Your name is way too long for your ID - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/12/janice-lokelani-keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NP_Top_Stories+%28National+Post+-+Top+Stories%29 <comment><USER2> See also "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names": [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/) (This falls under point #6)

<comment><USER3> But should we really worry about the 0.01% outlier who has seven different names, each consisting of some kind of personal scribble that changes depending on the phase of the moon?

More on topic, why should official systems allow for names of arbitrary length? Obviously your 1800 character preference for last name is not going to fit on all standard forms of identification. A standards-compliant name should be issued and you can use your preferred name for personal matters.

<comment><USER4> > the 0.01% outlier who has seven different names, each consisting of some > kind of personal scribble that changes depending on the phase of the moon?

I cannot adequately express my dislike for this kind of mockery. Seriously, fucking stop it.

<comment><USER2> Agreed.

The real issue is that too many programmers apply their own cultural norms to the issue of naming, in ways which privilege their particular culture at the expense of others'.

(You want to be able to identify people uniquely? Fine: allocate them a globally unique ID string within your own system. Then let them link this to whatever the hell they want -- be it an Anglophone forename-middlename-surname string sequence, or something _entirely different_ that fits their cultural requirements. Once you get into designing a procrustean name storage architecture and insisting that everyone uses their true name, then you are inflicting your own culture's naming requirements on them, which is offensive at best. Especially when it _isn 't necessary_.)

<comment><USER3> Sure. You go ahead and create a "culturally sensitive" system that allows people to create randomly changing names based on multiple character sets and unlimited length. On an infrastructure that was put in place in 1980 with a minimal budget just to get something running quickly because it was supposed to be temporary.

Most systems aren't going to be built with infinite flexibility. Some might argue that wouldn't even be possible. And perhaps it has absolutely nothing to do with the programmer's own cultural norms, but the system they are programming on, the budget they are dealing with, and their level of competency. Not every action that is offensive to a particular group is done deliberately to offend that group or even with the knowledge that it could be offensive.

<comment><USER5> >Not every action that is offensive to a particular group is done deliberately to offend that group

Irrelevant.

>or even with the knowledge that it could be offensive.

Irrelevant to your argument, which is that we should continue doing it even after we figure out that it's offensive, because fuck them.

<comment><USER6> Meh. The .01% comment is perfectly relevant. Should the system be re-organized from the ground up and new licenses issued to everyone in the USA to accomodate last names of her length? I can't wait to carry around my postcard size license in my back pocket.

The system was written to work for the 99.9% of users it serves, the other 0.01% will unfortunately have to deal with the problem of being outliers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am a U.S. citizen who recently moved to Japan. When I entered the country, my first and middle names were combined to create a 20 character given name that appears on my Japan-issued ID.

Ignoring the more common issues of computer systems not accepting non-Japanese names, it has been a bureaucratic nightmare, struggling with applying for credit cards, opening banking and investment accounts, and linking things together, as each system has different lengths limits for names, and in some systems my name is input as Unicode "double width romaji", which in some systems will not match the otherwise identical ASCII version of the name.

I truly wish I was offered the ability during immigration to just drop the middle name, but even then my first name is longer than some systems' 5 character limit, where I am often put in as "Cortl".

<comment><USER8> > "double width romaji"

The double-width latin characters are the bane of every data analysis using Asian data. It's a roll of the dice whether any given Latin character will be in typical ASCII form or double-width form.

I'm sure there's some "seriously insensitive character comparison" library out there, but it's not built into my SQL server's "LIKE" operator, that's for sure.

<comment><USER9> The seriously insensitive character comparison you're looking for is NFKC normalization (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_equivalence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_equivalence)).

You would probably be able to normalize all your strings before putting them into your database. You'd lose no functionality unless at some point later you really did need to distinguish "C" from "C".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a similar problem. I have a Brazilian name which means I have multiple middle names which normally means it can't fit in the required space.

When I renewed my UK Passport they just decided to lose one of my names. I was furious, but it became clear I'd need to go through administrative hell to correct it, and I needed the passport at the time.

Some time later, I've just given up on having my full name. I prefer just to give out a firstname lastname and ignore my middlenames. Its just far too much hassle to go through. As far as I am concerned, I have an external name which fits in ASCII and complies with anglo-centric formulae and an internal name which doesn't.

Thats just my personal choice though. My sister is defiant and managed to get her full name on by demanding that it was an unhyphenated triple barreled surname.

<comment><USER11> Is what your sister claimed sort-of correct anyway? An English middle name is generally a given name that can perfectly well be totally unrelated to family history.

It's my understanding that Brazilian (and Portuguese) "middle names" are usually if not always family names, are they not?

Insisting that they are part of your surname sounds like it might be the easiest way to get it accepted - it is common enough in Europe to have surnames with spaces. E.g. a Dutch surname like "Van der Vaart", or "Van Helsing", so it's quite likely various agencies etc. run into that often enough.

<comment><USER12> It's quite usual to have two family names, one from your mother's side and another from your father's. Usually the father's family name comes last, but it's by no means a rule, more of a social norm (and somewhat fading).

Additionally, it's also perfectly reasonable to have two or more "first names".

The consequence of all of this, and having four names myself, is that I'm always confused what I'm supposed to fill in as my first and last names. I end up using just my very first and very last, but i always feel like I'm being disrespectful towards my mother's family for the omission.

<comment><USER13> Something similar used to be common with the english too. My great-great- great-great grandfather was "Thomas Tindall Gore", and Tindall was his mother's maiden name. This sort of thing was quite common all throughout the 1700's and 1800's, but seems to have went out of style in the last hundred years or so.

<comment><USER14> I actually assumed, well into my teenage years, that people's middle names were their mother's maiden name, as that's the case for me, my sister, and my cousins.

<comment><USER13> Another interesting one I would see a lot is <mother's father's name> <father's father's name> <last name>.

For example, My dad was Charles Marvin Gore. His mother's father was Charles Maltbie. His father's father was Marvin Gore.

I don't think I ever saw the two modes combined though, so no example of a Charles Marvin Maltbie Gore. Although that is just in my family. It might have happened in others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Let's for a minute assume that we as developers will be able to agree on some sort of best practice. The "Falsehoods" article and the W3C page mentioned in the comments are good, valuable resources and I really hope developers across the world will take them into consideration.

Then it is time to show your form to the client and he/she goes nuts!

"People must enter their full name". Okay they can just write their full name into this text input. "No they must enter both first and last name". But not everyone in the world has a first and last name. Icelandic people? "Just require a space in the name". Like nobody in China has? "Don't argue with me, I am the client, require a space!!!ONE!"

It's discussions like these I feel I can't really win. Most clients aren't technical, they are chock full of assumptions and they are not paying me to argue with them, they are paying me to require first name and last name and quick!

I understand that education needs to happen but there are limits as to how much education your client accepts from you before he goes to a different shop.

<comment><USER16> Iceland has both first and last names, afaik. It's just the inheritance (first name + suffix becomes child's last name) and sorting that changes (usually by first rather than last name).

<comment><USER17> China has first names and last names too. I don't see why that client is a problem. Especially since I'd have no idea how to isolate the family name without having multiple fields or a space. It seems like either half could be 1-2 characters, so what do you do with a three character full name?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the level of ignorance in the comments on that article. e.g.:

> I doubt she can even pronounce it.

or:

> I am surprised her first name is Janice? She should change it to > IamsofullofmyselfbecauseIamsospecialbecauseImarriedahawainman.

...and the list goes on. Just because your heritage has shorter names or names that don't sound anything like hers doesn't mean your culture is "right" or something. People need to learn to be more open-minded.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is an interesting article on w3.org about names and websites assumptions: [http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal- names](http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names)

<comment><USER19> I've tried to promote one of their suggestions -- having just one big name field, plus another for "How do acquaintances address you?" to let the user enter what they want to be called in an email greeting. So far, not one employer has gone for it. Just too radical an idea -- to let the user self- identify.

<comment><USER20> Don't have just one. I'd suggest two:

* What is your full name, including title? (e.g. Mr John Jules Smith, Señor José Hernández Fernádéz, Kim Ban-Moon)

* How do you wish to be referred to? (e.g. Mr Smith, John, Sñr Hernández, Mr Kim)

* How should we address you? (e.g. Mr Smith or John)

<comment><USER19> The one I've considered adding is: "How would people would expect to find you in the phone directory?"

Which covers the Icelandic given-name first scenario, as well as the matronymic vs patronymic issue. This puts the person in control of _what_ to sort on, while _how_ to sort it would be controlled by the active user's culture settings.

<comment><USER21> This has the problem of any user under 20 asking "What's a phone directory?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've work with names and other demographic data darn near my entire career. I've also had name issues due to the length of one of my names.

Things are better and more accommodating than twenty years ago when every byte was precious. But some cultures and individuals get ridiculous. I'm not allocating 400 characters of space in a standard name field just because you want to include your family tree, PGP key, DNA sequence and homeland geology in your name. (I will put this in another table, and link it relationally so the software and the people can access your true name.)

<comment><USER23> > But some cultures and individuals get ridiculous. I'm not allocating 400 > characters of space in a standard name field just because you want to > include your family tree, PGP key, DNA sequence and homeland geology in your > name. (I will put this in another table, and link it relationally so the > software and the people can access your true name.)

This attitude boils down to "I write software that is easy for me to write, not easy for you to use." Why should any user want to use the software a developer that is hostile to their existence?

<comment><USER24> The key is obviously to make some trade-off between usability and difficulty during creation. If the software is never finished because running test cases with 10e10 chars-long names takes too long, users won't even be given the choice of not using it.

That said, I'd love to have my PGP fingerprint on my ID :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As much as I want to agree, there needs to be _some_ standardization. Whether its the supported character set or the name lengths, it's literally impossible to support everything. Personally I think every state should have a list of legal constraints for a name - maybe they already do.

<comment><USER26> For god's sake. It's just a piece of paper. If a name is too long for it, well, damn, spend some additional time and customize it and print this one special id.

<comment><USER27> This. Whether for this specific case or in general, the rigidity of these sort of governmental/administrative systems dehumanize us. We are engaged in a conversation about the standardization of names, about applying limits to our given, or chosen names because of? What? Suppressing cultural or personal identities...why? So everyone can parse your name on an ID?

For a community that routinely cries out against national ID laws and champions the right to anonymity, many of the comments on this thread surprise me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The article links to another article about names in New Zealand, which need government approval.

([http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/01/world/asia/new-zealand- sta...](http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/01/world/asia/new-zealand-stange-baby- names/index.html))

I thought that some people were just sending comedy names because, well, that's what some people do.

But some parents aren't joking around:

> Four years ago, a 9-year-old girl was taken away from her parents by the > state so that her name could be changed from "Talula Does the Hula From > Hawaii."

([http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/24/familyan...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/24/familyandrelationships.newzealand))

> _A family court judge, Rob Murfitt, gave the order after hearing that the > child was embarrassed about her name and had refused to reveal it to > friends. "She told people her name was K because she feared being mocked and > teased," the child's lawyer, Colleen MacLeod, told the court._

> _The judge criticised parents who give their offspring bizarre names, saying > it exposed children to ridicule among their peers._

> _" The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment that this > child's parents have shown in choosing this name. It makes a fool of the > child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily," > he said._

</comment><comment><USER29> _scribbles a note to himself_ "who the f__k would need a name field in UI longer than 32 symbols" is not a valid argument.

</comment><comment><USER30> And that's why everyone should be referred to by their assigned 128 bit GUID

</comment><comment><USER31> "disrespectful to all Hawaiian people" some people will say and make themselves believe anything to get their 15 minutes of fame.

I am foreigner living in UK and local council and government constantly screw up foreigners names, we always have a good laugh about it with friends.

<comment><USER32> Did you note that she lives in Hawaii? Screwing up foreigner's names is one thing. Screwing up the locals is another.

The locals in this case still resent the way that the USA took over in a coup. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Kingdom_of_Haw...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Kingdom_of_Hawaii) for the history.

<comment><USER33> There's actually more to the story.

She's not actually Hawaiian, but she married a native Hawaiian and took his name. He passed away and she wants to keep the name to remember him by.

In Hawaii right now there seem to be two prevailing schools of thought.

1) It's the state's responsibility to respect everyone's name.

2) She shouldn't have to change her name, but they don't have to put the whole thing on her ID

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> You don't have to go too far. Twitter doesn't let me put my full name either.

I have a typical Russian name (Vladislav) and a last name that consists of 11 letters. Is that really too long for Twitter to handle?

<comment><USER35> My full name is "Fırat Batuhan İçöz", it is 17 characters (including the space between my first and middle name). And Twitter didn't have a problem with it, when I used my full name in the past.

And just tried adding my first name again, it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Am I the only one who wants to know how it is pronounced and what the meaning possibly is?

I'm with her on this one but I am curious how a government would handle an ancestral name that has glyphs.

<comment><USER37> How it's pronounced: [http://www.khon2.com/2013/09/10/action-line-state- alters-wom...](http://www.khon2.com/2013/09/10/action-line-state-alters- womans-name-after-it-fails-to-fit-on-drivers-license/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Similar story here... My first and middle name were concatenated on my social security card, and I lost a few letters in the process too.

</comment><comment><USER39> On most days start-up programmers think about carving out a solution for a large enough serviceable, available, market. Time to market matters. Mark it as an open issue and move on. Etc. On other days, programmers are advised that it is culturally insensitive to leave anyone behind. People are mock-scolded that if they don't allocate their efforts to the 0.01% subset of their name system, they are bad people, whatever start-up dream they had.

BTW, my family used the Scandinavian "-sen" system of naming, until the government told everyone they had to stop, that heritable names made tracking easier. I'm one of the thousands/millions of people worldwide locked in as "son of Jens."

</comment><comment><USER40> She should live in India, all her identification cards will have shortened names automatically because the data entry operator names the citizen here and not parents. I have so much trouble with Isaac and Issac :(

</comment><comment><USER41> That reminds me that SAP has yet to respond to my question "Is SAP Business One not sold in Sweden". For some reason it has been decided that 50 characters are enough for a field that contains first middle- and last- name. Normally you can just deal with the extremely long name when and if they occur, but 50 characters is pushing it a bit.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've had arguments with people in the past about this sort of thing: names are overrated and not a unique identifier. If the UID on the identification card matches the info in the system, the card ID is valid and up-to-date, the face matches, and the name is close, it's a match.

</comment><comment><USER43> solution 1: spill over to second card.

solution 2: hash function

</comment><comment><USER44> Similarly: here in Iceland your official full name cannot exceed 32 characters, including spaces, due to legacy database constraints. It's retarded and has been highly debated recently.

</comment><comment><USER45> until recently I couldn't use my last name in Facebook, and its pattern it's very common in Spanish: "de la Fuente"

</comment><comment><USER46> On a tangent - NP _really_ need to obfuscate those ID's better. Pixellating is pretty readily reversible - you just need the base card image (find it or shop it), and you can then brute-force by iterating through numbers/letters as needed for each field, pixellating, and comparing the outputs.

Edit: in fact, as they've included two images with the same info, pixellated differently, you could almost certainly heuristically solve without brute- forcing. Eigenvectors, baby.

<comment><USER47> You reminded me of this: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_me...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_means_dodgy_numbers_and_dangerous_designs/)

I wonder if you did reverse out her name if it would have all the right characters in it, and if it didn't, what sort of changes to would make her family heritage in the process? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Note to self: never hire a Hawaiian to write code!

I can just picture it now: function convertThisDecimalDeclaredByMyCoworkerTimToBackWhenWeStartedThisCompanyThreeYearsAgoAnInteger() {}

<comment><USER49> Oh so like Objective-C?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why there are so many programming languages? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The big reason is that different languages do different things well, and new languages try to capture the good traits of other languages or language families. Maybe you like the JVM and the surplus of packages that are available for it, but you hate writing Java code and want a Lisp-like language instead: that's how you get Clojure. Or maybe you like C and its syntax and native performance, but you want the type-safety, memory-safety, and support for concurrency that modern languages offer: you've got Rust. Or maybe you just love Ruby's syntax and idioms but want the performace of machine code: that's the motivation behind Crystal, which is a newer, less popular language.

It's all about the transmission of ideas. "I'm going to take traits A and B from language X, and traits C and D from language Y, all while avoiding traits E and F from language Z." You try to isolate the good ideas from languages and suppress the bad ones -- but your new language is sure to have some bad ideas of its own, so somebody's bound to reinterpret it later if your language gets sufficiently popular. There's no language that's perfect for every single use- case, and there never will be, so this will probably continue on forever.

</comment><comment><USER3> We have no idea what we are doing.

More seriously, Languages are linked to cognition and thought processes. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're a serialisation or marshalling of thought but you could see language as the rules that dictate the semantics of communication.

Like human languages, they simultaneously evolve and cross pollenate as we improve our 'vocabulary of semantics'.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anything that is "general purpose" can have many many variations. This is exactly the case with general purpose programming languages. Special purpose language (eg: SQL) doesn't lead to such situations.

</comment><comment><USER5> Because everyone takes Compilers in school.

</comment><comment><USER6> Because people refuse to use hand-written machine instructions!</comment>


Why the 'Women in Tech' Problem May Actually Be a Silicon Valley Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/women-tech-problem-silicon-valley.html?cid=sy01304

<comment><USER2> I'm a woman in tech who has only been on the periphery of the Valley (mostly working out of Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, etc).

The sexism is everywhere. However, the brogrammer culture which has made an art of condescending to women PLUS all that PUA bs, is quite specific to SV and may even be an SV export (when I have seen it outside SV, it tends to a derivative).

In some other places they just treat women like shit outright without writing long articles about it :) (Like the founder who told me he was going to have a wet dream about me, after I kicked him out of a startup competition he sucked at.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Attitudes towards women in Tech would be a little more relaxed if a fair number of developers would have the courage to face the truth and come out of their closets.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've thought about this a lot. I don't actually think its a tech issue. I think it's a finance issue ? The finance sector is known for being an old money boys club driven by highly competitive people. The finance's sector honed in to Silicon Valley. I would argue Silicon Valley's Women problem is due to Finance/Business Culture leaking heavily into Silicon Valley for last decade.

<comment><USER5> Disagree with that since New York is filled with finance and financial tech companies too. Clearly, they're doing something right there and not in Silicon Valley.

It is more likely to be an SV power thing where the nerds finally get to talk to women and only see them as objects.

Women have always been in finance (not limited to Wall St.) as even though trading is glamorous but commercial/retail banking employs a very large number of developers for boring CRUD jobs, as customer service personnel, backoffice and middle-back-office type work.

So women being treated better in the finance sector is more not less likely.

<comment><USER4> I would respectfully disagree. I understand there are women in finance industry, but how many women are wall street traders, investors, brokers ? It seems like not enough [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-sasha-galbraith/to- profit-f...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-sasha-galbraith/to-profit- financial-indus_b_3353762.html) . Not many women are at the top of the finance sector in the it's specialty, and not many women are at the top of software development which is silicon valley's specialty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if the Silicon Valley model of VC-funded startups is particularly hostile to women?</comment>


5 foods it's cheaper to grow - <AUTHOR> http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/5FoodsItsCheaperToGrow.aspx <comment><USER3> In terms of just money, it's far cheaper to grow your own food. It does, however, take a _significant_ time and effort commitment. Very few plants are simply plant-and-forget[1]. As usual, when you go to the store, you pay for the convenience more than for the product itself. Nonetheless, even when you consider time & labor, home-grown food probably comes out cheaper because a significant amount of the convenience markup comes from transportation, which gets eliminated entirely.

Even with the work it takes, I would strongly recommend it. Remember, the true cost of the time and effort you put in is the opportunity cost of what you could be doing instead with your time. For a large chunk of the population, that's TV or facebook (farmville, ha ha). Plus, there are intangible benefits beyond the retail value of the food itself. Personally, I find it immensely rewarding to eat food that I made myself from seed to plate. It tends to taste better too--foods in the grocery store are bred for fast harvest, lower soil requirements, long shelf life and durability during transportation. It should come as no surprise that they converge in most discernible attributes towards wax and cardboard. Meanwhile, the tomato seed varieties you can pick up at your local nursery are bred to optimize salad, pasta sauce, gazpacho and lasagna.

[1] Unless you live in Hawai`i. Seriously, you can throw a stick at any bare patch of ground on that island and come back to a tree in a few years. Lava is nutritious.

<comment><USER4> >In terms of just money, it's far cheaper to grow your own food

Not necessarily - thats the point of the article Even in just cost of seeds and fertilizer you can't grow wheat more cheaply than iowa or saskatchewan.

<comment><USER5> There is a story about a well know homebrewer who wanted to try to grow and malt his own barley for brewing. The story goes that after the wildlife were done with his barley patch and losses during winnowing he had managed to turn 50 pounds of seed into 20 pounds of barley.

<comment><USER6> I would think that the hops are the determining factor in cost and taste of beer. there are just so many varieties of hops and there is a shortage right now because of the subsidies in other industries pulling farmers away from it to focus on corn. (I think it's corn but it has been a while since I read it) The owner of sam adams brewery had a hop subsidy to small brewers at the prices he could get to help foster the microbreweries around.

<comment><USER5> I don't think he was doing it to necessarily save money but to have more control over the process, or possibly to create a under-modified malt suitable for decoction mashing. None the less, he turned 50 pounds of seed into 20 pounds of seed.

There are 50+ types of specialty grains, each with distinct flavor and color contributions to the beer. In a more malt forward style like a scotch ale the grains certainly do provide a lot of the flavor profile, and there are at least 100+ strains of yeast for that matter.

Actually hop prices have dropped to half or less of their highs during last years shortage. Disclaimer, I work part time at my local home brew shop to support my brewing hobby with the employee discount.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. I didn't know that the hop prices fell. The craft beer prices have increased a bit since then. Need to support the local brewers though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Growing herbs was one of my best decisions (lifehacks?) of the summer. I have found basil to be the most rewarding and robust herb to grow. Although my friends have a mint plant that keeps on coming back.

You also don't need to be living in a rural or suburban area to grow herbs. I live in Brooklyn and have herbs growing on my fire escape, as do many of my neighbors. If you're lucky enough to have outdoor space, a good trick is to take tires and fill them with dirt to grow crops. Friends of mine have been successful with tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers.

I'm an advocate of urban farming and I'd love to hear from other people growing food in an urban area. I'm dying to try Window Farms (<http://windowfarms.org>), which looks like a great project and has built a robust community around urban farming.

One more thing: cat people, grow catnip! It's ~$1 for a bag of seeds and keeps on coming back. Much cheaper than anything store bought.

EDIT: Currently growing basil, rosemary, cilantro (barely), chives, mint, catnip, parsley. Would love to hear what has been successful or any advice since I'm kind of new to growing.

<comment><USER8> A warning: A friend gardening on a fire escape in Brooklyn came home from work one day to find all of her plants gone. It turns out it's illegal to keep things there and they can be removed without warning.

Regarding mint, it's super robust and will expand if allowed to. You can also surround other plants with mint, because most pests don't like the flavor (that's probably why it evolved that way) it will act as a barrier. Ants, mosquitos, cockroaches all don't like it. I grow Pineapple Mint because it looks cool. :)

<comment><USER7> Good to know about growing on the fire escape. Before growing herbs I had no idea that there were so many varieties of mint: spearmint, orange, chocolate, pineapple. Will you bring the mint indoors during the winter or let go dormant and come back next spring/summer?

<comment><USER8> I live in SF now, so I leave it out year round, maybe brining it in on the coldest nights. In NY though, if they are in pots or raised above the ground, I wouldn't let them freeze. If the roots get frozen they may never come back. Plants in the ground don't get as cold usually so they will be better off. (Your mileage may vary, I'm still learning this myself!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've got a small orchard of 8 fruit trees [1]. I've found that if you want to grow your own food, the time investment for fruit is the lowest per unit product. I'd estimate that I spend less than 5 hours per year on my trees, total.

Maintenance consists of pruning in the fall, culling fruit early in the season, fertilizing occasionally, and periodic spraying. For pruning, decide how much you think you ought to cut back, and then cut twice that amount. Do not skip the spraying. People who want their food grown all naturally really just wind up feeding the bugs and other pests.

A given type of fruit tends to come ripe all at once. I'll be harvesting my peaches, say, over 1.5 - 2 weeks. For soft fruits like peaches or plums, you can't keep them very long. You've got to preserve them or give them away. So plan your crops accordingly.

If you want to do this, now is the time to start planning. Even more than tomatoes, you need to time it right. Trees need to be planted either in very early spring, or in the fall.

[1] 2 peaches, 2 apples, 2 pears, 1 plum, 1 pluot

<comment><USER10> TIL: plum crossed with apricot is a pluot (or aprium).

> _People who want their food grown all naturally really just wind up feeding > the bugs and other pests._

I think that's part of the point. Wiping out bugs with pesticides has far reaching effects and not just on the bugs directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cheap is not the biggest advantage. Home grown vegetables taste better, especially haricots verts and tomatoes.

Some fruits are ridiculously expensive though like raspberries and blackberries. They also require less weeding than most vegetables and they survive the winter. From one blackberry plant you can get 20kg of blackberries. This can cost like €300 in the supermarket.

<comment><USER12> For blackberries, do what the hipsters call "foraging" or what folks when I was a kid called "picking them" from wild bushes. Cheap.

(Make sure you're not close to a road, garbage dump, etc. And they may not grow in your area. Void where prohibited.)

After going to the trouble of doing so, you might just prefer to spend the money for a little tub of them. Still, it's an option.

<comment><USER13> Oh, but the flavor of wild, ripe blackberries is so much better then even the ones I can get at the farmers market. Along with tomatoes, they have the biggest difference in flavor home-grown vs bought. Also blackberries myst be the easiest thing in the world to grow (here in the bay area anyway). Getting rid of them when you are done might be another story...

<comment><USER14> Wild blackberries are actually small and not that tasty. If they are good, they are almost certainly feral domestics; maybe spread by birds or an old farm was nearby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fruit tree numbers are a bit silly; land isn't free, they should really be including the rent/mortgage cost of the land too. The returns would be less impressive at that point I'd imagine.

<comment><USER16> Almost every property you purchase in the United States will have setbacks and easements on it which make a large portion of the land unbuildable. For example, a typical suburban lot in my area will have a 5 foot utility easement along the sides and back, then a 20 foot front building setback. It seems to me that you're decreasing the effectiveness of your mortgage payment by not doing something with that area like gardening on it.

<comment><USER17> Just be careful where your property lines are when you plant your trees. Whether a tree is on one property or another seems to be a common dispute. However, if you're giving your neighbor several pounds of free fruit, they may be more amicable to a tree growing a foot or two on their side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> After taking into account the cost of time and effort tending plants, it's almost always cheaper (dollars per pound) to buy food. Still, I'm an avid gardener because of the other benefits besides cost.

1\. Better taste. A tomato out of the garden is almost a different fruit (vegetable?) than one from the store.

2\. Personal satisfaction. There is just something rewarding about tending to a plant and enjoying the fruit after the work.

3\. Aesthetics. I have a lemon and a grapefruit tree I keep indoors. They look and smell nice. The fruit is just an added bonus.

<comment><USER6> interesting. How big do they get indoors?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> At the other end of the spectrum from the fruit tree at least, is sprouting.

It's dead easy (I think I _could_ manage, but luckily my fiancee got bitten by some kind of sprouting-bug lately), doesn't require much space (the window sill is perfect) and very cheap.

Around here, a mini tub of store-bought sprouts can run around €1.5 (say, $2). That buys probably around 500 g of dried mung beans, which will give a volume of sprouts that easily beats the store-bought pack by a factor of, oh, 50 is probably very conservative. It's almost scary, at first.

We cheat and use a sprouter (a small plastic container with two levels of strainer shelves, a bottom, and a transparent lid) that was around €10-15, so it'll take a while to get our investment back.

For the impatient, sprouting is of course also very fast, you'll be harvesting in a manner of days.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sure, most of those plants can be cheaper to buy than grow, if you treat your garden shop clerk as a used car salesman and let him connive you into buying every unnecessary over marketed garden gadget in the shop. But really, most plants will just require a shovel, trowel, cheap fertilizer, and a bit of time. Wheat and others are obvious exceptions, because their actual value is so low it's easy for any expense to exceed the benefit. Wheat also benefits hugely from mechanization, but the initial costs are high. It's basically an oddball. Potatoes don't fit that pattern, just buy seed potatoes once, then let a few grow "eyes", cut them off, throw them in the ground and weed them a bit. Done.

</comment><comment><USER21> A) Tomatoes are a must grow and pretty simple. The taste of a tomato that never touches refrigeration is almost a different fruit. Easy to grow in a 5 gallon bucket on your deck or wherever.

B) Carrots are my favorite fresh. I can't believe they said there wasn't much of a difference between store bought and garden bought. Although I have noticed that I have gotten a few exceptional carrots at time. It may be that their such a durable vegetable buyers can be negligent and leave them sitting around for ages.

C) Asparagus plants take a while to establish but are easier than growing a fruit tree! Key is to plant them correctly and to lime the hell out of them every fall / spring. They thrive under the right soil conditions.

And on the foraging front, Mushroom Foraging is actually pretty simple for a few location dependent varieties. Chicken of the woods or Sulfur Shelf is blooming all over the place this time of year in New England. Hen of The Woods is also bloomer, although not as easy to spot.

My favorite grow-your own was Giant Shiitake's from Fungi Perfect. Buy spores online (30$), find a suitable tree(30$ or free) and a days of work to get started. Water in droughts and you will get tons of mushrooms twice a year for 2-3 years. I had 3 fruiting logs and I would get 6" deep in a grocery bag of portabello sized mushrooms! This was one of my more satisfying hobbies, although the logs died in a drought last summer =(

<http://fungi.com/plugs/plugs.html>

<comment><USER5> B) Carrots - my father-in-law did carrots once. Horribly bitter taste. I don't know if there are different varieties or if it is just soil composition but ugh.

<comment><USER22> Probably soil composition. I've noticed wide variation in taste of carrots from different parts of my garden. I don't bother growing them anymore because they are so picky about good soil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> You have to invest quite a lot of time to get everything to work. Nevertheless, growing your own food is still very popular here in Russia, when almost every family (even with <600$ total monthly income) has its village cottage with some plants. You get to harvest and eat fresh only late summer and early autumn though.

</comment><comment><USER24> Well I have a small garden but try and get maximum yield from it. I've got Chives, Onions, Spring onions, basil, oregano, Thyme, and Rosemary. I have lettuce, tomatoes,zucchini,snowpeas and broccoloi, and celery. I have a small mandarin tree that yields by the bucketfull. In my planning I'm pulling out some decorative trees and replacing with a banana patch and I'm experimenting with pineapples.

I would estimate it's mostly been a money pit - the yields have been nowhere near enough to justify the time or money. For me it's a chance to do something real (I work from home) and a great learning opportunity for the kids.

The other thing not to forget is growing flowers. They're much easier and you can have fresh flowers inside the house for a very small outlay, or just keep them in the garden and enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER25> With potatoes, when you have a few starting to get past it in the cupboard or potato box (going soft, growing on you, etc), just throw them in the ground and they will take off.

For anyone with a small amount of garden space, look into the book One Magic Square (I think that's what it's called). Local author/gardener, suggests square-metre plantings that are complementary or that will give you crops suiting certain meals (salads, soups, etc). The other big advantage is that you add a square-metre and get used to it before you take it further.

IME, one risk otherwise is diving in too deep and finding you've bitten off more than you can chew (well, manage by weeding, watering, etc). Instead, start incrementally.

</comment><comment><USER26> Growing my own food is something that was instilled in me by my parents - <USER2> always had fruit trees, nuts and veggies growing in our backyard. My Dad having an MS in Agronomy didnt hurt either.

Currently in backyard in CA:

-Plums, lemons, oranges, pomegranate (my personal favorite), avocado and fig tree.

-Eggplant, jalapeños, bellpepper, corn

-Mint is the only herb we're growing

Beyond watering every evening (I actually find this therapeutic in a way), the twice a year fertilizer (the fresh stuff we get from Dad's friend) and once a year pruning, our backyard garden provides us food year round.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd add to that list Blueberry bushes if you have the right type of soil (acidic/well-drained). They don't need pesticide spraying and each bush can grow up to 15 pounds/year of berries.

My yard project this fall is digging out a row of clay soil and making a raised amended bed for 8-9 blueberry highbushes. Blueberry plants are finicky about soil PH and drainage, so I am prepping the bed with sulfur, coarse sand, peat, and ground pine bark chips and getting it right for planting by spring 2012. I expect they will produce ~100 pounds per year in 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm shocked they felt it necessary to mention that it's not worth your time to grow your own wheat. That's possibly the most obvious gardening suggestion ever.

</comment><comment><USER29> Not exactly a vegetable, but making your own beer is cost effective, and tastes great (Though it will turn you into a beer snob).

It costs around $100-$200 upfront investment, and then about $50 to make 5 gallons. The time cost isn't that bad either, 3 hours on the first day, then 15 minutes, once a week for three weeks.

</comment><comment><USER30> In terms of time and effort, it is far cheaper to simply go buy food the grocery store. On the other hand, we need to start taking responsiblity for the food we eat. Growing your own means you don't need to worry about food recalls or pesticide use. And, as other commenters have noted, homegrown does taste better.

</comment><comment><USER31> Totally does not account for the amount of time it takes to plant, water, weed, fertilize, pest-proof and on and on. $735 to maintain a garden for a year? Sure, if you consider your time as zero-cost.

In my experience, those heads of lettuce are delicious, rewarding, and cost 10-100x what you pay in the store.

<comment><USER32> Crazy talk - greens are so freaking easy to grow! You don't need to go crazy, just buy a couple bags of cheap soil, mound it up on whatever shit dirt you have, surround it with some rocks and water every other day. Water in the morning while you drink the coffee, takes a few minutes.

Way way way cheaper than the store - I am not detracting from my work or life in any way when I stand outside and water my (large) garden for thirty minutes while drinking coffee. Actually, it's one of the best ways I can think of to wake up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Do many people have advice on things that can grow inside an apartment?

I've heard/seen various lamp-based systems that have timers and things. I was curious if there are any particular plants that would grow in the relative dark of an apartment if I could get myself a barrel with some soil.

<comment><USER34> It'll cost you a fortune in electricity if _cough_ my friend's experience growing dope as a student is anything to go by.

I'm assuming your apartment has windows (or do you live in the dark?) so invest in some window boxes. You can grow herbs easily in those.

<comment><USER33> I have windows, but I also live next to some trees which makes direct sunlight limited.

I was hoping there was some secret vegetables/herbs that could deal with low- light. I guess that means things that would be possible to grow in the woods, like underbrush.

<comment><USER7> If your window gets sun, you can get herbs like basil, parsley, or mint to grow indoors. Currently I'm growing catnip indoors and I plan on moving some of my herbs indoors when it gets colder.

<comment><USER35> Is it too late in the year to start mint? I have a very similar situation to the OP; live in an apartment in SE Michigan with a window/balcony, but near trees. I'm assuming it'll have to come inside around mid-October.

<comment><USER34> Mint is like a crazy weed. It'll take over your garden given half a chance. It survives mild (UK) winters, but probably needs to be established before it will do that. So you might want to look for advice and maybe start it indoors for the first winter.

I did make a great discovery this year: chocolate mint (mentha piperita). The leaves taste like minty chocolate (you really have to try this -- you won't believe it until you do).

<comment><USER35> Just buy seeds on the Internet?

Also, I've heard conflicting reports about growing mint indoors over the winter; some sources say that mint needs to die down in the winter and won't survive year-round growing, but others don't mention it. Should I just plant two pots, one indoors and one out?

<comment><USER34> I've always bought it in pots, not tried it from seed. The pots are really cheap anyway (like $3 equivalent). All they need are watering, and if they die off, just get another pot ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> _I asked Steiner how I can tell if I can use a seed again. "It says on the package 'one-use seed' if it's been genetically modified," he says._

I sometimes wonder if we've gone too far with these genetic modifications.

<comment><USER14> Actually, except for heirloom varieties, most plants grown for decades have been hybrids - their parents are of different varieties, so their seeds produce different and usually far inferior products.

Newer patented varieties are _legally protected_ against being non-sexually propagated also, like taking cuttings from herbs or roses, to start new plants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> lemon tree....

<comment><USER38> Specifically, potted Meyer lemon tree :)

Expensive, but worth it.</comment></comment>


The conversation that led to Ruby being called Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/88819

<comment><USER2> I took the liberty of rewriting this in slightly more idiomatic English:

<http://pastebin.com/tHDPJsUt>

It is tricky: Japanese chat logs don't have all that much context to go on, and you have to make a judgment call as to what sort of "voice" they'd be speaking with. I gave them fairly informal young American programmer personalities but with just as much reason I could rewrite this to loko like it was two frat boys.

Disclaimer: I don't exactly go all-out for accuracy when translating to procrastinate about going to sleep.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! The one linked in the headline read like to chatbots randomly writing stuff at each other.

<comment><USER2> The one linked in the headline was the result of a professional programmer and OSS enthusiast spending probably an hour of their time doing something very difficult for the benefit of the community. The only reason they were able to spend that hour was because they had previously spent probably 10+ years studying English. Had they not spent that hour, the odds of me independently deciding to translate that email were zero. So, I would suggest upgrading that comment to "The one linked in the headline was a generous contribution to the community of the type which we should enthusiastically encourage."

Almost all professional translators strongly suggest that one translate exclusively from one's non-native language into one's native language. I think that is kind of a silly rule in the real world, but there is a reason it is so popular: idiomatically phrasing things in one's non-native language is _really freaking hard_. I've almost certainly produced Japanese much worse than that _when paid money to do so_.

More broadly, I'm reminded of a comment I heard from bilingualism debates when I was six: always remember, prior to criticizing someone for their accent, that it means they speak one language more than you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      keiju> But, perl is related to a shell.
      matz> Oh, I don't know that
      matz> never noticed that

Whoa. So today I learned that. Never noticed that either, all this time.

<comment><USER5> Was that a happy coincidence after the fact?

I always thought the official name was "Practical Extraction and Report Language", or perl for short.

At least that's according to the man pages on my linux machine.

<comment><USER6> May I suggest that if you (by "you" I mean the parent and siblings of my comment) are going to speculate, you might consider reading the Wikipedia article before going off in all directions. It's even got sources for some of the claims (although not all).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#Name>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, So Ruby was almost named Coral. Imagine programming in Coral on curtails.

Incidentally, there is actually a language named Coral ( a general purpose programming language based on ALGOL-60 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_66> )

<comment><USER8> Maybe you would call the framework "Reef". That would have been pretty cool.

<comment><USER7> Hell yes, 'Reef' would have totally kicked ass

<comment><USER9> But then us Ruby programmers would be called "Reefers".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      keiju> ruby
      keiju> a jewelry name after all
      matz> put it alongside kanji?

Just FYI, this refers to the simpler hiragana characters sometimes put next to kanji characters (for people who don't read kanji very well). This is also often a source of confusion for people who see the <ruby> HTML5 tag and think that it's for the Ruby language.

<comment><USER11> [Pedantic note] They're not just for people who can't read kanji well: they're also used to provide a phonetic gloss for proper names (where the pronunciation is ambiguous or unique), or in literary contexts to indicate the intended pronunciation where unorthodox kanji are used for nuance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So I'll be saying "What's the heck?" a lot for the rest of my life.

</comment><comment><USER13> Am I the only one who wanted to read the original Japanese?

<comment><USER14> A link to the original (scroll down a bit):

[http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby- dev/5...](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-dev/5173)

I might try my hand at a translation with better flow... although, remember, the original is a chat log. Chat logs read in retrospect usually don't flow as well as natural conversation!

<comment><USER14> Something like this, plus or minus English chat-slang:

(EDIT: dangit, I forgot that HN chops up linebreaks. hold on) (DOUBLE-EDIT: Text file from my Dropbox: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9485376/chattranslation.txt>)</comment></comment></comment>


Confused in Class? There's an App for that - <AUTHOR> http://understoodit.com/ <comment><USER3> Our CompSci Prof. uses something built in-house by students to evaluate who understands what & whatnot in real-time too.

How long is this around? Two years. Works.

He uses his iPad to present his slides wirelessly to our beamer and a student voluntarily manages the polls and when enough people haven't understood a topic, the student hits a button and the slide updates the graph, then the Prof focuses on that topic a little more.

That sounds more complicated than it is, it's dead easy and flawless, despite the fact that our Prof is an iDiot or iNerd, hehe :) He's just a huuge fan of everything Apple.

It challenges everyone to cooperate, thankfully it's anonymous, so we can fool around too, but the Prof notices that :D

In my eyes, the skill to built this is really low compared to the other stuff we've done, but it's a nice tool. Unfortunately most Prof just don't fucking care and go-on with their one-man-show.

PS: Our Prof uses the stats and data generated to create the exam also ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice concept! Although I can imagine this only works in large classrooms, as where I'm used to have pretty small sized classes (~30).

I have had the opportunity to experiment with something like a voting system. The teacher mixed his lecture with some (multiple choice) questions the students can answer via the voting system. This created a far more dynamic lecture with instant feedback on the answers provided. Maybe a feature you want to consider? Because with the smartphones and tablet these days you eliminate the need for an extra device (like we were experimenting with).

Besides this all, the site looks broken here (Fx 12.0, Vista) because the CSS is not loaded. IE8 in Vista is also messy (with a loaded CSS file).

<comment><AUTHOR> Adding multiple choice questions is certainly something I'm considering!

I'm using a web font from font deck and it seems to be slow loading which blocks the rest of the page from loading...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm the developer behind understoodit.com - any feedback on understoodit.com would be much appreciated!

<comment><USER5> Allow me to get out some luddite hate first:

-there's already an app for getting feedback if you don't understand... it's called RAISING YOUR HAND!!!!!11!

-are you going to add a "distractometer" to log how many times people are distracted by using and checking the app?

Ok, now that that's done. I would actually lose the "o-meter" phrasing and have the app simply say "Confused" and "Understand". In fact, you could even lose the "understand" interaction. I doubt people will be hitting a button all the time every time they "understand" something during a lecture. Just have one button for confusion.

Is there a way to post feedback (anonymously) at the end of a lecture?

Radical piviot: you know what this model of instant feedback would be good for? Occupy Wall Street and general assemblies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! In large classes students tend to be reluctant to raise their hands (especially in classes with 200+ students). ESL students are also unlikely to raise their hand and say they don't get it. I actually tested the app in 3 first year classes and it didn't seem to be distracting.

I'm hoping to add a feature for leaving feedback at the end of a lecture, great idea!

Also great idea on the Occupy Wall Street idea!

<comment><USER6> I go to a small college where average class size is around 20 students. People hardly ever raise their hand.

Overwhelming majority of students are deathly afraid of looking like an idiot by raising their hand. It happens everywhere, not just large classrooms.

I think this is a great idea.

<comment><USER7> I went to a small college too... In a class of 10-20, it was pretty easy for the professors to know when we were confused since she was looking at each of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great concept - quality is definitely an issue in the classroom setting that traditional methods of control do little to address - i.e.: end of term surveys etc.

Thinking freely here:

Could you produce a report for the school's administration of each professor's confused/understood ratio?

As gee-totes suggested, a messaging system would close the feedback loop nicely.

Is there a means of authenticating students? If this tool became a means of evaluation, it would be open to gaming by cagey professors.

Anyway, nice work, good video, great idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Great suggestion, producing a report is a great idea. I could even use the confusion data to predict exam test scores.

If students are going to be evaluating their teachers (providing richer feedback than confused/understood), then you're correct there will have to be authentication for students.

<comment><USER7> Be careful with cumulative evaluations - how confused students are may not correlate with how good a teacher is. And, if professors are going to be evaluated with the results, they are less likely to use the tool well...

For authentication, I'd make it so that when the professor each session, the class is given a random 4-5 digit code. That way the students would have to be in class to get the code and participate.

You may also want to think about adding the ability for the instructor to add different buttons, not just "understood / confused". You could then have class polls, or group questions to see how many people are paying attention.

This should all be able to be controlled from the instructor dashboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thoughts! The 4-5 digit code would be a good way of differentiating between sessions/lecture. When adding class polls etc, it my be advantageous to give each student their own account. That could conflict with the current anonymous aspect of understoodit.com though.

<comment><USER7> I'd keep it anonymous... you want people answering honestly and not worrying what the instructor might think. I'm thinking polls like:

 _okay class, we just went over big-O. here is an algorithm... what do you think the big-O of this is: O(n), O(n^2), etc..._

Nothing that you'd have to keep track of the answers for longer than the length of the class.

Plus, if you added logins, that would just make it that much more of a setup / hassle to get classes going.

<comment><USER9> I agree about anonymity. I'm a high school teacher and there are a bunch of smartphone apps that let students send in answers to multiple choice questions that the teacher puts on the board (I think it's called SmartResponse). The problem is, all responses have the students' phone numbers attached. So privacy concerns make it so that an otherwise useful product is basically unusable. Obviously the level of concern would be different in College/University, but I think students might be less inclined to use the app if it is not anonymous.

That said, this is a great idea. This is the kind of real-time feedback that I would love to have access to. Many of my students would rather fail than put their hand up and ask for help. Something like this would really help them out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is everyone expected to have a smartphone now a days? I really don't want a class to require a smartphone to participate. This would be much better as a web app.

<comment><AUTHOR> It currently is a web app! I tried to communicate that in the video, pictures and text on the website.

<comment><USER11> How did you try to communicate that? I cannot find any indication one way or the other. Just showing it on a laptop and a phone is not good enough - <USER2> you have native apps on multiple platforms. Plus the phrase "there's an app for that" is almost always associated with native apps, not web apps.

I would specifically say something like "nothing to download or install!".

<comment><AUTHOR> I mentioned "Understoodit runs on devices that you and your students already own: smartphones, tablets, netbooks and notebooks." But I agree I think saying 'nothing to download or install' is a great idea, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really like this. Has wider application than the classroom. Think gathering market/customer feedback to a new advertisement or TV show.

This was being used before the smartphone, so imagine similar products exist. However your metrics look meaningful.

<comment><USER13> For reference, Quick Tally[1], has been operating a service along these lines for over a decade or more.

It isn't web-based, and IIRC they offer/sell a voting widget to TV producers that can be given to audience members to vote with.

Worthy of a "web 2.0/iOS" disruption me thinks...

[1]<http://www.quicktally.com/>

P.S. Well done OP, that's a great concept and nicely (MVP?) executed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Simple solution to a big problem. Well done guys. Get it into the hands of lecturers, get feedback and iterate.

</comment><comment><USER15> What a fantastic idea for teacher feedback. I can see this being useful in every single classroom.</comment>


Our Obligation to Build Open Source Software for Modern Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacobsheehy.com/2014/02/open-source-software-is-important-for-modern-science/?ob <comment><USER2> I wrote some high energy physics data analysis software in FORTRAN for my UCSC senior thesis in 1993. I even got to spend the summer at CERN. :-D

I required seven weeks to come to grips with CERNLIB and its associated tools such as Patchy, a cross between IBM's JCL and Steve Martin's Cruel Shoes, four days to write my code, then three days to run my simulation long enough to write my thesis.

I had dropped out of school to work as a coder for six years, but decided to complete my degree so I'd stop having to explain to why I never graduated in job interviewers. So I knew quite a lot more about software development than even the postdocs.

The grad students and postdocs were all stunned at the simple, pristine readibility of my source. I scolded them all with "The reason that physics software is so hard to write, is that YOU PHYSICISTS MAKE IT HARD!"

Every law of physics other than general relativity - gravity, loosely speaking - is in CERNLIB somewhere, yet despite spending decades wandering its Gordian labyrinth, I have yet to actually find any.</comment>


Rdio Acquires Indian Music Streaming Service Dhingana - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/in/2014/03/14/rdio-acquires-shuttered-indian-music-streaming-service-dhingana-will-launch-rdio-india-this-year/?utm_content=38634&awesm=tnw.to_p2z28&utm_source=social&utm_campaign=pro&utm_medium=Twitter#!zDtqT <comment><USER2> Indian music industry is almost monopolistic with T-series controlling almost 80% of the market. Incidentally T-Series made its name taking advantage of a loophole in Indian copyright law back in the early 1990s and flooded the market with cheap audio cassettes. The very music industry which sort of excommunicated them at one time are now at their mercy. It even lead to murder of its founder Gulshan Kumar but now his son runs an empire that no one in Indian entertainment industry can afford to be enemy with.

At one Indian film awards show recently the anchor even made a joke that in future anyone whistling on the road would also have to pay a royalty to T-Series.</comment>


Ask HN: Does Facebook Run on localhost? - <AUTHOR>

how do big websites get tested? or get tested locally? <comment><USER2> Facebook gave a presentation about their development practices at OSCON in Portland last July, it was interesting (I was in the room at the time): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax9KR_PaiEM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax9KR_PaiEM)

...the thing that sticks in my mind was, yes it runs on localhost, where the localhost dev env has 3TB SSD and 144GB of memory :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Lots of insight—and several great projects—on their blog: [https://code.facebook.com](https://code.facebook.com)

Things work a little different for Facebook than they do for sites with more reasonable traffic. I've seen a few talks on YouTube where they speak about the challenges of scalability as they gradually hot swap legacy X or Y for their own in-house component Z.

See React/JSX and Flux, and the Haxl library. They go into detail about some of the problems and solutions that they've made public with respect to those projects, and they speak a lot about testing too in many of the posts. Worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, every engineer there has a dev server running a copy of Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd link to an article I wrote about website testing, but I used mod_rewrite to redirect every URL on my site to "Make a Bonfire of Your Reputations".

When I stop being so pissed off, you'll find my article at [http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/web-application- testi...](http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/web-application-testing/)

tl;dr: use a load generator. I wrote the article after some jackass woke me and my new bridge out of bed at three in the morning because his sun ultrasparc server fell over when brought live just in time for the christmas shopping season.</comment>


Hnweekly: weekly top stories from Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://hnweekly.watdahel.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool idea. Anyway, I created a Top Stories Directory 2 days ago too. It will record down every number one stories starting from 2 days ago. But, it lost tracking some stories due to some bugs. But, I already fixed them all.

<http://hn.siong1987.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> nice work too :)

<comment><USER2> How long do your crawl the Ycombinator once? Do you actually crawl every page on YC?

<comment><AUTHOR> I scrape only the front page once every ~4hrs (minimum)

Nearlyfreespeech.net doesn't have cron yet, so I'm using onlinecronjobs.com. If you want to scrape it on demand just go to <http://hnweekly.watdahel.com/index/scrape>

<comment><USER2> But, if you only scrape the frontpage, how can you know the points for all the past stories which are not on the frontpage anymore?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not 100% accurate, but it's close. The reason I did the website is so I can catch up with the good stories that were submitted earlier during the week (I usually read during weekends).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks like it sorts by points?

Is that the best way to determine top stories, or would something like a time- at-position score be better?

(Thanks - I kept meaning to do this myself. Would you do proggit & friends too, please?)

<comment><AUTHOR> yep it's sorted by points. reddit already has this: <http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/top/?t=week> not sure about the other sites, I'm just usually on hn, reddit and stuff on my google reader

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good work. Needs an RSS feed.

<comment><AUTHOR> now with rss feeds!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't seem to handle non-ASCII very well: "Does Gdel matter?"

<comment><AUTHOR> I might have problems with unicode in PHP (I really don't know much here yet) so I opted to remove them (for now) using regex.

btw I'm using <http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/> to scrape/parse which is great, it let's you use jquery style selectors on html.

<comment><USER6> In that case, it should replace ö with o, etc.

<comment><USER7> I have a screenscraping thing in place that targets an ASCII only environment (LambdaMOO mud). Manually replacing unicode stuff like this has been a pain in the butt. Luckily that was all just for fun and didn't need to be perfect.

Is there a good library out there (in any language) that does good unicode --> ASCII substitutions for major languages?

<comment><AUTHOR> I once used latin1_to_ascii (The Unicode Hammer) in python: (works great) <http://code.activestate.com/recipes/251871/>

<comment><USER7> Awesome thanks. Two coincidences: this fun mud thing is in Python (works via RPC)... and the entry method name is "hammer," heh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been looking for something like this but didn't find one. btw I only started scraping like 2 days ago :) so it's not yet a week's worth of data.

fyi: there's also <http://news.ycombinator.com/lists> which shows the top stories in 2 weeks

<comment><USER8> Lists are almost cool.

Allow us to choose: Today, Yesterday, Week, Month, Year

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty useful.

It would be nice to be able to see the top stories over any arbitrary time period as well. I imagine an interface with a draggable timeline to specify the period (something similar to what google finance uses, perhaps) could be even better.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, i'm planning to add that too. you can also try this (to see more recent links): <http://hnweekly.watdahel.com/?days=1>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a feed of all the #1 HN stories, use <http://feeds.feedburner.com/HNWatrcoolr>

For more top stories from hacker feeds, use <http://hacker.watrcoolr.us/> (feed: <http://feeds.feedburner.com/HackerWatrCoolr>)

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice and very useful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Allow it to sort by number of comments

<comment><USER12> Agreed. It is often useful to see which stories are the most-discussed.

<comment><AUTHOR> alright :) <http://hnweekly.watdahel.com/?order=comments></comment></comment></comment>


The Dilbert Blog: The Secret - Is success socially contagious? - <AUTHOR> http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/the-secret.html

<comment><USER2> Scott Adams talks about Affirmations here: [http://www.mindhacks.org/2007/01/18/scott-adams- affirmations...](http://www.mindhacks.org/2007/01/18/scott-adams- affirmations/)

A friend showed me the chapter at the end of The Dilbert Future - I definitely recommend giving it a once over.

</comment><comment><USER3> People should read Think and Grow Rich before they read the secret.

</comment><comment><USER4> What an excellent little fucking article.</comment>


The Effects of Virtual Reality on Our Body and Mind? - <AUTHOR> https://unimersiv.com/post/the-effects-of-virtual-reality-on-our-body-and-mind-38/ <comment><USER2> Still doesn't mention much about eye strain. The only real concern I have.</comment>


Nate Silver's Theory on 'Recency Bias' - <AUTHOR> http://www.esquire.com/features/data/nate-silver-on-economy-0309

<comment><USER2> "The most successful investors I have ever known were steeped in market history. History didn't mean 'what's happened in the past 15 years since I have been on Wall Street' -- it meant what has happened since World War II."

The general point of the submitted article refers to a too little known principle of behavioral economics, one that has resulted in thousands of investors losing billions of dollars in the last year. Why studying history helps is that a longer time horizon provides more examples (anecdotes) of recent trends blowing up.

In general, hackers who are running start-ups have to make decisions about how to respond to economic trends, so articles about heuristics that improve rationality against cognitive biases are interesting here.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a limit as to how much I rely on baseball/political prognosticators for macroeconomic analysis. That said...

I think he's aiming our attention at the irrational processes by which we as a society direct our attention. Long-term possibilities are the headlined item. He also mentions our tendency to neglect _low-probability_ (but high-impact) concerns. And of course that means "perceived as low-probability."

Those responsible for the reliability of less-macro systems like hard drives, servers, and networks have learned to have backup plans B, C, D... in place. Political and social processes, however, tend to be funded only for the best- publicized (usually the most recent) scares. Would you allow your IT department be as fault-tolerant as the SEC or other federal oversight agencies?

<comment><USER4> "There's a limit as to how much I rely on baseball/political prognosticators for macroeconomic analysis."

He's got a degree in economics and makes his living as a statistician. Not to comment too heavily on the article, which doesn't make very strong claims, but he is exactly the sort of person to rely on for (macro)economic analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article makes a very "soft" point that's hard to prove, hard to measure, and hard to make use of. What is he saying? "Be more aware that shit happens"?

Thanks, dude, but that's not useful, actionable advice - it's fluffy, unprovable, undisprovable, unactionable.. useless, basically. I'd rather see less of this kind of article on HN, so I flagged it.

<comment><USER6> "Thanks, dude, but that's not useful, actionable advice"

I completely disagree. We just witnessed an economic meltdown because far too few people took this advice, manifesting most obviously as massive overleveraging, but less obviously in many other ways.

I for one can very clearly see the actions I can take in response to this advice.</comment></comment>


What's broken with (western) education? - <AUTHOR>

I saw education appear on YC blog for industries to be disrupted - and while MOOCs have been awesome, it has got me thinking.
I've been rolling around two questions: what is the real purpose of education, or the education system? And then, what is broken with it?
--- The above is the question I posed in Reddit earlier tonight, generating an interesting conversation IMO (linked below). I have been pondering how we can _really_ take what we have seen with MOOCs and transform education.
I'm going to keep my views to myself for the moment. There's a big opportunity to fix the system, but I was very privileged, having participated in experimental education programs that fostered STEM progressive and independent thinking. So I'll be bias.
What's HN's views on education? Can SV transform education really?
http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/3734mh/serious_whats_broken_with_western_education/ <comment><USER5> > I have been pondering how we can _really_ take what we have seen with MOOCs > and transform education.

You're focusing on a solution, but you haven't said what problem that solution solves, or whether that problem is what should be focused on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed - that was just my ramblings in HN as I x-posted from Reddit. If you'll see the original Reddit post, I'm interested in trying to define what the purpose of education is, as well as clarify what others perceive it as being.

If we could all come to an agreement on its objectives, then a service / system / product / whatever could be shaped towards this.

<comment><USER5> > If we could all come to an agreement on its objectives

"If we could all come to an agreement ..."

For something that touches everyone, and that people have widely different views and motivations, starting from that goal will likely fail. The trick is to come to some way of working that allows most people to benefit, or not be overly harmed, and be able to move forward productively. Like marriage and politics.

Some objectives that I've seen for education:

\- So that citizens can read and understand propaganda.

\- To prepare people for the 21st Century.

\- To prepare people to understand "the news," so that they can make sensible choices in their days and in elections.

\- To give them marketable skills, for jobs.

\- To promote the state religion.

\- To promote a particular religion.

\- To promote "values." These values can be anything: tolerance, intolerance, discrimination, inclusiveness, being on the "right" side of gay marriage, etc.

This is why education is so important at an early age, we can get to people and shape their world view to the "right" way, so that they use Apple computers, smoke cigarettes, view gay marriage the "correct" way (which way is that again?), etc etc.

You will never get an agreement on objectives, we all hate each other too much. (If you don't believe that last, consider that insulting politically opposite people is about the last acceptable openly expressed prejudice, among all sides.)

Better to figure out how to move forward with a huge difference of opinions, and a huge variety of people. One way to do that is to ensure that there are plenty of options in education, so that one powerful group is not overly motivated to make education the same for everyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your comments have made a really big impact in how I was thinking about this problem. Thank you.

In serving up options in education (to overt concentration of power) - <USER2> would you consider a division? By subject matter? political ideals, all of the above?

<comment><USER5> Most of us aren't going to be able to effectively oppose school districts, teachers unions, governments and political parties. And mostly we don't need to, partly because people mostly don't want to change (in much the same way that pigs don't want to fly), but mostly because we can usually find a group of like minded people interested in what we're interested in (which is quite distinct from finding like minded people who want to force everyone to be like us). The most attainable thing is to try to make the thing we want viable and accessible to people who want it.

Which brings us back to your original comment on MOOCs. (Disclosure: I have purposely still not read your linked Reddit thread.)

It looks like you believe MOOCs provide something worthwhile. Without asking why, I tend to agree with you. But rather than try to convince everyone that MOOCs are an essential part of some large strategy, work at a lower level, trying to ensure that MOOCs remain viable and that they grow in maturity. Just having MOOCs available to anyone who thinks that MOOCs will solve their particular issue is great.

You might work on MOOC infrastructure, or from the educational side, or you might just be a non-annoying advocate. :) Just making people aware of the existence and utility of MOOCs would be a very positive thing.

I used to want to change the world, but I've come to see that the world is already changing, constantly. Once in awhile someone comes along and tries to determine the direction of the world for everyone. That always ends in disaster.

Best if you try to make your little geographical or intellectual or moral patch of the world a better place. Lots of better patches are likely to result in a good world direction, whatever that is.

MOOC on, dude. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wise words.

In my attempt to remain impartial in my opening I think I've come across too skeptical of the existing MOOCs (and by extension other tools). I really appreciate what MOOCs have done for us, and become (so far). They're awesome - and I'll always be an advocate. It's the first evolution in something special. I'm just impatient and want to see something more profound come from it :P

Other then that, I think you're right. We do have a chance to create a bit of a space aimed at bringing people together (for whatever they want to pursue). And looking at keeping the barrier to entry low. Your views have been invaluable! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was nothing wrong with western education before governments decided western citizens were too wealthy for public education and started liberalizing, privatizing and cutting funding for education.

It's not surprising that now education is outrageously expensive and not of as high a quality as it previously was.

No, SV won't "solve" education. At most it will come up with some revolutionary degree mill concept.

</comment><comment><USER7> We can either blame (or improve) the following things:

(1) The children

(2) The parents

(3) The teachers

(4) The system

Supportive (and pushing) parents are HUGE in the educational development of a child. Ever wonder why asian-american and asian kids in general usually have a higher education? Because of their parents (and environment they grew up in).

It's just such a tricky system which is 'sick' at the root ..

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not the education. It's the parents. Of course not all parents.

</comment><comment><USER9> the traction of improving education is to make learning things easy.

This is dead wrong.

Learning is hard. Banging your head in desperation against a wall - <USER3> - without hope for relief - hard. You cry in despair, doing one exercise after the other. Until forever and ever - until - you get it.

And then you have achieved mastering the lesson. But only by working through exercises, thinking, reasoning about possible solutions, talking to your peers, taking a break, sweat and tears, failing, falling, getting yourself up and going again - going the hard way.

There is no easy way - Think Bruce Lee training kind of hard way.

Easy is for dumb computers - you know the type. simple instruction set. Execution of given command path - without thinking, no personality, no ingenuity, no soul required.

The way they teach math in schools, art, history, humanities and STEM. You just need to pass tests. Given command paths. To be executed flawlessly.

Understanding is not required, just obedience.

And that is what our education system is made for - obedient executors of society - sheeple.

Depriving a child of the opportunity of tackling a hard problem is the worst abuse you can do to a developing mind. By dumbing down the goals to achieve - nobody uses math in their real life, you are not gonna need it. History is gone - why bother. The meaning of a poem ? What would that be for ?

Another form of abuse is to abandon a failing student - certifying the failure as if it were the students fault, taking all the chances from a young life just because a test was not passed. Throwing away the hopes and opportunities which might have been realized if only there had been someone to help along the difficult path.

And that is something "turning education around" is not going to achieve - <USER4> the only thing that is going to change is that we do no longer employ a teacher per 30 students per hour but one recording of one teacher for all mankind once for all eternity.

The chance of online education, of transforming the way we learn is about community. Remember programming before stack overflow and google ? I do. I made a living from solving problems which are just one google away nowadays. (just glad that still nobody noticed yet... <eg>)

Learning should be fun, not easy - in a way like going on a raid with your clan- kind of fun and hard. There should be pride and recognition by your peers and families for achieving a goal - and the support to struggle with learning.

Like the MMORG players do. Actually, the point in developing a successful game is about balancing frustration and joy. That is what is needed for education.

But in most cases the failing of students is just due to the basics.

Having a meal when hungry basic.

Having security and safety in your life basic.

Having someone to confide in basic.

Having the opportunity to be allowed to sleep basic.

Having the feeling of being accepted, wanted, loved basic.

So how to transform education ?

Get the basics right.

Education is a basic human right and duty, not a personal investment into your future which is only for the rich.

challenge the students.

Make them work together.

Support and accompany them on their journey.

Be proud of the students achievements.

It takes an entire village to raise kids. (said to be an african proverb...)</comment>


The Snake and the Horse: How Wallaroo's Python API Works with Pony - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wallaroolabs.com/2018/04/the-snake-and-the-horse-how-wallaroos-python-api-works-with-pony/ <comment><USER2> Pony is one of the new languages that intrigue me the most. Its performance seems very good, but how would you compare its expressiveness to e.g. Python?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a tough one. Python's dynamic typing means that you can write concise code as long as everything is of the correct type. But the consequence of this is that it is easy to accidentally express the wrong thing and only find out about it at runtime.

Pony's type system requires that you be a bit more explicit, but the tradeoff is that you get better guarantees about the correctness of your program. As your program grows in size these guarantees become more and more useful, or at least that's what I've found.

One part about Pony that can seem like an impediment to expressiveness in Pony is reference capabilities. Pony forces you to think about how objects can be accessed from different actors, which can sometimes make it hard to do things that seem like they would be simple, especially if you are new to the language. The payoff for this is that once you get the reference capabilities correct the compiler guarantees that your program will not have race conditions. In some ways, I'd say that if you're writing multi-threaded code then expressiveness that doesn't offer any safety guarantees is a false economy, because you'll probably end up rewriting the "expressive" code many times to get things right.

Python's a great language, and I don't mean to disparage it. I've used it quite a bit in my career, and for certain types of problems it is still the first tool that I reach for. In my mind, Pony excels in some areas where Python is somewhat weak, so they can live comfortably together in your programming toolbox.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your answer.

> Pony forces you to think about how objects can be accessed from different > actors, which can sometimes make it hard to do things that seem like they > would be simple, especially if you are new to the language.

Can you write single-threaded code in Pony without doing this, or do you have to do it regardless? The former would seem like a form of premature optimization.

<comment><USER3> Pony is an actor based language. You have to have at least one actor. Effectively, the answer is no. You could write "single-threaded" Pony code but it's not something you would do.

Pony is designed to make something hard- writing efficient, safe, concurrent code- easy. Anything you make something that is hard easier, you are invariably going to make some other things less easy, perhaps even difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of this blog post. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please feel free to drop them in here.</comment>


Does anyone else think Quora's Welcome screen is bad design? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/home/welcome I'm logged out. Got a digest newsletter from them. Tried to click through on a topic. Get to this screen:
1. It's an onboarding "squeeze" page 2. There is no link to login.
Here's a writup on it <http://www.redbridgenet.com/quora-really-hates-its-users/>
I'm frustrated. <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a quick visualization (it's a blog post): [http://www.redbridgenet.com/quora-really-hates-its- users/](http://www.redbridgenet.com/quora-really-hates-its-users/)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is like discussing the color of the fur of a bear that's eating you. Why ask whether Quora's welcome screen is a bad design, while overlooking the more obvious issue that Quora is a parasitic Internet organism?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely fallen out of favor. This is becoming very expertsexchangey.</comment></comment>


Persistent erectile dysfunction in men exposed to finasteride, or dutasteride - <AUTHOR> https://peerj.com/articles/3020/ <comment><USER2> This study is fucked, to put it bluntly. They're lumping together Fin and Dut and people taking 5mg Fin. Most people taking Fin for MPB take 1mg Fin, for example.

You can actually not draw any conclusions from this paper other than, don't use Dutesteride unless you're male to female transitioning and don't go above 1.25mg finasteride if you want to keep your hair and your dick.

But it just confounds everything together, it's a terrible study.

<comment><USER3> 0.8% of a 4000+ sample size had PED with the regular dosage for baldness treatment. That's absurdly low and pretty much confirms that though the risk is there, it's highly unlikely. Its even more ridiculous that 1.4% of the ENTIRE sample size (over 11,000 people) taking less than or equal to 1.25mg of fin, greater than 1.25mg of fin, and dutasteride reported persistent ED.

As a fin user I actually find this data to be re-assuring.

<comment><USER2> The criterion of PED is also vague. It's basically asking people do they think their dicks are broken. There's enough guys going on Noporn/Nofap routines because they couldn't get it up one night with a girl because they're so used to watching porn and jerking off that real sex is too weird, and one bad experience and now they're convinced they have ED.

If you tell a guy suffering from baldness that there's "a good chance you're gonna break your dick if you drink this pill" you've already biased your study. Blind study is the only way.

I'm not suggesting there is no risk, at this point the numbers are just a joke. This study is another example of how to NOT to do it.

<comment><USER3> They're also just doing analysis on a static data set.

> PED was determined by manual review of medical narratives for all subjects > with ED. Risk of an adverse effect was expressed as number needed to harm > (NNH).

So this doesn't rule out the possibility of the subjects' mental state affecting their ED.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A little strange to see this at the very top of the site, doesn't look like anything particularly interesting?

<comment><USER5> My theory: it's a back-handed jab at President Trump, as he's reported to be a user of Propecia for hair loss. Overtly political stories are usually flagged off the front page quickly, but this is "just" a journal article.

(Note: I'm not a Trump supporter — quite the opposite. I just don't like round-about mocking: "Oh, he can't get it up. That must be why he's such a jerk!")

<comment><USER6> My theory: an overwhelming majority of HN readers are men, many of whom have taken or considered taking finasteride.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Among men 16–42 years old and exposed to finasteride ≤1.25 mg/day, 34 of > 4,284 (0.8%) developed PED (persistence median 1,534 days, IQR 651–2,351 > days); the multivariable model predicting PED had one variable: duration of > 5α-RI exposure

So less than 1% of finasteride users get PED. PED was already a known side effect. That's good it's being confirmed with data, but aren't the odds still very low that this would happen to fin users? As a fin user myself, I haven't experienced any of the sexual sides so I'm wondering if there's any new take- away from this.

When I look at this as a fin user, I'm personally happy to see that the data says its so unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER7> Where is commonly found finasteride or dustaride?

<comment><USER8> they are used for treating prostrate enlargement as well as hair loss in men, among other things..

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

But I don't think that this side-effect was unknown. ED / sexual dysfunction is a documented side effect for both the drugs in a significant percentage of the patient population.

<comment><USER9> I think this study is exploring "persistent" ED, which is less known. ED is a documented side effect, but this shows that some men continue to experience ED even _after_ they stop taking the drug.

<comment><USER5> The linked Wikipedia article cites references to _persistent_ ED and diminished libido common enough to warrant changing the labeling on the drug in _2014_.

So, yes, this study is exploring that side effect, but it's inaccurate to call it "less known".

EDIT: fixed some word salad phrasing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone knowledgeable guess at the mechanism of action?

<comment><USER5> The Wikipedia article says it prevents conversion of testosterone into dihydrotestosterone by the enzyme 5α-reductase, and also affects the GABA system. Particularly relevant quote: "Reduction of GABA-A receptor activation by these neurosteroids has been implicated in depression, anxiety, and sexual dysfunction." More specific than that is _way_ beyond my understanding of these things.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finasteride#Mechanism_of_actio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finasteride#Mechanism_of_action)

<comment><USER10> That's fine, but how would that account for PED?

<comment><USER5> Like I said, any more is beyond my level of understanding of these things. All I can say for sure is that the GABA system is incredibly important, and kinda delicate.

Read up on _delirium tremens_ , for example: long-term alcoholics, and benzodiazepine and barbiturate addicts need to be really careful in stopping their use of those drugs — they could die if they aren't. Those drugs also affect the GABA system.

Maybe the long-term down-regulation of some aspect of GABA-A metabolism by finasteride's preventing the formation of an agonist for those receptors becomes permanent or semi-permanent after a while? I really don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm guessing this is a dig at someone of prominence having notable hair who is in US news who is on one of the drugs mentioned.</comment>