Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It - <AUTHOR> http://www.sugarrae.com/rants-in-bitchland/women-tech-conferences-and-bs/ <comment><USER5> One way to look at percentages is as a quota. "20% of our speakers this year shall be women!" Right or wrong, a lot of people don't like this.

Another way is to use percentages as an indicator of _how well your outreach is going._ If you have, say, 5% women/minority/whatever speaking in the first year of your conference, that metric could act as a swift kick up the butt that you're not doing enough outreach, your CFP is poor, you're not promoting the CFP in a diverse way, etc. You work and improve, and then in year two you might notice you ended up at, say, 30%. Hurrah!

Both approaches involve percentages and measurements, yet the second is not an attempt at fulfilling a "quota" (even if there's a target % to reach) and should be more palatable to everyone while still ensuring efforts are made to increase diversity.

<comment><USER6> This "forced quota" thing rarely works well - on large or small scale. Back in my college days, IBM came to campus - they announced their intention to hire more women than men, to have diversity in their workforce. While it was good for the girls who got hired (edging out guys who were more qualified), it annoyed a lot of guys who had better grades.

May be a better way is to create a nice atmosphere where women feel welcome and comfortable, having very strict code of conduct in conference and generally us (male engineers) being nice to them - this might take time, but the changes would stay.

<comment> guard-of-terra By the way, are "grades" still considered as a worthy predictor of one's performance in the workplace?

Because it's kind of strange when I think of it. I've interviewed a lot of people in my life already and I can't remember a single time grades were brought forward or mattered. Is it an US thing?

<comment><USER7> What else do you have when you are going to a campus to recruit?

On top of that, even if the company didn't consider them, their classmates probably knew where everyone fell in relation to each other. They would know if they got passed over for someone who had better grades than themselves.

<comment><USER8> If person A came from a privileged background, and got straight As, and person B came from a much less privileged background, and had to overcome many hurdles just to get into school, and continued to fight to stay in school, and got Bs, which person would you want on your team?

I'm not saying that's definitely the case here, just that grades alone don't tell the whole story.

<comment><USER9> The one that will produce more value for my company. In many cases, that person is person A.

I don't care if you were pampered and that's why you got A's. If you have the necessary knowledge and are a hard worker, you have my vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Making sure a certain % of speakers are women is ridiculous. I'm a woman and a programmer and I'd be offended they just threw a few women on to even it out vs. to make sure the best of the best speakers are there. If some happen to be women - great! If not, who cares. Women are not being excluded, so what's the problem? Why include women who may be mediocre just for the score? Too much sensitivity these days...

<comment><USER11> Indeed. I'm Asian. There's a lot of Asian men in tech. I don't see many Asian men on speaking panels. And I don't really care.

<comment><USER12> In that case, I will take it upon myself to be offended on your behalf. No need to thank me.

;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's pretty annoying to read articles like this about any topic - someone who doesn't appear to have thought through much of anything, let alone done a little research, bringing up 'thought provoking' ideas like 'did they consider that most of the submissions may have been from men?'. Well gee golly, if only anyone ever had looked at submission patterns across gender and ways to change them. Or there's the 'you think they dismissed awesome presentations from people who happen to wear a bra?' question, which is saying 'you must be accusing everyone involved of outright misgyny!'. Gee whillikers, if only anyone ever had studied the unconscious changes in reaction to a proposal submitted under a male name or a female name! etc etc. Do everyone a favour and do a little research before diving in to a controversial topic that already suffers so much from 'I'm a man/woman, I must know about this!' layman syndrome.

<comment><USER14> > Explanations for women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields of > science often focus on sex discrimination in grant and manuscript reviewing, > interviewing, and hiring. Claims that women scientists suffer discrimination > in these arenas rest on a set of studies undergirding policies and programs > aimed at remediation. More recent and robust empiricism, however, fails to > support assertions of discrimination in these domains.

<http://ateson.com/ws/r/www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full>

<comment><USER15> You misrepresent that study by quoting only that part. It continues:

 _"Based on a review of the past 20 y of data, we suggest that some of these claims are no longer valid and, if uncritically accepted as current causes of women's lack of progress, can delay or prevent understanding of contemporary determinants of women's underrepresentation. We conclude that differential gendered outcomes in the real world result from differences in resources attributable to choices, whether free or constrained, and that such choices could be influenced and better informed through education if resources were so directed. Thus, the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing, and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort: Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past, rather than in addressing meaningful limitations deterring women's participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers today. Addressing today's causes of underrepresentation requires focusing on education and policy changes that will make institutions responsive to differing biological realities of the sexes. Finally, we suggest potential avenues of intervention to increase gender fairness that accord with current, as opposed to historical, findings."_

and what's with the spammy intermediate link? direct link:

<http://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author's assertion is simply that enforcing quotas does not empower women, and that instead it devalues the work and talent of the women who are ultimately represented at the conference. And I agree with her. Women shouldn't need quotas in order to be offered the same opportunities as their male counterparts.

Of course, percentages matter, and the fact that far fewer women are represented in a conference may be a symptom of something else, as opposed to a direct bias by the conference organizers. What we need is more of the underlying data. To start, I'd like to know how many women submitted technical talks to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am from a country(India) where reservations and quotas are as rampant as breathing. Quotas and reservations are disastrous to any community over the longer run.

The only place where reservations make any impact is areas where there are too many good candidates and somebody from the lesser privileged sections of the society who is equally good can't make it due to the limited availability of opportunities. In such cases it makes some sense to offer the minorities a degree of reservation as the culture is unwelcoming to a meritorious minority person.

Any thing apart from this and what you will see is, the social problems remain totally unchanged. Reservations and quotas means some one from privileged class who is deserving of a position will be denied the opportunity, and some one oppressed class who is not deserving will get the opportunity instead. The net result is the whole system will be poisoned. Work never gets done, more and more hard working people are denied opportunities. At the same undeserving people get the same opportunities and make a big waste out of them.

If some one is good, they will win anyway. If they are not, they can't and won't.

Our job is to create a level playing field. So that anybody who want's to, can deliver.

<comment><USER18> Ah, right. No women in tech because they're not very good at it. Gotcha.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, where did I say that?

I only say there must be a level playing field so that hard working women get same chances as men.

Reservations create a scenario where you are lower the entry bar for A group of people. While keeping it high for B group of people. Net result is there will no motivation for A set of people to try anything extra since they are guaranteed an entry anyway. At the same a certain set of people from B will stop doing any good work because regardless of their work, A's are going to get their chances.

The whole system collapses.

India has tried this for the past 60 years. The situation has only gone worse.

Work should be done to help women win _without_ reservations.

<comment><USER18> You dance around it, but that's what you're saying. What else would explain the < 5% female speaker rate at conferences? Obviously the good women are making it, and the rest... just aren't very good.

"Reservations" or whatever you want to call them are lowering the bar to the same level as other people, but of course the "B"s are going to scream blue murder because they now have to work instead of cruising.

<comment><USER19> Or maybe there are just more men than women in tech to start off with (in which case it's hardly surprising there are also more men at conferences).

The problem needs to be fixed at the middle school level (or earlier) where girls are discouraged from technical subjects.

<comment><USER17> The worst I've seen is Mechanical Engineering course in my engineering.

In all my four years of Engineering course. There wasn't one single girl in all four batches of Mechanical Engineering branch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fallacy of the excluded middle. Just because quotas are a wrong solution doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

A tech conference that ends up with 95% male speakers _is_ Doing Something Wrong. They have no right to be "happy with their process".

One of the "correct" solutions has already been discussed in many places - <USER2> a name-blinded review process, and make sure your CFP outreach activities include women-intensive groups.

<comment><USER21> Do you think a name blinded review process would yield a different result? I've never run a tech conference but it would not surprise me if ~95% of submitted technical talks were from men.

If you name-blind the review process you would still expect to get 95% men unless there is a higher % of women submitting talks and being rejected because they are women.

The quoted article suggests doing the opposite of name-blinding and actively looking for female talks in the pile.

<comment><USER22> I never did follow up to see how DjangoCon 2013 turned out... looks like you're about right.

<http://2013.djangocon.eu>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5036457>

      > Everybody can vote for DjangoCon 2013 presentations (Github required)
      > The voting is deliberately anonymous at this first stage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As someone who has organized several conferences, and countless events in the tech space, let me just say that it is REALLY hard to find and get top- tier/well-known women to speak at your event. I reached out to over a dozen women execs from 10+ startups that were well known and all of them turned us down for this last conference I helped organized in Miami in February.

Part of the issue is that you need well known speakers to sell more tickets, that coupled with the fact that the % of women working in tech is a minority, you're left with a shallow pool of possible speakers. Furthermore, if you're looking for certain skill-sets in tech to be speakers, you're further diminishing your pool of available candidates.

<comment><USER24> Did you have similar problems recruiting make execs? If not, do you have any idea why the difference?

<comment><USER23> Male executives obviously gave us a much higher acceptance rate (lol anything over 0% acceptance would be higher). But we also had a larger pool of guys to invite/recruit (more males and more visibility of these guys).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Affirmative action are troublesome, and its good that someone are directly speaking against it. There are all from social to statistical problems, and those problem need to not be ignored.

Take Sweden education system. In the 1990s, they thought it would be a good idea to encourage minority groups by giving them an bonus when applying to a area of study where the applying individual would be a minority. It was a very simple rule, and it backfired, got scraped by the early 2000, and declared illegal. What the Swedish Education board found out was, that in 90% of the time where a applying individual would become a minority in a class, it was a white male trying to enter a female dominated area of study. The concept was scraped short after, with statements that the initial goals was not achieved, and that affirmative action was found as counterproductive to the concept of education. The second part was also reaffirmed in the courts and is now made illegal.

There are also much better alternatives to affirmative action which has been _proven_ to be effective. Outreach programs works. Just a few months ago, there were a article describing how they reached around 50% or above female speaker participation through just doing outreach. They even made it a large point that they did no distinction what so ever when picking speakers, and the only work towards equality was outreach.

There are also social studies. We need more of those. As a scientific society, we should even demand it before listening to anyone arguing about problems within this society, and more importantly, when the discussion turns to causes or suggested solutions. If we do not demand it, those studies won't happen, as there will be no pressure to do so or money invested into it.

</comment><comment><USER26> A few years ago I heard someone push the premise that women were simply too smart to acquire or keep a career in the tech industry. While sweeping generalizations like that usually set off my spidey-senses, this hypothesis might actually have merit.

The short version is that women won't put up with the (lack of) work-life balance, long hours and constant on-call status. The successful women I've worked with all stayed because they simply love it (like I do) but it's entirely possible that this is something that even young girls notice when they avoid IT related curricula.

To get back to the topic at hand, I think the best way to get women involved in more conferences is to have more "tenured" women in the industry. And the best way to do that is to that is to recruit more into the industry and to make the industry more aligned with their desires.

I'm actually not opposed to quotas for female participation at conferences ... I simply want to learn something from anyone that's put in front of me.

<comment><USER27> This is probably what you remember reading: <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> -The author claims that criticism is misguided, because we don't know the ratio of men to women who pitched or work in the industry.

-The author doesn't seem to know either.

-Insofar as criticism of conference excluding women is uninformed, the defense that the author provides is equally uninformed.

If there are fewer women speaking, applying to speak, or in the industry as a whole, there's a reason why. It seems to me we should spend less time going back and forth with vague abstractions, and more time looking for the underlying cause. Anything else is just cheap uninformed opinion. In this case, it's probably just linkbait.

<comment><USER16> In my mind, the author is the one pointing out the lack of industry data. Just because she doesn't provide it does not mean her core argument -- that quotas undermine the empowerment of women by devaluing their hard work and talent -- is invalid. It just means that, ultimately, we still need more data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Out of curiosity, what's the acceptance rate for these tech conferences? Are these like academic conferences where < 20% of the talks are accepted after months and months of work, or do mere mortals have a reasonable chance of acceptance?

<comment><USER30> I think it depends on the conference, but my general impression is that mere mortals _cannot_ expect to get speaker spots. In most cases, the organizers or at least the community in general want well-known speakers. There is no way random people are allowed to just walk up there and present. That's probably for the best, since as an organizer you want to have some kind of quality control. I do suspect that's part of the gender ratio problem though.

When I started to do open source development, I tried to speak at several OS conferences. In most cases I didn't hear back, but once they told me in no uncertain terms that they didn't tolerate "no-name" speakers (even though the signup page implied everyone was welcome).

<comment><USER31> Paradox. You need speaking experience to speak, but you can't speak unless you have speaking experience.

<comment><USER32> You can always start with smaller local events. In southern California we have the SoCal Code Camp which let me speak with no experience. There's also user groups. Build up a bit of a resume and a name for yourself, then go to the big shows.

<comment><USER33> Exactly. Just like getting a job you have to pay your dues in a lower position before you get to be the CEO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's a tricky question to address. It doesn't help that the people addressing it are obviously not entirely clear on the concept of an unbiased sample. To quote the fine article:

 _But let's say a larger percentage of the pitches came from women. Then people are also assuming that of the pitches that came from women, 100% of them were awesome pitches that organizers passed up solely because the presenter would be wearing a bra._

No, people are assuming that pitches from women and men are on average of equal quality. It's an assumption borne out by experience. So we _do_ need to ask the question why there are less women. If indeed 95% of the proposals were from male speakers, it's not a problem with the conference. If there were more than 5% of the proposals coming from women, but the final selection looked like it did, the organizers _should_ take a look at their process - <USER3> is likely to be off if that's the case.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't pretend to know if the conferences mentioned in the story are exclusionary or just choosing the best speakers. The only thing I'll say is that speaking or joining a panel at a small conference often leads to speaking at bigger conferences and keynote appearances.

If I was looking for speakers for my conference, I'd check their proposals to see if they had spoken at other conferences. But at this point, whose judgement am I relying on? Not mine, of course. I'm relying on the judgement of other conference organizers who in turn probably relied on the judgement of other conference organizers. This isn't really a system based on merit, though it appears to be. It's more based on who had an initial connection or a good PR guy to get access to that first conference spot.

I'm not entirely sure what we do about this problem, just pointing out that there's a problem here.

<comment><USER36> One of the problems in the hierarchy underlying this is simply that women (empirically) don't take that first step of reaching out to a small conference to speak. It's similar to data about self-nomination rates for promotion. Simply raising awareness of the promotion case managed to even the rates out, so arguably anything that raises the visibility of the lack of conference submissions by women could have a similar knock-on effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> For a vastly different take on the same subject… (no comment)

<https://medium.com/about-work/405b2d12d213>

<comment><USER38> "Make no fucking mistake that you occupy your cushy tech salary, your mid- level management job, your paltry access to power by permission of the patriarchy."

Oooh, it's one of those tumblr-style feminists. You always know you're in for a psychotic, incoherent rant when they start dropping the f-bomb repeatedly. (not to mention blaming everything from car engine troubles to a stubbed toe on the nebulous yet infamous "Patriarchy"...)

<comment><USER39> Clearly it is the fault of the patriarchy to make engines that women don't want to service and to implement measures that no women are allowed in fire brigades and ambulance services. Hence it is also absolutely obvious that engine troubles and medical problems are due to the patriarchy.

Oh wait, there aren't any laws banning women from entering fire brigades and ambulance services or to take up apprenticeships in car workshops? Then it is obviously again the patriarchy's fault to affect women in such a way that they don't join those areas anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> When you submit a paper to an academic journal, the reviewers do not know the name or origin of the authors, and make a decision based on the contents only. Conferences should select talks using a similar process. This would prevent potential bias against women, and also shield the conference from allegations of bias.

<comment><USER41> Conversely, the difference is that women are incentivised just as much as men to apply and be accepted as (in the UK at least) it's tied to research outcomes.

At least one other article has made the point that conference organisers should aim at getting more females to submit by a) finding female networks and making them aware of the CfP and b) even putting a quota on the submissions. That way, unless something is very wrong with the pool of people, some women's talks should just get through by sheer probability.

<comment><USER39> Oh yay, let's fight assumed sexism with more obvious sexism. That will surely work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is the concept of affirmative action at it's core. Do we base admission partly on demographics instead of merit? On one hand it may help promote the minority, though there are downsides as well.

<comment><USER43> Sadly, in modern times Dr. King's dream of basing ones judgement of others solely on character (including merit) rather than on skin color is considered by many to be passé. I must quickly add that I am not of that modern group -- I still cling to the notion of a color-blind society as being the 'right' approach. Clearly we need "gender blindness", too. However, counting colors and genitalia and striving for parity across all colors and parts has proved, over and over, to cause as many errors as it solves.

I'd pose the same question to professional women as has been posed to black males for decades now: "Are you wanting to define yourself as a great lawyer/doctor/engineer, or a great _black_ (or in this case _woman_) lawyer/doctor/engineer?"

Personally, I have far, far greater respect when the gender and race is not part of the definition. Otherwise it seems there is a message of "I get extra points due to the mistake of my birth". Is that not just another form of 'privilege'?

<comment><USER38> I saw Neil Degrasse Tyson speak a few months ago. In his talk, he mentioned how strange it was that he was always referred to as "a black physicist," since he had always thought of himself as just "a physicist."

I feel much the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't get why this is made to be a big deal. Gender or race shouldn't matter in choice of speakers, it should be their talent, track record, relevance of their work etc. What woman would want to be invited to speak if they knew it was because the organizers want to be representative of both sexes.

<comment><USER45> There is this perverse notion that there is something like "fair discrimination". As a South African this is something I've been forced to accept. Actually what it does is breed extreme discontent and disillusionment in those on the opposite side of the fence. No amount of rationalization can make this palatable. They even do it in sports. What this does is discredit people because everyone is thinking "Oh look, a quota player" and any actual merit this person might have possessed is discredited because of the bias in the selection process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's unsurprising that the "SEO" industry is taking gender equality seriously: They obviously wouldn't want to besmirch their reputation for ethical conduct.

</comment><comment><USER47> Generally speaking, I agree with the author of this post. While the language is at times intentionally inflammatory, the core point still stands: people who have talents, skills, and ideas should get to float to the top.

We work in a hyper-logical field (the only thing more logical is math). Why can't people involved in the field see that the only thing that truly matters is furthering the progress of our craft/art/discipline/whatever-you-call-it. I don't care who wrote my framework/language/IDE/whatever. I just want it to be quality.

This is the same problem that plagues things like education. No child seems to be allowed to be special or exceptional anymore. Everyone wants a damn participation ribbon. Screw your participation ribbon.

</comment><comment><USER48> For all the people who rail against quotas, the reason they exist is because of institutional sexism (or racism, in other matters). An overly simplified way to explain it is where there isn't any one instance or person that is sexist, but where the overall result of the system is sexist. A quota is a non-ideal blunt tool but it is one way to try and make up for the institutional sexism - not with the intent of giving improper advantages to a particular person who may be unqualified in a limited view, but by shocking an overall system to reduce the overall levels of sexism.

<comment><USER38> This isn't the way to do it. I'd be really offended if someone explicitly added me to the speaking roster just because of my genitals, just as much as I'd be annoyed if they explicitly denied me because of them.

<comment><USER48> While I don't know many of the particulars, I believe that one possible good example is Etsy. Etsy started a deliberate effort to employ more female engineers, and they did it by hiring junior female engineers and training them.

They don't call it a quota, but it certainly fits the loose definition - <USER4> wanted more females, and so they hired junior female engineers when they could have hired more senior male engineers. I'm sure that at some point, a team of theirs was considered at full capacity and some male resume was passed over that might have otherwise been considered.

But it's really, really hard to argue that they did something offensive there. They created more engineering talent, got some good press out of it, and I wouldn't be surprised if it had some sort of small effect in making programming a more viable-seeming career choice for women.

<comment><USER39> They choose their engineers based on their gender, hence acted sexist. I find that offensive and will take it into account when having to decide whether to do business with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It becomes absurd if you substitute tall and short people for men and women. Tall people have higher earnings[1] and are better off in many other ways, so should we not be satisfied if a conference panel doesn't include at least one short person?

[1] [http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...](http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2008/05/the- height-prem.html)

</comment><comment><USER50> Do male speakers tend to get a lot of weird stalkers after they do a conference? Honest question.

<comment><USER51> Stalking proper happens to both men and women, and is done by both men and women.

I suspect you mean something other than stalking. I guess, but I have nothing to support this, that the answer is "Women probably have more men acting weird and creepy after the woman has spoken at a conference".

<comment><USER50> I suspect you're right. I wasn't sure how to word it.

I could probably talk about a great many things but have done no conferences. There's something a little too "real world" about it. Does that make any sense?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I wonder how these pitches are reviewed and accepted.

It's well possible for an unconscious bias to seep in and taint your perception of someone's work.

It brings to mind things like this: [http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/1999/JANUARY1999/BehindTheSce...](http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/1999/JANUARY1999/BehindTheScenes.html)

Then again, with the kind of heat conference heads have on them now, I bet they ARE doing something like this, if not actively making quotas.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've seen Rae speak at multiple conferences and she's freaking awesome. Couldn't agree more with this article - gender quotas for panels are a.) a slippery slope and b.) detract from both the quality of the conference and the accomplishments of the speakers that have made it there without them

</comment><comment><USER54> "Another 10% of people between the age of 18-64 in the United States have a disability."

According to the CDC, 27.1% of Americans between the ages of 18-64 have at least one disability. Anyone know why the census numbers are different?

</comment><comment><USER55> Tech Conferences these days are just terrible. It's always the same people saying the same things, it's just a plain repetition of the same straight white male men saying the same boring things. I always think i'm just loosing my time. If i had dedicated the same amount of time to study seriously, it would be more benefical.

</comment><comment><USER56> Where is the + 10,000 button?

</comment><comment><USER57> There's too much common sense in this article.

</comment><comment><USER58> who is john galt?

<comment><USER59> An unrealistic, one-dimensional character in a second-rate novel by a second- rate philosopher. Next question?

<comment><USER60> You know, if you had called her a _third-rate_ philosopher the sentence would have a beautiful linear 1-2-3 progression to it. Consider that for next time.

<comment><USER61> Haha, yeah I'm gonna use that line sometime with your modification :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> There was tech conference in eastern europe where was 15% quota for womans. Organizers solved it by organizing afterparty and hiring stripers.

</comment><comment><USER63> This is _bad taste_ we have people getting blow up in Boston, we don't need another circle jerk right now.

<comment><USER64> We have people getting blown up all over the world. We don't need your pious bullshit right now.</comment></comment>


Postico – A modern PostgreSQL client for OS X - <AUTHOR> https://eggerapps.at/postico <comment><USER2> I use Intellij Idea with Database plugin and it works perfectly. SQL syntax highlighting (for PostgreSQL dialect), autocomplete (using actual table definitions from the database), visual table editor. I can run SQL query, edit some cell in the result table and that edit will update the database.

There's a dedicated cheaper product called 0xDBE if you don't own Idea and don't need Java support.

Postico looks nice and I like the fact that it's a native app. But without highlighting and autocomplete it's not very interesting for me, I'm SQL guy.

<comment><USER3> I'm perfectly fine with pgAdmin. It's not pretty, but it does everything I need. And it's free and cross-platform.

<comment><USER4> I've solely used the command line client for the last few years. I stopped using pgAdmin because it did not gracefully handle flakey network connections (i.e. vpn restarts). Has this improved recently?

<comment><USER5> I also abandoned pgAdmin because of flaky connection handling, as well as several annoying bugs on the Mac version. I was happy with psql for a while (and still sometimes use it), but IntelliJ's DB plugin is by far my favorite now. Its autocomplete is really smart, which makes a big difference in writing queries without having to constantly check various table definitions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could be promising but falls short for my use cases, which mainly consists of running ad hoc queries. I don't like Squirrel, but here are a few things squirrel does that are nice that I wish this did:

1\. Auto limit

2\. Syntax highlighting

3\. Multiple queries can be written in the editor; spaces separate them. This seems to run the first query in the editor afaict.

4\. Key bindings (I discovered that cmd-enter appears to run the query, but I didn't see these documented anywhere nor are the configurable.)

Also, stylistically it's a little spare. Alternating textures per row might be nice.

I do like the live table editing and the quick auto-querying of tables (though, there are cases where I might not like that.) Another thing I like is the query history -- one thing that would be nice would be to highlight those queries that failed due to syntax errors in red or something, to help you read the list, but even more importantly, a search feature (like Sublime's cmd-P).

<comment><USER7> 1\. I don't really want to modify the SQL the user types in the query

2\. Syntax highlighting is hard to get right, but I'll add it eventually.

3\. Postico by default runs all the queries, you can use the popup menu at the bottom to toggle between results. Select some text (even discontinuous selection using ⌘) and only the selected part is executed.

4\. Key bindings are shown as tooltips (hover over buttons for a few seconds), and you can find more keybindings by looking throught the menus.

5\. The history search totally makes sense and I just haven't gotten around to implement it yet.

<comment><USER8> An alternative to syntax highlighting might be query structuring/beautifying (on command, not by default).

And +1 from me for search history. Thanks for building these apps. Sequel Pro nails it for MySQL, but up until lately there seemed to be a void on the PG side. I've been using PG Commander for about 5 months and am excited I can use my license on Postico. So far the app works as I expect it to, and looks fantastic.

<comment><USER9> Can you say more about using your PG Commander license? I have one too but don't understand the connection with Postico.

 __edit: I figured it out. Sorry for the noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been wanting a better Postgres client. Pgadmin works but it's a bit dated. Postico looks promising. Download and setup went seamlessly and the ssh tunnel functionality worked great. This error message was shown when I connected to the database and I wasn't able to browse catalogs, etc.: PostgreSQL said: syntax error at or near "num_total_pages" To be fair, the Postgres server I was connecting to is old and obsolete (8.3.7). I'll look forward to trying this more!

<comment><USER7> I think I found the problem. Had a query missing "AS" for a column alias. Could you try if this build works? [https://s3-eu- west-1.amazonaws.com/eggerapps.at/postico/post...](https://s3-eu- west-1.amazonaws.com/eggerapps.at/postico/postico-hn.zip)

<comment><USER10> Yes, that's awesome! Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For the same price, you can get Navicat Essentials, which has syntax highlighting, import/export, and more. If you want to spend $160, you get the version that can talk to MySQL, SQL Server, SQLite, and more.

<comment><USER7> I'm a single dev; I can't compete with Navicat on features. But I can try to make an app that does a limited set of things really well.

For example, I'm really proud of the table view in Postico. It's really easy to filter rows by keywords. You can edit multiple rows at once in the sidebar. You can rearrange columns, filters and sort order are remembered automatically...

If you have a workflow where you don't often use the table view, you might not get a lot of value out of Postico. But fortunately there are a few people out there who do like the stuff Postico does!

<comment><USER12> I see what you're saying about the table filtering! Very slick. Dragging columns around feels very fluid. Great work, I think I might have to go ahead and purchase this one!

<comment><USER13> That was the main sell for me. Purchased!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How would you compare it to [http://www.psequel.com](http://www.psequel.com)?

<comment><USER15> It's pretty similar.

Psequel doesn't currently offer anything for schema editing, so you have to write your own queries for ALTER, CREATE INDEX, etc.

PSequel also doesn't show you the execution time of a query, which seems minor, and yes I know you can use EXPLAIN ANALYZE, but it bugs me pretty much every time I use it.

Neither one provides any way to add, view, or remove indexes

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's hard to call something "modern" if it doesn't even do syntax highlighting. But I applaud the fact that it handles multiple query results.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was underwhelmed by Postico when I tried it. On the other hand, I've been underwhelmed by pretty much every one of these tools over the past few years.

Some minor complaints about Postico:

1) Most of the time I am not changing ddl. Postico over emphasizes the infrequent tasks and under emphasizes the things I do every day.

2) Everything I do should be automatically logged, and not something that I have to explicitly save.

3) Syntax highlighting would be nice. It has been around in other SQL tools for many years. Why would a new tool not include it?

4) It is a common task for me to compare the schema and data between two databases. This tool didn't seem to make that any easier.

5) I also will log in with various identities and different times. After you have a dozen or so databases and two or three users on each - this did not strike me as a tool that would let me organize them very well.

6) It still doesn't see Foreign tables. None of the tools I've tried allow for visual interaction with foreign tables. A new tool should definitely include support for it.

7) In spite of its emphasis on table structure, it doesn't seem to show indexes, comments, size, dependencies, ownership, and other details that are on the table besides just the columns. (that I could find)

Without having the time to write my own, I'm sticking with the legacy and really feeling old, SQLExplorer (based on Eclipse). It gives me most of the features I need (and for multiple data sources, not just PG). I would love to find something more modern and better, so I'll keep looking...

</comment><comment><USER18> Is this a PG Commander fork? The UI is nearly identical: [http://i.imgur.com/QHeo54Z.png](http://i.imgur.com/QHeo54Z.png)

<comment><USER15> sort of. It's not a fork, it's just the next version of PG Commander (by the same author)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This has a pretty nice look and feel to it, but I've yet to find something that competes with DBVisualizer ([http://www.dbvis.com/](http://www.dbvis.com/)). Connect to anything with a JDBC driver, auto-completion, SQL history, auto-generate insert statements using a table's data, etc. Great product.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm running PG Commander and it's great. Extra praise must be given to Jakob for the excellent support he provides. I will definitely upgrade to Portico.

<comment><USER21> Same here. Great product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am not trolling, but what's the problem with psql? I didn't get the point of a GUI, it cannot help you write SQL anyway.

</comment><comment><USER23> In 15 years of database centric roles, it's certainly the most beautiful SQL client I have used, so bravo for that. (Currently in Sybase hell, so switching to playing with this when I get home is a real joy.) I don't use Postgres outside of that of a hobbyist, but I'll be certainly trying it out where I can. Thanks!

<comment><USER24> What's wrong with Sybase? Quite a powerful database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there a way to get rid of the blank space between rows in the structure view? Besides being a poor use of space, it has twice as many horizontal lines as necessary: visual clutter. The content view with single thin separating lines is much preferred.

<comment><USER7> You can type column comments in the blank space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'll be recommending this to my coworkers as an alternative to Navicat for PostgreSQL. The time limit on the trial version of Navicat makes it hard to recommend to contractors and designers who think the price is too high for commercial use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I picked up Navicat Essentials for PostgreSQL in the Mac App Store for something like $14 when it was on sale. It's more than enough for my needs when I want to visually view my data.

BTW, Postico is a successor to PG Commander

[http://eggerapps.at/](http://eggerapps.at/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Been using this app for months and love it. Really nice to have a native GUI for Postgres.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is the missing piece in my dev environment. Thanks for a great app!

</comment><comment><USER29> I might be a bit overkill because it has the modeling tools as well, but I really like pgModeler: [http://pgmodeler.com.br/](http://pgmodeler.com.br/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I also recommend Induction ([https://github.com/Induction/Induction](https://github.com/Induction/Induction)).

<comment><USER31> Last meaningful commit on Induction was 2 years ago. It's probably a dead project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looks interesting but more like those light-weight SQLite clients (SQLiteman etc.); pgAdmin seems to work mostly alright for me.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been looking for a more straightforward PostgreSQL client since... forever. This looks great. Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER34> What's the change over the previous PGCommander? Why the new app rather than new version?

</comment><comment><USER35> It's fast. Seems great for quick tasks, which is most of the time for me.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nice! Finally a good client

</comment><comment><USER37> Can I interest you in developing this for MongoDB?

<comment><USER21> Can I interest you in using PostgreSQL? jsonb got you covered by your mongo needs.</comment></comment>


Evernote Free now limited to two devices - <AUTHOR> https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2016/06/28/changes-to-evernotes-pricing-plans/?origin=email_silverpop&utm_source=silverpop&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EVN-NOT-888-88-88-8888-Gnome_Notification_Basic_Users_P1_062816&utm_content=blog_evernote_com_blog_2016_06(3)&spMailingID=14846861&spUserID=MzMwMjczMjIwMTYS1&spJobID=802100688&spReportId=ODAyMTAwNjg4S0 <comment><USER2> I just noticed this, thanks to spotting an Evernote email from 9 days ago that I'd ignored.

It's a shame, since I use Evernote quite a lot, but only on about 4 devices. Guess I should shell out for the paid version.

Alternatively I'll go back to Simplenote, as long as they've fixed their data- destroying bugs.</comment>


Your TV Is Now a Computer, but Not in a Good Way - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/smart-tvs-are-dumb/581059/ <comment><USER2> For many people, their computer is now their TV. It's not the same makeup of content of previous generations, but it's the moral equivalent of previous generations' "TV".</comment>


George Clooney on Tesla - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/11/11/george-clooney-adds-to-teslas-bad-news-month/?mod=trending_now_2

<comment><USER2> #5 on the list for any new technology is going to have problems, whether it is a social network, iPhone, or car. I'm sure all car makers had hiccups along the way to their first 100k cars. When they've sold millions of cars, they will have the issues ironed out.</comment>


Why babies are sleeping in boxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35834370 <comment><USER2> The posted article illustrates one of the things I like about HN, which is visibility on the wide range of technologies people deploy to get things done.

On one end of the spectrum, we've got fabulous hardware & code & infrastructure (think SpaceX's recent ocean touchdown), ultimately making life better and more interesting.

On the other, we've got a blindingly simple 'technology' (a box filled with useful stuff for somebody who's going to have a baby), and people fielding it in different ways to make life better and more interesting.

Thanks for posting this article.

</comment><comment><USER3> "There are dozens of projects under way in US states, but the biggest will launch later this year in Fort Worth, Texas, when all four of the city's hospitals start handing out baby boxes in an attempt to bring down the high infant mortality rate of 7.1 per 1,000 births in 2013."

Would be interesting to know if the local government will be modifying any of its infant programs alongside the hospital program. Thinking specifically of crib giveaways. Back in the day, municipal governments had such programs for low-income families to ensure babies did not have to co-sleep.

Similarly, the boxes offer an opportunity to promote municipal/statewide 211 information and referral systems. When done well, 211s are super efficient at information-sharing for people at every socio-economic level.

</comment><comment><USER4> > But he believes the effect [of giving away the boxes] will be marginal. > Alleviating poverty, stopping parents smoking, and improving education and > antenatal care - all these things are more fundamental, he argues, in > tackling the problem of infant mortality.

Yes, let's downplay doing something simple and well within our grasp.

Perhaps we should build a giant ocean boiler instead so we can started...

<comment><USER5> Note that this news article follows very closely to the standard format of introduction-positive quotes-counterpoint quotes. The interviewee may have pointed out downsides as a response to a question the interviewer might have posed, e.g. "do you think there are more fundamental factors to so-and-so problem that the box might also solve". It should not be taken to signal the interviewee's personal support of the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's think outside of the box. Look at the kangaroo.

</comment><comment><USER7> State-based social safety net -> trendy product :(

<comment><USER8> > It has been credited with helping Finland achieve one of the world's lowest > infant mortality rates.

why the frowny face?

<comment><USER9> Weren't you aware? The state isn't allowed to innovate in positive things, only misery and despotism.

<comment><USER7> No, I meant just about the opposite sentiment, thankfully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The HN title misses a key point of the article -- this was a Finnish practice that has now spread worldwide.

original article from 2013 about Finland:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22751415](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22751415)

</comment><comment><USER11> I googled images about this practice and I saw some of the boxes were being left on the floor. I certainly hope that people aren't leaving their babies in these boxes ON THE FLOOR overnight. I don't want to sound morbid but depending on where you live there are places where you can't even leave newborn puppies like that without rats having them for breakfast.

<comment><USER12> What a weird comment. You know that worrying about rats invading your home during the night is a rather uncommon concern in developed countries?

<comment><USER13> That's hardly true. Rats exist in basically every country.

But they don't typically attack humans, only if there is a massive overpopulation and not enough food.

Also, rats climb quite well - putting the box higher up is no guarantee.</comment></comment></comment>


Willpower - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/12/willpower.php

<comment><USER2> Is it still your blog post when all you do is copy and paste an article from the Times?

<comment><USER3> If you wrote the article, then yes.</comment></comment>


Good Guys Don't Make Billions: Web companies discover the perils of putting privacy before profits. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2185113/pagenum/all/

<comment><USER2> Paying is not synonymous with getting screwed over. Money can change hands in a win-win situation.</comment>


Scientists uncover first atomic structure of Epstein-Bar virus nucleocapsid - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-07-scientists-uncover-atomic-epstein-bar-virus.html <comment><USER2> Hopefully this helps them find a cure/treatment. Most people don't have complications from this virus, I am one of the few that did.

Now, every so often when I get the flu or a cold. Or in general my immune system gets weaker, lack of sleep, etc. I get another round of mononucleosis. My throat swells shut, I get ridiculous fatigue, and I get swelling and soreness pretty much all over. I'm then doomed to a week of bed rest and water+pudding+soap.

I fear that these complications will arise and make other illnesses worse as they do with the flu and colds. I really fear this combine with covid will do me in. I guess we'll see.

<comment><USER3> Sounds dreadful. My best to you. What is the soap for?

<comment><USER2> Good old iPhone auto correct. I did in fact mean soup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences

Is it trustworthy?

<comment><USER5> In my view, hopefully that question can be replaced with: Is it reproducible? The method they mentioned, Cryo-EM, is also how we've got those amazing 3d pictures of the novel coronavirus. They mentioned that preparing a good sample was a challenge, but it shouldn't be insurmountable for someone else to repeat that part of the experiment.

<comment><USER4> No, the intent of the question was: do we still have trust into scientific information coming from China? We know that China government closely controls many aspects of life in their interests, so should we consider this an exception?

Or, instead, should we wait for publication in a trustworthy source about "we were able to successfully repeat experiments, earlier reported from China, which demonstrate..."?

I guess the matter of trust is for everybody to decide by themselves.

<comment><USER6> > Or, instead, should we wait for publication in a trustworthy source about > "we were able to successfully repeat experiments, earlier reported from > China, which demonstrate..."?

I mean, shouldn't we wait for that always rather than reporting unreproduced findings to people other than those who might reproduce it?

<comment><USER5> I think so long as people understand how science works, or the journalists provide some explanatory insight about it, reporting interesting science news to the public should be OK. Scientists tend to be skeptical of systems that decide who should have access to information before others.

Most findings are unreproduced. It usually takes someone with a reason to be interested, to reproduce a study.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Funding options, what would you do? - <AUTHOR>

We're in a situation that is actually quiet reassuring, but its raising some interesting questions which my partner and I are struggling to reach a decision on.
It looks like we're in good shape to potentially get funding from a Canadian based angel fund / incubator, in fact there may be a few of them interested in us. The funding is a little higher than YC, but we're not interested in the money as much as the experience that the group offers us. They have a 12 week program starting in the next 30 days, which we would be part of.
The goal for us since the beginning of this year has been to get into YC, but YC doesn't make a decision until after the Canadian incubator starts its program. Obviously this is on purpose and to be totally honest we're tempted to take a gamble and wait out for the YC answers anyway...
I've read a lot in the past about people saying "don't be fussy, some people don't get options" but...we might have them and we've worked very hard, i feel like being fussy is going to be a key success factor now and into th future.
What would you do? <comment><USER2> Three things:

1) The girl who wants to get in bed with you is in almost 100% of cases better than the one on tv you'd _prefer_ to get in bed with

2) Almost all applications get refused, working hard and believing in yourself doesn't distinguish you

3) If you still exist in 6 months apply to YC next time around from a much, much stronger position

<comment><USER3> > 2) Almost all applications get refused, working hard and believing in > yourself doesn't distinguish you

But a strong application and a strong idea surely is a differential? If you have a solid idea, and a product, can you count on your application being viewed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both of the above comments are very useful...

I think our idea is great, i know we will be profitable in the near future...its just interesting to see the forks in the road appearing.

I guess we'll wait out and see if more information comes available. Next week is going to be a big one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd suggest going through the Canadian incubator and applying to YC in the cycle following the Canadian session

<comment><AUTHOR> So this is actually interesting to think about. YC will accept a company that has already been through one program and accepted a small amount of funding?

I wasn't sure if this would be looked upon as a good thing or a bad thing to be honest with you.

Appreciate the dialog!</comment></comment>


Entrepreneurship from the beachside - <AUTHOR> http://internationalbs.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/entrepreneurship-from-the-beachside/

<comment><USER2> This is just a summary of the actual interview available from [http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/entrepreneur/how- i-t...](http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/entrepreneur/how-i- turned-5000-into-one-of-asias-biggest-travel-websites-20100609-xvqw.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, there is commentary and analysis beyond the content of the original interview (which is linked from the blog post also)...</comment></comment>


Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-reveals-why-calorie-counts-are-all-wrong/ <comment><USER2> For the purpose of losing weight it really doesn't matter if the calorie counts are accurate or not: consistency is what is important.

If you want to lose weight reliably, track your weight and your caloric intake _consistently_. If you aren't losing weight, adjust your caloric intake until you are losing weight at a steady ~1-2lb per week.

Losing weight is simple...it's not easy, but it's very simple.

edit: You also should continually track this because as you lose weight, your body uses less energy and your maintenance level goes down meaning you may need to adjust your calories down a bit to compensate.

<comment><USER3> I don't know, if losing weight is so simple, I'd assume obesity rates won't be as high as 80% in USA during the "diet/health" craze phase we have going on. Theres gotta be other factors that we just don't know about, like metabolization, which will be ultimately what drives obesity down.

<comment><USER4> It's key in how he summarizes it at the end: "it's not easy, but it's very simple."

Losing weight isn't complicated. Eat less, move more. That's it.

Losing weight is extremely _difficult_. The drive to eat is a fundamental instinct. That instinct isn't calibrated for constant easy availability of food. We inherently want to eat more than is good for us in an environment of abundance. Fighting that requires a great deal of willpower, which is a limited resource.

Successful weight loss comes down to figuring out how to reduce your intake and increase your movement without requiring more willpower than you can actually muster. This is really hard. But losing weight is still _simple_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They say "all wrong" but they appear to mean "not perfectly accurate." Given that calorie counting is one of the most successful methods for gaining control of weight, that's not just semantics; that's unethical.

<comment><USER6> The author is to blame for this unfortunate headline. "Humans engage in a kind of tug-of-war with the food we eat, a battle in which we are measuring the spoils--calories--all wrong."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, but still mostly fiddling with details and niche cases. I found that simply "counting calories" (more like roughly keeping track of them in the back of my head) as written on the labels and then reducing my daily consumption by 25-30% to be the only reliable way to lose weight. No hassle, you can eat what you want and you aren't even that hungry. Those labels might be off by 10% or even 30+% at times but, ultimately, that should barely matter.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't make sense. If calories are all that matter, then simple math shows that being off by 2% over the course of the years easily leads to weight loss or gains. You've seen this math numerous times in the context of "if you just didn't eat one donut hole a day you'd weight X pounds less a year". If the labels are off by 10% or 30%, then it can't be just "calories are all that matter"; you'd be losing or gaining a dozen pounds a year, _unexpectedly_ vs. what your projections expected.

If, of course, the body is a dynamic process that reacts to what it encounters in the world, then of course the dynamic reaction is what dominates the situation, not percentages of error in calorie counting.

(The way the nutritionists managed to turn "The body reacts dynamically to incoming input" into unthinkable heresy in favor of a model in which the body is essentially modeled as a hapless passive recipient of "calories" with no feedback loop will someday be seen right up there with pholostigon theory, except less excusable. Any time you speak of a bodily process and aren't thinking about the feedback loops, you've bounded your best-case outcome to "utter failure" before taking the first step.)

<comment><USER9> This x10. I lost 43 lbs in 6 months upping my calorie intake by 500-1000 calories a day. But I drastically changed what types of calories I ate. I also halved my triglycerides, and brought my HDL and LDL levels far into the healthy ranges.

All by cutting out grains and sugar and replacing them with lots and lots of vegetables and meat (I'm lying, it was mostly bacon).

<comment><USER10> To a person who vehemently believes in the thermodynamic weight loss hypothesis (calories in minus calories out!), it would be more convenient if your anecdote, and others like it, did not exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel I still don't see this as an argument against calorie counting. When I over eat I know that I'm getting more calories than I need. It doesn't matter if the stem of the plant I eat is harder or easier to digest when the average calories consumed is higher than the average calories needed to lose or maintain weight. I really wish people would just admit as much and not fight in the margins for a completely wrong theory.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Proteins may require as much as five times more energy to digest as fats > because our enzymes must unravel the tightly wound strings of amino acids > from which proteins are built. Yet food labels do not account for this > expenditure.

That's not quite true. Protein has 5 calories per gram, but labels only count 4 because of this fact.

<comment><USER12> > That's not quite true. Protein has 5 calories per gram, but labels only > count 4 because of this fact.

Can you give me more information about this? I've always wondered whether or not calories listed are "net" calories (as in the number of calories you get after you extract calories from the food) or "total" (as in this amount minus the amount it takes to extract these calories). I'm just not sure what to google to read more :)

<comment><USER11> I found a Wikipedia article with the actual amounts from combustion:

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

<comment><USER12> Cool, I'll take a look, thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't this sorta obvious? I always assumed the calorie counts in foods were old data, calculated a century ago, and the foods labeled with those counts have been so modified since then that they are little more than relative guesses useful for moderate comparison only. Add in the variances of how different people digest, as well as how food combining impacts digestion, and those counts are marginally useful at best. "Calorie" in foods have little to nothing to do with "calorie" in chemistry and physics, other than they were originally intended to be the same, but any thinking individual directing attention to them sees they are not.

</comment><comment><USER14> I truly believe that calorie counting is just a big waste of time. sure you can pin point all the macros your eating, but unless your training for a competition or are a pro bodybuilder, than I believe just eating healthy and eating a lot each day would help you gain muscle. some good information on proper dieting is on this website I recently check out called [http://bodyweightburnreviews.com/](http://bodyweightburnreviews.com/) See for yourself If your interested...

</comment><comment><USER15> Despite the fights breaking out over accuracy I still found this article insightful. Eating 170 calories worth of broccoli vs 170 calories of honey does have a strong difference. I'm sure you can still loose weight by counting calories and adding a little exercise, even if you're adding honey to your diet. But this article at least explains why you will progress better by eating stuff that is a lot less processed.

</comment><comment><USER16> I heard some of this already 30 years ago when I took classes in Nutritional Chemistry. It's a highly complex system which is hard to measure and often highly dependent on the individual. Today we know more about the gut organisms which helps explain some of the variability, but like the brain much of what we think we know is still speculation and often anecdotal.

Plus the yuck factor makes experimentation not much fun.

</comment><comment><USER17> Of course, you have to keep in mind the form those calories are coming in. Fats, though energy dense, are pretty much slow release. Fructose, on the other hand, is just nasty stuff that leads to a build-up of visceral fat. Both of them contribute to your calorie count, but they both affect your body in very different ways.

<comment><USER18> Dietary fat contributes to visceral fat as well, and at a greater degree than fructose. There's always some energy lost during DNL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recommend watching That Sugar Film[0], It addresses this in part because as it turns out fat calories != sugar calories.

0.[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3892434/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3892434/)

</comment><comment><USER20> How does the "eat less is simple" crowd rectify with the information seen in this same space that gut flora can be the true difference between obesity and airbrush candidacy?

</comment><comment><USER21> This article is, in summary, a guy going "Well, actually, ..." about a tiny, but irrelevant detail.

</comment><comment><USER22> For some time now i have wondered what happens if one only eats corn for a week.

<comment><USER23> Corn has to be pretty processed before it becomes edible -- cornmeal, corn mash, corn mush, corn cakes, corn flour -- all of these are highly processed versions of corn. But simply grilling corn on the cob? You'll see where most of your calories are going when you flush!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article takes up a common position that calories are " _wrong_ " because, due to our bodies' complex natures, such an arbitrary measure ignores a lot of what is going on. And yet, every time this view is expounded, someone comes up to calories' defense, saying that they are a reliable measure of nutritional energy. _So which one is right?_

While it is true that calories don't measure the nutritional energy absorbed in any single meal, that would be a trivial proposition. Calories are a _statistic_ , that is, an estimate of an unknown but posited number, and partial representation of an underlying distribution. Saying that calories are "wrong" in this sense would be merely stating that they are _possibly_ wrong. And they would be wrong, if the underlying processes are somehow consistently correlated with each other, which would produce inconsistent and biased estimates of caloric content.

Yet, I don't have any reason to believe that the probability that I buy some potato cultivar today is correlated with the composition of my gut flora three weeks in the future, much less that it would be consistently so. On the contrary, the factors supposedly affecting my nutrition according to biologists are so many, and so diverse, that I might as well appeal to the central limit theorem, in which case calories would be just as a good measure as we can have. If today some potato gives me 166 kcal, and tomorrow 158, and further on 163... I don't see what's the issue. The likelihood of a critical event, such as starvation, due to misreporting of calories or due to some feature of my constitution seems so low that I would only very likely trigger it if I ate nothing but one type of food, in the same quantities, for a long period of time.

Furthermore I will never understand those who prefer no measures to at least one rough measure. No things are created perfect, but only made better. I wonder would have happened it occurred to Eratosthenes that his measure would have been too rough, too imprecise, or too vague for his mind. If all ancient mathematicians were bothered that no "real" triangles were to be found anywhere, mathematics wouldn't have happened at all. By such strict understanding of measure and precision, of course measures fail. They couldn't possibly live up to it. An other example is personality theory, which is said to have been nearly abandoned at it's inception because some psychologists thought of it entirely in terms of archetypes, rather than a general description of probable behavior.

And lastly, if calories have been adequately defended here, then I'll also add that ogling at them in order to find what is wrong with nutrition theory seems completely wrong. We already know about calories, and they are a measure of what we know. Rather than looking at them, we should be looking at the measure of our ignorance, which is the error term. If some calories consistently fail to account for some observations, then it's because no one has looked inside the black box enough to figure out what is going on.

In short, it's a sensational headline. The only people who perhaps should be worrying if calories are "wrong" in the sense of not being accurate to the tenth decimal are Soylent-ers.</comment>


The Culture of Criticism – What Do We Owe the Enlightenment? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121837/what-do-we-owe-enlightenment <comment><USER2> This is a great thought provoking article about the intricacies and paradoxes of our current society.

It's a little OT but I want to ask HN a simple question. The vast majority of my friends and acquaintances completely despise philosophy and they have one single question: what is the usefulness of philosophy?

I am often inspired by reading philosophy related articles, as I was inspired by my philosophy teacher in high school. Unfortunately/fortunately I was in another country with a completely different educational system. In this country most people only meet philosophy in a single semester in college and it's only a rush to memorize the most things possible about philosophers. How do I explain the importance of philosophy for the development of our mind?

<comment><USER3> The pragmatic (in the non-philosophical sense) argument is that it is less than helpful to be a Spinozist or Cartesian or whatever without knowing it, and without knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the position. C.S. Peirce (who trained as a chemist) remarked that much of what was called "plain common sense" was simply Aristotle. I encountered a teacher in an NLP course who quoted Aristotle's four types of causes without having any idea that it came from Aristotle. Listen long enough and you will Kant's Antinomies of Pure Reason argued forward and back by people who haven't cracked _The Critique of Pure Reason_.

The other argument is that it is a challenge and a pleasure to follow some of the strongest minds as they make, elaborate, and challenge theories. Not everyone will find it a pleasure. Still, I suspect that the difference between encountering Plato or Locke in a one-semester summary and actually reading Plato or Locke is comparable to the difference between encountering "The Marriage of Figaro" in a plot synopsis and in attending a competent performance.

Beyon

<comment><USER4> _The pragmatic (in the non-philosophical sense) argument is that it is less than helpful to be a Spinozist or Cartesian or whatever without knowing it, and without knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the position._

Because that forces you to actually think through your positions and argue for them using your own words, rather than deliberately obscure academic slang?

In natural sciences and math the simplest theory that works is the preferable one to use. In "modern" philosophy and various branches of academic criticism everyone tries to outdo each other in complexity. The practical result of it is that many people operate under false assumption: the assumption that if no one understands you, you automatically "win". This does nothing to improve the quality of reasoning or discourse.

<comment><USER5> I think you have a very narrow view of academic philosophy. Certainly there are many who obfuscate intentionally, or invent myriads of terms where it isn't really necessary. But there are plenty of writers, particularly in the "analytic" tradition, who write very clearly and succinctly.

Try Hume (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding -- short and high-impact), Russell, Rousseau, Searle, Putnam, or Dennett.

<comment><USER4> For every Searle there are several hundred people who routinely spew porridge of post-structuralist terminology to address the most trivial of questions. So who better characterizes modern philosophy/criticism?

<comment><USER6> Come back in a hundred years and see how many people remember Searle vs. any of the post-structuralists.

Heck, you don't even need to wait a hundred years. Go to any philosophy department in the English-speaking world right now and ask how many people know Searle vs. any of the poststructuralists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "In a world where 2+2 currently equals 5, who are yee enlightened ones to argue different?" Yells a 'modern' day citizen of "success".

For those who feel enlightenment still matters, think deeply... Very deeply about the meaning of this.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure that "present-day citizen" and "the _New Republic_ " are exactly congruent.

The _New Republic_ faces, itself, the central paradox of the Enlightenment humanist's project: if he succeeds, he abolishes himself by converting humanistic literature into accurate naturalistic and scientific description. Having done so, he is out of a job.

Thus the Enlightenment becomes the enemy of the humanist, who must defend his office lest he be pushed around by those awful math nerds.

<comment><USER9> I don't think anyone, including Foucault -- actually, especially Foucault who viewed Enlightenment philosophers and even existentialists as essentialists -- would think or want human-related literature to be an "accurate and scientific description". Anyone concerned with the "ought" does not confuse it with the "is", and therefore any scientific description of human society can only be temporary and certainly not normative. If anything, this view is even more associated with opponents of the Enlightenment than with its proponents. The only way the philosopher will be out of a job is if people confine themselves to the notion that society cannot be changed and there's nothing we can aspire to. Since the entire history of the human race empirically disproves this notion (and shows that the chance of people resigning themselves to this idea is very low), the philosopher is unlikely to lose his job. I think pretty much all philosophers warn against the naturalistic fallacy, and even scientists who believe science may assist in making value decisions do not think it can _dictate_ values.

<comment><USER8> Excuse me, but this is yet another time at which we _must_ differentiate between naturalist philosophy and non-naturalist.

In naturalist philosophy, "ought" statements eventually dissolve into a very specific class of "is" statements. One observes that the universe consists of particles, bits, and joules, and comes up with moral foundations suitable for living life as a human being who is made of particles, bits, and joules. If the universe contained a fundamentally moral component which we could exhibit and manipulate - the same way we can exhibit and manipulate particles, bits, and joules - we would consider that to be basic too. But it doesn't: so moral statements must reduce to non-moral statements.

What one does _not_ do is _precisely what is done in non-naturalist philosophy_ , which is to insist that "oughtness" is an ontologically primitive property of certain objects called "moral propositions", which have nothing whatsoever to do with atoms, bits, and joules, and which, despite the non-naturalistic philosopher's inability to exhibit any such thing beyond "Surely torturing puppies is wrong!", are nonetheless considered an essential component of the universe on a level with particles, bits, joules.

People have always been all too ready to insist that anything we don't fully understand, but which affects us emotionally, is an irreducible, ontologically primitive component of the fundamental nature of the universe, while anything you can actually exhibit and manipulate is mere gadgetry, used to make smartphones run but otherwise of no account. Problem is, the reverse is true: examining things we can exhibit and manipulate, _naturalism_ , has given us more fruitful and abundant insight into the world and our lives in it than any other approach ever tried. It has taken endless seemingly-disparate phenomena and united them in a single conception of the universe that ties everything from the stars in the heavens to the beat of the human heart in grand threads of causality.

When we rely on any fixed and finite system of propositions to describe our universe: _ignoramus et ignorabimus_. As we learn more and more fundamentally independent propositions and unite our disparate magisteria: _wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen!_ And this will extend to the moral realm as well, so that when we say torturing puppies is wrong, we will know that we are describing a matter of fact.

<comment><USER9> > has given us more fruitful and abundant insight into the world and our lives > in it than any other approach ever tried

But this is yet another argument over definition or a value judgement. I have spent most of my life studying math and science, and yet reading Dostoyevsky has given me much more abundant insight into my life than anything science ever taught me. The point is, of course, what do "insight" and "relevance" mean? Their meaning can be entirely subjective, and is certainly not scientific. For that matter, what does "meaning" mean?

There's no doubt that science has improved our lives, but so has politics (which has often been very much influenced by contemporary science). True, technology's effects are quantifiable and measurable, but being quantifiable and measurable is not the only way of assigning value.

As to non-naturalist ethics, I see absolutely no problem with concepts that are irreducible to atoms. Neither is math, even though math was created/discovered by humans, which live in this universe and are composed of atoms. I think that you're misrepresenting those ideas when you're describing them as "essential components of the universe", when the universe is merely the arena where these concepts form. The fact that you can find a causal chain -- a reduction, if you will -- does not mean you can always describe the end of the chain in terms of the first link (I'll get to that again later).

In short, I don't think you can reduce, say, literature, to atoms and forces even though the author and the reader are composed of atoms, and the reading process involves photons hitting receptors that start a chemical reaction in the retina. Doing so will teach us nothing of value about literature.

I think that it is your position -- that only that which can be reduced to atoms -- that lacks justification. Saying that science and technology are quantifiably or "physically" useful is _almost_ (not quite) a tautology. A shovel is more useful than a pen for digging holes, but who says digging holes is more worthwhile than writing? Even if you _think_ it is, you cannot prove it scientifically, because science can say nothing about values, only point at relationships between causes and outcomes.

> As we learn more and more fundamentally independent propositions and unite > our disparate magisteria: wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen! And this > will extend to the moral realm as well, so that when we say torturing > puppies is wrong, we will know that we are describing a matter of fact.

That doesn't follow. First, I don't know how science can teach us that something is "wrong". I don't know by what scientific or mathematical mechanism you can ever make the jump from the "is" to the "ought" \-- at the very best science can teach us that if we seek a certain outcome, we should take a certain action, but can it tell us what outcome we should seek?

But it's even worse than that because there is another philosophical, unscientific mediating factor here, which is "understanding". Being able to describe the universe and understanding it are two very different things. We can know without understanding. In fact, I can even give the last statement a more mathematical facet: that a process B reduces to a more fundamental process A, does not guarantee that fully knowing A will let us predict B because of intractability. We already know that most "interesting", i.e. complex processes in the universe are intractable, so at best, they are theoretically reducible, but rarely practically so. Our understanding of particle physics can teach us little about psychology (although it may assist in building instruments to study psychology).

So I disagree both with your assumption that we can know (or rather, that knowing means fully understanding or predicting), as well with the supposed consequences of knowledge.

<comment><USER8> >But this is yet another argument over definition or a value judgement. I have spent most of my life studying math and science, and yet reading Dostoyevsky has given me much more abundant insight into my life than anything science ever taught me.

And you think there is no science of people? You think that just because our current understanding of psychology is fairly hazy, it must remain that way forever?

Or worse: do you think that there is nothing psychological about what happens when you read Dostoyevsky, nothing that a science of human beings can say about your experience, even in principle? How much are you willing to multiply "irreducibility"? Until it covers your whole worldview like a cancer?

>As to non-naturalist ethics, I see absolutely no problem with concepts that are irreducible to atoms. Neither is math, even though math was created/discovered by humans, which live in this universe and are composed of atoms.

But of course math is reducible to atoms. Or, if that seems a strong statement, math is not irreducible _by default_ : Platonism is not the _only_ viable philosophy of mathematics, such that taking any other position generates an immediate internal (within math) or external (with our other knowledge of the world) contradiction. Both constructivism and formalism yield neat interpretations of math as certain kinds of computations being done within human minds.

>In short, I don't think you can reduce, say, literature, to atoms and forces even though the author and the reader are composed of atoms, and the reading process involves photons hitting receptors that start a chemical reaction in the retina. Doing so will teach us nothing of value about literature.

See above regarding psychology. Since atoms and forces make up the author and reader, we can use our theories about those to zero in on correct theories about the author and the reader, thus gaining an understanding of what the reader is experiencing and how he is playing an active part in reading a book. Certainly science can teach us more about literature!

You seem to be confusing naturalism with what's been called "greedy reductionism", which is a metaphilosophical - and therefore damn near nonsensical - view, namely that only the most ontologically basic level of description _actually matters_. In fact, if we _don 't_ employ our more abstract, high-level concepts like "human being" and "Dostoyevsky novel" and "armchair", we completely fail to make accurate predictions about the behavior of the very much natural world around us.

As long as these higher-level, and yet closer-to-experience, concepts possess causal power - as long as they make our predictions better and our counterfactual models more accurate upon interventional testing - we _must_ use them. Your thoughts and feelings are _utterly essential_ components of a naturalistic explanation of the world.

They are _also_ , ultimately, made of particles, joules, and bits.

Likewise to such mental activities as math and morality.

>A shovel is more useful than a pen for digging holes, but who says digging holes is more worthwhile than writing? Even if you think it is, you cannot prove it scientifically, because science can say nothing about values, only point at relationships between causes and outcomes.

This displays the funny post-religious misconception that values are relative to "the Universe" rather than to agents. This is incorrect.

And, presto change-o, when speaking of a specific agent, I can _certainly_ say whether digging a hole is more worthwhile than writing, or the other way around. Again: a scientist who _fails to predict_ that I (to take the personal example) would rather read and write than dig a hole is simply _inaccurate_.

>That doesn't follow. First, I don't know how science can teach us that something is "wrong". I don't know by what scientific or mathematical mechanism you can ever make the jump from the "is" to the "ought" \-- at the very best science can teach us that if we seek a certain outcome, we should take a certain action, but can it tell us what outcome we should seek?

Which shows a nasty hole in your philosophical education, but regrettably an all-too-common one: you were never told ethical naturalism ([http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism- moral/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/)) exists.

>But it's even worse than that because there is another philosophical, unscientific mediating factor here, which is "understanding". Being able to describe the universe and understanding it are two very different things. We can know without understanding.

You seem to be just pushing words around, but may I venture to guess that you mean to differentiate between discriminative "describing" and causal- counterfactual "understanding"?

>In fact, I can even give the last statement a more mathematical facet: that a process B reduces to a more fundamental process A, does not guarantee that fully knowing A will let us predict B because of intractability.

Certainly. In fact, this is the nature of reduction: to reduce B < A implies that B happens as a specific instance of A, which often means that B occupies a tiny corner of A's parameter space, and almost _always_ means that B's parameter space is much smaller than that of A. For example, in describing gasses, we can describe the precise velocities of every single molecule (the more-reduced theory), or we can measure the temperature of the gas as a whole (the less-reduced, higher-level theory). The intractability is often both computational and informational.

This merely reinforces what I said above, which is that we _need_ the higher- level concepts to correctly understand, interpret, and predict the world. Concepts like "human being", "sunset", "profundity", "confusion", and (just for the hell of it) "love" are also _utterly inescapable_ components of a naturalistic worldview.

It's just "irreducibility", or in other words, metaphysical handwaving and magical thinking, that aren't.

<comment><USER9> > You think that just because our current understanding of psychology is > fairly hazy, it must remain that way forever?

Sure but will that knowledge be so predictive as to be truly essentialist? After all, we can't provide tractably predictive models for even n-body systems for pretty small values of n, so I doubt we will for people. BTW, I believe that those answers we will be able to prove and reduce with any measure of definiteness will only tell us things we already know (or "know").

> Both constructivism and formalism yield neat interpretations of math as > certain kinds of computations being done within human minds.

Ah, but here I think I can convince you, and make a much more powerful point than the one regarding intractability. Consider the universal Turing machine and its approximate physical manifestations. Whether or not it is truly universal is an open question, but most assume that it is, yet they are not perturbed by the following result: our universe may contain a machine that can simulate not only this universe but _any_ universe, i.e. there are objects that can arise within our physical universe that are more universal than our universe itself. Can the simulated universe be reduced to the atoms and forces of the one containing the machine? Most people will say no, as universal computation breaks reduction. It is more general than the mechanism implementing it, with possibly more degrees of freedom.

> would rather read and write than dig a hole is simply inaccurate.

But the question is a different one. I wasn't asking what you want to do or even what you will do, but what you _should_ do. The definition of "should" can live, if you will, as a concept within the Turing machine.

> This displays the funny post-religious misconception that values are > relative to "the Universe" rather than to agents. This is incorrect.

That does not follow from what I said at all. I didn't say the universe or "morality" necessarily dictates an answer. What I said was that the answer -- even if it is subjective, if it exists at all -- does not necessarily follow the laws that gave rise the the being asking the question. Universal computation etc.

> you were never told ethical naturalism exists.

Again, I think there's a disagreement on definitions. It seems like naturalist ethics seems to say "if we know how people behave, we can deduce how they'll program their Turing machines (and they will always program them in a similar way), and we can therefore say something about the programs themselves", while non-naturalist ethics simply studies the "computer science" of those programs. I think both approaches are complementary, rather than contradictory, and really discuss different things, even if they give them the same name.

> B's parameter space is much smaller than that of A

So what? A's entire parameter space cannot be practically determined either (even if A is well understood), and the emergent property A may well require that in order to be explained in terms of B. For example, to explain psychology in terms of particle physics, we may need to understand the interactions of, say, 1e15 bodies. Since we cannot do that, we cannot explain A in terms of B.

Also, universal computation may arbitrarily increase (or reduce) degrees of freedom.

> It's just "irreducibility", or in other words, metaphysical handwaving and > magical thinking, that aren't.

Let me make clear that I am not in any way opposed to the naturalist worldview. In fact I fully and utterly subscribe to it, just as I fully and utterly subscribe to non-naturalism. I see absolutely no contradiction between the two, just as I see no contradiction between simulating a universe with different physics in a computer that exists in ours.

When I say something is irreducible, I simply mean you cannot construct a useful model for it in terms of a lower abstraction -- not that it is not an emergent property of that lower abstraction; obviously, it is (unless it's a simulation run by universal computation).

\---

Of course, there is one glaring bug in my appeal to universal computation, and that is the composition not of the machines but of the programmers. Since there is no free will in the universe, the programmers are then deterministic, and therefore the programs themselves. Still, even though this greatly reduces the space of possible programs (and makes the naturalist approach to studying the programs sensible) I think that few people will consider this (i.e. a deterministic programmer) a useful reduction.

In any case, I think everyone will agree that the programs _can_ be studied in isolation of the universe that created the programmers, and that doing so may be useful.

<comment><USER9> Correction: I wrote: "universal computation may arbitrarily increase (or reduce) degrees of freedom". This is not true for a physical computer, but I think most people will still agree that any computer breaks reduction to its physical mechanism.

The only question is does reduction work when the programmer -- though not the program -- is reducible. I think it's what makes the reduction useful, but it's certainly not enough to make it the only -- or even the primary -- approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _Critique, Foucault insisted, is the movement by which individuals question > all truths, especially those produced by powerful authorities._

But then,

> _If science is contested, the Enlightenment, it seems, has become a relic_

It seems like the author is falling into the same pattern. (Not that I think creationists have a leg to stand on, or that their prevalence isn't worrying.)

<comment><USER2> It's funny how for me, having grown up and studied in Europe, creationism sounds completely ridiculous and I expect that everyone around me agrees. My first instinctive reaction is "No one in their right mind would ever believe creationism! That's obviously wrong.".

The even funnier part about it is that, after stopping and thinking about it, I can understand why some people might not believe in it and how this could bring to endless arguments.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Poetically simple code review on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://text.sourcegraph.com/poetically-simple-code-review-e6804724b8e8 <comment> brian-armstrong Unfortunately Github's code review is still a far cry from mature review tools like Phab or Gerrit. The code folding in the latter reviewers is always better and leaving inline notes does not apply as individual messages. The reviewee can also more easily reply to each line individually and it is much easier to compare previous diffs.

GH's code review tool doesn't seem useful for diffs longer than 20 lines or so. I'm curious why they've never bothered to address this shortcoming.

<comment><USER2> AFAICT this stems from a different philosophy of what a code review should be for. GitHub appears to believe that code reviews should be very high-level, with most discussion focused on overall design issues and only the latest version of the code, rather than detailed line-by-line reviews of incremental changes. This attitude is shared by at least some number of GitHub users, since many people who visit [https://reviewable.io](https://reviewable.io) (my attempt at a code review tool in the vein of Phab or Gerrit) don't even get why it might be needed. So perhaps GitHub is not entirely wrong... but it certainly opens up a nice niche for providing tools to those who like more thorough reviews.

<comment> brian-armstrong In my experience of giving code reviews, I don't see how you would be able to achieve the same quality with just a high-level review. Coding standards and uniformity in code bases are so important, and you just can't achieve that with the high-level review

<comment><USER2> I wholeheartedly agree, but clearly other people have different thoughts or priorities. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've used FogCreek's Kiln and honestly, their code review is amazing. No other product comes close to it. No context switch and to the point.

My current org don't use it and I really miss it.

[http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/features/code- reviews](http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/features/code-reviews)

<comment><USER4> I've always been a huge fan of fogcreek software (fogbugz and kiln) but I've never worked anywhere that would use them.

Whenever I see places come up with lists of options for new issue tracking and code review tools I never even see them on the list which is a shame

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, pet peeve time. Every once and a while Sourcegraph comes up again, and I check to see if they've moved away from trying to do their (completely non- free) Fair Source thing. ([https://fair.io/](https://fair.io/))

This time it seems they have, mostly! None of their code on Github uses it, and the sourcegraph/sourcegraph project itself has gone private. Leading to a broken link on some of their repos (eg, [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph-browser- extension...](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph-browser-extensions)) -- but, hey, it's not like it was required to stay open, so, fair enough.

Now if they can just update their terms of service to remove any question of it (it's still there), and I'm on board. Because I really want to use this!

<comment><USER6> What exactly is your issue with that licence? I ask having published some code under it recently. I understand that it's "non free" but half the time people on seem to want source because they think they should see it.

I am going to put a timebomb in my software though. Each major release will become GPL3 exactly 3 years after its release. Would these terms be acceptable to you?

<comment><USER2> I'm also curious what the issue is. While I understand that a full open source license would be preferable to many, if the choice is between Fair Source and a proprietary code base, is there a rational reason for users to prefer the latter? (Assuming, of course, that the licensor doesn't try to spin the Fair Source as open source in PR, which would be annoying. I assume Sourcegraph doesn't do this, though.)

<comment><USER7> Sourcegraph CEO here. Your assumption is right. :) The Fair Source site ([https://fair.io](https://fair.io)) and our own materials are clear about Fair Source not being open source. If you see any folks out there getting confused, let me know!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of the post and contributed to the CR extension -- I'd love to hear people's feedback! (on the extension, please not the poetry)

<comment><USER8> I can't seem to enable indexing for my team's public repos, only my own. Other sites with GitHub login (e.g. Travis) allow you to login as your team rather than your individual user. Can this be enabled?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out! We'll investigate this ASAP. Can you shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll follow up directly? (Just don't want to turn the discussion forum into a support thread.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is worth noting that Sourcegraph also published add-on for Mozilla Firefox [1].

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/sourcegraph-a...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/sourcegraph-addon-for-github/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I appreciate that everything is Haikus :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Gitlab support?

<comment><USER12> Bitbucket support?</comment></comment>


Show HN: The Grid engine, a beautifully designed 2D game engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.andrewmcwatters.com/grid/

<comment><USER2> Site doesn't load in Safari on iPad 1.

<comment><AUTHOR> :( We use some pretty edge tech behind the sites for Planimeter projects, unfortunately none of us have an iPad 1 to test these issues. We'd still be happy to work on it as soon as we can, though. [https://github.com/Planimeter/grid/issues](https://github.com/Planimeter/grid/issues)

<comment><USER2> But why does this site need edge technology? It's a landing page for your game engine.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's code derived from my portfolio site.</comment></comment></comment></comment>