Asus' Transformer Book T100 - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/7320/asus-transformer-book-t100-atom-z3740-inside <comment><USER2> How is the Linux compatibility with transforming/dock computers like this? This would make one hell of a portable dev machine.

<comment><USER3> Not the same, but I was already imagining carrying a microSD card around with a Linux VM on it for portable dev. I enjoy the native Win8 experience, though.

Edit: Of course, this[1] thread seems to indicate that microSD might not be fast enough, in which case I'd have to fall back to the USB3 port. Either way, not a terrible solution.

[1] [http://superuser.com/questions/492182/using-a-microsd- card-a...](http://superuser.com/questions/492182/using-a-microsd-card-as-a-vm- harddrive-on-mac)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I won't buy because of the horrible experience I had with the ASUS support who refused to repair 2 laptops which clearly had manufacturing deficits within warranty. never again.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, this happens with all the major companies. I've heard a lot of people talk about the wonders of ASUS support and other people about how bad it is. ASUS is probably one of the best companies out there in terms of design quality (at least, I've never had any problem with them). Sorry about the bad experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The netbook of 6 years ago had an ethernet port and ran Linux out of the box. Feature parity has not been achieved by later models, if this is reimagining things they're imagining with a case of Alzheimer's.

<comment><USER7> Gee, I wonder why a notebook that's like an eight of an inch thick doesn't have an ethernet port. Well, it's probably because they are too _stupid_ to remember 6 years ago... I mean, what else could it be?

<comment><USER8> Many (more than 6) years ago there was a pcmcia card (3com perhaps?) that had an ethernet jack that popped out of the card, rather than requiring a dongle. Think of it like a cross section of the important parts of a normal ethernet port, with push-to-latch, push-to-unlatch-and-deploy behavior.

Rather than requiring movable parts, it could be built into the keyboard with some sort of protective cover on both top and bottom (if there's enough clearance on the bottom for the end of the ethernet connector).

It's possible. It might be too costly to get acceptable reliability, but it's possible and it's been done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where does the article say anything about Windows RT?

<comment><USER10> Yeah - OP, change your title to the one provided in the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> How can I edit it?

To clarify the reason I mentioned RT in the title is that since decent Windows 8.1 Pro tablets can be priced so low, I believe there is no room for RT.

<comment><AUTHOR> repeating my question: is it possible to edit it ?

<comment><USER11> No, you'll have to wait for mods to wake up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Agree 100%. I bought a Samsung 500T under the same premise about 6 months ago. 1.5 lbs, 10 hour battery life, atom processor, and it runs "real windows". It's not as good a tablet as the iPad but it's a much better computer. Not sure what the advantage of Windows RT would be given the excellent battery life possible with x86 windows.

</comment><comment><USER13> A personal peeve, and question.

Peeve:

I visit a lot of companies, and a lot of my works involves displaying a presentation or video. Modern offices' projectors almost exclusively use a VGA cable. A few more modern offices, re-fitted in the past 2-3 years, do have projectors with HDMI ports, but there's rarely a cable as the laptops they use have VGA cables, usually the laptops are ThinkPads.

Question:

Why has a VGA connector been dropped from most modern machines given a current if legacy usage?

<comment><USER14> Size.

<comment><USER15> \+ the fact that HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort, besides being technically far superior to VGA, are backwards compatible with VGA through a cheap adaptor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the benchmarks I have seen [1] it performs pretty similarly to it's ARM competitors.

[1] [http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel- Atom-Z3000-Ser...](http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel- Atom-Z3000-Series-Review-Bay-Trail-and-Silvermont-Arrive/Android-Performanc)

<comment><USER17> But it runs Windows 8.1, not RT. That's a major plus.

<comment><AUTHOR> and includes a full version of Office 2013 + keyboard dock in the price.

<comment><USER18> > and includes a full version of Office 2013 + keyboard dock in the price.

I could not find where they discussed the Office 2013 license. From the article:

> On the software side, in addition to Windows 8.1 you get a pre-installed > copy of Office 2013.

Which is to say Office 2013 is installed, but not necessarily licensed. It might be a trial.

<comment><AUTHOR> looked it up it seems to be full version of Home & Student edition. It says it on the press release at: [http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/11/asus-reveals- transformer-...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/11/asus-reveals-transformer- book-t100-with-windows-8-1-for-349-we/)

"Transformer Book T100 features Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013 with full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, the perfect productivity solution for both school and work."

it doesn't include Outlook unfortunately

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Asus _was_ previously touting a Transformer Book Trio which ran both Android _and_ Windows 8. It appears to have vanished from existence, and I now wonder heavily if they got a visit from the Microsoft legal or marketing department (as seems to have happened with the Ativ Q)?

<comment><USER20> I always thought it was because of lacking demand. I'm a former owner of the original Asus Transformer (Android-tablet + keyboard dock) and I still fail to see why I would want to have a device with two architectures, and two OSes.

People _love_ to talk about Android and fragmentation, much more so than I find constructive, but putting both Android and Windows in two different universes on the same device is pure madness.

I would never buy a device like that, and I think that applies to most technically minded people I know as well.

I'm curious as to why you think Microsoft's legal or marketing team would be opposed to this sort of product though.

<comment><USER19> > I'm curious as to why you think Microsoft's legal or marketing team would be > opposed to this sort of product though

It's pure speculation that it is Microsoft, but it does seem to be a legal problem in the case of the Ativ Q (patents are mentioned but I'm not 100% it is really patents because some sources just say "legal problems"):

[http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-ativ-q-hounded-by- patent...](http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-ativ-q-hounded-by-patent- problems-could-be-canceled-20130825/)

Microsoft is famous for making agreements with OEMs constraining them from shipping other OSes instead of or in combination with Windows. Their motive seems very clear to me in that they would be desperate to prevent Android from rising into the laptop / netbook space. This kind of transition device could be very threatening in that regard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Asus Transformer T100 the future of Windows & end of RT (anandtech.com)

> 20 points by kyriakos 2 hours ago | flag | 11 comments

Actual article title: _ASUS ' Transformer Book T100: Atom Z3740 Inside, Available October 18th at $349_

References to Windows RT in article text: _0_

</comment><comment><USER21> I want this with a MS Surface design. I don't mind paying 200 dollars more. It would then match the iPad in terms design and surpass it in practicality.

<comment><USER22> You won't see bay trail in surface because MS feels the need to justify Win RT. They'll let market segmentation drive the product design. They will rationalize this by saying that Apple has segmentation with iOS versus OS X but ignore the difference which is that iOS is compelling on its own while RT is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is anyone out there using a touch-oriented Linux distribution with a convertible device like this one? Any recommendations?

</comment><comment><USER24> At this price, they might actually start competing with the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is 2GB RAM enough?</comment>


Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://tylertringas.com/selling-my-bootstrapped-saas-business/ <comment><USER2> We recently sold our bootstrapped SaaS to SureSwift Capital as well.

It took us less than two years from founding to exit. I write about it at [https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/from-founding-to-exit- in-...](https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/from-founding-to-exit-in-two-years- the-feedbackpanda-story/) . Danielle, my Co-founder, and I did an interview at [https://www.sureswiftcapital.com/blog/bootstrapped-saas- foun...](https://www.sureswiftcapital.com/blog/bootstrapped-saas-founders- sell-business/) as well. Both articles give some insight into the process of selling the company and how we got it to that point.

Our experience was very positive. We had structured our business to be as sellable as possible, even when we didn't intend to sell it. Having documentation and automation in place at every corner made the due diligence and transition phases a joy.

I see a lot of people in the comments here asking for valuation and structural information. In researching the process before we sold, I had the same questions, and never really found reliable answers. It seems that every transaction is inherently unique. All numbers we throw around, MRR, EBITDA, multipliers, they are thrown out of the window once you look at the actual business, it's internal workings and dependencies.

My suggestion for fellow SaaS bootstrappers who want to sell their business: make sure you can hand it over easily, make sure you are not required (to remain part of the operations), make sure your infrastructure is either easily migrated or well-documented.

You will want to negotiate, as value is in the eye of the beholder.

I am currently writing at length about this whole process. I'll release it on the blog before the end of the month.

<comment><USER3> can you share the range at which your business was acquired?

<comment><USER2> I can't. But it was substantial. Like for Tyler, it was life-changing for us.

In many ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a $400K/year bootstrapped SaaS I'd sell if I didn't have to deal with the _process_ of selling it. But because I'm not willing to pick up the phone and talk to buyers and lawyers, and the long-term transfer of knowledge about an old tech stack and all that, I'm likely going to sit on it until some day I shut it down, or some kind of marketplace appears where you can flip a business like that without getting on the phone.

<comment><USER5> Alternatively you could hire someone to take over the day to day of it while you, being the sole shareholder, get the rest of the profits without having to spend much time on it, leaving you free to pursue other interests.

<comment><USER6> My two cents: It's a great idea if you find the perfect person but is very hard to go out and _do_. The compensation you need to provide to bring on someone to run the entire business, in terms of salary + ownership is often ends up with pretty similar economics to just selling. Also very tricky waters to navigate long-term if you both retain a majority ownership of the business but cede all day to day operations and strategy to somebody else. Likely to end up either with some conflict or the hired CEO gets tired of doing 100% of the work in a business they only have a minority stake in. Definitely not impossible and has the potential to work out to better economics than a sale if all goes perfectly. (I'm the post author btw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone interested in perhaps purchasing a side project to pursue your very own SaaS, take a look at a project that I've been running on the side - SideProjectors

[https://www.sideprojectors.com](https://www.sideprojectors.com)

Lot of interests in the past few years around "indie makers" and "life style businesses" and "side hustles" have attracted quite a few interesting projects to be posted on my site. It's been cool to see these projects being exchanged.

<comment><USER8> I'm seeing "NaN undefined 0NaN" in the rightmost "Details" box for each posting. Mobile Safari

<comment><USER7> Hm. Thanks for reporting it. Could you send me a screenshot by any chance? Can't replicate it on my end (email@example.com)

<comment><USER9> I use BrowserStack for my webapp. A little script hits dozens of pages, grabs screenshots and let's you quickly see across many, many browser/os combinations

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One problem with bootstrapping is that the founders carry all the risk.

The alternatives, i.e. selling equity for capital, usually means the founders mitigate some of that risk. For example their salaries would not come completely from their own capital anymore.

I think that's important to keep in mind. Bootstrapping is not the optimal solution for everyone. If you fail, you pay dearly, especially in opportunity costs, but many also touch their savings or their families' money.

<comment><USER11> That wasn't at all the problem for me in the first years of bootstrapping. I didn't invest with my own capital, but by putting my spare time into it. Funding was provided by the early customers. I kept working full time for my previous employer for one year, then part time the second and third year with decreasing hours.

Also now that its running on its own, I also feel that I have less risk, because with a profitable company there is no requirement for growing a specific amount that investors demand or otherwise they take your control away.

<comment><USER10> As I said, this varies from situation to situation.

Also, you may be confusing risk with outcome. Your outcome was positive. If your business had failed, at any point, you would have lost any benefit from the work you put in. It's also not quite fair to assume that the time you worked on that project is worth 0 Dollars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're interested in selling your side project or SaaS business shoot me an email (in profile) with the URL, avg monthly pageviews, and October's full month revenues if any. I started out 15 years ago brokering but have transitioned into running my own network of sites. I can make an offer within 24 hrs if I'm interested and you can skip the hoopla of fielding buyers, creating financial statements, spending weeks on QA, paying 8% brokerage fees, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> Above about $1-2m enterprise value, any half serious buyer will require exclusivity as part of an LOI. In fact, it is a good signal of an unserious buyer if you get an LOI without a binding exclusivity clause.

<comment><USER14> How common are breakup fees as part of an LOI?

<comment><USER15> Even in deals where there is a breakup fee, it's not a part of the LOI. It would be negotiated as a part of the Merger Agreement or Asset Purchase Agreement, to cover what happens if the deal signs, but then one party breaks off before moving to closing. The LOI is always non-binding so there's no firm commitment to do the deal at that phase and no penalty for breaking up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15497632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15497632)

</comment><comment><USER17> Great read, highly recommended.

I especially liked this paragraph:

 _The absolute most important factor in getting a great deal in a sale is not having to sell. All of the work here happens well before the sale. Craft your business in a way that you would be perfectly happy to run it indefinitely. Get your work /life balance in order and your stress level under control. Go into a sale process with the idea that if you don't get exactly the offer you want, you are 100% willing to just wait it out and run your business for another year._

<comment><USER18> And for this to happen you really want to bootstrap from day 1. If you have investors on your back you have pressure to grow or bust.

Bootstrapping isn't always easy but it seems to have been worth it so far!!

<comment><USER6> Bootstrap or just don't raise 'too much' capital and not from VCs. Lots of optionality still available for founders who raise eg less than $500k and don't give up control. (I'm not exactly neutral on this tho)

<comment><USER18> For sure! Friends and family can be a good source, but can imply different risks (i.e. awkward Thanksgivings).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone have any idea how much his business would be sold for? He described it as a "life-changing amount of money". If he was doing around 50k in MRR at the time he sold, what would his valuation look like?

<comment><USER20> Around 2.4 million - possibly higher depending on the mechanics and industry of the actual business

Typically it's ARR x 4

<comment><USER21> I've not seen multiples that high selling two companies. The multiple depends heavily on the growth rate. If you're growing at 25% YoY — unless you're in a hot market — it's probably closer to 2x revenue.

<comment><USER12> Average is 3x LTM revenue or last year for seasonal business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > There's always a risk that these posts turn into a 5,000-word humblebrag. > But I really do think it's worth a read because, unlike most business > acquisition stories, which often feel like an out of the blue stroke of good > luck, the way that I sold Storemapper _feels very replicable for other > entrepreneurs._

Emphasis mine, but that's why I love reading about these things. It seems somewhat realistic compared to moving to silicon valley and doing the VC fueled rocket ride.

</comment><comment><USER18> A few years old but a good read!

I worry that perhaps the advice isn't quite the same for all businesses. My SaaS business is fairly technically complex. I don't think it would appeal to a non-technical buyer that gobbles up simple Wordpress sites. I think it makes the available market of buyers a lot smaller. I hear less stories about this kind of business being acquired (although I know it happens)

</comment><comment><USER23> That's amazing, considering your whole business model can be replaced by just a wordpress plugin

<comment><USER24> But like; it was a Shopify plugin, so saying it can be replaced by another plugin (for a different platform completely) doesn't make sense here, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice article. Well written and with just enough detail.

I am curious though if the team also had equity in the company?

<comment><USER6> (post author here): The team did not have equity but I paid out substantial bonuses voluntarily to all employees. There's a lot of work to be done on how to incentivize employees in bootstrapped startups tbh. Nathan Barry has some good posts on the topic but I don't think it's a problem with any best practices yet: [https://nathanbarry.com/profit- sharing/](https://nathanbarry.com/profit-sharing/) [https://nathanbarry.com/equity/](https://nathanbarry.com/equity/)

<comment><USER25> Thanks for taking the time to answer. Yeah, you arrived at the root of my question which was how do you share with your team, especially in a closely held startup.. I probably would have been better served directly asking the question. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not a bad article, although the couple of paragraphs about hiking Mount Kilimanjaro and the like are beyond cringey.

Seconding the desire to know the corporate structure and how it worked out for the team. Any equity split? How did these factors add or subtract to the sale process? Cash sale or some interest in the acquirer? It's really baffling that these would be left out.</comment>


Tars Microservices Extended to the ARM Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/tars-microservices-extended-to-the-arm-architecture/ <comment><USER2> Our company is looking for a suitable micro-service architecture recently, and it seems that TARS is worth considering.

</comment><comment><USER3> My team has been using TARS, with Arm as an example, and I feel like I can use TARS more widely.

</comment><comment><USER4> wow~!</comment>


Report charts out "iPhone Middle Class" of app developers - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/07/29/report-charts-out-iphone-middle-class-of-app-developers/ <comment><USER2> The title is misleading---these are all apps in the Top 25. They are not the 'middle class', they are the 'rich' in the App Store economy.</comment>


Writing a Test Case Generator for a Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://fitzgeraldnick.com/2020/08/24/writing-a-test-case-generator.html <comment><USER2> Great article! Test case generation is pretty neat stuff! :)

\---

The author mentions John Regehr.

One of John's earlier projects was Csmith, which was a specialized test case generator for C. It was hugely successful in identifying hundreds of bugs in various C compiler implementations, including LLVM and GCC.

The same research group (but without John now because he's working on other things) is working on a project called Xsmith. Xsmith is essentially the answer to the question "What if Csmith could be made to work on _any_ language?" Xsmith constitutes a DSL for specifying a programming language (with a lot of the tricky technical stuff handled behind-the-scenes), so you as the developer use Xsmith to specify your language and — POOF! You now have a test case generator for your language.

Development is ongoing, but the project has promise.

More specific to this post: an MS student in the project is working on a WASM generator using Xsmith, which has helped guide a lot of the development of the project.

I make no assertions about the usability of Xsmith at the present time. As I said, development is ongoing.

\---

Link to Xsmith repo: [https://gitlab.flux.utah.edu/xsmith/xsmith](https://gitlab.flux.utah.edu/xsmith/xsmith)

Link to Wasm generator: [https://gitlab.flux.utah.edu/xsmith/webassembly- sandbox](https://gitlab.flux.utah.edu/xsmith/webassembly-sandbox)

<comment><USER3> Seems like it might be a nice companion to Redex [0] for defining a new programming language.

[0] [https://redex.racket-lang.org/](https://redex.racket-lang.org/)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I suppose you could do that!

But I will say that Xsmith is designed to be self-contained. You specify both the syntax and semantics of your language within the DSL to produce a random program generator. Of course, at the moment Xsmith's semantic capabilities are more limited than Redex's, but it's also designed to solve a different problem than Redex is.

Maybe it would be neat to have an automated method of translating from Redex to Xsmith's DSL though... hm. I'll have to think about that!

<comment><USER4> Hi, big fan of the work done on c/xsmith.

Would be great if it was using some existing infrastructure instead of asking to write in yet another DSL.

I'm thinking of an interesting thread some time ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21917927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21917927)

<comment><USER2> The reason Xsmith is a fresh project is because the PhD student doing most of the implementation wanted to be able to make extensive use of Racket's macro system. Using metaprogramming allows for all the DSL forms to be first-class instead of, say, needing to run a program to generate the program that will then produce the program to create the language's test cases. Of course, this style of metaprogramming has downsides (for example, the start-up time is pretty lengthy, and adding new forms to Xsmith can be tricky if you're not familiar with the Racket macro capabilities), but overall it seems the benefits may outweigh the detriments.

However, Xsmith's core is built upon RACR [0], a Scheme library for building what are called _attribute grammars_. This isn't quite what you were talking about, but at least it shows that not _all_ of Xsmith is 100% novel implementation. :)

[0] [https://github.com/christoff-buerger/racr](https://github.com/christoff- buerger/racr)

<comment><USER4> Hi thanks for the details, I didn't know racket that much before and I went diving into your links and that looks very interesting.

I wasn't disparaging the approach at all, sorry if it came across like this. Research is research, anyone willing to spend years of their life digging into such a subject should use the most appropriate tech and follow their intuition.

I'm just sad in general about the effort expected of developers (me!) or testers (me!), e.g. to write grammars in 3 or 4 dialects to be able to leverage new cool tools ;-) I _know_ they all have their specificities, I wish there was a way to express them in one place/format.

I hope this work allows some time in the future to test language parsers, compilers, interpreters, pretty-printers, so I can finally get some kind of answer to 'how do you test it'.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Makes 'The Good Place' So Good? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/04/magazine/good-place-michael-schur-philosophy.html <comment><USER2> Interesting concept for a sit-com although not entirely original. Sometimes funny, sometimes not.

What makes it good overall is the cast, nothing else.</comment>


Launch HN: BoardBoss, enhancing physical board games with AR and Computer Vision - <AUTHOR> https://boardboss.com <comment><AUTHOR> Excited to share our new app, BoardBoss, which brings the best features from apps to physical board games.

Our core belief is that games are way more fun to play in real life with your friends around a table than with your nose in screen. But there are trade- offs; some features currently are only available via software. Our goal is to merge the best of the digital and physical worlds.

The first game we enhance is Boggle (where you try to find words in a letter grid). The challenge with playing Boggle in real-life is that if there's a good word that nobody finds you'll never know. You're only improving your skill as quickly as the best player around the table. With BoardBoss, you scan the board at the end of the game and it shows you the words everyone missed. This is a feature common in Boggle apps that wasn't feasible when playing in real-life.

Our plans are to expand to other games soon. Last week we built the prototype for adding Chess[1] to the app and we previously launched a proof of concept that solved Sudoku puzzles[2].

Curious what other board games you play and whether you have ideas for how they could be enhanced with software features.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21162466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21162466)

[2] [https://twitter.com/braddwyer/status/910030265006923776](https://twitter.com/braddwyer/status/910030265006923776)</comment>


Self-publishing and the 2nd edition of Ansible for DevOps - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/self-publishing-and-2nd-edition-ansible-devops <comment><AUTHOR> One of the inspirations for writing this book in the first place was reading some of the 'Show HN' experiences over the years of other self-published authors, so thanks for that!

Something I am still annoyed by is the way editions work with traditional publishers and with Amazon—even if you update the content of a book on Amazon, it remains at the old published date for your first version of the book, with no way to change that.

So you pretty much _have_ to use editions to alert readers the content of your book is not outdated. But doing so incurs the cost of giving up store rankings, reviews, etc., effectively resetting your book to 'zero' on Amazon.

Am I missing something in that process or is that just how it is for 2nd editions? It seems like I'm going to have to spend some time trying to get people to purchase the 2nd edition copy, review it, link to it, etc. to be able to get it to show up in search results with similar rankings to my 1st edition.

<comment><USER2> KDP phone support is _shockingly_ helpful. I call them frequently and they're often able to accomplish stuff for me which doesn't have any sort of DIY interface. I call them at least once a month for something or other and am always impressed.

One of my friends just released a new edition and was able to it up and set the new version as canonical, which preserved the ratings, reviews, etc. I haven't done it myself and may be muddling the details, but I'd definitely call KDP support before throwing in the towel.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll give this a try!

<comment><USER3> Let us know how it goes! Other aspiring self-published authors are dying to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats! I wish more authors try out self-publishing and hope that they find success.

>Putting it in perspective, $200,000 over five years averages $40,000 per year. It's definitely something, but that revenue would not be enough to replace my salary, nor do I think my other book projects will match its success (though I'd love to be surprised!).

That depends on where you live I suppose. $40K per year will likely put you in top 1% richest in my country. My case is an extreme corner case, but my yearly expense is around $1500-$1800 (which looks likely to be earned with my ebooks this year).

>You can buy Ansible for DevOps, 2nd Edition on Amazon, LeanPub, or iBooks.

Any reason you aren't using [https://gumroad.com/](https://gumroad.com/) as well? That is much better than leanpub with fees being

* 5% + charge fee (3.5% + 30¢)

* or, 3.5% + 30¢ per charge only with different tiers ([https://gumroad.com/settings/tiers](https://gumroad.com/settings/tiers))

And payment withheld is maximum 2 weeks instead of possible 75 days with leanpub

<comment><USER2> My guess would be that leanpub is more "full stack" (formatting, layout, website, etc) whereas gumroad is just a storefront. I use gumroad and like it, but you need a bunch of other tools in your pipeline.

> That depends on where you live I suppose. $40K per year will likely put you > in top 1% richest in my country.

Exactly. It only scales up to a point, but that point can still be meanintful.I live in Spain with fairly low cost of living and my (self- published) books have been generating >10k/month profit for several years now, which is several times more than I can spend.

Plus, books are completely zero-maintenance, pure passive income, which is a massive relief compared to any sort of tech product. Would recommend it to anyone who has the interest in writing. (And if you are one of those people, feel free to email me -- I'm happy to help.)

But as OP mentioned, it needs to be a _good_ book. There are a million titles self-published per year and most of them sell approximately zero copies.

<comment><USER4> I just edited my comment to make it clearer. I wanted to convey why not use gumroad as well, not instead of leanpub. Sorry for the confusion.

Personally I use pandoc [0] to generate pdf/epub from GitHub style markdown. I use both leanpub and gumroad, with leanpub giving me paying customers more than double the share of gumroad.

>books are completely zero-maintenance

That depends on the type of the book I suppose. I just spent about 4 months to update all my books recently - and I expect to update them again to add new content, changes due to new software version, feedback from readers, etc.

And I agree, for success you need a good book. I'll add that it will depend upon how many users would need the material, able to reach said users in the first place, etc.

[0] [https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook- generation/c...](https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook- generation/customizing-pandoc/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > people who buy digital copies should be able to take advantage of the fact > that ebooks can update the contents of a book over time, and authors should > be able to update their books easily (if they choose to do so).

The important caveat that needs to be explicitly mentioned here is that readers should be able to consent and opt-in to these updates. Authors should be able to release updates, but they should not be able to push them, overwriting the purchased version of the book without the reader's consent. The keystone example of the outfall of giving an author/publisher the ability to tamper with a purchased book is of course the infamous Amazon 1984 fiasco [1].

[1] [https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from- th...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the- kindle-5317703)

<comment><USER2> For kindle, at least, authors can do an "optional" update or a "forced" update.

The forced one is pushed to every device automatically, and Amazon _strongly_ warns against this when you attempt to do it, becaues it deletes all the readers' notes, comments, and bookmarks. It's basically suggested to only use it for book-breaking issues where the current version is essentially worthless.

The optional one adds a little update marker to the book in kindle (similar to a phone app) and lets the user grab it at their own leisure, or ignore it. It's highly unreliable, but is the best practice for any updates which aren't fixing a book-breaking issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> And with LeanPub, it's opt-in only; the author can send a notification but it's up to the reader if and when they update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome. Thank you for making this, I will be buying a hard copy. I have recently had to learn DevOps due to being on a project setting up infrastructure, and have now been exposed to Ansible and Terraform. These are extremely powerful tools. Do you use Terraform at all, or do you do your provisioning with Ansible? Is Ansible able to do the things that Terraform would be used for? Just curious for your thoughts. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Terraform excels at provisioning resources, and Ansible excels at configuring resources, but can also provision most things as-needed.

For simpler things (eg small infra where I might need to configure a route 53 domain, a few EC2 instances, and something in RDS), I would stick with Ansible since I can do everything from AMI build to provision to reconfigure/deploy with it.

But for a lot of more complicated things, I do use Terraform. I'm working on a good example of using Terraform with GCP for Kubernetes in my next book, and will likely also show how I still tie things together with Ansible.

<comment><USER7> For provisioning, Packer + Ansible seems like a great combination.

I used both recently to setup a Discourse site and associated Postfix mail server. Packer spins up the machines and then calls Ansible to handle the actual provisioning. Once that's done, Packer takes a snapshot of each machine, so you end up with images that are ready for deployment with, e.g., Terraform.

Granted, this was just a toy project for me to try these tools out, so any advice would be appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh god. The guy studied liberal arts and theology and he's doing top notch work in his published computer related works. I have met engineers with master degrees who could not write a report succintgly to explain what the hell they build. Keep up the good work Jeff. You are No1 in relation to many other so called expert "engineers" out there.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great work on the book, and thank you for writing about the self-publishing process [1]. I'm in the process of writing a book, and your writing has addressed several things that have been on my mind.

[1] Especially [https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/self-publish-dont- wri...](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/self-publish-dont-write- publisher)

</comment><comment><USER10> Your book list on Amazon is a bit confusing since the first and second editions are both listed with the exact same title. If they can't be consolidated as one entry, maybe add "Second Edition" to the title of the latest one?

Also when visiting the old listing for your book, you should try to get one of those "There's a newer version of this book available" boxes that I sometimes see on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER11> Any news on what will no doubt become the definitive guide to kubernetes (no pressure).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! Well, hopefully a good guide on automating Kubernetes, at least! Now that this second edition is done, I'm re-focusing on finishing the first edition of Ansible for Kubernetes. You can get the book in progress on LeanPub, of course!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats, Jeff! Nice to see the new publication.</comment>


India is rolling out trains with solar-powered coaches - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1030696/india-is-rolling-out-trains-with-solar-powered-coaches-thatll-save-thousands-of-litres-of-diesel/ <comment><USER2> Best case, that much solar generates about 38 horsepower for about 5 hours per day. The engine generates about 4000 horsepower. I would be astounded if this lowered fuel usage by 1% after you count the added weight of the batteries and electronics or if it lowered costs by anywhere near 1% due to the added maintenance issues.

<comment><USER3> I think they seem to say that each compartment has it's own diesel generator. They don't seem to use the train engine for that.

<comment><USER4> That's not how modern trains generally work although it's possible that's how India's trains still work.

Usually there's a HEP (head-end power) generator on the locomotive and the rest of the coaches are just plugged into that/each other to distribute the power down the train. Most regions have standard connectors/voltages and such to make this pretty seamless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just wish those solar panels don't get stolen. That's a major problem with major valuable government installations here. People have stolen coal, road construction material etc. Although this seems impossible with the solar panels as they have been attached tightly. But with internal help from government employees, it is not.

<comment><USER6> Coal, Road construction materials, switches, panels, lights,etc have immediate economic value, even in small quantities.

Solar Panels are a whole different game altogether. IMO theft is not such a big issue.

The bigger issue is power loss due to lack of cleaning, battery life reduction due to lack of maintenance, etc.

It's not just the panels, you have batteries, converters, etc that need good maintenance to get a consistent ROI. However, the unit cost of power from diesel is definitely much higher than that from the grid and solar panels have a pretty good ROI when compared to power from the grid.

<comment><USER5> I personally think this transition would have been more efficient if all engines are switched to the electric ones and electricity is provided from stationary solar power plants in the higher radiation regions. It will be more efficient and easy to maintain.

<comment><USER7> What so you mean by electric engines? Electrification of rail lines is a pretty expensive undertaking, although I will admit I'm not certain of the specifics. I'm guessing that it makes sense only for shorter distances, which is why local trains/metros do use electrified tracks.

This seems like a good step in reducing costs of long distance train travel. Not to mention: a lot of experience would be gained in installing and operating solar panels, which could then be used elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> Thinking in terms of long-term ROI is a better way to evaluate electrification of Rail lines, rather than the upfront cost. Govt's can bear such a cost and ROI on electrified rail lines should be pretty damn good.

It's not impossible. Also, there is a scope of making the whole system carbon neutral.

<comment><USER8> I always wondered why electrification of major rail lines is not accompanied by updating and implementation of a more modern and efficient power grip. The two can parallel each other due to right of ways and while you cannot directly power your train from those high voltage lines the substations along the way make for good connection points

<comment><USER6> I don't know about other countries, but in India, the Rail power grid is completely isolated from the consumer grid.

Also, from a technical standpoint, especially for renewable energy systems, it's best to have isolated pockets of energy generation and consumption rather than a country wide grid.

Due to the intermittent nature of power available from renewable energy sources, it's best to have micro grids and micro storage systems.

In case of railway lines, the load on the network can be calculated to a very good accuracy, unlike the consumer grid. Hypothetically, this can mean that the rail grid can be isolated and be managed at a very high efficiency level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a nice idea, but I wonder whether they should maybe spend their money on electrifying their network, at least in the cities. The fuel used to power lights, screens, etc in the coaches must be a small fraction of the energy required to move the train.

<comment><USER10> I should have thought the disparity in cost between solar panels on roofs of trains vs electrifying millions of miles of track is gigantic?

<comment><USER11> Solar panels are also a lot cheaper than they used to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The way I see it is, they are trying to save expenses wherever they can so they have budget for other major projects. India imports pretty much all of its oil spending precious foreign currency reserves. So if they can save few thousand litres of fuel every year that's a good saving.

Secondly, IR has ambitious project to electrify all major routes, please see section 5 of the link for ongoing projects (a total of 20k RKM)

[http://www.core.indianrailways.gov.in/view_section.jsp?lang=...](http://www.core.indianrailways.gov.in/view_section.jsp?lang=0&id=0,294,302,532)

Thirdly, there is huge ongoing project to set up dedicated freight corridor across the country. To separate freight and passenger traffic.

[http://dfccil.gov.in/dfccil_app/Home](http://dfccil.gov.in/dfccil_app/Home)

Here is one of the drone videos.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aHSVVR7Z0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aHSVVR7Z0A)

Lastly, they are spending huge money on modernizing the train stations.

[https://www.irsdc.com/](https://www.irsdc.com/)

All these have to come from the same annual budget (except dedicated freight corridor project)

</comment><comment><USER13> The only good thing about this is that it will be an example for what to not waste money on.

</comment><comment><USER7> This could end up being a huge deal. The one thing I do worry about is thieves making off with the expensive solar panels. The article doesn't mention how the trains would be protected in those cases.

It also doesn't mention if the passenger cars would draw electricity from the locomotive during nighttime/ monsoon etc. but I'm guessing that is the case.

<comment><USER14> They're likely welded on - if there's a risk of theft there's already a lot on the coaches - lights, fans, tanks etc that need to be protected. Don't think the panels add to risk in any significant way.

<comment><USER7> Aren't solar panels more expensive than tube lights or fans though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One more thing to consider is: Stones or other obstacles thrown on the train (which happens sometime due to protest and theft attempt) and can damage those panels. I don't see that being handles in any way.

</comment><comment><USER16> This comes off largely as a PR exercise given the fact that the train is most likely going to be using solar a fraction of the time and when it does, it won't contribute much.

</comment><comment><USER17> Electricity is weightless... Leave the power plant at home. Just transmit the electricity by wire (if an electric train) or don't at all if its a coal train because I GUARANTEE the weight of the solar panels alone will make the train less efficient. And if it doesn't, the inefficiency of them being placed in a STATIC (i.e. not sun tracking) position on a MOVING object will certainly destroy whatever "efficiency gains" you had in the first place.

What's next? A nuclear power plant in the trunk of my car to power my radio??

Also, why use solar panels to power interior lights? You only need lights when the sun isn't out. And when do solar panels work? So now we're hauling batteries around the city too.

WHAT. A. WASTE. And what's frustrating is I see bullshit like this everyday!

<comment><USER18> I didn't down vote you. But, I wanted to put some views here:

> if its a coal train

No coal trains in India except Heritage pieces.[1]

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Railways#Locomotives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Railways#Locomotives)

You have a point. But, consider this:

\- Currently 47% kms length of the running track is electrified. They are not doing away with electrification and completely going solar. \- Currently they have 5869 Diesel and 5214 electric locomotives in total. (almost 47% again.) [2]

[2] - [http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/railwayboard/uploads/direct...](http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/railwayboard/uploads/directorate/stat_econ/IRSP_2015-16/Summary%20Sheet_Eng_pdf_pdf.pdf)

The Diesel ones have an Auxiliary power units to save Diesel which they are hauling around anyway now. Your point of hauling around batteries and equipment even now happens in all Diesel locos with multiple compressors and stuff. [3].

[3] - [https://medhaindia.com/index.php/products/fuel-saving- soluti...](https://medhaindia.com/index.php/products/fuel-saving- solutions/auxiliary-power-unit)

The Solar changes will mostly augment the Diesel units progressively thus strategically reducing dependence on Diesel, which India is a huge importer every year.

The Strategy is twofold as they are speeding up electrification plus thus reducing the share of Diesel locos and also experimenting with Solar stuff.

<comment><USER17> > No coal trains in India except Heritage pieces.[1]

Sorry, I meant diesel.

> The Diesel ones have an Auxiliary power units to save Diesel which they are > hauling around anyway now. Your point of hauling around batteries and > equipment even now happens in all Diesel locos with multiple compressors and > stuff.

Consider the energy density of diesel versus a lithium ion battery. Now consider the weight of an array of solar panels versus a small diesel generator. It's a great deal of weight gain. The compressors you carry are a sunk cost and are irrelevant.

The weight gains just put more work on the locomotives diesel engine. You will use more diesel in one location.

> The Solar changes will mostly augment the Diesel units progressively thus > strategically reducing dependence on Diesel, which India is a huge importer > every year.

You're not reducing diesel consumption. You're just moving it from an array of generators to the engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's nice to see innovation in the railways. Kinda sad in the UK we don't seem to do much, if any, innovation these days :(

</comment><comment><USER20> What about the people who ride on top of the trains? Is that practice no longer going on?

<comment><USER21> The only time I ever witnessed that was when a public transportation company employees went on strike for a month and the only transport available were trains. Otherwise I have never heard or seen anyone sitting on top of a train.

<comment><USER20> Maybe its something from western movies then?

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7260838...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7260838/India- moves-to-ban-passengers-travelling-on-top-of-trains.html)

<comment><USER21> Actually, that picture makes you believe that so many people sit on top of trains. There are crazy people all over the place. The ones in India do crazy stuff like sitting on top of a train. I have never seen that but there is a possibility that it may happen occasionally but not at the scale shown in that picture. I think India didn't even have a law that restricts people from sitting on top of trains and now they introduced one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> But won't they get blocked when everyone starts dancing on top of the train?

</comment><comment><USER23> do they have them behind bars same as priso...ehm passengers? very safe in case of accident...

</comment><comment><USER24> Instead of wasting money on this stuff they would focus on feeding those poor people.

<comment><USER25> yeah. that'll ensure there are more poor people. investing in infrastucture means reducing costs for moving from point A to point B, which means more opportunities for people to move up the wealth chain.

Any infra investment should be seen with the POV of reducing poverty in the future, instead of being short sighted and asking "why not feed the poor?".

If you are so concerned about the poor, what are you doing here ? Go feed the poor and then preach!</comment></comment>


The Ultimate Guide to Launching and Marketing Your Web App - <AUTHOR> http://www.minisprout.com/web-apps/the-ultimate-guide-to-launching-and-marketing-your-web-app/ <comment><USER2> I find this advice way too generic, misses the real insight how to get coverage etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you use only your iPad/Pro when you travel (away from your desk)? - <AUTHOR> With the apple keyboard and the cel-enable version I something think I can live on my iPad when I'm away from my desk and away from my desktop machine. I find 70% of the time it's fine, even good. The other 30% I am frustrated I can't do seemingly simple things. What about you? <comment><USER2> Most of the time, my iPad (current iPad Pro 10.4) works well. The major problems are actually stupid web sites which insist on using broken "mobile" modes even when mobile Safari IDs itself as desktop.</comment>


Using Content Marketing to Build Your Personal Brand - <AUTHOR> https://www.leejamesrobinson.com/blog/content-marketing-personal-brand/ <comment><USER2> When I google myself, it all looks good except a video that is posted on a past employer's Youtube account, of me doing karaoke. This is the company's Youtube account. Does this look bad? I honestly don't know. Of course, the karaoke is terrible.

<comment><USER3> I'd think it would make you look fun, down to earth, interesting and the type of person who shows up at corporate events and supports the company. All good things. It's good to come across as someone who people can have a good time with and who doesn't take themselves so seriously!

Maybe ask your company to put in the description a link to your github or something... some clever line like, "when GT isn't singing the house down in boots he also codes up a storm doing blah... (link to your awesome work here)."

<comment><USER2> That is my hope. This was a job I had before software... in an industry that would share karaoke videos of it's employees on the media title's youtube page, but I would like to think it still works that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I struggle with the need to "be authentic" with the need to "build a personal brand". What if you're authentic self isn't exactly an optimal candidate for a personal brand?

<comment><USER3> Just authentically be the best/idealized version of yourself.

Put your best foot forward/fake it till you make it kind of... you don't need to showcase the side of yourself that eats a pint of Ben and Jerrys and plays slither.io on the couch for 5 hours a night. Show off the hardworking, talented and creative side.

It's cheesy but this PR/branding stuff does work. I used to work with this hack nurse who hired a PR agency and he either wrote or hired someone to ghostwrite all these blog articles about emergency medicine. Suddenly he was getting featured in magazines as "expert nurse Blah RN" and was also getting featured in various "Top Healthcare Provider" type lists and being flown around and getting paid to speak at conferences.

It was kind of annoying because he was pretty clueless when it came to actual patient care and was also a sleazeball who sexually assaulted about 40% of our female workforce. But he had great branding and PR! If you googled him you'd think he was super smart and very impressive.

My point being, sleazeballs like that have absolutely no qualms about outright fabrications, inflating their credentials and lying, so you shouldn't feel guilty about showcasing your most professional, smartest "authentic" self.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> After I read Nathan Barry's Authority:

[http://nathanbarry.com/authority/](http://nathanbarry.com/authority/)

I started writing a blog to build my personal brand. The problem I am having is driving traffic to my blog. I get like 5 views in a day.

So, any ideas on marketing the blog will be helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you mind sharing your blog? I'd love to give it a read and give you some feedback. For me personally, it's easiest to write about things I'm passionate about. That might be related to my career or to my life in general. Each one has a different target audience. Understanding that audience is key.

Websites like Hacker News, Reddit, and others provide you with a platform to have your content seen. That doesn't necessarily mean it will succeed, though. I think the biggest hurdle is producing work you would consider high quality. Your readers need to feel like they've learned something valuable by the end of the article. It's difficult to accomplish that while still keeping their interest and not writing a book. Hopefully this helps answer your question a bit.

<comment><USER5> Contact email?

<comment><USER6> How will you get readers if you are sending it only by email. Unless you are good at email marketing</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Raise Our I.Q. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/opinion/16kristof.html <comment><USER3> The most important part to me :

 _That's particularly true of girls and math, apparently because some girls assume that they are genetically disadvantaged at numbers; deprived of an excuse for failure, they excel._

Our conditionment plays a very important role in limiting or improving our abilities. Doing maths is solving problems. During this process, having empowering believes about oneself is crucial.

I remember when I learned how to dance. The first thing I had to fight was my own belief that as a geek, I was good at maths but supposed to be akward at dancing. Not giving up is much difficult in this condition, but the reward is of a greater kind when you fight this particular demon. Believing in yourself is first and foremost refusing to let the outside world determine your idendity. Reality is complex and we are too multi dimensional to be fit in one category or another.

Instead of focusing on abilities, I prefer to focus on the center of interests of someone. Passion is the master, ability is the servant. While it's true we don't have the same potential in every area, we never know what we are capable of until we try it. And trying is precisely to challenge our inner beliefs, daring to face the unknown.

<comment><USER4> If you are looking for practical advice remember the big 4:

Diet: Specifically micro-nutrients and more generally a healthy diet.

Sleep: Vastly underrated, sleep deprivation is on par with getting drunk. Consider, long term sleep deprivation can kill you.

Mental Activity: Consider, Solitary confinement can quickly lead to long term mental issues.

Exercise: It's frighting how important this is.

PS: I suspect sleep and diet account for most of the differences in measured IQ in the french study.

<comment><USER5> I go to a fairly difficult school and I work 25+ hours a week at an internship. So routine is very important to me, a lot of time Diet, Sleep, and Exercise go to the wayside. It seems I will get a good routine going of eating well and exercising but then I go on break and I loose it.

Thanks for reminding me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much."

More optimistically, it means that they're already working pretty well. In a chaotic environment where smart people are likely to be randomly struck down, most variation in intelligence is environmental: The smartest are those who avoid malnutrition, neonatal infections, mothers with drug addictions, etc. In a utopia where everyone receives perfect education and lives up to their full innate potential, all variation is due to genetics, because we're holding everything else constant.

Edit: Less optimistically, it also means that there are no additional gains to be had at the margin. Maybe the benefit of public schooling has been just to sort smart-student pegs into high-paying-job holes, and now that most of that sorting is done there's nothing left for schools to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another reply in this thread cites some of the research on IQ score trends over time. There probably is more gain yet to be had among disadvantaged populations than among advantaged populations (which have already enjoyed huge gains), but the mechanism of causation of IQ gains is unclear enough that there may yet be a lot of room for increase for all populations.

Even if IQ gains grind to a halt in particular places, there is still much to be done to raise the level of rationality in the population there. (Another reply to this thread just cited Keith Stanovich's recent book What Intelligence Tests Miss,

[http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238...](http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300123852)

which is all about how to improve rationality among people of various IQ levels.) And for general social improvement, it is also possible to shape public policies so that they take into account common forms of human irrationality,

[http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health- Happi...](http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health- Happiness/dp/014311526X/)

so that daily life is more sound even if the people living it are neither more intelligent nor more rational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This doesn't really apply in the western world, but interestingly enough, one of the cheapest ways to raise an society's IQ is by introducing the use of iodized salt:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/health/16iodine.html>

<comment><USER8> I've often wondered how much diet plays a role in "mental acuity." When he referred to poor children being adopted into upper middle class families that was the first thing that came to mind.

<comment><USER9> It's a very big role, especially in early childhood. As the parent points out iodized salt is a big one, another is omega 3 oils.

<comment><USER10> Omega-3 needs to be balanced against Omega-6, but there isn't agreement on the ratio. They're polyunsaturated fats, which I try to limit. But I aim for a 1:1 ratio.

Omega-3 is anti-inflammatory, the Omega-6 pro-inflammatory. They're both essential to bodily processes, even though O-6 is pro-inflammation.

Good sources of O-3: Fish Oil, Krill Oil, Salmon Oil

<comment><USER11> I read 1:6 (O-3:O-6) is supposedly balanced, no ill effect or positive effects. 1:4 is considered good, but aiming for a 1:1 is definitely a good target.

The thing I find most disturbing is that omega-6 can replace monounsaturated fats in your skin and could significantly increase your risk of cancer. I'm unsure of how exactly, but the polyunsaturated fats increase the free radical production, where as monounsaturated and saturated fats can prevent it. Not to mention polyunsaturated fats might inhibit vitamin D production.

Another thing to consider, omega-6 can inhibit your immune system, which further increases your risk of cancer. It just kicks you when you're down, not only can O-6 cause cancer, but it can stop your body fighting it too.

<comment><USER10> O-6s also down regulates thyroid function, decreasing metabolism.

[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/12/omega-6-linole...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/12/omega-6-linoleic- acid-suppresses.html)

I didn't want to mention sat fat benefits, because I hate making heretical claims without time to back up them up, but I agree.

Even the AHA has admitted that stearic acid, a sat fat, is fine. As we turn up the power of the microscope on nutrition, sat fats suddenly aren't blanket bad for you. It looks like I depends on the form, source and context you're eating it. I try to down a lot of coconut milk/oil. It's a healthy sat fat, a MCT that's burned immediately instead of stored as fat.

The AHA promotes O-6s by the way. It seem like there's a lot of cached thought in nutrition. Many in the field can't design a study. They test a "high-fat diet" without thinking it matters what fats were eaten, and in what form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The easiest way to improve I.Q. scores is probably to take practice tests.

</comment><comment><USER13> Really? I only ever thought of IQ as a measurement of elitism, not intelligence. I've met some really smart guys with IQs much lower than you'd expect, and dealt with some really stupid higher IQ folk.

<comment><USER14> As much fun as it is to decry high IQs as the sole purview of snotty brats who can't actually amount to anything in the real world, it is still nothing but a combination of sour grapes and a biased sample. You notice the brats, you don't notice the high-IQ people that _aren't_ snotty brats.

Science says that A: IQ clearly doesn't measure "real intelligence" B: Whatever "real intelligence" is, IQ does correlate with it fairly highly (as well as a number of other measurements), though you must understand what "correlate" means to fully comprehend that and C: real intelligence has real impacts on your real life, no matter how wonderful or awful that may sound.

It's real. The science is strong. The science is much more complicated and nuanced than most people understand, or, more profound, than most people _want_ to understand. If you want to really understand the world, dismissing IQ is not a good start. (Nor is putting it on a pedestal, of course. If you want to understand the real world, recognizing that there is ground in between is also pretty helpful.)

<comment><USER13> I'm going to discuss your comment in three parts. Thank god this isn't reddit as I'd probably follow up with a "Your shit's all fucked up and you talk like a fag" or a pun type post.

Your first assertion is that people who decry high IQs as the sole purviews of snotty brats is a combination of sour grapes and a biased sample. I can't speak based on a scientific sample of high IQ folk. I can only speak for myself and people I know. My IQ (in case you were wondering) is 167 according to SB5 testing (I was tested through most of my childhood and some of my early academic life) putting me in the fairly smart range. To provide a counterpoint, I'll quote Alfred Binet (the 'B' in SB5) and just say:

"The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured." - Binet 1905.

There are snotty brats with low IQs. There are snotty brats with high IQs. Thus we can surmise that in any given sample of sufficient size regardless of IQ there are snotty brats. If you don't believe me I suggest you visit 4chan.org sometime.

Your second comment tries to pair correlation with reality. In some cases this works, in your example it doesn't as "real intelligence" is undefined, yet we are expected to accept that this undefined and unmeasured form of intelligence correlates with IQ. If you were to define what constitutes real intelligence then there's a point of discussion, but you must admit that your statement 'Whatever "real intelligence" is' implies that you don't know what it is - <USER2> be honest no-one does and that's the problem. An IQ score doesn't provide a measure of real intelligence, only problem solving within a measured subset of boundaries.

This then acts as a counterpoint for your third argument being that:

The science cannot be strong if "real intelligence" is less definable than "Real Madrid". Therefore I pose the counterpoint that correlation of an individual's success rate of "Real Madrid" (whatever "success rate" is) is more valid than correlation with "Real intelligence".

After all, "Real Intelligence" never won La Liga, the European cup, and so on, yet noone would ever argue against the genius of Real Madrid's European cup winning squads, no more than you could argue with the master strokes of Van Gogh or Raphael, nor the abilities of Newton - despite his inferior understanding of modern mathematics and logic, nor the ancient greeks despite their limitations.

One of the things I really appreciate about HN is that people have constructive arguments and disagreements. I completely accept that there's an element of fun in the topic I discussed (particularly about football teams) but I would like to say that although I don't agree with you, thanks for expressing your opinion and challenging mine. It's always good to have to rethink your worldview :)

<comment><USER14> If you have a point in your discussion of my first point, it escapes me.

For your discussion of the second point and third point, let me tell you the term to Google: "g factor". You can take that argument up with psychologists themselves.

Your arguments against correlation are pretty much what I was trying to cover with my parenthetical. You aren't decrying correlation, you're decrying popular misapprehensions about correlation, ones which I don't share. The correlation is present and the statistical analysis is simple; nobody can point at the g factor in one single test, but the statistical tests that show it is there is Statistics 101-type stuff.

The science is clear. Take it up with the scientists. You can start by searching for "g factor". (I recommend the quotes be included.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Publisher's description page for the book under review:

<http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/winter09/006505.htm>

</comment><comment><USER15> _Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held_

He _needs_ this straw man for the article to work at all. In fact, the belief that IQ is "overwhelmingly inherited" is considered socially repugnant, and has been for some time. All of the things he lists are just duplicates or variations on things we've already been doing, and mostly failing at.

<comment><USER16> socially repugnant has nothing to do with science. the data says parent IQ is highly correlated with offspring IQ.

<comment><USER17> And the offspring are, expect in the case of adoption, in the same socioeconomic class as the parents.

<comment><USER18> Twin studies show that identical twins reared apart are highly similar in terms of (for example) IQ. Much more so than fraternal twins reared together (or apart for that matter)

This indicates that genetics certainly play a very important role here. It might not be PC to say so but the science is pretty clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> _the science is pretty clear_

Actually, the science of broad heritability, which is what you are talking about here, is anything but clear. The concept of heritability (it originated with Francis Galton) is a pre-Mendelian concept, an example of the saying that a person with a hammer treats any problem as a nail.

Heritability says NOTHING about malleability of a particular trait in populations, as any professionally edited genetics textbook will remind you. And there is already plenty of empirical evidence that IQ scores, and real- world intelligent behavior outside the testing room, and rationality (which is distinct from IQ) are exquisitely sensitive to environmental influences, many of those influences being cultural or educational rather than nutritional. That's what the book under review is about: providing a large number of citations to primary research literature on the malleability of IQ and educational achievement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "How do you raise your IQ? For some, standing on a soap box is the only way."

</comment><comment><USER20> Wait, is IQ important or not?

<comment><USER21> IQ is very important, or at least intelligence is and IQ is the best way we have of trying to measure it. The Bell Curve is a pretty interesting book and it talks about all the things that IQ is correlated with.

<comment><USER22> I think he was being sarcastic/rhetorical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _while I.Q. doesn't measure pure intellect — we're not certain exactly what it does measure_

It measures what it is set to measure. An IQ test given to school children measures their mastery of school subjects, and IQ test given to cadets measures their courage, quick thinking and whatever other skill is necessary to be a good cadet. So an IQ test is simply a test of certain skills and knowledge not intelligence as such.

That might explain why IQ has risen, since education is becoming more sophisticated, more are going to university, more people have access to information i.e. through internet, so too the skills and knowledge which is tested gives higher results.

That might also explain the adoption studies, the children in poor households have poor environment, i.e. no books and poor stimulation, i.e. parents don't engage them in conversations. So their knowledge suffers because they are expected to watch telly rather than play or read.</comment>


Tumor-Specific Antigens from Way Out There - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/12/11/tumor-specific-antigens-from-way-out-there <comment><USER2> This work is important but they were slightly beaten to the punch of the van Allen group at Dana Farber in August:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4239?WT.feed_name=subjec...](https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4239?WT.feed_name=subjects_antigen- processing-and-presentation)

Also worth noting that vaccines using the exome-derived variant approach are in the clinic and having good responses when combined with PD1: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577644/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577644/)

Given this it will be interesting to see if these approaches are able to improve beyond what's already working in diseases like melanoma, or potentially move to low mutation burden tumors (pancreatic, gbm, etc.)

<comment><USER3> I am curious how much of this is a bioinformatics insight. If your dataset is looking under the lamp-post for coding sequences, then you'd be unlikely to pull out non-coding regions for analysis. However, if you're strictly empirical in your search for tumor-specific antigens, then such sequences shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Either way, it's a very curious fact of biology here.

On a separate note, the idea that unused viral sequences start showing up as neo-antigens is also interesting. Those old viruses in our genome likely have curious roles in other parts of our immune system such that a therapy targeting them specifically might have odd repercussions.

Regardless, having more cancer-specific (cancer-enriched?) identifiers is a good thing. And especially if used with synbio 'logic' like that found in bi- Specific CARs or SynNotch, these just add more circles to the Venn-diagram that is used to uniquely identify cancerous cells amongst our 'self'.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I think that's a reasonable point. There's definitely a good point of lamp-post searching here, imo. The biggest challenge is that technologies like mass spec can't get you a truly unbiased few of the tumor epi-nome, and so it's hard to really get a truly measurement of what fraction are from where (this is what they are trying to do here, but I think depth is still an issue).

The viruses part is interesting too, but from a different angle: viral specific t-cells are found, in abundance in tumors, and it's believed that they aren't doing anything (i.e., they're bystanders) - [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29769722](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29769722)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the immune system "leaves" some of these traditionally non-coding sequences behind as a canary in the coal mine. If a cell starts undergoing more frequent mutations on the road to becoming cancerous then a well placed marker gene would be a great signal for the immune system to wake up and send the cell into apotosis or to be phagocytosed.</comment>


Show HN: ColorTabs – Firefox add-on to change window color based on domain - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/colortabs/ <comment><USER2> This is a nifty idea. I do something similar, not by domain, but by the tab's label, by editing my userChrome.css file. For example, if one wanted to make Hacker News tab lines orange, but only when focused:

tab.tabbrowser-tab[label$="Hacker News"] .tab-line[selected="true"] { background-color: #FF6600 !important; }

Or if one wanted them to be orange all the time:

tab.tabbrowser-tab[label$="Hacker News"] .tab-line { background-color: #FF6600 !important; }

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. I didnt even know about the userChrome.css file. It's cool that FF allows the user all that customization. My original plan was to build this extension for Google Chrome, as that _was_ my main browser for development, however it's not actually possible because they don't allow dynamic themes.</comment></comment>


Hardware Disruption: Same Movie, Different Era - <AUTHOR> http://amandapeyton.com/blog/2012/08/hardware-disruption-same-movie-different-era/

<comment><USER2> The scale problem still remains. Going from 10 users of your webapp to 1000 does not take much in terms of technology and capital investment. Going from 10 hand-assembled bits of hardware to 1000 units manufactured in China is a difficult and expensive leap.

They're right though, it's definitely going to be a growth market. Looking forward to learning more about what Grand St. is doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> This post is indicative of where we are on the hype cycle for 3D printing (<http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=2124315>), i.e. right at the peak.

Consumer products are still, and will be for a few years, made in traditional ways. The lower cost of production in China being the biggest factor today for the last step of concept to real.

Pumping money into a sector will accelerate it, but the heating funding environment for hardware isn't a fundamental change.

To draw an analogy to software you really need to compare timescales and access to sufficient technology.

A talented developer can rent sufficient technology to support thousands of customers a day on a website and build the product in a week for a small launch.

On axes of both time and money hardware idea to product are still _at least_ an order of magnitude higher. Which, to be fair, is still much better than it has been, and a welcome evolution of the market.

<comment><USER4> The main draw of 3D printing isn't to replace the lower cost manufacturing we have in China et al, but to decrease the cost of producing prototypes. As Amanda mentions, this, coupled with a number of other new innovations, will finally allow hardware startups to iterate like their software brethren have done for decades. This can only lead to an explosion in hardware innovation.

<comment> yew-right Exactly. But why should it be limited to just prototypes?

If I can produce a casing for a development board that looks as good as some overpriced Apple junk or locked down Microsoft OEM crap, there's no need for me to jump through all their silly hoops. I can make my own device to do just the things I want it to do. My way.

re: the electronics of today's hardware: It's all the same stuff, more or less. How many factories are there? How many chipmakers? Oustide of uber- geeks, people are not that fussy about what's on the inside of their devices. Give them the power to make their own gadget that is personalised and programmable, and many of them will have no need to play games with Apple or Microsoft.

<comment><USER5> So called '3D printers' are actually rapid prototyping machines. Usually of the additive variety. The reason they are called rapid prototype machines is because their capability to is fairly well limited to prototypes. The time required to print an object vs. injection mold an object is at least one order of magnitude apart, for state of the art machines (between many minutes to hours for 3D printers compared with seconds with most injection molding processes). It will be many more years before 3D printers, and especially hobbyist level machines, can produce parts comparable to those made in traditional manufacturing (read: high capital investment) techniques in regards to cycle time, surface finish, variety of material, consistency, and durability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As I was reading this I was thinking "yeah, that's all great but what about the working capital requirements caused by horrendous retail deals" and then you brought it up. I think a shift in retail philosophy has to happen as online customer acquisition cost is still the white elephant that no one likes to talk about and big chains with high margins, long payment terms and "sale or return" deals are stifling what products can reach the masses.

If these terms can improve then that working capital requirement can drop and then you'll see a much greater impact on the market. I would argue that things like arduino are great for prototyping but they are actually making the electronics design for manufacture step harder as you are one more step removed from the in production components than you would be going down a slightly older fashioned route.

</comment><comment><USER7> Going from Kickstarter/prototype to China is too big a step. Small companies can not manage the constant hops across the Pacific to keep things moving. Prototyping shops like <http://www.techshop.ws/> are/will feed directly into US-based contract manufacturers that specialize in building the supply chain, assembly instructions, QA/QC checks, and the myriad details that can then bridge to China when volumes are sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm interested to see what gets sold here. The open source hardware movement has been awesome, but at the moment, it seems to only have resulted in a large hobbyist movement, and hasn't quite affected mainstream consumers yet. Perhaps these guys are going to partner with some of the more successful kickstarter projects and sell them in one spot?

<comment><USER9> The arduino seems popular in prototyping and customer validation of commercial products(example: the fitbit), i think some low/medium volume products are using the arduino hw/sw(but you might not know it's there-why should the business owner tell you?), and for high volume products, standard development methods give cheaper products.</comment></comment>


MySQL, Sub-selects and IN() - <AUTHOR> http://www.johnewart.net/posts/2011/03/mysql_in_queries/

<comment><USER3> In plain english, basically you expected mysql to work from inner to outer parentheses but instead

       IN (SELECT species_id FROM enemy_species WHERE enemy_id = 123)

is executed against every row in the table instead of just once, taking a REALLY long time.

I think every everyone goes through that particular mysql learning curve - <USER2> a join instead.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, but that is typical MySQL attitude - when someone finds a bug or a missing feature, they just say "you shouldn't do it that way".

Same thing they were saying back in the '90s for foreign keys, transactions, stored procedures...

<comment><USER3> Um, it's not a bug - how would you purposely execute a subquery against every row in a table?

It's doing exactly what you told it to do.

The bug is a human bug of not understanding what you are asking even though it seems logical.

<comment><USER4> If it's impossible then why do both Oracle and SQL Server handle this scenario correctly? I've just tried it on both.

(I do know the answer - it's because they can do hash joins and MySQL can't).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're looking to actually think relationally, that is, composing more complex queries from simpler components, as opposed to using only find-row-by- id types of queries (the kind that work equally well with a noSQL store like mongo anyway), you'd best use Postgresql, or if you like to spend money for no good reason an Oracle or SQL Server.

<comment><AUTHOR> What makes you tell money spent on SQL Server is spent for no good reason ? (real question)

Afaik a lot of .Net shops I know are fairly happy with it, to say the least.

<comment><USER6> I don't think any .net shops are particularly happy with it - they know of no other tool.

My personal opinion: There are far less mentally and emotionally demanding things that do as good a job for zero outlay and don't suddenly steal your wallet whenever you try and scale them up.

Having said that, I've used it since SQL 6.5 and it supports small to medium workloads fine. It's also significantly less ugly and needy than Oracle.

I'd pick PostgreSQL if I was going solo on a project though.

<comment><AUTHOR> The .Net shops I know are aware of other tools (including MySQL, Redis, MongoDB...), so I guess we're not talking about the same shops.

Thanks for the rest of your feedback though :)

<comment><USER6> The ".net shop" I work for uses MySQL, MongoDB as well. But it's a rarety having done a lot of contract work over the years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh yes, MySql is awkward. You get used to some of those subtleties after a while, but it would be nice if you didn't have to.

<comment><USER8> May I suggest using Postgres?

<comment><USER7> You know. After a while you just get used to the quirks. Postgres has its own oddities. Granted they have a tendency to be by design, rather than glaring errors, but can still be annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if NOT NOT IN would have solved it since he mentions the problem doesn't exist for NOT IN.

<comment><USER10> No. MySQL is able to optimize an anti-join but not the IN condition. It works about the same as having a LEFT JOIN with a not is null check in the where clause. MySQL will see NOT NOT IN as just IN.

<comment><USER9> Would using parentheses (NOT(NOT IN...)) make a difference?

<comment><USER10> Using NOT NOT IN is a syntax error in any event. I was answering in the hypothetical in any event.

<comment><USER9> Ah I see. Thanks for the answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> FWIW this is why the rest of us chuckle at MySQL.</comment>


The Calorie-Restriction Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11Calories-t.html <comment><USER3> "By slowing aging and increasing resistance to disease during periods of food scarcity, the adaptive responses to fewer calories increased the odds that animals and humans that lived short lives might survive until they could reproduce."

This statement seems somewhat dangerous to me. If the body slows down because of lack of resources, I'm willing to bet that, like has been observed in animals, fertility will also drop off - you don't reproduce when resources are scarce.

The article seems kind of contradictory to me. They say that it isn't a study about weight loss but then go on to say that this diet has an effect on lifespan in part because of the effect of aging diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes) which are all highly correlated with being overweight. Weight loss therefore has to be one of the primary goals of the study - if it didn't help you lose weight then it wouldn't (by definition) be reducing your risk factors for those diseases.

<comment><USER4> _This statement seems somewhat dangerous to me. If the body slows down because of lack of resources, I'm willing to bet that, like has been observed in animals, fertility will also drop off - you don't reproduce when resources are scarce._

I think the idea is that the animals would have a better chance of surviving until food became plentiful again, at which point their intake would return to normal along with fertility and aging.

<comment><USER3> Oh I don't disagree but I mean to point out that engaging in a calorie restricting diet at a young age may be detrimental to fertility, based on the effects that they suggest and the observational evidence from other animals. This may or may not be a big deal to certain people depending on goals - <USER2> you want to have children in your 20s versus 30s for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are some review articles that are very readable for non-scientists written by an old boss of mine (Dr. Mark Mattson at the National Institute on Aging) on dietary intake.

Here are some:

Dietary factors, hormesis and health [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253665?tool=pub...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253665?tool=pubmed)

Impact of energy intake and expenditure on neuronal plasticity. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2635925/?tool=pu...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2635925/?tool=pubmed)

Mattson is an interesting (albeit, a bit harebrained) dude. He completely believes in this caloric restriction stuff so much that he lives the lifestyle and follows a really strict diet.

<comment><USER6> Hmm,

Do you know if there have been any studies which made an effort to distinguish average-weight and average calorie intake? Hight calorie intake is associate with obesity and obesity is associated with many health problems. But what is the cause and what is the effect?

Do, say, long distance athletes, who consume and use massive calorie levels, suffer the same health problems as overweight sedentary people? Seriously, I'm curious if people have looked this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If the subject is losing weight then he/she is getting low calories and the body is burning excess fat. The diet then can be adjusted by trial and error and the subject can find the right diet and the right amount. The golden rule is to eat as much non-processed food as possible. I believe that these professional doctors hyper-complicated the process. Dieters usually hate to count calories.

<comment><USER8> Natrius is right. The independent variable in this experiment is calories ingested, not weight loss. They're specifically testing for what happens when you eat fewer calories. On page six, they compare rats that are lean because of exercise with rats that are lean because of calorie restriction. "...only calorie restriction was able to slow down aging and increase maximal life span." Simply having the participants lose weight would not allow as much to be learned about what they are studying. Complex controls are paramount for these human studies.</comment></comment>


Why the Vertical Takeoff Airliner Failed: The Rotodyne Story - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkJOm1V77Xg <comment><AUTHOR> While the commercial plug at the end surely is annoying, the video presents an interesting concept. Is it time to re-evaluate with current technology, or will it die just like ideas of Zeppellin use for bulk transport?

<comment><USER2> Seaplanes. Coastal cities could be directly served and offload or replace giant airports.</comment></comment>


Life ≠ Alive - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-schrodingers-cat-say-about-3d-printers-on-mars <comment><USER2> Since reading Christopher Alexander's _Nature of Order_ series (verbose, probably could be trimmed down quite a bit), I find it much more natural to view everything as living to various degrees across all sizes / compositions of matter, which he argues for on a mathematical basis. Here's a snippet from the first volume, lifted from the linked wiki page:

> _Centers are those particular identified sets, or systems, which appear > within the larger whole as distinct and noticeable parts. They appear > because they have noticeable distinctness, which makes them separate out > from their surroundings and makes them cohere, and it is from the > arrangements of these coherent parts that other coherent parts appear. The > life or intensity of one center is increased or decreased according to the > position and intensity of other nearby centers. Above all, centers become > most intense when the centers which they are made of help each other._

Unfortunately, this perspective makes mankind's treatment of nature all the more repellent as the horror of our actions towards the rest of life (and ultimately, ourselves) is so, so self-defeating. We just can't seem to evolve past self-interest where self is defined by the boundary of our body / family / tribe. :(

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

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

<comment><USER3> > Unfortunately, this perspective makes mankind's treatment of nature all the > more repellent as the horror of our actions towards the rest of life (and > ultimately, ourselves) is so, so self-defeating. We just can't seem to > evolve past self-interest where self is defined by the boundary of our body > / family / tribe. :(

You're packing a lot of 20th century cultural angsty baggage in that thought. Your worldview is not universal.

<comment><USER2> I don't think you understood the previous paragraph; the view I'm espousing that Alexander laid out is universal and objective. It has nothing to do with culture, but everything to do with physical systems, it is a lens by which to measure the nature of order, or in other words, life itself as a universal quality of configurations of matter.

We are not sustainably increasing order on the planet Earth, and if current trends continue, we will see an incredible amount of life / order disappear into entropy. That's a fair prediction given current evidence. Your statement about my worldview is akin to saying 2 + 2 = 4 is not universal, never mind that that formalism is dependable in this universe. Maybe in some other universe 2 + 1 = 4, but not in this one.

You can disagree with the model that Alexander lays out, but the correctness of that sentiment has nothing to do with "20th century cultural angsty baggage".

<comment><USER3> You miss my point. I don't disagree that events are unfolding in the manner you describe. But you have a preference it seems, to the way in which you would rather have them unfold.

"Unfortunately", "repellent", "horror" are all value judgements, and they might not be universal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think the terms and definitions (life vs. alive) are the best possible for making sense of this topic.

I think we can distinguish between:

* A living cat

* A dead cat

* A cat's living or dead skin cell

* A self-replicating 3D printer called Alice

I don't like the term "life" to refer to both the living and the dead cat. It seems bizarre to have concepts of "living life" and "non-living life."

I would rather say "living organism" and "dead organism," the latter of which implies that at once point it was a living organism.

And the cat's skin cell is not an organism at all; it is a living (or dead) _part_ of an organism.

Alice, on the other hand, is not an organism or a part of an organism. I would not use the same term for Alice as I would for biological life. Philosophically, does Alice constitute artificial life? Maybe. But calling Alice "living" with no qualifiers seems off.

<comment><USER5> Why is the skin cell not an organism though? The definitions for 'organism' vary, but a common theme seems to be an interdependant system comprised of 'organs' with different specific functions that together form a greater whole. But is a cell not comprised of organelles? Mitochondia have their own dna and it is theorized that they were originally a seperate lifeform in a symbiotic relationship. The same goes for other specialized structures like chloroplasts in plants. On the other end of the spectrum, would we classify groups or societies as organisms, with individuals carrying out specialized purposes? Is a society, nation or company alive? Perhaps not in the biological sense we commonly use the words, just like Alice. But that might just be our own carbon-based bias ;)

<comment><USER6> A gear, by itself, is not a machine.

A skin cell, by itself, cannot function or survive as a living organism.

<comment><USER7> How long would the average human survive if placed in an environment with no other humans?

<comment><USER8> With food and water, pretty long I'd say. Whether they'd stay sane is a different matter.

<comment><USER6> Meh, we're still losing sanity even when around other people. Sanity is relative.

<comment><USER9> You should see a psychologist if you feel like that.

<comment><USER6> So, are you unaware of the mental health crisis that's been popping up in 1st world countries in the past, oh, I don't know, 10-20 years?

<comment><USER9> I am, that's why I'm suggesting you seek professional help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's simpler and more general to consider that "life" simply refers to any member of a lineage of self-replicating cellular phenomena on Earth. Anything else is just a description of said phenomena.

Alive/dead seems to me to be a generic descriptor for any dynamic phenomena that has a limited time span. Stars that are actively maintaining hydrostatic equilibrium could be called "alive", planets with plate tectonics and atmosphere could be considered "alive", which is to say that they are a dynamic process that is still active. It just so happens that _life_ is also a dynamic process and therefore goes through a period of "alive" time followed by a state change where we become inactive and "die".

<comment><USER11> Under this definition, it's meaningless to speak of life on other planets. What would you call xenoreplicators?

<comment><USER10> That's exactly what I'm getting at! My idea here is strongly influenced by the thinking of Stanislaw Lem, who tackles this problem extensively in his works. He points out that it's very earth/bio-centric to assume that "life" on other planets would resemble in any way life on earth, and comes up with hypothetical life-forms that demonstrate this principle.

If we come up with some abstract definition of "life", then it seems like "life" is a fundamental thing of which "life on earth" is just one particular manifestation. Following that, we imagine that there are other specific instances in the universe that implement that general principle.

On the contrary, I think biological life is highly determined by its history and the geo-chemical particulars of earth itself, not by some fundamental principle. If we find extra-terrestrial "life" it's possible that the history and geo-chemical particulars of its evolution are so different from ours that we fail to recognize it as life at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An incredible piece of work, thank you Santa Fe Institute!

</comment><comment><USER13> To be even more pedantic: how do you distinguish between different instances of life? Do you require them to be a minimum distance apart? What if they are sitting right next to each other? Do you require them to be separable by a minimum distance? What if they need each other's presence (e.g. mother and unborn child)? Perhaps the only thing we can say for sure is that the universe is alive.

</comment><comment><USER14> The sofa is an example of the concept of an "extended phenotype," isn't it?

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

</comment><comment><USER15> There was a long-running definition debate on the now-semi-defunct C2 wiki: [http://wiki.c2.com/?DefinitionOfLife](http://wiki.c2.com/?DefinitionOfLife)

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems to be a semantic argument. That is, an argument that attempts to describe or reframe an existing semantic meaning.

It is interesting in the way it attempts to shoehorn this meaning into broader idea of information theory (or perhaps also pan-psychism or stoic philosophy). However, rather than taking the lead from information theory, that nothing in particular is special or has meaning, the article digs it's semantic heels in and claims a differentiation between life and not-life. Why? Or at least, why the arbitrary line it has drawn?

All particles process information as far as we can tell. Why the differentiation between those things we _" know"_ to be alive vs those we are not sure of. Surely any decent improvement on the current semantic categorisation of life cannot take as a starting point that very categorisation.

Whenever i read someone trying to redraw semantic definitions always reminds me of xkcd 927.

</comment><comment><USER17> Are ideas alive? They are the replicating units, after all. The concept of capitalism is certainly alive and well.

Both genes and DNA are alive?Red blood cells are as dead as hair. But still as alive as a non reproducing grandma.

James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis is relevant here -- even the earth's air is as alive as our body's the intercellular protein matrix.</comment>