinct (become a dead end). But there are other branches that continue succeeding. All of this is driven by evolutionary dynamics rather than by a lack of telomerase leading to a hard limit on the number of times the virus can replicate.

Now, just to blow your mind, oncogenic viruses like certain strains of HPV can induce human cells to produce telomerase and become able to divide indefinitely! Wowww this is so confusing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Key points missing from the headline: social distancing is necessary, PPE supplies must be sufficient, and healthcare system must not have broken down for us 'to be fine'.

He predicted the Chinese cessation of outbreak correctly because China consistently implemented the lockdown plan across regions and had strict measures to make sure of compliance.

From what we see, few western countries have bended the infection trajectory sufficiently to see the outbreak ending soon. Some people's behaviors and general lack of mask wearing don't help. (I think Germany may eventually accomplish that. The 2-person-max meeting rule and relatively extensive testing should help.)

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries)

We must read professional epidemiologists, like Marc Lipsitch of Harvard, whose expertise is more relevant and who don't have nearly as rosy a view on the epidemic. (Marc is also on Twitter.)

[https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/lipsitch-call-to- action](https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/lipsitch-call-to-action)

<comment><USER15> Except China is clearly lying about having their outbreak contained. I'm not sure why this is so difficult for everyone to realize.

<comment><USER16> It would help, I think, if such claims were supported in ways that didn't make them sound like conspiracy theories and fearmongering.

Perhaps you'd like to do so. If not, consider that this is a singularly bad time to be spreading misinformation, no matter how plausible you may find it. People are already frightened enough.

<comment><USER17> [https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21A014](https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21A014)

China sees drop in new coronavirus cases; all new cases imported, March 22

[https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/fmz3d6/while_china_c...](https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/fmz3d6/while_china_claim_there_are_no_new_local_cases/)

Translated: On March 20th, A local community management issued a notice, stating that one of the unit has 2 patient found, the unit will be sealed and no one is allowed to enter or exit.

It essentaily means that they are starving to death in the room.

Don't trust the Chinese government's propaganda

<comment><USER16> So, I'm not to trust a government - which is fair; I don't - but a totally unsourced and unverifiable Reddit post is 100% okay? When its claim is that the CCP is competent enough to enforce the murder by starvation of two innocent people, while the existence of the post that makes the claim implies that the CCP is too incompetent to prevent word of such a crime getting out, even to the point of issuing an official document to prove they're doing it?

Do you see what I mean about seeming like a conspiracy theory? Heinlein's Red- baiting about Soviet cosmonauts unpersoned when their early space capsules failed and stranded them, despite being nonsense, had at least the virtue of originality. But that was over half a century ago. I'd like to hope our standards have risen in the interim.

<comment><USER17> You are being a bit naive about journalism in an authoritarian country that has control over digital media coming out of the country. The fact that this picture made it out (suggesting that image recognition/AI censor rules are still naive in China) is proof enough that there are voices desperately trying to tell the outside world - don't trust their government!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> W-Stool Question from the cheap seats here : what causes a virus to "burn itself out" or fail to keep replicating? A lack of new hosts it can infect? Environmental details (heat, humidity)?

If anyone truly knows I'd like to hear it.

<comment><USER18> I am not a credible source on this, but I believe if we achieve heard immunity the virus burns itself out because it will eventually not find new hosts to infect. The virus has to keep finding new hosts, because otherwise the people infected will either get well and gain immunity or die. If enough people gain immunity then the virus can't spread anymore. Not everyone has to be become immune, just enough.

<comment><USER19> The problem is that for this virus, "just enough" immune people is about 60% of the population. If 1% of that 60% die, as will happen with COVID19, that's a lot of deaths.

The other alternative is social distancing, so you can reduce R0 (the number of people each infected person passes the virus on to) from something like 2.5-3 down to less than 1. Then it dies back by itself. This is what China and South Korea succeeded in doing.

<comment><USER20> > If 1% of that 60% die, as will happen with COVID19, that's a lot of deaths.

I remain astounded by the level of certainty people can have about things which they barely understand at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Since this is hacker news, where is the Girardian analysis? This situation seems to call for it with the fear of outsiders and scapegoating. Hard to worry about mimetic contagion when there is a real contagion?

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://archive.md/doeNm](https://archive.md/doeNm)

</comment><comment><USER23> We're going to be fine... whew, that's a relief...

> Levitt said the social-distancing mandates are critical

...as long as we practice fastidious social distancing, which, at least in the U.S., big parts of the country are utterly failing at...

> The goal needs to be better early detection — not just through testing but > perhaps with body temperature surveillance...and immediate social isolation.

...and if we have widely deployed testing, which the U.S. government has failed at spectacularly.

So: We're going to be fine if we take this seriously and have a coordinated, competent government response. I'll be in my doomsday bunker if anyone needs me.

<comment><USER24> Not sure social distancing is materially effective

<comment><USER25> My intuition tells me otherwise. Do you have evidence that I don't?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 2 points:

1\. The fact that the author is a Nobel laureate adds no weight to his conclusions. The Nobel laureate who invented PCR was otherwise what I would describe as "crazy" \- he was a notorious HIV denialist for years. Not saying this Nobel laureate is, but Nobels go for novel discoveries, not for being the best scientist.

2\. Look at the amount of extreme lockdowns that have been deployed in China for _months_ to get this reduction in transmission (assuming they aren't lying). There was a Twitter thread posted here recently describing the current situation in Wuhan, and their "lightened" levels of current restrictions are way more intense then any of the shelter-in-place restrictions in the US.

<comment><USER24> Right, see Linus Pauling

<comment><USER27> Or Brian Josephson

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Uh, why the hell would we listen to a chemist's opinion about a pandemic? There is literally a whole field of science that studies this, and it's not remotely similar to chemistry.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you don't do what China or South Korea did, we're not "going to be fine". The US handling of this is extremely poor. One shouldn't give the people false hope.

<comment><USER30> I also don't think you (and others) should be gleefully clutching pearls for too long just yet. Yes, western governments have been woefully unprepared and very slapshot in their response to this. Yes, valuable time was wasted. But please avoid the trap the media wants to drown us all in, that of despair and permanent anxiety.

We will solve this, one way or another. It won't be easy, and there will be a ton of pain (a lot of which is already being felt). But a solution will be found (my best guess: probably a vaccine in the medium to long run, and in the short to medium term stronger testing and isolation regimes to let us get back to some semblance of normal life again)

<comment><USER31> Beating this thing requires sacrifice and it seems very few people are willing to voluntarily do it. There is no reason to despair or panic or be anxious if you are following the proper precautions to prevent its spread.

I think there is just cause for spreading fear until people get it into their heads that this is serious and behave accordingly, at which point the focus needs to switch towards keeping people optimistic and healthy in isolation without social interaction.

The alternative is millions of deaths and a collapse of our medical system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 15,000 people are dead. Forget being fine for a moment. This is a substantial loss of life compared to recent wars. That number is guaranteed to, at the absolute minimum, double, but has a more probable lower bound at 100,000.

This will be a death toll that hasn't been seen in a lifetime. Yeah, maybe the economy won't collapse. Maybe it will. Regardless, it's unkind to downplay the severity of the situation.

<comment><USER33> At a macro level, we need perspective. This year around 3 million people will die for various reasons in the US. 15K deaths would be a rounding error, and even 100K wouldn't move the needle much.

COVID19 is scary and we should respond, but we are panicking well out of proportion to the threat. We should continue to make our best effort to prevent it from spreading while getting society back to some kind of normal footing, and then use the lesson as an opportunity to improve our preparations and planning for the next time.

<comment><USER31> I think a good lower bound for the number of COVID19-related deaths in the USA without proper measures is somewhere in the millions, not hundreds of thousands. And that includes a very large blow to our medical system.

This is one of those cases where the disease is far worse than the cure.</comment></comment></comment>


Edible forests - <AUTHOR> http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/02/edible-forests.html

<comment><AUTHOR> IMO the related video is fascinating: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-5ZgzwoQ- ao#)!

A quote from the video: "I casually asked, How long had [this edible forest] been there, how long has this system been established, and it turns out — about two acres of ground, probably a little bit less — _it's been in the family for 28 generations_. So it's a completely different timescale of establishment, because everything has been tried and tested. The bees' hives, the natural bees' hives in hollow logs, all the medicinal plants, every plant, every tree, in the system had a use, had a story, and if it wasn't a specific, regularly used food, it was a very specific medicine or herbal tonic."

A human-engineered ecosystem consisting only of natural components that has survived for 28 generations!</comment>


The Joys of Affordable Concurrency - <AUTHOR> http://www.rounds.com/blog/joys-affordable-concurrency

<comment><USER2> I like the pattern in the example a lot. We recently started doing something just like this in a Rails app at work that has to make quite a few API calls per request. In the right circumstances it makes a big difference in response time. Our approach was basically just this: [https://gist.github.com/kevinmcconnell/8365521](https://gist.github.com/kevinmcconnell/8365521)

I could definitely see how using a language that makes these sorts of operations simpler could lead to finding more cases where it's worth it.

<comment><USER3> > a language that makes these sorts of operations simpler

That's essentially what async/await is doing in C# (and hopefully eventually in C++).

For example the code in the original post could be in C# as:

        var facebookTestUser1 = CreateFacebookTestUser();
        var facebookTestUser2 = CreateFacebookTestUser();
        MakeFriends(facebookTestUser1, facebookTestUser2);

And asynchronously:

        var facebookTestUser1 = CreateFacebookTestUser();
        var facebookTestUser2 = CreateFacebookTestUser();
        MakeFriends(await facebookTestUser1, await facebookTestUser2);

Of course, the code inside CreateFacebookTestUser is going to have to change ;)</comment></comment>


Wikipedia's Emergency - <AUTHOR> http://www.markbernstein.org/May13/WikipediasEmergency.html

<comment><USER2> _I've been pointing for years to the fundamental rhetorical problem of wikis — that making the link target and the link label the same, as Ward's Wiki did, moves all links to nouns and noun phrases with disastrous impact on the link structure. Wikipedia no longer uses WikiLinks, unfortunately, but almost every link remains anchored to a noun and almost no editors use links intelligently or creatively._

I don't see a problem with most links being nouns and noun phrases. Wikipedia is a reference, not a literary masterwork, and so consistency and the principle of least surprise should be followed. There's also no guideline that I know of that forbids the use of links creatively or intelligently for non- nouns, as long as they wouldn't negatively impact readability.

I also don't believe Wikipedia/Mediawiki has required link labels to match link targets in something like ten years. It's often desirable or necessary to do that purely for semantic reasons.

<comment><USER3> Using nouns rather than verbs in links does not specifically relate to wikis and WikiWords. See this more general advice from the W3C in 2001: <http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/noClickHere.html.en>

> we do not recommend putting verb phrases in link text

More generally, links should identify what they link to, and more often than not that will mean a noun phrase, not a verb phrase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Categories suck in general because they're basically tags. That is, they're not structured. I find the category system for MediaWiki in general pretty useless specifically because it is impossible to create a taxonomy and apply it in a structured or hierarchical way across your document set.

Wikipedia's core admins are pretty notorious for lording over the content they consider their domain in pretty unforgiving ways. Luckily, Wikipedia is an implementation of a specific type of platform, of which many free hosting options are readily available for your own wiki.

I think it's pretty naive to think that editorialization hasn't happened in some flavor throughout the history of the encyclopedia, as far back as Diderot. Those biases just happened to be engrained in different ways: platonism, the academy system, ethnic or national bigotry, etc.

As human knowledge expands, so comes the need for all willing people to contribute to our collective intelligence. There will always be stories of people gaming the system for their own end. MediaWiki as a platform has a revision system that allows us to review specific changes made by authors and revert them if they are in some way problematic or unacceptable.

So without getting around to the inscrutability of facts in general, I think it's preposterous to claim that Wikipedia faces an insurmountable problem due to its issues with taxonomy (a non-primary concern) or sexism (a concern relating to specific members of the community, and not of the knowledge being produced). So that being said, what's the point of this post?

<comment><USER5> > I think it's pretty naive to think that editorialization hasn't happened in > some flavor throughout the history of the encyclopedia, as far back as > Diderot.

Everyone has a bias. That much is taken for granted, right?

Now, the questions:

Is everyone equally biased?

Can anyone overcome bias?

Are all biases equally severe?

Are all biases bad?

Is it futile to attempt to overcome bias?

How you answer these questions will determine whether you think encyclopedias are even a valid enterprise, let alone your ideas on how to construct one. The point remains, however, that none of these questions are new, and bringing all of them up at once, implicitly or explicitly, every time the topic is discussed does nothing to move anything forwards.

It seems fundamental and exactly the kind of thing we _need_ to get hammered out before anything else can begin, but it's really a pointless waste of time, like arguing about whether the physical world really exists every time you want to decide what to eat.

<comment><USER6> I think it is pretty clear that not everyone is equally biased or that every bias is equally bad or good. It does not seem like a useful question unless you plan on engaging in a lengthy exercise it justifying Wikipedia from first- principles or something.

I would ask this question instead: Is the editorial environment of Wikipedia specifically a place where the worst biases can flourish? Subtle edits over a long period of time from a malicious actor are one thing, but the same from someone who is simply oblivious to their bias on a set of topics is quite another. If the answer is yes, how in the heck can it be fixed?

<comment><USER7> The answer is yes, Wikipedia _is_ specifically a place where the worst biases can flourish. It only takes a couple of cranks to keep the biases in, and there are more than enough cranks around.

I don't know that it _can_ be fixed.

The good news, though, is that there's enough transparency to in most cases make it clear to the careful observer what's going on. On any politically- sensitive topic, the experienced wikipedia user eventually learns that you _need_ to check the talk page and see what points of view are being deliberately and actively excluded from the main page. Checking the page history helps too - bad pages tend to have a lot of reverts with angry check- in comments.

<comment><USER5> > It only takes a couple of cranks to keep the biases in

The journal _Nature_ disagrees.

<comment><USER7> [citation needed]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wikipedia has a failure which unearths some deeply embedded problems and then proceeds to fix them. This has happened how many times now?

Until I can get the same level of information (quantity wise) from another source, Wikipedia has immense value that fills a very large market gap -- even if they can't get their taxonomy of American authors quite right.

To say "Wikipedia's about over" ignores the actual value of the site and greatly over-reacts to another mishap in the history of the user-run site.

</comment><comment><USER9> _We don't edit Wikipedia anymore. We don't consult it for things that matter. It's merely a good resource for finding odd facts no one cares much about._

Snort. Explain this then: Wikipedia's getting more views than ever, more edits than ever, and more editors than ever.

<http://reportcard.wmflabs.org>

There are plenty of things broken in Wikipedia alright, but none of them fatal, least of all some misguided categorization (oh, the humanity!) by some two-bit hack with an axe to grind. _Everybody_ on Wikipedia has their own point of view, and while some people manage to game the system for a while, Wikipedia's core strength is precisely that it's self-correcting in the long run.

<comment><USER10> Um, I'm looking at the charts on that page, and:

• 'active editors' are stagnant to slightly declining globally for the last 3 years – and definitely down in EN and DE (largest) Wikipedias

• 'pageviews' growth has been slowing for a while, and since the start of 2013, total pageviews are down for 'all', EN, and DE

• 'edits per month' (on the secondary page) seems stagnant-to-very-slightly- improving globally, but definitely on the downtrend in EN

Sure, the the original article is an opinionated, possibly premature diagnosis of crisis... but your confident assertion of 'more activity than ever' isn't supported by those graphs!

<comment><USER9> You'll note that the primary graph on the first page is new editors per month, which is fairly stable at ~20k/mo total and ~7k/mo English. As long as that number doesn't start plummeting, there's fresh blood coming in and Wikipedia's future is assured.

Also, I think edits per month on EN and DE are slowly down simply because they're already so large and mature: these days most articles on most major topics that are, from a functional point of view, complete. This wasn't the case a few years ago, when even a layman could find things to fix everywhere and Wikipedia's article and edit counts were rocketing.

As for page views, my theory is that Google's Knowledge Graph has reduced the need for actually clicking through to WP, since most Google searches for basic Wikipedia-type info now come up with capsule summaries (often extracted from WP) that may well answer your question.

<comment><USER10> I agree that Google's Knowledge Graph is likely the largest reason for fewer visits.

New editors don't assure Wikipedia's future unless they stay around; as of the last study I can find, 2010, retention had fallen to quite low numbers...

[http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study/Resul...](http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study/Results#Editor_retention_has_not_worsened_over_the_past_three_years_.28Finding_.234.29)

...and each year's cohort was sticking around less than the year before. I recognize much of this may be that, in the more-established Wikipedias, the core audience of potential editors has been found, and the fun/easy 'low- hanging fruit' content has been finished (or made less fun/approachable by policy).

But that means Wikipedia is in new territory, with fewer active and experienced editors over time, doing less-exciting maintenance and defense work, while search engines retain more 'reference' views and other competitive sites (especially in the Q&A space) improve their coverage and depth. Wikipedia needs positive attention to keep the forces of decay at bay; if the attentional indicators have shifted in the wrong direction, even very slightly for now, it risks nearing a tipping point into collapse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wikipedia was never intended to be a formalization of semantic web (wikidata.org is more along those lines, if that's what you're looking for). So what's the emergency?

The decline in number/quality of editors is alarming, but what does it have to do with taxonomy? And how do the links fit into the picture?

 _TL;DR A random set of barely coherent assertions followed by OMG, Wikipedia is over_

</comment><comment><USER12> Wikipedia, for better or worse, serves an indispensable role for millions of people. So even if you disagree with its leadership and its editors with biased agendas and would like to see its demise, a more realistic solution seems, to me, to be to put on your writing cap and become an editor yourself. In this case, it is actually very possible to live according to the saying, "Become the change you wish to see in the world." A bunch of new contributors focused on fixing things might help.

Although I do remember reading stories at one point about new contributors' edits getting frequently rolled back by Wikipedians with more permissions. That could be a barrier to entry, but it's unclear to me how much of a problem this really is.

<comment><USER13> The second you try and do anything non-trivial without first "paying your dues" (and kissing the right asses) you find all your work trashed. If you complain or try to keep it in place you'll see a dozen different bureaucratic maneuvers involving obscure jargon and weird, diificult to use, administrative pages and processes to thwart you.

It's amazing the wikipedia is as useful as it is given how utterly hostile it is to new contributors. I hope it continues to be useful and thrives, but I'm not so masochistic to actually fight to volunteer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The biggest problem I've seen over the years is that Wikipedia is not edited by experts, and in general is edited by losers.

These are the sorts of losers that watch the RSS feeds of the little kingdom of bullshit they've carved out in their own corner of Wikipedia and relentlessly fight anyone trying to edit THEIR articles. Until Wikipedia gives some sort of weight to experts (paid perhaps?) instead of unemployed shut ins, the quality will continue to deteriorate.

<comment><USER15> Spot on. The power of crowds is immense, but it lacks the ability to focus for for sustained periods of time. Hence, experts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Taxonomy is hard, especially if you don't want it to be a collection of poorly-aging cultural biases. Even professional librarians have problems creating and maintaining future-proof ones.

Why does the Dewey Decimal System still have 10x as much space for Unitarianism as it does for all of Buddhism? [1] Well, think about what it would take to fix Dewey's initial biases post-hoc... either you have to get it exactly right the first time, or have a system that is designed to evolve.

It's unsurprising the wikipedia hive mind hasn't gotten it right. It's orthogonal to everything Wikipedia has generally done well. Seems like the best solution would be to have a separate taxonomy project that is overlaid on top of core wikipedia data by a set of flexible rules and not hardcoded in articles themselves.

[1] <http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-sep03-04.html#dewey>

</comment><comment><USER17> So here we have a article complaining about an category problem that do no longer exist, and a user that got banned because he failed to follow the rules of the site.

Its a community site where decision is made through consensus, and consensus was to fix the problems. So where is the emergency, and why is this article trying to declare the site as doomed?

<comment><USER18> But it wasn't a unanimous decision to ban the malicious user! Someone had a different opinion! The Horror!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Wikipedia ideals of having open, unbiased, and free access to information and being able to freely collaborate and edit articles directly conflict. If editing is "free", so too is slander and misinformation.

Unfortunately, I have no good solution to this problem. But then again, neither does Wikipedia.

<comment> guard-of-terra They can start by actively discouraging lawyering and deletionism.

<comment><USER5> Deletionism is the only reason Wikipedia remains using. Without deletions, it would have sunk into the world of spam-trap and personal blog platform long ago.

<comment><USER20> Delete the garbage, but leave the trivial. I hate deletionists.

<comment><USER5> > Delete the garbage

Which is still deletionism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I started in wikipedia in february of 2002. I was an admin, did over 3000 edits, most typos and grammar...

I gave up eventually. Last year they revoked my adminship for non-use, but I don't care, because I don't use it.

I was active for quite a while, but gave up eventually, under the crushing mind-numbness of endless layers of rules and procedures.

<comment><USER22> The most important handbook for understanding Wikipedia's self-governing mechanisms is _The Trial_ by Franz Kafka.

<comment><USER5> You're not even trying, are you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In regards to the Wikipedia list of American Novelists, could it not be that sexism for the last many hundreds of years have rendered a collection of what many consider to be the "most prominent authors" being primarily male. I am not saying that it's right, but it would seem that given our propensity as a culture through the years to over value the opinion of a man, a list of mainly male authors is all but inevitable.

<comment> jack-r-abbit I think the point was that all the women were being moved to the "American Women Novelist" sub-list while all the men remained in the "American Novelist" top list. If they had moved all the men into one just for men also and then made the top level list just link to the two sub lists that would have made more sense. This would also open up a format for additional sub lists linked from the top list.

<comment><USER21> What about transgendered authors? What about authors who write with a nom-de- plume of a different gender?

<comment> jack-r-abbit right... didn't I say that opens up a format for more sub lists?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lol, yes I did notice I've stopped using wikipedia.... no that was Myspace.

Very strange article.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wikipedia doesn't have an emergency. Jimbo Wales had large ideological axes from the beginning, including topics such as who started Wikipedia. As Wales once said that conservative "[Friedrich von] Hayek's work on price theory is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project". Wales went from running an Ayn Rand mailing list to running Wikipedia...but he's totally neutral of course.

As an example of this bias, Wales appointed the rabid editor JayJG to the highest authority, the ArbCom in mid-2005. He was voted out in early 2006 - but Wales used his power to reappoint him any how. Most of Wales's political position pushing has been behind the scenes, but here it was blatantly obvious.

I got tired of this sort of thing and pulled back from Wikipedia around that time. I'm very skeptical of the idea that everything has changed since Wales has less power now though. It's kind of like when the military takes over in a coup, kills off or exiles the opposition, and then holds an election. Once you have sculpted the infrastructure enough to your advantage, you don't need to be as heavy-handed any more. I guess I would be one of the exiles (and some excellent editors threw in the towel over this sort of thing - very educated people who could write well).

<comment><USER26> Hayek was not a conservative.

[http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek- why-...](http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek-why-i-am-not- conservative.pdf)</comment></comment>


Show HN: SocialAmnesia – Open-source tool that auto-erases old Reddits/tweets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Nick-Gottschlich/Social-Amnesia <comment><USER2> Unfortunately it's not actually possible to delete reddit comments from being publicly searchable. There are several independent projects which continuously retrieve and store every single comment. For example, PushShift[1] constantly crawls reddit for all new comments and posts. Their entire corpus of historical data is freely available for download. There is even a free service to search through any user's entire comment and submission history[2]. This includes deleted comments and deleted users.

_____________

1\. [https://pushshift.io/](https://pushshift.io/)

2\. [http://redditsearch.io/](http://redditsearch.io/)

<comment><USER3> That only matters as long as those services are alive and people bother to keep the data.

<comment><USER4> The pushshift data sets are downloadable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have previously used Shame Eraser [0] for this, which uses your Twitter Archive [1] to get all of the status IDs so you don't run into rate limiting problems. I was able to delete 87k tweets in a few hours a couple years ago with it. Is this software just as fast?

[0]: [https://github.com/benjaminjackson/shame- eraser](https://github.com/benjaminjackson/shame-eraser)

[1]: [https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to- dow...](https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download- your-twitter-archive)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I didn't even think about using a twitter archive to delete everything. This will help me get around the 3.2k API limit problem I was experiencing. I'll work on integrating this.

<comment><USER6> would this work for likes as wlel ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will have to check and see if the twitter archive also stores likes/retweets

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reddit should ban these kinda tools, a lot of useful threads become unreadable. Maybe some tool to dissociate your identity from the content made by reddit itself would be better.

Usage of this kinda tool always smacks of "screw you guys i'm going home" to me, i invariably have to resort to some sort of undelete/wayback service focused on reddit to see what the thread conversation was about esp when it was about a technical topic/ info only that niche community care about(a recent one i had was about rha headphones, half the thread was full of these "i deleted my reddit presence coz reasons etc etc" comments

</comment><comment><USER4> Fair warning, I use tools like masstagger, pushshift, and redusa to analyze users when deciding if a ban is appropriate. It's not difficult for anyone to still read over 99% of your deleted comments.

<comment><USER8> interesting, is the writer of a comment entitled of the copyright on them? could you dmca this services?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I do agree with the premise to the point that I built a Reddit-like thing that has this natively at 6-month mark. (Link in profile)

This is probably where all social platforms will eventually end up, whether they like or not.

<comment><USER10> Its just security theater though. Every popular website has scripts saving every comment that gets posted as well as users manually mirroring content to archive websites. The real solution is anonymity. You may regret saying something stupid years ago but who cares if no one can link it to your present self.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How does this tool play with large data gatherers like the Library of Congress that regularly archive tweets? Just asking for visibility.

</comment><comment><USER12> What are the misuse cases, and what does the software try to do about them?

</comment><comment><USER13> Interestingly, there is no way to delete hackernews comments or accounts.

<comment><USER14> Actually, I find this incredibly sad. Users should, at the minimum, have the right to delete their comments or detach their username from them.

<comment><USER15> Just mail at email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to release with downloadables: [https://github.com/Nick- Gottschlich/Social-Amnesia/releases/...](https://github.com/Nick- Gottschlich/Social-Amnesia/releases/tag/v1.2.0)

What's new?

\- New feature can edit reddit items with random gibberish a random amount of times to throw off archival services.

\- New feature will edit your reddit items but not delete them to throw off archival services.

What is this?

I'm excited to release 1.2.0 of my side project, Social Amnesia! This completely free and open source software allows you to wipe out old reddit and twitter posts, comments, tweets, and favorites, automatically and on a schedule. It also allows you to configure certain items to be saved based on configuration options like number of upvotes, favorites, or retweets, whether an item has been gilded, how old an item is, or by specifically whitelisting items you would like to have saved.

Who is this for?

I assume most of you are wary of what you post on reddit, twitter, facebook (if you even have one), etc. However, I can also imagine many of your friends and family are not. At the end of the day, the safest you can possibly be is to not use any social media. But I think the war on drugs and abstinence-based sex-ed proves everything we need to know about telling people to "just say no". What I believe we should be doing is working towards solutions that help reduce the damage that destructive activities can cause. This is why I've built Social Amnesia, which lets you keep your social media history clean with just a few button clicks, and set it up to automatically clean proactively (instead of reactively, after something bad happens to you).

Most of the tools out that allow you to manage reddit and twitter history are either very user unfriendly (require you to operate command lines and work with scary configuration text files) or cost money. I wanted to develop one that had a convenient user interface and was built to be completely open source so it could be checked to be sure it had no nefarious purposes. I believe the free aspect also helps get people to actually try and use it.

Why would you need this?

If you've been following the news recently you've probably seen cases of celebrities losing out on big career opportunities because of tweets or other internet posts from their past coming back to haunt them. Kevin Hart and The Oscars and James Gunn and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 are two of the more high profile examples of this recently. Make no mistake, this could happen to anyone, not just high profile individuals. If you are going to tweet, cleaning up your old tweets is one of the best ways to keep a nightmare like this from ruining a potential job opportunity or relationship. Since twitter is mainly focused on current events, and as far as I can tell it's rare for people to look far back in someone's twitter history, this shouldn't effect your day to day interaction with twitter.

On the reddit side of things, many people maintain pseudonymous accounts to post in places like /r/sex, /r/politics or /r/trees. The more reddit history you have, the higher chance you have of being doxxed by someone who might comb through your posts to try and scrape together details to de-cloak you and reveal your real identity. Keeping your reddit history clean is a good deterrent from being doxxed.

Concerns

I've received concerns about this software when I've posted it before. I'll try my best to detail some of my arguments here, but please leave a comment if you have anything to share and I'll do my best to respond to you. One of the main concerns I've heard is from people who've gone back to an old reddit post and there have been deleted comments that might have been useful for them (semi-relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/979/](https://xkcd.com/979/)). I hear you, and to try and combat this I've added some features to this software. The first is a whitelist window, which as far as I know is the only of it's kind in free management software for reddit. Opening this window shows you all of your comments or posts and let's you pick ones to save from deletion. Additionally, when you do go to delete anything, the software will show you every item that will be deleted and ask you to confirm your decision. This software doesn't do anything that isn't possible for a user to do by simply going back through their comments and deleting them.

I realize this isn't a complete solution, so I'd recommend using this software only if you use your reddit or twitter accounts for more current events or sensitive topics. If you provide helpful advice online and want to make sure it's preserved, be careful using this.

The second concern I've heard is related to backups, archives and having a false sense of privacy around using this software. Obviously I can't delete anything from reddit or twitter's internal servers, and I can't remove something if it's archived somewhere else. And I'm also limited by their APIs (which I detail on the login page of the application). However I've done some research, and backups of reddit and twitter are sparse, incomplete, and often hard to find and access. For a while the library of congress was archiving every tweet out there, but they gave up when that became too difficult a task due to the sheer size of twitter. Unless someone is actively archiving your posts, there is a good chance that deleting a tweet or reddit item will actually remove them from the internet.

<comment><USER16> Cool idea, but no Linux support and only Twitter and Reddit? Does it work by simulating user activity? I'd be worried about anything using the API that would trigger some internal alert/archival due to thinking it is a bot trying to remove evidence. I think the biggest thing to keep people safe is not to post under their real identity, and try to use a service (VPN, proxy, etc) that doesn't trace back to you. Web browsers are pretty guilty here in terms of what they permit to be tracked by default using JS that can almost immediately identify a user based on browser version/OS/etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's built in Python, it's pretty simple for a Linux user to run it (I have instructions on the readme that explain how to do so from the command line). I just haven't built an executable for Linux because of how many different Linux OS there are out there in use.

And yeah, only Twitter and Reddit right now, the next plans are to get Instagram working with this.

<comment><USER16> Don't forget the evil Facebook too, please.

<comment><AUTHOR> That one is a stretch goal, I'd love to do it but they are much less... friendly to this kind of thing than reddit or twitter is.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why more young Americans are cyber-bullying themselves - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/01/11/why-more-young-americans-are-cyber-bullying-themselves <comment><USER2> Hate hoaxes are becoming more common in the real world too, as in the case of Jussie Smollett. Victims are accorded much status in Western world today, so more people want to claim victim status.</comment>


Strange Beings – Episode #1 with Keith Rabois - <AUTHOR> http://www.strangebeings.co/episodes/4053-1-keith-rabois

<comment><USER2> Hey Daniel: Looks pretty cool, and like something I'd want to listen to. Only thing is: I have no idea what the content will be like. It'd be good to have a summary of discussion before I dive into 70 minutes of listening.

I like listening to Keith, but the bit about discussing "strange thoughts" made me unsure of what the content would be like.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but listening to the first 5 minutes is obviously a fine way of previewing the content without listening to the whole thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just wanted to subscribe via iOS Podcasts app, didn't find it in the iTunes store. I fear that in this case it might as well not exist for a lot of people.

<comment><AUTHOR> It just approved by iTunes actually! The email came from Apple just after you posted this. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/strange- beings/id9066020...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/strange- beings/id906602004)</comment></comment>


Atom 1.21 released with Language Server Protocol support - <AUTHOR> https://blog.atom.io/2017/10/03/atom-1-21.html <comment><USER2> This is good news. Have a look at this link to see what's the progress on this topic so far: [http://langserver.org/#implementations- server](http://langserver.org/#implementations-server)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great news! I don't know why I always thought this had been in Atom for a while (I think I'm confusing this for syntax highlighting support and probably ctags, etc)</comment>


ISeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam Indicator LED - <AUTHOR> https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/36569

<comment><USER2> Countermeasure: plastic [http://eyebloc.com/](http://eyebloc.com/) or just a small piece of paper on a tape, which looks better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there's more here than what can be fixed with tape. Your computer has computers in it that can be re-programmed in ways that the OS doesn't tell you about. From the pdf:

      The same technique that allows us to disable the LED, namely
      reprogramming the firmware that runs on the iSight, enables
      a virtual machine escape whereby malware running inside a
      virtual machine reprograms the camera to act as a USB Human
      Interface Device (HID) keyboard which executes code in the host
      operating system.</comment></comment>


An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/an-alarm-designer-on-how-to-annoy-people-in-the-most-effective-ways <comment><USER2> Along these same lines, one of my favorite examples of this type of work (human factors related to attention/alerting) is "Bitchin' Betty" and company - the female voice that makes up the "oral alert system" from the F/A-18 superhornet:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx7-yvXf6f8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx7-yvXf6f8)

A lot of research went into everything from the gender to the tone of the voice so that pilots would know to immediately pay attention to the warning system above everything else.

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

<comment><USER3> That's really interesting!

And now and off-topic question: why would rolling right stop a plane from going in the sea?

<comment><USER2> Not a pilot or engineer - but I imagine if the plane were in a "banked left" position (prolonged left roll) where altitude was being lost because of "slip" \- then rolling right would restore lift / level flight

[http://2bfly.com/assets/slipinbank21.png](http://2bfly.com/assets/slipinbank21.png)

<comment><USER4> likely just trying to get wings level. Likely triggered due to the high bank angle plus low altitude.

PDF Warning: Page 121 - Aerodynamic Forces in Flight Maneuvers

[https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...](https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/phak/media/pilot_handbook.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The plane's speed slowed to dangerous levels, activating the stall alarm—the one, in the words of Popular Mechanics, "designed to be impossible to ignore." It blared the word "Stall!" 75 times. Everyone present ignored it._

Probably not:

 _In an article in Vanity Fair, William Langewiesche noted that once the angle of attack was so extreme, the system rejected the data as invalid and temporarily stopped the stall warnings. However, "this led to a perverse reversal that lasted nearly to the impact: each time Bonin happened to lower the nose, rendering the angle of attack marginally less severe, the stall warning sounded again—a negative reinforcement that may have locked him into his pattern of pitching up" which increased the angle of attack and thus prevented the plane from getting out of its stall._

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447)

<comment><USER6> > the system rejected the data as invalid

Thats like suddenly having your car freeze the speed gauge or something because the speed would be absurd. Who the flip comes up with this things?!

<comment><USER7> You need to balance this with the ability to detect malfunctioning sensors. Its not so trivial with that requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I discovered when I was in my late teens that given a week or two of the same daily alarm, my subconscious would eventually recognize the sound as my alarm and I'd get up, walk across the room, turn it off, go back to sleep and wake up an hour or two later with absolutely no recollection of turning it off. I eventually discovered that using my phone as an alarm, with my call ringtone as the alarm sound, was the only way to trick my brain into forcing me awake: my subconscious has no way of knowing if it's an actual phone call that I need to be awake for or if it's just the alarm, so it forces me awake to figure that out. Its worked for years now.

<comment> squeaky-clean I've had trouble getting up and staying awake forever. I was terrible in my teens, my parents would actually throw water on me some mornings. Now I use an alarm app (Sleep As Android, I'm sure there are others) that can choose different puzzles and difficulties.

To turn off the alarm, I'd have to solve 3 problems like "2x5+14-6" without getting any wrong. I eventually got really good at doing math in my sleep apparently, because I overslept a few days after about a year of using it. Later finding that my alarm was in the solved state.

Now I use the mode that makes you physically shake the phone a certain number of times (and a certain amount of force) to turn off the alarm. I have it set so it takes about 20 seconds of vigorous shaking, and by the end of it I'm fairly awake.

I did the ringtone thing for a bit and it just made me really hate my ringtone. I would never hear my alarm and go "maybe someone is calling", but I would always hear my ringtone and go "Wtf, why is my alarm app...? oh..."

<comment><USER8> I think working for a few years in IT roles where I was on call 24/7 in case a server went down, where I worried that any call I got might be a disaster call, trained my brain to always consider the sound of my phone ringing as a possible emergency. I've been using the iPhone "Old Phone" ringtone for years now and when my alarm goes off I usually catch it by the first or second ring (confirmed by people who have actually called and woken me up). One other thing I've learned is that if I use an ascending alarm, where the ringtone starts quiet and slowly gets louder, it takes a _lot_ longer for me wake up, presumably because my subconscious learns that an ascending ring is most likely _not_ a phone call... my wife and daughter are awoken long before me if I use an ascending alarm, but if I just use a normal one I'm able to wake up and turn it off before it wakes them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A environment of multiple, repeating alarms - whether "Stall!" in a cockpit every 3 seconds, or a hospital room with multiple beeps, with only 8 of 1455 especially significant, sounds to me to be like being a programmer trying to fix a critical problem with a PHB manager hovering at one's shoulder, barking "Another server crashed" and "Have you fixed it yet?" and similar several times a minute.

Perhaps such environments could benefit from a button that silenced all current alarms for at least 30 seconds, leaving the operator a brief quiet time to focus, modulo new alarms.

Asking the annoying manager to go to some mildly distant place to find an appropriate manual or checklist binder (that may even exist!) may work well for some programmers and some managers.

For a more common example, spend a few minutes in the lobby of a busy or understaffed McDonalds and listen to the cacophony of beeps.

<comment><USER10> I wonder how much of this is "false alarms" as well. At my office, we had our disk-alert thresholds way too low for a while. Our intent was good: "If someone sees this and aren't busy, they'll jump on it when they get time". But that just meant that everyone ignored the alert until it was too late. Now, you don't want the threshold too high either, you have to find a balance.

signal-to-noise is hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The most distressing sound I know is the Shepard–Risset glissando, also known as the Barber-pole sound because it seems to continuously drop in frequency. Wikipedia has an audio sample [1].

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

<comment><USER12> That's pretty good, but I think the Chicago tornado sirens are more hair- raising.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy_oX6SURRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy_oX6SURRE)

<comment><USER13> [http://www.federalwarningsystems.com/sites/default/files/dow...](http://www.federalwarningsystems.com/sites/default/files/downloads/AlternateWail.wav)

It's Federal Signals' "Alternate Wail" setting for their outdoor warning products. Multiple overlapping arrays making this sound is (as you can tell) very effective at making people take shelter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm notoriously bad about sleeping through alarms. I used to have to use 4 at a time.

The two most effective things that I've done to wake myself are:

a) I had my computer play a song with a high BPM at 100% volume on repeat starting on a timer. Shutting it off required typing a few commands to kill the process. This was effective for a while until I started sleeping through it too.

b) What I do now is I have a cheap clock radio. I set the radio dial to an ultra-conservative talk radio station and then superglued the dial in place. I also superglued the volume dial at its max position and broke off the snooze button. This is highly effective at getting me up and motivated to leave the house.

<comment><USER15> Consider the bugle call "Reveille" [1], which has a long history of being used to wake the potentially recalcitrant. I've used it as a wake alarm for several years now, replacing the classic iOS "Alarm" tone that I used to use - "Reveille" is considerably less jarring, but I've found it much more effective in producing a transition from sleep to wakefulness that doesn't include the shock produced by something like "Alarm" \- or the anger I'd surmise is produced by your method B above.

Works for me, at least. Might be worth a try for you, too. I should think almost anything would be preferable to the self-abuse of loud talk radio.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reveille](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reveille) \- has a playable sample

<comment><USER14> I'm familiar. :)

I'm a heavy sleeper _and_ a dawdler though. The radio thing has the extra effect of motivating me to get out as quickly as possible.

<comment><USER15> Interesting point. I tend to dawdle in the morning a bit as well, but haven't really put a lot of thought into adjusting that.

<comment><USER16> My answer to dawdling has become to wake up an hour earlier, at the cost of going to bed earlier. I like my lazy mornings.

<comment><USER15> I get up at 5:30, which is already pretty early by anyone's lights except maybe my mom, who's usually up by three. Certainly it's unusual in our profession! I've long since grown accustomed to being the first of my team to arrive at the office.

The real problem for me is wintertime, because then I have to wake up in the dark. That just makes it super hard to get going in the morning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYcMcf-o3Zs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYcMcf-o3Zs)

Anyone hear a weird beeping noise? Wonder what it could mean...oh well, I'm sure it's not important, we're about to land anyway.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5McECUtM8fw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5McECUtM8fw)

Geez that sound is annoying, I hope it stops soon.

<comment><USER18> Air incident investigations have shown that under stress/duress, a pilot will ignore things that seem stupidly obvious due to focusing on one aspect of the crisis.

That first landing looked far from 'perfect'. He was coming in high and possibly too fast, and I daresay he was focusing too much on how much runway he would have left after landing. He could have also assumed that the warning was the overspeed warning from extending landing flaps at too high a speed (though most light aircraft don't have that warning system).

That second one was a lot less explicable - looked like a normal landing approach. Surprised that the instructor also didn't pick it up.

Interestingly, that second pancake landing is in exactly the same type of aircraft that I did my initial flying training in. Something about seeing that instrument panel, and hearing that warning alarm made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and raised my pulse a little. Even 25+ years after I last flew that type!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My favourite engineered sound is the sound of a 90' Nokia phone losing sight of the infrared port when syncing. It's a very low frequency sound that made me immediately realign the device the first time I heard it. I was amazed.

<comment><USER20> Sounds interesting. A quick googling fails to turn up anything, but I'd love to hear it. Do you remember any specifics that might help finding The Sound?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something I discovered years ago is that there are whole libraries of alarm sounds. And companies like Apple have licensed many of the best known.

The problem occurs when you choose a phone alarm sound that is frequently used in the industry for seriously nasty things. Like frequently used in many movies for the biggest disaster that will be occurring, leaving you in a panic to turn off the sound on your phone right in the middle of the most important part of the movie.

Or, you work in the central IT Services department of a major university, and you work in the building where the main computer room is located. And your alarm sound happens to be the same one as used on the floor for the halon dump fire suppression system. And you're standing at the doorway of a co-worker talking to them, when your phone alarm goes off. And their office happens to be right next to that of the datacenter manager.

So far as I know, there were no heart attacks or strokes that resulted from my accidental use of the same alarm library sound that day. But I was strongly incentivized to switch my alarm sound to something else.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Most adults can hear sounds between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz" \- 9 year old adults, perhaps...

I'm not an alarm designer, but my understanding is that if you want pretty much everybody to be able to hear something, not just your kids and your dog, 10-12KHz is a much better upper limit.

<comment><USER23> Anecdotally, around 19 kHz was the cutoff among most of my colleagues in their mid 20s to mid 30s when I tested this a few years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't want my alarm clock to annoy me. I just want it to wake up. I'd like an alarm with a gentler, pulsing sound that only gets louder or more annoying if you don't get up soon.

I found an Android alarm app that tried to wake you when you're in a shallow sleep phase. IIRC, the app would quietly ring 45, 30, and 15 minutes before the wake time you set, so if you happened to be in a shallower sleep phase then you would wake more naturally. I stopped using it, though, because the phone UI was too annoying to use as an alarm clock.

<comment><USER25> I was thinking the same thing. I don't want to wake up angry. When someone figures out a way to wake me up that feels like being gently kissed by a loved one, prodded by a dog, or the smell of frying bacon and fresh coffee, then they'll really have something.

<comment> crooked-v You can get coffee makers (including, I'm sure, K-cup variants) with timers.

The "bacon alarm clock" is also a real thing, being basically a timer-driven toaster oven with precooked bacon in it, but that'd be a bit more worrying to run automatically than just a coffee maker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish this article about alarms had sounds that readers could play.

<comment><USER27> What, "d-d-d-d-d-duh," "duhhhh-duhhhhh-duhhhh," and "BREHHHHK BREHHHHK BREHHHHK" didn't do it for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In my freshman year in college, a student was killed by a slow moving freight train while walking between the dorm and the campus. We all wondered how it possibly could have happened.

A few months later we understood. The first few times you see a bellowing metal beast with its horn blaring, you can't help but to watch out for it. A few hundred safe encounters later and it actually becomes very easy to ignore it. There were some other near misses that year.

</comment><comment><USER29> Many years ago I created a social alarm clock idea which was panned and hated.. lol. Though at the time I had no tech skills and never released our prototype.

Personally being woken up to something funny, cute, meaningful from a friend or loved one was great. Though the challenge for this idea to work is you have to put restraints via audio volume levels to ensure a great experience (waking up laughing or with a smile or another positive emotion) happens on each use. Also know the likes of each user and what's happening in their life.

I still believe it's a great idea/new form of communication that if done correctly the masses would love, as when it wakes you up to something you connect with you smile and or laugh; changing your morning routine for the better! I wish Apple would allow a user the ability to wake up to a radio URL!!!

<comment><USER30> Interesting idea, partly because it is the total opposite of what I want in an alarm clock: everyone's different!

As a heavy sleeper I'm always groggy and not social when I get up. My perfect alarm clock would have a loud, blaring alarm (imagine what a movie alarm would sound like to indicate nuclear war or some other form of certain doom). I think I'd either be annoyed by or sleep through something cute like laughter.

<comment><USER29> Well then you could tell your friends to choose loud, crazy and fun alarms and or choose the option to crank up the volume.

I keep thinking I should get back to working on it and finish it the way I described above...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The Air France example is not a good one - there's no indication the pilots didn't hear or heed the warning, it's that a loud voice blaring "STALL!" was only one of multiple "pay attention to me now" things in the cockpit. To claim the alert needs to be more noticeable/annoying/loud/whatever is completely wrong - they needed information, not alerts.

</comment><comment><USER32> > Above 20,000 Hz, she says, an alarm "starts sounding not really urgent, but > like a squeak."

Not sure it's even right to call it a squeak. Many adults hear nothing at 20,000 Hz.

</comment><comment><USER33> Just record the sound of an open-plan office.

<comment><USER34> The article addresses that — a good alarm shouldn't interfere with getting things done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hospital monitors beeping all the time are so annoying, stressful. Last visit I just turned off the machine I was annoyed.

<comment><USER36> The last time I was in the hospital, the sound was only really ever used when the nurse or doctor was present in the room. It allowed them to monitor the status of the patient without having to stare at a display. All other times, the sound was typically turned way down or even muted as they were monitoring an independent readout in another room.

<comment><USER37> Good units don't just squawk out a beep, they fade in and out and have an inoffensive tone. The pitch changes with increasing/decreasing heart rate. These ones are good and the others need to die.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> my favorite example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5McECUtM8fw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5McECUtM8fw) I believe it's better to read the description after you watch the video.

</comment><comment><USER38> I never really thought about the fact that alarms are researched and have dedicated designers. This was a very interesting article, thanks for sharing it.

I might have to start checking Atlas Obscura more often if they have articles like this on it.

</comment><comment><USER39> Use the excite bike 'overheat' sound and use it sparingly.

</comment><comment><USER40> > The statistics say that most of these alarms are not indications of peril

That's because they are CYA lawsuit deflectors.

</comment><comment><USER41> So after reading the article, is the only way to evaluate an alarm through human testing? Is there anywhere I can read more about theory of alarms? Very interested in this, as well as how it might crossover to music and songwriting.

</comment><comment><USER42> There should be away for users to combine alarms with and/or blocks in hospitals. That way the cacophony would be reduced to the important cases.

</comment><comment><USER43> The alarm sound I like the best is the one that dutch ambulances use. I wonder where I can buy such an emitter.</comment>