High-Tech Solution to Disaster Response May Be Too Good to Be True - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/us/emergency-response-disaster-technology.html <comment><USER2> > Our mission is not to make money only," Mr. Wani said, later adding, "We're > trying to save the world."

People should probably watch Silicon Valley before giving interviews. Repeating satire verbatim isn't a good look.

<comment><USER3> But isn't emergency response literally about saving people?

<comment><USER4> Is One Concern responding to emergencies, or sucking up a quarter million dollars a year in funding to paint a map using "AI"? That's a lot of actual boots on the ground, saving people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _"We really think we can enable a disaster-free future."_

That statement gave me pause since it's quite the unrealistic claim to make.

<comment><USER5> I think it's reckless to make claims like this even with genuinely useful technology because it triggers the "Arrogant engineers think tech is the answer to everything" response which leads to people in other fields dismissing things out of hand that could actually be worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For one, it's great to see startups tackling hard problems like this: generally I believe there is huge benefit and opportunity for startups in providing government services like this. It certainly helps to dispel the feeling that our brightest minds are working on ads.

Secondly, this really seems like the initial phases of product development and fit — agencies would be foolish to simply rely on a startup like this to coordinate 100% of disaster response, I'm sure FEMA has similar models. With startups, especially ones tackling more "serious" domains (for lack of a better word) I'm willing to have a longer leash and proceed with caution.

<comment><USER7> "One Concern's earthquake simulations rely on FEMA's free damage-prediction method known as P58".

It may not be AI, but combining data sources and predictions. Which is useful but not world changing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quote from article:

> _Ivan Porto Carrero, who oversaw a team of engineers at One Concern, said he > was fired in June after speaking out against what he viewed as a company > culture of dishonesty. He said the usual start-up attitude of "fail fast and > try something new" was inappropriate to apply to disaster response because, > "If you fail fast, people die."_

</comment><comment><USER9> I can already see how something like this will further increase inequality due to unaccounted biases in the training data, for example worse no emergency response in black neighborhoods because there is less data about them.

The question is whether this bias is better than just relying on government agencies, which we know are absolutely infested with racists and fascists.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow. "AI" and emergencies are such a bad fit. ML is great at probably being almost right. That's not how you want to run critical systems.

<comment><USER11> Turns out, humans are also pretty good at probably being almost right. Luckily though, they've figured out how to build systems with higher fault tolerance than their own.

<comment><USER10> It's easy for an ML model to do great in the average case but horribly in the worst case, so you're correct if "fault tolerance" is a simple loss function to be minimized, but wrong if "fault tolerance" actually means what we care about. That's much harder and not something we uniformly know how to do with ML. Like the costco example in the article.

To do that with ML, they'd need a loss function that captures what we care about and data it sounds like they don't have.

We _do_ know how to build systems with high fault tolerance the old fashioned non "AI" way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My experience with disaster response is a month in Louisiana helping to operate the Rapides Coliseum shelter managed by the American Red Cross after hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Those who are resourceful, can solve problems creatively, and take initiative will lead a disaster response while those granted rank and position tend to spin wheels and control a situation they don't understand. Disasters aren't responded to by staff employees with adequate training. If it's a major disaster, people who have never worked together nor acted in such a capacity are loosely organized together and used to channel resources and effort to victims and their families. Technology absolutely plays a vital role in disaster response but at times it can be a major hindrance. I recall when agents of FEMA came to the coliseum, they asked where the computers and network were. The location did have them, unlike others, but over time they went down and no one has available to maintain them. I explained to the agents that they will have to use forms and manual entry the old fashioned way. They just looked at each other and left. Several days passed. Then, FEMA returned with a mobile command center, featuring computers and satellite communication.

The experience didn't surprise me but made me realize how dependent people are on technology and how unprepared they are to handle circumstances they haven't trained for.

</comment><comment><USER13> "In classes that fall, Mr. Wani and other graduate students turned the problem into a project. Using crowdsourced ground-shaking reports from previous earthquakes, they trained a computer system to predict the areas of greatest impact so that responders would not have to rely on 911 calls."

After a major earthquake, I seriously doubt competent emergency dispatch operators will be proactively sending critically-understaffed ambulances, fire engines, and police to a location identified by old, crowd-sourced cell phone shake data cobbled together for a grad-school project.

Not that emergency systems IT is not without challenges: old (often third party) technology, overly stove-piped administrative domains, and just plain old out-of-date technical skills. In other words, there's lots of low hanging fruit for bright young programmers looking to serve their community!

</comment><comment><USER14> anyone up for a relevant xkcd?

[https://xkcd.com/2128/](https://xkcd.com/2128/)

<comment><USER15> Spent some time around the CMU robotics labs in the mid 2000s. This is way more real than most can imagine...

<comment><USER14> I review proposals all the time and this is still standard language.

<comment><USER16> Disaster-response is to robotics, as Lenna is to computer vision</comment></comment></comment></comment>


All-o-Meter: Just a funny app - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lumenti.allometer.android&hl=en

<comment><AUTHOR> All-o-Meter: this app simulates metering whatever you want, rotating the device up or down</comment>


Tips on when and how to shard your database for scalability from CTO of Flixster - <AUTHOR> http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/going-viral-without-going-down/ Going viral without going down - tips on when and how to shard your database for scalability from CTO of Flixster <comment><USER2> There is no silver bullet.

Caching is hot and database scaling architecture is very specific to your application.

"Feature based partitioning" sounds cool but does the data access layer do the cross database joins??

"Vertical partioning" again the data access layer can get complicated. I wish this was available as a piece of technology or service.</comment>


Apple working on cheap 8GB iPhone 4 alongside worldmode iPhone 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/apple-working-cheap-8gb-iphone-4-alongside-wo

<comment><USER2> It should be noted that the 8gb iPhone 3GS was not available at launch. It was added to the lineup as the budget option only after the iPhone 4 was released [1]. So this should not be a real surprise.

The real question is what Apple will do with the 3GS. Will Apple keep it available and turn it into a low-cost prepaid phone? Apple's own Tim Cook has suggested Apple is exploring its options.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_3GS#Timeline_of_iPhone_m...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_3GS#Timeline_of_iPhone_models)

[2] [http://www.bgr.com/2011/08/05/low-cost-iphone-could- launch-s...](http://www.bgr.com/2011/08/05/low-cost-iphone-could-launch-soon- apple-execs-hope-to-settle-patent-disputes/)</comment>


Ask HN: About to intentionally hose my MFA, suggestions? - <AUTHOR> Greetings HN,
Murphy is busy tonight. Sitting at IAD with a cancelled flight, and my Pixel XL has concomitantly decided to start exhibiting the following lock screen loop: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/12740836?msgid=12750715
I have a number of TOTP MFA that will be toast if I reset the phone from recovery. I don't have backup codes for all of the TOTP, and even if I did, they wouldn't be on the work laptop I am typing this from.
Any suggestions for now, or next time? <comment><USER2> > Any suggestions for ... next time?

When you do get out of your current situation, be sure to backup your TOTP codes somewhere secure so you can recover them should your usual device which hosts them fails. Backup the rest of your data too while you are at it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some MFA apps can backup your codes, if that fits your risk profile (e.g. Authenticator Plus)

<comment><AUTHOR> Debating whether to consider that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure for now, but for next time SMS as secondary fallback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't read SMS on this phone at the moment, due to the lock screen settings. So even if they could text me a code, I can't use it</comment></comment>


LinkedIn Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://hurvitz.org/blog/2008/06/linkedin-architecture

<comment><USER2> "No ORM (such as Hibernate); they use straight JDBC ... Spring as glue"

Spring has stuff in it to make working with JDBC much more sane (much less exception handling code to write, you can make it DRY, etc.). I'd be very surprised if they weren't using that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess this post could be used as a convincing argument to implement searching into ycnews:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=209716> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=210537>

<comment><USER4> It's really not that hard to just type "site:news.ycombinator.com <search terms>" into google. Just sayin...

<comment><USER5> Actually, that is quite a mouthful to type

<comment><USER6> if you use your fingers to type, it is much less mouth-intensive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Maps AR Walking Directions Arrive on iOS and Android - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20776247/google-maps-live-view-ar-walking-directions-ios-android-feature <comment><USER2> If it's meant to be used as shown in the top photo in the article, where the phone is held directly in front of the user at eye level, it looks quite dangerous.</comment>


Starbucks Style Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.starbucks.com/static/reference/styleguide/

<comment><USER2> Much more interesting is the link to their complete styleguide - <http://www.starbucks.com/static/reference/styleguide/>

<comment><AUTHOR> You're totally right. I was just looking at that page, and now can't change the url.

Also interesting, but less technical, is the BBC's style guide: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/gel>

<comment><USER3> Does the quote box without the closing quotes really bug anyone else on that page? As soon as I noticed it I was instantly annoyed. Feel. Need. To. Wash...

I'm a grammar nazi at heart methinks.

Good read though, although I think the BBC has started to make some serious mistakes and are getting a little too experimental. All the animations they keep doing everywhere are getting in the way of the actual reading and are very distracting. The home page is now looking a real mess. At least they've got rid of the annoying 'slide' effect their carousel had which meant if you moved your mouse around the whole page seemed to jerk around.

<comment><USER4> > Feel. Need. To. Wash...

I too am a grammar Nazi, and the very first rule off grammar is that sentences, delimited by punctuation marks such as the point, have subject and verbs, unlike your four sentences above.

Or maybe it is because English is not my mothergrammar?

<comment><USER5> This is an informal discussion group; it's fine to complain about punctuation marks on the BBC even while making errors in your own posts.

And, of course, 9/10 people who read that sentence (yes, a single sentence) knew exactly how the OP was intending it to sound in their head.

I guess what I'm saying is, you can be pedantic around here, but not to the level where it looks like intentional misinterpretation.

<comment><USER4> I was just telling I find this way to emphasise a sentence a bit fatiguing, but I should avoid thus kind of useless comment, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is _exactly_ the sort of thing that I tend to ask visual designers for, give me a set of general rules that I can apply when making new things so I can quickly make new interactions (new pages, whatever) without having to make all of the visual decisions from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER7> You wouldn't think Starbucks would really be the typical use case for a style guide. Like I would think all their content would come out of a single web shop in HQ.

Style guides are usually created when content is generated by separate groups on their own with no central coordination, and the style guide is to try and get them to all look the same.

<comment><USER6> Don't underestimate the size and breadth of Starbucks corporate.

Also, even when I'm a solo developer doing in-house stuff, I always always always request at least a simple style guide so my efforts can be consistent and high-quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really don't understand why they say the stripes version "requires" javascript.

Firstly, they're relying on javascript to do the striping effect, applying a class to even rows. If someone has javascript turned off this effect will degrade even in modern browsers.

Secondly, .stripes tbody tr:nth-of-type(2n){ background: #f6f6f6} achieves exactly the same thing in all modern browsers, and degrades just as well as the javascript version (even if javascript is off).

<comment><USER9> Their webpages end in .aspx and that means they are using ASP.NET Web forms.

So I wouldn't expect them to be very cutting edge in terms of modern browser practices. Sad but true.

<comment><USER9> Interesting to see so many down votes to my comment.

Even Microsoft leadership has admitted ASP.NET MVC is a better choice for public facing (non-intranet) websites.

My comment was only to make the point that they were using an outdated web framework, so it's likely that their markup is probably also outdated.

<comment><USER10> What's interesting in this set of guidelines is basically all the front-end development goodies (stylings, grids, js) not the backend. It looks very decent to me, and it was probably made by a completely different department than ASP's, So thats why the comment comes a little irrelevant in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there an open-source framework or tool for creating a styleguide like this from a project?

<comment><USER12> I made StyleDocco (<http://jacobrask.github.com/styledocco/>) for this purpose. You add example HTML (and Markdown) in your stylesheets, and StyleDocco generates documentation files with the rendered HTML as well as the HTML code snippets. There's also Knyle Style Sheets (<https://github.com/kneath/kss>) if you like a more structured TomDoc inspired syntax.

I'll definitely be adding something like the "prefs" thing in the top right corner of this style guide, that was awesome.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know where they got that awesome debug panel?

<comment><USER15> By the looks of the code I'd say they made it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love their responsive table. I really like how it collapses below 480px wide. Hopefully the Twitter Bootstrap guys implement it!

<comment><USER17> I like it as well, though they should probably clamp image sizes, at certain widths the images are very tiny

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How'd you find this nugget?

<comment><USER19> Maybe OP was searching for style guides. This almost looks unintentionally public. It's all a bit bland for a brand like Starbucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Starbucks Bootstrap, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER21> Just wondering, are we allowed to see it? I mean, will they remove it if they notice everyone can access to it?

<comment><USER22> No - I don't think they'll remove it. I was talking to one of their developers about the idea that they _might_ make it public a few months ago, and it seems that they did.

<comment><USER23> It's always been public just not promoted. We made it known after Andy's talk at SXSW (grown up css, recommended listening) and after I chatted with Andy and Jeremy Keith who urged us and more companies to release their styleguides. We see this as invaluable tool for internal communications within our team as well as an industry trend (24ways, BBC Gel - both of which we're big fans of). The response has been overwhelmingly positive and for that we're proud and humbled as we are just trying to create the best websites we can for our customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This jab is awesome "SiteCore has a mind of its own. It will automatically add a shape attribute to links."</comment>


Scott Adams: Crazy Eyes - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/crazy_eyes

<comment><USER2> My wife always tells me when I'm "programming with my eyes". She says my eyes get this look and she can tell that, even though we are having dinner or a discussion, that in my head I'm looking at code. She's almost always right.

<comment><USER3> I joke many programmers switch to an "autistic mode", when they shut off everything around them and focus completely on the computer in front of them and the code they are writing. Myself included.

<comment><USER4> aka. "flow" or "in the zone". Mentioned widely as early as 2000: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html>

<comment><USER5> Probably older, as "hack mode" in the Jargon File: [http://people.kldp.org/~eunjea/jargon/index.php?idx=hack- mod...](http://people.kldp.org/~eunjea/jargon/index.php?idx=hack-mode.html)

<comment><USER6> Probably older as the Tao in the Tao etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Then you cropped out everything but the eyes and showed the films to a > group of volunteer subjects. Could the volunteers distinguish the skeptics > from the believers just by their eyes?_

Tangentially related -

There was a study done some time ago when they took a black and white photograph of an old man, sort of looking off camera and smoking a cigarette. Then, they told to different study groups that the person was (1) a mass murderer (2) a scientist (3) a farmer (4) a blind person and many things else, and asked what gave him away. The answer - invariably - was "his eyes".

So while I see what Scott Adams is saying and it makes sense, I still doubt it'd be possible to tell the skeptics from the believers the way he suggests.

<comment><USER8> Probably depends on how far the believers drift from "normal" mental state.

While working for long periods with poly sleep schedule, and getting into that hypomanic idea-spewing region, I'll scare myself by looking in the mirror: my eyes are WIDE, with eyelids not touching iris. Is that how I really look to everyone? Yep. But my eyes feel normal at the time, if a bit cold. If I force them to look like a normal person's eyes, they feel warm and half-closed as if I'm sleepy. That's it! In high creativity "flow" mode, I'm really _really_ awake and I'm paying attention to my entire visual field. Perhaps it's akin to looking frightened. In order to see possible approaching dangers, you pull your eyelids back so they don't block peripheral vision as much. You don't necessarily roll your eyes, but when your eyelids are so wide open, any glancing to the side exposes the whites of your eyes. Very noticeable to onlookers. (So then when I go out in public, I have to make sure to squint and pretend to look sleepy!)

Sheer speculation: ancient tribes might survive better if their members evolved to display certain unconscious instinctual facial expressions. The look of feverish sickness says "stay away, infection danger." But the wide- eyed crazed/fearful expression also gives the community warning to back off and avoid unexpected behavior. When I've put myself into an extreme creative state, I'll notice that my eyes feel cold w/wide open lids exposing more surface. I think to myself "Yep, automatic craziness-warning system been triggered."

Imagine what might happen if heavily-armed and mentally unstable tribe members DIDN'T display any signs that they'd consumed alkaloid plants or mushrooms or alcohol ...or had just gone without sleep for two weeks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always thought they were just rolling their eyes at me, but now I know they're deeply engaged in imagining that they're somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER10> If pupils really will widen when you look at someone you love, then that's a cool idea for mobile app "Love detector".

<comment><USER11> "Hold still, baby, hold still. This won't take more than two seconds."

(Version for people on iOS with an iPhone 3G: "Holy still, baby, hold still. This won't take more than forty five seconds.")

<comment><USER12> "You're in a desert, walking along the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach over and flip the tortoise on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone link to some pictures or videos as an example of what this looks like?

<comment><USER14> I can tell you one form.

I'd never met Maoris (native New Zealanders) until a few years ago. When I first did, I was quite freaked out because I'd be having friendly conversations about common topics with people who were smiling, yet their eyes made them look like they want to kill me.

Look in the mirror and say something in whatever tone you like.

Then repeat, exactly, but:

* tilt you head back

* open your eyes a little further.

Suddenly you're insane, even though you're saying something quite normal.

My understanding is that Maoris, being a tribal culture, have a certain threatening, warrior body language. They're not actually threatening you, they're just being a normal guy in Maori society, and part of being a man is looking tough. I validated this a few years later when my next door neighbor in Australia ended up becoming a close friend, and used the behavior to my own advantage to avoid being attacked without saying anything to escalate the situation when I lived in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh boy when I get those I'm generally also completely zoned out of my mind. It's like everything else shuts down.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've had a friend describe my 'crazy eyes' as 'watching an eagle soar', which really caught me off guard because I had no idea that I looked any different. Since then I have made a conscious effort to give my full attention to people. It's not easy though - ideas erupt.

<comment><USER17> When I zone out, basically day dreaming I tend to get "1000 yard stare" eyes, where I freak people out :)

Meth / Coke heads tend to get glassy eyes..not many studies on those effects and the appearance of eyes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hate looking at people when I have crazy eyes...I get incredibly self conscious, because I'm sure that they think I look completely nuts. Squinting and claiming I'm really tired helps.</comment>


On Fake Instagram, a Chance to Be Real - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/fashion/instagram-finstagram-fake-account.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur <comment><USER3> This is really fascinating, and I've heard similar stories from my younger cousins about maintaining multiple accounts on FB, Instagram, etc.

"Real" social media = your fake life

"Fake" social media = your real life

edit:

Although, as I think about this, it's not much different from those of us who are a generation or two removed from the people in the story.

I was on a call with a salesperson from a large company last week, so I googled him to put a face to a name.

His linkedin featured a professional picture with a suit and tie, paragraphs written in the third person (like account executives have biographers?), and we had a dozen mutual connections in common. Connected with 500+ people.

His facebook profile told a very different story of vacations, beach voleyball, parties, family events, and life. Connected with 100 people.

</comment><comment><USER4> what gets me is how hard facebook doubles down on the "single account + real name = authenticity" excuse. it's the exact antithesis of authenticity - <USER2> more people you have following a single account, the more guarded and lowest- common-denominator you have to be in order to not leak stuff from one area of your life into another.

<comment><USER5> I think that approach had some value in setting up a very different atmosphere than MySpace in Facebook's early days. Especially since this was before people started to realize what kind of scrutiny those accounts would face from employers etc.

However, I think at this point they would be better off dropping it. Facebook's tone has already been set, and the most common impact the real name policy has at this point in time is its use as a weapon against transgender users and those who need to maintain anonymity for fear of personal safety.

<comment><USER4> and the steady stream of people getting kicked off because their (perfectly real) names look weird to anglophone americans.

<comment><USER5> Too right! My favorite crash-course in the realities of names is "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names"[1]. I think any programmer whose work deals with any kind of personal information should google "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About" and read all of them (gender, addresses, etc.).

[1]: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Authenticity is an interesting thing to think about. Beside clear and pseudonymous identities, there is also the idea of having anonymous platforms with no identity at all attached to the created content.

The guy who made 4chan, Christopher Poole, had a TED talk on that topic once: [https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_fo...](https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online)

</comment><comment><USER7> I would argue against this article's assertion about the "real" use of Instagram. As a college student, my interpretation (and AFAIK my fellow students') is that the real use of Instagram IS this small personal community, not unlike Facebook. And indeed, this seems to be more intuitive, as pointed out in some of the other comments here.

</comment><comment><USER8> well it's good to know i've been doing instagram wrong long enough that it's come around for me to be doing it right.

<comment><USER9> Hey man,

Kind of need your help on the VideoCore project bro, where have you been?

Missing you.

Love, VideoCoreCommunity

<comment><USER8> lol really....

i've been incredibly busy over the past year or so, I'm sorry the project hasn't gotten much love recently :(</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you happy with the AWS console UI? - <AUTHOR>

Are there better alternatives out there. It's been frustrating to use for a less than trivial network architecture for a project I've been working on. <comment><USER2> The console UI is not a perfect solution, but just works.

btw, I found an alternative UI designed for making automated job from Japan.

"Cloud Automator" \- Change your way of cloud operation [http://cloudautomator.com/en/](http://cloudautomator.com/en/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not exactly sure what you're asking for, but ElasticWolf has a very nice and functional UI:

[https://aws.amazon.com/developertools/9313598265692691](https://aws.amazon.com/developertools/9313598265692691)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've always thought the the web UI was meant for trivial things. For everything else, there's always the Command Line Interface.

</comment><comment><USER5> On my opinion, they are the best in cloud hosting and yes they have complex but great UI</comment>


Alibi Routing - <AUTHOR> https://alibi.cs.umd.edu/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure this is practical. Caveats: I have only read the paper while sleepy, and I'm worried that I'm breaching our negativity rules with my attack, but I'll proceed: I propose the following attack on the protocol.

Bisect North and South America with a 'no go zone' for packets -- we can't live with a packet hitting Omaha, for a variety of reasons.

I propose that there exists no safe "alibi" route from SF to NY. Any crooked peer can route into the dreaded Omaha and to a crooked NY peer faster than any safe route can go west through Asia. A crooked peer can forge sequential MACs showing a 'legitimate' looking route easily.

So, I would reformulate the claims to "If a packet is never routed to an attacker that can route through a forbidden zone more quickly than obeying the restrictions, there is a valid alibi routing."

It's hard to come up with a good use case for this protocol, in my mind. Especially because we are most often concerned with packet routing at the destination and source, and for legal reasons, not inspection reasons.

It's largely understood by anyone who might possibly be using alibi routing that packets are often inspected in flight, and there is nothing you can do about it, and that furthermore the concepts of safe or unsafe nations or regions or cities are almost laughable when it comes to even the smallest nation state's avaricious desire for inspection and storage of data flying by.

<comment><USER3> _Any crooked peer can route into the dreaded Omaha and to a crooked NY peer faster than any safe route can go west through Asia._

I think the idea is that you can't go through Omaha _and_ have a router in Asia saying that it handled your data within the time constraints.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, totally not practical. First, it is a very impressive paper that got into the flagship conference. It presents and solves an intriguing puzzle.

The implied attacker model: you are safe unless your packet traverses an unsafe country. Wrong in my opinion (RFC 7258).

As a scientist I've seen this over-and-over again. No healthy scientific community exists around privacy. SIGCOMM-like venue want novel/crazy ideas. We known onion routing works to a large extend. However, it is a career/tenure killer to work on that. No grants. No citations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So they use "checkpoints" everywhere in the world and use time as a radius of impact. I wonder how precise this is.

> Our proofs of avoidance are built around the idea of using what we call > "alibis": relays that are sufficiently far away from the forbidden region > such that traversing both relay and forbidden region would result in a > noticeably high delay.

And they implemented a p2p protocol to find these alibis easily. I guess from a starting list of trusted alibis.

> The second contribution we make is the design and implementation of Alibi > Routing, a peer-to-peer overlay routing system for finding alibis safely and > efficiently

My main concern is how can they predict the minimum speed a packet takes to reach their target? Especially with zones of poor cabling.

<comment><USER6> Establishing baselines from the users current ip address to their alibi seems like a significant challenge.

If your traffic is being routed for interception, you would only be able to detect that if you had a preexisting baseline with your alibis.

If there are enough users, we could potentially crowd source baselines for different autonomous systems to the alibi network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious if geography really has anything to do with governments' and organizations' access to network traffic?

<comment><USER8> In the example on the home page, the traffic from Italy to Norway, avoiding Germany, travels across the ocean, which means it bottlenecked through undersea cables, the most thoroughly tapped network links in the world.

This research is of aesthetic interest, not practical interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, but does it bother anyone else that someone from Palantir is on the project?

</comment><comment><USER10> Does it matter to avoid USA if _someone_ is taping into the cable in a different country.

</comment><comment><USER11> The paper is interesting, I am only partly through it but I am curious to see their code and data.</comment>


Steam on Linux Hits 1800 Games Available - <AUTHOR> https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=1800-Steam-Linux-Games <comment><USER2> Ever since buying the new Counter-Strike title for Linux, I've re-discovered my obsessive love for FPS games. Everything runs so nicely. As a mid-20s young professional with a penchant for cannabis, this does not bode well. So glad I don't need to be a WINE-o, at least.</comment>


Excel incorrectly assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year - <AUTHOR> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/wrongly-assumes-1900-is-leap-year <comment><USER2> Obligatory link to "My First BillG Review" by Joel Spolsky: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg- rev...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/)</comment>


Firefox 46 supports some -webkit prefixed CSS properties - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/46 <comment><USER2> And I still see web developers who reject the idea that we have troublesome webkit monoculture. And when you ask them what non-webkit browsers they are testing on, they're response while not literally "What do you mean testing?", effectively conveys the same: "Just use latest Chrome (Works on my machine)".

When Microsoft created its initial version of ASP.Net, it was mainly designed to allow Windows VB6 point-and-click programmers to create web applications without understanding how the web worked. It was a joke of a web-framework.

The irony is that right now, I can tell the current crop of "ninja" web- developers (who rightfully rejected ASP.Net and its ilk) are starting more and more to look like this generation's VB6 programmers: Unambitious. Untalented. Unprincipled. Web-standards? Whatever works, and this works on my machine.

It's quite frightening. I thought we were past this shit.

<comment><USER3> > It was a joke of a web-framework.

Hey, at least it wasn't ASP classic

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure he meant ASP Classic. In any case ASP.NET a.k.a. ASP.NET Core is one of the best looking frameworks right now.

<comment><USER5> Yep, it is open source, cross-platform, with a fantastic MVC framework and an elegant language (C#).

Visual Studio is of course proprietary and windows-only, but it isn't necessary to use. Although you'd be a fool not to use it.

<comment><USER6> ASP.NET Core 1 (formerly ASP.NET 5.0) development works great in Visual Studio Code [https://code.visualstudio.com/](https://code.visualstudio.com/), which is FOSS (MIT license) [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/) and works on Linux and OS X as well as Windows.

A lot of people don't realize that Visual Studio Code is, in fact, it's own product and not a version of full Visual Studio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FWIW, these aren't actually enabled in 46 unless you flip the `layout.css.prefixes.webkit` pref to true.

(We hope to flip that to true by default soon: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1259345](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1259345))

</comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting considering WebKit is moving away from prefixes: [https://webkit.org/blog/6131/updating-our-prefixing- policy/](https://webkit.org/blog/6131/updating-our-prefixing-policy/)

<comment><USER9> this is bad.

remember when Microsoft was the first to ship a browser shipped by default and dictated the standards by releasing it as they saw fit in that monopolistic browser? (for the kids of today, devs from that day loved ie just like you love chrome today. IE invented the developer panel and ajax request, both things you live by today)

well, Google (the irony) sued and won. Microsoft had to remove IE from Windows, and browser vendors agreed to not force standards themselves. that is the only reason we have prefixes. it send the message "we think it's cool, but wait for everyone to agree on the best way to implement this".

without prefixes, Google, having the browser monopoly (since Android is the new windows) can dictate the direction as it see fits. just like Microsoft when they sued them.

<comment><USER10> > _well, Google (the irony) sued and won. Microsoft had to remove IE from > Windows, and browser vendors agreed to not force standards themselves._

What on earth are you talking about? This is not a thing that ever happened.

<comment><USER9> are you too young to remember the browser wars and how Google sued ms for giving internet explorer for free with msn as the honepage?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't blame them. I remember reading how IE on Windows 10 sends a Safari user agent because so many sites use user agent sniffing rather than capability detection for things like touch events.

So, all disappointing, but we (as an industry) have no-one but ourselves to blame for it. Firefox and MS are just putting the user first.

<comment><USER12> And, of course, Safari sends a Mozilla user-agent...

<comment><USER9> and everyone send in a gecko string...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Disappointing, but you can see the corner they're wedged into here. Maintain purity or lose users due to sites not working "because of Firefox".

<comment><USER14> This is far from unprecedented, the genesis of Firefox basically involved implementing a ton of IE's behavior for compatibility with the web as it existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is why we can't have nice things. [https://webkit.org/blog/6131/updating- our-prefixing-policy/](https://webkit.org/blog/6131/updating-our-prefixing- policy/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This specification, created by Mozilla, is also relevant: [https://compat.spec.whatwg.org/](https://compat.spec.whatwg.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, Firefox Dev Ed / Aurora has had this for a while and has been on 47 since 08 March.

[https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/47.0a2/releasenotes/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/47.0a2/releasenotes/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Google is moving as aggressively as Microsoft was with IE, and Mozilla bent over, again.

for the kids that don't remember, go read about why all the worst parts of JavaScript are the way they are...

<comment><USER17> The problems with a WebKit monoculture on mobile are as much Apple's fault as they are Google's. Neither did anything to stop it until far too late.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> New changes welcome.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is making me sad...

</comment><comment><USER20> > Firefox 46 supports some -webkit prefixed CSS properties

>When implementing new features for the Web, it's important for us to be able to get them into the hands of developers early, so they can give new things a try

> WebKit is moving away from prefixes (webkit.org)

Well done Mozilla.

<comment><USER21> Mozilla is adding support for existing wide-spread -webkit-prefixed properties for compatibility reasons[0][1].

Existing properties which Webkit _isn 't dropping_, they're dropping prefixes for _new experimental features_ , a move Firefox (and Chrome) made more than 3 years ago.

Which you'd have know had you read the first comment of the sister story instead of going no further than the story title.

[0] [https://compat.spec.whatwg.org/#introduction](https://compat.spec.whatwg.org/#introduction)

[1] following the lead of Opera and Microsoft in doing so</comment></comment>


Most Depressed Adults in the U.S. Remain Untreated - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-depressed-adults-in-the-u-s-remain-untreated/ <comment><USER2> I'd wager that the vast majority of people that would test as being depressed are depressed because they are in a crappy life situation for one reason or another. I was depressed to the point where I barely left the apartment for 2 years, other than to go to work. You know what got me out of it? I bumped into an old friend who had just come back to the US from an extended backpacking trip. I ended up quitting my job and backpacking for 3 months. It totally changed my perspective on life, and I met my now-wife, who was also backpacking, and we currently have a kid and I have a much better job than I had before I left. Turns out I was depressed because I was bored and lonely, and all I really needed was a kick in the ass to get moving again.

There are obviously lots of people who seem to be depressed out of all proportion to what's going on in their life, and would benefit from antidepressants to get them going again, but I really don't think that it should be a first resort for all of them.

<comment><USER3> This is the difficult thing about clinical depression, how do you know if it's truly a chemical imbalance or just the normal reaction to your situation? Sure, there are these screenings, but in my non-professional opinion they are pretty bad. Maybe it's an epidemic of false positives on depression screenings.

<comment><USER4> The chemical imbalance theory has little scientific support.

<comment><USER5> Google Dr Robert Sapolsky.

<comment><USER4> Google the area of chemical imbalance as an explanation for depression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a line of thinking I see that I wanted to address. The idea that someone isn't depressed but instead are really unhappy with their lives, work or situation. It's been pointed out already that the difference is difficult to test.

The problem that thought doesn't address is how impossible it can be to change your life, work or situation. People in abusive relationships can feel trapped and even when a door is left open for them to leave they won't take the chance out of fear. A change that would break someone out of a depression who is in an impossible situation could just as easily end up in what could be called a psychotic break. Hurting themselves or someone else, thereby becoming free of the situation by being in jail.

I'd like to add that part of the solution to help those particular cases could be to promote a society of helpfulness. To know if they jump from that life, work or situation that they won't die or have to crawl back to their abusive trap.

There isn't an answer and I think that you should err on the side of caution by not being dismissive of depressed people. There could be something in their life making them unhappy but they probably can't find any healthy way out. Without anti-depressants many people self medicate with alcohol for instance which I would argue is a worse condition to exist in.

Anyway that is a lot of rambling to say there isn't a clear answer so please think twice before dismissing depression. Invisible diseases are incredibly difficult to live with for the very reason they aren't visible in a photo.

<comment><USER7> Depression is more about lack of motivation than it is about lack of happiness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The most common treatments for depression were antidepressants (87.0%), > followed by psychotherapy (23.2%), anxiolytics (13.5%), antipsychotics > (7.0%), and mood stabilizers (5.1%).

As a former therapist turned software engineer, herein lies the problem. 87% antidepressants? How are we defining "treatment?" Depression is a complex beast, and does it always require "treatment"?

I had a kid with my wife (together 10 years) about 15 months ago. Our little guy slept like absolute shit until a month ago, awaking multiple times per night, every.single.night. Nothing changed this; he finally grew out of it. We also moved, remodeled our home, and became a little isolated. I have suffered depression, including a period of hospitalization early on, dabbled with antidepressants, etc since adolescence. Never had psychosis, as I am lucky. I worked as a therapist for many years. I know this stuff. Yet due to psychosocial stressors, I fell into a period of depression for a couple months. The poor sleep mixed with isolation due to moving, and less exercise, probably. Gained 20 lbs. I know better, I know my triggers, I know warning signs, but it happened. Antidepressants would have masked the issues here. The side effects are subtle but serious over time. And they don't fix the problem for people with my kind of depression. Yet, my primary care doc would have prescribed antidepressants in a heartbeat. That is a serious problem with the medical system in the US.

What is "treatment"? Sleep, exercise and social experiences? Is there a way to measure that reliably and accurately? Probably not; that is why I take articles like this with a big grain of salt.

<comment><USER9> On a slightly related note; with all of your life changes, it's pretty easy to become Magnesium deficient. Please look into taking Magnesium Glycinate. It's made a world of difference in my depression. (just make sure you're taking at least 1,000mg a day, two capsules every 4-6 hours).[1][2][3][4]

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16542786](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16542786)

[2] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19944540](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19944540)

[3] [https://examine.com/supplements/magnesium/#summary3-7](https://examine.com/supplements/magnesium/#summary3-7)

[4] [https://www.amazon.com/KAL-Magnesium- Glycinate-400-tablets/d...](https://www.amazon.com/KAL-Magnesium- Glycinate-400-tablets/dp/B00013YZ1Q/)

<comment><USER10> While there's no harm in supplementing with small doses of Magnesium, it's also very unlikely to be the sole causative or curative factor in most people's depression. I'll address your studies individually:

[1] Refers to case studies (e.g. clinical anecdotes) of depression recovery following magnesium administration, but the number of cases is omitted. More importantly, there are no placebo controls to differentiate between spontaneous or placebo response and response to the magnesium supplementation. Finally, the article is in the context of severe magnesium deficiency, which is a strong selection bias that prevents the anecdotes from being extrapolated to the general population anyway. (Yes, I am aware that much of the US population does not meet FDA guidelines for magnesium intake, but that's not the same as being deficient in magnesium in the body).

[2] Is a good example of the importance of noting which journal the article was published in: In this case, it was published in Medical Hypotheses, which is dedicated to promoting diversity in debate by publishing hypothesis and fragmentary ideas that don't yet have enough real evidence to publish elsewhere. The first study it cites is from 1921, which was not placebo- controlled. The second study cited is from a journal dedicated to Magnesium research, but more importantly which _pre-selected for patients with hypomagnesia_. In other words, the study examined whether Imipramine (an anti- depressant) or magnesium supplementation were more effective in elderly type 2 diabetes patients who were known to have hypomagnesia.

[3] Refers to animal studies, but 3 of the 4 cited articles are about magnesium in migraine headaches. Perhaps the full-text articles have some embedded murine studies, but otherwise I don't see much evidence for magnesium treatment in humans here.

In short: It can't hurt to supplement, but it's unlikely to be curative. More importantly, recommending weak or unproven supplements to depressed patients can send them down a path of attempted self-medication with supplements that do not work, when proper medical treatment can work much more quickly and effectively.

<comment><USER9> I don't think I ever made the claim that Magnesium would cure. It has helped my symptoms. Hypermagnesemia appears to be very rare so it was a low risk effort for me. I've had positive results with it whereas other touted natural antidepressants have quickly petered out (St John's Wort, 5-HTP).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I scrolled down to the bottom of the page, and there's a little ad to subscribe to Scientific American 'Mind' magazine. One of the issues has 'How to Raise a Happy Child' across its front page, 'The essential guide to improving kid behaviour and resilience'.

That pretty much sums up the impression I get from American attitudes to parenting and early childhood. Behave, be resilient, and when the time comes, take your measly week of parental leave to teach your baby to behave and be resilient too.

Prevention is better than cure: the traumas of early childhood sow the seeds for a lifetime of anxiety and unhappiness. I don't really believe there is a long term solution to widespread mental health issues without concentrating on that fact, and enabling parents to provide the love, bonding and security their children require. But instead, in the US and here in the UK, we make parents' lives harder and harder (especially those in low paid jobs or out of work) and assume that an online course of CBT in a few decades will mop up any problems.

<comment><USER12> The family unit has been anything but since the industrial age.

For ~99% of human history, families lived, learned, and worked closely together.

As of late, the opposite is now true. How can parents provide adequate love and bonding to their children when they both spend the majority of their time separated from each other with strangers at school/work?

<comment><USER13> What's more, not just the family as a small group, but also the larger groups of many families and generations remaining close and connected. Today with so many people moving around the country and even the world (me, for example, the latter as well as the former), those close networks just don't exist any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Some groups, such as men and adults with less education, as well as ethnic and racial minorities, were especially unlikely to receive any treatment for their depressive symptoms"

I know that when I was making less money and had worse insurance, I never have even considered getting any kind of treatment for my depression. Me feeling bad and hating everything was something I felt I could deal with, and it took a low priority over pretty much everything else.

<comment><USER15> Unsurprising. It's expensive. Of course, you probably needed it more when you didn't make much.

Being unemployed is a huge risk factor for depression, but when unemployed how do you afford treatment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are more adults depressed, or are we just noticing it more? I can't tell if we're hitting the next phase of "just give the kids adderall" or if this is actually a problem with US society right now. The current popular jokes all revolve around hating your life and killing yourself, it's kinda strange.

<comment><USER17> While there are many factors, I'm convinced that our most popular social media platforms, Facebook in particular, cause depression.

It's anecdotal, but when I stay off FB I feel better about life. When I compulsively browse for hours, I feel terrible about myself, my friends, and the state of the world.

Intriguingly, Facebook has started doing sentiment analysis, putting them at risk of discovering with statistical rigor that their product causes depression. If so, their position right now is no different from the tobacco companies, in that they know that they're making their users sick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I studied neuroscience in college, so have tried to stay up to date on what we know about the biology of things like anxiety and depression (surprisingly, we know very little for sure). The "chemical imbalance" hypothesis that I was taught in college and that is widely accepted is increasingly being challenged. For example, is it possible that depression is a symptom of a larger inflammatory problem vs. its own disease? Inflammation caused by stress or undiagnosed food or environmental allergies? (People with allergies have a higher risk of depression and suicide, especially in the spring. Allergy shots can help.)

In terms of non-pharmaceuticals, here's what seems to be effective: B Complex vitamins (make sure to get methylcobalamin form of b12 included not cyano), sleep, meditation, exercise, social support, omega 3, vitamin D, probiotics (refrigerated, not gummy), not taking NSAIDS, not taking proton pump inhibitors or antacids, low carb/very little sugar.

<comment><USER19> Please provide sources for the more interesting / outrageous claims. Especially meditation, probiotics, PPIs link to depression or the specific low sugar diet. Good quality controlled trials on more than two handfuls of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of my best friends was able to drop his dependency on anti-depressants (which _are_ a bitch) with 1 well prepared and well managed LSD experience (he had made 100% sure that the substance was indeed LSD and that the quality was the purest possible, spend tons of time researching every aspect). His experience was apparently so profound that he was able to stop all meds and since then never touched them again ( _remaining_ free from depression). Obviously, 1 dose of LSD costs virtually nothing, compared to anti-depressant prices (long-term usage), which may be one of the reasons it is not being pushed by the pharmaceutical lobbying powers that be. There's also a (real/licensed) doctor in Switzerland who has researched this substance/field very successfully.

Meditation is also very often mentioned for (not deeply/clinically) depressed people, as well as the Wim Hof Method.

EDIT: The case of the above mentioned person needs the following PSA: LSD is not for everyone: if you have anybody in your family who suffers from schizophrenia or psychosis, you may have this potential as well, which means LSD could trigger a crisis (but not cause the medical condition itself).

<comment><USER21> My friend took LSD and it made her anxiety worse. Another got an epileptic seizure while on LSD (never had one before or since the trip).

Not to say you shouldn't try it, I know several people who had positive experiences, but it's not 100% positive, as some people make it out to be.

(in before 'oh what they took wasn't actually LSD' from the 'LSD can do no harm' crowd)

<comment><USER22> just like heroin laced or replaced entirely by fentanyl, there are plenty of unsavory cats ordering NBoME or other compounds online and passing it off as LSD.

harm reduction circles _always_ recommend testing the drugs yourself with a reagent kit, easily acquired online, because otherwise there is absolutely no way to know what was ingested.

not saying your friend didn't take LSD, nor am I naive enough to think LSD does no harm, just that if your friend didn't test the tab themselves, they have no idea what they took. unless they personally know the chemist, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't buy it. Something else is going on. Look: Pretty much everybody I know is on antidepressants. Are we really facing a massive epidemic of sudden chemical imbalances? _Everybody_. I propose that our brain chemistry is unchanged, and unless you want to redefine normal in such a way as to exclude the entire current human population, the problem here is not medical.

<comment><USER24> The problem _is_ medical, it's also societal. The solution is _not_ chemical, but antidepressants are effective (for many people) in alleviating their symptoms.

Loneliness -> Depression for many people. Stress -> Depression for many people. The solution is to address those. What causes you stress, can you alleviate it, can you change your circumstances. What causes your loneliness. Can you move somewhere else, can you meet other people and develop a social life.

There is a (probable) chemical imbalance for most of these people, but the cause is not the chemical imbalance, it's the emotional/physical/mental stressors. They're what need to be addressed for long term recovery.

EDIT: I should amend this. _Some_ cases of, particularly the severe cases, anxiety and depression are the result of an actual chemical imbalance where addressing concerns like the above won't help. In those circumstances, medication is certainly appropriate and probably necessary.

<comment><USER25> I saw this TedTalk[0] earlier that vouches this idea. The genes we got from our hunterer gatherer ancestors cannot sustain sedentary isolated life we live today.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drv3BP0Fdi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drv3BP0Fdi8).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Health care in the U.S. is not about health care. It's about wealth transfer.

1\. People don't get effective treatment. 2. People start avoiding the system and its giant suck, even when it is to their detriment. It becomes difficult to discern whether this detriment is greater than that of "participating".

</comment><comment><USER27> I would hold off on the hating on antidepressants.

Benzodiazepines, popular for anxiety, impair cognition, learning and memory and get in the way of the natural process of learning how to deal with life better and thus feel better.

Antidepressants do not. Antidepressants have an additive effect with psychotherapy, exercise, meditation, stress reduction, etc.

Also in cases of chronic pain where somebody is taking an NSAID or acetaminoprophen daily, many of those people would be better off taking an SNRI like Effexor.

</comment><comment><USER28> > _Nearly three-quarters of patients who were treated for depression were > treated exclusively by general medical professionals, and those patients > were less likely than patients treated by psychiatrists or other mental > health professionals to have screened positive for depression or serious > psychological distress._

I tend to see this kind of anecdote (data inference?) as a strong rebuttal to those who claim "Oh in the US it's not just like here, have a pill and you'll feel better!" when the people handing out the pills aren't specialists in the field where they're dealing out psychoactive substances. Would clamping down on the ability for 'general practitioners' to write scripts for stuff like this maybe help move the needle back into more rigorous treatment plans? Would it just cut off access to the drugs that otherwise help? Lots of implications to untangle, and I'm sure the pill industry wouldn't be really game to start making things more difficult...

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing that I find worrying about this comment thread is how there is a general vibe of "antidepressants are evil". This widespread idea makes a lot of people who should be seeking treatment be reluctant to do so and as the article points out, right now under-treatment is a much bigger problem than over-treatment.

If you are feeling depressed you really should seek help from a psychiatrist. Having a face-to-face appointment with a psychiatrist will put you on a much better position to find out if you should be prescribed antidepressants or not (as well as other forms of therapy).

</comment><comment><USER29> Is it possible that to be clinically depressed (on the milder end of the scale, perhaps) for years and be unaware of the fact?

<comment><USER30> Very much so. For example, Dysthymia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia)) often goes untreated. Some people develop this at a really young age, and simply don't know any differently. It seems that Atypical depression ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atypical_depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atypical_depression)) can probably result in the same unawaredness, due to having positive feelings to positive situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's important to say that the primary treatment for depression (87% of cases) is drugs, and it's now established that available drugs do not work. A now- famous series of meta-analyses ([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/)) that include unpublished drug studies show that, for the majority of clients, drug therapy shows no clinically significant benefit.

So when we read that the majority of depressed people aren't being treated, it's vital to remember that the majority of _treated_ people aren't being treated either. The very real possibility exists that we have no idea how to either diagnose or treat depression.

</comment><comment><USER32> Adults are screened for anything? When does this happen?

(Asked in a joke-like manor, but I am being serious, I can't recall EVER having been screened and don't feel like I'm an outlying case. How many haven't been forced to be tested?)

</comment><comment><USER33> I'll just say something that might help the lads here. Get your testosterone levels checked. Sitting around, getting extra weight, my T levels were good... for a 90 year old. I've always had the "mind over matter" thing, looked down on manliness and testosterone, etc. Total nerd stereotype. I was so damn wrong.

So I read up on it and decided to take the plunge. The difference was immense. I feel so much more alive. Not even working out, I'm losing weight and getting stronger. It's the cheapest drug I've taken for the hugest effect. Everyone that knows me has commented, even when I was only 2 weeks in.

<comment><USER19> Please do not offer medical advice of this kind. While it is true that lack of testosterone can mimic some symptoms of depression (much less than low thyroid hormone for example, which should be checked first, it is not uncommon), the treatment has almost the same side effects as with any steroid hormone and the disorder is quite taste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Part of the problem is that the cost of therapy, and all medical care, is skyrocketing in the US. We're working on lowering the cost with online therapy. We use a break-fix model where you only pay if we help fix your issues.

[http://cheeseburgertherapy.com](http://cheeseburgertherapy.com)

</comment><comment><USER35> Untreated meaning what? Un-medicated? I don't see that as a bad thing. The cause of depression is seldom one that medication alone can overcome.

Therapists... they're probably useful for some people.

For others, man what they wouldn't give to just have a few more friends, or something to do / some place to go where they felt welcome and needed. Medication doesn't help give people purpose or cure the underlying behavior that prevents them from building friendships.

This is a complicated thing, since there's no guaranteed cure for everyone, there's no reason to be concerned if people seek different ways to combat this deeply personal problem they face.

Some generic advice... eat healthy, get some exercise in the sun, keep your room clear from distractions (tv / laptops / cellphones) so you can sleep... just do the best you can. One foot in front of the other. Try and be social if you have the energy for it.

<comment><USER30> Untreated means that there aren't therapists nor medications for the person.

I agree that therapy isn't for everyone. However, some people are truly helped by therapists, especially if they are lacking life skills or coping mechanisms.

Those people that just want to have a few more friends or something to do where they are accepted? Well, medicine can help with that at times, depending on the situation. If they don't have friends because they work too much, and can't go places because of money or disability, the medication won't help them solve those things. The crappy thing is, however, is that some folks that are depressed long for these things, but they can't get out from under the fog enough to actually do anything about it. Medication often clears up the fog enough to be a productive person.

It is a complicated thing. It isn't a problem if people seek different ways, but that should include being ok with folks taking medication.

Your generic advice? Honestly, it just doesn't work for a lot of people with depression. Eating healthy and exercise is great if you have the motivation to do it: Not so sound advice if you can barely get the energy up to have clean clothing. _One damning effect of depression is an absolute void of motivation to do anything_ What do you do if the distractions keeping you from sleeping are the thoughts in your head? _Rumination and worry is a horrible thing_ They already are doing the best they can just by barely making it through a workday. Try and be social with a depressed and warped view of the world? That's a mighty difficult thing to strive for.

The whole point is that if it were possible to just do a few simple things and think or act your way to happiness, it'd not be such an issue. But not everyone can even get to that point.

<comment><USER35> Listen, without getting into too much detail, the root of solving depression is always the realization that you aren't powerless and you aren't worthless. You can do things, you can improve, you can add value to the lives of others, you can have the life you want... small steps get you there.

Letting yourself get into that rut, that dark space, it's very hard to get out of that. Medication, friends, therapy, success... if you're convinced you are worthless and that there's no point to anything... it won't matter what you have going since you won't see it.

Avoiding that, through some simple activities, is what I think is helpful. The focus of "curing" depression has to be preventing yourself from falling back into it.

And get a dog. They love you, they force you to get some exercise, and you always feel small accomplishments being able to take care of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> They forgot to mention the corollary: most treated adults remain depressed.

</comment><comment><USER37> Note: Most [of] Depressed Adults in the U.S. Remain Untreated.

Not how I initially read it: [The] Most Depressed Adults in the U.S. Remain Untreated.

<comment><USER38> I know, right ? I am not a native speaker and more often than not I can't figure out how to interpret such short titles, especially when it throws grammar out of the window in order to get something shorter. And yet they chose to take special care and went on capitalizing some words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How very depressing.</comment>


Ask HN: Any tool that can crawl and produce stats like avg/median/p90 pagesize? - <AUTHOR> I am looking for a fast tool that can quickly crawl a subset of pages and come up with a number like the average/p90 stats for webpage size, request size etc <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/sitespeedio/sitespeed.io](https://github.com/sitespeedio/sitespeed.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you. using it right away</comment></comment>


Would Google make more money if they charged 1 cent per search? - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/answers/2981153/Would-Google-search-make-more-money-if-they-charged-1-cent-per-search <comment><USER2> I would pay more than that for a version of Google which searches exactly for what I input like in the old days, and doesn't try to guess what I'm trying to search for with some nonsense NLP while ignoring half of my query

<comment><USER3> Do you have proof they're applying NLP?

<comment><USER2> I meant natural language processing, is that not what they're doing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They would until someone replaced them with a free service.</comment>


Ask HN: Ruby/RoR, where to begin? - <AUTHOR>

So, several articles have appeared lately, talking about the fast-moving nature of RoR, and its ecosystem. Any information on getting into RoR from the PHP world, books/ebooks, sites, blogs, tools. I've heard a lot about RVMs, etc... but sifting through current and old pages, finding "good" tutorials, and so on is quite the undertaking. <comment><USER2> Good for you. I've started working with Ruby and RoR about three weeks ago now, also from PHP. These are some of the the things I've read/watched to get a grasp on the whole:

Why's Poignent Guide To Ruby <http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/>

I found the RailsCasts invaluable. It's great to just see someone code stuff, instead of finished examples: <http://railscasts.com/>

Read every one of the Rails guides: <http://guides.rubyonrails.org/>

I started reading Russ Olsen's Eloquent Ruby yesterday, which is absolutely awesome. I'm already half way trough. Wish he could rewrite every programming book I ever read. [http://www.amazon.com/Eloquent-Ruby-Addison-Wesley- Professio...](http://www.amazon.com/Eloquent-Ruby-Addison-Wesley- Professional/dp/0321584104)

It felt really daunting at first, because it seems there's so much new stuff to learn (Ruby, Rails, Passenger/Phusion, Gems, Capistrano, RVM, Rake, db migrations, etc etc). But hang in there. As I said, I started only a couple of weeks ago and already feel like I never want to go back.

</comment><comment><USER3> Michael Hartl's "Rails Tutorial" is probably one of the most up-to-date and comprehensive tutorials: <http://ruby.railstutorial.org/>

There's also the latest Agile Rails Development book, which covers 3.0.x: [http://pragprog.com/titles/rails4/agile-web-development- with...](http://pragprog.com/titles/rails4/agile-web-development-with-rails)

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently used the Apress book "Beginning Rails 3," and I thought it was very well done and easy to understand for a beginner. It takes you through the building of a basic blog application and touches on pretty much all the important areas. I found the more involved tutorials on the web a little hard to follow for some reason.

After you have the basic understanding from a book or otherwise, the best thing to do is just start on your own project and rely on Google/Stack Overflow when you hit a roadblock.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll throw in my two cents on this one. If you don't feel like reading then you should pop on over to NetTuts and check out their "Ruby for Newbies" screencast. There are 11 of them I believe and you can find the first one here: <http://goo.gl/jBBY>

In addition to Ruby for Newbies they have loads of other tutorials and videos that aren't limited to just Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER6> TryRuby.org and Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby are good foundations for Ruby. Then RailsForZombies.com is a completely browser based interactive tutorial for Ruby on Rails, from there I too would recommend the Rails Tutorial which just got a Rails 3.1 Chapter today.

</comment><comment><USER7> Learning Ruby and Rails, where would you start? [http://ontwik.com/ruby/learning-ruby-and-rails-where- would-y...](http://ontwik.com/ruby/learning-ruby-and-rails-where-would-you- start/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I am working through this tutorial right now and it is phenomenally useful. Explains exactly the right amount for me: <http://ruby.railstutorial.org/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I will have to say <http://www.codeschool.com/> , try the Zombie Rails tutorial, the best learning tool out there by far

</comment><comment><USER10> RailsCasts is a great resource: <http://railscasts.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> To better understand Ruby itself, which is critical:

<http://rubykoans.com/></comment>


"We call it RSS" – an ambitious founder raises $400M at $8b valuation - <AUTHOR> https://www.theolognion.com/we-call-it-rss/ <comment><USER2> Too funny. In other related SV parody news to give you a great big laugh: [0]

[0] [https://www.theolognion.com/vc-hospitalized-for- overexciteme...](https://www.theolognion.com/vc-hospitalized-for- overexcitement-after-hearing-about-serverless-no-code-nosql-blockchain- startup/)</comment>


Reinventing Home Directories – systemd-homed [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cfp.all-systems-go.io/media/homed-asg2019.pdf <comment><USER2> What a good idea.

Here's the hyperlinkified link to the {systemd-homed.service, systemd- userdbd.service, homectl, userdbctl} sources from the PDF: [https://github.com/poettering/systemd/tree/homed](https://github.com/poettering/systemd/tree/homed)

Hadn't heard of varlink: [https://varlink.org/](https://varlink.org/)

Is there a FIPS-like subset of the most-widely-available LUKS configs? Otherwise home directories won't work on systems that have a limited set of LUKS modules.</comment>


Why Libertarianism, Bitcoins are wrong  A discussion... - <AUTHOR> http://ozeanmedia.com/political-consulting/why-libertarianism-is-wrong/

<comment><USER2> Answers to criticisms

1) Just plain not true. Ls want to make their own decisions on who they help and when. That is true charity.

2) True, but no more than any other believe system

3) The given example is nonsense. Someone just surfed a 100' wave in Europe. Should that have been illegal? On the flip side, if someone wants to die (on purpose), it would be cruel to make them live.

4) I have yet to find any system that solves this problem well. We have a big government now and have problems. China has an even bigger government and has problems. Therefor, I don't see any indication that larger government/more regulation has a positive effect on pollution.

5) By the example given, sound is considered pollution. You are not allowed to pollute other peoples property.

6) I'm not sure I know of anything to back that up. Most monopolies I know of are granted by the government. AT&T and USPS are two examples.

7) We are far from a libertarian nation, but we still have a whole bunch of choices. What are a few more?

8) Not too many Libertarian want to live in isolation. Just like everyone else. I think the problem is that the author is confused on the definition of freedom. Freedom is the absence of coercion.

9) So, you've had a few drinks with not too intelligent folks that haven't given a though to how a truely free society would work. I guess it can't be done then.</comment>


How can I learn C++? - <AUTHOR> I've used Codecademy to get started with programming in general--is there some similar website teaching C++? <comment><USER2> I think this is a really good book

[http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Principles-Practice- Using-...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Principles-Practice- Using-C/dp/0321543726)

It is by Bjarne Stroustrup the inventor of C++.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=learn+c%2B%2B+online](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=learn+c%2B%2B+online)

</comment><comment><USER4> You learn programming languages the same way you learn real languages, use it.

Pick a project and do it.</comment>


SecondMarket Opens Institutional Bitcoin Trading, 25 BTC Minimum - <AUTHOR> https://coinreport.net/secondmarket-institutional-btc-trading/

<comment><USER2> US $13K is laughably small for an "institutional" block. Block trading in US equities is more like 10000 shares (keep in mind 100 shares is "one lot" i.e. the minimum quantity for typical orders). Since BTC is trading around the same dollar value as GOOG now, imagine what would happen if someone announced institutional trading with a minimum quantity of 25 shares of GOOG. It's a decent chunk of change for your IRA, but doesn't even register for an institution.

If the goal is to facilitate large orders, the minimum quantity should be at least 1000 BTC. Institutional traders would not pick up the phone for less than that.

<comment><USER3> Why would it matter to an institution what the minimum is? If they want to purchase 1000 BTC instead of 25, would SecondMarket actually force them to make forty 25 BTC purchases?

<comment><USER4> I believe that he is putting it into perspective in case that some people believe that 25BTC is too high of a minimum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do they let you short Btc?

<comment><USER6> I assume you mean to say that you think this is a lousy idea and indicates that BTC/USD is about to fall. However, if you're serious, the answer is that while there is no mechanism to short BTC/fiat like you can a NYSE-traded equity, there are venues in which you can buy and sell BTC/fiat futures, like ICBIT. You can also participate in "betting" pools, which are derivatives similar to certain types of options, such as BTCLevels and BTCOracle.

Caveat emptor, obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> On my iPhone Chrome, no actual article appears. Just headline and comments.

<comment><USER8> Works just fine on my iPhone 4 Chrome</comment></comment>


A new year, a better waffle - <AUTHOR> http://blog.waffle.io/a-new-year-a-better-waffle/ <comment><AUTHOR> Waffle is a kanban board based on GitHub issues. My cofounder put this in a few months ago and I've been using this daily since - not sure what their plans are but for the two of us it's been $free.</comment>


How to make sure your talk doesn't suck (2011) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/talks/talk.pdf <comment><USER2> The biggest signal of someone being an amateur when speaking (or writing) is discussion of the process of creating the presentation. Polished professional speakers don't talk about "when I started writing working on this presentation, I wasn't sure how to talk about X." They just put together a presentation describing the result or topic and present it without talking about all the work that it took to create. The process of creating it seems very salient and novel to the creator at the time of creation, but the audience doesn't care.

People who are nervous or give public talks only rarely will regularly fall into this trap. I think it's related to self-handicapping in presentations, but is distinct, and I have not seen it mentioned in looking at a few "presentation pitfalls" articles.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this happens in writing too. Steven Pinker has a great name for it: "self-conscious style" (in the book _The Sense of Style_ ). That's where you insert yourself into the text in a way that's irrelevant to the subject matter.

He instead advocates that you write in "classic style", which is basically talking about X, as you say. There is something in the world, and I am going to show it through words.

He also talks about the "academic style" of writing, and has some funny examples of it. One big part of that is obscuring the prose so that you can never be proven wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pleased, but not surprised, to see the thought and effort Tong puts into communicating ideas. His notes on Quantum Field Theory are still an excellent go-to introduction for masters students and sheds light on a number of otherwise tricky to pin down ideas and topics. And, somehow, makes them seem comprehensible and straightforward for the must part.

As for this, the bit about never going over time is incredibly valuable advice, and one I /still/ see regularly ignored, often flagrantly, in Physics seminars.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good advice, obviously, but there are different types of practice. I was always grateful that, amongst other things, my (wider) research group had weekly meetings with talks, mostly from students who were all expected to do it to get practice and friendly feedback. The next level up was a national conference, where you got the chance to do a short talk in a sympathetic atmosphere, where it was frowned on to be hard on students. It was common to rehearse talks for major meetings in front of the group too for comments.

I've been horrified on occasion subsequently to see students thrown in completely cold to give important talks, including at major international meetings.

</comment><comment><USER6> The link to the article on slide 26:

Suggestions For Giving Talks \- Robert Geroch (Enrico Fermi Institute)

[https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9703019](https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9703019)

</comment><comment><USER7> For beginning speakers, I feel the number one piece of advice is to practice the talk. Practice to an empty room if necessary, all the way through. If you're like me, it's extremely painful the whole time, but I always regretted not practicing enough.

<comment><USER8> I agree. My rule for my own preparation is to practice out loud, end to end, 10 times. After 3 it always seems pointless, but I don't let myself off the hook. If I know my audience and my message - I can actually think on my feet and answer questions with respectful consideration. YEMV. Good luck to anyone public speaking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Telling people to use a laser pointer instead of a mouse pointer is terrible advice.

Design slides to work without a pointer. If you can't, use a magnified mouse pointer.

<comment><USER10> Lasers work fine and you're always able to have a functioning laser pointer. The same cannot be said for any mouse type device.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Y2038 Problem and SGI IRIX and Others - <AUTHOR> Not sure if anyone cares but its crazy to think about all the legacy operating systems that are going to be unable to work properly past 2038 because of clock issues. Is there a larger community project to patch OS'es where this is possible.
I know IRIX is a lost cause because its closed source and I dont see HPE making any changes to that...
Is there a Y2038 community website where opensource developers are all working as a community to patch this bug and certify software as patched for Y2038? Without a central clearinghouse where people can check for compatibility I can see a ton of panic as the rollover epoch approaches. <comment><AUTHOR> Link to Irix.cc thread [http://forums.irixnet.org/thread-1779.html](http://forums.irixnet.org/thread-1779.html)</comment>


CIL (.NET bytecode) to WebAssembly compiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/WebAssembly/ilwasm?test <comment><USER2> Finally , people will be able to get rid of javascript wholesale . No transpilation , asmjs whatsoever. It basically means that javascript will die in the long run and people will be able to use whatever language they want to use, actionscript , java , c# you name it. That's a game changer and it's a future standard , so no plugins.

<comment><USER3> I welcome being able to use any language. But,

> No transpilation

You'll have to compile instead.

> people will be able to get rid of javascript wholesale

Modern JS (ES6+) isn't worse than Java or C# in terms of expressiveness. In fact, it might even be better in some cases.

No other language is going to come with built-in tools for editing within browser/client dev tools. Modern JS is going to be one of the easy languages to get started on.

And of course, you totally underestimate the billions of lines of JS already written for the Web.

<comment><USER4> I tried JS multiple times. And every time, easy things are complicated when doing them in JS. It is much easier and faster for me to do those same things in C, even though I'm equally familiar with both. This is mostly because there are just so many gotchas.

Here are some examples from this week:

Checking whether a passed argument is an array or a dict:

        var a = []
        if (Object.prototype.toString.call(a) !== '[object Array]') ...

(perhaps not js itself, but how it is used) Leaking DOM nodes are a thing: [https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/heap-profiling- do...](https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/heap-profiling-dom-leaks)

Easy things like getting values of a dictionary:

        var d = {
            a: [1,2,3,],
            b:[4,5]
        }
        var values = Object.keys(d).map(function(key){
            return d[key];

});

in Python, it's just .values()

Errors aren't thrown when there are obvious issues with the code.

String.replace replaces one instance instead of all instances in a string.

Functions arguments are a bit of a mess.

differences between

        for each (var myVar in myObject)
        for (var myVar in myObject)

random things like these:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2568966/how-do-i-pass- the...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2568966/how-do-i-pass-the-value- not-the-reference-of-a-js-variable-to-a-function)

All the things here:

[http://www.toptal.com/javascript/10-most-common- javascript-m...](http://www.toptal.com/javascript/10-most-common-javascript- mistakes)

If you import a library, they could have modified the global scope. This is common in JS libraries. Then some things you wrote don't work.

undefined/null thing

differences between var declared function and regular named function.

Many things in the language are not obvious and you have to discover them through trial and error or study JS internals and find out how things are implemented.

<comment><USER5> > Checking whether a passed argument is an array or a dict

Luckily solved in ES2015:

Array.isArray(thing)

The toString trick is pretty outdated, in ES5 you can also do:

thing instanceof Array

> (perhaps not js itself, but how it is used) Leaking DOM nodes are a thing

Definitely not JS itself, it's easy to create circular references between JS objects and DOM elements. It's just the way the DOM is (poorly) designed and the way it interacts with JS.

> for each (var myVar in myObject)

That's not even standard, just a Mozilla "dialect". I don't think that's supported by any engines other than SpiderMonkey and predecessors.

<comment><USER6> >The toString trick is pretty outdated, in ES5 you can also do:

> thing instanceof Array

instanceof is ES3.

> That's not even standard, just a Mozilla "dialect". I don't think that's > supported by any engines other than SpiderMonkey and predecessors.

To quote MDC:

> The for each...in statement is deprecated as the part of ECMA-357 (E4X) > standard. E4X support has been removed, but for each...in will not be > disabled and removed because of backward compatibility considerations. > Consider using for...of instead. (Please refer to bug 791343.)

<comment><USER4> So now we have ...

        for each (var x in a) ...  <<Firefox only??>>
        for (var x of a) ...  <<ES6>>
        for (var x in a) ...
        a.forEach(callback[, thisArg])

Knowing JS, each of them have their own quirks probably.

<comment><USER5> Yes:

for each (...) -> It's not supported anywhere, so forget it.

for (var x in a) -> x is the key, so it's kind of inconvenient. You have to watch out for inherited properties/methods so one should check for a.hasOwnProperty(x).

for (var x of a) -> It has mostly no gotchas. Only poor browser support.

.forEach only works with arrays and from ES5 on. You have the good old "this"/scope gotcha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat. I keep hoping for one of these to evolve into a more modern replacement for Silverlight or WPF. There's a lot to like about the .net ecosystem and having a plugin-less deployment story for it would be great.

<comment><USER8> I was really hoping that Silverlight would gain more traction than it did... for that matter, it's far closer to what I was hoping for when Adobe bought Macromedia. I had been hoping to see a _new_ flash container format that was similar to what Silverlight became using SVG and MP3 with JS as it's main interfaces in an open structure (for the format and player), Adobe could have stayed king of tooling... Flash and Flex are still way better in terms of tooling for some relatively complicated presentations, simulations and the like for a browser than what you now need to hand code with current standards.

It really takes something like WebAssembly which multiple browser vendors back to get traction... Adobe was in the position to give us this almost a decade ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is exciting stuff for c# devs. I dream of writing isomorphic web apps in c#.

Is there a runtime environment for executing wasm available yet?

<comment><USER10> The ml prototype in the draft specification repository ([https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/tree/master/ml- proto](https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/tree/master/ml-proto)) is the closest thing at present. ilwasm targets that presently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does this bring in all of the MSIL for any .NET stdlib modules you happen to link in as well, or is there a dead-code elimination phase pruning them down to just what you use?

<comment><USER7> It looks like at the moment it doesn't support the stdlib at all. Early early prototype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do note that aspnet just released their beta7 yesterday and the *nix port of .NET is coming along nicely.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2015/09/02/announcing...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2015/09/02/announcing- availability-of-asp-net-5-beta7.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER13> Holy s __* yes!!! Finally web dev moves in the right direction! JS developers will finally realise how bad they 've had it.

<comment><USER8> Yeah... I mean give me layers of interfaces, indirection and dependency injection that's hard to follow. Class structures that don't flow well for procedural workflows. Projects with dead end code paths because they are so big no one person understands even half of it. I mean, these are such great things.

I've totally missed them in modern JS development, and haven't been fighting against many of these practices for years now at all (/sarcasm).

Seriously though, my biggest issue with JS development today is people that don't understand patterns beyond what they use in C# and Java, and don't want to keep things simple and easy to reason about. Most C# and Java applications I've worked with have many layers of unnecessary complexity for the sake of, more because "that's how it's done in 'Enterprise' software" more than it is about what's truly needed.

I actually really like C#, and the thought of being able to use some of the features really appeals to me. That said, actually working with solutions common from .Net, I've been happier without it. I've spent the better part of my time the past 4-5 years migrating away from .Net solutions to Node based ones... once you get past people trying to implement overly complex patterns and embracing "the node way" of simple, composable, functional modules... it can and does go much more smoothly.

\--- edit:

When I say complexity for the sake of... it's usually for the purpose of testability, often in scenarios that don't have tests, and beyond that aren't trying to target multiple implementations of an interface. Even then, with JS you don't need the added constraints. I know there are "contract" concerns, but what that gets you is WS-* and SOAP/WSDL hell that nobody really understands vs easy to reason REST/JSON services. In the end, having simple systems where you have to learn a bit of convention tends to be easier than complex systems with layers of indirection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone summarize what one could accomplish using WebAssembly with a statically typed language as c#?

<comment><USER13> I've worked with both C# and JS for a number of years and to sum up why static typing is ultimately better than dynamic typing, is because of the type system which gives you compile time errors.

As programmers on the computer all day, the more work the computer does for us the better. With a type system the computer knows what the system is capable of, and so knows what you are doing - this means it can tell us precisely what members are available in 'foo' when you type 'foo.', and it can accurately tell us that 'bar' does not exist in foo when you type 'foo.bar'.

With systems of even minor complexity this is a godsend when you don't have to even read the documentation of a new API you want to use - you just use the autocomplete and contextual documentation to figure things out. It makes code fun again.

With dynamic typing, and especially with JS, the computer is mostly oblivious to what can/cannot be done and you end up having to ctrl+F on method names, mispell something and it just gets added as another variable to the type, you can't refactor variable names easily etc. It's pretty bad in comparison.

Static typing isn't all perfect though - sometimes types do get in the way where I wish more dynamic features would have been available. But at least now if C# etc can be used for webdev, then solving these problems will become something people will invest time in and we will finally see new innovation again - instead of yet-another-javascript library/hack.

<comment><USER15> I have also been doing C# and JS for years and completely agree. JS is nice for prototyping because of the light footprint but as soon as your code gets more complex it becomes a problem to manage/maintain, far from impossible, just harder. From this perspective TypeScript is a godsend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought WASM didn't [yet] have a GC. How are they dealing with memory management?

<comment><USER17> Can't you just let the browser handle the GC? I don't think this is a port of Mono to JS - i.e. it's not a new runtime.

EDIT: A: No, you can't.

<comment><USER18> WASM models memory as a big array which is your heap, all memory management within that is up to you. There is no GC, there is no new / delete or anything else. For the use case of porting C programs to your web browser this is fine, for higher level languages you're a bit stuffed.

I hope WASM gains some sort of GC eventually, because writing a GC in WASM will make me cry. :-(

<comment><USER17> Ah-ha! I see - apologies, I'd misunderstood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would anyone be kind enough to explain what exactly I'm looking at here? I'm very familiar with C# but only have a very simple understanding of the idea behind WebAssembly.

<comment><USER10> The WebAssembly design repo ([https://github.com/WebAssembly/design](https://github.com/WebAssembly/design)) has a bunch of high and low level details. Essentially, wasm is a spec for an instruction set and runtime environment for native apps, and it's designed so that existing JavaScript runtimes can support it. This will eventually let it solve most of the problems currently solved by asm.js, NaCL, and (to a lesser degree) NPAPI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While writing C# with strong types for the browser is a nice idea, this project won't give you strongly typed access to the web api e.g. window. JSIL, which this project is based on, gets around this by making window and other objects available by the dynamic keyword.

You can still strongly type everything within your project but creating a complete strongly typed wrapper to the web api would be a big job.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it only proof of concept? If no: How they develop compiler to language with incomplete spec?

</comment><comment><USER21> So, where's the JVM to WebAssembly compiler ? I googled for it and couldn't find any ?

<comment><USER22> This is what I could find on the subject:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-web- toolkit-c...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-web-toolkit- contributors/sZ8H80Fw5mU)

 _My thoughts are pretty much exactly what Colin said.

Without GC it's not a reasonable target for Java cross compilation because you'd have to embed your own GC implementation into the output.

That being said, they plan to add GC, which will make it more attractive._

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Originally posted yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156709)

<comment><USER24> Yup, but reposts are fine when an item hasn't had significant attention yet (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)). That helps offset the random churn of /newest, which otherwise causes many good stories to fall through the cracks.

Indeed, we invited vmorgulis to repost this one, which we sometimes do when a good submission didn't get much attention the first time. I've written about this at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134) if you're interested.

<comment><USER23> Thanks! I thought re-posting was frowned upon, no matter if the content is considered good or not. I'll check the links!</comment></comment></comment>


The Remote Work Revolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4VnDQIsL_M <comment><USER2> Its still really tough to get remote work. You have to compete not just on quality but price. If you live in an expensive city it seems to be extremely tough to get into remote work, been trying for years. It has to be based on price because I have no problem getting work in LA "onsite" it just ruins the quality of my life because I get to spend most of my life stuc in traffic ratther than living.</comment>