Ask HN: Hacker Hobbies? - <AUTHOR> Hello Hn'ers,
What hobbies do you have?
What do you do to wind down when you're afk? <comment><USER2> I'd like to tout an increasingly rare hobby among younger people (non- retirees): Bridge, the card game. It has a rule structure and that hidden- information element that appeals to nerds, but it forces you to think critically and rationally instead of analytically (usually--opportunities for highly analytical plays pop up), and forces you to be able to relate with another person both at and away from the table, since it's played by pairs of 2. There's a reason it's Bill Gates' favorite game.

A lot of fascinating older people play the game, as well. I met a small business owner who was formerly the first computer salesman for a major mainframe company--IIRC it was Honeywell, but don't quote me on that. At least one famous international financier occasionally shows up to the bridge clubs in Chicago (unfortunately I've never ran into him).

The downside is it's hard to find a critical mass of bridge players in your age and "hang-out-ness" category.

<comment><USER3> Based on a CNBC special I saw a year or two ago, I believe Warren Buffett is also regular bridge player.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. In fact, Buffet and Gates often play bridge together, both online and IRL.

<comment><USER5> Tough to go against those guys in a cash game :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the best hobbies for hackers are the ones that will force you to go _out_. Walking, sports, astronomy, going to the beach, and so forth. We already use too many hours to stay at home hacking so it is better to counterbalance in some other way in the free time.

<comment><USER7> Totally agree. After a major coding session earlier today, I spent a couple of very enjoyable hours gardening. The complete contrast really works for me. Although I do sometimes listen to a tech podcast at the same time :-)

<comment><USER8> Which podcast? TWiT? I haven't found a more entertaining (and somewhat educational) podcast than that, including other non-tech-related ones. I'm probably very uninformed, though, so I'd like to hear which others might be worthwhile.

<comment><USER7> Here are a few I enjoy:

Techzing

Mixergy

Radiolab

Floss Weekly

Stack Overflow (no recent podcasts from Joel and Jeff however)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Capoeira. It's a mix of Brazilian martial arts, music, culture, dance, and game, and one which requires physical training as well as the ability to think quickly and creatively on one's feet, and it teaches you how to truly control your body, something most people never learn to do.

Many people don't know much about it, but it's a beautiful sport. (Martial art, not dance. Common misconception is that it's non-contact - it's only non- contact if you move fast enough!) I particularly enjoy it because of the associated culture and traditions.

(In case anyone's interested, here are some videos: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8xxgFpK-NM> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51q1VB_dDik> Feel free to email me if you have questions.)

<comment><USER10> I used to do Capoeira too until I broke my wrist. My knees weren't too happy about it either.

Now I do climbing (no, it's not as hard on the wrists). As much as I enjoyed Capoeira, I have to say, that I enjoy the whole "me vs the wall" aspect - especially bouldering. I suppose it's because I'm an introvert. :)

<comment><USER11> I found that climbing strengthened my wrists and reduced the nagging tendonitis I would get from using a mouse.

Bouldering is unique because while some people do it alone, others consider it the most social form of climbing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cooking is probably my favorite hobby, I love doing something with my hands and really feeling accomplished when I make a great meal.

This may sound childish, but I also really enjoy building and playing with LEGOs. I just have a few sets but I constantly rebuild them and I find it is an interesting thing to do while listening to music.

<comment><USER13> Coding buys grocery for me, Cooking helps to make something delicious out of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love to cook. Something that I find most of us geeks are really bad at. Amazes me how many of my friends can't do simple things with a piece of meat and some veggies, but also how uneducated they are about food in general (The fault of the North American system, probably.)

When it comes to cooking, I do it daily. Love doing Italian and French Cuisine and just sometimes picking at random from one of my cook books. I find the entire process very relaxing and a nice removal after sitting on my ass for 8 hours doing code.

Apart from cooking I love gardening, growing herbs, etc. It goes very nicely with my cooking hobby so it works.

I find the best thing about gardening is how close you get to the rawness that is mother earth. It's another nice way to step back into reality after staring at the computer screen.

<comment><USER15> _The fault of the North American system, probably._

What the hell is the North American system?

<comment><USER14> That was kind of a vague swipe at North American food culture and schooling in general.

I didn't mean to much harm, but in summary .. we are not educated about food/cooking in elementary or secondary school (There are classes, but fully optional) .. and well, look at what most people in America eat. Snobby? Sure, but it's true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ultimate Frisbee. It's real good exercise (which hackers need), and there's something peaceful about throwing a frisbee. Plus "reading" the disc (figuring out where it's going to land) is interesting because a disc has a few more degrees of freedom than a ball.

<comment><USER17> Plus it really takes the edge off my competitive urge which hurts more than helps when I'm programming. It gives me a reason to stay healthy and work out, a large social group both in my city and spread across the whole country, and I found my wife playing ultimate :)

/club ultimate player

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Rock Climbing, Surfing and Traveling (to do the first two) have always had a higher priority for me than programming computers, which would rank as my 4th hobby that also happens to pay my rent.

I think the fact that most people classify those activities as "hobbies" says a lot about the lives we construct for ourselves: Spend 50 weeks per year doing something unpleasant so that you free up a couple weeks to do something you actually enjoy. If you enjoy your hobby as much as you say, why not find a way to devote at least half your time to it?

<comment><USER11> Where do you live that you can do the first two reasonably frequently?

<comment><USER18> When I lived in LA, I'd often do both on the same day. Drive up to Stoney Point, then down the hill to Malibu. You can do the same if you live near Santa Cruz or Santa Barbara. Portland in theory has both surfing and climbing, but in practice has neither (cold water + crap rock).

These days I live in England, so there's tons of climbing at my doorstep and surfing happens in month-long blocks a couple times a year. That's actually preferable, since you get warm water and smaller crowds in Morocco/Ecuador/Oz.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I play the didgeridoo. I picked up this hobby after my lung collapsed spontaneously, and the surgeon recommended that I learn to play a wind instrument. Since the medical bills came out to over $100,000 dollars (paid with cash money FTW), I didn't much feel like spending money on a really expensive instrument that I might not even like.

I also set aside an hour or two a day to read classic literature, or hard-to- read literature. My favorites are epic poems. Currently on page 53 of Finnegans Wake and I've been hearing rhythmic gibberish in my sleep. I'm reading Finnegans Wake so I can feel good about reading everything by Joyce, and I'm actually finding it really pleasurable.

There's more, but those two things are what I enjoy most.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's an idea! In the past I played the saxophone quite fanatically but had to stop because of lung trouble (weak spot in a lung, too much pressure).

Didgeridoo...

What a bummer to have to pay for your medical bills out of pocked, weren't you insured ?

<comment><USER19> If you'd like to look into it, I'd recommend the Didjeribone. Plastic, lightweight, sounds really awesome even compared to my authentic didj, and you can change its pitch.

As for the medical bills, well I was pretty young and felt invincible. That delusion was thoroughly shot down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the tip, I've bookmarked this comment and will order one. I've been looking for anything to get back in to music. Tried the harmonica but I get coughing fits whenever I try the 'inhale' sounds. Flutes are tempting... (hardly any backpressure, just exhaling). Didjeridoo sounds like fun, I just never thought of it.

About the young and invincible thing, I think that the sooner you realize that is not the case the better it actually is, because it will rub in really hard that you have to take care of your body.

Investment early in life really pays off big time in that respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Gardening. I give my self one computer-free-day each week in which I garden. Working with one's hands instead of one's head provides a much needed relief after a week of programming, designing, and hacking at software. During the winter, cooking and baking fill a similar, but not quite as satisfactory, experience.

The contrast from coding intrinsic to vegetable gardening is especially satisfying - one can sit back and watch the fruits of one's labor manifest themselves. When one codes, one knows that his inactivity results in nothing. Not so with gardening, aside from some maintenance, the initial work constitutes a self-fulfilling promise.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm really into metal casting. Got into a few years ago by bastardizing a kiln I found on craigslist. Have since moved on to building my own propane furnaces and rigging old microwaves to melt copper. I don't know that I'm actually any "good" at it, but I do enjoy it a lot. I like working with a material that you have to respect highly or it will burn a hole straight through you. And I have been able to cast some rudimentary parts(housings, pulllies) that have been used on other hackeresque projects.

<comment><USER22> I went to the local blacksmithing group just this week. I think I'm going to join. The work looks like fun and I liked the social atmosphere (slightly grumpy old guys who reminded me of my dad).

> rigging old microwaves to melt copper

Whoa. I guess you're still here to type about it . . .

<comment><USER21> You should definitely join the blacksmithing group. I'm definitely on the casting part of the work as opposed to the smithing. but I know a bunch of great blacksmiths. I think you will be able to find a great group of interesting personalities that somehow get drawn to metalworking (sort of like HN)

One great resource for metalcasting is Backyard Metal Casting. www.backyardmetalcasting.com He will probably answer any question you could possibly have about casting.

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> lifting weights. it's not only a hobby, but a balance and medicine.

"When the Iron doesn't want to come off the mat, it's the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn't teach you anything. That's the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against w...ill always work against you." - Henry Rollins

<comment><USER24> Agreed. And Henry Rollins has some great quotes about lifting. Here's another:

"The Iron never lies to you ... The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hndred pounds is always two hundred pounds."

<comment><USER25> The entire essay is great. "The Iron": <http://www.oldtimestrongman.com/henryrollins_iron.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Flying (halfway through pilot training), scuba diving, travel, reading, and I hope to take up sailing later this year. I tend to enjoy things that combine multiple skills and disciplines into one activity. For example, becoming a pilot requires proficiency in a variety of technical areas such as navigation, weather, and aircraft operating procedures, but it also requires learning airmanship and the art of flying the plane by feel. We spent several hours this week doing takeoffs and landings with the entire instrument panel covered with a towel, to get used to flying the plane with only your sensory input to guide you. Enough rambling though :)

<comment><USER26> I really enjoyed flying when I used to fly. After ~35 hours, I ended up soloing twice and then had to stop. (Initially due to a long stretch of poor weather, then a re-evaluation of my financial situation :))

<comment><USER27> i loved flying and hope to go back to doing some at some point. i have about 150 hours, flew some fun high performance and complex aircraft. just too expensive to keep up...

<comment><USER15> I initially started in 2007 and took a 2.5 year break for financial reasons. We'll see how it turns out this time...maybe I'll end up flying ultralights or something :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> 1\. Watching cartoons. Seriously. I'll watch an hour or so of old cartoons before going to sleep to unwind my brain from programming.

2\. Playing music. This is my creative outlet. I play several instruments, and using music theory to create music is a different sort of way to be analytical and creative at the same time. I've always thought of music as the most universal way for people to appreciate math in its purest form, even if they don't realize it.

3\. Bowling and Golf. Both are "sports" in that they are competitive and involve physical activity, but they can both be done alone and on my own time. They are also both very physics-based games which satisfies my need for mental engagement; consequently this makes me "that guy" in group bowling outings that takes it a bit too seriously :)

<comment><USER29> I still love my Saturday morning cartoons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I produce electronic music. These days production is all computer based, and tech knowledge gets you a long way. Also if you can learn tech skills you can probably also come to understand things like dynamics processing and frequency ranges well enough to get to the top of the game, in terms of production quality. Its one of the few things that I find to be a good mix of my creativity and tech aptitude (along with web design and games art).

<comment><USER31> What software do you recommend/use...Abelton live?

<comment><USER30> Logic on Mac, Cubase if you're stuck with Windows, Native Instruments Massive is a pretty awesome synth (for beginners and pros) and Izotope Ozone for mastering. Logic has pretty much everything else you need included but if you go with Cubase or Ableton then you'll need to stock up on 3rd party plugins including a good EQ and freq analyser, good dynamics compressor and a decent sampler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> MMA. In my experience the technical sophistication and methodical nature of submission setups appeals to people who are abstract thinkers. Many people need to get over the bar brawler reputation though :) Don't worry, most practitioners are a lot smarter than the typical Tapout fan :)

<comment><USER33> I'm am also an avid MMA practitioner... it's a much more interesting and complex sport than most people think.

In addition to training, I also run a little news aggregator for it (built it for myself). Here: <http://mmabuzzsaw.com/>

<comment><USER32> That's a cool site, thanks. As an aside I didn't know Overeem was fighting this weekend - he /toyed/ with Rogers, I'm thinking he's going to give Fedor a run for his money. Still rooting for Fedor :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> One of my favorite things to do is to go out and travel. Leave the computer at home for the weekend or a week and go visit somewhere new. Spend some time with friends and loved ones. As a side hobby, I've really been into taking pictures because I want a photo journal of all of those experiences and I want them to be as good as possible.

Some great resources for traveling are Spirit Airlines and Travelzoo.com. With Spirit you can pay something like 40 dollars a year and they will send you deals every few days in the mail with flights as low as $9 (plus tax). Travel Zoo sends amazing deals weekly.

In addition to that I love cycling, wakeboarding, cooking, and lots more but they mostly all involve getting out of the house and away from a computer.

</comment><comment><USER35> Actually hacking is the hobby here. Job is different.

</comment><comment><USER36> Cycling. All kinds and lots of. I even run this <http://www.lfgss.com/> because what hacker wouldn't combine their activities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, your comment caused me to dust off my 10 speed and take it out for the first time since winter. Man am I out of shape ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm surprised home brewing (beer) isn't more common. I thoroughly enjoy making my own recipes as it is a sort of cross between the art of cooking and science of chemistry. My brews get better each time.

My friend and I started <http://brewadvice.com> (based on the Stack Exchange) platform. The community has been very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER38> I play airsoft. It's not a cheap hobby, but it's good exercise in good company. I'm involved with the running of the society (I'll be president next academic year), which has taught me organisational skills; and hanging out with the other players was half the socialising I did last year, so it's probably helped to keep me sane.

<comment><USER31> Wow...had no idea that was a sport! Just read a bit on wikipedia:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am a rock climber and have met or seen at least half dozen people on HN who also climb. Can't say enough nice things about it, gorgeous hobby.

edit: I was also curious about this, and created a similar thread a while ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=862139>

<comment><USER39> Is rock climbing something you can do alone? ( _Indoors_ rock climbing or something similar, at least? I guess outdoors climbing by yourself would be pretty dangerous =P.) It's something I've wanted to get into, but I prefer solo activities.

<comment><USER11> Outdoor bouldering is just climbing small rocks. Find a small rock somewhere and scramble up it. It is as dangerous as you want it to be. If you are concerned about the danger, bring a pad and let people know where you are.

I first got into climbing by scrambling around boulders on the Sonoma coast, mainly by myself. I had so much fun. When I found out that it was an actual sport that other people did, I was hooked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I practice yoga. I find doing a physical activity helps my body to relax and take my mind off things.

Initially I had the impression it was a 'light' activity which mainly women practice, but after taking a couple of Ashtanga sessions I was floored :-) I recommend you give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER41> Recording and writing music. I just recently upgraded from Garageband to Logic Pro and recently bought Reason. You can listen to my modest efforts at <http://www.myspace.com/zendevice>.

</comment><comment><USER42> Photography (<http://divya.ca>) and Motorcycling

<comment><USER43> Photography too... particularly landscape and wildlife photography. It forces you to get outside, to wait, to be still and patient.

<comment><USER44> Photography also :) glad to see some photogs on HN. I do mostly street photography - I find that it gets me engaged with people and forces me to be much more social than I'd otherwise be (I do stare at a screen all day for my day job...)

[edit] Also, working in an industrial kitchen. Nothing like getting your hands dirty that takes your mind off brainy matters like programming.

In the end IMHO the best hacker hobbies are the ones that are mentally nothing like hacking at all.

<comment><USER45> Oh cool.. do you have any of your photos online?

I'm also into street photography: running a photoblog where I post a photo every workday (<http://journal.boblycat.org/cosmozoo>). Still going strong since 2005 or so, and I concur it's a great compliment to screen-gazing.

<comment><USER44> Sure do: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/potatolicious/>

Nice pictures :) I wish I could keep up a shoot rate of one a day... Nothing kills the creative eye quite like code all day ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> In the summer during the day, I play beach volleyball a few times a week at Milwaukee's Bradford Beach. Great workout, great fun, and something completely different to hone and perfect.

At night, and in the winter, I play videogames: Quake Live is a great game to play for 10-30 minute sessions. League of Legends, and now Bloodline Champions is fun to play with a few friends.

</comment><comment><USER47> Keeping bees. Playing viol (that baroque instrument) and guitar. But I like to "follow my nose", so the answer might be different next year (did someone mention metal casting in this thread? hmmm...)

<comment><USER48> Another beekeeper! Although I haven't had a hive in quite some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Cycling. Indeed, I'm having some regrets about beeing at a Startup Weekend and having missed the live coverage of what has proved to be one of the more epic stages at the Giro d'Italia in recent years... _sigh_.

I like to ride, too, but have been sick an awful lot this year, due to our daughter being in nursery school and picking up a nasty array of diseases.

<comment><USER36> Eurosport online access is just about making not seeing the Giro on big-screen tolerable. It's been epic.

<comment><USER49> Living in Italy, I get the RAI coverage streamed, just that it didn't work because of whatever network reasons at this place. ARGH.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I enjoy gardening, i just got a my first square foot garden, i enjoy geeking out over automating it's watering, and optimizing conditions. I cannot stop comparing the task to that of building a website...nurture it slowly and it will grow ^_^

Not only is it a relaxing/rewarding hobby it encourages me to eat better and helps save me money on my groceries!

</comment><comment><USER51> I love to cook and I'm puzzled why more Hackers don't. To me, cooking is the anti-thesis of coding. Both are about the deeply satisfying act of creation but one is abstract, permanent and virtual. The other is visceral, messy and temporary. This yin-yang balance appeals to me immensely and both are major parts of my life.

<comment><USER52> I love to cook as well. I find is a very relaxing thing to do with a sense of completion at the end. When you are hacking on a long project you may not get that sense of completion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've gone backpacking eight times this year despite the rather rough weather back in February when I started.

It's great to have a hobby that involves a lack of analytical thought, just your immediate surroundings and some physical effort to expend.

Keeps me sane when I live and work downtown, and type at a keyboard in front of three screens day-in day-out.

</comment><comment><USER54> Boating in general. In particular, I love wakeboarding, and I have a stand-up jet ski. The stand-up is my favorite. An 800cc, 80hp engine producing 700lbs of thrust in a <400lb fueled vehicle is pretty intense. There is nothing like going 50mph standing an inch off the water.

</comment><comment><USER55> I try to focus my non-computer hobbies to things outside:

-any board sport (surfing, snowboarding, wakeboarding)

-high altitude hiking/mountaineering

-outdoor photography <http://picasaweb.google.com/michael.atwood/PublicPhotos#>

-weight lifting/power lifting

-basketball

</comment><comment><USER56> I relieve coding stress by drawing on my tablet at <http://brokensign.org>

I do daily drawings, but sometimes I make two or three depending on the time available and circumstances. Does that count as afk? :)

</comment><comment><USER57> Latin. It's satisfying mental exercise, and there's no pressure to learn quickly, because it has no practical applications (except for general brain sharpening). And the structure of the language is almost custom made for a hacker.

</comment><comment><USER58> Rugby, hiking, beer (it's a hobby, right?) and hanging out with good friends.

Some things I want to take up include; boxing, photography and diving. (Even though I can't swim, and all animals in the water freak me out.)

</comment><comment><USER59> Photography and weightlifting. Back in the old days when I had a full set of lenses, I could combine the two. Now that I've bought a digital point-and- shoot, I have to go to the gym.

</comment><comment><USER60> Volunteer Firefighting. It's a great way to get involved with a close knit group of people, a solid motivation to stay fit, and an extremely fun and rewarding experience.

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm surprised there aren't more parkour practitioners here. I find it is one of the most physically demanding things a person can do, it is almost entirely free, and it requires both extreme focus and tons of creativity. Of course, the downsides are that you have to be in amazing shape (or work your way up to it) and that it does tend to result in small injuries, but I would say no more than a martial art.

Definitely a great way to get out, move around, and stay focused.

</comment><comment><USER62> Does writing blog posts making fun of people who get crypto wrong count as a hobby? ;-)

I'm also a classical violinist and play in a local (amateur but quite good) symphony orchestra.

<comment><USER63> _Does writing blog posts making fun of people who get crypto wrong count as a hobby? ;-)_

I believe that's more of a public service. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I love Go something fierce. There's something mathematically pure about it; a good game feels like two people trying to solve a single intricate mathematical puzzle, with the result reflecting who came closer to perfect understanding.

What's not to love, really? Binary math, simple axiomatic formal system, seriously deep complexity. It's no coincidence that Conway's early fundamental work on cellular automata was done on a Go board with Go stones.

</comment><comment><USER65> Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (no-gi), surfing and classical/figurative painting. I used to be a street performer and avid skateboarder when I was a teenager.

</comment><comment><USER66> I've begun to learn playing go. It's kind of hard to find people willing to play though.

<comment><USER38> You may know about this, but <http://gokgs.com> is an active online community. I don't think I've ever had to wait more than a few minutes for a match against someone similarly-ranked (my own rank's been anywhere between 15 and 25 kyu).

I don't know how easy it is to learn there, though. Playing offline, there's usually a stronger player around who can notice specific mistakes that I make and explain them to me after the game. ("You're being too submissive", "this is bad shape - play here instead".) Without them, I imagine I'd still find out what works, but I would improve much more slowly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I skateboard. The only reason I'm a computer programmer is because I got hurt really bad when I was 18 and had to find something else to do.

</comment><comment><USER68> My main two: 1) working out. Normally something outside: running around Red Rocks, jogging and looking at the mountains, playing ultimate frisbee, etc 2) board games. Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy, Dominion, Hansa Teutonica... not Settlers of Catan, which seems to be just recently getting popular and is too luck-based for my liking.

</comment><comment><USER69> Music (unfortunately, listening to it, not playing - at this time). Photography (common hacker hobby, very relaxing yet has a technical component to it). Cars/driving/potentially amateur racing (you don't need a fancy car for this, in fact it's likely _not_ a good idea to use an expensive/luxury car).

Reading (in the sense of fiction literature). History, philosophy, political science (really another form of reading). Travel. Exercise.

Often times it helps to hack on things that _seemingly_ aren't related to your work (even if you like your work). I've spent good chunk of today writing my own graph library: for learning and scratching a personal itch; if I wanted a real one I'd use Boost (best imo), JGraphT or JUNG. Chances are, however, that it may come in handy e.g., I'll need to find the shortest path in an ad-hoc graph, but the scope I'll have at hand wouldn't justify adding additional dependencies.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's only fair to list my own I guess: renewable energy and restoring old cars (yes, terribly inconsistent!), music.

</comment><comment><USER70> Paragliding. It's pretty tactical, and there's a lot of information to assimilate about weather, clouds, thermals, etc. Snowboarding, cycling, hiking, guitar, piano/keyboards. Music composition is the closest thing to programming that I've found, in terms of intellectual absorption.

</comment><comment><USER71> Photography, oil painting, pastels, watercolors, guitar, piano, singing, and lots of others.

Variety is the spice of life.

</comment><comment><USER72> Kendo. Its quite expensive and more of a sport than a martial art but keeps me fit and gives me an excuse to go to Japan every so often.

Video for the curious: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XRZF7IqakI>

</comment><comment><USER73> Not always AFK, but I like Technical writing, including gathering easy-to- understand data (taking photographs, screen shots, etc).

Photography, bicycling, listening to and playing music, wrenching on anything mechanical (currently putting a clutch in a 1990 Miata). That includes fixing electronics, too. Although I commute by bicycle and ride most places that I need to go to, I dearly enjoy driving for the sake of driving, autocrossing, etc.

I design fantasy vehicles in my head, and all the elaborate user interface bits that go along with them. Sometimes, I doodle parts of things down on paper, but most of my ideas are in my head.

I don't play computer games, but in real life, I like Chess, pool, scrabble, Monopoly and bowling.

</comment><comment><USER74> Kayaking and mountain biking, nothing extreme, just a way to be closer to nature and admire it in all its grandeur.

My dream would be kayaking the glaciers at banff national park, alberta canada. That turquoise lake is just a feast to the eyes, and the soul.

</comment><comment><USER75> Reading all this makes me realize that I need to find myself a good hobby...

</comment><comment><USER76> Jogging is something I do regularly, as well as inline skating. I also picked up paragliding this year and try to do it as often as possible, but it always depends on the weather.

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm too busy these days (I only run to keep myself sane) but I used to design & build hi-fi gear. It's a lot of computer modeling and a fair amount of sawing / soldering.

</comment><comment><USER78> Sports - absolutely cannot live without. Enjoy it as much as my work.

Anything goes: soccer, volleyball, squash, or rarely some water sports. I follow a lot of sports too.

<comment><USER79> Soccer player here too. Love it, but my knees are a bit messed up now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Krav Maga and lambada (on separate nights of the week) so I get a good balance between acting like I'm tough and feeling all loved up

</comment><comment><USER81> Just after Christmas I started taking Salsa Dancing lessons, and have since expanded into Tango, Cha-Cha, and Merengue. Hell of a lot of fun, and I've met some interesting people as a result.

That and the usual; cooking, reading (fantasy and science fiction,) social gaming with friends, running, cycling, and (when I get round to learning how) swimming.

</comment><comment><USER82> Diving, traveling, photography, and flying airplanes

Those are the expensive ones.

Karaoke, reading, diving, exercising, and writing are the cheaper ones

<comment><USER34> Diving is both expensive and cheap? I plan on getting certified this summer and I know it can be a bit expensive to start up but I'd love to know if this is something that can potentially be a big drain on the wallet.

<comment><USER83> Another diver here (and sailor as well). There is a certain minimum cost, but it's not as much as most people imagine it will be. I could fly to the Red Sea and dive for a week (including gear rental, cheap'n'cheerful accommodation and going out in the evenings) for about GBP 600. If you spend more money you could stay in a nicer hotel and eat imported food (if you _really_ want sushi in Egypt it'll cost you!) and buy all your own gear but the diving won't be any better.

I'm not "rich" by any means, but I run out of vacation time well before I run out of money to dive...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Writing, drawing. Used to draw comics too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat! Is any of it online ?

<comment><USER84> Not yet, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Chess. In many ways, chess is very similar to programming. It is a beautiful mix of art & science. It requires constant learning, studying and practice to get better. It allows you to solve puzzles and identify patterns. It has been around for many centuries and yet people still find new strategies.

<comment><USER48> Go. The same, except it's been around longer than chess and is better. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I enjoy home improvement. I head over to Home Depot most Saturdays. My daughters (8 & 10) go with me and we talk about the various interesting things we pass in the store. After we get home, they often like to help out with my home improvement projects, which makes it even more enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER87> The variety here is awesome, and I agree that outdoor or physical activities are usually better for you...

...but yeah, I just play video games, watch movies, read books, and code side projects. A former roommate gave me a bunch of his old PS2 games, mostly JRPGs, and they need to get played one of these days.

</comment><comment><USER88> Guitar, studying japanese, and recently started lindy hop. #2 and #3 are complementary, and #1 helps #3.

<comment><USER89> I've done Lindy Hop for about 4 to 5 years now. I love it. It'll be no time when you'll be able to swing out to Shiny Stockings and Jumpin at the Woodside.

And if #1 helps #3 I can assume you're a Django Reinhardt fan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Croquet. When played properly/competitively it's very different to the casual backyard game. To play well requires a nice mix of physical skill with complex tactics and decision-making. A disproportionate number of serious players are scientists/engineers/mathematicians/etc.

</comment><comment><USER91> Basketball. Recently purchased a rower and started rowing after I broke my foot playing basketball.

</comment><comment><USER92> Rock climbing, hiking, fencing, longboarding. All of these require intense in- the-moment focus, but they aren't overly stressful.

On the non-sports side: Clarinet, learning sax, going to shows, dancing, writing music, cooking, sitting in trees and reading.

</comment><comment><USER93> fishing, hunting, hiking, biking and making beer.

</comment><comment><USER94> Hiking: I have explored over 100 remote Indian ruin sites in the mountains of Central Arizona.

Cooking: definitely a favorite way to decouple from my work day.

Music: I gave up on the guitar after 40 years but I now enjoy the Didgeridoo and Native American flute.

</comment><comment><USER95> I read a lot of books on foreign policy, war and politics. I also do a lot of boxing. I believe in being challenged intellectually and physically. Also, I love human competition in terms of doing it and the history of it.

</comment><comment><USER96> I do triathlons and marathons to get me outside and to challenge me to continuously improve my performance & health. You can geek out a good bit with all of the equipment and data that can be captured while training.

</comment><comment><USER97> Used to do jujitsu, now I mostly play soccer as my physical outlet .. Also regularly play some chess to keep my skills honed, and sometimes play some (mostly soccer) video games when I just want to unwind

</comment><comment><USER98> Geocaching. Something about finding a hidden container given just the coordinates seems to appeal to a lot of hackers. Plus, it gets you out in nature.

</comment><comment><USER99> Ham radio. I like doing contests, running counties from chicago to the west.

Radio is not always AFK, as everyone uses keyboards these days.

</comment><comment><USER100> 1\. work on the car 2\. track the car(mostly auto-x since the track is like 5 hours away) 3\. started getting into sambo(russian martial arts)

</comment><comment><USER101> Salsa dancing, snowboarding, walks, martial arts, backpacking, hikes, scrambling, rock climbing, see a play or cultural event, read, etc...

</comment><comment><USER102> Crossfit.

</comment><comment><USER103> Playing tennis/paddle, writing, reading. I've a growing interest for astronomy so it's the next thing to incorporate in my life.

</comment><comment><USER104> Landscape photography. Motosphotos.com Home rennovation.

Physical and artistic hobbies just to get away from analytical thinking.

</comment><comment><USER105> Recording in a live-electronics duo, gigging out with said duo, cycling, and raising my daughter full-time :)

</comment><comment><USER106> Wine making and also wine tasting.Cooking as well and I also plays various musical instruments.

</comment><comment><USER107> I play jazz guitar and bike (though not as often as I like). That's about it I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER108> I'd love to do rock climbing, but I'm overweight (100 kg) so it's not for me...

</comment><comment><USER109> Recording music, reading sf/f and classics, parenting, and Team Fortress 2.

</comment><comment><USER110> Piano

</comment><comment><USER111> I have a rock band and I do mountain bike too. Outside hobbies rule.

</comment><comment><USER112> Parkour. Just make sure you have decent health insurance.

</comment><comment><USER113> My hobbies are running for fitness and fishing for calm.

</comment><comment><USER114> listening & playing some music (not seriously) painting (usually abstract art) going to the beach (is that a hobby? I just like the sea too much)

</comment><comment><USER115> Reading (of course), Go, cycling, recreational math.

</comment><comment><USER116> Take over the world!

Also make infographics for the fun of it.

</comment><comment><USER117> Skiing. Running. Juggling. Playing piano.

</comment><comment><USER118> Watching anime, sleeping, and reading HN.

</comment><comment><USER119> mountain biking - flying through the woods on narrow 'singletrack' trail is a great way to clear the mind

</comment><comment><USER120> Taekwondo , Table Tennis and Tennis.

</comment><comment><USER121> Piano, guitar

</comment><comment><USER122> Starcraft ;)

</comment><comment><USER123> fencing.

<comment><USER124> Me too. A choice video for the curious: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGmihF97XIA>

<comment><USER123> yep, a good bout. you're also one of greg's kids aren't you?

just to round it out with videos of the other weapons:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXQkdFQ6Upc>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJGG8gR7mlI>

<comment><USER124> Yes, I am. Thus the fanboyism. Although, the fanboyism preceded (and caused) me being his student.

<comment><USER123> nice. well, we're not alone here, at least. there are a good number of fencers. mcantor, dkellner, dzlobin, dfranke, nuba, warwick, and others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> lindy hop

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't happen often that I have no idea what something is in English :)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> Bowling and writing music.

</comment><comment><USER127> Organizing guided tours

</comment><comment><USER128> lock picking, model making, cycling

</comment><comment><USER129> photography, wargaming and BEER!

</comment><comment><USER130> sailing and fishing around NYC

<comment><USER131> Where around NYC do you sail?

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> I spend all of my time chasing women around. Unfortunately, this isn't really relaxing.

</comment><comment><USER133> Ham radio</comment>


National Science Foundation: US no longer 'uncontested leader' in science - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00084-7 <comment><USER2> Who cares all that much about being the "uncontested leader" in science?

Isn't there a more important question to ask here, namely how the US compares to other countries in bringing "traditionally marginalized peoples" into the R&D workforce.

After all, when one factors in the impact on social justice, there's a big difference between a discovery being made by the oppressor, e.g. the "douche- bro entitled STEMlord" that Scott Aaronson talks about in this recent blog post:

[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4522](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4522)

versus one made by the objects of their oppression, e.g. all of the women who are being denied "free and conveniently located childcare that makes a colossal difference to women's choices of whether or not to stay in STEM."

So let's stop fretting about "global leadership" (that's kind of a testosterone-driven thing anyway) and focus our attention instead on making sure that lactation stations are installed in all laboratories that receive government funding. The requested childcare centers should quickly follow though.

<comment><USER3> How did you so quickly turn a nation's standing among the world's scientific powers into some sort of battle of the sexes?

I for one don't think that science supremacy is a reasonable goal for a nation. The goal should be to provide those Americans who wish to do so with the opportunity to spend their lives doing real research, and to carry that research product to other American who wish to use it for purposes that are useful to the nation.

<comment><USER2> "How did you so quickly turn a nation's standing among the world's scientific powers into some sort of battle of the sexes?"

I had just finished reading the hacker news item on Scott Aaronson's controversial blog post -- that's all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Caught up in political issues, we're slipping and they are closing the gap. This is unacceptable.

</comment><comment><USER5> Congressmen love gaps. Sadly I do not think the NSF is a force for good in US science. It's panels are merely mechanisms for old scientists to slow down the young and the top five universities to cement prestige. It's puny hard won grants are like millet turning doves into ravenous pigeons.

It's been sapped of all virtue by decades of neglect, malice and deprivation.</comment>


"Ily" – a word that qualifies–or adverbs–an adverb - <AUTHOR> https://htmlgiant.com/random/ily/ <comment><USER2> The author claim that they're not re-inventing adverbs, but rather want a word that modifies another adverb (someone in the comments suggests an "adadverb"). But the example doesn't show this:

> "He quickly ate the mango in a distracted manner," I wanted to write, "He > distractedily quickly ate the mango," because, among other reasons, I wanted > to be more concise.

But in the first sentence, "quickly" and "distracted manner" both modify "ate," and so they are both simply adverbs.

While there could be some merit in trying to suggest a causal relationship between the two adverbs ("Because he was distracted, he ate the mango quickly"), that doesn't seem to be what's being suggested either.

So I can't really see the purpose of this. How does "distracted" _modify_ "quickly" in the example? How is "quickly" itself different, now that it's been modified? I don't think it is, what's different is the way the mango is being eaten, so they are both simply adverbs for the same verb.

In any case, adverbs can already modify adverbs:

"He burped enormously loudly."

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that sentence should look like this: "He distractedily _and_ quickly ate the mango", and then it's clear both adverbs modify the same verb. Unless the author was trying to pull the equivalent of "he is distractedily quick", in which case I don't know what their original sentence would mean anymore.

<comment><USER2> Ok, but the adverb is "distractedly."

The "ily" in "distractedily" isn't doing anything.

<comment><USER4> And "distractedly quickly" is perfectly cromulent casual English, even if not something you'd likely want in formal writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Um,

 _> acceleratingily increasing_

Acceleratingly increasing (without the "i") is already grammatical English with the desired meaning, right?

 _> unconsciousily habitually_

"Unconsciously habitually"

 _> endearingily awkwardly_

"Endearingly awkwardly"

Drop the "i"s and those are all grammatically correct. That's a rather low bar to clear though!

</comment><comment><USER6> Those are just adverbs. Poorly written adverbs.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you remove the 'i' from "ily", then you get the sentence, "He distractedly quickly ate the mango...," which seems grammatical to me.

In any case, I'm not sure why some high schooler's ill-considered blog post is Hacker News.

<comment><USER8> Tao Lin is annoying in his own right, but he's not a high schooler.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem is interesting, but the solution is too confusing because an -ily word looks and sounds too much like an adverb with an epenthesis. In speech (YMMV because regional accents) I would just think that the person said "distractedly", changed their mind, and said "quickly" instead.

Makes me wonder if any language existed/exists that does have such syntactic sugar for "<adverb> <action> in a <adjective> way". Seems like something that might have come up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh god what is with those em dashes (—) and spacing? Is "foo—bar baz—quux" correctly spaced? Because it took me a minute to parse the title (and the same line in the article). For a while I was thinking that "qualifies—or" and "adverbs—an" are some advanced concepts from linguistic equivalent of algebra. But it turns out that the sentence is just "qualifies, or adverbs, an adverb".

<comment><USER7> Some style guides let you put spaces on both sides of an em dash, others want spaces on neither side. No style guide wants spacing on only one side, and the title is correct with its lack of spacing on the em-dashes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I understand the first example-the awkward way that it's done is endearing-but the second one seems like a confusing oxymoron. Can someone explain what it's trying to say?

<comment><USER11> I was going to say something similar. The best, non-oxymoron, interpretation I can come up with is:

> A longily concisely written account of skydiving.

Since these are intended as adverbs on adverbs (which, by the way, is already how adverbs work), my most generous interpretation is:

> A concisely written account of skydiving which took a long time to write (or > to write concisely?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> this is already a thing though, it sounds like he thinks he invented it? [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ily](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ily)</comment>


Ask HN: Do I get penalized by Google for porn search terms? - <AUTHOR> http://tumblr.jasonreposa.com/post/77260961/on-yowzas-weve-been-getting-lots-of-search

<comment><USER2> No. One or two combinations here and there aren't enough to flag your site as adult.

I don't have any proof of this, by the way. But I think it's common sense, or the way I would flag a site as adult. If it has images of nude people, if there are links from known porn websites, that kind of thing.

name + playboy is quite common. "Playboy" is also a synonymous for "bon vivant".

On the great algorithm of things, a couple ocurrences of naughty words are statistical noise.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's nice to get traffic. It makes me feel like we're doing well. But how frustrating it is to see it's all related to porn. Will I get isolated to porn only searches by Google?</comment>


Why do Americans die younger than Britons?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14070090

<comment><USER2> "But the US is a big country, and while parts of Mississippi have a male life expectancy of 67, behind nations like the Philippines, women in areas of Florida live as long, on average, as the Japanese, who top the longevity rankings."

Would those perhaps be the areas of Florida where retirees move? If you have a large influx of folks at retirement age, I bet you do increase the longevity rankings.

</comment><comment><USER2> "[Australia] also has a nation of immigrants."

Well, yes, but they aren't getting smuggled in via Arizona. They are carefully selected by the Australian government.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's really interesting is about half way down the page: The misaligned interests of doctors hurt _rich_ patients as well as poor ones.</comment>


Maze-solving algorithm implemented in sed - <AUTHOR> https://devpost.com/software/sed-pathfinder <comment><USER2> At Kodak in the 1970's, my father devised the "Bayer filter" used in digital cameras. At the time, he wrote a research system for image processing in sed.

<comment><USER3> Wow. Can you say more about what it did?

<comment><USER2> Kodak's goal was to keep customers happy while selling less silver. Less silver means more grain, so they envisioned digital methods for reducing grain, before printing photographs at some centralized facility (obviously not the pocket I keep my phone in). So the sed program did various convolutions on rather coarse images, for playing with ideas.

My dad's other contribution that stuck was ordered dithering: Bit patterns for various gray levels that worked well next to each other, without edge artifacts at the transitions. Long ago replaced by other methods for higher resolutions, but last seen as part of the DEC logo on their product boxes.

I'm sure that choosing characters to represent gray levels in this sed program got him thinking in that direction. I've never been good at complicated, but he taught me to see simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This, this is actual hacking. Absolutely useless, and not at all the correct tool for the job, but exceedingly clever. Shame I can't get the code to work for me on Debian.

<comment><USER5> The visualization is beautifully instructive, too -- the essence of the algorithm explained in about a second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool! Reminds me of an AWK-based music generator I used to listen to while programming: [http://kmkeen.com/awk-music/](http://kmkeen.com/awk-music/)

I love when people use tools for bizarre things outside their intended purposes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me that I should probably finish my article on how I wrote a BrainF*ck interpreter in sed.

<comment><USER8> This I would like to see. Do you have the code somewhere right now or do you plan to release it with the article?

<comment><USER9> If you're interested in things being implemented in non-standard languages, I would check out the Make-A-LISP project on Github [1]. Someone even took it upon themselves to write an implementation in AWK :) [2]

[1] [https://github.com/kanaka/mal/](https://github.com/kanaka/mal/) [2] [https://github.com/kanaka/mal/tree/master/awk](https://github.com/kanaka/mal/tree/master/awk)

<comment><USER10> There's even an implementation of lisp in sed :) [https://github.com/shinh/sedlisp/](https://github.com/shinh/sedlisp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool. For those of you who know sed well, can you actually read the source of this program and understand it, or does it look like garblygook?

<comment><USER12> It's pretty nicely put together and commented, still trying to work through exactly how the interleave steps work though.

<comment><USER13> I'm one of the organizers of Hack N Roll and personally know the guy who built this.

He says that the code on Github is actually broken but he forgot in what way.. I still think it's pretty cool though

<comment><USER14> I tried running this on a Mac but got an error. Assumed it was because of some sed version difference. Perhaps the code on Github is just broken.

<comment><USER10> That's probably because you used BSD sed. Running it on my BSD sed also gives an error, presumably because it thinks the `}` is a part of the label in `binput}`.

However it works fine in GNU sed, and now that you mention it, GNU sed's extensions were not used, like the `-z` flag to slurp all input in one "line" to avoid `:input;$!{N;binput}`.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For reference, here's a code golf challenge for maze solving. It's an "endless" challenge (meaning none of the code submissions are viewable) but the shortest sed solution is currently 98 bytes.

[http://golf.shinh.org/p.rb?maze+solving](http://golf.shinh.org/p.rb?maze+solving)

Not quite as hard as the OP, though, since the conditions are slightly easier: only 3 inputs are tested, all of them are the same size, and all of them have exactly one solution.

If I remember right, my overall approach was pruning dead-ends instead of a breadth-first search.

<comment><USER10> Are you tails? Anyways, thanks for helping me tie with first place :)

<comment><USER15> No, I'm clock. As you can see, my sed skills aren't as good as tails :)

Now that I'm 10 bytes behind I might have to give it another try. Though I haven't golfed in years :/

EDIT: Well, I checked my old code and found a few places to optimize. Now down to 95 bytes :)

<comment><USER10> Reached 96 bytes (now where would that last byte be hmmmm). And as you can see, my sed skills aren't as good as yours either :)

Nice meeting a fellow golfer, this was fun :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice - I've been getting overly familiar with sed recently because it's one of the few tools that we can trust to be installed for our minimal-dependency NBD server. Unfortunately we also need to work across Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. However I've not needed to write anything as large as this maze-solver. It's text hacks like: [https://github.com/libguestfs/nbdkit/blob/b8d80d3df90eaa32ef...](https://github.com/libguestfs/nbdkit/blob/b8d80d3df90eaa32ef9886b87fe79205ede24b49/server/protostrings.sed#L33)

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://github.com/bolknote/SedChess](https://github.com/bolknote/SedChess) another one

</comment><comment><USER18> It reminds me of this (scroll down to "Regular Expression Pathfinding" section):

[http://realgl.blogspot.com/2013/08/battlecode.html](http://realgl.blogspot.com/2013/08/battlecode.html)

tl;dr: competition counts cycles but excludes certain standard library functions, one of which is a regex matcher, so someone naturally decides to use it for much of his algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why not indeed. Great fun to play with

</comment><comment><USER20> You, are a genius. I didn't know sed could do such things, awesome!

</comment><comment> loa-in-backup It would seem the site suffers from hug of death.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's amazing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Probably BrainFuck would be easier, congrats.

</comment><comment><USER23> Awesome :)

</comment><comment><USER24> But is it faster than Rust?</comment>


Open source Qubes OS is ultra secure - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/technology/operating-systems/nix/in-depth/index.cfm?articleid=3230 <comment><USER2> This sounds quite interesting. Joanna Rutkowska has some some serious low level security work, including work on Xen.

Xen was chosen for a minimal TCB, with the plan of moving stuff out of Dom0 like networking now and filesystem(s?) next?/later.

Of particular interest is the graphics system, where the code running in Dom0 was kept as small as possible (2,500 LOC, with no plans for fancy 3D).

ADDED: From a message on the mailing list, an explicit decision was made that each VM would have its own X server: applications sharing one are not isolated, trying to fix that would be "non-trivial" (quite an understatement!) and "the X protocol and X server alone present a huge attack surface". Indeed....

If I had a spare machine that could run it I'd be kicking the tires right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure how putting things on different VMs improves security - If the VMs can communicate with each other seamlessly enough for the system to be usable, then there's a hole big enough for the virus to just kind of step through and damage the other machines without even running on them.

On the other hand, if usability drops because the VMs are actually isolated - and this seems to be the approach that was taken - users will simply consolidate more applications on one machine, and infect everything at once this way.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps you could define "seamlessly enough for the system to be usable"?

The architecture envisions consolidating applications by domain, e.g. one for your social networking, one for banking (and that would be very locked down, e.g. http(s) only), etc.

It accepts that there will be comprise (or so I gather) and is explicitly designed to mitigate it. For me, that improves security significantly (I already do a form of this by running three browser instances on two machines).

It's a very pragmatic approach, and I can see from the lead's background why she'd take it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems analogous, in principle, to a system with fully utilized role-based access control - like security-enhanced linux or similar - although easier to grok perhaps?

Is there a fundamental difference? (I understand the technical difference - I'm asking more in terms of semantics - what makes this a better security model?)

<comment><USER2> I think the granularity is so different that it's a difference in kind.

And the granularity is at a _very_ high level; I gather few want to wade into the details of SELinux, and if I hadn't been exposed to the concepts for 30 years (sic, I started learning Multics in 1979) I probably would have just turned off SELinux when I was using Fedora last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we please, please stop saying that things are "ultra secure" before they've been adequately beaten on? Saying that your goal is a very high level of security is fine (I do the same), but saying that directly translates to security out the gate is very deceptive. This has great potential for security, but it's not known to be secure yet; only time will give you that.

<comment><USER2> I fear your goal will be achieved in the computer press about the same time the tabloids stop giving us headlines such as " _HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR_ " (the _New York Post_ on a murder in 1983).</comment></comment>


The Rational Addict - <AUTHOR> http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7873033/ <comment><USER2> Funny, but I did not see anything deeply interesting. What were you trying to communicate with your post chrismealy?</comment>


Ask HN: Any breakthrough in NLP in 2018? - <AUTHOR> As an interested (but amateur) outsider, I think I've seen many exciting developments in NLP in the mid 2010's, such as Word2vec (2013), GRU (2014), SyntaxNet (2016), and its second version, DRAGNN (2017).  It almost looked like new ideas were introduced every quarter.
However, I don't remember seeing anything similarly "breakthrough" in the past year.  It looks like NLP has moved to the "boring but mature" stage (for now), with bigger datasets and incremental improvements over already known methods.
So, what do you guys think?  What would be the most surprising/innovative new ideas on NLP that showed up in 2018 (or late 2017)? <comment><USER2> [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ACfbclm3Kjb61StMLjfZHEG4zcL...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ACfbclm3Kjb61StMLjfZHEG4zcLjpZtx/view?usp=sharing)

</comment><comment><USER3> the BERT language model [https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/11/open-sourcing-bert- state-o...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/11/open-sourcing-bert-state-of-art- pre.html)</comment>


A better way to fund SaaS companies: Pingboard's $5mm Seed Round - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@billboebel/anatomy-of-our-5-million-seed-round-7965d177535b?new <comment><USER2> Amazing founder and a great company. I've worked for and with him before in prior ventures. One of the most intelligent and sincere people I've ever met.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not your typical Silicon Valley startup...

<comment><AUTHOR> More Silicon Prairie :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go Pingboard. Go Bill!!!

Glad to hear you found better capital for your company.

</comment><comment><USER5> Happy to see Bill's next company continue its success.</comment>


Radicle-Link: Extending Git with Peer-to-Peer Network Discovery - <AUTHOR> https://radicle.xyz/radicle-link.html <comment><USER2> Great short into by a Radicle contributor: [https://twitter.com/abbey_titcomb/status/1237053756983959552...](https://twitter.com/abbey_titcomb/status/1237053756983959552?s=21)

</comment><comment><USER3> Really like the idea of decentralizing projects and their social artifacts. Getting rid of github for project discovery is a great goal.

Additionally running all of this on top of I2P would counter any embargoes that centralized forges like Github have to abide by. Projects by Iranians wouldn't suddenly disappear from radicle and neither would things like PopcornTime.

I'll be checking this out. I hope they have an executable with a good CLI. The GUI or embedded webserver for the social part of radicle can come later (unless they already have it)

<comment><USER4> > github for project discovery

Honestly I don't think I've ever "discovered" a project simply by searching/browsing github itself. Usually it is through places like reddit and HN, and blog posts when searching for how to do something. I've never gone to github and just searched for some random project name...

On the other hand I also don't use github "stars", which I see more and more people talk about, so maybe some people use github differently than I do.

<comment><USER5> I sometimes visit [https://github.com/](https://github.com/) and the three "Explore repositories" in the sidebar seems tailored based on my activity. I've clicked a few, bookmarked some and even submitted PRs.

<comment><USER6> It's interesting. I feel like for each repository I understand why the recommendation is made, but the repos are completely disconnected from what's useful to me. It's a bit like "you bought milk, would you like a milking machine cleaner as well?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ssb itself does initial sync which requires a few GB of download to use (and will keep growing AFAIU). Does radicle-link have the same issue? Or is it relying on gossip and transient data?

<comment><USER7> With SSB (context: [https://ssb.nz](https://ssb.nz)), most of those few GB are blobs — arbitrary files, like email attachments. They aren't needed to confirm that the feed is complete, and clients can choose whether to download them.

SSB downloads the whole feed so it can guarantee that a peer hasn't maliciously withheld certain previous messages from the feed.

I guess ( _waves hand vaguely_ ) that constraint probably isn't relevant for version control, because subsequent commits would fail to apply…? Not sure. But if you're only interested in recent history, you could probably do something like a shallow clone.

<comment><USER8> What is the rationale for making them part of the chain, instead of just making their hashes part of that chain, like with git LFS?

This way, you would know about all the messages and blobs, but only download those you want, and match their content against the hash. Of course, this comes with less replication, therefore less availability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They have an eth smart contacts repo "radicle-contracts" on their org. Anyone know what that bit's about?

<comment><USER10> from a user session a friend did with their team, they are working on a bunch of stuff including funding features for maintainers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the first look it sounds like GitCenter (git over zeronet), but a closer looks seems radicle is more efficient and has unique (and probably better) way for discovering new content. Still not very clear about the actual design of radicle, will checkout more about it

</comment><comment><USER12> Surprised that it doesn't mention ForgeFed (earlier GitPub). [https://forgefed.peers.community/](https://forgefed.peers.community/)

<comment><USER7> > Proposals such as ForgeFed and [federated > GitLab]([https://gitlab.com/gitlab- > org/gitlab/issues/6468](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/6468)) > are a step in the right direction, but implementations are underdeveloped or > lacking. In addition, federation is dependent on domain names which can and > _are_ regularly seized by governments.

— [https://radicle.xyz/towards-decentralized-code- collaboration...](https://radicle.xyz/towards-decentralized-code- collaboration.html)

<comment><USER2> > federation is dependent on domain names which can and are regularly seized > by governments

This is exactly what Arthur and Eric from the MetaCurrency Project aimed to confront. Protocol Cooperativism (not Platform Cooperativism) means direct, fully transparent, distributed, and mutually-sovereign protocol negotiation in all areas of our new digital world/life [1], making invisible the dogmatic legacy 'wealth acknowledgement systems' now in place [2]. Even Banking 'apps' and things like land-registry [3] and more can be re-invented (I'd argue that banks are one of the earliest forms of software).

[1] [https://medium.com/holochain/holochain-reinventing- applicati...](https://medium.com/holochain/holochain-reinventing- applications-d2ac1e4f25ef)

[2] [http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/11/05/id-55](http://eric.harris- braun.com/blog/2007/11/05/id-55):

 _" When I was growing up in Ecuador, I remember in the market place there would always be a couple men sitting by tiny tables with pen and paper and a line of people waiting for them to write letters, for which they would pay a small fee. This is a common sight wherever literacy isn't universal. This situation is almost exactly the same we are in today with respect to money. We, and by we I mean our communities (not ourselves as individuals) are monetarily illiterate, and therefore we need others to make our wealth acknowledgment statements on our behalf (and we pay a pretty penny for it) when in fact, we could simply learn to write.

Learning to write in the monetary context, is simply issuing a currency. Or, more precisely, creating the symbols and rules that a community will use to make wealth acknowledgment statements. But the problem is that we don't have an alphabet, a grammar that we can follow with which to make such statements. Our monetary system and the financial world behind it is essentially that 40,000 character dictionary and the scribes who can interpret it. It does work. It creates a system in which we can make wealth acknowledgment statements at a global scale. But it does so at a direct cost like paying the scribe in the marketplace, and also a systemic cost, that of allowing an elite who control that system to grow and take advantage of those who do not."_

[3] [https://medium.com/@AlastairParvin/a-new-land- contract-684c3...](https://medium.com/@AlastairParvin/a-new-land- contract-684c3ba1f1b3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _In fact, Git was only created when Linus' free Bitkeeper license was revoked after a Linux kernel contributor tried to reverse engineer its networking protocols_

Bit-who?

<comment><USER14> So by revoking Linus' license bitkeeper set in motion a development that would make bitkeeper obsolete. This is funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have to say that reading the Radicle designers observations about git on IPFS I think they solved the wrong problem. I would love to be able to save and work with git repos on ipfs.

Most of the other things radicle aims to provide seem like they are better centralized. There is a reason we all use gitlab/github for collab services. It is that centralization is better for that kind of thing.

<comment><USER16> I was wondering the same. If the Microsoft monopoly is the problem, why not just use non-profit Git hosting sites like codeberg.org? They run a Gitea instance and are being adopted by more and more FOSS projects.

<comment><USER17> Because if they become popular they'll be picked up by The Empire too. E.g. .org TLD debacle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Any approach to sharing and collaborating around a git repository that requires some convention inside that repository seems fundamentally broken to me. I understand why people want to do it that way -- self describing artifacts are quite handy. Having something like fossil that can live inside a git repo itself is a big plus, for some workflows. I would be shocked if the linux kernel tree ever has a project.json file added to it. All the identifiers you need are already there in the commit hashes, why create another layer of complexity inside the repo itself?

<comment><USER19> It has signing information in it, which does seem necessary to authenticate commits.

<comment><USER20> but git itself has signed commits and tags.

<comment><USER19> Yes, but it does not tell you which signatures are valid in this repo, this is something that is external, eg GitHub lets you manage a list. You need this information to validate the signed commits.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Walmart's pay raise is backfiring - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-walmarts-pay-raises-are-backfiring/ <comment><USER2> It should be why a minimum wage increase is back firing. Nodidy seems to think things through..</comment>


Saudi Arabia ripped off my open-source app and published it on the App Store - <AUTHOR> I developed a Coronavirus tracker app for iOS and macOS and open-sourced the project on GitHub [1]. I tried to publish the app on the App Store, but it got rejected by Apple because it's not from a health organization [2].
Today, I found my app published on the App Store by "The Saudi National Health Information Center", a Saudi government institution, after they made slight changes and additions [3].
[1] https://github.com/mhdhejazi/CoronaTracker
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/05/apple-rejects-coronavirus-ap...
[3] https://apps.apple.com/sa/app/corona-map/id1503046302 <comment><USER2> You can't add a GPL-3 license in your repo (which explicitly allows modification, distribution, commercial use) and then also write "not for commercial distribution" in the README. Pick one.

Even then, it can be argued that a national government publishing an app for free is not commercial use.

<comment> kube-system More than that, I's say it's a _pretty big stretch_ to say that a government giving something away is in any way 'commercial use'.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not concerned about commercial use here. It's about publishing the app without complying with the GPL-3 conditions. It'd be fine had they respected the license and attributed the project.

<comment><USER3> Contact Apple about this.

[https://developer.apple.com/contact/#!/topic/select](https://developer.apple.com/contact/#!/topic/select)

<comment><AUTHOR> I did. Let's see what they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First off, looks like a nice app, well done.

So what exactly is your objection? You open-sourced it under GPL, you mentioned they made some changes, have they not open sourced them and thus broke the terms of the Licence, is that what bothers you?

Or is it lack of attribution and notifying you, which would be a decent and respectful thing to do?

What was your actual intention here: 1\. Create an app to help the world during this terrible time? 2\. Build something you could make some money from? 3\. Build something to get kudos from?

As it stood your app wasn't available as Apple rejected it, these guys made it available and thus if your goal was option 1 they helped you!

If option 2, then you failed upon failure and serves you right.

If option 3, I'm not sure you GPL requires attribution within the app, but they do have to open source there changes and thus should make it clear, its built upon your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> It'd be totally fine had they respected the license or attributed the project. It's great to know that people use your app and find it useful, and that's why I offered the app to JHU to publish it in their name when Apple rejected it. I'm bothered more by the way the app is published without attribution and how I knew about that.

<comment><USER5> how exactly did they not respect the license?

i just don't understand your complaint at all.

<comment><USER6> The GPL requires that derivatives (A) credit you, and (B) release their source under the same license.

IANAL but this is not nitpicky legal details; it's the entire point of a copyleft license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You could likely ask Apple to take down Saudi Arabia's version as a violation of your copyrights, and a violation of the license under which you offered your creation.

It's the FSF's position that Apple App Store distribution necessarily includes extra restrictions that violate the GPL:

[https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store- compliance](https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance)

So, while your "no commercial use" addition itself contradicted the GPL, the GPL itself, if relied upon as the governing license, may give you enough ammo to lodge a complaint.

<comment><USER8> If this app is providing value to the Saudi people it would be unethical to take it down. We're talking about lives vs an authors pride.

<comment><USER7> There are many other sources for the same info, to satisfy curiosity & impress upon Saudis the urgency of the situation.

Poking the KSA government's public health bureaucracy to better cooperate with others, & honestly acknowledge the work of outsiders rather than stealing it to create a false sense of their own internal competence, might best serve the health of the Saudi people in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "I have observed, throughout life, that a man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it." — Father Strickland

Congratulations on your coronavirus open-source app getting distributed and presumably used! I know it sucks that they didn't credit you or honor the GPL by sharing their modified source, and folks downloading it from a not-exactly- trustworthy government isn't my first choice, but I sincerely offer you my congratulations nonetheless.

<comment><USER10> I do not think that the quote is relevant to the topic.

<comment><USER9> I meant it as advice—better to celebrate the accomplishment than focus on the lack of credit. The latter leads to stuff like getting Apple to pull the app listing and having no one use it. I'd only do that if I believed Saudi Arabia had made it harmful in some way (eg spyware).

Also, please don't pay attention to the dated/non-inclusive wording ("man", "he"). I tried to just match the original version, although the attribution/provenance is (fittingly, I suppose) a bit uncertain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You say here it's open source, but your licenses read me says it's ffnc use?

<comment><AUTHOR> I published the app under the GPL-3 license, and with a clear statement that says "It's not allowed to publish, distribute the app, or use it in a commercial way". They neither respected the license nor the other conditions.

<comment><USER12> The GPL3 license allows people to "publish, distribute the app, or use it in a commercial way" (provided that they comply with the other GPL3 conditions, of course). So, when you say it is under GPL3, then say people can't do something which GPL3 allows, you are contradicting yourself.

If you release something under self-contradictory licensing terms, and then people use it in a way you didn't expect – maybe the problem was with your self-contradictory licensing?

<comment><USER13> If I understand GPL3 correctly, they still have to make the modified source available and state the changes they made. The header on GH that parses the license also seems to agree with me: [https://github.com/mhdhejazi/CoronaTracker/blob/master/LICEN...](https://github.com/mhdhejazi/CoronaTracker/blob/master/LICENSE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Would you mind articulating how they violated your expectations?

<comment><USER6> OP has done so further upthread. (Apologies for lack of link, I'm on an app that makes this difficult)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some details and screenshots here: [https://medium.com/@MhdHejazi/saudi- arabia-shamelessly-rippe...](https://medium.com/@MhdHejazi/saudi-arabia- shamelessly-ripped-off-my-corona-tracker-app-and-published-it-on-the-app- store-dfcb672961d4)

</comment><comment><USER15> Did they abide by the terms of GPLv3? If so then I don't see the problem here. I mean, you deserve an enthusiastic "Thank You" for your contribution to open- source, and I think Apple should reconsider it's determination in-light of our situation and your obvious desire to contribute... but you kinda signed up for this. I would honestly be excited and proud that a nation-state found my time and hard work so worthwhile that they essentially adopted it to benefit a larger audience. I think I would find that extremely humbling myself.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I see your point about the extra condition I added to the license. And you're right, you can see it as self-contradictory. But when I added it, I wanted to make sure nobody will use the project to make money and thought it's ok to add such a condition above the license.

That said, my concern here isn't the commercial use of the app, they're not doing that. It's about publishing the app without complying with the GPL-3 conditions. It'd be totally fine had they respected the license and attributed the original project.

</comment><comment><USER16> I understand your frustration but as nobody is making money off this (pretty polished looking!) app and it's maybe potentially even saving lives somewhere you can be proud of your work. Credited or not, it's probably having more impact on the real world than most people's side projects.

Have you written them? Who knows how this came to be, rushed out by some programmer somewhere who doesn't know about the ins and outs of licenses and just wants to get this to as many people as possible quickly.

</comment><comment><USER17> The splash-screen (in arabic) says "all rights reserved" with a copyright logo.

And under it lists "the Saudi health council" and "national council for health information".

So my understanding is that they're claiming copyright on this app?

[https://imgur.com/a/y6EW8CB](https://imgur.com/a/y6EW8CB)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like you should ask the App Store Legal Team to take it down, because the Saudi Government is distributing your work in a manner that is not compatible with the GPL-3 license - so it is a rights infringement issue.

[https://developer.apple.com/contact](https://developer.apple.com/contact)

</comment><comment><USER18> Find what you think is a reasonable price, explain to the Saudis and ask them to write you a check. They'll probably do so if your claims are correct and your price sensible. The Saudis are generous people.

</comment><comment><USER19> You will probably be contacted by them. Ask for some money, they'll probably pay and call it a day.

P.S. Don't click on any whatsapp link they may send you.

</comment><comment><USER20> A software license matters in proportion to wherewithal to lawyer up and enforce the terms...just like any other contract.

</comment><comment><USER21> You used the GPL and then tried to put it on the App Store? The GPL does not allow that and you should know better.

</comment><comment><USER22> Negotiate to get credit for the work or cash. You would not have been able to register it. They did it with a change. you found that out. Now you hold them responsible and Negotiate to get credit for the work or cash.

</comment><comment><USER22> Negotiate to get credit for the work or cash.

</comment><comment><USER7> Create some compelling new features for your version. But include some obfuscated back-door allowing you to insert other messaging later. Tempt the copycats to integrate your improvements, including the backdoor. Then send subversive messaging they wouldn't like, anything from simple credit, if desired, to short utterances carrying the death penalty in their jurisdiction.

(Of course, it's likely too late to pursue this strategy in this case, and one should be careful about such vigilantism against murderous organizations. But I mention this to place it in the "idea library" for other HN readers, who may find themselves in similar situations in the future.)

</comment><comment><USER23> Did they maybe translate it so they could link it to their citizens?

I really see no problem with this, they should provide the source code, but from what you said their modifications really aren't that sought after are they?

Don't open-source something if you don't want someone to clone it. What did you think was going to happen?

I don't see why someone would post the source to an entire app then watch the app store for a clone waiting to complain about it...</comment>


A movie that doesn't exist and the Redditors who think it does - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2016/12/movie-doesn-t-exist-and-redditors-who-think-it-does <comment><USER2> Went through the article thinking "god, I do remember this movie" until I got to the Kazaam part. Kazaam fits fine into my vague memory.

It was always the Berenstein bears though, get out of my universe!

Edit - If anyone wants a good sci-fi novel, the revelation space series touches on the mandela effect a bit.

<comment><USER3> I had pretty much the same reaction — I was actually hoping a little bit to be able to finish the article, run my own queries through Google, have them come up empty, and get a small taste of the supernatural.

But nope, Kazaam is a perfect fit. I had remembered Shaq being in it from the beginning too, and was starting to think that my memory was a a bit faulty.

I would have also guessed "Berenstein", but to be fair, I barely knew how to spell when I read through those books.

<comment><USER4> >I would have also guessed "Berenstein", but to be fair, I barely knew how to spell when I read through those books.

I didn't know about the Berenstain alternate universe until long after it was a thing, and I this was my first reaction as well. I never really _knew_ how to spell it, and I hadn't see one of those for many years since.

I also think it's one of those easily confused suffices: -ein, -ine, -ien, -een, -urg, -erg, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's very strange how memory works.

The first few paragraphs I thought - "yes, I remember this". But once I got farther into it, I realized it was definitely Shaq's Kazaam that I was __misremembering __.

However--I would never have thought it was Sinbad at all, if the article had not __suggested it __first.

I'm not sure if that says more about the nature of memory, or _the power of suggestion_.

Perhaps fading memory combined with strong and 'seemingly accurate' suggestion is quite a powerful thing. There are tons of examples of this.

For example, was that old Tom Cruise movie called "Interview with _A_ Vampire" or "Interview with THE Vampire"? Like 'Shazaam', many people say that at some point the movie title changed. But there's no evidence of that at all.

Perhaps my all time favorite story about the strangeness of memory is more relevant than ever. Borges' story, "Shakespeare's Memory". Read aloud for the New Yorker: [http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction- podcast-h...](http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-podcast- hisham-matar-reads-jorge-luis-borges)

Basically, a writer is magically given Shakespeare's memories. "But he soon discovers that memory is a slippery thing, 'not a summation, it is a chaos of vague possibilities.'"

The greatest labyrinth of all might just be the mind.

</comment><comment><USER6> Should we also discuss witnesses' recollections during trials?

I remember thinking about that very much when I listened to the podcast Serial. What do we actually remember? I think _I_ only really remember "methods". ( _neural passageways_?)

edit: I was a pain in high school for my physics teacher (and for myself), I never learned any formulas and did everything with dimensional analysis...

<comment><USER7> Historically I believe we always trusted eye witnesses pretty heavily in trial, but they're known to be unrelated. I remember myself testifying once, and it's the strangest experience.

I remember what I thought I saw. I don't remember seeing. Even at the police station immediately after the "replay" was fuzzy. 3 months later? I was literally just parroting what I remember saying and thinking at the time _not_ what I remember seeing.

Was a weird experience

<comment><USER2> I Wonder if we should favorite witness statements taken shortly after the event instead of involving witnesses in the trial?

<comment><USER7> I absolutely think that's a better way to behave. Once I replay/recall a memory a couple of times in my head it becomes as real as the original, eventually more real. I guess I'd favour my odds of being correct closer to the event but overall I just think humans are unreliable overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have experienced this effect multiple times when my wife remembers me saying something I have no recollection of :-). I like the idea of a mandella effect, or perhaps someone _does_ invent time travel and the only change was who starred in the movie and what its title was. Something like "in the timeline where Sinbad was in a genie movie the world is destroyed but scientists stepped back in time and changed just enough to save the world, unfortunately causality resulted in the movie no longer existing even though some still remember it. A small price to pay for saving the world."

</comment><comment><USER9> MGM should cast Sinbad in a movie titled "Shazaam! 2" just to really fuck with people.

</comment><comment><USER10> TLDR: They're misremembering Shaq playing a genie in Kazaam as Sinbad playing a genie in "Shazaam".

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why people make such a big deal out of it, muchless why it's a front page article here. When I read the first few lines of the article I figured it was referring to the movie with Shaq, then realized I remembered the name wrong when I saw the image for "Kazaam". It wasn't exactly earth shattering that I misremembered something that was a minor part of my childhood.

Same with the Berenstain Bear books - I'm pretty sure I remembered it as Berenstein as well, but I guess I was wrong, or just mispronounced it as a kid and it stuck. While I remember having read all the books multiple times, it's not like they were that important.

The impact that this has and the amount of discussion it generates is very confusing to me. If it's all in good fun and jest, then no worries I suppose, but if misremembering or simply making a mistake with facts is this mind blowing to people, I'm really curious how they handle more important incorrect facts they hold dearly. Maybe it's a function of my education hammering home the fact that what I knew yesterday might not be true to day (science and technology is like this), but making a mistake like this isn't that earth shattering to me. There's a lot of data out there to remember and of varying priority - a kids movie about a genie and the name of a book I read when I was 4 isn't quite that important to me now as it was when I was 4.

I'm sure most of this is just people having fun with a really widely held mis- memory, but I really hope people don't take it too seriously.

edit: changed opening to include my confusion why this hit front page.

<comment><USER12> > Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why people make such a big deal out of it

Memory is our connection to the past, to the events that led us to the present. We perceive and interpret the present through the models we constructed with what we experienced before. If we can't trust our memories to be good approximations of past events, we can't trust our judgement.

Let's say physicists around the world start reporting consistent FTL neutrino detections. It could be, of course, a batch of defective cables, but it'd be much harder to convince those who made the measurements when lots of people are getting the same results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Read an article a few years ago, where a lot of people claimed that New Zealand used to lie north of Australia. The same conclusion was made: it must be a merge of two parallel universes. Nobody stopped up to think that maybe they're just really bad at geography.

<comment><USER14> o.m.g. i thought it was always north of australia... but why lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My Shazaam.1994.DVDRip.x264.AC3 torrent has been stuck at 15% for five years.

Plz seed!

<comment><USER12> Did you set your VLAN tag to the correct timeline?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think what makes this magical is the suggestion that a misremembered, imaginary D-list 90's movie—supposedly featuring Sinbad—is somehow evidence for Bostrom's simulation hypothesis.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a 90s kid I thought the article was going to talk about the Shaq Genie movie, and it turns out it was.

I do know there was a Shazam cartoon on VHS. My local Rite Aid used to have a tiny VHS rental section. It was organized by having all of the covers stuffed into a poster display (the kind where a good number of flat frames are hinged at once side and attached to a shelf so you can flip through them like a book), and you simply found one you wanted to rent and told the clerk. The clerk would pull out the movie from underneath the shelf for the one day rental. Anyway, they had an extremely narrow kids selection, which we burned through almost immediately. Except for one title. The only cartoon in the list, Shazam was apparently some kind of superhero, but we would never know because the VHS tape was lost long ago and the manager wasn't interested in either ordering a second copy or removing the cover from the display. So every week we would ask and every week the tape would be missing.

In retrospect it was probably shit, but so was most everything kid oriented in those days.

<comment><USER18> That was probably SHAZAM - based on the Captain Marvel character that is now owned by DC comics.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmm781WHxdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmm781WHxdk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> my own "favourite" false memory is a cover version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah done by Nick Cave. The is a song named Hallelujah by Nick Cave but it is a different song. None the less I remeber very distinctly Nick Caves cover version of Hallelujah sung in his unmistakable style. I went so far to listen to several dozen cover versions of Hallelujah on Spotify and Youtube but found none that came even near.

<comment><USER20> He did do a version of Avalanche, which might be confusing you [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyuEu2vOY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyuEu2vOY8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> False memories are very interesting (and a bit scary) stuff! For example, I distinctly remember eating moose meat at a restaurant with my grandparents, even though that never happened.

I wish there was a way to find out how much of what I remember never actually happened

</comment><comment><USER15> There is an old French Canadian folk tale, "John Labadie's Big Black Dog". It was written up by author Natalie Savage Carlson in 1952.

It revolves around a town of people who all claim the existence of a dog. Trouble is, there is no such dog.

<comment><USER15> Oops!

Being shaper in the morning I see I should have written _Jean_ Labadie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The crossed movie is Aliens for Breakfast. I distinctly remember a Sinbad genie despite never having been on the Reddit discussion or thinking twice about it since the dawn of the internet. I'm pretty sure the movie people are thinking about is Aliens for Breakfast though.

</comment><comment><USER23> Whenever I see stuff on reddit I have to think there are a bunch of trolls doing stuff like this "for the lulz". This is relatively harmless but then you have stuff like /r/The_Donald and even worse, Pizzagate.

<comment><USER24> The stuff about europe on the donald and related places is totally crazy IMO. At first it was a joke, one europe earned after merkels public invite. But then it slowly creeped into mainstream media and now is used by politicans in the USA and even "documented" in propaganda material.

<comment><USER25> Can you summarize?

<comment><USER24> Sure i'll try. Obviously europe had a few more immigrants than otherwise over the last 2 years. The general idea was that under these immigrants will be a lot of terrorists (which showed to be wrong, because by far most attacks were done by people living there for a while) but is used until now from right partys. These US dominated subreddits like /r/The_Donald or even /r/4chan turned this into memes along "Blacks come to rape your woman" (projecting much?). And meanwhile Trump uses Europe as example for getting overrun by terrorists and turning Islam (whatever this means) in every other speech.

The thing is, what most european leaders are fully aware of, its not immigration that is the problem but bad immigration where Germany and France are prime examples.

I hope this helps :)

<comment><USER24> To the guy that answered and then removed the question (Got a notifaction). Yes i live(d) in europe. In Switzerland where this whole thing barely seemed to be a problem and only named as problem by a few right politics. Also i am not claiming the sitation wasnt hard to some countries to scope. Its just that criminality & terrorism did not rise at all in most of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's classic confabulation. Corporate confabulation is a thing.

</comment><comment><USER27> Best Sinbad movie was by far was First Kid [http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0116311/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0116311/)

Edit: Sorry forgot about Jingle All the Way, after that

Edit2: Oh man, and he was great in Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia</comment>


Review my startup: real time analytics, services for Flash and now HTML5 games! - <AUTHOR>

This last week I've been rolling out a huge update for my little startup Playtomic.  I added a bunch of stuff but the two big ones are:
- making the analytics real time... which was quite a challenge at 8 billion events/month
- finally finished my JavaScript API for anyone who's making HTML5 games.
- shiney new website that showcases some of the awesome companies and developers using it ... if you've ever played web games you'll probably recognize some of those names
If you're making HTML5 games I'd love it if you could come test out the new API, it provides analytics, leaderboards, level sharing and a bunch of other bits and pieces. <comment><AUTHOR> Feedback on the new site is very welcome: <http://playtomic.com/>

You can preview the JS API here: <http://playtomic.com/api/html5>

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm not making any games (yet) but I wonder if you'll provide similar services for mobile development platforms and frameworks (unity, corona etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. Unity and iOS are coming this month, more after that.</comment></comment>


A dataset of 1M programming solutions with state changes - <AUTHOR> https://fraser-greenlee.github.io/2020/06/25/A-dataset-of-ran-code.html <comment><USER2> Pretty cool.</comment>


In B2B, does difficult registration get you more users? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a B2B startup and we are moving from a free open registration process to a closed registration process that requires a sales phone call to create an account on the website.
Has anyone else found that for B2B sales you paradoxically get more users if you have a closed registration process as opposed to an online user registration process?
So you get more registered users by making it harder for each user to register? <comment><USER2> What kinds of customers are these (the individuals), tech, non-tech, whatever? I tend to skip sites that make it difficult to get information. OTOH my SO is an artist. She likes the phone because people like to talk to her. They jump through hoops to tell her what she wants to know, and she ends up getting big discounts on hardware, software, and art supplies.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting point because I'm always amazed at how many sites of major companies I visit and they make life really hard to sign up or buy their products. It often involves a phone call or to send an e-mail to the sales department - I wonder how they can stay in business, but clearly it works otherwise they wouldn't be turning over $10m+.

</comment><comment><USER4> No, but it gets you more serious users.</comment>


RIP Redux: Dan Abramov Announces Future-Fetcher - <AUTHOR> https://react-etc.net/entry/rip-redux-dan-abramov-announces-future-fetcher <comment><USER2> This article is completely wrong, and is based on a joke tweet from Kent C Dodds and a complete misunderstanding of what Dan was actually talking about. This should be removed.</comment>