Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/mindfulness-meaningless-word-shoddy-science-behind-it-682008 <comment><USER2> I'm shocked that a relatively new clinical practice with only moderate evidence behind it would be overhyped to sell magazines. Shocked I tell you.

I was introduced to mindfulness practice as a therapy for depression several years ago at my university. They were clear it was a new approach for clinical use (though building on a long history of meditation) and that although the initial research results were promising it was still very much a developing area. For what it's worth, I've personally found it one of the more effective techniques I've been taught for relapse prevention. I support both its ongoing use _and_ a robust attitude to demanding high-quality evidence for/against it.

The article is just describing the hype cycle for technology as applied to psychological therapy: "hey, I've a new idea" -> promising early results -> hype -> "this new approach will solve everything" -> ["actually this sucks" NOW HERE] -> "well, perhaps it's helpful for this area (for some people) (some of the time) -> "hey, I've a new idea" -> ...

<comment><USER3> The "trough of disillusionment". Great term! [http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hyp...](http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype- cycle.jsp)

<comment><USER4> In this particular case, the effect may be amplified, because expectations (the y-axis in the graph) may have an effect on meditation/mindfulness.

<comment><USER3> A hype-based placebo effect perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I normally wouldn't weigh in here, since I am the furthest thing possible from an expert, but after even a little dabbling in meditation I can see some major misconceptions in the other comments.

It isn't about being bored, or about any of the benefits that may or may not occur.

Meditation is a useful discipline because it is about training the mind to (a) become conscious of and "reify" individual thoughts and sensations, and (b) direct and maintain attention consciously, rather than the usual unconscious process by which our minds flit from thought to thought.

Once you have these skills you can (presumably) use them for other things and to achieve various effects. But it starts there.

<comment><USER6> In regards to (a), isn't it more about _not_ reifying your thoughts and sensations? This might be semantics though; I do agree that the path of _not_ becoming a slave to thoughts and sensations starts with acknowledging them.

<comment><USER7> Semantics or not, that's actually a very important topic. From my limited understanding, the meditation approach would be to firstly notice the thought or sensation, but then to neither repress nor necessarily express the emotion further or get carried away with it.

The rationale being that repression is a short term band-aid that does not allow for resolution of the issue, and can also be a way to conveniently trick yourself into ignoring important things (which you might want to be considering / processing). On the other hand, you also don't want to get further into the emotion, as it may add fuel to the fire (like getting carried away with stories in your mind about what you should have responded with during an argument, etc). So, there's some kind of balancing act there.

So reify might actually be a good word, although it may go to far, as you pointed out.

<comment><USER8> Drawing parallels between meditation and reinforcement learning, I have realized that those thoughts we are supposed not to sustain (about the future and past) are simulations. We do model-based RL in our heads, simulating (imagining) future events in our minds, in order to adapt. So mindfulness is telling us not to simulate, and instead, just to perceive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Major commercial players in the meditation space

The sheer insanity of this phrase astounds me. There's an industry devoted to meditation. For such a thing to exist, you have to start by convincing people that they're not meditating right. Which means some people are better at it than others and you should worry about not being as good. What's next, competitive meditation?

<comment><USER10> Guided meditation is a big deal. I know a number of people who use Headspace. Also, obviously, some people are better at meditating. I think most meditation practitioners tend to sort of remove ego, not add to it. So I don't see anyone being competitive about it. But I do see people desperate for the benefits and looking to those good at it to show them the way. There are worse things people could be trying really hard to get good at :)

A lot of meditation and mindfulness encourages an active focus on other people and how they are feeling. I think it is generally wholesome with a side industry trying to take money from people who heard it was good.

<comment><USER9> > obviously, some people are better at meditating

This is not obvious to me. This is the message the meditation industry is trying to sell, and I'm not buying it. We have a long history in the West of selling pre-packaged individually-wrapped enlightenment products and claiming they come from the East, where enlightenment was invented. But that's marketing, not reality.

<comment><USER11> > This is the message the meditation industry is trying to sell, and I'm not > buying it.

Why do you find this hard to believe? Meditation and mindfulness is a skill, there are in fact various techniques or approaches one can take to improve the effectiveness. Being opposed to charging money for this is one thing, denying its existence is something else.

<comment><USER8> It really is a skill. You can get good at it in a very short time, or in a lifetime, or never.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is no need for scientific proof. I observe that being mindful changes things for me: The way I listen to people, the way I eat, the way I handle rejection or anger or any other feeling. I realize that being mindful (vs mindlessly and blindly doing things) sharpens my senses, makes me think clearer, makes me change perspectives, create more categories or realize that I think within categories.

I got in touch with mindfulness by reading one of Jon Kabat-Zinn's books ("Wherever you go, there you are"). That was almost twenty years ago. Shortly after that I read Ellen Langer's book "Mindfulness", which is more about the negative effects of mindlessness.

I think that the pure process of observing something (mindfully) has the potential to positively influence the results. Whether I sit down quietly and observe my feelings and thoughts (things that happened in the past or things that'll happen in the future) as they come and go. Or as I interact with people, or as I walk, travel or engage in any type of activity.

I don't need scientific evidence that all of this has a measurable positive effect. My own observation is enough evidence for me.

Edit: typo

<comment><USER13> If you need a book to meditate, you are probably doing it wrong.

<comment><USER14> How else is one supposed to learn without access to a teacher?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not really surprised. How do you even do measurements in a brain to see if it has any effect?

It's already quite tricky to make sure anti depressants work, so I would not trust meditation.

At best you just make people believe doing it will make them better, so as long as they believe it, it might be reassuring enough.

I don't tell people to do meditation, I tell them to go to a quiet place outside, in a park or woods, to sit and do nothing and let their thoughts go around. No phone, no book, no toys. The mere act of doing nothing is already doing a lot to relax you, and people have lost the simple habit of relaxing. Stop being busy, that's what people need.

<comment><AUTHOR> > to sit and do nothing and let their thoughts go around.

Pretty dangerous if those thoughts are "I am worthless and no-one would miss me if I die" or "my family would be better off if I kill myself".

<comment><USER11> And this is where one needs wisdom that should be part of a healthy meditation practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have practiced meditation for 20 years but I still don't understand what is the purpose of emptiness (I mean I used to think I did but now I'm not so sure). What would be the purpose from a reinforcement learning point of view? A state where I have no likes or dislikes, no goal, no reward signals, where I feel no attraction or repulsion, where the distinction between self and other disappears. An uprooted agent drifting in the world, trying to be 'nothing'.

Would that make me better? I have had many colleagues who dedicated their life to meditation and ended up alone and without a career. I don't think they are particularly happy now, and that is because they prioritised the spiritual ideals above anything else, ignoring other legitimate needs. Is it even a good idea to exist as a pure witness detached from anything around you, or to think that you are not really a person?

What I approve of is being more aware, in the present moment. This practice clearly has a purpose. It can lead to less impulsive reactions / more adaptive actions, without so much internal struggle. But the rest is just playing with your mind - mantras, chakras, Kundalini, they are just side effects of the nervous system. They feel transcendent but are just a bunch of feelings.

<comment> wu-ikkyu >"Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. And, therefore, if you meditate for an ulterior motive – that is to say, to improve your mind, to improve your character, to be more efficient in life – you've got your eye on the future and you are not meditating. Because, the future is a concept; it doesn't exist. As the proverb says, "Tomorrow never comes." There is no such thing as tomorrow; there never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking; there is only a present – only an eternal now.

It's funny then, isn't it, that one meditates for no reason at all. Except we could say, 'for the enjoyment of it,' and here I would interpose the essential principal that meditation is supposed to be fun. It's not something you do as a grim duty. The trouble with religion as we know it, is that it is so mixed up with grim duties, 'we do it because it's good for you, it's a form of self- punishment'. Well, meditation when correctly done has nothing to do with all that. It's a kind of digging in the present; it's a kind of grooving with the eternal now. And it brings us into a state of peace where we can understand that the point of life, the place where it's at, is simply here and now."

~Alan Watts, The Art of Meditation

<comment><USER8> I know that high level meditation is supposed to have no practical purpose, but that is exactly what is bothering me. What would be the utility of that, from an evolutionary point of view, or from a reinforcement learning point of view (where we divide the world into agents and environment, with goals and rewards).

The spiritual utility, as it is presented in tradition, is related to attaining some sort of freedom and realization, a subjective feeling. But I am thinking (devil's advocate) that all are just patterns of activation in the brain, in other words, just perceptions and emotions. And from a practical point of view, there is nothing useful about it - I am referring only to emptiness, not to mindful attention.

<comment><USER16> The emptiness you're referring to, if I understand you correctly, is that of sunyata[1], wherein we realize precisely what you have stated: that there is no thing besides patterns and activations, and that assuming these things construct a whole person that has some sort of "centerpoint" is fallacious. Your devil's advocate point arrives at the truth precisely.

The freedom arises when one accepts this fact wholeheartedly. This realization isn't "supposed" to help you, or bring you anywhere, since that would be assuming that the actions that are taken have some internal guidance mechanism that bring it to fruition and bestow benefit on the actor. But no such thing exists. It just happens, is, and you are ok with it (or not). The utility doesn't need to exist because it can't exist: if all there is, is now, utility has absolutely no goals or targets, and thus the only thing supporting its "existence" is an assumption about what may yet does not exist.

[1] [http://buddhanet.net/cbp2_f6.htm](http://buddhanet.net/cbp2_f6.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe we should have listened to the people who are Zen Buddhists about how reaching satori is incredibly difficult?

<comment><USER18> I don't think most people are expecting to get to that level, though. You can get benefits without getting that deep.

But the key is you _can_ get _benefits_ rather than have a guarantee that you will get very specific sets of benefits. It's not a wonder-cure for every mental problem around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> People should be aware that this does not mean you shouldn't meditate. At least give it a shot. The risk/reward ratio is so heavily skewed toward reward (what are the risks, really?) that you'd be foolish not to try it.

<comment><USER20> So like Pascal's Wager for meditation?

<comment><USER21> Eh.. no? Mindfulness is something for which the results of trying it are testable. Pascal's Wager is a gamble about what happens beyond the verifiable. They are fundamentally different.

<comment><USER22> Tell this to someone that committed suicide because of mindfulness.. Oh wait.. they look exactly the same to me in this case.

<comment><USER21> This is you right now: [https://xkcd.com/1901/](https://xkcd.com/1901/)

EDIT: Ok, fine, I'll bite: exactly the same how exactly?

Anti-depressants can cause suicide too: some people are too depressed to _even commit suicide_ , and the anti-depressants give them enough mental energy to commit to that.

That doesn't mean anti-depressants are pseudo-science or a bad idea, it just means their usage must be determined on a case-by-case basis

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I believe there are only 2 way to reach truth.

1\. experience your truth 2\. do statistically sound study to show if your truth is in fact the truth of majority.

to challenge and test the use of , meditation and 'Mindfulness', JUST TRY IT on yourself. this won't kill you or cost you fortune. find your own truth.

P.S. - I think this magazine Article to be somewhat hocus - pocus. I can't pinpoint what's wrong1 except something just doesn't seem right!

<comment><USER24> Number two seems not right. For the path you're talking about to be useful, shouldn't it still work even if you're the last person on left on Earth? Number two also assumes that the majority of people are also searching for truth (seems they aren't, currently) or have already found it (which would require that they'd been already searching).

<comment><USER23> If, i am the last person on earth. I can still find my truth, by experiencing it myself. it's not 1 and 2. it's 1 or 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Psychedelic Therapy will be the next one.

<comment><USER21> Which is sad, because I get the impression that in the situations where it _does_ seem to work (alcoholism for example), it's both very effective and one of the few therapies that work at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a term to describe the outrage that we seem to be sharing towards the snake oil salesmen?

</comment><comment><USER25> Between being a placebo and a straight up pseudoscience(if I even were to call it a "science") in my opinion "mindfulness" is a type of pavlovian conditioning design to establish a self-empathy defense mechanism within our minds.

I've been to "mindfulness events" for executives and corporate, where people claim to let go of their ego only to look down on anyone who is not as "open minded " as they are.

Overall is another balancing act between our "ego" and "super ego". But I guess it does "works" for some individuals.

<comment><USER18> I'm trying, but I can't find a way to understand what you describe in terms of my experience with mindfulness practice.

Conditioning for _what_? Defense against _what_? It just seems entirely disconnected from my experience, which is "just" a combination of deep relaxation and a sensation of being more alert to (some) mental impulses rather than blindly following them (all the time). It is not a miracle cure for anything. It won't give you mental superpowers. But it offers a different way of looking at things that sometimes offers surprising insights.

I'm sure there are some incredibly poor events for executives and corporate, given the money you can potentially make, but that says very little about mindfulness and more about these types of events.

<comment><USER25> I agree with your argument discribing the fact that, I should not judge a single chronological event as means to an end. I should rather reason by first principle rather than by analogy.

Yet experiences are a often influenced by various psychological and environmental componets. The fact that we have different experiences is absolutely natural, thus I'm capable of comprehending your argument.

I was simply stating my thought analogy based on my past experiences.

Since is rather hard to measure such statements (in a quantitative way) I shall be skeptical of other people's "experiences". Thus staying true to my thought process, unless I manage to find a comon ground by truly "experiencing" what some call "mindfulness ".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's plenty of support behind cognitive behavioral therapy--mindfulness is the same thing, but facing westward. Where is the discrepancy?

</comment><comment><USER26> Glad the title was updated.

</comment><comment><USER27> Clinical psych graduate student and researcher studying, among other things, group mindfulness interventions in a clinical setting. Thought I'd weigh in.

While there is a lot of not so good research surrounding mindfulness, there is some decent research as well, some of which is mentioned in the original article. Mindfulness-based interventions like Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness Basic Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) do show, as stated, at least moderate effects for stress, anxiety and general well-being. The difficulty that I'm finding in my own research (mostly still unpublished) is that these groups don't do much more than just being in any group would, and actually my current work is on parsing group vs meditation-specific effects (outcome variance decomposition). Meditation-specific effects are, indeed, proving elusive.

But there are a couple of things at play here. The first is that, it's nearly impossible to separate the effects of ANY short-term treatment from so-called "group" or "therapist" effects. One of the major findings of the last 10-15 years is that a therapist or group-leader's ability to convey confidence, warmth and understanding and to establish rapport is a massively more important factor than technique, at least in the short-term. We're talking 80+ of treatment gains. Of course, to do that you generally have to have at least an effective-seeming technique, and one that you legitimately believe in, but it doesn't seem to matter which one. Again, this is in the short-term.

The second issue, is that virtually all studies in any clinical intervention are really quite short. MBSR is 8 sessions. How good do you think a person can really get at meditation in 20 minutes per day for 50ish days? The answer is, not very. And that's true for other cognitive and behavioral treatments as well. Studies limit the length of their tested interventions to between 8 and 20 weeks, and usually on the lower end, for funding and convenience reasons. Then they (we) find that group and therapist factors trump technique. It's really not that surprising when you think about it. It's not that the techniques don't work, it's just that it takes as long to master your mind as it does to master anything else, 100s to 1000s of hours. And that research, which would take years and be extremely expensive, just isn't done.

So yes, a lot of the mindfulness work out there is hype. But it doesn't really bear on whether mindfulness is effective, just whether a person can make massive gains in 2-4 months. My own view, is that mindfulness is an effective tool for teaching awareness and attention control. I use it in conjunction with other cognitive and behavioral techniques with my own clients.

Review paper on mindfulness effect sizes for anxiety and depression. I've seen others which found moderate rather than large treatment gains:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848393/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848393/)

The "Dodo Hypothesis" that the bulk of therapeutic treatment gains are the result of "common factors" (therapist effects, rapport, empathy, etc.)

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wps.20238/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wps.20238/full)

I think the second one is behind a paywall, but you should be able to grab the DOI and "find it".

</comment><comment><USER28> As somebody with clinical anxiety, I have been prescribed CBT and Mindfulness on the NHS, I think this piece misses several key points.

For one thing, NICE (the UK NGO responsible for analysing evidence and making recommendations on the efficacy of treatments and their cost effectiveness) and an all-party Parliamentary group found signifcant evidence to recommend Mindfulness as a treatment for anxiety and mild depression along with traditional cognitive-behavioural therapy and SSRIs.

Secondly, mindfulness feels, to me, closely related to CBT, a tried and true therapy. It appears to be very closely related to CBT in what it helps to control: intrusive thoughts. The increased focus on meditation is why it's more effective for anxiety and mild depression.

It's most certainly NOT recommended for serious cases of clinical depression. As often, selected application of evidence and over-generalisation is the problem here.

Mindfulness can help with a range of relatively-minor mental health issues, and it can also help prevent relapses in those that have recovered. For those of us who have been helped that's really not something to diminish.

It's not that there's no evidence for its effectiveness at all. There is.

(Disclosure: Mindfulness helped my anxiety a lot. I believe it to be more than placebo, but then I would, wouldn't I?)

<comment><USER29> > Secondly, mindfulness feels, to me, like an offshoot of CBT. It appears to > be very closely related to CBT in both its approach and what it helps > control.

Really? When I meditate I need to turn my thoughts _off_. With CBT you reframe your thoughts by a process of what I'd like to call creative thinking and empiricism. So for me, it's not an offshoot of CBT, since mindfulness is not concerned with thoughts but with being mindful on whatever your object of mindfulness is (in 95% of the cases it's your body).

Also, mindfulness was ripped out of Buddhism. Mindfulness was "Buddha's" invention on top of Hinduism -- as I understand it. Hinduistic meditation focuses on concentration (note: I stand corrected if I'm wrong), whereas Buddhistic meditation shifts (eventually) towards mindfulness and depending on the tradition you have like 4+ different forms of mindfulness.

What psychologists/neuroscientists did was take these techniques out of their contexts to see if they were helpful for therapy. And apparently -- according to their studies -- they were.

I just know from personal experience how mindfulness damages me, I also know how it can heal me. I prefer to use it for healing purposes. For me, when I need to be more connected to my body and to other people I use mindfulness and loving kindness meditation (metta) as a practice. Metta makes me more connected to people and mindfulness acts as a multiplier towards that connection (since I am more aware of all my feelings). Whenever I need to code, focus and analyze more I tend to be less interested in meditation practices.

I'm noticing it's not a hoax. I've meditated 500+ hours and my baseline level of being aware of my feelings is slightly but noticeably higher. Even if I don't meditate for months.

<comment><USER30> > When I meditate I need to turn my thoughts off

Good luck with that! From my experience and the teachings I received, meditation is not about turning thoughts off (which is practically impossible) but becoming aware of them in a way that you don't get lost into them, the goal being to understand hands-on how the mind works.

> Mindfulness was "Buddha's" invention on top of Hinduism

That's completely wrong AFAICT, although I concede that the term "mindfulness" can be perceived as a lay version of "meditation", without religious or philosophical connotation.

<comment><USER18> Mindfulness meditation indeed is not about turning thoughts off.

Concentration meditation on the other hand can involve turning thoughts off. Mindfulness meditation involve a certain degree of concentration practice (e.g. the use of breath meditation - anapanasati) to maintain focus, but too much concentration is directly detrimental to mindfulness meditation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Tangential, but has anyone else noticed a surge in newsweek links here and on reddit? I feel like they hired some consultants.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's really easy to check if numbers of submission have increased.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=newsweek.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=newsweek.com)

<comment><USER32> Judge for yourself: [https://i.imgur.com/yPUg6pC.png](https://i.imgur.com/yPUg6pC.png)

<comment><USER31> Oops. Didn't notice it's cumulative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Few years ago, I read an article about mindfulness on HN, and it finally clicked with me, why some people recommended me to meditate, and I dismissed it because I was too skeptical. I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored, and through that, focus better on a single task that is boring but you have to do it.

It probably isn't a cure for everything, but looked at this way, it is still quite useful.

<comment><USER34> > I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored...

There is a vast landscape of meditation practices from numerous traditions that focus on different aspects, but I think your comment is an extremely poor characterization of them. It's bit like describing playing guitar or piano as "moving your fingers in some specific patterns." Uh, no.

<comment><USER35> I think OP is correct, it just wasn't stated as well as it could've been. Meditation (at least some practice forms) is an act of forcing boredom upon yourself AND exploring how your mind's default settings react in that environment. There is a reason why focusing on something like your breath is recommended vs. focusing on the television (breath is boring!).

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

<comment><USER34> Boredom is an emotional state, it is not the absence of stimulation.

<comment><USER35> And sitting down in a quiet, non-stimulated environment typically produces all sorts of emotions, does it not?

<comment><USER34> YMMV but for many practitioners meditation does not imply boredom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Mindfulness" is an occult method. End of discussion. It can be, and has been studied not by science, but by people working with the occult.

And mindfulness is more of a byproduct of meditation, controlled breathing, or other techniques that Shiva told Shakti.

We'll eventually be able to analyse these things in the words of science. But not yet. If you're looking for proof, you will be looking for a very long time, unless you're willing to do the research on yourself. And then, N=1 research usually isn't looked highly upon.

EDIT: How nice. -1's and hidden by a moderator. Somehow, something I said was "wrong", or more likely disagreed with someone's world view. But instead of discussing, it's easier to hide. Pity. I expected better from a group of people who claimed to like science.

<comment><USER37> As we say in Brazil: "monkey that can't eat a banana will say it's unripe". Some people try medidation and succeed, some don't and think that the ones succeeding are faking it.

> And then, N=1 research usually isn't looked highly upon.

Genius!

<comment><USER36> What's interesting is that "mindfulness" via what westerners think of meditation is only one of 110 different techniques. Some of them don't work now (wrong time), some wont work in the future, and some won't work for certain people.

When going this route, its best to try different techniques until you feel a change. Once you do, start working with the technique for a time. 3 minutes starting, then 3 days, then 3 months, then 3 years. That provides mastery... Then you can work on another one.

And no, meditation via breath doesn't work on me. I've tried with lamas. Nope. However when I started working with visualizations (think Hololens without hardware), I had other people near me that could tell me the shapes I was projecting. That was -- neat.</comment></comment></comment>


Is not going to college for a developer viable in the current year? - <AUTHOR> I'm getting near college age, and I'm faced with a common question: "Should I go to college?" With my grades, I could get some good (possibly free ride) scholarships for decent technical colleges, but I don't feel that they'd be worthwhile, considering all my current programming knowledge has been obtained via the internet at zero cost and without structured classes. A four-year college would mean four years of my life where I could be learning in the real world, for much, much less, and without all the overhead of other, irrelevant classes. And this doesn't even factor in the financial aspect, which doesn't seems very good, given the mounting costs of universities in the US.<p>What do you think, and what was your experience with college or the lack thereof? <comment><USER2> Some not necessarily cohesive thoughts from my experience, 8 years after graduating:

College is probably more useful for tackling topics that you find more challenging - personally I am trying to brush up on my Math after taking an interest in Machine Learning and it's definitely a bit of a slog going through textbooks by myself.

If you can get accepted to a top college you will find it more challenging and rewarding than an average school. They will also usually have needs-based financial aid. No one I know who went to MIT regrets it. These degrees open doors in a way that they probably shouldn't. I really would say that if you can get accepted to a top program, you should take it.

I am currently not using much of my degree since I was very interested in Systems work while I was doing my degree and have gotten less interested in it over time, but I do not regret learning the things I did, they were useful at the start of my career.

A big part of the cost of college in the US is actually just living expenses for 4 years - If you can live at home or find a part time job as a developer, you can significantly defray the costs.

You will probably get paid less without a degree than with a degree, making the benefit of working straight away smaller.

A college degree is basically necessary is you want to work overseas.

You will make more friends at college than at work.

The world expects people to go to college, even if it isn't strictly necessary, and as more people graduate with CS degrees (enrollments are way up since I graduated), it will be a reason to reject you out of hand.

I personally rail against the stupidity of funneling everyone through college, but I don't think you are making it easy on yourself by skipping one.</comment>


American Airlines sues blogging ex-employee and alleged moles - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnooz.com/2012/04/16/social-media-2/american-airlines-sues-blogging-ex-employee-and-alleged-moles/

<comment><USER2> Moles? LOL! More like: 'Oh shit, all of our bullshit is out on the internet!'

Air that dirty laundry! Show some light on the darkness.</comment>


Introducing the new Guardian Developers Site - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/info/developer-blog/2014/jul/22/introducing-the-new-guardian-developers-site

<comment><USER2> Are developers based in a specific Guardian office, or spread throughout all of them? Similarly, where are the job openings? I see no mention of office location.</comment>


Ask HN: Does using throwaways still make sense in 2019? - <AUTHOR> With all the tools and techniques (some of them automated) we have available nowadays, can using simple throwaways still be considered an effective way to hide your real identity in 2019?[1]
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9mZLBve6yQ
[1] There is a YC-worthy idea there, somewhere.
Edit: Fixed. <comment><USER2> Efficient? Effective?

Watch what you say if the stakes are high:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#After_publicatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#After_publication)</comment>


Is there a RSSlike standard for Posting? What about NNTP? - <AUTHOR>

So often when I'm reading a blog or news site (Such as news.yc) in my feedreader, I wish I could easily read the full set of comments, or easily hit reply, and leave a comment right on the site.
I understand that the preferred model is to then "push" my reply to my own site, but it seems easier for everyone if there were a standardized API that could be used to posting replies to the site.
I'd also love to be able to read the various comments, fully thread them, and the like.. The Natural solution that comes to me is integrating a NNTP-like service into the popular website hosting software.. NNTP has allowed people to post replies and read through those of others easily for decades. It supports moderated on non-moderated posting, and it's lightweight enough to be supported everywhere.
Are there any other solutions that are in the works? Perhaps a simpler API that's based on HTTP post, rather than Sockets?
One of the main advantages of NNTP, is that it already has a HUGE base of Client Support- People have NNTP readers and don't even realize it.. Outlook, Thunderbird, Etc. What other app gets a huge installed base of users, who don't even realize they already have that functionality? ;)
I can understand reasoning that says that Spam might be a problem, but I have a hard time agreeing with it.. For one, there's technological fixes, such as HashCash, or even server-side IP filters.. Keep in mind, since each post goes back to the original server, who is running their OWN instance of NNTP, they can blacklist however they choose.
It seems like there's certainly an opportunity for this sort of development, I'm just curious if anyone knows someone working on it.
Unfortunately, I'm too busy approaching beta on Chron X to take on any new projects, but it seems like something desperately needed, and not a difficult technological problem. <comment><USER2> There are extensions for RSS/Atom that allow threaded comment feeds; if you combine this with the feed reading support in Thunderbird it might almost get you a news-like reading experience. Probably the biggest challenge would be getting blogs to output threaded feeds.

A standard protocol for posting comments on blogs sounds like it would be politically difficult due to fear of comment spam (it doesn't matter whether that fear is justified). Technically I think you could use unathenticated AtomPub, but I don't know if anyone has implemented this use case.

As for NNTP, you can't serve it from a $7 Dreamhost account so obviously it sucks.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's AtomPub -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_>(standard)

<comment><USER4> Yup. It's AtomPub.

Look up Sam Ruby for more info on it. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Ruby>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I hadn't seen that before. Shame on me. It still has the downside of not having the same level of client-support that NNTP does, but given that it doesn't require server support, I can see the appeal.

There's a couple of things in the Atom spec that seems underutilized, such as AtomPub. When combined with the threading, that could be a viable alternative. I wonder why So few sites support it? Momentum?

If I had the spare time (or capital to hire someone else), I'd love to see plugins added for the popular Blog packages and forums.

I suppose I shall have to wait and see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote about this same issue some time ago. You can read it here [http://alwaysnewmistakes.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/idea- embed...](http://alwaysnewmistakes.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/idea-embedding- rss-comments-in-a-content-rss-feed/).

</comment><comment><USER6> There's SIOC for read-only access to forums.</comment>


You don't understand exceptions, but you should - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/implementing-exceptions/ <comment><USER2> Lots of good clean fun in this article. My one question: would continuation marks avoid all of the `set!` messiness?</comment>


A Man Who Got Away with Everything (2002) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/14/books/the-man-who-got-away-with-everything.html <comment><USER2> > the well-known photograph of his fibula and tibia, a favorite exhibit on > display in the Army Medical Museum in Washington, which in the 19th century > was one of the must-see attractions of the capital.

It's still popular! In 2014:

[https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/179/9/1051/4159552](https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/179/9/1051/4159552)

"At the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) in Silver Spring, Maryland, "Sickles' leg" remains one of the most frequently requested objects."

Worth reading that short article too, even if you don't read the NYT one, as the former has a nice summary of his major "achievement."

</comment><comment><USER3> If you come across, and have to deal with a Sickles day to day - maybe as a boss or colleague or employee or in social circles - what would you do? Does anyone have any good strategies?

<comment><USER4> Having worked with folks approaching that level of obstreperousness my advice would be to get as far away as you can as quickly as you can manage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious if you come across his name while reading the NYT opinion piece on the "Lincoln Project"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I did. Good pickup, you're very perspicacious :-)

<comment><USER5> Rick Wilson's writing has been a small point of light in otherwise very dark times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paywalled and Not Supported by Outline...

<comment><AUTHOR> A quick search reveals a vast armamentarium of options. It has also been discussed in HN ;-)

In addition from HN FAQ: Are paywalls ok?

It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.</comment></comment>


Comcast "Not Welcome" Here - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/comcast-not-welcome-here-customers-protest-sale-of-tiny-cable-company/ <comment><USER2> I hope those residents of Vermont win the good fight to keep Comcast out.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anybody need freelance front end developer? Hire me - <AUTHOR>

Hello guys!
I am freelance web designer and front end developer seeking for work, since school is over. I have too much free time and I want to do something productive.
I love to work in Photoshop for creating designs and coding in Sublime Text. I enjoy using Twitter Bootstrap or just code from scratch.
See my latest work:
- Webdesign: http://i.imgur.com/7aVaPMd.png
- Web application: http://i.imgur.com/e8jsIH4.png
- Phone application: http://i.imgur.com/fCl5nnK.png
I have a lot more examples but for now I can't show them publicly.
If you have work or any qestions for me, just hit me up at firstname.lastname@example.com
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Clickables:

\- Webdesign: [http://i.imgur.com/7aVaPMd.png](http://i.imgur.com/7aVaPMd.png)

\- Web application: [http://i.imgur.com/e8jsIH4.png](http://i.imgur.com/e8jsIH4.png)

\- Phone application: [http://i.imgur.com/fCl5nnK.png](http://i.imgur.com/fCl5nnK.png)

</comment><comment><USER2> Do you have any working examples rather than screenshots?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah now I got some links:

\- [http://vidakovic.si/callscheduler/](http://vidakovic.si/callscheduler/)

\- [http://vidakovic.si/enyo/](http://vidakovic.si/enyo/)

\- [http://vidakovic.si/skillplus/](http://vidakovic.si/skillplus/)

\- [http://vidakovic.si/edure/](http://vidakovic.si/edure/)

Contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com</comment></comment>


European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail - <AUTHOR> https://www.dw.com/en/ecj-eu-employers-must-track-working-time-in-detail/a-48734055 <comment><USER2> ITT: Office & IT workers who have no clue that this might not be just about them but the millions of factory workers, shop attendants, builders etc that are forced to work overtime without pay. And you better not say anything, because you are very replaceable.

My personal experience? I've had to record my work times accurately for a few years, it was kinda annoying, but also freeing. Wanted to work in the weekend? no problem. Wanted to leave early or sleep in? no problem. Now I 'just kinda have to make sure I work my 40 hours' and always feel pressure to stay 9 till' 5 and do as little as possible outside of that.

<comment><USER3> > Wanted to work in the weekend? no problem.

Except that in many countries in Europe you aren't allowed to work on Sundays, and time tracking will be used to enforce it.

<comment><USER4> It's actually more liberal than that. You are allowed to work on Sunday, but it's more expensive for your employer as they need to compensate the discomfort. Double pay and triple pay are not uncommon (although taxes will eat most of that). In the end, your employer probably will not let you work Sundays if it isn't worth it (to them).

<comment><USER5> > Double pay and triple pay are not uncommon (although taxes will eat most of > that)

People have the weirdest views on how tax actually works. Taxes will eat the same proportion, or potentially marginally more - but unless a persons marginal rate is suddenly >50% you're obviously wrong.

I would go as far as to suggest this is a non issue in the majority of cases where overtime is paid.

<comment><USER6> Tax rate for Western EU workers is definitely above 50%, if you look at aggregate national income that finishes in government budgets (about 53%).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm punching in and out every day at work / in the home office. Either on a terminal or in the web browser. Best thing ever, takes 15 seconds a day.

Being called at home (when not working) because of an emergency? At least 2 hours are added to my timesheet, even if I solve the problem in 5 minutes, so I only get called if it's really important. Adds a lot of sanity and stops abuse.

We are very productive because we actually get to relax from work.

<comment><USER8> That's great, but would be a contravention this new law apparently.

The law doesn't want to know how much you bill or how much is allocated, but how much you actually work.

I the context of labour, surely it makes sense, but there, most hours are logged.

Outside of that it gets a little harder.

<comment><USER9> It's fully on the employer if they log _more_ time than you actually worked, the issue that was addressed with this ruling was people who'd clock out and then continue to work or where there is no clock and people simply write down how long they worked.

The issue the court had was that if you write it down then there is the possibility that you worked overtime but didn't actually write that or your employer changed it. If start and end of work time are accurately tracked then you can sue them for not paying you overtime.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _the issue that was addressed with this ruling was people who 'd clock out > and then continue to work or where there is no clock and people simply write > down how long they worked_

No, this ruling cannot prevent this practice at all. How could it, without a government official standing watch?

<comment><USER10> You rely on employees or former employees raising an issue and investigating. There is little money to be saved by not paying bob for 15 minutes that one time. Companies that abuse this do so pervasively and consistently providing ample evidence of their misdeeds.

Alternatively employees can raise the matter in court where the additional incentive of money paid to settle the claim makes it worthy of a lawyer handling the matter purely based on expectation of obtaining a cut of the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > A German confederation of employers said that the ruling was tantamount to > demanding a return to workers punching in and punching out on arrival and > departure, calling this impractical given modern working practices, > smartphones, home offices and the like.

Not really in agreement with the ruling but that's a dumb argument. Tons of tech contractors bill by the hour where accurately tracking time is a financial requirement.

<comment><USER12> True, And those same contractors do not take the hours worked off contract into account which by experience is combined always more than the stated work week hours. It's a cheap way to not deal with overtime.

<comment><USER11> > And those same contractors do not take the hours worked off contract into > account

What do you mean? If I'm working on your project, I'm billing you for my time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I worry this will have a negative impact on culture in work environments with more of a return to "bums in seats" management rather than outputs focussed management.

That's a pretty myopic view though many jobs have no objective outputs which makes hours one of the measurable metrics.

<comment><USER14> This.

It solves nothing, since the crooks will just continue to cook the books. This is already "mandatory" in Czechia and I have yet to hear about anyone being sued for not upholding the Labor Code.

On the other hand, the tech employees will have to take extra care to manage their attendance sheet with arbitrary requirements such as no weekends and/or no late-night work contrary to the actual practice of being on-call as needed with it being already factored into the pay.

Unless there is a significant bounty for employees who report such breaches for their current employer, the only businesses upholding the law are the very same businesses who would have done so nevertheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've got mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I hate the added administration of overly detailed time-keeping, on the other hand, it's often too easy to employers to pressure employees to work for more hours than they're actually paid.

The gripping hand, though, is that many employers aren't interested in hours, but in results. If they just pay you for certain results, and getting those results takes too much time, is it because the employer is too demanding? Or is it an employee who is slow to do that kind of work, but still prefer it over other kinds of work? It might also lead employers to pressure employees to work faster within the hours they're supposed to work, and fire those who can't keep up. I don't think it's going to solve the problem of overly demanding employers, though it probably helps in some cases.

</comment><comment><USER16> Traditionally, what is on the records and what happens in real life are two very different things. In each case I've seen in private companies, public offices, or universities, the timesheets are duly filled with what is expected and then the work and life continue as before.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting how used I got to the compensation model of a lump sum per month (or every 2 weeks) for software engineering jobs.

One of my first programming jobs required time tracking and so there was really no need to work more then 38 hours a week - because working more cost the company extra and always required approval from manager. Weekends and holidays were compensated 2x, during week after 5pm 1.5x I believe.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe a better idea would be to spell out expectations, so there's at least transparency in terms of comp.

I grab emails, take calls and do little things quite often in the evening, impromptu, it's rather difficult to measure all of that in many management functions.

</comment><comment><USER18> The ruling is strange, because in my opinion part of a modern working environment would be driven by some form of mutual trust. If you put the burden of "proof of accomplishment" on the workers, that may stifle workplace attractiveness and pose a bureaucratic hurdle. Hence cracking down on untracked, yet (or even therefore) quality employment relationships would naturally appear a step in the wrong direction.

I get it, the Spanish workers may not have shared such mutual trust with Deutsche Bank, but I don't get how that has to have consequences for everyone else?

Or am I (and maybe even the reporting journalists) reading this wrong and work contracts may, and from now on have to specify otherwise explicitly, if that's how they do business?

<comment> phoe-krk > If you put the burden of "proof of accomplishment" on the workers, that may > stifle workplace attractiveness and pose a bureaucratic hurdle.

An example of such a system is a glorified Excel sheet, given to your manager monthly, where you write how many hours have you worked on a given workday and which project you should report the time on, if you have multiple.

Getting acquainted with the system might take half an hour. Filling it in, in most trivial cases, is a copy-paste that takes up to five minutes a month. In case you have a more complicated case of working times, you should already be accustomed to noting down your work time daily, even if for your own good.

<comment><USER18> You have a point there, I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess it's good for workers: No one will work over what he is suppose to work and also will stop answering emails/slack/etc after work hours and/or in the weekends.

Employers have this stupid notion that the workers are slacking but in office setting IMO this would backfire by malicious compliance from the workers.

Also, good job Spanish Trade Union in making things worse for everyone in EU.

</comment><comment><USER6> I suspect it's only a fraction of employees that work more than they're supposed to, but as they're workaholics that work a lot more, they move the mean and it has a big positive impact for employers.

If this is true, this ruling is bound to have an impact on EU economic activity. And I don't see how it can be good, given that nobody's thinking that EU labor is too cheap. If it's applied at face value, it can only reduce worked hours at current costs, or have employers pay more for current output. Definitely can't increase EU labor competivity.

<comment><USER20> There's more to life than productivity. The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher._

But not thanks to this court ruling. The only thing _that_ will bring employers and employees is more bureaucracy.

Employees which let themselves get exploited before, will let themselves get exploited with precise time tracking as well. After all, who's going to check whether you actually tracked the time you spent working after hours – answering e-mails, calling back a client, or fixing bugs in your code?

<comment><USER21> Seems very reasonable to me, don't know why you call this bureaucracy:

"The Court holds that, in the absence of a system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured, it is not possible to determine, objectively and reliably, either the number of hours worked and when that work was done, or the number of hours of overtime worked [...]"

ALL places I have worked at have this in some way. Maybe not every day and maybe not always 100% correct but how else will they bill projects internally???

<comment><AUTHOR> For project budget and billing purposes, it is sufficient to track the number of hours each day. This court decision, however, would require to also track the start and end time, as well as the durations of all breaks. That's because there are laws regulating how much break time you _have_ to take each day (dependend on how many hours you work) and also how much time has to pass between two work days. If you're working from home, you'd have to track every little interruption in which you walk the dog, take your child to kindergarten, etc., otherwise your start and end time won't fit your billed hours.

Of course, nobody will bother with such tedious timekeeping, and will instead just enter plausible but made up values for start and end times, rendering this court decision useless.

<comment><USER22> No idea why you're so bitter about this, but obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded. This just spreads a common practice to the exploitative employers that don't respect workers rights - such as the right to have a20 minute break during the day.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded_

Bingo! In practice, employees will just fill in whatever values are convenient. Nothing's going to change for an employee who was pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to work unpaid overtime – now they'll be pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to not track the time they're working after hours. It's just more bureaucracy for everyone, including for honest, fair employers.

And yes, I'm very bitter about this. Bureaucratic, ivory-tower decisions like this one are partly responsible for phenomenons like Brexit and the German AfD party, which in turn pose a danger to the prosperity and peace we enjoy in Europe.

<comment><USER21> Oh the "let's be sensible" argument...

Please do not follow this road. According to EU the main target of Russian disinformation campaign during current EU parlamentet elections is to spread the picture that EU is colapsing due to bureaucracy/corruption/incompetence/all power moving to Brussels/migration/Islam (select one depending on your target) while their country is solid as rock.

They have a ~1 billion Euro budget to spread that garbage this year. Please don't do their work for free.

<comment><USER23> So we can never argue about it because the russians might try to use it against us? I would rather know the EU has problems so I can get away in time.

<comment><USER24> If the EU has problems we can discuss those left and right. The difference between having problems and making them up is relevant here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Understanding LSTM and its diagrams - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/mlreview/understanding-lstm-and-its-diagrams-37e2f46f1714 <comment><USER2> Pro Tip: The GRU is a much simpler unit (easier to explain) and usually works better than the LSTM.

<comment><USER3> Interesting paper that compares performance of GRU vs LSTM. [http://proceedings.mlr.press/v37/jozefowicz15.pdf](http://proceedings.mlr.press/v37/jozefowicz15.pdf)

TL;DR - For most tasks other than Language modeling GRU is better.

<comment><USER4> why is LSTM better for language modeling?

<comment><USER3> The paper doesn't speak much. Empirical results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [dupe] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13612938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13612938)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12960989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12960989)

<comment><USER6> > _Are reposts ok?

> If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill > reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)</comment></comment>


The Flat Build - <AUTHOR> http://dbushell.com/2013/03/18/the-flat-build/ <comment><USER2> I use punch for this -- it works very well for development, and sometimes can even be used in production as well. In any case, it is just mustache + json hashes. <[https://github.com/laktek/punch>](https://github.com/laktek/punch>);</comment>


W3C working group will shelve Web Intents - <AUTHOR> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-intents/2013May/0000.html

<comment><USER2> The linked email is a call for consensus which, if adopted, would have the effect of the headline, but neither it nor any of the replies currently indicate that that proposal has been adopted, so the headline seems premature/overstated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Traffic on the Web Intents mailing list has been low for the last few months. Browser and website adoption has stagnated. The spec has become huge and unwieldy, and has drifted widely out of scope. Participants have moved on to other things. The group has recognized this and I think the Nokia people are right to assume that _if_ WebIntents comes back one day, it will probably be with a wholly different approach. This is not premature in my opinion, it's just the official recognition of the project's state. There is no reason to believe the shelving will not occur, since it's being proposed by the people who are actually in charge of working out the spec.

I would love to be wrong, but that doesn't look likely. Compare the fanfare when WI was announced to the level of public interest now.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying I think that the headline is _wrong_ about what the path is, just that it is overstated as a description of the content of the email it links to. I haven't really been following WI all that closely, but my impression of the state of the project matches yours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So they shelve something truly awesome and with massive promise, while they keep pushing ahead with Web-DRM which _everyone_ external to the process has been utterly negative about.

W3C has sold itself to Hollywood and it has/will cost them their reputation, and ultimately their stewardship of the _open_ web.

We need someone else to stand up and talk for the best of the web now.</comment>


Mathematica programming – an advanced introduction (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mathprogramming-intro.org/ <comment><USER2> I personally have mixed feelings about Mathematica. Stephen Wolfram has issues, but I don't buy software based on the attitude of the creator. Otherwise, many open source projects that I use with some combination of very cranky, irritable, rude, egotistical, and/or arrogant people involved would be ruled out as well...

Closed source that costs $$$ is definitely an issue - for a while after school it was hard to continue using Mathematica until my employer acquired a site license and I got a home license. In the meantime I tried all of the usual suspects - from open source things (Maxima, Sage, Octave, Julia, and so on...) to other commercial products (e.g., Maple and Matlab). I ended up returning to Mathematica for two reasons: 1) it has a massive standard library, and once you learn the idioms of the library and the language, I found it pretty usable; 2) it has beautiful graphics capabilities.

The open source tools are hit-or-miss on the standard library front - some of the libraries are great, some are missing major features, or their implementations are poor. (Yes, it's OSS and one can either contribute code or feedback, but often I have a problem to solve NOW - I don't have time to wait for the OSS to catch up.)

As for the graphics, I'm not sure what it is about Mathematica visualizations that I like so much, but they look GOOD relative to the others I've tried.

At the end of the day though, Mathematica is just one of the useful tools in my toolchain - the others have their plusses and minuses as well. But one thing I've adapted to over the years is that A) sometimes good software costs money, and B) sometimes jerks are involved in creating good software. Neither case is one that I feel is a valid justification for rejecting a software package outright.

Edit: It's worth noting the time period over which I've been mucking around with Mathematica and the other alternatives I mentioned above. I started seriously using numerical and scientific computing software (including Mathematica) in 1994, so that's a 21 year period of wandering around the space trying out things here and there.

<comment><USER3> Maple is IMO a much nicer programming language, but unfortunately their user interface became awful sometime in the early 2000s when they switched it to a Java-based UI framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sage is accumulating a lot of math software. Try it at cloud.sagemath.com. An introduction to sage for undergraduates, using linear algebra as the topic focus is at [http://www.gregorybard.com/SAGE.html](http://www.gregorybard.com/SAGE.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I try to avoid Mathematica because Wolfram himself is a self-centered prick and it's closed source - it is a shame, too.

Matlab's strength is doing lots of things for you through its toolboxes; Sage Math is a bloated monster, Maxima is pretty damn good, haven't spent any time with Axiom. Octave is pretty good (none of those delicious toolboxes though) and Scilab just 'felt' wrong (and its Simulink knockoff was atrocious). Mathcad is great, but also expensive and closed - Mathworks kneecapped them by buying the company that made their symbolic engine (and turning it into a toolbox/addon for Matlab).

OpenModelica I never got far with, but I'd like to do some multidomain simulation with eventually.

If I missed a good CAS, let me know.

<comment><USER6> Nemo - a Julia-based CAS - was just released yesterday: [https://plus.google.com/106997024604580807053/posts/GUWM4QiL...](https://plus.google.com/106997024604580807053/posts/GUWM4QiLBX3)

Also, I'm sorry you find SageMath to be a "bloated monster", but mathematics itself is really complicated, and unfortunately there seems to be no royal road to geometry.

<comment><USER5> I have huge respect for the project, and I have used the same quote...but you have to run an entire Linux system in a VM. If that isn't bloated, I have no idea what is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder why the creators of Mathematica didn't aim for a pure functional language.

</comment><comment><USER8> Love programming in Mathematica in college but the closed source development and expensive licenses made it a non-starter for me over the years.</comment>


FarmVille, Mafia Wars maker Zynga worth $3 billion, says trading site SharesPost - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/18/zynga-farmville-sharespost-mafia-wars/

<comment><USER2> The only problem with sites like these is that there is an inherent incentive to boost the theoretical price of a private company beyond all reasonable valuations because

(1) They get ridiculous press like the one above that plays off their sensationalist valuations.

and

(2) Companies are more willing to use their sites as guidelines if they overshoot their own internal realistic models. Which is ultimately their business model.

<comment><USER3> It also isn't an open market. Did I read that right that people owning shares in a private company need to put them up for sale? So the supply of shares is limited vs a public company.

First off, many shares aren't going to be transferable due to vesting schedules, agreements, or other logistical details. Even if they are transferable, many holders probably don't know that there is even a market on which to sell them.

I've got to believe that the fraction of shares truly available make for a very short supply compared to any public company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know if there's a way to monitor share prices on sites like SharesPost and SecondMarket without dealing with finding a Purchaser Representative up front?

<comment><USER5> I have a member account on SharesPost. It's free and I can view bid/ask prices without having had to talk to anyone.

<comment><USER4> Perfect, good to know. I've only looked into SecondMarket and incorrectly assumed all secondary markets enforced the SEC regs up front.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple, in Refusing Backdoor Access to Data, May Face Fines - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-in-refusing-backdoor-access-to-data-faces-huge-fines/ <comment><USER2> I hope the company decides to close rather than cave in to government demands for mass surveillance. Sometimes doing the right thing is hard to do.</comment>


110 best books: The perfect library - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/06/nosplit/sv_classics06.xml

<comment><USER2> Not a bad list. Strong Anglo-American bias, and no religious books (both understandable). The 'books that changed your world' feels like a dumping- ground for recent UK bestsellers that'll be forgotten in 50 years (Schott's miscellany; Eats, shoots and leaves; A child called 'it'), but most of the rest are bona fide classics. Better, many of them are classics that are still fun to read.

</comment><comment><USER3> A list that excludes Plutarch, Benjamin Franklin, and SICP is utter crap!</comment>


Is there a popular second hand marketplace other than CL/eBay/Kijiji? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> For which type of goods? At least for mens fashion, one secondhand site that has blown up recently would be Grailed ([http://grailed.com](http://grailed.com)).</comment>


Today you, tomorrow me [from 1982] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12043294

<comment><AUTHOR> Given the festive spirit and the popularity of the original submission titled "Today you, tomorrow me", I thought HN may enjoy this story.

Merry christmas HN

<comment><USER2> Thanks a lot for the submission. Really wisdom worth a christmas gift. Merry christmas HN

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing that. It brought tears to my eyes.

Every time I read such a story, my faith in humanity is restored a little bit. I wish such stories were given more publicity; instead, we read about the latest mugging, stabbing or junkie actor every day.

These stories, combined with Neil Fraser's actions from a couple of days ago, have made the season for me. Thank you, HN!

And remember, people: it doesn't take much to do these things; just the desire to help others. Just do it!

<comment><USER4> If you think this is a great story, there's one on reddit where someone changed a car tire for someone else! also, cats.

<comment><USER5> And just when your faith in humanity is restored a little bit, there's always someone just around the corner to drag you back down.

I fall into this trap myself sometimes, but it's becoming more and more important to take in active stance in fighting your cynicism, even if it means losing some face to the trolls of the world.

<comment><USER3> I hear ya... but as I've matured in life, I now feel sorry for such cynics: probably life has been so tough on them that they have lost their ability to see the good that is around us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another nice story:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ahg8x/what_is_the...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ahg8x/what_is_the_nicest_thing_youve_ever_done_that_no/c0hkuyq)

</comment><comment><USER7> For reference: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003515>

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.bernardhare.com/articles.htm>

Reading some of his articles is how the last hour of my christmas evening has been.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for posting that link, I've spent a while reading those articles - quite a way to finish a Christmas day.

I've ordered a copy of his book "Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew" from Amazon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks. I actually teared up a bit towards the end. A good reminder of some perspective when you're knee deep in a project.

</comment><comment><USER11> This submission has the lowest comment to vote ratio I think I've ever seen on HN.

<comment><USER12> Technically a story with 1 vote and 0 comments would have the highest ratio. But point taken, not much commenting on this. Likely because this story was posted on HN a few weeks ago, though I can' seem to find the link.</comment></comment>


How To Turn A Laser Into A Tractor Beam - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26448/?ref=rss <comment><USER2> How does this not violate the conservation of momentum (and/or energy)? It seems like the outgoing photon must have some increased momentum (proportional to h/lambda), which also means it will have increased energy (~ h * c/lambda), which it must have gotten from the tractored particle. The induced multipoles ought to be a higher energy than the ground state, though, so where did the extra energy come from?

<comment><USER3> You could conserve momentum by having the photons continue after interacting, but at a higher energy level (i.e. heavier). But I can't figure out how to do that and also conserve energy.

One possibility is that you end with the object at a standstill, so while you need to move it, you don't actually need any extra momentum or energy to do so. If there was some way to borrow it maybe? Sideways motion perhaps?

<comment><USER2> > Sideways motion perhaps?

Now that I have some time to read the paper, on the second page there's this sentence: "The Fourier decomposition of a PIB consists of plane wave components whose k-vectors form a cone that make an angle Theta_0 with the z-axis." The way it must get momentum is having the outgoing light be more collimated than the incoming light.

My _new_ question is, How is this different from an Optical Trap? I'm imagining the point of the cone at the particle, but that may not actually be the case, and my skimming of the article is not enough to make sense of figure 3.

<comment><USER4> Not only is the point of the cone not at the particle; it's not even _in the same space_ as the particle! The cone is in the Fourier transform of the beam.

A standard optical trap, applied to very small objects, works like this: the electric field causes polarization in the thing being trapped, turning it into a little dipole; it then exerts a force on the induced charges, basically pulling on each end of the dipole; that force is bigger in regions of greater field intensity; the net effect is a small force pulling the object towards where the field is bigger. (In an electromagnetic wave there is also a magnetic field, which also acts on the objects, but the effects of those average out to zero over each cycle of the wave.)

Now, really the effect of an electric field on a particle is more complicated than just turning it into a dipole. There will be higher-order stuff as well. The authors of this paper claim that if you look at the quadrupole term and consider interactions between the different terms (warning: I am not at all sure I understand this bit, and they've left the details to a supplementary section that appears not to be included in the paper on the arXiv), then with a suitably shaped beam and the right sort of particle you can get a backward pull against the direction of propagation of the wave. (So, yes, the light will have to emerge travelling more-directly-forward than it went in, so to speak. Which is ... counterintuitive.)

So it's different from an optical trap in that it relies on higher-order effects, and a more sophisticated beam shape, and it can only work on very small objects (the higher-order stuff gets averaged away for bigger ones; so I don't think you could use this technique for things like biological specimens). But it uses much the same underlying physics.

[EDITED to add: their trick also doesn't work for the very _smallest_ objects, substantially below one wavelength. It works only in the "Mie regime", meaning with particles whose size is comparable to the wavelength.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does this mean: "the photons must simultaneously excite several multipoles within the particle, which scatter the beam" ?

<comment><USER6> When trying to find out how an object is going to interact with the electromagnetic field, it's generally useful to decompose the charge distributed on the object into "multipole modes". It turns out that any arbitrary distribution of charges can be expressed as a sum of such multipoles, and the interaction of each multipole with the E&M field can be solved even though the object itself may be too complicated. Usually, only the first few multipoles are important, which allows efficient computation of the objects behavior by summing up the contribution of the first few multipoles.

The first multipole ("monopole") is just the net charge of the object. The second multipole ("dipole") is the degree to which the object has positive charge distributed toward one side and negative charge toward another.

A single isolated point charge is a perfect monopole, with zero higher-order multipole components. An object composed of two opposite charges of equal magnitude, separated by a distance, is a perfect dipole, with zero monopole and higher-order multipole components. And so on.

Apparently, the point is that objects which are electromagnetically simple (such as a single point charge) cannot be pulled by a tractor beam. Instead, the object must be complicated such that it has several large multipole components which interact in the right ways to produce a net pull.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Typo in article: There is, of course, still a potential gradient. As the abstract notes, the important thing is that there is no _equilibrium point_ , i.e. no place where the gradient is zero. The object can be pulled all the way back to the source.

<comment><USER4> No, it's not a typo.

Standard "optical tweezers" pull things towards regions of higher intensity (it's the _intensity_ gradient, not the _potential_ gradient, that's relevant here), so you can't pull anything past where the intensity is maximal. But the technique described in the paper works even with no intensity gradient along the direction of beam propagation. (I think that if there were one, the gradient force would swamp their new force, but I'm not sure.)

<comment><USER6> Whoops, looks like I was confused about the terminology. Thanks.

In case anyone else reads this: according to the wikipedia article, the term "intensity" in "intensity gradient"--in this context--is just the strength of electric (and magnetic) field associated with the laser. The electric field, in turn, is the gradient of the electric potential [1]. Point charges will follow the _potential_ gradient, but neutral dieletric objects (which I think is what optical tweezers are usually used on, and which usually can be modeled as dipoles) will follow the _intensity_ gradient.

Simple dipoles can be pulled with optical tweezers, but limits on laser power mean that the distance between intensity extrema (and so the maximum distance things can be pulled) is relatively short. The hypothetical tractor beam only works on objects more electrically complicated than dipoles, but doesn't rely on following an intensity gradient and can pull all the way back to the source.

[1] This may not be quite applicable here because of the ambiguities in defining a potential for non-static electric fields like those of lasers.</comment></comment></comment>


Mars One plans suicide mission to Red Planet for 2023 - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/24/is-mars-one-serious-about-suicide-mission-to-red-planet/?intcmp=features

<comment><USER2> That's not a suicide mission, it's a never-come-back-home-again mission. They're not being sent there to die right away, they're being sent to live the rest of their natural lives on Mars.</comment>


Ask HN: Having Children - <AUTHOR> My partner and I are approaching the age where we must start to seriously consider parenthood or it will not be an option anymore. While neither of us are particularly compelled to have children, there is still a sense of FOMO around it. We both enjoy our work and our time together immensely, and the current outlook is that we just want to enjoy comfortable lives together, without the extra life-altering chaos of children.<p>It feels existentially lonely though, and I am wondering how other people in tech feel or have felt about the their decisions around having kids. Do you regret your decision? Did you have kids but wish you didn't? I know the latter is a taboo thought, but my understanding is a lot of parents have it from time to time. <comment><USER2> It's probably the most challenging but also most rewarding thing I've ever done.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try to think about your own upbringing. I'm very biased against children because my own parents didn't really get joy from their kids and were miserable and unleashed their misery on day to day family life in various forms. Many people had a great family life growing up and conceptually don't even entertain thoughts like that.

If you guys didn't grow up in a dysfunctional miserable family you are probably already way more qualified than many people who simply lack the experience (literal thousands of hours spent in a quality family). Start with that assessment, you have most of the facts about yourself to make the call - we don't.

Again, people that had positive family experience will not ponder if kids will cause chaos, because well, they never felt that way in their own families. You and I ponder it, which means you better dig into what's behind that question.

</comment><comment><USER4> Adding kids when you don't have a Mrs. Moffat looks hazardous for lots of reasons. The commitment to the relationship is questionable if somebody is holding back on that. Kids shouldn't be brought into an unstable uncommitted situation. Kids won't fix your relationship; they may tear it apart, making you join the ranks of miserable parents fighting over visitation rights and child support payments.

<comment><AUTHOR> My partner and I have been together for 13 years and are very happy together. The conjecture that we are unstable, unhappy and trying to "fix" our relationship is completely unfounded.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure it seems that way, without the stress of fighting over decisions related to kids.

What last name would the kids get?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You need a good daycare or babysitter so you both can work while the child is growing. Family time is quality time. Spend time with your child and watch child movies with them. Teach them how to use an iPad and get them child games. Have playdates with other children so your child can develop social skills.

</comment><comment><USER6> check this post out: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24182426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24182426)

Long short of my existential crisis when I pondered the exact same. Late 40's and a newborn is super super hard.

I realize it really comes down to state of your life, your partner and your extended family. You absolutely need support. Not even to question that. If no support then a fulltime nanny to help. I'm a fulltime dad, quit my fulltime when my now 1.5yr was born. Not really by choice but a necessity as we have no local support, especially with the pandemic. I will need go back to work. My wife works fulltime so I get up at 6a and goto bed at 1a daily.

If you're happy with where you are and where you're headed i.e. retire AND you're absolutely in stride with your partner. Then you should, else I wouldn't.

I never knew family. Grew up abused and alone so never had a family feeling.

A child is a love hate relationship that has no recourse. the infamous commercial where a sick dad opens the door to his child and asks for a sick day? Yea, it can't happen. no matter what your mood is or what your current beef is with your significant other and boy..you don't know what a fight is until there is a child. you better learn to get over it quickly.

Lastly, you absolutely will LOSE your previous life. There isn't a part of it you can retain. It's gone....period. You will need to forge a new life.

Fun romcom to watch that can give you an absolute realistic even though fictional movie is:

Life as we know it [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1055292/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1055292/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

PS> I'm going to blog about this because its actually bullsh*t that there isn't answers to some basic questions about parenting. Most of what you read, reads like a marketing fluff for a blender.

An article I ran into recently worth reading:

[https://www.scarymommy.com/okay-not-to-love-every-second- lif...](https://www.scarymommy.com/okay-not-to-love-every-second-life-as-a- mom/)

PPS> Join a dad's group and seek the same. It's a shame men don't have the balls to ask for advice and help...unlike you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your post. I took a look at your other comment too and it was very insightful. I think we're going to look into Big Brothers/Sisters as well when COVID starts to clear up...maybe it will inspire us one way or another, or maybe it will fulfill the parenting need completely.

>Lastly, you absolutely will LOSE your previous life. There isn't a part of it you can retain. It's gone....period.

This is probably the biggest challenge against the idea of having children. We both like our lives and hobbies...a lot (we make work together as well). It's part of our identity, so the thought of giving it up is very difficult to entertain. It feels selfish, but it's who we are.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't consider yourself selfish by not having a child. Bringing in a child into this world is simply contributing to society, but then you can do that in many other selfless ways. But I feel there will be a personal sacrifice by not having a child. I consider myself a loner beside loving my wife, I have no reason to leave a legacy. However, there is something to be said to share your life, experiences and knowledge with someone who can benefit. Passing that to someone is rewarding for sure i.e. Big Brothers, bt there is something more, something special if it is your own flesh and blood. Something very innate.

Lastly, typically you and your spouse will most likely die separately. Even with families close by, there is nothing like knowing your own flesh and blood will be there. The inherent trust and bond is undeniable.

>>Lastly, you absolutely will LOSE your previous life. There isn't a part of it you can retain. It's gone....period.

Little overly stated since my son needs me 24/7 now. However, overtime, he'll need this space and my wife and I may be able to get back to where we were. Of course one factor to consider is age so this is where having your child at an earlier age has it's advantages. So truly get back to where we were will most likely be based on your age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > It feels existentially lonely though

Do you think it will get more or less lonely as you age?</comment>


Please evaluate my startup - <AUTHOR>

I have just launched Buzznews.com in private beta. It is a feed search engine.  You type any keyword in the search box and it will display the feeds that are most relevant to that keyword.
Please use this invite code "hacker" to activate your account.
Here is the URL:
http://www.buzznews.com
Please click on "Request for Beta" and then log in with any option and then enter invite code.
Any comment or suggestion will be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> I think it's a good idea. But I think the implementation could be better.

First of all, login+invitation is a bit much. You're not google, I don't think you'll submerged in requests without any heavy marketing.

I think you should get a graphic designer to redo your buttons and logos.

There's a lot of information on the screen and it's a bit difficult to navigate. I would use tabs for each category(videos, flickr, mainstream media, blog feeds, yahoo groups).

English second language, sorry for the grammar.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> hi Olihb,

Thanks a lot for your thoughts. We will officially launch next week. So, all of the beta request and login will be eliminated. I agree with you about logo and button. I will change them.</comment>


NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Awakens for Pluto Encounter - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons/on-plutos-doorstep-new-horizons-spacecraft-awakens-for-encounter/#.VIPZ6R4Vg4R <comment><USER2> 2015 is shaping up to be a great year. New Horizons visits Pluto and the Dawn probe visits Ceres. Two dwarf planets in one year, when we've never visited a single one before.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget Rosetta continuing operations around comet 47P while it transitions into being an active comet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are two sentences in Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Everything" that absolutely amazed me when I read them the first time:

"Even at the speed of light (300,000 kilometres per second) it would take seven hours to get to Pluto. ... On a diagram of the solar system to scale, with the Earth reduced to about the diameter of a pea, Jupiter would be over 300 metres away and Pluto would be two and a half kilometres distant..."

</comment><comment><USER5> The article says there is "a high-resolution telescopic camera" on board. Does this mean we will get high-resolution pictures of Pluto's surface, like those we have of Mars?

<comment><USER2> I'd assume so. It has already taken high-resolution photos of some of Jupiter's moons, when it flew past in 2006-2007.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Jovian_moons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Jovian_moons)

<comment><USER6> It really amazes me that we are able to transmit high-res pictures from such distances.

<comment><USER7> Within our solar system (which is itty-bitty), there is really no theoretical limit to what we can send or receive. Bandwith is pretty high on modern satellites and probes and our only really limiting factor is latency, which doesn't matter so much when the probes can store data locally and slowly send it to you over time. NASA is currently experimenting with the LCRD[1] project for laser-based communications which have a downlink of 622mbps.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Communications_Relay_Demo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Communications_Relay_Demonstration)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any intention to use New Horizons to test the "Pioneer Anomaly"? Seems like a good candidate, as its moving in the right direction.

<comment><USER9> Pioneer Anomaly was solved in 2012, once the thermal recoil force is properly accounted for, no anomalous acceleration remains.

<comment><USER10> Well, confirmation with another probe would be nice, and the New Horizons has an instrument (obviously included before the thermal solution) if NASA so chooses to perform the experiment. Will no doubt depend in part if they can find another object to examine beyond Pluto.

<comment><USER11> The hibernation mode of New Horizons has the RTG "cylinder" axis perpendicular to the spin axis, so unless there is asymmetry around the axis of the RTG, I would not expect to see any thermal recoil force. I guess that means we would not expect to see any effect, which neither validates nor invalidates the accepted thermal recoil theory for Pioneer, but it would exclude any "New Physics" explanations (which the planets do already).

You can read quite a bit of detail about NH in the data sets archived to-date in the Planetary Data System [http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/](http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/) specifically [http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/](http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/) look for data set directory names starting with nh- and subdirectories of those named catalog/ and document/.

There is also a lot of geometry information available in the SPICE data set under /[http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/nh-j_p_ss- spice-6...](http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/nh-j_p_ss- spice-6-v1.0/nhsp_1000/) e.g. start at aareadme.htm

<comment><USER10> I said that based on a Wikipedia reference to this paper: [http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.5135](http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.5135)

Which proposed to do testing in late 2007 through 2008, which I gather didn't happen, no doubt because of the reason you point out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's always a nervy moment for mission operations to re-establish contact with a hibernating spacecraft. Much relief and much to look forward to, as the fastest object in the Solar System speeds towards Pluto. Pluto is a fascinating system and with the discovery of additional moons over the last few years, there's clearly a lot to be discovered.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow I just did the math and at this rate it would take New Horizons roughly 20,000 years to travel 1 lightyear. Slingshotting around Jupiter takes longer to play out than a straight shot obviously, but it puts things in perspective.</comment>