Ask HN: Back problems - <AUTHOR> With many of you coding for multiple hours a day, presumably hunched over your keyboards for a portion of that time, I'd imagine back pain being a relatively common problem throughout the hacker community.
For those of you with back pain, knots, lower back pain, etc., how do you deal with it? Are there any exercises or movements that help alleviate whatever pain or soreness your backs might be experiencing? Have chiropractors or acupuncturists helped?
I've had back pain for years now, and although contorting my body to snap my spine provides immediate relief, it hasn't really provided any long term alleviation. In fact the problem has gotten much worse.
Thanks. <comment><USER4> Try stretching out your hamstrings. A lot of lower back pain is actually caused by shortened hamstrings pulling the pelvis and lower back out of alignment.

<comment><USER5> As another comment suggests, there are many muscles acting across the pelvis and trunk that might be contributing. A physical therapist will either correctly identify what specific areas you should focus on, or (more likely) make sure that you work them all.

I've had several acute lumbar disc incidents leading to up to 6 months of sustained sciatica. By the end of that time, my hamstrings were indeed extremely tight, from inactivity and sitting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Improve your hip mobility and the strength/activation of your _glutes_.

It takes a bit of reading to understand whats happening to your body but essentially sitting for long periods of time weakens your glutes and also the mobility of your hip. This in turn causes your lower back to compensate (flexion) in any movement requiring glutes/hip movement. Since the back wasnt designed for that movement, you tend to get hurt.

Start with these 2 articles and you'll understand what I mean:

[http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_trai...](http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_repair/lower_back_savers)

[http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_trai...](http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_repair/the_mobilitystability_continuum)

I'm a programmer too but I've had no back problems as soon as I started fixing my glutes/hip-mobility.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have 3 squashed discs in my lower back from a skateboarding injury. I've tried everything for back pain. Before I share what works for me, I'll say that if you don't have a structural injury you probably just have very weak "core" muscles and the best thing you can do is get into a general state of good fitness and then add in some core strengthening exercises.

After doing tons of PT, and trying everything from yoga to pilates to accupuncture to cyclobenzeprine, I figured out three main exercises that strengthen the muscles in the lower back:

\- "superman": lay on your stomach on the floor. raise your left arm and right leg up at the same time. hold for a count of five. repeat on other side. do this 10 times for each side.

\- "planks": this is like a pushup but you're on your elbows and instead of doing a pushup, you just hold in that position. It sounds easy but is very hard if you don't have strong abs. try to work up to 3-5 sets of 60 seconds at a time.

\- "bird dog": like the superman but you're on your knees and hands, doggy style. raise left leg and right arm at the same time, hold for count of 5. alternate. do 10.

Those three things, and being generally in shape have helped my back more than anything else I've tried. You can find videos of them on youtube if you google those exercise names with "core fitness" or similar search strings added in.

Other lifestyle changes are good, too. Don't sit down in a pile for 8 hours at a time. Get up and move around, even if you're just getting out of your chair at least once an hour. Change your position. Sit on an exercise ball for a while, lie down on a couch with a laptop for a while, work standing up for a while. Go for a walk at least an hour a day.

I've found that pilates is much better for back care than yoga. many of the yoga moves are not good for your back if you have slipped discs. in particular, "downward dog" which is the staple move of most yogas is not good if you actually have a back injury like mine. Pilates arose out of rehab so most of the moves are safer for your back. I mention these activities because one of the side effects of back problems (or sometimes the cause of back problems) is very tight hamstrings. You'll need to do some sort of stretching to get the hamstrings back in order and I've found this easier to do in a structured, class context.

I'll be semi controversial and say that you want to have strong abs, but you DON'T want to do situps. do planks instead. Situps strengthen your abs while pulling your back into the same position that makes it hurt. planks strengthen your abs but you're also extended and working all your stabilization muscles at the same time.

<comment><USER8> This is excellent advice. I still play sport at a high level at the moment and being 6'6, I was getting back pain. Superman, plank and bird dog are all excellent exercises to help strengthen your back and core. Since I've been doing them, I've alleviated all the back pain which I used to get after training and matches.

The only thing I'd say is that the plank exercises may not be the best exercises for people with a reall weak core. You may want to start at something lower (bird dog and other light core exercises might be better).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Exercise - it works.

<comment><USER10> No kidding! I used to have frequent back pain, with aches that wouldn't go away even after an age of stretching.

Six years ago I started on the RCAF's old 5BX program (a quick Google search will lead you to the booklet that describes it -- dead simple) and, in exchange for 11 minutes of exercise a day on an open floor, had the body I've always wanted within a year.

I've since moved on to weights and other gym-like stuff and have not had back pain in years.

It's so stupidly obvious I'm kicking myself for it now: If you have decent muscle to support all those bones and tendons up your back, they won't be straining themselves to the point of pain while supporting your body.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, yeah, 5BX is great! While a certain rare exercise machine gives the most relief, one simple 5BX back exercise (chart 1, exercise 3) is as effective, provided I do it regularly.

I do other exercises too: stationary cycling, rowing and treadmill with some weight work. All necessary because I enjoy food!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At work, I try to remember to stand up and stretch periodically. Drinking a lot of water forces me to get up out my chair regularly and go for a short walk down the hall.

When not at work, I try to take care of my back by wearing a back brace when doing heavy work or home improvement tasks and try to remember to lift with my knees, not my back.

</comment><comment><USER13> Look into the ideas and books of John Sarno. He believes that many chronic pain "syndromes" that resist treatment are actually psychological in origin.

I discovered Sarno when I came down with untreatable "RSI". Eventually I got better using his approach. My story is similar to Rachels (google for others):

<http://podolsky.everybody.org/rsi/>

Sarno originally worked with people who had chronic untreatable back pain.

All that said, if you're not getting any exercise I would try that first. But if you have tried that and a bunch of other things and nothing works, look at Sarno.

<comment><USER5> I read Sarno when I was suffering from "carpal tunnel" like symptoms that wouldn't heal. I didn't believe his claims, but his argument about the possibility of self-perpetuating psychosomatic pain made me put more effort into being happy, which was valuable.

In cases where you have inflamed or slipped disks pushing on the spinal nerve (e.g. sciatica), Sarno is completely inappropriate.

Of course, bulging or not-perfectly straight disks in an MRI or xray do _not_ mean the pain should be solved by an operation - most symptom free people have some irregularities that will show up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stuart McGill's [http://www.amazon.com/Low-Back-Disorders-Evidence-based- Reha...](http://www.amazon.com/Low-Back-Disorders-Evidence-based- Rehabilitation/dp/0736066926) is a good textbook. It's not for the layperson looking for quick recommendations, but he does give some recommendations based on physical and computer models of the spine under various exercises (and traumas).

</comment><comment><USER5> In a vulnerable state (from athletic wear and tear), I've incurred unexpected sharp nerve compression pain (feeling like part of my spine crunching against the nerve, maybe some minor lumbar disk slip) from things like kicking a lid shut on a trash can, or crouching down to open a cabinet - in those cases, conscious bracing (or just being more cautious when not feeling 100%) would likely have avoided the irritation altogether.

Those minor tweaks have always resulted in at least a few days or weeks of pain, which seems a little ridiculous, but one of the unfortunate things about back pain (not muscle strain or soreness, but actual spinal soft tissue incidents) is the increased likelihood of reinjury later in life. For many of us, there's a direct and obvious spinal trauma causing a few weeks or months of injury, followed by seemingly normal function, but with (lifelong?) heightened risk of reinjury from more minor strains.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm going to have to go with the AOL comment on this one. I had both upper and lower back pain. A proper understanding of how my back can get pulled into awkward positions and what stretches/posture corrections are necessary to prevent this has eliminated it thus far without having to make any equipment changes (buying new chairs, desk trays, etc.).

Tim Ferris also recommends changing your shoes ([http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/07/vibram- five-...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/07/vibram-five-fingers- shoes/)) or your chair ([http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/27/office- chair...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/27/office-chair-aeron- vs-mirra-vs-liberty/)) if stretches/exercise doesn't cut it for you.

</comment><comment><USER15> * Abs and Back Strengthening *

\- These are simple and only need a yoga mat and 10 minutes 3 times week. Even 1 session a week will kill a lot of back pain

\- I will ignore situps here, because they're simple

\- Get yoga mat.

\- Lie _face down_, legs and arms outstretched

\- Raise your _left_ arm and _right_ leg, so your body evens out

\- Lower left arm / right leg

\- Raise right arm, raise right leg

\- Lower and repeat ~ 20 times

\- Now switch to the situps and do 20 of one of the many varieties you can do.

\- Alternate situps with prone swim, as the core muscles exhaust after 20 repititions. Keep both abs and back at same level to prevent hunching.

* Ergonomics *

\- Get a foot rest

\- Get an Aeron chair

\- If you're right-handed get a left handed keyboard so that your hand does not have to travel over the numpad to reach the mouse. This extra travel distance can really hurt over time

I have a Evuloent <http://www.evoluent.com/kb1.html>

* Stretching *

Mentioned elsewhere, do your quads as much as possible

</comment><comment><USER16> James Hong recently wrote a blog post containing a video and excerpts from a book by Esther Gokhale called "8 steps to a pain free back". It's worth a look, helped me.

<http://blog.jhong.org/2009/02/back-pain.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> Fix your posture (most likely bad), stretch your psoas and hamstrings, and go and have an ART or deep tissue massage done. You might also want to invest in a foam roller for self-myofascial release and then use a tennis / lacrosse ball once that's not enough.

<comment><USER18> I'd recommend buying this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Point-Therapy- Workbook-Self-Tr...](http://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Point-Therapy-Workbook- Self- Treatment/dp/1572243759/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242674470&sr=8-1). It shows you the trigger points which cause referred pain. I reference this book quite frequently and would also recommend (no joke) taking a woman's nylon and putting a tennis ball in it. You can then hold the open end of the nylon and hang the tennis ball over your shoulder with your back towards a wall. By applying pressure (by leaning) on the tennis ball for a few seconds, you can alleviate trigger points or sore muscles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> \- Sports

\- Try not to code on a Laptop or use a clever setup to avoid problems. E.g. see here for some details [http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/workplacehealth/Pages/Laptophealt...](http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/workplacehealth/Pages/Laptophealth.aspx)

\- The chair you sit in. It makes sense to buy a good chair if you spend all day in it.

\- Sitting angle. Interestingly a angle of 90 deg has shown to have more "sitting pressure" than 110-135 degrees. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm> more details here <http://www.springerlink.com/content/w3k042u614x16900/>

</comment><comment><USER20> I recommend the StrongLifts 5x5 program. It's 5 exercises per workout (45 mins), 3x a week.

[http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength- tra...](http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength-training- program/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah -- chair, general ergonomics, excercise, stretching, massage. All good. All mostly missing the real point.

Unless you've suffered a real back injury, your pain is probably at least partly psychosomatic. That doesn't mean "in your head", but "FROM your head" -- there is real physical pain caused by real physiological phenomena, but the major contributing factor is unnecessary muscular tension. BLOW OFF STRESS. Laugh. With friends if possible. Hit things that are designed to be hit and don't mind it at all. Drink in moderation if it's safe for you to do so.

</comment><comment><USER22> These two books are essential reading for people with back problems and should be reasonably accessible to anyone with both an athletic background and an advanced high school understanding of anatomy and physiology.

[http://www.amazon.com/Low-Back-Disorders-Evidence-based- Reha...](http://www.amazon.com/Low-Back-Disorders-Evidence-based- Rehabilitation/dp/0736066926/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Fitness-Performance-Stuart- Mc...](http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Fitness-Performance-Stuart- McGill/dp/0973501804/)

</comment><comment><USER23> You can do two things: \- ensure you have proper posture \- strengthen your "core"

First, do a web search for ergonomics and posture to make sure you're sitting in a neutral position. If you're not, you will be constantly using your back muscles (and neck, shoulders, etc) to maintain your posture when you sit, which will lead to pain.

Second, search for exercises to strengthen your "core". You should strive for simple exercises to maintain your muscles. Back pain is related to weak back and abdominal muscles.

</comment><comment><USER24> I would have assumed that the reverse would be true: people who mostly sit all day should have less back pain. In my personal (apparently anomalous, given the posts here) experience, this is the case. When I worked in manufacturing 12 years ago, putting commercial refrigerators together, I had back pain quite a lot, even to missing some work due to it, but since I switched to desk jobs, it just went away.

</comment><comment><USER25> I get back pain every once in awhile and it tends to linger for 1-4 weeks. Then it goes away for a month or two.

I try to work my abs and lower back, as well as stretch my hamstrings.

As for sitting up straight, I think the most recent guidance is that a 120-135 degree thigh-to-back angle is optimal: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm>

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a repost of some advice I've offered here before, but doing them really helped me out.

Outside of seeing a doctor to see if there's something seriously screwed up with your back, I'd offer these 3 pieces of advice I had to learn about the hard way.

1.) Massage.

You may not think it's the manliest thing ever, but if you can afford it you should find a good local masseuse and get yourself an hour session. Even if you go once and never go again, you'll get an education in just how kinked up your back and shoulders probably are.

I tweaked my back lifting a lawn mower out of my car a few years ago and didn't think much of it at the time. Over the next few weeks I started to have all kinds of shoulder problems and other various pain to the point where my arms were getting tingly and I couldn't sit and code for more than 30 minutes at a time.

Long story short, I went through a few doctors before I finally just decided to see a masseuse and see if it helped. I was lucky to find someone that knew what they were doing and helped get me straightened out. It took about 5 sessions over 5 weeks, but I've never had problems since.

2.) Trigger points.

Learn what they are and how you can fix them. This was my problem that the masseuse turned me on to. Trigger points are essentially little micro-knots in your muscle fibers that can add up to cause big problems for you. For me, lifting that mower was really just the straw that broke the camel's back. It just exacerbated all the trigger point problems I'd been creating over years of coding and not stretching out my back and shoulders properly.

If you know where the common trigger points creep up and how to get rid of them you can save yourself a lot of pain and downtime (not to mention massage bills).

Buy these two things: The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook (<http://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Point-Therapy-Workbook-Self-Tr...>) and a TheraCane (<http://www.amazon.com/Thera-Cane-Theracane-TheraCane/dp/B000...>)

The book will show you how to identify and treat the trigger points all over your body, and the TheraCane will help you reach the places on your back that you can't reach yourself.

3.) Yoga.

Once you get all your issues straightened out, yoga and/or a good daily stretching regimen can help keep you kink free.

Hopefully some of this advice is helpful. I was really messed up for a while until I figured all this out.

</comment><comment><USER27> I used to have terrible back, shoulder, and wrist problems.

Then I bought a Herman Miller Mirra, got decent wrist-rests^ for mouse and keyboard, and took up bike riding and other forms of exercise.

I can't say for sure which of those three had the biggest effect, as I made all those changes at once, but I definitely don't hurt anymore.

\---

^ Definitely recommend the IMAK ergoBeads products for this!

</comment><comment><USER28> i used to get back pain from working too much as well, but a chair solved that. i think i take more breaks now too, which was a factor as well, but the chair upgrades made the biggest difference. i love my freedom chair: <http://www.humanscale.com/products/freedom_index.cfm>

if an expensive chair isnt an option, figure out how to get good lumbar support in some other way, and make it easy for you to slouch, distribute pressure, etc....prob is , slouching in most chairs will result in pain, but when you work this much, sitting upright can only be sometimes -- thus the freedom chair. ted talk on the chair: [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/niels_diffrient_rethinks_...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/niels_diffrient_rethinks_the_way_we_sit_at_work.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> squats and deadlifts!

worked for me.

<comment><USER30> This is good advice, but it needs to be followed only after you know EXACTLY how to perform these exercises. Doing them improperly is just asking for trouble.

You can start by reading "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe. If you don't feel confident that your form is correct, you can join a forum like the one over at stronglifts.com. They will probably be happy to review a video of you doing the lifts to let you know if you're doing things right or wrong (and what to fix, if it's not right).

Although, if you can swing it, I'd recommend finding a trainer to start you off.

<comment><USER31> I second the recommendation for Starting Strength. Strengthening your entire posterior chain (hamstrings, "glutes", lower back and upper back will do wonders for your back problems.

Having said that, spending 1 hour a day fixing your problem won't be enough when you're spending the other 23 hours undoing it. Sit up straight or do as I did and get a stand-up desk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Yoga has made all the difference for me. It is a great way to unwind for a short period of time and with practice it will greatly improve your core strength and relieve your back pain. It doesn't help that it is also a wonderful opportunity to meet new people, especially flexible girls. :)

</comment><comment><USER33> I am religious about ergonomics.

1\. I spent $300 on a herman miller ergonomic chair that forces you to sit up- right.

2\. Use a keyboard tray to force you to lean back against your chair when you're coding.

3\. Stretch and walk around once an hour.

4\. Do back exercises at the gym everytime you go.

</comment><comment><USER34> Healthy habits for developers - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/330446/healthy-habits- for...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/330446/healthy-habits-for- developers)

</comment><comment><USER35> I get horrible back pain if my chair is not positioned correctly(it doesn't take much maybe an inch off and I start to feel it). Find a guide on correct positioning and try to follow it.

<comment><USER36> Or when at work: see if your company has a department for such problem. (SAP had one, when I was an intern there. They adjusted my desk and chair.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Find a Tai Chi studio and learn the short form. It is a complete set of exercises for back, legs and shoulders that takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. And it is fun to do.

</comment><comment><USER38> An Aeron. They aren't cheap, but for something that you sit in 10+ hours/day, you want something that's good for your back.

Exercise, stretching, rowing, etc..

</comment><comment><USER39> Use a standing desk. Odds are your body evolved to spend more time standing than sitting in a chair.

</comment><comment><USER40> a lot of back pain is caused by weakness in other areas and your posture muscles trying to make up for it. do an ab routine and hyper extensions for a strong core and most problems should go away.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have had a chronic pain in my upper back right above my right shoulder blade, below my neck, and a little to the right of my spinal cord (the area is about two square inches in size). I got this injury from (surprise surprise) a marathon coding session (40 hours straight) sitting in an uncomfortable chair without taking enough breaks, and it has been plaguing me for about six years now. It used to be a very sharp shooting pain, but now the area is somewhat numb and mostly gives me sharp pains if I do certain awkward motions (like turning my head too rapidly), lifting heavy objects using that particular part of my back, or coding for long stretches of time.

I have tried just about everything from traditional back exercises to acupuncture to cure this, and up until recently, nothing really worked. I finally went to some doctor in India who gave me a different type of exercise that made a lot of sense. Normally, chiropractors will tell you to do things like rotate your head or stretch your neck by looking up and down for 10 seconds at a time - basically minor motions that put minimal stress on your back in the hopes that it will strengthen the back. The doctor in India said my problem was not that my upper back muscles had grown weak from RSI, but that my particular injury had caused some muscles to start pressing down on a nerve there, which is why I have such a local pain and why that area has started going numb. So, exercises putting more strain on that area were in fact worse for me.

To get to the point, the "exercise" works as follows: 1) Stand up straight and straighten up your neck. 2) Gently press on your forehead with your two hands such that the force is pointing behind you. While doing so, press forward with your head against your two hands so that your neck stays straight (very important that the neck stays straight the entire time). 3) Do this for 30 seconds (I started off with 10 seconds). 4) Repeat steps 1-3, but instead of pressing on your forehead, I press on the right side of your head, the left side of your head, and then the back of your head. 5) Repeat steps 1-4 three times, and then do the whole thing 3-5 times a day.

This has helped tremendously in getting feeling back and reducing pain. Apparently, this part of your back is usually under some minor stress from holding up your head (and this strain is increased when you hunch). So, after my muscles started squeezing down on my nerve in whatever awkward way, this minor stress that is otherwise normal was pressing down on my nerve all the time, causing it to hurt. This exercise will, five times a day, take the pressure off my back and into my hands and let the nerve have some time to slowly get back into place.

Also, I have started using a standing desk for at least some time a day and it has done wonders to keep me from hunching while working (which in turn has also made my back feel much better).

<comment><USER42> There has to be a name for that condition. I've had it as well, though it started in me in my early teen years practicing piano and got progressively worse throughout my 20s (marathon coding sessions...and I never did give up piano) The exercise you mentioned was the fix. In my case, my Chiropractor was the one who recommended it.

I'm not a big Chiropractic fan, I went to various practitioners and have received various pieces of advice ranging from "non-exercises" to goofy expensive vitimins. I started getting regular adjustments with this guy only after I noticed the pain in my neck was going away due to the exercises he recommended.

He's since also helped me with wrist and finger pain not uncommon to those in my profession.

The only thing I'd add to your recommendations (haven't tried the standing desk) is to take "second hand smoke breaks". I get up from my desk twice a day and walk around the building outside when the weather is tolerable. That tends to get the blood flowing. I've also found when debugging or troubleshooting a problem, stepping away and getting some fresh air tends to result in better solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> One word - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER44> I used to sit for more than 12 hours continuously. I also used to be the default "mover" for my friends.

i have had back pain for last 5 years and never knew it. Twice a year, I would have lower back pain and I would take rest for couple of days and pain seemed to vanish. Last year, I joined the gymn to do some weight reduction focussing more on cardio, less on weights. At some point(i think i picked more weight than I could munch) my lower back gave off(not literally). There was no pain. Couple of days later, I felt some pain in my left calf, which I passed as musle pain. Then the intensity of pain increased and my butt and thigh started to ache. Hey but no back pain!!

So off I went to meet a doctor-to ellaborate my story- I love US doctors-I explain my emergency and all they had to say is "oh wait, if you have an emergency, you'd better go to the emergency to this hospital i am affliated with, hmmm but I think you'd better take an x-ray first"; I say "doctor- i have no broken bones.no" doctor"i understand, but if i don't go thru procedure, the insurance won't pay me!!!!" So I bore the pain for a week and took my blood-test/x-ray! and meet the doctor. Obviously nothing to see there. So now he says "Hmmm, why don't we don't I refer you to a specialist- would you prefer a neurosurgeon or a pain specialist" I say "You're the doctor? no?" AND he refers me to the neurosurgeon.

3 weeks have passed- Still I have no back pain-but to put in words, you take a needle and poke it the part where your butt meets the spine. poked? now remove it and run it down the rear thigh, calf and stop near the ankle and then run it along the outer part of the feet and stop at your little finger on the foot - all the while applying pressure. When you reach there, poke once more - <USER3> for fun. _This_ is a bit of what I was experiencing.

I could go on and on - but everyone here is busy- I had to go thru the loops of the neurosurgeon too - this time on 1 week on pain killers and another on testing my muscles(i forget the medical term used) and finall after 2 months - an MRI - something that could have been done the first week. MRI showed that I had two ruptured discs on my lower back. I was "threatened" by the doctors for an operation to which I said "f@k you" in a more subtle way.

In the end, accupuncture helped ease the pain. I also tried the Indian style - Ayurveda - something that revealed the spiritual part of life to me.

The funny thing at the end of all this is not posture that caused pain to me in the first case. It was constipation. Once my bowel movements were (made) normal along with medicated oil massages and few other things (include enema of oils)

The treatment/healing made me consider my revaluation of "east" vs "west" in many ways and varied thoughts about modern medicine "industry" considering the threats of operation vs what doctors perceive vs doctors as businessmen etc.

Oh! one more thing - Swimming helps! I can jog for a few minutes beside the sea, a privilege for me now!</comment>


Sleep (or how to hack your brain) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dustincurtis.com/sleep.html

<comment><USER2> The article makes for an interesting read, however, I am not entirely convinced that "polyphasic sleep" is necessarily effective or healthy. The article states that, "There's no clearly defined biological reason for it, and it is intuitively an evolutionary disadvantage." This type of reasoning makes me believe that longer sleep periods are healthy and required, otherwise we would have evolved beyond that disadvantage. Dolphins have somewhat evolved beyond the "disadvantage" of sleep by remaining conscious in one half of their brain while they sleep. Granted... that is due to having to surface to breath, which is a circumstance humans do not have to cope with. Another point I noticed regarding this article that seemed a bit strange, is that the more "standard/normal" sleep cycles require only four REM cycles, while the "everyman-4 nap" or "uberman" require five and six REM cycles. If REM is the only relevant sleep cycle, shouldn't only four cycles be necessary across all sleep patterns?

</comment><comment><USER3> I hate to be the lone voice crying out for science, but has anyone actually ever seen any evidence that the "uberman" sleep schedule is possible? Has anyone ever done it successfully for a long period of time and written about it? Have any studies ever been done on it? And if so, where are these facts and why do they get less attention than blog posts advocating the idea in abstract, or as a cool new thing someone's _about_ to do but hasn't seen results from yet?

At this point, I think all this polyphasic uber-nonsense needs to be relegated to the "bread crusts make your hair curly" department where it belongs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't that what supposedly Edison did, take cat naps and then go back to work? He probably did not know anything about REM and Polyphasic, maybe just discovered he was more productive that way?</comment>


Scripting Monad: The Future of Windows Scripting (2005) - <AUTHOR> https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2005.11.scripting.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396 <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr:

> Editor's Update - 5/22/2006: Monad has been renamed Windows PowerShell

Plus there's an interesting interview with Erik Meijer and Jeffrey Snover [0]

[0]: [https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Expert-to- Expert-...](https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Expert-to-Expert-Erik- Meijer-and-Jeffrey-Snover-Inside-PowerShell)</comment>


Ask HN: Want to stop recruiter spam? - <AUTHOR>

I get too much recruiter spam. But I don't hit the spam button, because I might be interested in a few decent personal recruiting messages one day. A lot of developers think this way.
We need a specialized collaborative filter, which everyone contributes and benefits from, that I can switch on and off when I want.
Would you use one?
I think it's a fascinating idea for my next OS side project, but it only makes sense if enough people want to use it. If you might want to use it to protect your inbox from recruiter spam, let me know. I put up a LaunchRock form at https://recruiterham.joshuafox.com to measure the interest. If you sign up, I'll let you know how it goes.
And please let me know in the comments  what you think about the idea. <comment><USER2> Blackhole any recruiter or firm you haven't personally sent a resume to or worked with. Problem solved.</comment>


Central bank cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1709f.htm <comment><USER2> Lol. So back crypto $ with trillions of $ of debt going back to the Louisiana purchase; kept alive by a pyramid scheme dependant on a certain and limitless supply of debt free immigrants, after they continue to prove they don't require anything concrete to generate demand & subsequently value?

Aka: how interested are people in a cryptocurrency worth market value minus 20 trillion $?

<comment><USER3> The banks are in debt to trillions of dollars to people who are 'in credit'. That's what 'in credit' means. It is the accounting term for a liability.

Does that keep you awake at night too?

For every asset there is a liability - even with cryptocurrencies.

What you are missing with government 'debt' is that it creates safe private assets that keep the pension system going.

<comment><USER4> > For every asset there is a liability - even with cryptocurrencies.

I would think that bitcoin is no-ones liability? I mean, there are a bunch of bitcoins that you may or may not be able to sell someone with a price, but there is no-one who has any kind of legal or even moral obligation to give you anything in exchange of a bitcoin.

<comment><USER5> Liability will start once you start loaning them out to others and package the loans to other investors who them show them as assets to borrow something from someone else :).

<comment><USER4> Sure. But it is not the bitcoin that is the liability, it is the loan contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "(preventing double-spending without the use of a trusted authority requires transaction validators (miners) to employ large amounts of computing power to complete "proof-of-work" computations); there is only probabilistic finality of settlement; and all transactions are public. These features are not suitable for many financial market applications."

The words "only probabilistic finality" makes it sound uncertain, whereas in reality the uncertainty of a bitcoin transaction is insignificant compared to the uncertainty of a trusted entity, which they advocate.

In other words, they still don't understand it.

<comment><USER7> They understand it just fine and you simply wrong. Proof of work validation IS probabilistic and central agency validation is not probabilistic. But it does require trust in that central agency. You may not trust that central agency, but that doesn't change the facts.

<comment><USER8> Using your definition, all cryptography is also probabilistic. It's technically correct, ie. there's a risk that someone guesses your AES key, but it's practically irrelevant because the probabilities involved are so small (and key sizes can be adjusted to make guessing as improbable to succeed as we want).

<comment><USER9> This is not the aspect that is considered to be probablistic. The problem is that forks can happen by design -- blocks can be orphaned and the tree can be reorganized. So a transaction is only final so long as it is on the main chain; if the main chain switches to a forked chain that does not contain your transaction, then it is not settled; the resulting coins cannot be spent.

There are attack scenarios, but even without those it is possible for forks to occur; single-block forks are common (so-called "orphaned blocks") due to some combination of network latencies and chance. Longer forks may be possible if there are more dramatic breaks in network connectivity. The original whitepaper originally advocated waiting for six blocks before a transaction is considered "settled". That's probably high, but the guarantees are strictly probablistic; any software dealing with bitcoins has to be aware of the possibility of reorganizations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very interesting. I'm intrigued by Fedcoin and how it incorporates the possibility of monetary policy into the cryptocurrency framework. The rigidity and hard ceiling on liquidity of Bitcoin is a major weakness of the currency (I know that Bitcoin enthusiasts see it as a strength) but if technology like Fedcoin can overcome that weakness I'm more bullish about cryptocurrency becoming part of the monetary scheme.

<comment><USER11> Deflationary currencies are hoarded, not spent in circulation. Even Aristophanes described it thousands of years ago. That's what advocates of "sound money" need to understand. Sound money is good, but for savings. On top of this you build other, less sound money, which circulates. This is also known as "Gresham's Law".

<comment><USER12> Nobel prize winner F.A Hayek wrote a great defense of deflationary currency and a rebuttal to Keynes back when he was debating Keynes in the 30s[1]. He also predicted Bitcoin with his book "The Denationalization of Money" written in the 1970s[2].

[1] [https://mises.org/library/hayek-paradox- saving](https://mises.org/library/hayek-paradox-saving)

[2] [https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money- argument-r...](https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money-argument- refined)

<comment><USER13> Hayek didn't really adequately defend a deflationary currency at all. Hayek was attacking a related, but different underconsumptionist argument that consumption was more important than investment.

The argument against [sustained] deflation is that _investment will be reduced along with consumption_. In order for investment to take place, it is necessary [though not sufficient] for the investor to expect to earn a money profit as a result. In the case of sustained deflation resulting from an economy being tied to a fixed supply of money, the expected money return on an average investment over a time period is negative (especially after adjusting for risk) and the expected _real_ return to burying money in the garden is positive. Thus the money stock is more likely to be buried in the garden and less likely to be invested in production, with the result that less stuff is produced and sold than otherwise could have been.

The best thing that can be said about Hayek's argument as a defence of this is that he points out that profitable companies confident of still having a market in future might still be inclined to invest money in cutting production costs (which is true, and necessary for the deflation to be sustained, otherwise you can expect prices of goods to start rising again in future as a result of greatly reduced production) but there's no reason to expect that level of investment to not be lower than an economy where nobody is incentivised to hoard.

(the original paper is included in this compendium for those interested [http://www.hayek.sk/wp- content/uploads/2012/12/hayekcollecti...](http://www.hayek.sk/wp- content/uploads/2012/12/hayekcollection.pdf))

<comment><USER14> If you keep the same deflationary money over the years, you are making a profit. So what's "good" is not a money which supply grows or shrinks, but a money with which people can make good predictions and plans accordingly.

Plus, burying your money is withdrawing it from the money supply, maybe it has effects like "giving it to everybody" ? (added the risk that you can dig the money and put it back into circulation)

<comment><USER11> How do you know an elastic money supply is not better?

What is your criterion : goal for measuring how good a currency is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have been curious about this idea for a long time. Consider the situation the USA is in right now. What percentage of all transactions which occur in the US economy right now pass through a payment processor? I would imagine the majority, and growing. And payment processors don't just charge for their services. They charge a percentage of the size of the transaction. Their cost to provide the service of moving numbers from one place to another over a wire does not increase for larger numbers, yet they still insist that the parties in the transaction pay more to move larger numbers.

This makes payment processors a de-facto taxing body and gives them at least as much control over the monetary supply in a society as any central bank. If the Federal Reserve decided to take actions that private banks or payment processors disagreed with, it is entirely within their legal power to adjust the rates they charge and counteract the central bank. This is very dangerous. It's terribly unfortunate that modern government is so packed with nibshits and the clinically paranoid that they would never again back a currency which offers the same features as cash (untraceable, unfreezable, etc), but even without those, just escaping from the tyranny of payment processors might be worth it.

<comment><USER16> If we could somehow move from private banks to a public distributed ledger that worked Government-style, we could probably reduce taxes and streamline a lot of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I welcome it. It will make the flow of fiat into good cryptocurrencies so much easier. Let the better system win. Monopolies are almost never good.

</comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps you should add [https://fiatcoin.net](https://fiatcoin.net) to the list.

</comment><comment><USER19> does anyone know how will banks and accounts work in such a system ? because funds will be held by individuals and not banks.

will banks become the authoritative proof-of-stake entities ?

<comment><USER16> Would not proof-of-stake be an algorithmic calculation, available to anyone with the dataset (blockchain) and the computational power? Right now certain credit card companies charge a fee for calculation of a credit score (at that instant/ on the fly). Presumably in a cryptocoin economy everyone who has access to the dataset and knows the formula could tell you the proof-of-stake. Banks historically act as a time-throttler on transfer of funds, making sure the economy does not move without the inner cogs of the banks turning first. It is widespread now globally. With a cryptocoin economy, banks would not throttle time any longer and would instead help facilitate additions to the blockchain (via fee) as many exchanges currently do. What all factors does one need for proof-of-stake?</comment></comment>


IE9 Preview with hardware acceleration - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/05/05/html5-and-same-markup-second-ie9-platform-preview-available-for-developers.aspx <comment><USER2> Some useful links:

Updated test drive site: <http://www.ietestdrive.com/>

Updated tests on the IE Test Center: <http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkID=110283>

IE PP Developer's Guide: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/ff468705.aspx>

Channel 9 Video Interviews: <http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/>

If you've got any feedback/bugs to report, I'd be happy to hear them. My contact information in on my profile if you prefer to ping me privately. thanks! :)

<comment><USER3> I guess Apple has some level of hardware acceleration going on with Safari 4... Browser flip is running at around 60 fps, the flickr app does slow down but not as severely as the video shows. The scrolling text doesn't really work at all though hah. (13" MBP)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let the battle of hardware accelerated graphics begin! I don't think Google, Apple or Mozilla can ignore this as it's a major advancement for web.

I can only imagine what kind of interfaces, games and applications will be possible with hardware accelerated graphics, blazing fast JavaScript and HTML5! We are in for a fun ride :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Are the CSS/HTML enhancements finally making it into Quirks mode in these new IE releases as well? That was one of the worst issues with IE8 and 7 for us as a company that builds widgets and scripts that need to work on every page on the web.

We're stuck without guaranteed support for position:fixed on any IE version because we can't guarantee that the underlying page uses a modern DOCTYPE.

<comment><USER2> Huh? Quirks mode is never going to change; by definition, it is to maintain backwards compatibility. If a webpage was coded back in 2000, we don't want to break those pages simply because a more modern version of the browser is available.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode#Overview>

If you want to check for a browser version, there are some best practices around it. This should help: [http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/03/12/site- compatibili...](http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/03/12/site- compatibility-and-ie8.aspx)

In summary, use object detection when possible, and if that does not work for you, use something similar to:

      <!--[if lte IE 7]>
        <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" src="ie.css" />
      <![endif]--></comment></comment>


Follow 70 amazing PHP developers with a single click - <AUTHOR> http://followphpdevs.com/

<comment><USER2> You forgot few really important developers. [http://phalconphp.com/en/team](http://phalconphp.com/en/team)

</comment><comment><USER3> You shouldn't be asking for permission to post.</comment>


New language that let's you add syntax as if defining a function [video] - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/130697349

<comment><USER2> Term rewriting, I guess? Then it's not that different from what Maude is doing, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reference to Maude, I wasn't aware of it.

Certainly there is similarity to Maude, in that both Maude and LastCalc are programmed through term rewriting. However in other respects they are very different, both in purpose and implementation.

Maude looks to be an academic research language. LastCalc is designed to be used by anyone, and can be used as a teaching language. I've used it to teach my girlfriend, who had no prior programming experience, how to write simple recursive methods.

The biggest algorithmic difference with Maude is that LastCalc has a backtracking parse engine.

Here is an example of how this works:

      x=12 pounds
      x in usd (result: US$19.9522)
      x in kg (result: 5.4431 kilograms)

Note how the interpretation of x is different depending on what makes sense within the wider context. To the best of my knowledge this is fairly unique (I'm sure Google Calculator does something similar, but it's not user- extensible).

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's certainly a cool feature and I cannot think of a language already doing this. Must be very useful for interactive DSLs.</comment></comment></comment>


Frontier customer bought his own router–but has to pay $10 rental fee anyway - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/07/frontier-customer-bought-his-own-router-but-has-to-pay-10-rental-fee-anyway/ <comment><USER2> How is this not illegal? if they are charging a rental fee for something they are not renting?

<comment><USER3> They can easily say it's a condition of the rest of the service.

If you don't like it, don't sign up in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Exactly, they can just call it a "device management fee" "provisioning fee" or some such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sonic did the a similar thing to me in Sunnyvale. I could not order the internet without also getting VoIP which required paying $10 a month for a dongle. I asked if I could ship it back or not have it sent in the first place.

I was told I was required to keep it even if I did not want it, and I would have to return it at the end of service.

<comment><USER3> In this case, just refuse to sign for the delivery package.

Normally, the provider will let the service work anyway, and then at the end of the year, point out that they never delivered the hardware, they'll check the records, and refund you.</comment></comment>


U.N. report reveals secret law enforcement techniques - <AUTHOR> http://www.hacker10.com/other-computing/u-n-report-reveals-secret-law-enforcement-techniques/ <comment><USER2> > _198\. In the United Kingdom, it is a criminal offence under the Regulation > of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 to refuse to hand over an encryption key > when required. Care must be taken, however, to ensure that suspects do not > seek to evade the provision by utilizing several layers of encryption and > multiple keys to protect different data sets. For example, a setting of > TruCrypt, a common free encryption tool, allows a suspect to encrypt a hard > drive and create two passwords: one for the "clean" drive and the other > containing the incriminating material. This can be circumvented by ensuring > that the forensic examination of the hard drive takes into consideration > whether there is any "missing volume" of data._

If they had actually installed TrueCrypt and created a hidden partition or read the documentation, they would see that the other partition lies about space usage to prevent its existence from being provable

<comment><USER3> There's other hints though. For instance, you might start the clean volume and find it hasn't been run for a month. Or, if the volume is being mounted inside another OS, there could be cached paths in various places pointing to the secret volume.

If you're being seriously investigated, you have to work on the cover story and make sure your clean volume looks legit.

<comment><USER2> Any other problems?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sigh. They create a honeypot to catch terrorists, then "finally hav[e] to dismantle their own website when law enforcement realised that it was also being used to plan attacks against US troops in Iraq."

What? If they know the plan, then ... they act on it. Why would you stop using an information source like that?

<comment><USER5> Quite simply, they decided it was worse to leave it up and allow the communication as the risk/reward was not sufficient.

The relevant text of that point (listed as 218, but is actually 228):

      For example, a "honey pot" jihadist website reportedly was designed by the [Central
      Intelligence Agency] and Saudi Arabian Government to attract and monitor terrorist
      activities. The information collected from the site was used by intelligence
      analysts to track the operational plans of jihadists, leading to arrests before the
      planned attacks could be executed. However, the website also was reportedly being
      used to transmit operational plans for jihadists entering Iraq to conduct attacks
      on U.S. troops. Debates between representatives of the [National Security Agency,
      Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Office of the Director of
      National Intelligence and National Security Council] led to a determination that
      the threat to troops in theater was greater than the intelligence value gained
      from monitoring the website, and a computer network team from the [Joint Task
      Force Global Network Operations] ultimately dismantled it.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's very likely that the shutdown stopped them from communicating. Risk/reward? The risk is that the honeypot was the only way they could communicate, and that keeping it alive was the only way these attacks could continue. I don't think this is a very large risk. The reward, however, is foreknowledge of an attack. Maybe they don't think this is very useful knowledge?

In any case, I don't think these were the reasons for taking it down.

<comment><USER7> Possible, but remember that these are political animals.

How are they going to explain to the American people (or talk-radio hosts) that President Obama authorized a website that was used to plan attacks on U.S. soldiers?

<comment><USER8> Yes, when law enforcement gets that enmeshed with the plans of criminals, things go sideways. Compare the ATF scheme ("Operation Fast and Furious") for letting illegal gun sales proceed so that criminal gun distributors higher up the food chain could be caught:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal>

When you count all the guns that the US let leak into Mexico over the years, it's hard to justify the operation.

Basically, such an operation deserves a fuller debate and examination of all the consequences. But by their nature, secret operations can't have full debates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone have any further insight into the software HF radio?

<comment><USER10> Try:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/>

And/or search the Web for "packet radio".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this as a big industry for hackers. It's only going to get bigger.</comment>


Happy workers are 13% more productive - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-10-happy-workers-productive.html <comment><USER2> Isn't the follow-on question "why do some companies make their workers unhappy, apparently on purpose?"

Aerospace/defense companies until the 1980s had this weird thing where they'd put an urgent date, a "best and final" bid due date or something just after a holiday, so that engineers ended up working during nominal holidays. It was a matter of gallows humor at McDonnell and Martin Marietta.

That's one example, I'm sure there are hundreds more. So, why?</comment>


The End of Rationalism: An Interview with John Ralston Saul (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/saul.html <comment><USER2> I find the author's discussion of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil a bit confusing, precisely because the tree holds the knowledge of _good and evil_, not the type of scientific knowledge the author seems to be discussing. Forgive me for a bit of a rant, but I think that understanding how to interpret this story actually helps make his point better.

The message isn't to be innocent of scientific knowledge -- it's to be innocent of evil. And that evil is immediately made manifest not just in Eve blaming the snake, but perhaps more heinously by Adam blaming not only Eve but God: "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate". Adam and Eve demonstrate a renunciation of self responsiblity and ultimately, of the gift of free will that they have been given, for the sake of trying to falsely appear blameless. Contrast this with the new Adam, Christ, who takes the blame of others upon Himself (even though He is blameless) demonstrating not just His divinity but _what humanity truly is_.

So we see that the message of the fall, once fully illumined by Christ, is really that we ought to love one another by covering one another's sins (isn't this forgiveness?) It is in this that we become God-like: not by simply eating of the tree. And if we use only our rational minds we might not ever arrive at this point, because to make oneself responsible for things one isn't responsible for -- whether it is problems others face or the outright wrong things other people have done -- is beyond rationality and is instead both truly human and divine.

<comment><USER3> I agree RE Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; that's what I was taught about it and it makes perfect sense in the context. But I disagree with your last sentence:

> _because to make oneself responsible for things one isn 't responsible for > -- whether it is problems others face or the outright wrong things other > people have done -- is beyond rationality and is instead both truly human > and divine._

Actuall, covering for other people's sins is perfectly rational if it makes others likely to cover for your sins as well. Cooperation is hard to ensure, but it usually has better payoffs than minding only your own interest. C.f. iterated prisoner's dilemma, etc.

<comment><USER2> I understand what you're saying. I didn't want to make a long post even longer, but I will try to clarify without hopefully writing stuff that's too obtusely theological. :)

Christ says that one of the greatest expressions of love is to die for a friend. But who is it that dies for one's enemy? Yet this is what Christ does for humanity, forgiving them even while hanging upon the cross, and it is what He calls all Christians to offer to their enemies.

One way I think of this is that there is one mode of living, which I'll call economic, where we do things in order to receive things. That's what you've described in "if it makes others likely to cover for your sins as well". But what the Christian tries to live, what St. Silouan the Athonite would term theanthropic living, is that of humility: of loving even when there is no chance of receiving a reward. One might argue that in this other mode of life, one is awaiting some kind of heavenly reward. But I don't think that is the case because as one approaches God closer, one sees just how _unlike_ God one is; as a saint has said "none of the saints have counted themselves worthy of Heaven."

What I mean is that in approaching God we become aware in the depths of our heart of our fundamental wrongness towards others and toward God, and the great darkness that lies within ourselves. This isn't some kind of masochistic pleasure in self-hatred. It's an awareness that penetrates one's entire being. And _balancing this recognition_ is that God Himself loves us even unto death. Despite this incredible self-awareness, we are indeed not lost. Even more than that, we are empowered to become like God (theosis). The result of this is the joyful sadness of the theanthropic life: one accounts only oneself as deserving of death, while one sees all others as worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. And really, this is what Christ Himself did in His life, His death, and His descent into Hades. But Hades could not contain God, and St. Silouan says that death also cannot contain any truly theanthropic person, for they become blameless. This is how death becomes the gateway to divine life.

Perhaps there is a rational way to justify suffering and even dying at the hands of one's enemy. I'd honestly be interested in hearing such an argument!

<comment><USER2> Whoops, one correction, as I misquoted St. Silouan. It's not that the theanthropic person become blameless (as in sinless), but that they become beyond judgment. I've tried to explain some pretty weighty concepts in a very short amount of text. For those interested in St. Silouan's thought I recommend the books "The Enlargement of the Heart" and "The Hidden Man of the Heart," but they require a bit of background that probably isn't appropriate for those unfamiliar with Orthodox theology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well that didn't make a whole lot of sense. The most methodical use of the methods of rationality you'll find are the natural sciences and they are incredibly open to anyone interested. Its just that most people are not actually interested at all. Nor are they in rationality.

This guy is a bit like a confused version of Noam Chomsky.

<comment><USER5> He's essentially trying to say that there is more to knowledge than reason. Which is true and often ignored in today's "scientific" society [for example, the demise of humanities funding in colleges]. Proust is completely _unreasonable_ when he talks about certain smells evoking memories of his mama, but it is unfair to dismiss his thoughts - as many uber-rationalists do - as worthless sentiment.

<comment><USER6> It's reasonable, and scientifically compatible, to talk about smells evoking memories of parents. There isn't a rational process that creates the link between a sensory trigger and a memory, but there's a rational process and scientific field(s) of study by which that link (neurobiology) and its formation (psychology) can be understood.

That kind of argument seems to me like, "Nobody [unless there's a God] rationally constructed the theory of gravity, or the complexity of fluid dynamics, therefore there's more to gravity or fluid dynamics than can be understood through rationality and science."

<comment><USER5> Scientifically compatible, yes. Reasonable, no. Emotion is not reason; it is a completely separate enterprise. That's partly what the article is talking about.

<comment><USER6> Does that "separate enterprise" amount to knowledge? I don't think so. It's an artifact of neurology. It's an important artifact, and one that can't be ignored (when studying psychology or sociology, or managing humans, or planning events involving humans), but nevertheless that emotional artifact is not useful knowledge. Only the [scientifically and rationally understandable] mechanisms behind the emotional and sentimental connections are useful knowledge. The connections themselves may serve sociological purposes, enabling cultural knowledge generation and accumulation, not to mention improving societal stability, but in themselves emotional artifacts are not knowledge.

<comment><USER7> You fly through words like "knowledge" and "useful" without giving them proper thought. What do these words mean? We lived in a philosophy-starved culture. Too much social media, not enough deep thought.

And how can you know that what you call rationality is also not an artifact of neurology? In fact, Gödel proved that if you don't doubt your own rationality, you are in fact being irrational.

I think science is cheapened by this sort of blind faith. The defining characteristic of the scientific attitude is doubt, not certainty.

<comment><USER8> >And how can you know that what you call rationality is also not an artifact of neurology? In fact, Gödel proved that if you don't doubt your own rationality, you are in fact being irrational.

That is not at all what Goedel's theorems actually say.

>We lived in a philosophy-starved culture. Too much social media, not enough deep thought.

No, we live in a culture that _loves_ to engage in cheap, shoddy philosophizing by generalizing incorrectly from facts.

<comment><USER7> > That is not at all what Goedel's theorems actually say.

An informal description of his second incompleteness theorem (from the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"):

"For any consistent system F within which a certain amount of elementary arithmetic can be carried out, the consistency of F cannot be proved in F itself."

One example of a sufficient "certain amount of arithmetic" for this to apply to a system is the use of the integer numbers, addition and multiplication. Such a system can no longer prove its own consistency.

If you think that this does not apply to human efforts at rationality, I would like you to explain why.

Debate becomes cheap and shoddy not when someone is wrong (I could be), but when you resort to name-calling instead of pointing out where you think the mistakes are.

<comment><USER8> >If you think that this does not apply to human efforts at rationality, I would like you to explain why.

Human beings aren't proof systems. We don't operate under conditions of certainty via deductive reasoning. We're _inductive_ (or rather, abductive) reasoners from the get-go.

<comment><USER7> Sure, and abductive reasoning can be formalized in certain modal logics with Kripke semantics.

What Gödel tells us is that, as long as you have a sufficiently powerful formal system, you cannot prove the consistency of the system itself. Modal logics are no exception.

If you are a computationalist (that is to say, you believe that the human mind can be emulated by a Turing machine), then you might want to take a look at Gödel, Escher, Bach, where Hofstadter discusses how the second incompleteness theorem applies to Turing machines.

You might also enjoy "Forever Undecided" by Smullyan. It uses puzzles to guide you to an intuition about what the incompleteness theorems means to human knowledge and its limitations. In the worst case it's a fun read.

Peace!

<comment><USER8> > Sure, and abductive reasoning can be formalized in certain modal logics with > Kripke semantics.

No, it can't. Abductive reasoning is probabilistic modelling, and notably, there's a line of research by Cristian Calude showing that you can soundly, non-paradoxically place probabilities on Halting questions.

(Computational tractability is still an obstacle with his current approach, but it has been shown _not_ to generate paradoxes, which is already a major step forward.)

>you might want to take a look at Gödel, Escher, Bach, where Hofstadter discusses how the second incompleteness theorem applies to Turing machines.

This is backwards: halting problems and Kolmogorov complexity for Turing machines _give us_ the two Incompleteness Theorems for proof systems, via _Chaitin 's_ Incompleteness Theorem.

Which also neatly gives a way around the Second Incompleteness Theorem: a hierarchical-probabilistic reasoner can create an abstract, _compressed_ model of themselves which consists of small-enough amounts of information that they can reason about its behavior without becoming subject to Chaitin Incompleteness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He mentions ethics as a quality, but I think it is empathy which is more fundamental. Ethics can be the result of empathy and reason, but empathy cannot be a product of any of the qualities he mentions. Which leads us to his reading of the story of the Garden of Eden. A more nuanced reading notes that it is not the tree of knowledge but the tree of knowledge _of good and evil_. The serpent says to the woman, "when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing _good and evil_ ". God then acknowledges this and says, "See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil". So it is not _knowledge_ that came from the serpent, but knowledge and ethics, and that is what made man godlike.

<comment><USER10> > Ethics can be the result of empathy and reason, but empathy cannot be a > product of any of the qualities he mentions.

He claims it can, but I agree with you. Empathy is an emotional quality, while common sense, creativity, ethics, intuition, memory, and reason are not.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A few excerpts form Saul's satirical dictionary, "The Doubter's Companion", [http://www.amazon.com/The-Doubters-Companion-Dictionary- Aggr...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Doubters-Companion-Dictionary- Aggressive/dp/0743236602)

 _" CALM: A state of emotion which is overrated except in religious retreats.. The Captain of the Titanic was no doubt pleased that his male passengers in first class remained calm as they waited to drown. Had they been less controlled, they might have gained some small satisfaction in passing their time by throwing him overboard._

 _CROISSANT: Islamic symbol of paradise in the shape of a quarter moon. As an act of religious denigration during the Turkish invasion of Europe, Austrian bakers reduced the croissant to a breakfast bun._

 _DENIAL: Characteristic reflex of a technocrat. Since actions are the result of solutions arrived at by experts, there can be no error. Error is replaced by a linear succession of right answers. This requires the systematic denial of error when each preceding answer fails to do the job in spite of being right._

 _ECONOMICS: The romance of truth through measurement._

 _" FREE SPEECH ... is afflicted by two widely held, contradictory opinions. The first is that we have it; the second is that it is a luxury.

How can you have something which exists only as an existential act? ... freedom of speech is only maintained at sufficiently high levels through constant use. The exhausting effort which this requires involves a willingness to listen combined with a desire to be heard. Listening means taking into account, not simply hearing what people have to say. And being heard means being exposed to criticism, even ridicule.

.. A new method of limitation involves arguing that free speech, having been won in the absolute, can now be treated as a luxury. What people need above all, the argument runs, is prosperity. With the physical well-being and stability that brings, people have the time and energy to engage in free speech. It follows, sotto voce, that the more unsuccessful those in responsible positions are at running the economy of a country, the less the citizenry should use their free speech."_

</comment><comment><USER11> Logic is hollow until we add references to reality. That is what physics is. It's filling variables with real data. Without data, mathematics is completely hollow. Skip this step, and it's all constrained fiction, but fiction nevertheless.

Comparatively speaking, English is an extremely logical language and it does enforce a level of active reasoning on the speaker[0]. Combined with the emphasis on individuality and the value of self, both being highly western values, we have ample examples of what John calls the bastardization of reason and aggressive common sense. It's everywhere... politics, pseudo-science, non- science, and even simple everyday conversations are full of reasons that actually are immaterial, which makes them illusionary, but that are encouraged by the culture and the language we use to express ourselves. Worse yet, feeding off our obsession and trust of science (and in many cases celebrity), communicators repeatedly abuse reason to accomplish their motives, be it commercial or personal. Donald Trump exemplifies the bastardization of reason and aggressive common sense. He's betting his campaign on it, and it's working because these observations of western culture are true.

Beyond that point, regarding "6 qualities" John is easier to challenge on the merits. But if one subscribes to scientific models instead of axioms [1], then it is but another model which is worth analysis and pursuing for all of it's bases and applications. In terms of the physics of this, the other elements (common sense, creativity, ethics, intuition, memory) would be the input (hopefully evidence but not to be confused) and reasoning would be the logic (hopefully mathematically accurate but not to be without checks and balances).

Anecdotally, as evidence of hollow reasons there is the _excuse_. We are all trained to make good excuses growing up, but what are they really? They are simple statements used to shift blame, and are backed first and foremost by a motive (not science). Hence the smarter we are the more excuses we can generate, and the better they will be. Most of them may even be true. But the point is, given the circumstances and our intelligence, we can pretty much reason ourselves and others to think anything when trusted. When we start twisting the facts and deceiving even ourselves, we have confabulation, and this too is a real and serious problem [2].

\--

[0] Wish I had a quick reference, but by being the Lingua Franca of science English has been pushed to be easier to reason with. Japanese for example, does not have plurals and no subject-object distinction. It is harder to do math and science when the language doesn't care how many or what is objective.

[1] "The semantic view of theories, which identifies scientific theories with models rather than propositions, has replaced the received view as the dominant position in theory formulation in the philosophy of science." ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory#About_theori...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory#About_theories) )

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation)</comment>


Software and Mind: The Mechanistic Myth and Its Consequences - <AUTHOR> http://softwareandmind.com/ <comment><USER2> Based on what I've skimmed, which is admittedly not that much, I'd bet the author spends most of the book making mind projection fallacies like this one:

> _while we can easily recognize a familiar face, we cannot describe that face > precisely enough to enable someone unfamiliar with it to recognize it as > easily as we do (see pp. 110–111). Thus, when we know a face, we possess a > type of knowledge that cannot be expressed as methods or rules. We can > readily use this knowledge, but we cannot explain how we do it. What this > means is that the only way to acquire this knowledge is by allowing it to > develop in our mind; we cannot acquire it by learning some facts. [...]_

> _[...]_

> _For a phenomenon that is a complex structure, the only exact representation > is the phenomenon itself._

Here the human inability to directly introspect on how we recognize faces is explained as an underlying facet of reality. A fact about faces, instead of a fact about the limitations of our mental architecture. That's why no one has ever been able to write facial recognition software that works even a little bit /s.

It would be wrong for me to say the book is not worth your time, because I haven't read enough of it to make that judgement, but I can honestly say I _expect_ it to not be worth my time.

(Also I want to complain about a minor error the author keeps making again and again: stating that scientific explanations form hierarchies. This is simply wrong. The graph of we-use-X-to-explain-Y isn't a tree, it's a directed acyclic graph. For example, consider jet airplanes, chemistry, aerodynamics, and physics.)

<comment><USER3> I got as far as 36ish where he decided that all extant academic study of the mind is an exercise in futility and that mathematics is incapable of representing nondeterministic phenomena. (Gee. Warn the psychologists, warn the statisticians, tell them all to stop wasting their time.)

It seems like the author realizes that behavior of complex and chaotic systems is really hard to reason about and model accurately (he calls out sociological systems, which also are lovely and heterogenous), and I guess reasoning about complex software is similar. Sure. But he tries to parlay that into a quasi- spiritual characteristic of the systems rendering them immune to simulation, instead of a limitation of our current capacity to efficiently construct models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the first time I have heard of this. For that reason, I appreciate that it was posted. Nevertheless, the author is greatly mistaken. I think we can reject most of what he says, without making too much effort, similar to how we would reject a conspiracy theory.

To pick out three things:

> Mechanism holds that every aspect of the world can be represented as a > simple hierarchical structure of entities. But, while useful in fields like > mathematics and manufacturing, this idea is generally worthless, because > most aspects of the world are too complex to be reduced to simple > structures.

Without trying to manage complexity, it becomes impossible to build real systems.

> Software, the book argues, is a non-mechanistic phenomenon. So it is akin to > language, not to manufactured objects.

Well, yes, to a degree. But if you arbitrarily change a word in a 1000 page book, the book will not fall apart. If you do the same in software, most likely it will stop working. This is because there is much less dependence between sentences in natural language and the dependence is redundantly spread over many pages.

> The software elites have turned software into a weapon, a means to dominate > and control society.

Sounds like a conspiracy theory too me.

Judging from the description, I also think the book lacks perspective. It's what a software engineer might expect the world to be, if he lives under a rock. Most of the world is doing just fine, and is just somewhat affected by software here and there.

<comment><USER5> >> Mechanism holds that every aspect of the world can be represented as a simple hierarchical structure of entities. But, while useful in fields like mathematics and manufacturing, this idea is generally worthless, because most aspects of the world are too complex to be reduced to simple structures.

>Without trying to manage complexity, it becomes impossible to build real systems.

Both of you are correct. The real world is too complex to be modeled, and without trying, you can't build a real system. The answer to the conundrum that real systems include humans, which can handle the hard-to-model parts.

The author appears to be using bombastic language to communicate what is actually a simple point. I see the technique used often. There's a method to the madness. It's the long-form version of "to get someone to give you a correct answer on the Internet, post a wrong answer rather than just ask." Spiritual books are often written like this. Without a blend of the overly pedantic and the utterly simple, the reader won't be compelled to dissect what the author has written and won't have the intended epiphany where the reader discovers it wasn't as simple as he thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is also the impression i get from the first chapter where his point seems to be that no amount of hip software methodologies can replace an intelligent, experienced software engineer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Written by Andrei Sorin. Published by "Andsor Books". Uh oh.

This guy is obsessed with hierarchies and taxonomies.

His rant on Software Irresponsibility, starting at page 828, has some good points. He starts out with "Partial or total software failures are such a common spectacle that they are now taken for granted. ... In most cases we know the actual individuals involved in its development, purchase, or installation; but we don't feel that these individuals must be reprimanded, that they are accountable for their work in the same way that physicians, pilots, or engineers are for theirs. In other professions we have the notions of incompetence, negligence, and malpractice to describe performance levels that fall below expectations. In software-related matters, and particularly in programming activities, these notions do not exist."[1]

He has a point. Compare, say, the NTSB report on an aircraft accident with a DHS US-CERT report on a blatant software security hole. The NTSB will name names and assign blame. Careers can be ended and licenses pulled by those reports, even though the NTSB has no law enforcement power. Now look at a US- CERT report for a company which knowingly and willfully put a default password into millions of products. Was the responsible manager located and identified? Were there sanctions against the company?

A point I've made about security bugs in open source - who put them there? That should be made known, and it should be a significant career setback. Yet the identities of those at fault are seldom mentioned.

[1] [http://softwareandmind.com/extracts/Software_and_Mind.pdf](http://softwareandmind.com/extracts/Software_and_Mind.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Amusingly, the NTSB's _software_ fails completely, at step 1:

[http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/_layouts/...](http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/_layouts/mobile/mbllists.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> After a quick skim, I would recommend _Master and his Emissary_ as a book with similar themes about the limits, dangers and over-dominance of reductionism and mechanistic views of reality, but significantly better written and argued and ultimately much broader (although not focused specifically on software). An introduction can be found here:

[http://www.iainmcgilchrist.com/The_Master_and_his_Emissary_b...](http://www.iainmcgilchrist.com/The_Master_and_his_Emissary_by_McGilchrist.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems to rebrand these two existing concepts: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism) and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism) (philosophers generally reject the latter, not sure about scientists regarding the former, but these are old ideas that are probably out-of-vogue)

<comment><USER10> I would call reductionism and logical positivism the baseline assumed perspective in much of science - definitely in biology, the field with which I am most familiar. So they're very much alive and well in science.

As far as philosophy, the philosophers most closely associated with science and the 'New Atheists', e.g. philosophers Dennett, Churchlands, adopt more sophisticated versions of these philosophies but I'd still call them a variety of reductionist/logical positivist.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. I thought at least physicists only viewed their models constructs that have predictive capabilities, but aren't concerned whether their models actually represent reality in an objective/ontological sense (to say nothing 'meaning' in the LP sense). I'm sure there are different camps of folks out there especially in the different branches

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I think researchers in physics are more open to non-reductionistic theories. For example check out constructor theory:

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-meta-law-to- rule...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-meta-law-to-rule-them- all-physicists-devise-a-theory-of-everything/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reading parts of this may cause a knee-jerk reaction, because mechanistic thinking is so useful to us in engineering!

What I essentially see in this is a reminder -- that it is easy to conflate how we look at something with what something actually is.

This is why it is important to be able to step back and understand how you are thinking about a phenomenon, and to generally cultivate an internal library of different methods of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER10> Here is a short review of the book:

[https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/andrei- sorin/soft...](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/andrei- sorin/software-and-mind/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this guy a Scientologist or something?

</comment><comment><USER13> After programming for a long time everything starts to look like a computer but everything is not a computer.

</comment><comment><USER14> Obviously what we need to do is abandon the algorithmic model of software and switch to a synchronous, signal-based model, as used in electronics and described in the Biblical account of how the human brain works. Then all software complexity problems will magically disappear, just like that.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think that the mechanistic worldview may be flawed, but that this attack on it is fairly impotent.</comment>


Show HN: Azk – run code locally straight from GitHub and deploy to DigitalOcean - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-deploy-a-rails-app-with-azk <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm part of Azuki, the startup that created azk.

azk ([http://github.com/azukiapp/azk](http://github.com/azukiapp/azk)) is a lightweight open source development environment orchestration tool. It runs on top of Docker containers, but we tried to make it super simple to use.

We liken it to YouTube whereas Docker is more like Adobe Flash Video.

azk is versatile, but right now we're focused on the simplest use cases hence our focus on DigitalOcean as deployment option.

Accordingly, we created the "Run Project" button. You can add it to your public repos on GitHub and any visitor can easily and safely run your code locally in very few steps.

The only thing you'll have to add to your code is an Azkfile, a simple manifest file listing the required elements for the code's environment (OS, language, database etc.).

We even created this demo gallery with forks from GitHub to prove that [http://run.azk.io](http://run.azk.io) . We'll be continuously adding new projects to it.

In this tutorial published by DigitalOcean, we demonstrate how easy it is to run code "in natura" straight from GitHub with the "Run Project" button and then deploy it to DigitalOcean with azk.

We know there are several options to deploy code from GitHub to the cloud or even to your local machine, however none of them allow you to deal with the original code unmodified like this which can be very useful for hacking/experimenting purposes.

How many times have you stumbled upon some code on GitHub you'd like to check out but it was so complicated to run it locally you ended up just giving up? How many projects do you have that could be going through that?

There you go. :)

I'll be glad to answer to any comments and doubts about it.

Thanks!</comment>


PFAS "Forever Chemicals" and Nordic Ski Wax - <AUTHOR> https://www.outsideonline.com/2408206/nordic-skiing-fluorinated-wax-swix <comment><USER2> This shit is everywhere and I've lately observed that the big outdoor brands aren't even close to doing what they can to stop using them. It's even in childrens clothes, all in the name of keeping us dry.

I actually recently tried Greenland wax on a cotton canvas anorak, and so far it's working out great. Perhaps it's not as effective as Gore-Tex. I think we should try to remember that people somehow survived outside before these materials were introduced.

<comment><USER3> I suspect many of the buyers of Gortex clothing are quite environmentally aware. This could be bad for them if the news spreads. I was completely unaware of the link between Gortex and PFAS

<comment><USER4> The Goretex membrane itself is PTFE, which as long as you don't overheat/burn it, is a long chain polymer that does not seem to be anywhere near as much of a concern as small-molecule PFAS are. The bigger issue is likely the water repellent treatment of the shell fabric, which at least in the existing technology is necessary for breathability -- the garment can't breathe if the outer fabric layer is waterlogged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fungi Phanerochaete chrysosporium and Aspergillus niger apparently can degrade PFAS chemicals. Though I'm not sure how you concentrate them enough to for bioremediation, especially in tap water, unless you can do it at the point sources.

[https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2x47296b](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2x47296b)

Scotchguard got banned years ago, sounds like ski wax is next, but it sounds like it'll still be used in factories for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like kind of weird timing for this article - FIS has banned fluoros, and their grip over the nordic ski racing world is pretty much absolute. by next season, any waxes with fluoros will not be viable consumer products.

They call out the american birkie for not having banned fluoros yet - that's because the FIS ban hasn't gone into effect yet. American Birkie is a FIS worldloppet race and subject to FIS rules.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's in almost all chain lubes for bikes also. There is one brand I found called Green Oil that doesn't use it, but it takes a week or so to ship from the UK and they only make a wet lube. Not thrilled with using a wet lube year round, but still much better than having Teflon dust in my apartment.

<comment><USER8> No, lubricants such as Krytox and the various spray and wet machine lubes used for bikes and such contain only polymerized fluoropolymers such as PTFE (trade name Teflon). PTFE has a long established safety record, and is completely different from the unpolymerized PFCs that are showing up in ground water and in people's blood.

Green Oil is fear mongering. Their website calls PTFE "carcinogenic". This is a lie. The manufacture of PTFE is nasty business, no doubt, but the finished product is safe. Safe enough that it has been widely used in medical implants for the past 50 years.

<comment><USER9> >PTFE has a long established safety record, and is completely different from the unpolymerized PFCs that are showing up in ground water and in people's blood.

Teflon is mentioned in the article as a PFAS based chemical that has had legal trouble due to health hazards in the past..

"A just-released film, Dark Waters, stars Mark Ruffalo as an intrepid lawyer battling DuPont in the early 2000s after the chemical giant began making a PFAS-based product, Teflon, at its factory in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where chronic illness and untimely deaths spiked among nearby residents. Several states, New York and Ohio among them, have filed lawsuits that seek compensation for health problems caused by drinking water polluted by PFAS. DuPont and 3M are frequently defendants in these suits."

<comment><USER8> The difference is between polymers such as PTFE and PVDF, and the feedstock monomers used to make them. They are _completely_ different materials. PTFE is inert and immortal. It's dead to the world. You can scrape the non-stick coatings off of all your pans and eat it, and there will be no detectable fluorinated chemicals in your blood. PTFE is widely used for medical implants, and has been for over 50 years. Its track record is well established.

The chemicals discussed in the article and in the movie you mention are the feedstocks used to make the polymers, and the surfactants used to form coatings. Those chemicals -- referred to collectively as PFAS -- might be a big fucking problem. They are also inert in a chemical sense, but they're monomeric so they live their whole lives as single molecules, free to pass through biological tissues, where they apparently cause problems. PTFE has no such freedom at any scale; even the finest PTFE dust cannot be absorbed in your gut, and evidence of respiratory hazard of PTFE is pretty much nil until it's burnt, in which case the problem isn't the PTFE but rather the pyrolysis products.

PTFE and PFAS... completely different materials with completely different chemical, biological, and environmental behaviors.

<comment><USER10> >You can scrape the non-stick coatings off of all your pans and eat it, and there will be no detectable fluorinated chemicals in your blood. PTFE is widely used for medical implants, and has been for over 50 years. Its track record is well established.

You fail to mention it's track record for straight up killing birds if you overheat it. Which, to be clear, we're talking about cookware. The odds of it getting left too long on the heat once in a while are very high.

It will kill your pet bird in seconds. Damage to humans? Unclear.

<comment><USER8> Birds are easily killed by any kind of smoke. Everything from overheated cooking oil to second hand cigarette smoke can quickly kill your bird. Non- stick cookware is hardly unique in that regard.

PTFE does emit some uniquely nasty chemicals when overheated, but in mercifully small quantities, and the effects seem to be temporary. If you read up on fluorinated polymer fume exposure, you'll find exactly zero known deaths, only a handful of known injuries, and no firm evidence of long term health effects. Considering that there are millions of amateur cooks out there abusing non-stick pans every day since the 1960's, I'd say that's a pretty fucking good track record.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who has waxed with HF wax several dozen times in the past (collegiate nordic ski racer) with no face mask and mediocre room ventilation, how worried should I be about long-term side effects?

<comment><USER12> The average US citizen has a large load of PFAS in their blood[1] from clothing, carpet, water and other sources. The levels have dropped a great deal in the last 20 years but it's unlikely you've increased your levels much beyond what you already had from other sources.

[1] [https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/pfas-blood- testing.html](https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/pfas-blood-testing.html)

The blood serum levels reported by CDC are staggering. As an example, I have a well and it's in a contamination plume of PFOS and PFOA. The EPA certified laboratory measured level two years ago was 11 ppt (parts per trillion.) The CDC measured 2.1 ug/L of PFOA (only) in the blood of over 2000 people in 2014. That's 2,100,000 ppt; 5 orders of magnitude higher than my 'contaminated' water.

<comment><USER13> I think 2.1 ug/l is 2100 parts per trillion (where "trillion" means 10E+12)

A ug is 10E-6 grams, a liter is about 10E+3 grams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For everyone concerned about the damage this crap is doing to the environment and humans should watch "The Devil We Know"[1]. This film covers a time frame, starting in the 50's up to the current day.

[1] [https://youtu.be/gwZSXdjAqSk](https://youtu.be/gwZSXdjAqSk)

</comment><comment><USER15> This stuff is in drinking water which seems bad, but what are the dangers of Teflon and Gore-Tex clothing?

<comment><USER16> The company manufacturing Teflon has been disposing of chemicals used during the manufacture of Teflon in such a way that those chemicals end up in the drinking water supply of communities surrounding factories.

<comment><USER8> Also, the U.S. military deliberately dumps tons of this shit right on the ground every year. They use it in firefighting foam, and spray it freely in regular fire fighting exercises at dozens of military bases around the country.

[https://theintercept.com/2018/02/10/firefighting-foam- afff-p...](https://theintercept.com/2018/02/10/firefighting-foam-afff-pfos- pfoa-epa/)

<comment><USER17> That and the jet fuel are powerful reasons to never live near a military base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Meanwhile in Aspen, CO [https://www.aspentimes.com/news/aspen-skiing-co-among- those-...](https://www.aspentimes.com/news/aspen-skiing-co-among-those-saying- goodbye-to-ski-wax-hello-to-phantom/) & [https://www.dpsskis.com/phantom- glide](https://www.dpsskis.com/phantom-glide)

Should pollute less because it lasts longer?

</comment><comment><USER19> So is the regular Swix CH7 hydrocarbon wax a C6 or a C8? Should I still be handling these with gloves?

<comment><USER6> the "CH" line of waxes (CH4/6/7/8/10) are not fluorinated. The waxes that start with LF or HF (low-fluoro and high-fluoro, respectively) are the fluorinated products.

you probably don't need to worry about handling LF or HF with gloves, it's not _that_ toxic. but if you're waxing with them you should be wearing a respirator.

<comment><USER20> Yeah ... about that. The CH wax dust isn't good respiratory-wise either. As an avid Alpine skier I used to hot wax, scrape then use the drill mounted rotary brushes pretty much every weekend until I discovered wax "dust" in my coffee! (early morning tuning!). I'd usually tune late at night I guess I never noticed the wax in my beer can/bottle! That was the last time I used them.

Now I use the Pro-Glide from SkiMD, rather than hot-waxing, scraping and brushing, you crayon the wax on cold then use it as a friction device to "melt" the wax in with some very light brushing. Much much quicker, uses far less wax and produces very little dust, highly recommended:

[https://skimd.com/pro-glide](https://skimd.com/pro-glide)

I never really used Fluro-based waxes because it doesn't last long and the guidance was that you needed to "get it out of your base" after racing as it supposedly did long term damage to the ski.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am a childless person living in the biggest nordic skiing area in North America. I wax with LF/HF every morning. I don't think my impact on the environment is that big.</comment>


Ask HN: What tools do you use to diagram micro-service architectures? - <AUTHOR> Any open source or browser based tools you guys use  to document micro-service systems and all the connections and dataflows? <comment><USER3> I recommend [https://draw.io/](https://draw.io/) \- it's easy to use, doesn't require an account and you can load/save diagrams from Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox (or, of course, from your device). I've created a lot of diagrams with it and it "just works" :)

<comment><USER4> Seconding draw.io, have been using it somewhat actively recently, do recommend.

Seamless integration with GDrive, lots of existing templates, great experience overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most of the time I'm using PlantUML [1], since it can live in the same place as the source code, moreover there is a IntelliJ Idea plugin which adds PlantUML support to the IDE [2], nevertheless I think there should be plugins available for all major IDEs.

[1] [http://plantuml.com/](http://plantuml.com/)

[2] [https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/?idea&id=7017](https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/?idea&id=7017)

</comment><comment><USER6> => [https://gephi.org/](https://gephi.org/) \+ log aggregation/tracing - <USER2> [http://opentracing.io/](http://opentracing.io/) and [http://zipkin.io/](http://zipkin.io/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I like Lucidchart ([http://lucidchart.com](http://lucidchart.com)).

Does what I need, and their google-drive integration makes it easy to keep track of the diagrams and share them with folks.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use either [https://draw.io](https://draw.io) or Giffy Diagrams for Chrome extension.

</comment><comment><USER9> libreoffice draw works fine for most of my charting needs. even google drawings is not that bad. draw.io is plain awesome!

</comment><comment><USER10> www.yuml.me is text based, which I prefer</comment>