How Eve Players Pulled Off the Biggest Betrayal in Its History - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/how-eve-players-pulled-off-the-biggest-betrayal-in-its-1806168400 <comment><USER3> I must be completely out of touch, because I could not make heads or tails of nearly any word in this article. In fact, I'm so out of touch, I couldn't tell if I was reading a real news item or a piece of short fiction. Damn there some areas of the tech scene that are as foreign to me as, say, hitching a tent along the Antarctic coast.

<comment><USER4> Short version (from the point of view of an outsider to the events):

During the last big large scale conflict, an alliance called CO2 defected from its parent coalition The Imperium to the other side. This was a big loss to the Imperium - CO2 were one of their larger and better groups of fighters. It turned the tide of the war and the Imperium were left with emnity towards CO2 due to their betrayal.

In the time since then, Gigx who runs CO2 has (among other things) been annoying people inside and outside his alliance over various diplomatic incidents. One of those was TheJudge who was a leader in CO2 (but subordinate to gigx). Simultaneously TheJudge was being slowly talked into betraying CO2 by a couple members of the Imperium. This was significantly helped by the three of them being on a player elected group of representatives to the developers, that meets in person a few times a year.

TheJudge had enough power and control over the alliance and its assets that when he eventually decided to actually jump ship, he could sell off ships, space stations ('citadels') and other expensive things owned by the alliance. The Imperium are taking credit for this betrayal - they consider it 'revenge'.

Up to now this is all classic Eve - betrayal by people you trust. The postscript is less nice though: gigx in a moment of anger asked in in game chat for real life contact details for TheJudge so that he could 'cut off his hands'. This is obviously not OK and CCP banned gigx permanently. This has the side-effect of putting the final nail in the CO2 coffin.

<comment><USER3> Who created this war, is it part of the initial game or are these "societies" forming ad-hoc by the players and making wars between them?

<comment><USER5> They are all player formed.

Another interesting aspect is that almost every in-game item is "player manufactured" by mining raw materials, refining those materials, using those refined materials to make items from blueprints, then sell those items to other players.

Each step in that cycle requires specialized skill trees, so it's usually not one person that does it all.

They don't really have NPC shops and inventory is just what people are making and selling. "What to make" is itself informed by buyer demand and everything from raw material to finished items has a market set price.

Simply being a trader in Eve can be fun.

<comment><USER6> > Simply being a trader in Eve can be fun.

yes. But it's eerily similar to having an actual day job...

<comment><USER7> You can even get paid real money!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't play EVE because there are already enough demands on my time, but damned if this commercial (entirely done with voice comms) hasn't come close to pushing me over the edge:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdfFnTt2UT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdfFnTt2UT0)

<comment><USER9> This is a more realistic version, IMO: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmS9vcVNr5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmS9vcVNr5A)

<comment><USER10> GP "Oh man that looks so awesome!"

Parent: "I'll stick to solitaire"

The idea behind Eve is extremely appealing but damn if I'm not just done with people screaming into a microphone. I'll stick to reading the postmortems after interesting things happen

<comment><USER11> > _damn if I 'm not just done with people screaming into a microphone._

Aside from the huge time-sink that's involved in any MMO, I mostly don't want to have to have a part-time job playing politics. That's what kills it for me; I love that Eve Online exists, but I have zero interest whatsoever building a whole other parallel set of friendships, alliances, etc. outside of my current life. Even if they were the nicest antithesis of League of Legends chat, I just don't have the emotional energy to put into it.

<comment><USER12> I haven't played in years, but last I did there was a huge range in engagement levels to have "fun".

With one or two friends, I'd say one could have a blast pirating for a couple years. It's one of the higher doing_fun_things:total_time_playing ratios I've found in a multiplayer game.

The balance is really well done. Two specialized smaller ships > one general larger ship. And coordinating on voicecoms after you've got the normal sequence of actions down doesn't sound that different than a sci-fi series.

"Jumping. Two contacts. Found them on the belt 5. Miners, no escort. In position to warp disrupt. Popping bubble and web. Tackled. Jump, jump, jump." (Plan comes together, fireworks ensue)

And in general, most people keep it in perspective. Hence "it's just internet spaceships" jokes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's nice to see treachery is alive and well in EVE.

I started playing EVE just prior to the Trinity expansion release in 2008, and played up until 2013. During that time I was fortunate to watch the game evolve in so many fantastic ways (walking in stations aside). I owe an unbelievable amount of fond memories to the game, most of which involved treachery (albiet on a somewhat smaller scale).

That said, many of the changes in recent years have left a bad taste in my mouth. For example: Aurum, an in-game currency used to purchase items from the "New Eden Store", such as ship skins and clothing. Radical changes to character progression in the form of skill injectors. Radical changes to the PLEX system, as well as F2P. Innumerable changes to core game mechanics.

Not all of these changes are necessarily bad, but they do tend to foster almost a weird sense of alienation among long-time players, especially inactives. Nobody I know really plays anymore, and it's not because they lack the time. There's this mutual feeling that the game kind of lost its way some years back, and that the golden age is over. That its soul is gone, or at least waning.

I don't know how true that sentiment is, but it certainly feels that way. Of course, it's always possible we're just a bunch of really biased bittervets.

It is true that CCP has had an incredible amount of missteps in the past (walking in stations, Dust 514, vampire game), and that they've inevitably had a lot of turnover in their core talent. Despite all that, EVE is still alive, which in and of itself is impressive.

From a technology and art standpoint, the game is arguably better than ever right now. I just can't shake the feeling that it's stuck in an evolutionary treadmill of sorts, where things are changed just for the sake of change, and not pursuant to a strong overarching ideal or vision that was present in the earlier days of CCP.

On the bright side, at least Star Citizen has no hope of killing EVE. Things such as lifetime insurance are wholly antithetical to the ideal that EVE represents. Namely: you don't get an adrenaline rush flying something expensive if you know there's zero risk involved.

Elite: Dangerous (in my opinion) had the opportunity to kill both games, and failed only due to its unfortunate choice of core gameplay mechanics and P2P networking model. Four years ago it had the most advanced UI/UX of any game in existence, and arguably it still does today. Incredible artistic and technical production values unfortunately can't save a game if it has no soul.

<comment><USER14> > I don't know how true that sentiment is, but it certainly feels that way. Of > course, it's always possible we're just a bunch of really biased bittervets.

I'm a very bitter vet myself, so take it with a grain of salt, but you're essentially correct. Space hasn't been as empty as it is today in over a decade, if ever before. Active player numbers are in the basement and falling and CCP is now even advertising starter packs with "More weapon slots, More damage, More tank". They are removing valid complexity and gameplay options left and right to "remove developer burden" (they removed the granular sound options a while ago because "almost nobody was using them" and made the game unplayable for me and many others unless we turn sound off completely).

The EVE of today is not the EVE you once knew. It's lost its soul in favor of making as much money as possible out of an ever shrinking player base.

<comment><USER13> Well, that's an incredibly grim assessment. I can't imagine playing without granular sound settings.

At least the game's IP should be dirt cheap on firesale after it runs aground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I had a life to spare, I'd play EVE... I'd love to watch some kind of weekly news round up, is there anything like that?

<comment><USER14> [http://evenews24.com/](http://evenews24.com/)

EVE is a lot more fun to read about than it is to play it. You aren't missing all that much by not playing it...

<comment><USER16> I do not agree. To me it sounds a little bit like saying 'life is not so much fun'. You can enjoy it if you decide to make it enjoyable. EVE online allows that kind of behavior which makes it a unique game in my opinion.

That's how I try to play the game and have had so many thrilling moments. I'm not even in a corp, I play solo but have so much fun with the game!

<comment><USER14> It depends on what you find enjoyable. If you find mining asteroids or mission running enjoyable, all the power to you. But that's not the way EVE is portrayed in news articles. Articles are about the betrayals, the massive battles, the wars. Few people will ever reach that level of meta-gaming and those massive battles don't happen on a daily basis but several months apart, neither are they very fun to participate in. Unless, of course, you consider listening to your fleet commander and pressing a button every few minutes fun.

For the non-EVE players: EVE has a system called Time Dilation, TiDi in short, that slows down the gameplay to give the server more time to process. It gets as slow as 10% of normal speed, which doesn't sound all that bad at first, except that stuff tends to no longer work as expected when the server load increases beyond what is manageable on that level. New commands are thrown on a stack and get worked down in order, which causes massive lags between giving a command and the game executing it, if it doesn't get lost somewhere along the way.

Those massive battles with thousands of players sound awesome in writing. They're very boring in reality.

<comment><USER6> > If you find mining asteroids or mission running enjoyable, all the power to > you.

most new players only find out about this aspect of EVE - running grinding missions for petty coin etc - because they've been conditioned by the stereotype of World of Warcraft (and its myriad of copycats).

If you have a few minutes, have a watch of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64) \- it's one of the best videos explaining this concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Eve is an excellent example of a game with mostly user-supplied content in a loose framework. The game supplies a physics engine and basic rules for game components, but beyond that it is an open world.

This is both a strength and a weakness: the game itself isn't that interesting or challenging without interacting with other people. But you can't really see all the game's content because so much territory is controlled by hostile teams. So unless you have nerves of steel and great skills to fly stealthed, you'll probably never see Russian-controlled Drone Regions, for example.

It would be cool to have a second shard of this universe in "care bear" mode that didn't allow player-vs-player (PVP) so that people could appreciate all the content that CCP created. It might also create pressure on CCP to create more interesting non-player-dependent mechanics and content in the game.

<comment><USER6> > "care bear" mode that didn't allow player-vs-player (PVP)

that would not be a game of EVE. It would be World of Warcraft, but in space. And not a particularly good one either.

The uniqueness of EVE _is_ the free-form, non-consensual PVP. Just like in real life, you cannot say no to being mugged, or ganged upon. When making friends, you cannot really know to trust them, and if you do find trust worthy friends, you friend them for life.

<comment><USER17> >The uniqueness of EVE _is_ the free-form, non-consensual PVP.

It's just another bit in a database and only one aspect of the game. Sure, there are 1,000 experiences in Eve you'll never get anywhere else - <USER2> spinning wormholes trying to find a dread enemy, to station spinning out of utter boredom because your station is bubbled to hell and back.

However it's simply not possible to see all the content on-offer in the game because PVP precludes it. I realize for some people the idea of EVE without PVP is inconceivable and that's fine, I'm just saying it's too bad because it would be fun to be able to see all of the game and enjoy other aspects of it that are suppressed by the ever present threat of PVP.

<comment><USER18> You can go anywhere in Eve with the right ship and an understanding of the mechanics with different regions of space. In fact, explorers do just this as a form of PVE in hostile space. Creating Trammel for Eve doesn't add anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've never played EVE but have read a bit here and there about it, and while I have no interest in playing, the epic stories that come out of it fascinate me. Is there a good place to go to find more?

<comment><USER20> There's an excellent book that covers some of the larger conflicts between ~2004 and 2009 called Empires of Eve[0]. As someone who was intimately involved with nearly everything the book describes, I recommend it.

[0] [http://empiresofeve.com/](http://empiresofeve.com/)

<comment><USER21> Even as someone who wasn't intimately involved in everything, and was only around to see some of those things from a distance, that book is still FASCINATING. I also highly recommend it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This event was discussed yesterday though the article focused on a completely different aspect of the story, with much less detail:

Eve Online alliance leader banned after threatening to cut off betrayer's hands | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15232168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15232168)

> thg: _Classic gigX.. Not the first time he 's got a "permanent" ban for > making real life threats._

> xiaodown's personal account: _I was sitting on coms when this all went down_ > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15232910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15232910)

> xiaodown: _He ... has a history. Plus, I mean, trying to get out-of-game > details like address /name is a big no-no in Eve_

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems to me that the game turned out to be most famous Icelandic export product by far. That's pretty cute.

<comment><USER20> Well Bjork is more well known but Eve is worth more, income-wise :)

IIRC Iceland's largest export is aluminum.

<comment><USER24> IIRC this is not because Iceland has particularly rich stores of aluminum ore, but rather because refining aluminum ore into usable aluminum metal is energy- intensive and Iceland has abundant geothermal energy resources. So they import ore and export metal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For current and past Eve players: How does Eve compare to the glory days of Ultima Online (1997-1998)? I've always wanted to try another MMO with the same level of freedom and consequence as early UO. Is Eve worth a try or are they just too different to compare?

<comment><USER26> I've never played UO, but if it's freedom and consequence you want then EvE is what you want to try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> maybe the top 1%is having meta fun, but from what I seen the rest might as well be playing Excell spreadsheets

<comment><USER28> Depends. The top 1% are playing political games, beyond even spreadsheets. A percentage finds the logistics part fun, handling excel sheets and resources and production, either for their own gains or that of their corporation or alliance. Another percentage goes for the pvp, dealing with control of their spaceship, tactics, the meta of their ship and equipment vs that of their opponents.

There's a lot to this game and it's not just spreadsheets, that's only a percentage of the game.

<comment><USER29> > The top 1% are playing political games

This is the thing that absolutely flummoxes me about the "game." Most gamers are geeks, but most geeks I've known into have little patience for political games. Yet, here's one of the most-successful and longest-running MMOPG's, and it's -- from what I can gather -- almost entirely political. I just can't wrap my head around it. I even have a hard time reading these post-mortems. The whole business seems to cater to some sub-sub-sub category of geek that doesn't lie in the direction of Myers-Briggs IN?? types. Does anyone know what those types might be? (All discussion of the usefulness or accuracy of these categories aside.)

<comment><USER30> MMOs often have alliances and political intrigue. It's not just Eve, though Eve definitely takes the cake. I've played n>2 different MMOs where there's a large cohort of politically savvy players pulling the strings. Sometimes it's just out of necessity - if you want the coolest stuff in the game you have to organize groups because that's how the game is set up. So by definition it filters success towards those that organize bigger and better alliances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is more immersive listening to the latest EVE track posted on Soundcloud:

[https://soundcloud.com/ccpgames/eve-online-redesigned- stars](https://soundcloud.com/ccpgames/eve-online-redesigned-stars)

</comment><comment><USER31> I hope that someone who knows "gigx" in real life checks in on him. It is safe to assume that he spent a significant amount of time playing Eve to reach the level that he did. Yes, he got drunk on power and it pissed people off. I would bet that if a neurologist were monitoring his brain activity before the coup and during the coup it would be very similar to a person going through a really bad breakup, a very disturbing event or going cold turkey on a bad addiction. Hopefully what happened in Eve doesn't spill over into gigx's personal life for the worse.

</comment><comment><USER32> I every time I heard about EvE the image of it being "a mass of bickering old couples locked inside a large room with alliances forming and dissolving constantly" strengthens.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is it too late to start playing EVE? Every time I hear about these great events it seems like it's the last and the game is over now.

<comment><USER34> Jump in!

Disclaimer: you _will_ die. Lots. The adage is "don't fly what you can't afford to lose". There's no equivalent of "this is my special invulnerable armor and the sword of my great-grandfather", because when someone inevitably comes along and blows you up, it'll be _their_ special invulnerable armor etc.

Also, the concepts of fraud, scams, and so on are unusual in Eve in that they're actively encouraged, or at least explicitly tolerated (with few exceptions, like you can't claim to be an official representative of the game's publisher). This is known as "adding content". As in, if you complain that user Foo defrauded you out of a few hundred dollars of in-game currency, the response will almost certainly be along the lines of "wow, Foo added a _lot_ of content to your game, huh! You should thank them for it. You can't get that kind of entertainment from an NPC, can you?" This fosters a certain level of paranoia.

<comment><USER21> Based on the number of incredibly clever scams that exist, extreme paranoia is correct. If something looks too good to be true, it is VERY likely to be a scam. (e.g.: there are scams built around selling an item for a price that is lower than a buy order somewhere, seemingly promising free money, but when you attempt to sell the expensive item, it'll get rejected due to some quirks in how some systems interact)

<comment><USER6> > get rejected due to some quirks in how some systems interac

i dont think that works anymore now? Not sure...but it's human nature to scam! There's been so many pyramid schemes it's not funny!

<comment><USER21> I would be surprised if that were the case. IIRC it worked by using a skill that let a player put up a buy order without taking the entire cost of the order out of their wallet. So the player could then ditch all their remaining money, which wouldn't allow the buy order to be fulfilled.

What changed that disallows it? Did they remove the skill? Can a wallet go negative? Even if they forced the buyer to take the item and give the amount of money reserved to the seller, the scammer could theoretically just make sure that the buy order is close enough to the sell order that the seller still receives less than they paid. (though it makes it seem like a less juicy payout, so people would fall for it less)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The way I see it, they abused their position in the CSM for in game advantages. When one random player betrays another, that's fine. This wouldn't have happened if they weren't on the CSM though, which is something out of game. They should be permanently banned from both the game and their CSM positions instead of being made heroes.

<comment><USER36> Eve is all about the meta-game, real world espionage and shenanigans often happens. Its all unofficial but its kind of the unique selling point of Eve really.

<comment><USER37> Not sure why the one leader was banned trying to get real world information if one of the the selling point is about interacting outside of the game as well.

Why wouldn't it be perfectly valid to attempt to scare or convince this guy in real life to give back the loot. It feels like it should be part of the game. Bonus points for getting someone fired or sleeping with someone's sister.

<comment><USER38> There's levels. Lying to get access to a groups private information and plans to gain a competitive advantage (spying in other words) is one thing, attempting to dox someone because you've threatened to cut off their hands is another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Goonswarm strikes again!

RIP: vilerat. Hope you're somewhere laughing your ass off about this knowing that your legacy lives on.

<comment><USER26> I don't really think we had that much to do with it. As much as I find it kinda funny. I feel sorry for the line members tho. When The Judge said he didn't mean to screw over line members, I don't know how he said that with a straight face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Okay, when is there going to be an in depth documentary series about EVE, I mean Ken Burns Style but maybe a couple of season because so much has gone in this space. Constantly every year I read or hear about some EPIC Battle/Betrayal going on in this little realm of the gaming world.

</comment><comment><USER41> I've read a lot about betrayals in Eve, how much ISK are stolen and lost here or there, and tales of revenge.

Does anybody actually have _fun_ in this game? Like, simple this-is-a-fun- game-and-I-am-having-fun-at-the-moment fun?

<comment><USER42> Lots do, yes.

You make your own fun. Personally I had great times studying the market and finding / executing (entirely on my own) new manufacturing chains, attempting to gain an ever increasing margin and profit-to-effort ratio!

But to each their own :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> American ambassador assasinated in Libya, Sean Smith was also a high ranking officer at Goonfleet corp and was playing it for 6 years! A game that is able to attract these profiles is doing something very right.

<comment><USER44> I, and some others, posted stuff about him further down this thread, for those who might be interested -- you can click the link [0] to get there directly or just keep scrolling through this thread.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15246021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15246021)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> i feel like the only thing i hear about with respect to eve is 'betrayals' and 'theft'. is there anything else to the game? is there anything else to do besides steal?

<comment><USER46> Don't forget Ponzi schemes! Honestly there's a lot to do in EvE, since the economy is entirely player-run. You can be a miner, mining raw materials. You can be a trader, running arbitrage between different stations trying to turn a quick buck. You can be a pirate, preying on either of the previously mentioned roles. You can be a manufacturer, creating either intermediate goods or finished products for the open market. You can be a (different kind of) trader, buying and selling commodities, trying to time the market, etc. (This is where the space spreadsheets meme mostly comes from.) You can go out "ratting", finding and killing NPCs for goods and money. And, of course, you can go join (or start!) a corporation (guild) and own a portion of nullsec (full PvP) space, fighting with, allying with, and betraying other player corps for power and influence over nullsec.

The reason you only hear about betrayals and theft are because that's what is the most interesting to write/read about with regards to EvE. While it's really cool, conceptually, that you can make a living in this game by participating in this massive player run economy, you're not going to find a lot of articles about people spending hours of their life mining internet asteroids and occasionally getting ganked by pirates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This isn't the biggest by any stretch of the imagination.

<comment><USER47> The citadel is the biggest player owned object in the Eve universe, right? Maybe that's what they meant by biggest.

<comment><USER20> It is but it's value with fittings is only ~300 billion isk (the eve currency) which isn't that much when we're talking isk at the alliance level.

<comment><USER26> It's the biggest. Rough value of the alliance wallet, srp program and all the citadels (not just the keepstar) is about 1.4 trillion.

And yes, the Keepstar is the biggest of the citadels (the smaller ones are Fortizars and Astrahauses).

<comment><USER20> That's nothing compared to Haargoth's damage, back in 2009 or Kartoon's.

Hell we've had single dudes do single corp thefts for more than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Sounds like anyone who plays this game needs to get a life.

</comment><comment><USER49> What?

</comment><comment><USER50> It is not the biggest.

<comment><USER26> Which one is bigger then? This is around 1.4 trillion. I don't think anyone has gone much past a trillion in the past.

<comment><USER51> If you take into account inflation, there is an argument for previous heists being larger... IIRC.

Check out [http://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2017/09/did-judge-really- pull-...](http://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2017/09/did-judge-really-pull-off- biggest-heist.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Can we get a TL;DR?

(I read the article and the relationships between the parties vs events vs timeline is still confusing)

</comment><comment><USER53> I really like these Eve stories that show off the worse of humanity! They portray a reality where there are relatively few consequences for the human, so huge risks might be undertaken. If you die, your avatar has simply died. OK, you might have invested literally months-years into forming it, but still it's not the physical unique you.

You can always create a new sock puppet to rule the world.

<comment><USER54> I liken it more to playing a game like Diplomacy.

It's a sandbox that gives you a safe place to RP some really dastardly, evil shit. If everyone has a level head, you can go and enjoy a beer together afterwards and start over.

<comment><USER26> Yes, but in this instance he's taken assets that take a very long time to build up and left the alliance in a position which they're going to find very hard to come back from. I'm not sure many people will keep a level head there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I wonder if multi-sig contracts (not necessarily through blockchain) would preclude such incidents in the future. Concentrating so much power to a single person, inevitably makes for such "Little Finger" plays with devastating effects for everyone involved.

I am watching the video of it all now here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOdXie85VX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOdXie85VX8)</comment>


Show HN: Ultimate Plumber – a tool for writing Linux pipes with live preview - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/akavel/up <comment><USER2> Careful with rm:

        r
        rm
        rm -
        rm -rf
        rm -rf ~
        rm -rf ~/
        rm -rf ~/tmp
        # where did my files go?

<comment><USER3> yikes!

It's always been surprising to me that their isn't a built in "undo" to `rm`

e.g. why doesn't `rm` just move files to /tmp?

<comment><USER4> > e.g. why doesn't `rm` just move files to /tmp?

And do what when tmp gets full and services & applications start crashing?

When someone implements that undo, someone's going to need to write a tool that really does remove files, really. Will the next guy wonder why really-rm doesn't have undo built in?

<comment><USER5> What about undo that expires in 1 minutes? Gmail website does that for sent emails (for 5 seconds I guess).

<comment><USER6> > What about undo that expires in 1 minutes? Gmail website does that for sent > emails (for 5 seconds I guess).

Same question as parent: "And do what when tmp gets full and services & applications start crashing?"

<comment><USER7> You could do what is more or less an industry standard when it comes to this and warn the user that there's not enough room to allow an undo when deleting said file(s) and prompt if they want to delete it permanently instead.

It's not rocket surgery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of my favorite quotes:

``Remember, a temp file is just a pipe with an attitude and a strong will to live'' \- Randal Schwartz [comp.unix.questions]

<comment><USER9> I never thought of it that way. Framing it that way is ingenious.

<comment><USER10> pipes _used to be_ temporary files on Unix.

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/450900/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/450900/5132)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks like a fun and helpful tool! (Perhaps best to ignore the notice from lshw and _not_ run it as root, ha ha. Maybe even only in some kind of sandbox. I bet they could add a --safe flag so it would make an on-the-fly Docker image with a copy of your cwd, and run the commands in there. Then you have different problems I suppose, but still....)

I've never seen `paste - -` before, but that is amazing too! I can't count how many times I've wanted something like that. Surely that will help my own shell pipelines in the future.

Also I've never seen `foo |& bar` before. What a neat idea! The surprisingly- valid creativity of it reminds me of Duff's Device. Has anyone else ever found uses for that idiom?

After so many years working in the shell, it's such a rare and delightful treat to learn new tricks. Thank you for sharing this with us!

<comment><USER12> It is a pretty neat trick. Kinda hard to Google for though. Here is the bash manual page on it: [https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Pipelines...](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Pipelines.html#Pipelines)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks great. Personally, I have been using a "cache" function to cache output of expensive commands. This has helped me iterate faster on pipelines that call into apis.

      function cache {
          cmd="$*"
          name=$(echo "$cmd" | base64)
          if [[ -f ./cache/$name.exit ]] && [[ $(cat ./cache/$name.exit) -eq 0 ]]; then
              echo "cached"
          else
              mkdir -p ./cache
              eval "$cmd" > ./cache/$name.out
              echo $? > ./cache/$name.exit
          fi
          cat ./cache/$name.out
      }

      cache ls /

<comment><USER14> I use something similar, created by a friend of mine, called 'bash-cache': [https://bitbucket.org/dimo414/bash- cache/src/default/](https://bitbucket.org/dimo414/bash-cache/src/default/)

It hooks specific functions in Bash and keys off of their arguments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I do progressive filtering a lot. It's convenient to have all the intermediate results somewhere temporarily.

What I do is typing the command in one acme window with the working directory, and middle mouse swipe it. Acme shows the result of that command in a +Errors window with the same working directory. I change the name of this new popped up window (to something like `+Errors-cmd`, type a command that operates on the file name `/mnt/acme/$winid/body`, and middle mouse swipe it again. Acme shows the result of the new command under `+Errors` again. Rinse and repeat until I'm satisfied.

I guess this way it gives a convenient temporary place for all the intermediate texts. I can of course edit them in place if I want.

<comment><USER16> A rare sight, another user of Acme on HN!

You know it probably, but there is also a mouse chord for piping selected text into a command. (2-1)

<comment><USER15> I was curious what this plumber could be.

2-1 is just a concatenation of two strings and run the whole string. I wouldn't call it pipe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is awesome, but I am absolutely bloody terrified of using it on my systems.

As is stated in the README, if you write 'rm' or anything like it... oopsie oops.

<comment><USER18> Right, that's one problem. The author says:

> But you'd be careful writing "rm" anywhere in Linux anyway, no? Also, why > would you want to pipe something into "rm"?

But the thing is that you don't need to intend to pipe to "rm". Maybe you were typing something else, like having a command "rmore" or something. This danger is also not strictly limited to `rm` and `dd`, and you have to be careful that no substrings from the start of the command you intend to write cannot be interpreted as something dangerous.

<comment><USER19> The author's theory there about user behavior seems dangerously wrong.

I'm quite careful writing command lines because the whole experience of the shell is that of working with sharp knives: you get a lot of power but if you screw up, you'll feel the pain. The point of this tool is to take away a lot of the pain that teaches people caution. Its whole theory is "just try a lot stuff as you explore what you want".

In their shoes I'd look at using some of the container/security magic as a way of nerfing commands. If the on-a-keypress runs work in a way where they can't make changes to a filesystem, that seems way better to me. Even better if the tool then reports, "Would have deleted 532 files in a warning color at the top of the output."

<comment><USER20> > I'm quite careful writing command lines

A safety measure I picked up from a sysadmin while watching over their shoulder: start writing nifty command lines by prefixing them with # first, to prevent havoc when fat fingering the [enter].

<comment><USER21> It's a pity you can't do something similar to SQL: when writing UPDATE/DELETE always write the WHERE clause first

<comment><USER22> Something I learned early on when writing possible dangerous SQL selects:

      CREATE TABLE mytable_backup AS SELECT * FROM mytable;
      SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE condition;
      DELETE FROM mytable WHERE condition;

<comment><USER23> Or just let the DB work for you with BEGIN; + (select/update/delete) + COMMIT; or ROLLBACK;

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> After watching the GIF on the README.md I was like "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE" (actually just the past 10'ish years)!!!

Then I was like, I bet quite a few ancient wizards out there have some pretty amazing techniques they have picked up over the year. And that it would be great to be a "fly on the wall" watching some of these wizards do simple tasks. And that a YouTube channel watching them do simple tasks could be quite revealing and therefore very educational.

Paul Irish did something like this a few years ago and I still use a bunch of the tools he introduced into my purview. Really, really improved productivity!

<comment><USER25> > And that a YouTube channel watching them do simple tasks could be quite > revealing and therefore very educational.

Does such a channel exist? All I've ever found has been tutorials. I want to watch unix veterans use the tools. I've found that to be the best way to learn. Hell, that's how I learned vim.

<comment><USER26> which channel did you use to learn vim?

<comment><USER25> No channels specifically. I've watched these videos as a good primer:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsWY-8n9igM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsWY-8n9igM)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NUO4JEtkDw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NUO4JEtkDw)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blpCz9HsUaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blpCz9HsUaA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nicely done!

I do a pretty similar version of this with command-| in textmate, but I've wished for/thought about building a command like this to speed up the process!

The textmate approach does have the advantage (or perhaps _dis_ advantage, for large enough inputs!) of emitting immutable "views" of the data at each step, rather than (presumably?) re-evaluating the pipeline each time, which is nice if the steps of the pipeline are the slow part, or to go back 2 steps and start a new pipeline. Maybe a potential future flag? :-)

Automatically emitting an `up<N>.sh` script is super clever too!

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you please elaborate a bit on the textmate approach? I don't fully grasp it from this description yet... while it totally sounds interesting...

<comment><USER23> I (partially) recreated your `seq 1 15` example here [1] -- no sleep, but my lshw wasn't as interesting as yours :-) I'm hitting command-shift-| to bring up the "filter through command" dialog.

[1]: [https://tcj.io/i/textmate_piping.gif](https://tcj.io/i/textmate_piping.gif)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I get it now. Thanks! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've submitted an issue on GitHub, title "Executing incomplete commands is too dangerous".

[https://github.com/akavel/up/issues/8](https://github.com/akavel/up/issues/8)

</comment><comment><USER28> Really cool. The key principle that this tool highlights is the advantage of rapid iteration. Whenever you have a problem, spending the time up front to shorten your test iterations will pay off massively in the long run of the problem's life.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is nice for linear pipes. But occasionally I find myself building more of a graph.

Bash lets you provide file arguments from pipes via the <() syntax (it's turned into a fd reference via proc behind the scenes). And you can also wire up additional pipes with fd renumbering, though this gets ugly in bash, some other shells are more flexible there, e.g dgsh.

A tool to iteratively build a graph of commands and pipes would be the next step.

<comment><USER30> This sounds interesting. Can you pull up some history and make a gist/pastie?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I checked out the original tool Pipecut—it allows you to look at the output after each pipe:

[https://youtu.be/CZHEZHK4jRc?t=1273](https://youtu.be/CZHEZHK4jRc?t=1273)

When I see stuff like this, I check the date to see if it happened before or after "Inventing on Principle" was presented in 2012. (It's always after)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, you made me think and try to recollect. And to my surprise, I can't really _remember_ the fact of The Presentation being an influence. But I am quite sure _it must have been_ , I can see no other option. Hm, memory is a tricky thing. And Bret Victor left his imprint on our whole industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Related: percol utility allows to narrow a process output interactively [https://github.com/mooz/percol](https://github.com/mooz/percol)

I use it all the time to select a command from my shell history. It is a very convenient addition to zsh-autosuggestions (one of those things that you use hundreds times per day without even thinking about it).

</comment><comment><USER33> Late to the party. This screams like it needs to be part of the shell instead of an addition.

E. G. I type a command in the shell, end it with pipe, and press enter, it doesn't delete the command but runs a preview of the output top 10 lines? This way I can continue to the edit the command without losing the context, the pipe, or I can decide to redirect it to a file!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, interesting thought! The tool needs to do some ugly buffering however; would there be place for it in a shell? Also, I suppose some kind of "Ctrl- Enter" or something would be a better idea instead? So that it could also be hit at any point in the line... But how about scrolling through the preview?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is great. Thanks for sharing.

For something a lot dumber: here's a tiny thing to print out pipe contents to allow for cancelation before continuing the pipe.

[https://gist.github.com/jasisk/be34ae93b74a3d3e8f0a4daac1237...](https://gist.github.com/jasisk/be34ae93b74a3d3e8f0a4daac1237966)

</comment><comment><USER35> The most frequent use case for this for me would be interactive grep. The "fzf" tools has this along with fuzzy search. And the text doesn't disappear while you type "grep" like it does with "up".

I will definitely try this out too though when I make a pipeline with sed, cut, etc.

<comment><USER36> You know that less has interactive grep right? Type & phrase <enter> To go back: & <enter>

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Just an awesome tool, I love those moments of "ah that's trivial, why didn't I think of this already" and it definitively applies for this tool. So special kudos for the idea, but also how little go code the implementation took (ignoring dependencies).

There is already some "pre-release" discussion going on over at lobsters btw.

[https://lobste.rs/s/acpz00/up_tool_for_writing_linux_pipes_w...](https://lobste.rs/s/acpz00/up_tool_for_writing_linux_pipes_with)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :) See also my "prior art" note in the readme ;) I also had the "why didn't _somebody_ think of this already" moment when _I_ thought of it ;) And somebody in fact more or less did, just I wasn't able find it then :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Reminds me of fzz [0], which is a similar tool but focused more on interactive modification of prescribed components of a known command/pipeline than appending a pipeline.

[0] [https://github.com/mrnugget/fzz](https://github.com/mrnugget/fzz)

</comment><comment><USER39> Novel and interesting idea but honestly i can't see any other use for this than grep and that point you might as well just pipe the output straight into vi, less or your other favourite editor where incremental search is one keystroke away.

Sure, the shell has some powerful tools like jq that editors usually lack but otherwise several levels combo piping through cut, wc, awk, etc are quite rare and are usually only done in crazy shell scripts that actually should be rewritten in more appropriate language.

And the dangers of automatically running any commands shouldn't be downplayed. If you only whitelist a few programs this would be much safer, most users would only use this for grep. Or run the whole thing through a docker container.

</comment><comment><USER40> rm is not the only issue. Another problem may arise if your command is not idempotent with respect to the state of the system. Especially if it is not idempotent with respect to system state and requires multiple parameters, since it will execute many times as the parameters are typed. Maybe having a configurable debounce on key press with a reasonable default would be sufficient to get around this issue.

What would be really cool is if this tool ran in a pretend mode and showed you what the results would be without actually mutating the system. Then, once the user is happy with the results, the command can be executed for real.

This whole concept reminds me of helm for emacs :-). Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ideas, and for the good words! :) Do you know of any nice screencast/video where some similar functionality of helm would be shown? Does it also work for shell commands in some way? I'm not an emacs user...

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > This is achieved by boosting any typical Linux text-processing utils such as > grep, sort, cut, paste, awk, wc, perl, etc., etc., by providing a quick, > interactive, scrollable preview of their results.

        lshw | grep network -A2 | grep : | cut -d: -f2-

A better idea would be to work on tools that have structured output, so people can select the keys they want and don't have to scrape.

        $ Get-NetAdapter | where status -eq 'up' | select InterfaceDescription

        InterfaceDescription
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4A Wireless Network Adapter

</comment><comment><USER42> Sounds like fun, but I think there are other ways to achieve a similar workflow without an extra tool. For example, I like to use a tmux session with two panes. On the one side there is a `vim myscript.sh` and on the other side there is a `watch myscript.sh`.

Very similar result and using rm is not that dangerous as you can finish writing your code and it gets executed as soon as you save the file (if you don't like the watch delay you can use one of the many inotify based watch tools or set -n 0.1 or something that suits your needs).

<comment><USER43> I use `entr` for a similar effect, little nicer than watch, though I don't think it's available on all OSes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well damn! This is a really elegant solution for a problem that has been bothering me for quite a while, and for which my own planned solution was much more complex :O

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the good words! :D <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why wasn't there a tool for this earlier? I am a very aggressive piper but I used to hit up arrow , a series of ctrl-w and enter and wait everytime.

Thank you

</comment><comment><USER8> One of my favorite quotes:

``Remember, a temp file is just a pipe with an attitude and a strong will to live'' \- Randal Schwartz [comp.unix.questions]

</comment><comment><USER45> One thing that probably would be useful is when commands are not completely typed or parametrized at the end of the pipeline to still show the last result along with the error message instead of replacing everything and thus removing any context the user had.

</comment><comment><USER10> * [https://github.com/akavel/up/blob/master/up.go#L574](https://github.com/akavel/up/blob/master/up.go#L574)

Please at least respect the SHELL environment variable. (-:

<comment><AUTHOR> Eheh; sorry, MVP! ;) and thanks a lot for taking it lightly and commenting in such a kind and playful way :D It's totally on the long list in some way... please see [https://github.com/akavel/up/issues/2](https://github.com/akavel/up/issues/2) ! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> There is a vim plugin that enables "live preview" for python : [https://github.com/metakirby5/codi.vim](https://github.com/metakirby5/codi.vim)

</comment><comment><USER47> What about using LD_PRELOAD to load a FS shim that prevents writing to the FS?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think LD_PRELOAD would be enough; there are programs which don't use libc and reach straight for syscalls (e.g. the whole Go ecosystem/runtime)

<comment><USER47> Sure; it wouldn't be perfect safety but would work for a large swath of Unix tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Maybe if it automatically chrooted everything to prevent side affects (or better yet: isolate them to a ramdisk.) That would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER49> Massive bravo. Thought about the need for this for ages.

</comment><comment><USER50> For mac: go get -u github.com/akavel/up

</comment><comment><USER51> Wow, how reckless! running partial commandline constructions on every keystroke..

The obvious thing to do is only run what's been typed so far on a trigger key like tab or something.

</comment><comment><USER52> this looks great! installing! my one gripe is that the name really should have been marIO ;)</comment>


How Your Phone Is Designed to Control Your Life [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/515355/google-employee-says-your-phone-is-controlling-your-life/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I actually am very far from addicted to my smartphone. I spend very little time trying to digest information on a 6" screen when I can wait till I get home and digest it on a 4K display and able to concentrate on my work.

For me the most annoying thing is that _other people_ expect me to be glued to my smartphone like them. They expect that I can be reachable at any hour, any minute, and always checking my messages. People expect that they can change venues last minute and I'll be checking my messages. People expect that they can be late 45 minutes and that I'll be okay with it because I can check my messages.

No. That's not the life I want to live. When I leave the house, I have a plan and I execute it according to schedule, giving full attention to the world around me, not the world inside a stupid 6" screen.

<comment><USER3> > I have a plan and I execute it according to schedule

This makes no sense. The single best thing about a phone is removing friction from the last mile and last fifteen minutes of meeting friends. Checking in and fine tuning last minute details is great for friendships. If someone changes venues on you, consider that maybe it accommodated the needs of other members of the group. If someone is late, it's not a problem unless it is a pattern. If it's a pattern, then you know how to plan around it or avoid that friend

<comment><USER2> As another replier said, everyone has different needs.

> Checking in and fine tuning last minute details is great for friendships.

I hate this culture of "checking in". If we agree to meet at place X and time T, is it so difficult to just ... actually be there? I remember the life in the pre-smartphone days when things were just that simple.

Also, when arranging to meet at a place, I am usually specific. Like, "meet me at the train station in front of the inside entrance to Starbucks at 8:20a". That completely eliminates the need for the stupid rounds of "where are you? can you hear me?" at the actual meeting time.

> If someone changes venues on you, consider that maybe it accommodated the > needs of other members of the group.

What about _my_ needs, which are to concentrate on what I'm doing for the day instead of being glued to my smartphone worrying if the time and place has changed? What if I planned a hike for the day and am without reception? What if I'm on the way, biking or driving, and don't want to look at my phone for safety reasons? What if I'm out of battery but still running according to schedule?

In general I consider it disrespectful to change venues last minute, unless someone physically present at the old venue, or a sign is posted is there to inform people who did not see the change of venue. If it's a group of friends meeting at a restaurant that closed, is dietary-wise unsuitable, or something like that, I'd rather just gather everyone at the pre-specified venue first, and then find an alternate venue together.

<comment><USER4> I've had friends call off a meeting because "I wasn't responding on the phone." Moron I'm driving or riding my bike of course I'm not responding. And you didn't call me so I couldn't tell you that, since you're afraid of talking to people over the phone.

My motorcycle is set up for hands free operation but phones still generally assume you have a screen active and shift into screen mode and then accept touches in my pocket which makes me pull over and fix the phone. Or simple shit like google not knowing how to "read hangouts" or "send hangout" but able to text. You can tell it's definitely an afterthought feature. I've spent some time getting that all configured but it's not ideal and doens't really survive new phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really happy this topic is getting some traction. Human well-being should be the non-negotiable constraint within the design process.

I understand the argument that people should be able to manage themselves but human nature is not that simple. People are never told that they are about to use a drug that has been proven to have addictive effects.

Receiving a like on facebook releases dopamine the same way smoking, drinking alcohol or gambling do. All fine in the right amount but dangerous when taken beyond a certain point. One of the problems for example is that people tend to use these substances more under stressful situation like studying for exams, dealing with a problem in your relationship, etc.

<comment><USER6> > I understand the argument that people should be able to manage themselves

I think that argument is made because people arent aware of the degree to which external factors can influence not only our behaviors, but our thoughts. Im sure the HN crowd is aware of things like framing and anchoring, but there are dozens of cognitive biases we are all susceptible to

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was covered in a comment already re: Netflix, but it can't be stressed enough: much of this is a consequence of _free_ software services that need users to spend as much time as possible on the service in order to maximize ad revenue. If the software service required a subscription, then none of these issues are present. In fact, the provider company would have a fairly neutral position on usage, as long as costs are in line and the desired amount of profit is made.

It should give us pause when free software/services have a significant amount of design in common with the lottery and slot machines.

<comment><USER8> We have the example of services like cable tv where people pay for a service to be inundated with ads. So not necessarily the case. We have a pretty diseased relationship with the corporations which are suppose to serve us but instead prey upon us.

<comment><USER7> True. But in that case my point still stands: the cable company itself isn't particularly interested in usage as a profit center because it charges for a subscription. It's the _networks_ that want more usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First step is to gplv3 the entire stack as much as possible, and in the meantime while that seems impossible or improbable, the thing to do is to not use proprietary systems. LineageOS seems like the best comprimise for the time being.

Stallman was right. Either the program controls the user or the user controls the program.

</comment><comment><USER10> How is this different from any other medium?

A newspaper prints articles most likely to consume your time (that's why you buy them). TV channels produce programs you're most likely to watch, and arrange them in such a way that your most likely to continue watching (damn HBO producing quality content so I'm more likely to watch it).

Don't pretend companies are forcing you to look at your phone all the time. Take responsibility for your own actions, and choose not to stare at your phone if you don't want to.

Should we praise the most boring magazine on the stand for not wanting to grab our attention? All hail Drying Paint Weekly, for they are the true guardians of my attention -- producing content so boring that's there's no chance of me getting suckered in!

<comment><USER11> You're right, other mediums employ whatever tactics they can to keep our attention. I think the key differences here are that we have our phones with us all of the time, and the phones have the ability to interrupt whatever we're doing. The point being highlighted in this video, whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing, is that those two things are being exploited to make us addicted to looking at our phones.

I think everybody is in favour of interesting articles and engaging content - I think what this guy is against is the cheap tactics being used at the moment to make you check your phone regardless of the quality of the content you're checking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cell phones were lurking in our subconscious long before they became real. Look at instances of magic books in old fantasy literature. For example in that wizard's house in CS Lewis's "Voyage of the Dawn Treader". And magic mirrors too.

Given that, it's like we hungered for them all along. They click into us like a lego brick.

Also, I see "employers" demanding that their "employees" be accessible via cellphone basically all reasonable waking hours. So it has us by the wallet now.

</comment><comment><USER13> He's absolutely right but how do you change the incentive from maximizing time spent to improving lives?

I find it unlikely that ads are the only problem, after all Netflix wants people to binge just as much as Spotify does and the customers have already paid.

<comment><USER14> Netflix's incentive structure is slightly different: they want their clients to _enjoy the service_ , so that they will be inclined to subscribe to them in the future. Spotify, on the other hand, wants to _maximize time spent using the service_ , which in turn maximizes exposure to advertisements and thus inflates their ad revenue.

For Spotify, binge use is the end goal, whereas for Netflix it is merely a consequence of producing an enjoyable service.

You're right though, it would be difficult to directly incentivize something as nebulous as 'improving lives' beyond providing services that do just that, since corporate incentives generally follow the money.

<comment><USER13> Maybe companies could offer healthier versions of their products for a price if customer awareness rises.

<comment><USER14> Well, grocery stores already do that. And it's hard to imagine what a 'healthier version' of an app, say Spotify, would look like. Unless you're suggesting they move to Netflix's business model, but that's a market niche that's already filled.

<comment><USER13> I'd imagine the spectrum of software healthiness is something along the lines of:

Snapchat -> Facebook -> Reddit -> Hacker News -> BBS (Bulletin Board Systems)

<comment><USER14> I confess that I can't see what gradient this ranking follows. It looks like the users get progressively more anonymous, except Reddit has the most anonymous users and it's in the middle; it also looks like the average use time per day goes down, except I have no idea whether that's the case.

<comment><USER13> BBS, Usenet and Email don't have ratings, likes or follower counts. I think the gradient follows less 'dopaminergic' services that don't offer rewards beyond the intrinsic content people send.

<comment><USER14> Ah, makes sense. But ratings and likes serve another purpose: determining which content is worth looking at. Snapchat aside, those services have the following they do because the content is tailored to the user: Facebook has their algorithms, r/all is filtered by 10M users, and so on.

But HN has an advantage in that it has a specific audience (the sort of people who know that Ycombinator is a thing). So the content is already probably relevant. Maybe that model has advantages we haven't fully explored yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, such a negative view.

> Never before in history have 50, mostly male, 20-35 year old designers, > living in California, working at 3 tech companies, influenced how a billion > people spend their time.

This is an incredibly specific statement that wouldn't be true if scaled back a bit. The result of this seems to be pure FUD. I have to say what an incredibly biased piece. The attention economy did not start with the internet. This a cultural issue not the fault of the companies in Sili Valley. Take responsibility for yourself people.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. Religions have better track of lifes control.

<comment><USER15> Scaling back that statement would include more than religion. How about the disruption the automobile industry caused way back when?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I just wish there was a better way to measure "positive impact" on people's lives. Often the amount of time spent is used as a proxy for this, because it is much easier to measure.

In order to truly accurately measure such a thing, you would need to know (or infer/predict) someone's personal goals, and their progress towards their goals. This raises concerns with privacy, but perhaps it is a level of trust that more people will be able to give technology at some point.

<comment><USER18> The phone must have a direct link to our brain and measure our dopamine and serotonin levels. Thats the only way. As long as our hormone data is anonymized then there's no problem.

<comment><USER17> That seems crazy to me. If you want to maximize dopamine release you will optimize your product to be more and more like cocaine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A tool I've found eye-opening is [https://www.rescuetime.com](https://www.rescuetime.com) which measures and graphs where you spend your time at the computer.

The Battery Usage statistics on iOS are also helpful, if not as granular.

Once people have awareness of how they spend their time it becomes easier to make an informed decision.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really? Twitter inserts a deliberate delay before updating the number of notifications you have?

</comment><comment><USER20> As I think and wonder sometimes: human race have some kind of "bug", we are not prepared for phones and notifications.

<comment><USER21> Sure in the same way that many people have an exploitable "bug" for slot machines, opioids, calorie-dense foods, etc. It will take a long time if ever for evolution to catch up.

<comment><USER20> Yes, other bug shows when you combine sugar + fat. E.g.: ice cream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use a basic phone. Not charging it all the time is very convenient. But best of all, me and my friend don't know each other's numbers; and if we do, it gets invalid fast since we change SIM cards fast.

I think the best way is to get rich via trading Cryptocurrency and then be free from wage-slavery. Read physical books and eventually do something worthwhile like teaching in remote areas.</comment>


Ipython and SciPy for the iPad - <AUTHOR> http://computableapp.com

<comment><USER2> This seems really interesting and has a lot of potential if Apple allows the iPython notebook approach (which would make sense given the likes of Editorial having Python etc), but the info is sparse and all links off the homepage result in 500 errors :/</comment>


Indonesian cave art may be world's oldest - <AUTHOR> http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/10/indonesian-cave-art-may-be-worlds-oldest

<comment><USER2> They mention the oldest depiction of a rhinoceros --- in a cave in France. Mind = blown.</comment>


Flickr's new iPhone app puts mobile front and center  - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57558673-1/flickrs-new-iphone-app-puts-mobile-front-and-center/

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't care what Marissa is doing for Yahoo's stock, as a user I am over the moon that they FINALLY put together a halfway decent Flickr App.

Their mobile app efforts to date have been total crap for one of the world's largest photo sharing sites, especially considering that far and away their largest uploaders are smartphone users:

<http://www.flickr.com/cameras/>

Definitely a positive sign.</comment>


Parasites may explain regional differences in intelligence - Rob-Goodier http://www.economist.com/node/16479286 <comment><AUTHOR> When looking at correlating factors, they should also include diet. I remember reading that some Central Asian countries, as recently as a decade ago, were losing more than 5 IQ points on average just to iodine deficiency.

</comment><comment><USER2> Another HN participant told me about a reply to this latest paper by these authors.

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/2...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/29/does- national-iq-depend-on-parasite-infections-er/)

When I see gee-whiz news reports about science, even in very reputable publications like The Economist, I think to turn to Peter Norvig's article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

to evaluate the research.

<comment><USER3> There is an interesting comment in the Discover post, where Carl Zimmer (author of popular science book on parasites) points out several studies from all around the world (Jamaica, China, Indonesia, Philippines) where they found children got smarter after de-worming:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/2...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/29/does- national-iq-depend-on-parasite-infections-er/#comment-10704)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why wouldn't it simply be the case that more intelligent societies have been more successful at eradicating disease?

</comment><comment><USER5> My first thought: which parasites make you smarter?

<comment><USER6> Had the same thought, though the article says that the _lack of_ infectious disease (parasites) would cause intelligence gain. The population of countries where disease is less of a problem wouldn't see the same benefit...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The first thing I thought of is that if lack of diseases is what has been causing the rise in intelligence, then there's likely to be a ceiling that average intelligence will hit as countries become healthier, rather than some mysterious force continually increasing average intelligence forever. That makes me a little sad.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm really curious as to how exactly they accounted for other factors. They say they compared findings to other studies that looked at other possible explanations, but quite many of them are certainly correlated if not caused by one another.

<comment><USER9> one can deduce how two kinds of organisms have influenced each other by studying how their respective gene pools (have) co-evolve(d)

<comment><USER10> Statically the problem that he posed is still there, what are the variables they ignored when calculating the statistical significance of their hypothesis? I actually read the paper, and well, it was one of the worst that I have read in my entire life. In the end of the paper they wrote: "We are not arguing that global variation in intelligence is only caused by parasite stress."

So why is the point of having a research about causation when various independent causes can exist and do not test how much the hypothetical cause affects the causation relationship in general? Should I publish a paper on intelligence and ice cream consumption by population in the last 50 years to show how ridiculous the entire situation is?

Sounds like that sort of paper that someone publishes only so that his name get cited more times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's politically illegal to say that on average whites are smarter than blacks so instead they have this little gem:

"....distance from humanity's African homeland (novel environments could encourage greater intelligence)...."

<comment><USER12> There are plenty of Blacks outside Africa and I hear that in South Africa there are loads of whites.

<comment><USER11> If you look at the data you'll notice it's very noisy. And I bet the noise is entirely (or mostly) made up of race.

Note that one of the things they did not control for was race.

It's racist to say this, I know, and more importantly it's not nice. But if you are going to make a study, you have to deal with reality.

Control for race, and then check the correlation with parasites.

<comment><USER13> How do you control for race? My grandmother is Mexican. My grandfather is German. What "race" is my mom? What about me?

<comment><USER11> You do the best you can. Perfection is not required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> another reason to support universal health care: a smarter public

<comment><USER15> You presume that universal health care will lead to a healthier public

<comment><USER16> It's been successful in every country that has tried it. Granted, the US has a bad habit of poorly implemented government programs so who knows, we may be the first exception.

PS: Medical outcomes are far more dependent on the average level of care than the peek level of care. EX: There is a lot of evidence that the average doctor is significantly more effective than a "high preforming" doctor that is sleep deprived.

<comment><USER17> > It's been successful in every country that has tried it.

Doesn't that depend on the starting point? For example, NHS started during the post WWII depression in the UK. The US isn't starting from there.

I'm trying to track down the stats, but I've heard that the US lifespan is world-longest if you adjust for accidents and homicide, two things that aren't affected by healthcare.

> Granted, the US has a bad habit of poorly implemented government programs so > who knows, we may be the first exception.

The US govt gets the same amount of tax revenue per person as the "rich" EU countries. If the benefits are less ....

<comment><USER18> > I've heard that the US lifespan is world-longest if you adjust for accidents > and homicide, two things that aren't affected by healthcare.

Other measures of health care quality, such as infant mortality, are worse in the US than in many other countries. So I doubt it.

<comment><USER19> _Other measures of health care quality, such as infant mortality, are worse in the US..._

Nope. The US spends far more on trying to save the lives of premature and sickly newborns than any other country. Many these don;t make it after being born and show up in the stats as "high infant mortality". This approach also drives up health care costs.

One can argue (having met two crack babies that survived, I personally would be tempted to in many cases) that US hospitals _shouldn't_ do this, but nevertheless they _do_ do it. And it costs money and skews statistics.

I also have personally experienced health care in other countries (Greece, Mexico, China -- where my wife was a doctor). No thanks.

<comment><USER18> _The US spends far more on trying to save the lives of premature and sickly newborns than any other country._

[citation needed]

 _Many these don;t make it after being born and show up in the stats as "high infant mortality"._

That's true in every country, regardless of how hard you try to save their lives. More of them make it after being born if you try very hard to save their lives.

 _I also have personally experienced health care in other countries (Greece, Mexico, China_

So have I. I surely don't need to point out to _you_ , with your wide travel experience, that not all other countries are equal. The Argentine health care I've experienced is head and shoulders above anything I've experienced in the US, although that's mostly because I live in the capital where things are good.

The US's infant mortality rate is about .0063. Greece's is about .005 to .007. Mexico's is .017 or .018. China's is about .020 to .023. Your personal experience that care is much worse in those countries, with the exception of Greece, supports the validity of infant mortality as a measure of care quality; it does not undermine it.

There are around 25 countries with better infant mortality than the US, but that doesn't include the three you listed. Several of them have less than half the infant mortality level of the US. Have you personally experienced health care in any of them? What was your experience?

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_count...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate)

I recognize that statistics do not always capture the reality of a situation. However, in this case, I don't think it's adequate to simply deny their validity without any evidence. (The evidence you have adduced so far, from your personal experience, supports their validity rather than undermining it.)

<comment><USER17> > There are around 25 countries with better infant mortality than the US,

With comparable populations?

For example, Scandanavians do well everywhere. (However, the US ones do better than the ones who didn't leave.) A population dominated by Scandanavians will do better than one that is more "typical".

I'm pretty sure that the US healthcare system is not responsible for crank and crack mothers, but it gets "credit" for their birth problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Correlation <> causation. IMHO they should be very careful before establishing a link between those two.

<comment><USER21> You should read the article. They considered that.

 _The correlation is about 67%, and the chance that it might have come about at random is less than one in 10,000. But correlation is not causation, so Mr Eppig and his colleagues tried to eliminate other possible explanations. Previous work has offered income, education, low levels of agricultural labour (which is replaced by more mentally stimulating jobs), climate (the challenge of surviving cold weather might provoke the evolution of intelligence) and even distance from humanity's African homeland (novel environments could encourage greater intelligence) as explanations for national differences in IQ. However, all of these, except perhaps the last, are also likely to be linked to disease and, by careful statistical analysis, Mr Eppig and his colleagues show that all of them either disappear or are reduced to a small effect when the consequences of disease are taken into account.

There is, moreover, direct evidence that infections and parasites affect cognition. Intestinal worms have been shown to do so on many occasions. Malaria, too, is bad for the brain. A study of children in Kenya who survived the cerebral version of the disease suggests that an eighth of them suffer long-term cognitive damage. In the view of Mr Eppig and his colleagues, however, it is the various bugs that cause diarrhoea which are the biggest threat. Diarrhoea strikes children hard. It accounts for a sixth of infant deaths, and even in those it does not kill it prevents the absorption of food at a time when the brain is growing and developing rapidly._</comment></comment>


Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView - <AUTHOR> https://karp.id.au/a/2016/08/23/privacy-implications-for-openstreetview/ <comment><USER2> Reading into the details of these kinds of "privacy implications" (particularly the desire to force publication delay and the force blurring of people or license plates), I'm left thinking that the "implications" are more stark for _freedom_ than they are for _privacy_.

Are there really privacy implications of _any_ sort in publishing a series of photos of people and cars on a street that aren't already implicated by the knowledge that Google and / or the NSA already have far better photos of the same scenes?

On a more fundamental level: isn't publishing, in real time and high quality, a photo (or series of photos) of a public area essentially for freedom of the press? And doesn't the insertion of a "privacy" claim that threaten that freedom?

I know it's specifically enshrined in the US Constitution, but in an age of ubiquitous cameras and publication media, it's equally important in Australia and around the world, no?

We can opt either to allow each other to share our eyes and ears unto infinity, putting criminals and power brokers on notice that their actions in public are preserved for all time, or we can decide to close and cover them, leaving only criminals and power brokers to see and hear.

<comment><USER3> > We can opt either ... or

Or, we can have a compromise, since the world isn't black and white, and we needn't restrict ourselves to a binary choice.

That's how the European rights work, on life, expression (speech), privacy and so on.

<comment><USER2> With most things, I agree, but I'm not sure I see any middle ground here. Can you publish a picture taken in public, even if it includes faces and license plates, or not? This does seem binary to me.

<comment><USER4> Big public projects can have policies which minimise negative externalities.

You can still privately publish any photo you like, within the bounds of the law.

There is lots of middle ground. "Legally you can, but morally, should you?"

Time series get interesting.

If it comes to actual law and courts, it's definitely context dependent. Intent matters a lot. Surf cam is more OK than "revenge cam" of ex's house. Yes that means humans ascribe morality to certain arrangements of bits (and how the bits are evaluated is affected by who they were created by, and why). No, publishing and freedom of speech are not absolute but depend on purpose and intent.

To put it another way, technically child pornography is just a time series of pictures right?

<comment><USER2> > child pornography is just a time series of pictures right?

But presumably it's not the capturing of the photons that is criminal in the case of child pornography. Even if you used a fake camera, it's still illegal, right?

<comment><USER5> I'd assume that's just child exploitation/molestation, not pornography. But that's just me.

<comment><USER2> Right right.

Well, then, I suppose what I'm saying is: in an information-age society, it's the child exploitation/molestation that's properly a crime; capturing the same as a piece of media is no modifier.

<comment><USER4> But the media itself is illegal to posess. Some images / videos are Ok, some are not. Moral judgement is involved.

What I am saying is, if society wants to, it can totally declare that some pictures / videos are ok and some are not. This already happens all the time.

<comment><USER2> Maybe that's not really OK anymore. I tend to be of the belief that, for freedom to prevail in the information age, information freedom must be absolute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The lack of quality blurring is definitely something to prioritize.

As an aside, OpenStreetView makes me think of the "gargoyles" in Snow Crash. As sensors of all types (but in this instance cameras) get radically cheaper & start to permeate the physical world it's inevitable that things visible from the street will just become less private over time.

<comment><USER7> And quality blurring may be tricky to implement. On Google Street View, street name plates and road signs are often blurred, because the algorithm is not sure if they are licence plates or not, and blurs too much. For Open Street View, this would defeat the purpose of having the photos.

<comment><USER8> "Because it's hard" is not a very good reason to neglect doing something when you know it's the right thing to do.

The right thing to do would have been to avoid publishing these photos until you have the means to anonymise them properly, or to use a service like Google Vision and pay the small fee to get someone else to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-jones Cock-up before conspiracy.

OpenStreetView isn't intended to intrude, it is just naivety on the creators part. It will be solved in some capacity sooner or later, if not for genuine concern for peoples privacy, to avoid negative media attention.

<comment><USER9> I think that's a fair assessment, but still, it's important to raise the issue sooner rather than later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shouldn't it be possible to let people do their own blurring for the case where the automatic stuff doesn't work?

There isn't going to be that much to blur if this is all straight ahead views from a car. You don't see many people on the road from lower than car roof level. Those on the sidewalks will be pretty far away. The issue with Google is that the point of view is deliberately made high enough to clear cars in other lanes. So in practice the privacy thing might not a huge issue here unless a significant number of people start mounting cameras on poles.

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps we could consider what is going on here to be something of a small- townification of cities.

I grew up in a small town. If something was going on out from behind closed doors, everyone knew about it. And sometimes they knew even if it _was_ behind closed doors.

Prior to the current era of data ubiquity, to escape such a thing, you could find some level of anonymity in a crowd. Walking through Times Square in NYC, you're technically in public, but you're just another unremarkable person on an unremarkable day.

There is a certain level of ignorance about the greater world in a small town. I've witnessed people saying and doing very--how should I say--unprogressive things, "just" because they didn't know any better [0]. On the flip side, there is a certain level of indifference about the greater world in a city. I've seen no greater degree of true open-mindedness in cities, and I think that's due to a kind of shutting down and retreating from the full ocean of people that cities contain.

In other words, whether or not a certain person lives a public-by-default or private-by-default life, they're probably going to be exactly the same.

So what does this mean for privacy? Privacy is a continuum that is inversely correlated with how much contact you want to have with the outside world. 100% privacy requires 100% retreat from the world, which is childishly unrealistic. Either accept that society needs to know your face to be able to talk to you, or go move out into the desert and live a hermit's life. You can't expect to live in a community and be "anonymous", not now, not ever before.

I don't agree that one should be allowed to blur themselves out of other people's photos. If you're out in public, you agree to be seen. It's childish to say, "I don't want my photo online." You might as well say, "I don't want people on the bus to see my face." They are the same exact people online as they are on the bus.

[0] They should have known better, ignorance is no excuse here, but it's very easy to rationalize to yourself that the media provides an accurate depiction of people-unlike-you of whom you have no personal experience. I'm not sure my grandfather has ever met an African American man who confirms his racist stereotyping of them, but that doesn't stop him from adopting whole-cloth the image that they are all wanna-be rap stars, which I blame mostly on my grandfather being a raging asshole, but a small part on mainstream media providing black men with few other roles.

<comment><USER12> > If you're out in public, you agree to be seen.

True. Seen and enshrined in some (or more) peoples fleeting memory. Not captured for (nearly) all eternity and the whole world (who were not present at that exact moment and place) to see.

That is also the reason I oppose ubiquitous public surveillance. Even if it can only be seen by some amount of government actors.

I am glad, that I grew up in a time without constant photography or trackability. I am glad, that I an not totally recorded with every step I take in public and that only the people who walk by might have the chance to remember my face and me being there at that moment.

[Edit] formatting [/Edit]

<comment><USER11> That's not entirely true. Photographers have long had very broad rights about shooting in public [0]. If you're in a high-traffic area, it's fairly likely you could end up in someone's photo. You might be lost in the sea of people, but you'll probably also be lost in the sea of mass data collection.

My point is not that "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear". There is perhaps a corollary, "just who do you think you are that anyone _would_ be interested in your life?" But even that is beside the point. The point is that you've never actually had this extremely broad version of a right to privacy that you think you had.

[0] [http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf](http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf)

<comment><USER12> I know of the rights a photographer has (at least here in Germany). It is not so clear cut as it sounds. for example, if I wear a big pink hat in a sea of suits and a photographer does make a photo of me within this sea, even being among maybe hundreds of people, I am clearly the center of attention and he has to obtain the right to use (and show) the image in any way.

You are right, if me being merely some pebble in a sea of pebbles - so to speak.

So there is still some privacy implication left - even in your example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do you actually use openstreetview.org? All I could see was a map, no imagery. At first some roads were highlighted in pink but as soon as I zoomed and panned a little bit, the pink lines disappeared...

<comment><USER14> It's under heavy load at the moment (probably some scaling issues), so responses are a bit slow. You click on the pink lines (and wait).

<comment><USER12> Even loading the pink lines took about 60 seconds last time I tried. So the heavy load seems to be very heavy indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Funny, me and a friend started talking about a crowd sourced alternative to Google Street View just last week. My first thought when discussing this was: how will you normalize data? How will you provide a 360 view? I guess the answer is: you probably wont.

Didn't know of this initiative, so I was happy to see people working on it. Here's the first image that popped up for me:

[https://imgur.com/a/ScgOd](https://imgur.com/a/ScgOd)

Lo and behold, it's upside down. :)

<comment><USER16> They fixed that bug: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12331769](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12331769)

Mapillary has been able to recover 3d structure in areas with high photo density:

[http://blog.mapillary.com/update/2015/11/10/pointclouds.html](http://blog.mapillary.com/update/2015/11/10/pointclouds.html)

That's still a long way from merging the photos into a coherent view, but you quickly start to be able to 'look around'.</comment></comment>


Design and Implementation of a 256-Core BrainFuck Computer [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://sigtbd.csail.mit.edu/pubs/veryconference-paper2.pdf <comment><USER2> > The BrainFuck computer is an attractive solution for servicing high > throughput BrainFuck cloud services, both in terms of performance and cost.

BrainFuck as a Service?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Considering each BrainFuck command on average takes 5 or more assembly > instructions to implement, even assuming a perfect 1 instructions per second > on a 3GHz processor, it would require almost one hundred cores to compete > with this performance

I assume the authors intended to mean "1 instructions per cycle" here, but even with that amendment isn't that pretty poor performance for modern CPU? I was under the impression that modern CPUs have peak performance way above 1 IPC, although if that is realizable with BF interpreter is another question. It would have been nice to see comparison to some reasonably high-performance BF compiler.

<comment><USER4> Not way above, but yes. We use simultaneous multi threading and out of order execution to enable superscalar execution I.e >1 instruction per cycle. But it's not likely to be more than 2-3 for a variety of reasons.

<comment><USER5> Just adding that you can be superscalar, while not being out of order or multithreaded.

The Xbox 360's cores fit that model, as well as the original Pentium. They'll execute multiple instructions, but will serialize if there are dependencies (or other constraints that are uarch specific).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a simple man. I see an article about Brainfuck and I upvote it

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck)

For reference. This would basically let you almost use BrainFuck. If you wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would a mind greater than I please weigh in on a potential path to using BrainFuck to do some type of meaningful task (simple server, cli tool, etc)?

From what I can tell, the best bet is using it to to write the source code for another language and run that code since most examples seem to just print strings or increment values.

Is there a meaningful set of primitives one can incrementally build on the core language to make usable code?

<comment><USER9> Thanks to BFBASIC there's a small digital jewel safe running brainfuck as it's core in a couple casinos.

It was doable, and matched security expectations, but it feels like twenty years ago.

The tooling isn't quite there, so you end up working around the compiler and injecting hand written bf, like we used to with assembly.

<comment><USER10> That's kind of amazing... could you share why? Just to prove it could be done?

<comment><USER9> Security requirements by the hotel. They wanted everything to be running obfuscated code.

They gave me a choice of Malboge or Brainfuck, neither of which I knew before the contract.

<comment><USER11> That seems like a ridiculous security requirement, but also like a rather interesting project to work on! The ultimate security through obscurity.

<comment><USER9> It was certainly fun at the beginning, and I think they were aiming for crazy levels of security, and obscurity sounded nice to someone.

But the tooling really isn't there.

Ended up using 'make' and 'm4' as preprocessors to work around things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Come on, 5 instructions per BF operation? They're on x86 right? Let's assume your memory pointer is in ebx. (Substitute rbx for x64 code) (nasm syntax)

        +: inc byte [ebx]
        -: dec byte [ebx]
        >: inc ebx
        <: dec ebx
        [:   cmp byte [ebx], 0
             jz endlabel
           startlabel:
        ]:   cmp byte [ebx], 0
             jnz startlabel
           endlabel:

That's ignoring . and , which I expect do not occur very often. (If they did, their compute-focused architecture wouldn't be a good choice anyway.)

This is more like 1.3 instructions per command. How did they get their "5"?

<comment><USER13> Even basic optimizing compilers collapse consecutive + and - operations into a single constant size instruction and does a dozen other optimizations so in practice the instruction density is crazy high compared to naively executing every BF operation individually. It could have been interesting if they used an optimized ISA inspired by [1].

There's a reason why CPUs that can execute JVM bytecode directly never caught on: They cannot apply any of the optimizations that a JIT or compiler can.

[1] [http://calmerthanyouare.org/2015/01/07/optimizing- brainfuck....](http://calmerthanyouare.org/2015/01/07/optimizing- brainfuck.html)

<comment><USER12> Of course you collapse sequences of BF instructions, but then you get an even lower cpu-instructions / bf-command ratio. The paper gives 5/1, I claim it's at MOST 1.3/1, and with a basic optimising compiler you can get far below that of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tuition well spent.

</comment><comment><USER15> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12714846](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12714846)

</comment><comment><USER5> The architecture really reminds me of TIS-100.

<comment><USER16> Zach, if you're reading this, please make a Brainfuck expansion for TIS-100 [1] and Shenzhen I/O [2], your games are clearly not hard enough already ;)

[1] [http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/](http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/) [2] [http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen- io/](http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen-io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can't believe they misspelled Virtex.

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice.</comment>


Zero Downtime Deployments Using DevOps - <AUTHOR> https://www.dotlabs.com.au/blog/unlock-zero-downtime-deployment-devops/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Happy to discuss or answer questions.</comment>


Building An Expanding DHTML Menu With CSS and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.interspire.com/content/articles/10/1/Building-An-Expanding-DHTML-Menu-With-CSS-and-JavaScript

<comment><USER2> An article from 2005 on a technique that is passe now (what no <li>'s?)

Karma bait...</comment>


Show HN: A method to generate more business ideas for solopreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bigfmethod.com <comment><AUTHOR> Out of frustration after not finding any relevant methods that could help me come up with more business Ideas to develop, I've ended up creating the BIGF Method (BIGF stands for Business Idea Generation Framework).

There are methods and tools out there, but they basically are for teams of people working for a company, not for entrepreneurs / indy hackers / side hustlers by themselves.

So I decided to document my own journey and use that as the base to create the BIGF Method with the hope that it will be helpful for other entrepreneurs like me.

You can get in for free with the code hn (it will be valid until tomorrow).

I hope you find it useful and that you can help me improve it.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and checking out the BIGF Method.

Ramon

</comment><comment><USER2> You don't mention even a slight hint about how it all works, or if one of those ideas was turned into a business. Also, 10$ seems low for a (possible?) life-changing course. If I could find ideas that easily my life might be different.

So, why should we buy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback @xcubic.

How it works is explained in the free preview part of the course: [https://www.bigfmethod.com/courses/bigf- method/lessons/intro...](https://www.bigfmethod.com/courses/bigf- method/lessons/intro/).

That's also where I explain what I'm doing with those ideas: I'm working through them as part of my journey to find my next business. I thought it would add confusion to send them to another website to learn about my challenge ([https://ramonsuarez.com/launching-at-least-one-project- every...](https://ramonsuarez.com/launching-at-least-one-project-every-month- my-entrepreneurship-learning-challenge/))

I'll look again into the text and see if I can fit it in a relevant way.

About the pricing: I find it is a good price to start with to get more people in, specially at the beginning where not enough people have gone in to provide good testimonials. I also think that the target audience is very price sensitive.

What would be the adequate price for you?

Why buy? Because you are looking for new business ideas and are stuck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've implemented a couple changes in the landing page text based on your feedback @xcubic. Again, thanks :)</comment></comment></comment>