In Tuesday's Vote, California Opts for Year-Round Daylight Saving - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/in-tuesdays-absolute-worst-vote-california-opts-for-yea-1830275687 <comment><USER2> This doesn't change anything right now -- it _allows_ the California legislature to pick _either_ PST or PDT:

[https://votersedge.org/en/ca/ballot/election/area/73/measure...](https://votersedge.org/en/ca/ballot/election/area/73/measures/measure/3253?id=statewide-73-ca)

 _The way it is now

Federal law sets standard time zones for each area of the country. California and other western states are in the Pacific Standard time zone. Current law requires the time of each zone to move forward by one hour from early March to early November each year during a period called Daylight Saving Time. During this period, sunrises and sunsets happen one hour later. Federal law lets states choose to stay on standard time all year long, but prevents states from having year-round Daylight Saving Time.

What if it passes?

Prop 7 would allow state lawmakers to vote on changing Daylight Saving Time. Lawmakers would be able to choose year-round Daylight Saving Time, if allowed by federal law. Any change would require support from two thirds of California's Legislature. Until then, Prop 7 would keep California's current Daylight Saving Time schedule.

Budget effect

Prop 7 would have no immediate effects. Impacts on state and local government would likely be very small._

edit: I think it is more of a referendum that Californians want a single timezone rather than they specifically want PDT.

<comment><USER3> It passed 60-40. The legislature would be foolish to ignore the electorate's clear intent.

CA has only a single timezone, the Pacific Timezone.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the voters intent is clear. The question was whether the legislature should be able to make the change not whether they should. If I lived in California I would have voted to provide them the option but that doesn't necessarily mean I think they should. I would expect further debate around the subject at the time legislation is introduced.

Let's accept your premise that a vote for the referendum was in all cases a vote for the change. The referendum requires 2/3rds of the representatives of the people to vote to affect the change. It can certainly be argued that since this level of support was included in the referendum and the referendum itself failed to garner this level of support then the representatives should not vote for the change.

<comment><USER5> Yes, this is kind of the issue with a lot of things (props/measures) we get on the ballots. Some are worth a direct vote, others should be phrased in the way you're describing as "this is an issue we'd like you to take up, research, and debate".

I personally find it annoying that sometimes we end having to vote directly on things that really fall under the job of our representatives.

<comment><USER6> I think all democracies would benefit from referendums/petitions that simply force the legislature to put the issue up for debate/vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From [1], which is much better and more on-point, if still short: "Opponents of the proposition argue [...] the sun wouldn't rise until 8 a.m. during some winter months, forcing children to walk to school or buses in darkness"

Maybe school shouldn't start so early then? Starting at 8:30-9 would reduce a lot of that, though not all of it. Also, as a Canadian and Vancouverite... so what? Darkness is a fact of life, get over it.

[1]: [https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/11/06/proposition-7-pas...](https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/11/06/proposition-7-passes- daylight-saving-time/)

<comment><USER8> The local TV news used to run the same story every DST change.

Like walking to school in the dark is worse than walking home from school in the dark?

The only advantage of the former is that it gives the sun a chance to warm up the air a bit more so it's not quite as cold in the morning.

<comment><USER9> Not sure where you are, but where I'm from (Northeast US) the walk to and from school were usually in daylight hours, unless one happened to be 1-2 hours early or late.

<comment><USER10> It all depends. Usually schools stagger arrival times to maximize bus trips, especially in urban areas where desegregation or integration with public transit required suboptimal routing (from a distance POV).

My neighbors kid has a middle schooler who starts at 7:30 and a 1st grader who starts at 9:30!

Personally, I went to a rural district with an 8:05 start time. The bus picked me up at 6:40AM, and I typically didn't see daylight outside of school in December.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe it's trying to be funny, but this article is the stupidest take on this issue that I've seen.

<comment> mark-r Yup. Ranting about losing one hour, once? It's either a flat attempt at humor or the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time.

<comment><USER12> It might be just an hour to you, but collectively the residents of California stand to lose 4.5 millennia!

(But yes, it was the idea of losing time that convinced me this article is either a humor or misguided)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Grew up in a region without day light saving, I really don't see the point of changing clocks twice every year. I'd be very glad to see it getting abandoned

<comment><USER14> The real kicker is snow: in the winter months, if you get snow, you really want as much sun in the morning as possible to aid snowmelt and other snow clearing steps. In the summer months, moving extra sunlight to the afternoon makes much more sense. DST is a compromise that gets you morning sun in winter and afternoon sun in summer.

<comment><USER13> What's wrong with just getting up earlier, on your own terms? Or just stay on DST time zone forever?

<comment><USER15> Most people don't determine their own schedules. They have to get to work, or class by a specific time. Even independent contractors have to accommodate their clients' schedules.

<comment><USER13> Companies can decide what schedule makes better sense then. Or if needed, better rules can be established to solve those problems.

Even with day light saving, people don't work on the same schedule. Plenty of them need to get up before sun rise or work until late night no matter what the clock says.

<comment><USER15> People don't work at the same time, but the time they work is determined by other people's schedules. That's why janitors often work in the middle of the night, and school starts before work, and the doughnut guy has to get to the shop early in the morning.

By the way, I would also love to get rid of clock changes twice a year. I'm mainly playing devil's advocate here. The drawbacks of winter morning darkness are real, and will likely not be solved without DST. I just also think that they're not worth screwing with the clock.

If I lived in a more northerly latitude, maybe I'd change my tune. But as it is, I value daylight at 5pm way more than at 7am. The yearly "fall back" of DST is like an insult added to the injury of winter.

<comment><USER16> Living in a relatively northern latitude with fairly fixed hours far east in a timezone, I used to really value DST (though would just as soon have been in the next timezone east). Now, between lots of travel and flexible schedule, I don't care that much though I still prefer whatever tilts toward more evening light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Proposition 7 doesn't immediately change anything. It authorizes the state legislature to change the DST rules _if_ authorized by federal law.

Reading the text of the revised law, it does seem to emphasize the possibility of going to year-round DST as opposed to year-round Standard Time (which is what I would prefer).

One thing I'm not clear about is how the state legislature didn't already have this authority. Prop 7 doesn't change the state constitution, just the state Government Code.

[https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2018/general/pdf/topl.pdf#prop7](https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2018/general/pdf/topl.pdf#prop7)

<comment><USER18> > One thing I'm not clear about is how the state legislature didn't already > have this authority. Prop 7 doesn't change the state constitution, just the > state Government Code.

The relevant Government Code provision establishing DST was adopted by the voters (not the Legislature on its own) and, therefore, the legislature can't change it unilaterally, only by sending an amending statute to the voters.

<comment><USER19>
       it passed by less than the required % of votes in the legislature

... but existing law (1949 Prop 12) has been ignored for decades anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Will the lost hour disrupt the time-space continuum?

Curious to see a Californian writing for (supposedly) tech-savvy publication echoing an old English superstition: [https://www.historic- uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Give-...](https://www.historic- uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Give-us-our-eleven-days/)

<comment><USER21> I think the first half of the article is written sarcasticly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Already been tried in the '70s and it sucked: [https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight- sav...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-saving-time- went-too-far/)

</comment><comment><USER23> > general consensus is that Daylight Saving Time is better for farmers, and > energy consumption, as well as being less disruptive to children who are > particularly affected by the ping-ponging of the clock in the spring and > fall.

I think the author is arguing _against_ getting rid of DST? In which case, what he wrote above (which BTW is a link that goes to an article that backs up not a single thing he said) actually goes against his point. It says that if we stay on permanent DST, it's better for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER24> The annoying thing about this proposition is that it proposes allowing the legislature to attempt to move to permanent PDT… which requires changing our timezone, something which requires an action from federal congress. If we had simply chosen to go to permanent PST, we could stay in the summer time zone and make the change without involving congress since it doesn't require changing timezone.

Personally, I'd much prefer PST over PDT, which gives us sunlight later into the day.

</comment><comment><USER25> So when the US East Coast springs forward 1 hour California is then going to be 4 hours behind? That's gonna make West Coast travel even worse.

<comment><USER26> The opposite. California is going to UTC-7 year-round. The East Coast varies between UTC-5 and UTC-4. California is effectively going to be in the exact same time zone as Arizona, which is in Mountain Standard Time and does not recognize DST.

Honestly, we should just abolish the Pacific time zone and then abolish DST on the West Coast. Rename Mountain Standard Time to Western Standard Time.

<comment><USER27> the obvious follow on from that is to abolish timezones all together, all use UTS, and simply change the times we go to work to match local conditions

<comment><USER28> No that's just awful, now instead of having a defined timezone boundary we have a slow bleed between different areas and we have to look up to know what a businesses hours are if we're not close enough to follow the same customary time instead of just knowing what timezone they're in.

So now we're dealing with a patchwork of 'zones of similar customary times' as areas with similar solar times move towards a similar clock so businesses can coordinate and trade easily with local businesses. It'll be a mess so states will probably organize together to make things simpler and have a similar set of hours across the state. These pseudo-timezones will be slightly better and states around a similar longitude will naturally order into a similar set of customary times because their local solar times are roughly the same. Now we've got pretty much the EXACT same situation as the current timezones including a generalized offset from UTC so we gain nothing.

What exactly do you suppose we gain from abolishing timezones?

<comment><USER27> but isn't that what you have to do now, look up what timezone a business is in. The only difference with this scheme is that you don't need to convert between timezones to figure out when they're open in your timeezone

I live in the southern hemisphere and 'work' online in the northern - I have to deal with the mess that is 4 different combinations of timezones every year, and calendaring systems that are unable to handle the idea of knowing WHERE a meeting is going to be held so they can get the time right

Really though people should change their work hours to match their timezones - I live a long way south, we have long twilight in the summers and tiny days in the winter, when it gets dark at 4:30 because we're squashed up against a timezone boundary - I have to get up in the dark anyway, why not move our winter work hours so we get a couple of hours daylight during the winter? it would help with the Vit D issues

<comment><USER28> > but isn't that what you have to do now, look up what timezone a business is > in.

Not really I know some of our offices are in India UTC +5:30 and some are in Texas UTC -6 which are +11:30 and -1 respectively. With the current setup most timezones follow state boundaries in the US so I know when it is there roughly by the location. In the 'no timezone' setup (which is really just timezones without the top down mapping) I have to hope they have business hours posted somewhere convenient to look up instead of just finding their rough location.

The rest of that sounds principally a failure of tools than anything else. Today you could just set all meeting times using UTC and let the users UI take care of the mapping to local time.

But again my biggest issue with the no timezones system is we'll just be getting rid of the defined boundaries in favor of undefined boundaries because each area WILL wind up on roughly the current timezones anyways because they roughly match to solar time as is.

> Really though people should change their work hours to match their timezones > - I live a long way south, we have long twilight in the summers and tiny > days in the winter, when it gets dark at 4:30 because we're squashed up > against a timezone boundary - I have to get up in the dark anyway, why not > move our winter work hours so we get a couple of hours daylight during the > winter? it would help with the Vit D issues

This is more an argument for more flexible working hours than most anything else.

<comment><USER27> Just setting up meeting times in UTC doesn't work right now if the nominal location of the meeting switches to/from daylight time (the actual UTC time changes)

I think that my solution to timezones simply is "more flexible working hours"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> All of this is patently silly.

The sun will rise and set at exactly the same times it always has. All you are doing is changing your clock and deciding when to do things based on what the clock says. Farmers don't care- they get up and work based on when it's sunny, not based on what the clock on the wall says.

If you want children to be in school during daylight hours, modify the school schedules. If you want to get that extra round of golf in, go to work early and then leave work early. But don't drag the rest of society along with you so that you can pretend you're not doing anything differently!

Ten years after DST dies, everyone will remember how silly it all was and how they were always opposed to the madness.

<comment><USER30> Unfortunately 9-5 is deeply ingrained in our culture as the "standard working hours", despite the 8-hour workday being a relic of the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The real problem with the time change is it happens over a single night.

When you're actually living in nature, waking up with the sunrise, you will gradually wake up earlier or later as the seasons shift.

If our time changed gradually on a more natural pace it would be a whole lot less disruptive and people wouldn't be losing daylight from their lives. We have the technology today to make that happen. If everyone's clocks are computerized and sycnhronized, we wouldn't even notice as minutes are quietly added/removed by the system across many days.

<comment><USER32> Under this system, either some minutes will be longer than others, or we'll have leap minutes every night. This sounds _more_ complicated, not less.

It might achieve the goal of having a sunrise at the same wall clock time every day, but I don't really see a purpose for that. Sunsets will still vary.

<comment><USER31> I made no claim of it being less complicated, and I am not aware of the general public's primary issue with the time changing being one of complexity.

If the clocks are automated, nobody really notices the gradual change.

My perception is the public's major complaint is the jarring disturbance to their lives an overnight +-1-hour change has.

<comment><USER32> As a person who works on software that cares about what time it is, and already struggles with the existing DST rules, I think I would change careers if this were adopted. Measuring the elapsed time between two instants would become extremely difficult.

<comment><USER31> We're already in a world where you really need to rely on external date+time libraries to apply a locale-specific temporally-varying offset from UTC.

I don't see it as being a significant implementation difference if that offset changes a smaller amount at midnight on a short sequence of days vs. a larger amount at midnight on just one of those days.

Either way you need to be leap-aware.

<comment><USER32> The amount of information embedded in leap-awareness would be significantly different. Right now DST is modelled as two different time zones that are switched between. If you want to handle it the same way, I guess you'd need 365 (366?) "time zones" per time zone. I can't see how you can argue that's not a significant implementation difference.

<comment><USER31> Let's say we wanted to turn it into a gradient where we instead shifted five minutes per night, so we need 12 days to transition an hour.

You could just add a transition countdown field "-" to the "S" and "D" timezones being transitioned to, dropping it once the transition is finished.

e.g. for Pacific time:

PST -> PD-12T -> PD-11T -> PD-10T ... PD-1T -> PDT and in reverse: PDT -> PS-12T -> PS-11T -> PS-10T ... PS-1T -> PST

If you already have the indirection of the table, it doesn't increase implementation complexity to put some more rows in it.

I don't see where you got 365 zones per time zone, unless you thought I was proposing we change the time a little bit every single day of the year. That's entirely unnecessary to eliminate the practical nuisance of the sudden 1-hour jump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't understand all the hubbub but I am for this. I bounce between the West Coast and the East Coast on a regular basis.

If DST is made permanent in California then Southern California will have the same nearly the same sunrise as Georgia when they change their clocks back. Clearly Georgia makes it through the fall and Winter A-OK every year.

Is the concern mostly squared around Central through Northern California?

</comment><comment><USER34> Archive of stopdst.com:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170420043300/http://stopdst.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170420043300/http://stopdst.com/)

No novel facts, just a pretty list of statements against Daylight Saving Time.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anecdotally, my kids (all under 5), have already decided to ignore the time change.

</comment><comment><USER36> Here's a tool I built to calculate how much sunlight you get thanks to DST.

[https://daylight-saving-time.muehlemann.com](https://daylight-saving- time.muehlemann.com)

</comment><comment><USER37> It will be so nice to not have to change the time on all our servers twice a year!

</comment><comment><USER38> I saw a good argument that adjusting the time to keep daylight as long as possible during waking hours is an amazingly healthy thing.

Any decrease in daylight time dramatically increases rates of depression.

</comment><comment><USER39> 1) Nothing is changing unless federal law changes. So basically, nothing is changing

2) For those who have calls with people in Europe this would be a big plus since the EU looks likely to go to DST year round. If this happens and California keeps switching then UK/ROI/Portugal will be 9 hours off from CA half the year, and western Europe 10 hours off. It's hard enough to schedule calls with an 8 hour difference.

</comment><comment><USER40> Why would they switch to PDT year round as opposed to just switching to MST ?

<comment><USER41> PDT and MST are the same time all year long, as far as I know, so there's no effective difference. I suppose this means that other places in Pacific time that have DST part of the year would be on the same labeled time zone as California part of the year for cultural and historical reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is probably the most content-free article I have ever read.

<comment><USER43> Is it satire? Are they being facetious? I honestly can't tell if they're serious. They don't make an argument against permanent DST.

<comment><USER21> "This is clearly stupid, and something I've personally felt keenly since at least 1994, when I wrote to my then Congressman Pete Geren and asked why he supported Daylight Saving Time."

That passage marks the point where they admit it is satire. It's about half way through.

<comment><USER44> I have no idea. It seems like the author wants permanent Standard time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> _connects twitter account to make a comment_

 _doesn 't do a thing_</comment>


How did you end up getting access to Android Call_log permission? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
How were you successful in getting Android Call_log permission for your app? There is no human I can connect with at Google to explain. I've given reasons why my app should have that permission via the application process, but no feedback at all from that side. Any hints, suggestions? <comment><USER2> What is your application?</comment>


Fintech: The rise of the Asian 'super app' - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/0788d906-1a7b-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4 <comment><USER2> >This is a revolution for the whole world. Asia is 12 years ahead of the rest of the world. It is a time machine to the world," he says. "The key point is not because they are better at tech. It's because the demand for digital and mobile services is so much higher. They are leapfrogging generations of paying by plastic and cheque books to paying online through e-wallets."

12 years ahead? Seems a patronizing number to put Asian fintech highlighted. Can any one confirm if this sounds right?</comment>


Your Genome Structure, Not Genetic Mutations, Makes You Different - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/genome-structure/ <comment><USER2> This article really made me question my understanding of gene sequencing? Is it saying we can't really sequence a genome? We can't tell how many times a gene is repeated?

<comment><USER3> Depends on what you mean by "sequence a genome". There's nothing out there that can take a single chromosome and sit and spit out its sequence from one end to the other (even from organisms like yeast that have much smaller chromosomes). Instead, with high throughput sequencing you sequence between 30 and 150 base pairs at a time, and then stitch several million of those reads together. This computationally difficult problem can be made easier if you know the approximate spacing between two given reads, so you can connect islands together. Illumina (and possibly SOLID, but I'm not sure) lets you do paired-end sequencing, where you get both ends of a particular DNA molecule, and depending on how you set up your samples, you can have mate pairs separated by 3,000-5,000 base pairs. In order to get a really good _de novo_ assembly of a genome, you typically want on the order of 50-100x average coverage of the genome. A single sequencing lane (which costs ~$1300) can get you about 5x coverage of a genome.

It's often possible to tell how many times a gene is repeated because, statistically, you should get fairly uniform coverage of the genome (although there are lots of artifacts in the sequencing process that makes this less true). If you get significantly more reads from a particular locus, it's likely that it's been duplicated.

Glancing at the figures in the article, more than 65% of this "structural variation" seems to be insertions or deletions of less than 10 bp, with only 2% coming from elements greater than 1,000bp.

<comment><USER2> Thanks so much for the detailed answer? Is there anywhere to learn more about this besides wikipedia? Every time I try to learn this I end up there and it confuses the bejesus out of me.

What are mate pairs? How does that help with sequencing?

<comment><USER4> Feel free to ping me after August 5 if you still have questions.

<comment><USER2> What happens then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't all that surprising. I've spent the summer working in a bioinformatics lab, and just the other day we were talking about the importance of structural variation.

</comment><comment><USER6> When should we expect full genome sequencing to become affordable?

<comment><USER4> Depends on "affordable". Current bulk prices are about $5000 per genome though the coverage can vary.

Here's the price per genome for the last decade: <http://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/>

and an explanation: [http://singularityhub.com/2011/03/05/costs-of-dna- sequencing...](http://singularityhub.com/2011/03/05/costs-of-dna-sequencing- falling-fast-look-at-these-graphs/)</comment></comment>


World IPv6 switch-over event scheduled for June 6 - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/broadband/world-ipv6-switch-over-event-scheduled-for-june-6/ <comment><USER2> "The Internet Society is organizing a pow wow of big ISPs, web companies and networking equipment providers on June 6 to ceremonially bury the world's current Internet protocol, IPv4, and permanently implement its successor, IPv6."

Don't let the truth get in the way of good rhetoric. Bury ipv4? Hardly.</comment>


2019 is your last year to use Google Hangouts if you haven't moved on already - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2018/04/19/google-rcs-chat&= <comment><USER2> It's being replaced with Chat, which is an RCS client. Even though RCS supports encryption, Chat will not support that.

[https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-rcs- messaging/](https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-rcs-messaging/)

</comment><comment><USER3> My groups are making the move to signal. The desktop app is not great, but their mobile version is pretty polished. So far, everyone is happy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Please don't kill hangouts. It's a more reliable platform for me than even whatsapp, because it is very easy to create a new email account and chat with people.

It's much more tedious for me to get a new phone number or burner phone.</comment>


Wrong optimization with aliasing - <AUTHOR> https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=69776 <comment><USER2> TL;DR: the bug is due to GCC's optimization feature called full redundancy elimination (FRE).

It treats "int a=* pi; * pi=a" as a redundant store and removes it, as explained in the 5th comment:

[https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=69776#c5](https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=69776#c5)

</comment><comment><USER3> I is not wrong optimization. The guy is explicitly breaking the C specification by doing that.

The correct way of accessing a variable like that is trough an union. Here is an example [http://pastebin.com/8V3whcL3](http://pastebin.com/8V3whcL3)

Alternatively one can make both of them as volatile. That will basically force the compiler do all the loads and stores.

I really hate it when people write code that breaks the spec and then complains to the compiler maker. And now they actually changed the compiler to work with the code that is simply wrong.

Just as what happened with glibc memcpy (works like memmove due to people not knowing what they are doing and then crying for the libraries to change their behaviour to match their own incompetence).

<comment><USER4> > The correct way of accessing a variable like that is trough an union.

It's funny you should say that, because people have been taking the exact opposite viewpoint for years: "union do not allow type-punning because it was only clarified in TC3 of C99 that they do. memcpy has always been the correct way to type-pun."

The bug reporter is referring to the rules described in 6.5:6 and 6.5:7 of C11 (the same rules are included in C99, but interestingly not in C90, meaning that "gcc -std=c90" should go theoretically easy with the type-based optimizations. It doesn't). Here is a link: [http://port70.net/~nsz/c/c11/n1570.html#6.5p6](http://port70.net/~nsz/c/c11/n1570.html#6.5p6)

And an excerpt for your convenience:

If a value is copied into an object having no declared type using memcpy or memmove, or […], then the effective type of the modified object for that access and for subsequent accesses that do not modify the value is the effective type of the object from which the value is copied, if it has one

How do you interpret the above paragraph?

<comment><USER5> I've been under the impression that unions don't truly allow type punning, but given that the practice was widespread (e.g., it was used in the code Protocol Buffers generated a few years ago), it was a pretty safe bet compilers would support it as an extension.

I was also under the impression that the One True Way to type pun was to cast to char*, which is allowed to alias, and then cast again to the type you actually want.

<comment><USER6> _I was also under the impression that the One True Way to type pun was to cast to char_ , which is allowed to alias, and then cast again to the type you actually want.*

That clearly doesn't work, but I can see from a naive perspective why some think that. It feels like a nice hack, but a cast to char* doesn't "remove" the original type.

To be clear: char* can alias any type, but only char* can alias char*.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> -fstrict-aliasing is on by default in gcc at -O2 and above. I'm surprised that the bug discussion doesn't mention that.

The PathScale compiler had a fair number of customers who complained about "bugs" that went away with -fnostrict-aliasing. We told them to use -fnostrict-aliasing.

<comment><USER8> I think it's quite obvious strict aliasing is implied in this case. The bug is than _even with strict aliasing_ he should get the result he wants, because the last time he wrote to the pointer before reading it as an int he wrote it as an int and hence it should keep the int-value 1.

Having that said, balancing aliasing like this is just asking for trouble, don't try this at home.

EDIT: The more i look at it the more i think he is wrong. Since pi and pd _shouldn 't_ be able to alias, the last assignment to both of them is allowed to reorder. This is just UB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder why this wasn't caught by the extensive set of regression tests of GCC.

<comment><USER10> Because they don't think it's a regression, it's working as intended.

<comment><USER11> No, apparently a gcc developer agreed that there was a regression and it wasn't working as intended. They've just fixed a reduced test case [1], although according to the original reporter, there remains an additional problem to be fixed.

[1] [https://gcc.gnu.org/viewcvs/gcc?view=revision&revision=23341...](https://gcc.gnu.org/viewcvs/gcc?view=revision&revision=233418)</comment></comment></comment>


Diabetic teen upset with TSA screeners at Salt Lake City Airport - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc4.com/content/news/state/story/TSA-diabetes-salt-lake-insulin-savannah/Az-QjubuEUeXMX7LAbC1Xw.cspx

<comment><USER2> Funny, I'm a T1D and every time I go to the airport I get through the TSA with an unexplained bag of needles.</comment>


Google adds another cool tool to Search: The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/09/13/six-degrees-of-kevin-bacon/

<comment><USER2> It's interesting trying to find an actor who has appeared in more than a handful of major hollywood movies (as opposed to indie flicks in which nobody has really worked with anyone) that has a Bacon Number > 3\. I've tried about twenty so far, and everyone is at 2 currently. Even Linda Lovelace and Dev Patel. There is a counter challenge - Find a living actor who has appeared in three or more major hollywood releases with a Bacon Number of 4 or greater. Define Major Hollywood release as > 100 screens in the United States and more than $1mm in revenue.

</comment><comment><USER3> For people not in the US, you need to change Google to English for this to work.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not convinced that it is a useful tool. Anyone disagree?

<comment><USER5> "do a barrel roll" and "tilt" weren't directly useful, but they were certainly fun.

However, consider the potential ways that Google may have coded this and potentially been useful: identifying names and finding relationships with certain parameters. What seems fun on the outside may be a bare bones tech demo of relationship finding.

Or you can be a stick in the mud instead of recognizing this as a fun internet game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How about adding another tool for Erdös Number?</comment>


How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/02/fight-over-trans-kids-got-a-researcher-fired.html <comment><USER2> I can't help thinking that there really is a large element of adults applying adult values to children here.

> _"...research suggests that most gender-dysphoric kids will, in the long > run, end up identifying as cisgender."_

If this really is true, then the approach offered by Dr Zucker makes far more sense to me - to allow the child to make up his/her own mind over time and provide an understanding and sympathetic environment to do it in, rather than immediately treating the child as the opposite sex the moment they express doubt at age 5.

<comment><USER3> Allowing the child to make up their own mind is almost exactly _not_ the approach offered by Dr Zucker. His approach involved telling parents to prevent their kids from playing with toys of the "wrong" gender and making friends with other kids of the "wrong" gender in an attempt to make sure they grow up the right gender. That's why activists call it conversion therapy.

This is what the article means when it says that: "That's because the authors believe that messages from family, peers, and society do a huge amount of the work of helping form, reinforce, and solidify gender identities, and that at young ages these identities tend to be quite malleable. There's great potential for confusion. A young boy might notice his new baby sister getting more attention than he is, and start dressing like a girl in a bid to be noticed. His parents, not knowing what to do, might go along with this, inadvertently reinforcing the notion that he's a girl — a notion which, according to the GIC model, probably doesn't come from a deep-seated kernel of gender identity, but rather mostly from social reinforcement and family dynamics."

His position - what he told parents coming to his clinic for help - is that if parents don't do everything they can to dissuade young kids from acting in gender-inappropriate ways, to make sure they wear the right clothes and play with the right toys and socialise with the right gender of other kids, they'll turn their kids trans. This is the point of dispute, and he's way outside of the scientific consensus here. All the stuff about the adolescent he may or may not have mocked is a red herring - I've followed this issue, and literally the only place I've heard it mentioned is articles defending Zucker.

<comment><USER4> > All the stuff about the adolescent he may or may not have mocked is a red > herring

Seems pretty definitive that he did not mock that person:

> _But Adam is now sure that it wasn't Zucker who made the offensive remark to > him, and said he was planning on sending CAMH a note letting them know he > had erred, though he didn't respond to a follow-up email asking him if he > had._

(The author got in touch with the person who made the claim, and from details provided, such as full names of the receptionist and other worker, determined he misremembered the clinic where he was mocked. Author provided that person with a photo of the clinician from where she suspected the abuse happened and received a very strong confirmation.)

That said, this whole article and ambiguity about the right approach for handling gender dysphoria is scary to read as a parent. I just try to tell my children that whatever they want to do is appropriate for their gender. E.g., If they are a boy and want to wear dresses, then boys wear dresses and that's OK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've written and rewritten a comment for this thread several times now, but every time I get close to posting it, I feel obliged to go back and revise it.

The simple truth is that, given how toxic and charged a lot of the activism is around this topic, I don't feel able to make any kind of substantive comment that won't be misinterpreted, deliberately or otherwise, and used to pillior me.

<comment><USER6> Let me try.

I frankly find it bizarre that so many things -- colors, clothes, toys, certain behaviors -- that should have nothing to do with gender are associated with gender. Why are toy isles even gendered? Why does everything for girls have to be pink? The kids wouldn't care if the adults hadn't already hoisted the distinction on them.

I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference between genders would be minimal, and that would make the sorts of problems discussed in the article a lot more manageable.

Or are all of these just distractions, and am I missing the point entirely?

<comment><USER7> In the nicest possible way I'd say you're missing the point. To what degree gender is a social construct vs actually having non-minimal differences in the brain depending on your chromosomes is largely settled (IMO), the real question is just what is going on with gender dysphoria. Is it (and do we treat it as) a mental illness? (The DSM-V calls it a disorder.) What are the causes? Is it just attention-seeking? Or is it just an aspect of personality like preferring the color blue over red, only with much more important social implications? Is it changeable? Does it go away? Is the "gender-affirmative" approach the right one, where we apparently need to up-heave societal norms to make these people "comfortable", whatever that entails? Should such up-heaving be funded by the tax payer? Can we make them "comfortable" while not making other people "uncomfortable"? These and many others are the questions that matter. I don't have a strong opinion in the matter other than I know non- passable trans people creep me out on a sub-rational level (so I just avoid them, like spiders). I'd like to ignore the problem and let the scientists and doctors solve it. But when scientists and doctors are busy purging other scientists and doctors instead of doing science and medicine I guess I'd rather have a decree from the Supreme Court that settles things (at least temporarily) one way or another for society as a whole. If they pick wrong, the scientists that believe so better start coming up with good evidence, since apparently what's presently available is either not good enough to actually be convincing one way or another or it's possible to become a practitioner in the field without a firm grasp of the current state of evidence.

Most commenters here won't read the submitted article. I admit I only skimmed it, for it is long, but what I did read was also good. It addresses some of these questions and more. This sort of reporting on purges rarely happens.

<comment><USER8> > To what degree gender is a social construct vs actually having non-minimal > differences in the brain depending on your chromosomes is largely settled > (IMO)

I don't actually think this is true. Disclaimer: a close friend of mine studies this academically, so i'm probably incorrectly passing along a vague version of what i've been told, plus i have a certain level of personal investment in the issue. Anyhow, there's rather a difference of opinion in the schools of thought of queer theory (roughly: it's all a social construct) versus sexual difference theory (roughly: no, the physical body is important in the equation) -- if i understand correctly, this is far from a settled question.

I don't want to attack you personally, because i believe you are commenting in good faith (as am i), but this sentence:

> I don't have a strong opinion in the matter other than I know non-passable > trans people creep me out on a sub-rational level (so I just avoid them, > like spiders).

Comes across as rather hurtful. I hope that sometime in the near future (like, 10–20 years? one can dream), this sentence will be seen as equally dubious as someone saying something like "black people creep me out, i don't know why but i try to avoid them".

I really don't mean to be mean about it, i'm just pointing out that this attitude won't help any early-stage transpeople feel welcome or comfortable. We as the grass-roots society should probably do our bit to make everyone feel accepted and welcome, especially if they do not conform to our (gender expression, as well as other) expectations. I mention the bottom-up point-of- view in contrast to your "Supreme Court" / institutional answer to the issue.

Respectfully.

<comment><USER7> I figured that sentence might be an issue, but I left it in anyway as an honest relay of my thinking. It may be dubious, and may one day be as dubious as the similar sentence applied to black people, but I think it's an entirely natural reaction (just as girls avoiding the boy with terrible acne in school) given our evolutionary history and unlikely to vanish due to social pressure -- it will just become better hidden (few admit to being a racist), but still in plain sight by way of revealed preferences ("white flight"). Being natural doesn't make it good, but it does mean policies and expectations should be realistic. Singapore has achieved racial integration by very authoritarian measures like deciding where you can live and who your neighbors are, which was and is a realistic policy given the alternative outcome of just about everywhere else of racial groups bunching together against the outer culture which ends up causing various problems for the local government. In the absence of negative reinforcement like demonizing people who don't at least appear welcoming to transpeople in the same way racists are demonized (this is the way I predict things going, sadly), and in the absence of well-enforced top-down measures, expectations should be for a long slog towards grudging acceptance of the state of the world.

I dream of a more grand future where I can just rewrite my personality(ies) to feel differently about various things, even to rewrite my brain and form a new body to experience what it's truly like to be female, or Hutu. The natural way of things is evil, but it must be considered and dealt with honestly.

<comment><USER9> You may be interested in this blog post, by Eric Raymond:

"Preventing visceral racism" [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5001](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5001)

In it he reports a similar "natural" reaction to some racial group that he'd never met before. But his theory is that simple exposure is enough for people to move past this, as long as they don't construct rationalizations for their initial feeling of "something isn't right here".

Kind of ironic, as he says a lot of things that many, myself included, would consider racist, but you never know, he may be onto something.

<comment><USER10> Doesn't this argument potentially defeat itself as a positive thing?

If I spent enough time with racists, I might not find racism as repulsive. Describing losing a reaction as "moving past it" suggests to me he had a suspicion of that reaction for other reasons; Had he not, he might have considered himself 'desensitised'.

What I mean by saying this is, flip it around, and people can tolerate a lot of things that are bad. that feeling of "something isn't right here" isn't always wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "In 2016, there's fairly solid agreement about the proper course of treatment for otherwise healthy, stable young people who have persistent gender dysphoria, and who are either approaching puberty or older than that: You help them transition to their true gender. The process is different from person to person, but for an 11-year-old, it might include a round of puberty-blocking hormones to prevent the development of secondary sex characteristics and buy time to figure out the best course of transition, followed by the administration of male or female hormones, and, later on, possibly sex- reassignment surgery or surgeries."

Giving an 11 year-old hormones...

<comment><USER12> Your point being? In this case it is hormone blockers that delay the onset of puberty, to essentially "buy time" until the patient can competently make a decision on more invasive transitioning.

This is reversible (just stop taking the drugs), and for young people with gender dysphoria, the onset of puberty can be extremely traumatic and often triggers a range of sometimes severely self-destructive behaviour, and so delaying puberty is for many seen as by far the safest and best option.

<comment><USER13> I feel like "reversible" is a generous term for hormone therapies.

And additionally, I suspect that puberty and its associated natural hormones is a big part of what allows a teen to feel comfortable.

<comment><USER12> You can feel like that all you want, but the facts are that puberty delaying hormone blockers have a well known safety profile, and that the benefits in reducing emotional and behavioural problems and reducing onset of depression as a result of onset of puberty, amongst others, is well established.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway-09876 I'm a regular poster on HN. I have decided not to use my usual account, because this topic is toxic and breeds hatred.

I am now in my forties, married with children. I am now coming slowly to accept that I am trans. It is a hard and troubling realisation. It is (without doubt) a curse in today's (western) society.

I'm also starting to realise that there are different kinds of transgendered people [1]. I have also come to realise that gender is not necessarily fixed, and it spans a range.

It is not a surprise that our society struggles to accept this, since people only outwardly see two fixed biological sexes from birth. Deviations from the norm are always the subject of derision in society.

Brain gender and physical sex do not always match. Gender and sexuality are also different. Many people confuse these two.

I like the existing methods for dealing with gender-dysphoric children. Delay puberty because it is extremely traumatic (from personal experience). Then wait and see which gender starts to settle. We don't want our children to make mistakes they regret, nor end up forced into a gender that ends up damaging their entire lives.

However, it is incredibly important that children are not forced to be cisgender when they are not, no more than cisgendered children who have a fleeting period of trans-esque feelings be forced into being trans for the rest of their lives.

We need to get it right, otherwise you end up with secretly trans people in their forties with children and a partners who have their lives turned upside down, because something that should have been dealt with 25 years ago was brushed under the carpet.

My gut feeling is that there are a lot more transgendered people out there than we realise. Many of them sit in their "assigned at birth genders", having their souls ripped in two, because they are forced to live with a shameful secret.

[1] [http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm](http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm)

</comment><comment><USER14> There is a huge problem when activists care more about their cause than the truth.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the hard part is figuring out which side are the "activists".

I know nothing of this particular field, but I do know I can go out on the internet and find well-meaning people writing a very similar story about a scientist commited to the truth being hounded by ill-informed activists on the topic of, for example, climate change. And, to my point, I can find that story written from both sides of the debate.

Who would have thought the temperature of the earth would become a political football? On the other hand, people have been freaking out for literally decades about the mildest of gender controversies, like men not cutting their hair short, or women wanting to wear trousers, so there's a whole backlog of drama that this current issue builds on.

<comment><USER14> Exactly, it's a problem much greater than this issue. People need to be free to have dissenting views. That will drive research in that direction, the outcome of that will either prove or disprove the position and we'll all be the better of for it having been tested. But now I'm going down the road of an idealist. TLDR; politics suck.

<comment><USER14> I think I missed the point, but was spot on with the summary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have difficulty seeing why gender is such a solid and psychologically important concept, as opposed to sex. Gender is the social layer of meaning attached to sex, while sex is a biological construct.

Do males really need a sex change just to play with barbie dolls? Do females need really need to think about sex change just do play with "action figures"? That's an extreme change to make just so you can fit into social roles.

Why not just create your own personal identity that involves being female and doing male-typical activities, or vice versa? Hollywood plays with gender expectations all the time, and while there are certainly still gender norms, the lines aren't so clear anymore, and society has adopted the appetite to continually challenge gender norms.

And there are barriers that far surpass gender, like the barrier of money. Most men and women don't travel much because of money. Because of your racial identity, you can't easily penetrate any social circle you wish; it's hard to be an anthropological spy.

<comment><USER16> > Do males really need a sex change just to play with barbie dolls? Do females > need really need to think about sex change just do play with "action > figures"? That's an extreme change to make just so you can fit into social > roles.

I doubt we would be having this discussion if it was just about playing with culturally acceptable gender relative toys. I suspect, because of what I've heard and read, that feeling like your body does not match your mind, is traumatic and troubling. Additionally I suspect that without having experienced this feeling, it can be hard for those of us to understand quite what it feels like. As such, this is probably a good time to error on the side of caution, and accept that some people may have vastly different experiences from the norm, and we should support them where possible.

> And there are barriers that far surpass gender, like the barrier of money.

Do you have anything to back up that it's a bigger barrier? Keep in mind, we aren't talking just about gender, but whether you feel comfortable in your current gender. I can imagine not feeling comfortable with my own body being quite an issue, and overwhelming a lot of other problems I might have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is just disgusting child abuse. Way too many children after this 'treatment' commit suicide.

<comment><USER18> Way too many children with gender dysphoria commit suicide

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sad to see how many comments here completely miss the complex nuance of this issue, and just project their own prejudices and preferences on this. Just like the activists in the story, apparently.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would postulate that this is because of the decline of family values and traditional roles in Western countries. With problems due to what is known as feminism, SWJs and the like, everything is being watered down and wishy washy.

Leonard Sax has talked about some important social topics in today's Western society. The media now influences how kids are raised, and how they see their parents. The influence of parents over their kids is gone in the name of liberalism and open-mindedness. The family unit is being broken down, and we are already seeing the consequences of that.

<comment><USER21> > the decline of family values and traditional roles in Western countries

> With problems due to what is known as feminism, SWJs and the like, > everything is being watered down and wishy washy.

Rad-fems are loud but they don't run the show. Corporations, Brands do. Corporation and Brands want to make more money. In order to do that, they need to find new segments of the population they will sell stuff to (stuff that are less and less useful).

Yesterday the "traditional christian white family" got that new fridge or car like in the ad, today gays get this or that product from brand X. Tomorrow Brands will target Trans, Muslims or whatever but in order to do that and not piss off old customers they need to control the narrative thus social influence. Is that bad? that's just how things are. Rad-fems, SJW and co are a fad and a tool,they are working for corporations for free. Proof is they don't question the foundations of modern western societies. They are narcissistic. Brands and corporations need them in order to sell more stuff, period.

Basically changes in modern western society are directly related to capitalism and the consumer society. They are not really driven by ideology anymore. Ideologues are just puppets. Watch that whole "islamophobia" finger pointing thing for instance. I bet a few years from now most brands will sell hijabs. They can't today because they'd risk a consumer backlash.

edit: sorry for my broken english.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, capitalism plays a big role as well. The focus on money without caring about morals or responsibilities seems to also play a role in the breaking up of the family unit, which in turn is producing more "liberal/open minded" likes.

I wonder if anybody stopped to think about how much "gender dysphoria" was an issue in previous societies. It seems to be purely a modern mental illness. I'm not talking about actual hormonal and physical issues such as hermaphroditism, that's something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> lets pump your 10 year old full of hormones so you can signal how liberal and tolerant you are on facebook.

this all makes me incredibly sad.

<comment><USER12> Noone are pumping 10 year olds full of hormones for the parents sake. Children that have undergone _lenghty_ consultations and therapy are sometimes given puberty-delaying hormone-blockers because the _medical evidence_ is that it substantially reduces emotional and behavioural problems and depression to delay onset until the child matures further mentally and emotionally and is in a better place to decide whether to transition or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is silly. Young children are essentially genderless. If they express gender issues, work on it using therapy to find what the cause is. I don't see the need to make them crossdress etc. at such a young age.

<comment><USER24> The cause may be though that they just feel that way. I remember that since the beginning of the primary school there was a boy who pretty much perfectly integrated with girls. The clothes were the only difference from the outside. He explicitly identified himself as a girl. And that was from the age of 9 until 16 (if I count the years correctly...).

He was very far from genderless. Actually now that I remember it, it was so plain / obvious / natural that (as far as I'm aware) none of the kids picked on him about that - and kids picked on almost anyone for any reason.

<comment><USER23> Did he have any brothers? I also recall people I studied with behaving like that because they only had sisters to play with.

<comment><USER24> I believe he was a single child, but that was a long time ago...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Zucker is not the victim of misguided activism. He was fired because, simply, he wasn't doing his job, which is to provide (evidence-based) medical treatment for trans people, not peddle pseudo-scientific conversion therapy. If he'd done to adults what he did to kids, maybe he'd have been gone sooner.

<comment><USER14> From that article it did not seem to be the case? Is there any evidence that he was not practicing evidence-based medical treatments?

<comment><USER19> That's certainly my impression too. The article sounded like he had evidence on his side, and the activists distorted some of the events. Then again, this is only one article. Maybe the article itself is biased. There's really no good way for us to be sure. Though to me, the story sounds reasonable, and the actions of everybody involved sound understandable from their viewpoint (even when it is misguided).

<comment><USER25> The article is indeed biased. A good example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064927)

It claims there is "strong evidence", but doesn't point to it, and dismisses most of the evidence against Zucker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> ITT: No one who understands or even cares to research gender dysphoria.

</comment><comment><USER27> frankly. This is sick. this sickens me like nothing before. it is a new form of circumcision, sicks parents butchering the minds and the bodies of their children. drugs? making them wear clothes of girls while they are boys? JUST like for Religion we should leave the kids being kids and deal with the sexuality and "gender" issues when they will be able to articulate a self thought after their adolescence and when they have enough awareness of the world to rebel against their sick parents.

</comment><comment><USER28> You can't give children counselling, you just have to give them the meds and convert them into the gender they want to be.

There's no balance, in some cases it could be psychological and a hormone imbalance (of the childs current gender)

In a few years they'll flip flop in the other direction, when children will be denied reassignment, and it'll start all over again.

Also this could be dangerous to some in adult life, like telling a partner you used to be a boy as a child.

<comment><USER29> There was a story on the BBC podcast Analysis, about a UK politician who while helping a transgendered teen, tried to get reassignment treatment funded through NHS.

The LGBT group protested. Apparently according to their research the majority of children who feel they are transgender realise they are actually gay.

<comment><USER12> This sounds odd to me. The NHS has an extensive programme of treatments, including full reassignment:

[http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender- dysphoria/Pages/Treatmen...](http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender- dysphoria/Pages/Treatment.aspx)

What they certainly would have refused would be to start reassignment if said teen was not yet 18 and/or had not yet undergone the full evaluation and started socially transitioning, and this is in part for medical reasons, in part because it certainly is true that many children with gender dysphoria eventually come to decide they don't want to transition, either because the gender dyphoria resolves or because they don't feel they need to change physically.

<comment><USER29> I scrolled through the podcast episodes and can't find it.

I stand by the 2nd paragraph though.

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

 _Gender identity disorder in children is more heavily linked with adult homosexuality than adult transsexualism. According to limited studies, the majority of children diagnosed with GID cease to desire to be the other sex by puberty, with most growing up to identify as gay or lesbian with or without therapeutic intervention.[5][6]_</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mesosphere's Marathon Is on Fire – Mesosphere - <AUTHOR> http://mesosphere.com/2015/02/06/mesosphere-marathon-is-on-fire/ <comment><USER2> I'm really impressed with William Thurston's work on the Amazon EC2 Container Service (Amazon ECS) scheduler driver. It will be cool to see a benchmark of ECS vs. Apache Mesos with the same taskDefinition defined.</comment>


A Word Is Worth a Thousand Vectors - <AUTHOR> http://technology.stitchfix.com/blog/2015/03/11/word-is-worth-a-thousand-vectors/ <comment><USER2> As a native Chinese speaker, this comes so natural.

pork = pig + meat

So the year of 2015 is the year of ram/sheep/goat, in Chinese they literally means

Ram = male ∪ caprinae

sheep = wool ∪ caprinae

goat = mountain ∪ caprinae

basically, word composition is pretty common in analytic language like Chinese, but kinda new idea in fusional languages like English.

<comment><USER3> This is super-cool. I am trying to start learning Chinese on Coursera [https://www.coursera.org/learn/learn- chinese](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learn-chinese)

Learning a language that is based on different principles is an enormous brain exercise. Also, remembering the characters is a challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always wondered about doing this in non-flat spaces. Like if I add the "7100 miles west" vector to the "California" point, I get Turkmenistan. If I add "7100 miles west" again, I get back near "California." Similarly, adding the "not" vector twice might get you back where you started in a word embedding. Anyone know if anyone is working on this? It could be tricky because "7100 miles west" lives in the tangent space to the space "California" lives in, but that in itself could be an interesting thing to study in the context of words.

<comment><USER5> Take a look at some of the compositional models here under publications: [http://www.socher.org/](http://www.socher.org/).

Here is the demo webpage for the sentiment analysis system: [http://nlp.stanford.edu/sentiment/](http://nlp.stanford.edu/sentiment/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wondering how this differs from the SemanticVectors package? Will have to look into word2vec further.

<comment><USER7> It's my first time seeing the package, but looking over the docs it looks like it implements LSA. The major difference here is that word2vec dramatically outperforms LSA in a variety of tasks ([http://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/678/what- are-...](http://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/678/what-are-some- standard-ways-of-computing-the-distance-between-documents)). My experience has been that the vector representations in LSA can be underwhelming and poorly performant. I can't comment on the Random Projection and Reflective Random Indexing techniques SemanticVectors implements.

This link is about document distances but still compares other techniques nicely: [http://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/678/what- are-...](http://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/678/what-are-some- standard-ways-of-computing-the-distance-between-documents)

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I should have specifically mentioned how it differs from random indexing/projection. I was immediately reminded of a similar inference example using random indexing/projection.

[https://code.google.com/p/semanticvectors/wiki/PredicationBa...](https://code.google.com/p/semanticvectors/wiki/PredicationBasedSemanticIndexing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very exciting stuff. I love how you can take simple building blocks and create something elegant and fun with them.

However, why are there words more similar to "vacation" than "vacation"?

<comment><USER7> Thanks! The word 'vacation' is just removed from the list since it's exactly what we're looking for.

<comment><USER9> It's not removed from the list -- it is second from the bottom. madsravn's question is a good one.

<comment><USER10> The one in the list includes a period after it, so I believe it is just a case of slightly dirty data.

<comment><USER9> Good observation -- I missed that (obviously). They seem to be using data from the word2vec project, so I would guess that it is intentional rather than a lack of cleaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand how the item matching is working. Do they have textual descriptions of each item (including colors and patterns), or are they somehow building vectors for the images and then doing cross-modal vector calculations?

If it's the first option, then generating those descriptions seems and important thing to mention.

If it's the second, then it's a pretty significant result! I've seen some papers that indicate some possibilities in that area, but never anything working as well as this.

<comment><USER7> The item vectors are generated from the text: customers and stylists write text about the stripes, or maternity, and word2vec associates this with the item in question. How that happens is treated in the next section about summarizing documents (a 'document' here is the collection of all text about an item).

So we don't do any fancy deep learning from the images themselves, although this is on the horizon :)

<comment><USER11> Colors would be trivial to do at least.. "The Dress" not withstanding..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I wrong that the title seems to imply something negative about word vectors? But the article is super pumped about them!

<comment><USER7> It's just a play on the phrase a 'picture is worth a thousand words' :) The word vectors themselves contain sophisticated relationships that seem almost miraculous, we're definitely not negative on them

(Speaking as one of the authors of the post)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> By simple algerba, we can now prove that a picture is worth 1,000,000 vectors.

</comment><comment><USER14> > If the gender axis is more positive, then it's more feminine; more negative, > more masculine.

Reminds me of my java textbook: the example was to model some employee[1] and it's gender was a `boolean`: `false` for man; `true` for woman. Of course that was just an intermediate example before they showed off the `enum` solution.

[1] because hey, java OOP + CRUD business application example == match made in heaven as an example, apparently.</comment>


GCHQ/Gaffer: A large-scale entity and relation database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gchq/Gaffer <comment><AUTHOR> For those who are unfamiliar, GCHQ is the UKs signal intelligence and security agency, similar to the NSA. They have open-sourced Gaffer, a graph database framework which provides fast queries across a large number of nodes and vertices.

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

</comment><comment><USER2> > Storage of arbitrary Java objects on the nodes and edges

Seems like a very strange choice instead of something a bit more cross platform.</comment>


Does Your Enterprise Have a Social Media Policy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/05/does-your-enterprise-have-a-so.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29 <comment><AUTHOR> .</comment>


Ask HN: Heated discussion about programming went wrong - <AUTHOR> I recently had a conversation with a guy who wrote a few lines of code in his life. We had a heated discussion about programming and it turned out that he sees himself as a programmer who can program and hack everything. I program for many years now, but didn't have any words to give him new perspectives on this topic or to show that it's not that easy. I don't want to prove him wrong but I need an advice about showing such people that there is much more behind it (I think this can be said about many other topics too). How to have a good conversation with such people giving them facts or questions to rethink their current mindset and arouse more interest for it? <comment><USER2> Maybe you should be asking HN why it's so important to you to enlighten him on that, in lieu of just letting him go on with his delusion. I wouldn't allow a discussion to get heated with someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. Wouldn't you rather spend the time coding? :)

</comment><comment><USER3> See

[https://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning- rise-o...](https://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-the- expert-beginner/)

Psychiatrists, salespeople and many other people persons believe that it is more powerful to ask people questions than tell them something. If you can draw him out and get him to delineate the territory he thinks he understands he might start to understand that there is more about it.</comment>


LSD-assisted psychotherapy for anxiety with a life-threatening disease - <AUTHOR> http://jop.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/11/07/0269881114555249.abstract <comment><USER2> LSD is widely understood to be benign when used in a controlled setting (even recreational aficionados' discussions of it focus heavily on the importance of establishing a safe context under the rubric of 'set and setting'). However I think it will take another 15-20 years to see it legalized; drug warriors will harp on the crazy-making potential while paranoids will dredge up fears of gubmint mind control - both of which have roots in reality, since LSD _is_ a powerful hallucinogenic that can lead to confusion or injury if consumed in excess or carelessly, and since the CIA did experiment with psychedelic drugs on unwitting subjects back in the 1960s.

Even limited rescheduling allowing medical treatment would be a good thing IMHO, but the reality of the US medical system is such that that the <$5 dose of LSD is likely to be dwarfed by a $3,000+ bill for clinical oversight and additional fees for administrative compliance with drug scheduling protocols.

<comment><USER3> As someone with some experience, and who ran around in counterculture circles where such things were common years ago, I would offer a more tempered view.

LSD is not chemically addictive and is basically non toxic in that there is no known LD50. On a pure physical level it is very safe. Psychologically the reality is more mixed. If used in moderation with some sense of responsibility, it can be neutral or even beneficial. But "acid casualties" really are a thing. Heavy, irresponsible abuse of LSD and similar drugs can really destroy a person's mind. I've seen people who really abused these things and sort of never came back.

While there appears to be no conventional toxicity, it would not surprise me to learn later that there is some potential for harm at the neurological level. If so it might be more a result of trauma or stress due to the effects of abuse than direct toxicity. In any case the abusers I saw did seem mentally impaired, in some cases never recovering.

So when someone asks me about these things, I always tell them to do a lot of homework on them and to be very careful. I say the same thing to people who want to play with stimulants or nootropics. In general extreme care and self awareness should be exercised when putting anything into your body, especially if it affects your mind.

Most of the people from the psychedelic world who seem to have their heads screwed on seem to advocate their use rarely, under careful setting, with at least one other experienced person that you trust, and a lot of introspection and time in between to integrate the experience.

Anecdotally harm seems to occur when recklessness precludes integration, as if not processing the experience leads to some kind of overload and trauma. It may be a form of burnout leading to something like PTSD, which can actually manifest physical brain damage. Look up some of the stuff on child abuse and PTSD victims and neurological effects.

On the upside, I have seen dramatic evidence that these things can lead to deep positive breakthroughs. They might also be able to act as "steroids for creativity," allowing extreme feats of lateral integration that are hard to even imagine in ordinary consciousness. These compounds are fascinating and powerful tools that should be studied with care. They should neither be marketed recklessly as enlightenment in a pill or ignorantly banned by fear- mongering reactionaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> DMT is easily tolerated by the body and only lasts 10 minutes. There's no hangover type effect and it doesn't last hours. It's also infinitely more intense, with an overwhelming sense of love and comfort.

LSD is like riding a bicycle but DMT is more flying in a spaceship that actually travels through dimensions. There seems to be a much lower or non- existant risk of a bad trip. (Unlike the version you drink, which can take you to hell and back.)

<comment><USER5> You don't seem to know what you're talking about... the chance of bad tripping with DMT is about the same as with other psychedelics. It's just waaay more intense and has a shorter duration. And actually, most people argue that Ayahuasca is more likely to give you an easy ride than pure DMT, which can be "just too crazy".

<comment><USER6> Arguably the short duration helps quite a bit... bad trips don't start instantly....they are more of a gradual building of anxiety that builds to a sort of panic attack.

<comment><USER5> If you smoke DMT and don't have a breakthrough you may feel a lot of discomfort, which may cause anxiety. That's exactly what happened the first time I tried DMT, and I was already pretty experienced with other psychedelics...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A guy I served with credits weekly shroom trips with helping him deal with his PTS symptoms. He was not exactly a tree hugging hippie when we were both in uniform so it's good to see him being so open minded about solutions to his problems.

The utility of psychedelics in therapy has been a "known quantity" to the medical community since the 1950's at least, so it's good to see that mainstream acceptance of such is gaining ground.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here is the full text (PDF): [http://cl.ly/YZzg/download/J%20Psychopharmacol-2014-Gasser-0...](http://cl.ly/YZzg/download/J%20Psychopharmacol-2014-Gasser-0269881114555249.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's awesome that these kinds of studies are finally able to happen again.

Scientists had already determined the usefulness of LSD and other psychedelics in Psychotherapy of this sort back in 1950 ([http://www.psymon.com/psychedelia/articles/busch.htm](http://www.psymon.com/psychedelia/articles/busch.htm)), but since the controlled substance act in 1970, it hasn't been possible to do any real science in this area. Good to see this finally starting to change.

</comment><comment><USER10> SET AND SETTING. IT IS ALL SET AND SETTING.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a person who has an anxiety problem I'd be worried about having a bad trip. I have never done LSD though..

<comment><USER12> The benefit of using LSD in a psycho-therapeutic environment is the opportunity to work through the anxiety that comes up during the trip.

For a lot of people, an emotional breakdown can act as the catalyst for a life changing emotional breakthrough.

edit to add: 'bad trip' is a subjective term.

<comment><USER13> You're certainly right in the subjective use of "bad trip". I think the term has been applied to maybe too wide a spectrum of psychedelic experience, I've usually seen it manifest itself as one of these two:

A. An unpleasant experience where the user is forced to confront uncomfortable realities about themselves and the "world". This is usually a feature of most trips, it could last a few minutes or hours. This can often be a net-positive experience as the user navigates their way out of it and realize the baselessness of some of their more troubling assumptions.

B. An experience where the user entirely loses touch with "reality". Sometimes this resembles the symptoms of a very strong panic-attack. It includes feelings of imminent death or the feeling that the user has permanently altered their psychology forever or has gone irreparably insane. This can last for the entire duration of the trip and have permanent, lasting effects long after the drug has worn off.

As someone mentioned further up the thread, "A" can sometimes spiral out of control into "B".

<comment><USER14> Just an anecdote... I've had several "A" style bad trips, and they all ended up being net-positive for me. I've had one "B" style bad trip in the late 90s, and still haven't gotten 100% over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related topic: I just finished reading "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion" by Sam Harris and it has become my book recommendation for people that don't understand psychedelics or meditation. Sam talks about both in the most lucid way possible. Highly recommended!

<comment><USER3> IMHO religion has little to do with spirituality. I'm not necessarily saying it's all bad, just that it's all about politics, philosophy, enforcing a certain set of norms to allow cooperation, etc. The relationship of religion to spiritual experience is along the lines of the relationship between space themed fiction like Star Trek to actual space flight.

<comment><USER15> Religion is a classifying term for a variety of cultural languages in which the vast majority of spirituality has been framed throughout history. Saying they have little to do with one another is, at best, uninformed.

One does not necessitate the other, but that does not mean they are anywhere near as dissociated as you suggest.</comment></comment></comment>


Walmart plans fly drones in it stores to assist you in your shopping - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologynewsextra.com/walmart-plans-fly-drones-stores-assist-shopping/11168.html <comment><USER2> Soon in Walmart near you : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seKaU- qQuts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seKaU-qQuts) ?</comment>


Your Node.js authentication tutorial is wrong - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@micaksica/your-node-js-authentication-tutorial-is-wrong-f1a3bf831a46 <comment><AUTHOR> Funny thing is I was just discussing this with a Rails dev who was surprised there was nothing like Devise. I said - I think there has to be I just haven't researched it that hard. I guess not.</comment>


The New 83(i) Election – Defer Tax on Your Stock Options - <AUTHOR> https://blog.visor.com/equity/83i-election/ <comment><USER2> The one question in my mind the whole time which the article doesn't answer, is if you exercise options and buy unregistered stock with has a current FMV in excess of the strike price--a taxable gain--but then within the 5 year deferral period the company dissolves in a puff of smoke, making the stock you hold actually worthless... do you still owe the tax?

Seems to me that a key advantage of the deferral period would be if it allowed one to net out the true capital gain/loss if you actually sold or otherwise disposed of (e.g. it became worthless) the stock within the deferral period.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the rationale for adding another rule to the tax game? It seems complicated enough already, and I thought we were trying to simplify it?

</comment><comment><USER4> On the surface, this seems like a welcome addition. Given how long companies are waiting to IPO these days, 5 years may not be enough though...

<comment><USER5> This is definitely much more preferable to the typical 90 day window + pay the tax this year scenario. Even if the company does not go public, the employee at least now has five years to come up with the money to pay the tax bill. If you are fortunate enough to work at a company that offers a longer exercise period (e.g., Quora and Pinterest are two I can think of offhand that offer 7+ years to exercise your options), then you've got over a decade of time--unless I'm misunderstanding the bill.

Is it possible to "un-exercise" your ISOs? If so, that also gives employees five more years to watch the company trajectory and make a more informed and measured decision -- if they lose confidence in the company, they can return the ISOs to the employer instead of paying an upfront tax bill on what is still somewhat of a lottery ticket.</comment></comment>


Aircruise - a clipper in the clouds - <AUTHOR> http://www.seymourpowell.com/aircruise/aircruise-press-release.html

<comment><USER2> The article says it would use Hydrogen. I think that's a non-starter afer the Hindenburg, even if only for PR reasons.

<comment><USER3> Sigh. Indeed. Hydrogen inflated anything is a powerful fear trigger in the ignorant, similar perhaps to Chernobyl and nuclear power opponents. No matter the decades upon decades of progress since the time of the accident.

Of course, these same people have no problem getting on board a flimsy aluminium tube surrounded by a hundred tons of jet fuel, right below which is slung - _gasp_ \- an open flame!

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't say that people have "no problem" with it; plenty of people are terrified of flying. Jet fuel and hydrogen are worlds apart in danger and ease of handling, as jet fuel stays where you put it and will extinguish your cigarette. Finally, a jet engine is hardly an open flame; it's very well- contained for a dozen different reasons, not least to keep its own thrust from blowing the flame out.

I agree with your point about the hydrogen fear trigger, but your strawman caricature of the heavier-than-air aircraft industry weakens your argument.

<comment><USER3> Well, pure hydrogen will extinguish your cigarette, too ; )

Yeah, I was a bit unfair I guess. Just trying to make a point about people's irrational risk perception - they tend to seize on certain things while ignoring others. I mean christ, the Hindenburg made a big pretty explosion, but there were only 36 fatalities! That's nothing. And yet, 75 years later, oh no can't even think about Hydrogen! It's bullshit.

It's interesting to consider how different the world might be today if the media hadn't caught the Hindenburg disaster in a visual format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very pretty but ... propulsion? Control surfaces? Sort of basic requirements, one would think? And with a shape like that I'd love to see it in a storm .. would rather less like to be on board.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of lighter-than-air flight and consider the area to be criminally under-developed. But that thing needs to be rethought with an eye towards practicality.

<comment><USER5> I agree with the practical aspects - the video shows a couple good opportunities for very spectacular disasters, but there are things that should be built not because they are practical, but because they are beautiful.

<comment><USER3> _there are things that should be built not because they are practical, but because they are beautiful_

Oh, I agree. I love innovative and beautiful design as much as anyone, believe me. And yet I am an engineer at heart, and when I see something like this, questions spring to mind, such as "what is making it move" and "how does it control its buoyancy", amongst others.

The greatest triumphs are a meeting of minds between good engineering and beautiful, functional design. This is a lot of the latter and not a lot of the former. Still, I appreciate the story and hope it inspires those capable of the former to think about how it could be made to work.</comment></comment></comment>


Adelaide Pilot Leaves 'I'm Bored' Message and Graffiti on Flight Radar - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-20/bored-adelaide-pilot-leaves-message-on-flight-radar/10829262 <comment><USER2> Surprised the article doesn't mention the famous event where Boeing used a 787 during ETOPS testing to draw a giant 787 over the continental US. Story here:

[https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/boeing-uses-a-787-to- draw...](https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/boeing-uses-a-787-to- draw-a-787-dreamliner-during-etops-test/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The probable explanation of 'trying to log more hours' totally makes sense.

This lead me to think, I wonder how much fuel is burnt / Co2 is emitted for these essentially useless purposes around the world.

<comment><USER4> Well it's a requirement for safety I think, so not entirely useless.

It's more that flying planes for fun might be considered wasteful.

<comment><USER5> It is, it's part of training and licensing. You wouldn't want someone with no experience flying others or graduating to larger aircraft.

However I do see a large role for VR in the future filling much of this gap, along with automated systems making their way down to smaller aircraft.

<comment><USER6> IIRC it is possible to use hours logged in MS Flight SIM as a sub for flight hours in training.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He's not the hero we need, he's the hero we deserve.</comment>