Living the freelance life while keeping your sanity - <AUTHOR> http://maxvoltar.com/articles/living-the-freelance-life-while-keeping-your-sanity <comment><USER2> I like the idea of having client meetings in one day. I never feel like I accomplished as much when a day is broken up by client meetings.

Most of my work I do remotely, so in similar fashion, I tend to dedicate a client visit day, where I'm out and about on sites.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been working alone now for the last few months and I'm about to lose my mind. Seriously. Whenever I go out, I feel like an ogre who's lost all what social skills were there to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very good post.

I'm already doing what he suggests on Monday and Friday. Monday's are for client meetings. Any work done is a bonus. On Friday, all work stops after the first beer. Hopefully, that's after 6:00 p.m.

I have learned one other thing that seems counterintuitive. My customers do not hold me to the same standard that I hold myself. Sure, they want it done right and on time. But I was driving myself nuts working all hours making everything perfect. I exceeded their expectations, but at a price. Also, they often weren't ready for me, adding to my frustration.

So I learned to relax and have a little more fun working on their stuff. Still top quality and always on time, but it took me a while to learn to "not go nuts" on everything I did.</comment>


User succumbs to a seizure in virtual reality while other players can only watch - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/19/16911408/vr-chat-virtual-reality-seizure <comment><USER2> VRChat was released last year and has been picking up momentum all over the place. If you have not had the chance to see what it's like, it's worth at least checking out as an observer.

The worlds and experiences are reminiscent of Stephenson's Snow Crash or Cline's Ready Player One in so many ways. It's eery, fascinating, and altogether odd.

Add on top of this that spectators, sometimes in the thousands, watch these virtual experiences live on Twitch.tv, and you have a very "we're in the future" feeling.

You can check out plenty of live streams of people experiencing this on Twitch.tv now:

[https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/VRChat](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/VRChat)

<comment> FLUX-YOU >The worlds and experiences are reminiscent of Stephenson's Snow Crash or Cline's Ready Player One in so many ways. It's eery, fascinating, and altogether odd.

It looks more like VR Idiocracy to me. Especially if you check out twitch and see donation stuff and stream overlays. It's just a platform for vomiting memes. [https://imgur.com/ZkJq1cr](https://imgur.com/ZkJq1cr)

On the other hand, if it were super-serious-Deus-Ex-plotting-the-control-of- the-proletariat-VR-Chat, I don't think I could take that seriously either (and would be quickly overrun with Uganda knuckles anyway).

<comment><USER2> There's more to it than simply what you see at first glance. Snow Crash and Ready Player One described the _experience_ at length. The freedom of expression, of identity of who or what you could be. The ways that people talk, interact, explore, and represent themselves in the virtual realities of those books is more than just "how it looks." Some concrete examples are pulling up virtual windows to access resources from "outside" the reality, or the multitude of sizes and shapes that people represent themselves with.

The descriptions of what earlier versions of the virtual realities in Snow Crash or Ready Player One were, line up with the basics that VRChat encompasses.

Those are some of the things I was addressing when I said it was reminiscent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Rogue Shadow VR says he caught up with the player afterwards on Steam, and > that he is doing better now.

Since one of the definitions of "succumb" is "die from the effect of a disease or injury," this title is more than a little clickbaity! Mods, can you potentially edit to "User has seizure..."?

<comment><USER4> I also associate succumb with die for some reason, although I'm not sure why. Maybe in the newspapers if they say 'x succumbed to their injuries' it would imply that?

<comment><USER5> If you succumb to cancer or another often fatal disease - "fail to resist" it -- that clearly has to mean death. If you succumb to a cold -- failing to resist it just means you are stuck in bed with a bad cold. So I think it's probably because you are used to hearing it used with more serious illnesses, and in your mind a seizure is closer to cancer than a cold.

<comment><USER6> You can absolutely die from a seizure. Very appropriate language IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Misleading headline -- the person managed to survive and didn't "succumb" (die)

<comment><USER8> Just because "succumb" is euphemistically used to refer to death doesn't mean it's the only meaning. Perhaps "Users suffers a seizure..." would have been a better phrasing though.

<comment><USER9> Not for driving clicks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is it with twitch and other game streamers all having crazy colored hair? What am I missing?

</comment><comment><USER11> Could the VR have triggered the seizure?

That's one aspect I would have expected in the article.

<comment><USER12> I think it definitely could have, but it's very hard to determine the trigger for a seizure.

It could not be related to any triggers too (audio/visual).

It can only be identified by review of the person who it happened to... The rest of us are just speculating, and no point in that :)

Systems, including VR, should have an option to disable/slowdown fast paced color switching on a end-user level of they are known to be susceptible to seizures with visual triggers

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a "Black Mirror" episode in there somewhere...</comment>


Burn All Your Textbooks (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://philpapers.org/archive/AKMBAY.pdf <comment><USER2> It's not necessary to burn your textbook over this. Just don't read the intro chapter if that's necessary.</comment>


Javascript Screens - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/drkarl/javascript-screens

<comment><USER2> I don't quite get what this is supposed to be. A tmux? Multiple monitors? Faked displays?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it doesn't have anything to do with Gnu Screen or tmux or command-line linux. It is just a very simple and clean way to create websites using knockout.js for data bindings, sammy.js for route system, abstracting and automatic much of the boilerplate needed for sammy and knockout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It sounds decent, but how about some examples?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it is an example in itself. Dependencies are in /public/javascript/lib, and the core in /public/javascript/src/base.

The main page is in /public/templates/index.html, and inside that .html every route starts with /assets/ because I use it with Play framework. You can change the routes to /public/ or whatever.

In /public/javascript/src/screens you can find two basic screens which point to each other, and in /public/templates/ there are 2 .haml files corresponding to each screen. In /public/locals are the locals for each screen.

Hope that clarifies something...

<comment><USER4> You could simply publish those files in a way that we can open with our browsers without having to download the project, and link it in the readme. This would be worth a thousand words :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just updated Readme trying to explain better what it is. It's the first time I share some code on Github, so be patient with me! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ummm... it would help if you would first explain what a 'screen' is. The word is heavily overloaded.

</comment><comment><USER6> So it makes web pages. Dynamically, programmatically. Awesome. [wanders off and deletes perl cgi-bin running on NCSA server]. I love it when computers make my life easier and return my precious leisure time. Please accept my apologies for my inherent lack of insight.</comment>


List of English terms of venery, by animal - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_terms_of_venery,_by_animal <comment><USER2> And a tragedy of telepaths.</comment>


Large UDP packets in IPv6  [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://ripe72.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/67-2016-05-23-bigipv6.pdf <comment><USER2> This talk from Geoff Huston seems great (as usual) but it has not been presented yet at the conference. You can connect to the live streaming [0] around 14pm CET on Wed 25th, or watch it later from the presentation archives [1]. I suggest you also check out the other two talks he's giving at the conf.

[0] [https://ripe72.ripe.net/live/main](https://ripe72.ripe.net/live/main)

[1] [https://ripe72.ripe.net/programme/meeting- plan/ipv6-wg/](https://ripe72.ripe.net/programme/meeting-plan/ipv6-wg/)

<comment><USER3> While waiting I can recommend this Packet Pushers podcast episode where Geoff Huston takes on IPv6 and the future of the networking:

[http://packetpushers.net/podcast/podcasts/show-275-future- of...](http://packetpushers.net/podcast/podcasts/show-275-future-of- networking-geoff-huston/)

<comment><USER2> I second this. I like when he points out that available entropy in CGNAT (ipv4+proto+port) is larger than what available in IPv6.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who works in the application layer, the recommendation to have a fast failover to tcp from udp seems silly. Shouldn't the recommendation be to keep packet sizes below 1280?

<comment><USER5> Oh, whatever happened to SCTP?

<comment><USER6> The reality that to much stuff in networks (mostly firewalls, NAT and other middleboxes like that) only understands the basics (TCP, UDP, random bits of ICMP) and drops SCTP. You can do SCTP over UDP, or use it in networks you can control and fix, but not reliably as-is over random internet connections. So we now have HTTP2 and other protocols now reinvent parallel streams instead of swapping to SCTP, but that's how it is.</comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from Spotify - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2018/lessons-from-spotify/ <comment><USER2> I was surprised he missed another alternative, quick already fits some of the other companies under Ben's own Aggregation Theory.[1]

Spotify could try to become a music label and audio itself, by expanding to lesser known artists in particular. Basically, adopt Netflix's strategy.

[1] [https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation- theory/](https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/)

<comment><USER3> > _Spotify could try to become a music label and audio itself, by expanding to > lesser known artists_

There have been rumours and accusations of them doing this in a somewhat secretive manner: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/13/are- spoti...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/13/are-spotifys- fake-artists-any-good)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Spotify is an excellent product. They have addressed and solved almost every problem users cited for why they wouldn't pay for music via other means.

It's time to admit it: consumers do not deserve this level of product in exchange for listening to a few ads. These users are obviously unprofitable. And the premium version could likely be more expensive, too.

The devaluation of music was a collective moral convenience. Now it's time to pay.</comment>


A peek at the home of Dieter Rams (industrial design, Braun) - <AUTHOR> http://www.yatzer.com/as-little-design-as-possible-dieter-rams

<comment><USER2> On a related note: I once heard that Jonathan Ive designed the iPhone's calculator as a tribute to Dieter Rams.

Doesn't seem unlikely after a quick Google image search: <http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/dieterive.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER3> Just look at the pictures (and lament the perfunctory captions). The writing in this piece is dismal.

</comment><comment><USER4> Who wants to live in that antiseptic hotel? My 1920 "homes fit for heroes" house is beautiful, cluttered and very practical.

<comment><USER5> Not everyone shares your taste.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your emails? - <AUTHOR> I had at most 10 emails per week, and it was very easy to manage, but I recently subscribed to three high volume mailing lists of open source projects I like/want to contribute to and I feel overwhelmed. <comment><USER2> Gmail labels, filters, and shortcuts / hotkeys (no mouse when processing email, >2x speedup)

</comment><comment><USER3> Labels/filters. Read, take notes, reply and delete. This has a slight learning curve.</comment>


There's going to be some enlightening talks at this for the next 3 days - <AUTHOR> http://www.poptech.org/live

<comment><USER3> There's interesting stuff under discussion up there but I've noticed it doesn't seem to get a lot of attention - few blog comments, etc - <USER2> wondering why this was since there's other arguably similar gatherings (TED, SXSW, etc) that get a lot more attention.

It's also geographically close to me, if I didn't have to work I would consider going to Camden. Kind of a bizarre location really.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, no idea. Went to it last year, and the location is so enjoyable! So peaceful around there. Hadn't even heard of the conference though until my biz partner told me about it. And there's some insanely great talks at this thing. But yes, I only see links to TED talks, not these :)</comment></comment>


Lecture: High-assurance crypto software [video] - <AUTHOR> https://streaming.media.ccc.de/36c3/hallb <comment><AUTHOR> From the lecture description:

> This talk is meant as an introduction for a general audience, giving self- > contained answers to the following questions: What are timing attacks? What > is constant-time software? What are some examples of constant-time crypto? > How can we be sure that code is constant-time? What do these reverse- > engineering tools do? How does constant-time code help these tools? How do > we get from reverse engineering to guaranteeing correctness?

> The talk will be given as a joint presentation by Daniel J. Bernstein and > Tanja Lange.</comment>


The Finkbeiner Test: A Tool for Writing About Women in their Professions - m-ou-se http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2017/10/26/the-finkbeiner-test-a-tool-for-writing-about-women-in-their-professions/ <comment><AUTHOR> Where this discussion gets confused is that it fails to recognize that there are actually two different issues and two different kinds of articles at issue. To make the discussion neutral, instead of women in science let's talk about startups. There are many (but at least two) kinds of articles about startups. Ones that focus on the technology, and ones that focus on the "human interest" angle. There are articles about Tesla that focus on the limitations of cameras-only versus LIDAR. And there are articles about how Tesla is racing against much bigger and established competitors like Toyota and Volkswagen. The latter kind of article is not a diminution of Tesla's technology, but rather one that focuses on an entirely different sort of topic that might interest readers for different reasons.

There is nothing illegitimate about these human interest articles. Succeeding as a women in a male-dominated profession in fact presents real and unique challenges that merit writing about, just as succeeding as a startup in a field dominated by entrenched incumbents presents challenges worth writing about. Where articles about "X in science" get in trouble is that (1) people care a lot more about the human interest angle than about the science; and (2) journalists aren't up front about what kind of article they are writing, or are themselves confused about what kind of article they are writing.

<comment><USER2> I agree, and I think there is definitely space and a need for "women in science" articles, because there are topics that are of particular interest for women in science. The issue that the author is pointing out is that it seems like when it comes to female scientists, it seems like _every_ article about female scientists is written from this "women in science" perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> And I think that is a valid issue. But I think the real answer is, unfortunately, that people don't really care about science articles. The human interest angle is the only thing that sells ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Take the things that are said about a female subject and flip them around as > if they were said about a male. If they sound ridiculous, then chances are > good they have no business in the story.

Exactly. Every time I read something that fails this test, I can't help but dismiss it as identity politics. If somebody does great work, let's praise the performance. All this focus on male/female, black/white, rich/poor, etc. only creates an environment where people can't think straight about the issue at hand.

<comment> crooked-v To me, this sounds like an excuse to pretend that systematic inequality doesn't exist, and thereby imply that not being able to rise above it is a personal failing.

<comment><USER4> To me it sounds like you don't like anyone who dares challenge your personal orthodoxy.

<comment><USER5> Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else may be, so please don't post like this to Hacker News.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

(Incidentally, no one likes anyone who challenges their personal orthodoxy, and we all have one.)

<comment><USER4> Writing off folks opinions as "just an excuse" is rather insulting, impolite, and antagonistic.

That I had the audacity to directly call out that behavior instead of coaching attacks in vague language is the only difference here.

By your own, cited guidelines

> Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. > This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it.

This whole conversation is off-base. Consistency in the application of rule would be great. This seems like the exact kind of situation that calls for a detach / remove.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another thing I've noticed is articles using large headshots of women for companies where they could use product photos. With men it's much rarer... they even prefer to run cheesy graphics of "AI" instead of headshots.

<comment><USER7> That's true, but now your pushing into the territory of marketing.

When you are making compelling images to attract attention its more about creating an effective advertisement than a political agenda.

<comment><USER6> I'm not talking about the companies themselves... but media outlets who don't have a responsibility to market the companies they're covering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a male scientist with a family, I wouldn't mind if someone wrote news articles about my work and mentioned I'm "a loving father of two" or whatever. Just as long as it doesn't dominate the whole article and distract from the actual science. A family is something to be proud of!

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting. It's notable that you read the exact same type of statements emphasizing masculinity when an article mentions a male who is a nurse, teacher, veterinarian, yoga instructor, social worker, or any of the other professions that are dominated by women.

Perhaps it's that, when someone does something slightly outside of the norm or expectation, that becomes a notable storyline or contextual reference.

<comment><USER10> True, but it's still worth asking whether that practice is harmful to the goal of increasing gender diversity in these fields.

This could even be discussed without ratholing on whether or not this is a worthy goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Worth looking at this article that includes embedded tweets of mock bios for men written in the fashion bios tend to be written about women:

[https://www.sciencealert.com/someone-on-twitter-is- writing-a...](https://www.sciencealert.com/someone-on-twitter-is-writing- about-male-scientists-as-if-they-were-females)

</comment><comment><USER12> _"Jill makes a fantastic role model…because she is married, has two children and has been able to keep up with her research." It's hard to imagine anyone saying this about a scientist named Bill._

I'm actually cool with the Finkbeiner Test being a thing. But I will note that there are reasons such things get talked about.

I was one of the top ranked students of my graduating high school class. With having also been State Alternate for The Governor's Honors Program -- a live in summer enrichment program for the gifted -- I was one of the best students in my entire state. And I turned down a National Merit Scholarship, attended the local college for a bit, quit school and spent a couple of decades as a full-time mom and homemaker.

I spent a lot of years trying to figure out why I failed to get the two career couple lifestyle I fully expected when I first got married. There were a lot of factors there, but a lot of it is rooted in old fashioned gender roles.

I'm handicapped. This is a contributing factor to my lack of a real career. But Stephen Hawking was also seriously handicapped. He had a real career.

I have two special needs kids. So do lots of men with serious careers. When there are special needs in the family, it is typically some woman who ends up with the task of dealing with it.

I was a military wife and the entire military structure is rooted in a historical expectation that men are soldiers, they are heterosexual and have a wife at home and she is largely doing the homemaker thing and supporting his career. This actually works fairly well in many ways -- until you get divorced and find you have no references for a resume because you have little work experience, you moved around, you didn't keep in touch, etc. Meanwhile, the ex still works for the government doing similar work to what he did when he was active duty military and his finances are just fine, judging by the big house, new wife, nice vehicles, etc.

So part of why we mention those things is because a lot of women -- me included -- sit around wondering "What the hell do I need to do different? Is it just not possible to be married and also have a serious career as a woman? How does this work?" So it's valuable information to know that, yes, there are married women with actual careers. And then the next question is "So, okay, what is different about their marriage compared to mine? What do I need to change here if I am ever going to stop being a second class citizen?"

And that's not something you really want to ask personal acquaintances. That's a good way to find yourself blacklisted, so to speak. So we go searching articles and hoping for crumbs of clues.

</comment><comment><USER13> _> For instance, in a profile of biologist Jill Bargonetti, The New York Times quotes one of Bargonetti's colleagues saying that, "Jill makes a fantastic role model... because she is married, has two children and has been able to keep up with her research." It's hard to imagine anyone saying this about a scientist named Bill. The story's subtitle piles on, reinforcing the stereotype that women are nurturing and selfless with "A Biologist's Choice Gives Priority to Students."_

The paragraph hits on so many ways in which the popular (press) conception of science and academia is toxic, and sexism is only one part of that toxicity.

Yes, the disparity in how female scientists are described in a problem. But that fact that these attributes are absent from descriptions of male academics is also troubling. How are there so many profiles of _Professors_ that don't mention teaching or mentoring even once?!

When new phd students ask for advice on choosing a Ph.D. advisor, I give them three strictly ordered criteria:

1\. Is this person a good mentor? (Where are their former students? Do those students speak positively _and also candidly_ about their advisor?)

2\. Does this person have a work-life balance? (Family? Intense hobby? Good friendships outside of the department? Encyclopedic knowledge of their favorite TV series? An inappropriate percentage of their net worth invested in cars/wines/whatever? Literally, _any_ non-trivial time invested in something other than work most weeks.)

3\. Are you excited about the research agendas that they currently have (relatively fresh) money to explore, and do you think this person has the expertise needed to help you push those agendas in the way you want?

Those three questions, _in that order_. If you can't find someone who meets some minimum reasonable threshold for all three, maybe consider expanding your research interests or finding a new department.

Profiles of male academic scientists should go beyond individual contributions to discuss teaching/mentoring and work/life balance. After all, it's a profile of a _person_ who is a _professor_! Teaching/mentoring is a _huge_ chunk of the job, and the person is more than their work.

If there's nothing to say about the person other than some brilliant results? If their former students resent them and their family life is in shambles? That's a tragic personal interest story. If the person has a normal relationship with their students and a normal personal life? Then there's no personal interest story at all and the article should maybe just talk about the results instead of profiling the person.

</comment><comment><USER14> And yet, anyone assuming this position might be wise to ask themselves whether, if the suggestions were actually implemented, many women would be up in arms about a _lack_ of special recognition of their gender-distinctive qualities, "doing it all" and the rest.

I'm sure I'll be downvoted, but I'm coming from a place of sincere intellectual commitment to this concern. There is a rift among the feminist- minded about whether women should be "neutered" in this way in our observational language. The way this polemic shakes out overall seems to be opportunistic; sometimes women receive distinctive treatment, when it's convenient, and other times not, when it's (reputedly) oppressive.

<comment><USER15> Many ambitious women want recognition, period, not to be asked about their clothes, husband, etc. Articles that focus on those things might get more views, which I think is the more interesting thing to discuss.

Speaking as a woman, I'm pretty sure you're wrong that other women would be up in arms if there were more straight-up articles about womens' achievements.

<comment><USER14> I can only speak from anecdote, but, being of academic social background, I've known many women — some of impeccable "culturally liberal" credentials — who would and do say things like:

"But all they did was talk about her work, and left out the obstacles she's had to overcome to achieve it!"

There are even those who would, from a more niche women's studies angle, critique a strictly work-substantive biography for the "masculinised" psychological priorities it reflects and that it fails to capture the "unique female experience" or what have you. These are usually allied to the folks who bemoan the "medicalisation" of pregnancy by male technocrats, and with it the suppression of ineffable qualitative experiences of femininity that come with pregnancy and giving birth.

These are real things. The matter of a reasonably universal and inter- subjective conception of gender equality is unwieldy.

<comment><USER5> Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER14> Sorry, that really wasn't my intent. I thought it to be germane to the issue at hand, though of course, the issues raised by the article participate in a larger ideological nexus.

<comment><USER5> I believe you. It's just that we have a lot of experience with these tangents where discussions become both more generic and more ideological. If you imagine a 2x2 matrix of those variables, that's the flamewar quadrant.

<comment><USER14> That's hard to argue with, because it's undeniably true. :) I'll be more careful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is why I hate identity politics and why I believe all jobs for a given role should pay identically. Men/women are created equal but different. Praise people for their merit, not their sex. I know women who can run circles around men in coding and sysadmin work. I sometimes have to remind myself that I'm working with a woman when we're sat together working on something. I just tend to notice that this person is smart, often smarter than me in a given area, and I can learn. One of my favorite team leads is a woman from Ethiopia. Smart, pretty, funny, able to handle the BS some of the guys give her. The guys quickly realize she's better than most of them and they defer to her where her knowledge exceeds their own. Let's be honest, it's refreshing to see women excel in an area where men are usually dominant, and let's not forget, programming in the beginning years was mostly women.

I'm attempting to teach my own teenage daughter some programming basics, not to get her into the industry, but to show her cause and effect, abstract thinking, building something from nothing, critical thinking, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Men/women are created equal but different.

Identity politics is a reaction to people who say stuff like that.

<comment><USER17> It's not society and nurture stopping a woman from deadlifting 800lbs, or a man from breastfeeding. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species.

My girlfriend and I were just talking about how it's pretty unfortunate that there are basically no top level female smash players, but the fact is that reaction time is such a huge advantage that only a fraction of a percent of men can perform at the top level, and the female bell curve just doesn't stretch that far. The opposite is true for some traits as well, like top percentile flexibility.

<comment><USER18> Well, what's stopping men from deadlifting 800lbs? Because only a tiny fraction of men can deadlift 600lbs (the women's deadlift record), let alone 800lbs.

Will a man hold the deadlift record? Most assuredly. Does this in any way matter? It sure doesn't seem like it does.

<comment><USER19> People's lives literally depend on whether or not you believe in physical and mental differences between men and women.

[https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/blog/2012/07/05/get- over...](https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/blog/2012/07/05/get-over-it-we- are-not-all-created-equal)

[https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/2014/09/why-women-do- not...](https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/2014/09/why-women-do-not-belong- us-infantry)

[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why- special-...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-special-ops- should-be-off-limits-to-women/)

<comment><USER18> Oh come off it. If it mattered to the actual discussion, women serve along men in the IDF infantry. But it doesn't matter; it simply begs the question. _Nobody is debating whether peak male lifting performance is better than peak female lifting performance._ Women are also much better at giving birth than men! The issue is: why does that matter?

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure if you're intentionally being dense or we're talking past each other about different things.

1\. Progressive and liberal-minded individuals think that promoting the idea that there is no functional difference between men and women will help fight gender inequality but this is not only untrue, it is dangerous. See the linked articles in my comment; people absolutely are debating this, these people are driving real policy changes, and you misrepresent them saying they are not.

2\. Part of this agenda is shaming people for treating men and women differently, like in the OP. In this case they're right to do this, it's not productive or fair to write science articles about women differently than ones about men. But in other ways there is definitely a culture being created where it is taboo to treat men and women differently in any capacity and maybe that's not entirely a good idea. That's why it 'matters'.

<comment><USER18> You're pretending to address what I wrote without actually engaging with anything I wrote. But that's OK, right: lives are at risk!

<comment><USER19> So you are being intentionally dense. I'm sorry I tried.

<comment><USER5> Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this again.

Also, please avoid name-calling like "intentionally dense", even when you're not attacking someone specific. It lowers discussion quality and points the vector downward for others.

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


Unskilled and Unaware of It (1999) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/p7536_readings/kruger_dunning.pdf <comment><USER2> In general use, I can't recall the Effect being cited outside attacks on a political adversary or disfavored social group or group member. Basically gives a scientific basis to insulting one's ignorant opponents.

Taking the point further, can anyone think of a mechanism by which the paper has a positive effect? The ignorant person who is overly self-confident presumably would be immune from its lessons, while the informed person is not better informed about their domain.

How does the knowledge of the paper's findings benefit society? (I ask this because the paper's findings seem to be widely celebrated.)

To the extent it makes readers more hesitant to boast or claim superior knowledge, it's a good thing, but I have to think that those predisposed to such boasting will continue rather unfazed. Maybe I'm just too much a pessimist.

<comment><USER3> The main lesson I take from the paper is that self assessments aren't worth all that much.

So when someone says they are good at something, don't just take their word for it.

<comment><USER4> But a main lesson you could be taking is that you shouldn't trust your own self assessment. If you think you're good at something, don't take your own word for it.

<comment><USER5> Another main lesson you could be taking is that this paper is flawed and doesn't actually prove anything about self-assessments in general, so don't automatically second-guess anyone's word for it, even your own. Find the link elsewhere in this thread titled "what the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn't".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People value confidence over competency. If you always question things because you known enough to know that you don't know enough, people aren't going to take you very seriously. Better for yourself if you fake it till you make it. At least then you will have opportunities to advance in life. I rather suffer from Dunning-Kruger than impostor syndrome.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. You've no idea the number of times I've sat in a meeting and watched someone who clearly had no idea WTF he was talking about sway a decision maker because he presented his BS (and also swatted down more knowledgeable dissenters) with extreme confidence.

<comment><USER8> This is probably the one and only "work scenario" I've seen play out again and again at every company I've ever worked at, without exception. These people are everywhere.

<comment><USER9> I have never seen this... which makes me wonder if I am the one BSing

<comment><USER10> You might be working in a sector that they don't consider sexy and exploitable enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Counterpoint: [https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the- dunning-...](https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning- kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/)

<comment><USER12> What an amazing read! I saw the correlation between actual and perceived ability and thought to myself, yeah, because the further up you go the more you expect the scale to become logarithmically difficult, be it only to imagine (for themselves) that it's even possible they don't get to actually high score (100%).

That being said, there might be some statistical magic hidden in the graph, where the group, the further up it goes, does less rely on self-rewarding by guessing a lower score and splitting up into "actual" self-underselling for mimicking, evening out with the ambitious but really good ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _" Participants were 95 Cornell undergraduates ... from ... courses in psychology"._

Bad job, "researchers". That's not a suitable pool for studying this. That group has already been filtered for competence. It's a rerun of the old joke of someone asking a drunk why he's looking for his keys near a streetlight when he didn't lose them there. "The light is better here." (In tech, some clueless types do user experience testing on their own staff. Same problem.)

Try recruiting some subjects at the unemployment office.

<comment><USER14> I think the Dunning–Kruger effect is fairly well established, so I'm not sure why you'd put "researchers" in scare quotes.

<comment><USER15> Not scare quotes. The impression I got was, they're not competent so not real researchers.

<comment><USER16> That's what the phrase "scare quotes" means: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've never been more aware of my own dunning kruger effect until I started playing violin.

At first I was getting better fast and learning faster! I didn't often record my playing and I should. After 1 year I thought I made significant improvements and could play some songs "pretty good".

Into the second and third years I started being able to hear how scritchy and a little out of tune I was in almost every song. I also started listening to recordings of myself and shuddered at the sound.

I didn't _know_ how bad I was because I was making such great improvements (from ignorant and being unable to play twinkle twinkle little star). It wasn't until I got mediocre that I could even hear how mediocre I am.

I think some of it is the big leap from total ignorance to beginner knowledge. It "feels" like you are getting better _quickly_ and learning fast because you have no reference.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a strange way of phrasing the result, since the participants were all from a group of university students their skill distribution in all those fields was probably above average with respect to the overall population (especially since they were Cornell students). So I do not find it that surprising that they assessed themselves higher than warranted because in their experience they probably encountered many more people who had a lower skill level compared to them.

</comment><comment><USER7> I believe myself to be a competent programmer. Does this mean I'm incompetent?

It's possible; I can't ignore the possibility.

There goes my self-confidence again.

<comment><USER19> Doesn't this self-doubt imply that you are now competent? I have always found the Dunning-Kruger effect to be more of a fun novelty than a practical tool.

<comment><USER7> Possibly, but then the minute I stop doubting myself, I become incompetent again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would be interested in a cross-cultural evaluation of the Dunning-Kruger effect. This study was performed in the US. Is the effect as prominent in Russia? Sweden? China? South Africa? Across racial boundaries? Across class boundaries? I suspect a strong cultural and environmental influence.

<comment><USER21> The original study was of 65 undergrad psychologists at Cornell who got extra credit for participation. Probably a relatively narrow pool of personalities even in that region of the US.

Anyone know of replications with a wider pool?

<comment><USER22> In this study [1] the experiments were replicated in Hong Kong with 4034 high school students and in US with 95 students.

[1] "Why Do People Overestimate or Underestimate Their Abilities? A Cross- Culturally Valid Model of Cognitive and Motivational Processes in Self- Assessment Biases" [http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022022116661243](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022022116661243) (paywalled)

<comment><USER23> here's the article, for scientific purposes:

[https://file.io/41t2Gv](https://file.io/41t2Gv)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Dunning-Kruger effect explanation should be in every single high school education program. Quoting Bertrand Russell: "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt" (1933, "The Triumph of Stupidity" essay [1], also discussed in HN [2]).

[1] [http://russell-j.com/0583TS.HTM](http://russell-j.com/0583TS.HTM)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10636818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10636818)

</comment><comment><USER25> Presumably, the original paper of the dunning kruger effect[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

</comment><comment><USER26> Recognized with the Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology in 2000.

[https://www.improbable.com/ig/ig- pastwinners.html#ig2000](https://www.improbable.com/ig/ig- pastwinners.html#ig2000)

</comment><comment><USER27> "Adventures in negative vs positive reinforcement experiments via 'studies' shown as social media content"

<comment><USER28> "Without reading the article"

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Every time I've witnessed in person the Dunning-Kruger effect being used in real life, the person bringing it up was under its spell...

<comment><USER30> Every time you say...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> TL;DR

People thought they did well on a test but actually performed poorly relative to their peers! Haha, losers!

</comment><comment><USER32> How do you test for humor?

<comment><USER33> The third page of the study explains how they tested for humour. It's kind of fun to propose how they might have tested for each fo the 4 attributes they mention, then check to see how they actually did it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> tldr know thyself

</comment><comment><USER35> Could this have a (1999) put on it?

<comment><USER36> Yes, done. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> lol this is the original Dunning-Kruger paper.. why is it news now?</comment>


The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians – Lawfare - <AUTHOR> https://lawfareblog.com/time-i-got-recruited-collude-russians <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14675135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14675135)

Less than an hour ago, 21+ points</comment>


Photon-to-electron conversion: Two for one - Shockley-Queisser Limit Broken - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/photon-to-electron-conversion-0418

<comment><AUTHOR> The following is a large file (36MB) but it seems to include the entire paper, as well as the entire journal issue.

[http://zippy.zapto.org/Science%20-%20April%2019%202013/Scien...](http://zippy.zapto.org/Science%20-%20April%2019%202013/Science.pdf)</comment>


DHS warns about CAN bus vulnerabilities in small aircraft - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/dhs-warns-about-can-bus-vulnerabilities-in-small-aircraft/ <comment><USER2> The CAN bus in most cars does not require removing panels or equipment to get to a port. By design the OBD ports are generally easily accessible and usually expose the CAN network through the main computer. So not sure I agree with that conclusion.

I will agree that in some cars specific sub-systems can't be accessed through the standard OBD port and to get to those CAN connections it would require removing panels to get to the controller etc.

</comment><comment> java-man They mentioned some mitigation strategies used in automotive. Could someone please explain what those are, specifically?

<comment><USER2> Some automotive manufacturers have gotten more sophisticated with their systems and prevent writing to safety critical systems or to protected areas on the board. But I am not sure I agree with the conclusion that the CAN network in a car is anymore secure than what the article describes in regards to airplanes.

I am not a security researcher but have done plenty of embedded work and specifically wrote decoders for some vehicle systems. I definitely don't feel like an expert here, but I am not sure the conclusions are valid in relation to automotive, at least in my experience.

<comment> java-man Thank you.

Let's say we want to create a CAN bus which makes it impossible to listen to / inject non-authorized input even when the adversary has physical access to the bus.

This means encrypted traffic and a (possibly shared) key maintained by each device on the bus, or only the critical devices.

There is still a possibility of DoS attack on the bus, or tampering with the packets by injecting noise.

Does anyone know if the capability to encrypt CAN bus traffic even exists?

<comment><USER2> To be fair, there are multiple forms of CAN now in usage too. With CAN FD being the latest IIRC. So some of this will depend on which standard is being followed, although at their core they function nearly the same.

The overall nature of CAN is if you have access to it you can listen, so it isn't designed to prevent participation itself. There isn't a way of excluding a node without custom hardware/software as every node sees all data in a standard CAN bus. Yes, you can do a DoS attack on the bus, tampering with the packets is tougher but not impossible. There are essentially CAN firewalls that can be setup which can limit the damage and there are some companies that make software/hardware that act like a sink to control/stop a bad node or unauthorized access.

The most common thing is during CAN connection to require registration and some form of a key infrastructure. Without that your node is essentially ignored, although the network is still subject to your node essentially DoS the network by holding the lines low/high. This is how I have handled basic security and node control prior. But you can do things like a firewall with network segmentation, which works really well too.

Encrypting CAN can be done, but by design CAN is not a super high throughput bus (new FD is fairly fast) and is designed for multiplex messaging, so it can be quite costly to encrypt data going across it. But there are solutions for encrypting CAN and it is done.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Internet of things - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_next_node_on_the_net_your_car.php

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea of everything connected to the web. Your car, fridge, evet the musical band poster with rfid chip or QR code. What do you think about the next frontier?</comment>


Ask HN: Whats a Good Karma Score? - <AUTHOR>

How do you know when you have good Hacker News Karma? 5,000? 1,000? 100? <comment><USER2> It doesn't really matter. Post when you have something useful to say and don't worry about the karma.

</comment><comment><USER3> yeah... it's really just a measure of activity on this site. If I could give you some I would.

At 250 you get to change the color on the top navbar! that's pretty cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oooooh - I need to hit 250 =)</comment></comment>


Map of computer science - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SzJ46YA_RaA&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> I'm so glad they put A.I into applications</comment>


Affordable Care Act Repeal Bill Published [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/documents/AmericanHealthCareAct.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> I will admit to having only skimmed it, as well as reading the cnn [0] piece on it, but literally the one expansion-of-coverage move that Trump kept talking about - interstate competition - doesn't appear to be part of it.

[0] [http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/politics/republicans-public- ob...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/politics/republicans-public-obamacare- plan/index.html)

<comment><USER2> Not that it would likely make much difference. Some states have authorized cross state insurance company reciprocity but AFAICT no companies have taken advantage of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The regulatory patchwork makes it difficult. Even if some states have authorized it, you still have individual regulators in those states themselves. I work in a different type of insurance, but even in my space, writing one insurance contract that satisfies two sets of regulators isn't easy.

A full blown shift to federal regulation of insurance is probably too much to ask - and frankly, the state regulated system we have today is more consumer- friendly so I doubt anyone except insurance companies wants to give that up. We could, however, do with a federal definition of a basic policy that is authorized to market in all 50 states. Something (and I'm simplifying) like what Switzerland does with a legally defined minimum set of coverage that all policies must offer - the Swiss also regulate the pricing of that contract, but let's set that aside for now and start with price competition on a defined minimum coverage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's hard to follow this bill format -- it's like one big patch file.

Is there a way to get the 'patched' output, with diff highlighting?

<comment><USER4> This is the format of all bills and lawyers have been asking for this for some time. It's a very hard problem to solve.

<comment><USER5> Do people have tools that help with this now? If not, sounds like a project that groups like sunlight foundation would fund.

But I agree, it seems pretty hard and would involve being able to properly identify which sections are to be amended (there's a lot of navigational references like "paragraph", "subsection", "subparagraph" and how to apply the verbs I can see: "adding", "striking", "inserting", and I'm not sure how precise the existing documentation is in its references.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a lawyer by training, although I no longer practice law, and what I'll say is that when you read enough of these you get pretty good at piecing it together provided that you have some grounding in the existing law (since it's very heavy on amending language). This problem has been on my list for a long time, I've just never had enough time to think it all through. It's probably more approachable now versus 5-10 years ago given the advances in NLP, which at least in my mind, was the barrier on getting started.

The navigational references are not always consistent. They're human-readable, but not really marked up for straight machine processing. Given that you'd probably never get the Federal government to move toward some kind of standard markup, I think any solution would be AI-driven (not to overuse the buzzword, but I think it fits).

One day I'll get started on this. I have no idea how it could make any money, but I've been interested in it since law school.

I'm hesitant to ask who else wants to work on this, because by this evening, this will be back in the category of things I don't have time to look at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't they just make a google doc?</comment>


Kongregate Labs - open source Flash game tutorials - jim-greer http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081020-kongregates-new-strategy-teach-you-to-create-your-own-game.html

<comment> jim-greer Is it discouraged to submit articles about your own company? If so I'll remove it...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's fine.</comment></comment>


Complete copy of Star Wars done entirely in ASCII characters [1997] - <AUTHOR>

Try following telnet command:

    telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
 Related Links:
[1] http://www.asciimation.co.nz/asciimation/ascii_faq.html
[2] http://asciimation.co.nz/ <comment><USER2> Not sure if "Tell HN" really fits here; blinkenlights.nl has hosted this since at least 2001:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20011123045625/http://www.blinken...](http://web.archive.org/web/20011123045625/http://www.blinkenlights.nl/services.html)

and it has been widely covered:

[http://google.com/search?q=towel.blinkenlights.nl](http://google.com/search?q=towel.blinkenlights.nl)

</comment><comment><USER3> This should probably be tagged [1997]; also here's a link to the original author: [http://www.asciimation.co.nz/asciimation/ascii_faq.html](http://www.asciimation.co.nz/asciimation/ascii_faq.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> That's cool, for those interested, here's the link to the original ascii Star Wars at Simon's website: [http://asciimation.co.nz](http://asciimation.co.nz)</comment>


DHH: The five programming books that meant most to me (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3375-the-five-programming-books-that-meant-most-to-me <comment><USER2> Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture was a revelation for me. Not that I went on and directly applied the knowledge in that book for the most part (largely due to the fact I've never been a Java developer), but the thinking _behind_ the book really helped me go from "hack shit together" to a thoughtful and disciplined programmer.

</comment><comment><USER3> So of these books are oldish (for software engineering) and I don't count that against them. But I would like to know for each what more recent books (or even blogs) would succinctly fill in gaps in development since their publication.

Anyone?

<comment><USER4> These books are pretty timeless. They are not "learn X in 12 hours", but they are about concepts and ideas that will make you a better programmer, regardless of the specifics of your job. They are timeless, for the most part. The one exception might be "Refactoring". While it's true that the concepts it discusses is not unique to Java, a more recent edition just came out that focusses on javascript instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice list. Thanks for posting. I'm a sucker for a good list of book recommendations.</comment>


Where Vim Came From - <AUTHOR> https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/05/where-vim-came-from.html <comment><USER2> As someone whose first editor was _qed_ I appreciate this history. Although it is too easy to get caught up in nostalgia, it is useful to understand just how tall the shoulders we stand on today were. Some were giants.</comment>


Design Discussion Principles – How to get your client to love your design - <AUTHOR> http://000fff.org/design-discussion-principles-how-to-get-your-client-to-love-your-design/

<comment><USER2> As someone who's been the client in this situation a number of times, let me offer two additional tips:

1\. Explain or reiterate the goals before you show the design--especially if you're showing it to a larger group in the client company. If they don't know what you're trying to achieve, they're much less likely to give comments out of left field or try to rearrange everything.

2\. Keep in touch with your client. If you've been working on a project for 4 days with no contact, send an e-mail letting them know how far you've gotten and if you're on track to make the deadline. This may not make your design more likely to be accepted as-is, but you'd be surprised how much more likely it makes the client to hire you again.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the most esoterically challenging writer on the Professional Elements of Managing Web ecosystems today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate what you mean? :)

<comment><USER4> Possible reference to the heading "Know thy client and you know the real project" in the article. I'm no expert in second person singular pronouns but I do believe that sentence is an improper mixture of thy and you. (Reference: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou>)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is most probably.

That's it I am getting an editor.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Marriott turns to prefabricated rooms for quicker hotel construction - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-travel-briefcase-prefab-20170513-story.html <comment><USER2> Here's Marriott's announcement.

      http://news.marriott.com/2017/05/marriott-international-expands-modular-construction-initiative/

And here's their contractor's website.

      http://www.guerdonmodularbuildings.com/</comment>


DevArt: Art made with code - <AUTHOR> https://devart.withgoogle.com/?

<comment><USER2> No mention of demoscene on the entire site, very disappointing. For some OG dev art, do head to pouet: [http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?order=thumbup](http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?order=thumbup)

<comment><USER3> > No mention of demoscene on the entire site,

Hey, the demo scene existed way before "making art with code" became an expression owned by the young hipsters who think they invented everything, so no wonder they don't even consider it exists.

<comment><USER4> My initial reaction was similar. There are some fine pieces on the website; but then why the fuck is raspberry pi listed as a platform, along with iOS, Linux and Windows? Why is Arduino there? If someone decides to do something on a MegaAVR, is that going to get there _in addition_ to Arduino?

I honestly appreciate the initiative, but I find the presentation to be very disrespectful about the code part of it.

<comment><USER3> Hehe, they indeed seem to dissociate Hardware/OS based on irrelevant criteria.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This actually took long enough to load (25 seconds?) that at first I wondered if the loading animation was the referred-to art.

The actual art is interesting, but ouch.

</comment><comment><USER6> "DevArt is a new type of art", "DevArt is the opportunity to open their creative process, share their art with the world and be a part of a new movement in art."

Why are they pretending to have invented this? Net art (or whatever you want to call it) has been a thing since the 90s, Rhizome has plenty of early examples ([http://rhizome.org/artbase/](http://rhizome.org/artbase/))

<comment><USER7> If we count ascii art it goes back further than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A (fairly poor) study I did last year on code as art lives here: [http://faegernis.com/](http://faegernis.com/)

I would like to get back to it sometime, but my knowledge of aesthestics is limited.

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't wait until code is no longer seen as this mechanical and mysterious thing. Stuff like this will no longer need to be explicitly be "Art with Code", instead it can just be "Art made by describing it"

</comment><comment><USER10> Since demoscene is mostly happening in Europe, and hardly existent in America and the far east, I can see why they wanted to give it a different name. They don't even know what demoscene is.

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems kinda dumb to name your project after possibly the biggest art community in the world: [http://deviantart.com](http://deviantart.com).

</comment><comment><USER12> I really love code as art. I do a bit during my free time, but it's a dream to do it full-time.

Does anyone know how to break into this field?

<comment><USER13> I guess it's a bit like doing regular art full-time. Get yourself a name, a mystique, an agent, a benefactor. Skill is one thing, but success requires marketing.

(that said there's a number people who manage to do a regular bill-paying job and pursue an artistic endeavour on the side - eg Andy Lomas works at the Foundry by day and then does cool CUDA-powered music videos by night [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qMvqeEUzzw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qMvqeEUzzw) . I think it helps to try to at least work in a creative or visual industry though.)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the reply. Any other suggestions on artists to watch?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord At first I thought "What ever happened to calling it a demo?", but these go beyond that. Some clever public API (ab)uses to be found.</comment>


Ask HN: Responding to a "blank canvas" job offer? - <AUTHOR> I'm a freelance developer, reasonably successful on the business side (6-figure annual net revenue, varied and interesting projects).
An enterprise client of mine that I really enjoy working with (on a contract basis) has tried to hire me as a full-time employee on more than one occasion, and I've gently, gratefully said no, as I value my independence, and generally want to continue in the entrepreneurial vein (for example, growing my consulting business by hiring employees).
They've asked me again, and basically asked me to set my own terms, including:
- scheduling flexibility (work for them only part of the week/month/year)
- contractual freedom to continue running my business when not working for them
- salary & benefits
Given that I'm already doing lots of contract work for them, I'm considering the options here while obviously trying to balance them against opportunity costs.
Salary aside, what would you ask for in this situation? <comment><USER2> The same reporting structure you have now. You don't want to wind up spending all your time on politics and paperwork.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, thanks!</comment></comment>


Libretto: Toshiba's dual-touchscreen UMPC - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQHWfji5zZY&feature=player_embedded

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't believe there hasn't been more buzz about this. I own an iPad already, but I still find myself wanting one of these. Toshiba needs to do something to get some Apple-style publicity behind this so people can see what's coming.

More info on specs from here: [http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100621/tc_pcworld/toshibal...](http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100621/tc_pcworld/toshibalibrettow100lookspromisingformobileworkers)</comment>


An Investor Just Lost $70,000 in an ICO Purchase Mistake - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-11/buyer-beware-as-70-000-goes-up-in-smoke-on-broken-ico-trade <comment><USER2> Isn't every ICO purchase a mistake?</comment>


Comcast's Incompetence Puts You At Risk - <AUTHOR> http://unixjunkie.blogspot.com/2008/10/comcasts-incompetence-puts-you-at-risk.html

<comment><USER2> Wow...I just went through this last week. Definitely didn't think they'd be dumb enough to encrypt the applet but not the chat traffic. But I was a little sketched out by the fact that you go through this entire official ordering process on their website through which you provide all your contact details, then some low-wage support guy in who-knows-where asks for your SSN. I refused to give it to him, which meant I had to put down a $100 deposit. On my credit card. Which I had to type into that unsecured chat box.

As they say, it's Comcastic!

<comment><USER3> Maybe this is just a result of being in the military and having my SSN on 10 trillion documents in various insecure facilities around the world, but I would give out my SSN way before my CC number. Especially in a chat application.

<comment><USER4> You can change your credit card number (cancel the card).

You cannot change your SSN.

<comment><USER5> Actually, you can change your SSN -- it's just very hard, requiring something like a risk of assault or proof of persistent misuse. Of course, even if approved, the discontinuity incurs many other inconveniences when seeking credit/employment/housing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Interesting that the frontend is a Java applet but it's posting to an ASP/ASP.NET url. Two technologies that you don't usually see a development team combine.

Smells like a bunch of contractors plugging a few random components together to just-get-it-working?

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of a story I heard a while back of a store with a few locations but only one credit card terminal. In order to process credit cards as needed they just submitted credit card info by instant message to the store with the terminal where an employee would process and respond with a confirmation message.

</comment><comment><USER7> Backend applications that retail customers never see aren't secure. Film at 11.

<comment><USER3> Maybe somebody should make the film. Because I already know all about it, and it is still ridiculous.

But don't play it at 11. That's where news goes ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to automate the occasional micropayment? - <AUTHOR> I've been toying with an idea for an app which would occasionally make automatic donations to a charity.
I've been googling for a while, and it's not clear to me that there's an easy way to try this out (e.g. the paypal API).
Anyone know of a place to start? I'm looking for something lightweight to make a start prototyping. <comment><USER2> Stripe offers subscriptions. Easy too.

Additionally for mobile apps they support in app purchase subscriptions as well. You could use phonegap to develop current mobile apps with just HTML/css/backend-programming.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just to ensure that PayPal payments are still working on my SaaS, I subscribed as a customer to a test plan that charges me $0.02 per month--just my 2 cents.</comment>


Using Open Data and Mapping to Fight Human Trafficking - <AUTHOR> http://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/oct/01/using-open-data-and-mapping-fight-human-trafficking

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish they would provide links to these open source tools and data that are making a difference. Typically the providers would love the publicity and increase PageRank, and in turn, can provide even more service.</comment>


Simply Irresistible. - <AUTHOR> http://hangger.com/posts/simply-irresistible

<comment><USER2> How can this be permissible?</comment>


The Hustler's MBA - <AUTHOR> http://tynan.com/hustle

<comment><USER2> While correct (in a sense), this suffers from pretty much the same naïveté that a lot of similar essays contain.

Simply put, the chief benefit of formalised higher education is that it forces you to learn stuff you didn't even know you didn't know, deeper than you ever thought you had to.

It's many years since I left university (studying electronics and software), and I while I still work in tech (who doesn't around here?!), I only used a fraction of what I learned there once I got to the real world. That's the chief argument of essayists like this one, and it's one I agree with.

However, I have many times been in situations where I've had to solve a problem that I would not have had the mental tools for, were it not for a deep distant memory of some obscure piece of maths I did (painfully, perhaps even reluctantly) in second year, or some recollection of a weird hack with CPU registers I learned in third year. True, these moments in my career have been fleeting, but they helped me in a way that OP could not have been helped.

I've since worked a lot as a technical trainer. For me, the difference between technical training (or vocational, or OP's self-inflicted syllabus) and education (college, university) is that the former gives you a great hands-on real-world grasp of the available tools and techniques and how to use them to solve problems. The latter gets you further into the "why", and makes you better suited to making your own tools and techniques. Those of you who have written your own operating systems and compilers - would you ever have done that had you _not_ been in university? And how much did you learn from it?

</comment><comment><USER3> He lost me at the part where the secret to life is becoming a professional poker player. Because in a highly competitive game of chance you're pretty much guaranteed to come out on top to the tune of $50-60 an hour...

Does this post strike anyone as completely f'ing delusional? Perhaps applicable to the author, one of the greatest card sharks alive today, but seems silly to the vast majority.

<comment><USER4> I thought the poker thing was strange ... but he didn't fully lose me until the SECOND time he suggested becoming a pickup artist. Ugh.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate more about why do you think becoming a pickup artist is a bad thing?

<comment><USER4> The author is essentially saying that learning to manipulate women teaches you to think strategically. He wouldn't say it like that ... but that's very close to what he's saying. He's NOT saying that it helps you learn social skills (which IS valuable and IS NOT really the point of what pickup is trying to teach you, let's be honest).

I could go on and on about this. But this Quora answer knocks it out of the park so I don't have to. Her analysis is spot on:

<http://qr.ae/8VDLj>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's definitely an interesting concept, but does assume a certain 'buffer' level of class and income level to go down this road.

Having a home to be in while you 'get up to speed in poker', having parents that understand and provide some sort of boundaries at 18 years old, assuming poker winnings will be the base 'bank' for all other ventures, and assuming that the networks you make at school are not very important are big red flags for me.

For some, going to college, despite the hand-wringing, is also a way to break cycles of poverty within a lineage, a sense of family pride, and an escape from their home circumstance.

It's a little disconcerting that the author is a little lost in their own privilege and that his Hustler's MBA curriculum is probably a product of previous generations who went to college.

I think the better message is: Don't expect college, however many years you spend, to GIVE you everything or ANSWER everything. You still have to live life, take chances, and exist outside of your comfort zone. College is a concrete foundation to that mission.

<comment><USER7> He definitely forgot to check his privilege, big mistake...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> College is proven way to improve productivity and lifetime earnings. And it's scaled fairly well. And unlike poker, it's not zero-sum.

"In fact, apart from very specific cases, I think that school is a bad thing, not worth doing even if it was free."

Very wrong. You're not going to become a doctor, lawyer, nurse, accountant, etc. by playing poker and traveling. You're not going to get recruited by an employer because you claim to have read a lot of books.

What the author is actually saying, but incorrectly applies to everyone (startup bubble thinking, maybe?), is that for would-be startup founders, college may be obsolete. This is in no way, shape, or form, indicative of the value college provides to the rest of the population.

People have lots of motivations and reasons for attending college and many of them are completely valid, logically and economically.

<comment><USER9> I believe he notes that if you are going to school to become a professional (i.e. doctor) then it doesn't necessarily apply.

To your point, you also aren't going to become a zookeeper or programmer by playing poker or travelling, but you also won't necessarily become one by going to college. You WILL become one if you make the effort to do so, it doesn't matter whether it's in college or elsewhere.

<comment><USER10> I really think that is the takeaway that I got from the post as well. You become what you put your effort into, no amount of schooling is useful without the desire and drive to really make someone successful. While many of us here don't agree with the exact path he lays out, the gist of the message is to only go to school if you have a really good reason for going and the drive to make it worthwhile. Hustle and drive are key factors to success in this world, anything you can do to improve those will definitely be more useful then a college degree. These skills/personality traits are also not taught/picked up very well from classroom studies. I have been in college two different times in my life, and the first time I had no business being there. I was driven and wanted something the second time. Definitely much more useful the second time around, even though it was expensive. If you don't have that purpose and drive, go figure yourself out first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone whose done it, I can tell you that you shouldn't rely on making money over the long run at poker. There are a lot of reasons why you'll probably fail, no matter how smart and hard working you are, most of them emotional.

It is a great way to learn decision making with incomplete information though. There's sort of a class divide in the world between those who understand and apply the concept of expected value to every part of their life and those who don't.

</comment><comment><USER12> This post would have held more sway for me if it had been touted as a _preparation_ for school - not as a replacement.

I am of the opinion a number 18 year olds are very far from being emotionally mature and self possessed enough to get the most ouf of college. Such individuals would probably be well served by making a go at dealing with the world, which might well include some form of the OP's syllabus.

However, touting this as an _alternative_ to higher education is IMO doling out plain bad advice. I'm not even going to touch the highly dubious claims made about poker as a source of reliable income (by an amateur with one year of experience).

<comment><USER13> I think this is pretty insightful, I was comparing my daughter (17) as she looks at colleges to some of the other potential freshman. It was clear that a noticable number of young people were going to be lost.

I'd guess that its the 'hovering parent' syndrome which trys so hard to keep their kids 'safe' and 'competitive' that they don't let their kids develop into adults, but I don't know. It is definitely a factor though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How to be a great [developer|dad|founder|hustler|manatee trainer] in 11 easy steps

1-7. Do what I did.

8-10. Learn what I learned.

11\. Listen to advice from random people on the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER15> If one is disciplined enough to go for 4 years following a rigorous schedule, sure go for it. I doubt most people could follow this program for 4 years. It took me 8 years to get through college (those 9 am classes were too damn early...), and I had no idea what I was going to eventually do. Many people entering college are not highly motivated, and certainly not motivated with the iron will required to play winning poker.

The states letting state universities set the price of tuition up to ludicrous level seems to be the main issue with debt. At a reasonable state college, a 4 year degree 20 years ago for tuition would have cost less than 2k/year (I think I have some receipts for $800-900 from 92 or 93 for a full semester, 13-18 credit hours at the time).

It is now about 2700/semester or 3x the price 20 years ago. Actually I guess 2700/semester is still not too bad, at full price for 4 years, that's a little over 20k.

While going to Stanford or somewhere and getting a CS degree might pay off, you don't actually have to go to freaking ivy league schools if you don't have the money or want the debt. If you are in the humanities or something where your future is probably a lower paying job, then a state school is probably the way to go. 20-30k in debt is still a bit painful, but that's a 4 year degree for the prices of a semester at some colleges.

Poker, btw, is a game of statistics, not chance. Since you can change your bet when the odds change, ie: betting more when the odds favor a bet, or folding when they do not. Craps, Roulette, and most other casino games are all games of chance, where the odds are not in your favor at any time. Craps can give you the best odds of a normal casino game, but every dollar you bet at craps is returning at best ~$.99 over the long run. I used to play craps until I read all the odds and now all I can see is the negative numbers everytime the dice rolls. Poker is pretty much the only casino game I enjoy playing, because skill can effect your outcome. However, I don't have the years or bankroll to be a professional at it, and haven't played in a few years now.

<comment><USER16> _"While going to Stanford or somewhere and getting a CS degree might pay off, you don't actually have to go to freaking ivy league schools if you don't have the money or want the debt."_

The idea that one has to go into debt to go to a top-level school is an outdated one. Every fancy school I got into was cheaper than the University of Texas after financial aid.

<comment><USER15> You didn't get the same financial aid at UT?

My impression is that if your family makes too much (ie: 80k or 100k/yr), you aren't getting anything but student loans.

A friend of mine went back to NYU a couple years ago to finish his degree while he was working, I think he still racked 50 or 100k in loans.

Obviously if you can go to a school with a lot of scholarships or grants, debt isn't an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disagree with articles that are so myopically focused on dropping out of college.

College is only overpriced if you make it overpriced (i.e. you major in underwater basket weaving).

My alma mater is one of the more expensive ones out there ... yet, between the connections I gained, classes I took, habits and ways of thinking it beat into me, and rep I acquired from the school ... it was worth every damn cent.

</comment><comment><USER17> He also lost me at poker. A lot of us entrepreneur types love poker because we just love risk, IMO. To say that you can comfortable make 85k a year playing poker is the most outlandish statement I've ever heard.

I also hate how people try and tell me poker is a skill. Yes to a degree it is, but it's more luck than anything once you understand the game, let's be real.

Seemed like a good blog post until he became delusional about poker.

<comment><USER18> If its about luck, than why do we see the same familiar faces deep into WSOP finals?

Luck is only relevant if you're playing for the short run. Professionals generally make decisions that favor them in the long run against natural statistical deviations. That's why playing against a beginner is incredibly hard; they make poor choices that don't necessarily result in poor results. But put compare the results of that beginner vs a pro after 1000+ hands, and you'll see how much luck vs skill matters.

<comment><USER19> But how much money does a poker player burn through before he/she is "good enough" to play in big tournaments and win decent money? A couple hundred thousand? A couple million?

It's like when someone wants to trade stocks/derivatives. They may lose massive amounts of money before getting their sea-legs and that is a price that is far too high for most people (and their families) to endure without gaining anything tangible.

And I wouldn't think that "Professional Poker Player" is a title that would land a high paying job like a university degree might. If someone is spending all their time learning to be a pro poker player, it might back them into a corner where now that's all they're are capable of doing for the rest of their life whether they win or not.

Variable reward systems, like gambling, are damn hard addictions to break once conditioning has set in.

<comment><USER20> Pursuing poker as a career is usually a poor decision for a variety of reasons, but the cost of learning is not one of them.

The overwhelming majority of poker hands are now played online, and the limits go as low as $0.01/$0.02 -- in today's poker landscape, the winning players tend to be those who initially invest a small amount of money and gradually climb the ladder with careful bankroll management.

The opportunity cost, on the other hand, can be very high. Many people waste a lot of time trying to become good at the game without experiencing any meaningful degree of success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sometimes a person needs to go to college in order to understand why it might not be relevant for them. By simply touting that college is useless as a fact seems too far-fetched for me. No one is born with an ability to assess going to college as it is today. It's all social conditioning. To that end, college is useful. If it can teach you something about yourself then the 2 or 3 semesters were not wasted time or money.

</comment><comment><USER22> In 2006, you actually could fairly easily make $85K in a year playing poker.

Not anymore, though, and not for the past few years.

<comment><USER23> what happened after 2006 that caused the dropoff in payout?

<comment><USER22> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enfo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006)

That scared off a lot of the fish, plus, in mid-2007 (I think?) the biggest payment processor, Neteller, got busted by the US Attorney's Office (I hope I'm remembering all this correctly), which made it so that even the fish that were left around couldn't keep re-filling their accounts.

Also, there was a wealth of information about how to play by 2006-2007 and there were a lot more absolute numbers of good players which, with the decreasing supply of fish led to a much higher concentration of good players.

From early 2006 to early 2008, the game had changed so dramatically that it was guys who used to crush NL400 ($2/4 NLHE) couldn't beat NL100 (50c/$1 NLHE)

<comment><USER24> He's not talking about playing poker online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It depends. Depending on the field of study, university may be a pass time or where you cut yourself out for greater challenges. If you are into a deeply technical subject, college is pretty much the only option. If you want to get by studying humanities and few easy courses, you can as well help yourself without spending all that money for college.

</comment><comment><USER24> I found it odd that there is no direction here. What are you working towards?

Also Tynan seems to be making the mistake of giving advice on _how to be Tynan._ This isn't really anything to do with "hustling" or an MBA (Is Tyan running a sucessful business? It appears not).

</comment><comment><USER26> Meanwhile back on earth...

</comment><comment><USER27> He "left with zero additional skills after three semesters" in college, and is now advising people to make money playing poker? I'm having a hard time taking this seriously.

</comment><comment><USER28> Articles like these (although it has some good points in it) give the word 'hustler' a bad reputation in this world.

</comment><comment><USER29> I lost focus after he talked about how easy poker was to make $85k a year.

</comment><comment><USER30> And here I thought the answer to life was 42, not Poker.

</comment><comment><USER31> I encourage EVERYONE to follow this phenomenal advice!!!

... and when the next tech bubble bursts, I look forward to picking up good CHEAP programmers without college degrees.

MWAH HA HA!</comment>


The Rumsfeld Matrix: A Model to Estimate Uncertainty in Projects - <AUTHOR> https://melvintercan.com/blog/the-rumsfeld-matrix-uncertainty.html <comment><USER2> Would be awesome if this can be somehow tweaked and enhanced for the complexities of nation-building</comment>


Open source distributed database with complex event processing - <AUTHOR> http://interference.su <comment><AUTHOR> Summary below.

Yesterday, a number of personalities, in response to my publication, bulling in comments with insults, conspiracy charges and very valuable instructions on what to do. Regrettably when adults do not see boundaries in communication.

The accusation of spammering brought against me is a blatant lie. I have NOT received ANY official notifications of violation of any rules from the ycombinator.com resource.

I pointed my position and apologized, although it was not worth it. I didn't hear an any apology.

All this is very disappointing in my opinion and I would like to draw attention to the problem of misunderstanding between people, no matter what prejudices it is caused.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interference is a spammer. Nobody should use it. Obviously it's a failed project that nobody needs, if they have to spam about it so much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why am I identified as a spammer? Periodic attention to the project - is it spam? Maybe people can do without your so valuable opinion?

<comment><USER3> 8 repetitions of the same submission with the same boilerplate text that you're now forcing into unrelated threads.

"Spammer" is perhaps the most _polite_ term I'd use.

<comment><AUTHOR> 8 repetitions for what period? 3 months? This is spam? Well, OK. Maybe it was overkill sir, no more repeats, sir

<comment><USER3> 5 in two days.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, carried away.

But this is not a reason to write nasty things above</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Conservatives and Liberals Are Not Experiencing the Same Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://heterodoxacademy.org/social-science-liberals-conservatives-covid-19/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but I think misses a major point: Many conservatives are not _apathetic_ , nor do they feel less _threat_. Rather, they see a different _balance_ of threats.

In particular, shutting down our medical system (ex COVID-19) means that large numbers of people will _die_ of other diseases/conditions. Shutting down the economy means that large numbers of people will _die_ of suicide and other syndromes associated with economic deprivation. This isn't just a guess--it's clear and well-documented.

For some reason, these factors seem to be being currently discounted by the Left. I cannot understand why.

<comment><USER3> I can somewhat answer why the left is discounting the economic factors. The short answer is there is historic precedence that taking strong action against a pandemic will help that economy recover quicker than places that took little to no action. More deaths and a drawn out pandemic had a worse long term economy than a hard and fast shutdown earlier. [http://news.mit.edu/2020/pandemic-health-response- economic-r...](http://news.mit.edu/2020/pandemic-health-response-economic- recovery-0401).

<comment><USER2> It's possible that a long, hard shutdown will result in a better economic result. Looking to 1918, though, raises a lot of questions. It's a small amount of data points from a time when far less reliable information was available.

Perhaps more importantly, it doesn't help us much in determining the _total_ number of excess deaths from these alternatives. I'm guessing that few were even thinking about that question back then.

<comment><USER4> The larger point, IMO, is that it's not in evidence to assume that it's a tradeoff between saving lives and the economy. It's possible that prioritizing life saving, even at the expense of a worse economy in the short term, saves lives and spurs a better economic recovery.

Edit - for clarity

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ideology may set rough attractors and no-go areas, but it's naive to think that our current battle lines have been drawn by individuals independently pondering their own positions.

At a deep level, our experience of reality has become wholly moderated by mass media. Reds and Blues are watching different channels, and thereby experiencing different realities. It's as simple as that.

Nonconformance to a media narrative is punished by all, in a distributed fashion. If you express an independent point in a Blue flavor, you will be attacked by both the ever-present Reds as well fellow Blues for breaking rank (and vice-versa, obviously).

Even this comment itself would be better if I tied in some basic examples. But they would inherently reflect my own filter bubble, opening my point up to partisan scrutiny looking to reject self-reflection xor continue caricaturizing the others.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Note that our results cannot say which of these is happening in greater > measure.

That's okay. Every reader can figure it out.

<comment><USER7> I couldn't; could you help me figure it out?

<comment><USER6> It's the other team.

My comment was a joke, pointing at my expectation that most readers _will_ come to a conclusion despite the warning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Out of six, the strongest effects emerged for goals that involved > government-imposed social distancing rules. Conservatives oppose the > government telling them when they can or cannot leave their homes; liberals > support such policies. Because a threatening disease might validate > government interventions that conservatives dislike, conservatives appear > motivated to downplay the severity. Or conversely, because a threatening > disease might validate government interventions that liberals do like, > liberals seem motivated to magnify the threat.

Ugh I hate when people do this, it seems like lazy thinking. Decreased government intervention is a terminal goal for many individuals, but increased government intervention is not. Liberals are more willing to trade government intervention for lives saved.

> We found that the general effect of ideology on perceived COVID-19 threat > significantly decreased at higher levels of experience with COVID-19. > Conservatives view the disease as less threatening than liberals, but this > difference shrinks among participants who have been more impacted by the > disease.

Looks like the divide is not entirely different values, and that it's at least partially driven my misinformation.

* I know there are probably some liberals for who this is a terminal goal but it's a vanishingly small amount.

<comment><USER9> > increased government intervention is not

Seems like a weird, pedantic half-truth. It's like "I'm not a racist, but ..." except for government. "I don't want increased government intervention... except for the areas of healthcare, housing, education, guns, the economy, free speech, religion, banking, labor, technology and a few dozen other areas, those I do want increased government intervention in".

I get that it doesn't come from "I love authoritarianism and want more of it" but the practical end is the same when the solution to every problem is "More government regulations or interventions"

<comment><USER10> It can be seen as a corrective to 'let the free market decide everything,' which is clearly showing its limitations in responding to the COVID-19 crisis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the post is on the right track, but fails to even mention the urban/rural divide in the US, which is heavily weighted liberal/conservative.

The two groups are experiencing differently—to rural folks describing it as a non-problem is largely accurate, to inner-city liberals the catastrophe is accurate as well.

Combine that with a distrust of government in rural areas and you have a pretty solid case. It's clear that attempts at "one size fits all" policy making across a country the size of the US is problematic. States the size of California are also approaching the limits of governability in this situation, see the unrest between different counties.

<comment><USER12> > The two groups are experiencing differently—to rural folks describing it as > a hoax is largely accurate, to inner-city liberals a catastrophe is accurate > as well.

That is not what word hoax means. Hoax means that the thing does not exists at all and is made up. It does not mean "I personally dont have the very same problem yet, therefore I dont believe you when you tell me it is happening".

<comment><USER13> It depends on what you define as _The hoax_, and there is a great diversity of opinions.

It can mean the virus doesn't exist

It can mean the virus isn't as bad as claimed

It can mean the virus mitigations aren't worth the tradeoff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > First, might conservatives actually be less threatened by the current > pandemic? After all, the pandemic has thus far tended to hit more liberal > regions, like New York, harder than more conservative regions.

And conservative regions that are hard-hit, like Florida, are actively suppressing information on how bad the outbreak is.[1][2]

It'll be interesting to see how the conservative narrative changes as the outbreak becomes undeniable. The CDC projections are pointing toward 100,000 dead sometime in June[3]. That's a _lot_ of parents and grandparents. At some point, it will be almost impossible to not be personally affected.

[1]: [https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/flor-m01.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/flor-m01.html)

[2]: [https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida- medi...](https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical- examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/)

[3]: [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid- data/forecas...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid- data/forecasting-us.html)</comment>