A Year Ago I Put Saltwater in a Jar [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OG5jyRGhLg <comment><USER2> Somewhere on Galactic Youtube there's a video entitled "A Billion Years Ago I Put Single-Celled Organisms on a Water Planet in the Outer Spiral Arm. Look What Happened."

<comment><USER3> If the GalaxyTube is anything like Earth YouTube:

Why you must see the TOP TEN creatures descended from one weird experiment TEN HUNDRED THOUSAND THOUSAND YEARS AGO

sponsored by Squarespace

<comment><USER4> "They're made out of meat."

<comment><USER5> "And they're growing more self aware any minute."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I live near a fresh-water lake in the middle of Europe, and decided to do this experiment with my kids a few years back .. we took a jar, scooped up some water, threw a couple small bits of algae in, and took it back to our kitchen, where we watched it daily for months.

It was extraordinary to see things growing right away .. the kids loved getting up and checking on 'the critters and the goop', as we called it.

Our patience was rewarded when I spotted a tiny hydra had attached itself to the side of the jar ..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(genus)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_\(genus\))

We watched it grow and grew, going from near-microscopic to the size of one of the kids finger nails, turning a deep and vibrant red as it aged.

There were lots of other things too, which we never got quite around to naming .. freshwater shrimps, a couple of tiny fish (which didn't survive a heat-wave also, alas) .. but eventually it became a murky mess, and we cleaned the jar out for other experiments.

This is a really neat way to teach kids about life, in my opinion. The next time we do it, we'll rig up a USB microscope and have it pointed into the depths - I have a feeling that my kids are going to find operating the microscope far more intriguing than any video game. Would be grand to discover there's a microscope out there that can be remotely moved .. we may have to cannibalise a 'light following flower robot' to rig up our own "Exploratorium"™ .. ;)

<comment><USER7> Another good one, to teach about how there is microscopic life all around us, is to make sourdough bread using wild yeast and bacteria. Starting with just flour and water, you can capture the wild yeast and lactobacilli that are floating around your kitchen and cultivate them in a ball of dough. You can establish a colony in such a dough ball that can last centuries [1], breaking off some of it whenever you want to make some bread.

Sourdough bread made from your colony might taste a little different than sourdough bread made from someone else's colony, because different places have different subsets of the something like 20 species of yeast and 180 species of lactobacillus there are, and different species can have different flavor.

[1] Boudin Bakery in San Francisco is still using the colony it started in 1849.

<comment><USER8> Check this out: [http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/37259/mythbusters-grain- yea...](http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/37259/mythbusters-grain-yeast-or-air- yeast)

It seems like the source of microorganisms is from the input grain itself, not what's in the air.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The incredibly serene mood combined with late-90s tv-funk music put me into a weird state of nostalgic careless bliss. (As opposed to the more typical nostalgic feeling of unrecoverable loss.)

<comment><USER10> Speaking of nostalgic bliss, Infochammel does this for me. With its HC2K TechnoLoc encoding I get a strong dose of positive vibes reminding me of my Apple IIgs and childhood. I'm a huge sucker for that style of graphics.

[https://youtu.be/rWN8KN7C6Is](https://youtu.be/rWN8KN7C6Is)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have to try this with the kids. I wonder, if you aerated the water slightly and protected it a bit from things like heatwaves, would you see more life? Would the little crab have lived longer? Or would the higher life capacity due to increased oxygen also lead to more ammonia spikes that aeration alone wouldn't help the ecosystem process. I guess it's something to experiment with.

<comment><USER12> It would be neat to aerate it without breaking the closed system. Maybe a magnetic connection through the glass. Motor on the outside and prop on the inside... Does add complexity though.

<comment><USER13> Probably almost every wet-bench lab has a magnetic stir bar, as in [0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3BoXEWCF2E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3BoXEWCF2E)

<comment><USER14> But that would just mix in air from the top of the jar?

<comment><USER13> Oh I guess I don't understand what it means "to aerate" then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I bought one of those small "EchoSphere" water globes[1] back in 2002. It originally had 3-4 little shrimp and algae. within a few months, all but one of the shrimps were gone. But now, nearly 17 years later, the one remaining shrimp is still going strong. Amazing!

[https://eco-sphere.com/](https://eco-sphere.com/)

<comment><USER16> Interesting. Would you share the picture of it?

<comment><USER15> The shrimp is so small, it would be hard to get a photo, but it looks pretty much like the "Small Sphere" from the link above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somewhere, as a society, we should have thousands of these with random collections of "stuff" like this. It seems like finding combinations that can survive indefinitely would be useful.

<comment><USER18> I fear that it would get so popular, certain habitats would become destroyed by people wanting to capture a little bit of it in a jar.

<comment><USER19> With 0.1 square kilometers of habitat, you can fill a million jars. Seems like a pretty remote risk.

<comment><USER18> How many exotic pets have we made endangered or extinct already?

<comment><USER19> Pet animals are stupendously less common than "one square foot of dirt is more than enough".

If you charge a couple dollars you can make the habit grow with every purchase.

<comment><USER18> I think the idea that a healthy habitat can be kept in a jar is a misguided one. What was the ecosystem in this example, really? Some sea lettuce, algae, some nematodes and a dead crab. That's not healthy, diverse, or complex.

The real thesis should be: without room, natural ecosystems will turn more like this jar: barely holding on at a low level. What we can do is put less pressure onto a natural ecosystem. For example, not digging little parts of it up to keep, essentially as pets.

Related, higher, more complex organisms need room to range. Remove one, and a large part of the surrounding environment is affected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Watching little creatures live their lives under the microscope can be calming. Nick Moore has some darkfield microscopy videos of aqutic life that are pretty nice and educational to watch: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPhdZFYLanpzdQYgkJoi3...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPhdZFYLanpzdQYgkJoi3vTzOtpr7cwU0)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've had lots of fun using microscopes to look at things as a hobby. It started when I went to the Boston Science Museum about 30 years ago and saw some rotifers tooling about in a dish. At the time I was into computers and i figured that living things were effectively mechanical computers/robots and that they could be understood through reductionist approaches (looking closely at their components and then building up their complex behaviors from those components). This leads to the "Can a biologist fix a radio, or understand schemes?" problem (bing it).

Eventually, through many years of reading and experimentation I realized that you could convert an inexpensive CNC platform into a microscope- the 3 stage system that moves the router head around can hold an objective and a microscope slide. So I built one of these and demonstrated it at Maker Faire (thanks, Google, for paying for all this). Highlight was showing Daphnia, which happened to be pregnant at the time and gave birth live in front of a few visitors ("did we just watch the miracle of birth?")

Later I learned that rotting fruit and wet moss from the yard is a great source of microbes, and you can leave standing freshwater with some moss in it to get all sorts of rich ecosystems. I just love rotifers, they're such fun to watch.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is absolutely amazing! I live a few miles from the ocean so I'm totally going to try this!

Crabs - there's hundreds of thousands of (very small) crabs living on the beach, at least around here (from what I've seen) so grabbing a tiny one accidentally isn't unusual or unexpected.

</comment><comment><USER23> I haven't seen anyone mention it here, but this concept is known as a "terrarium".

There have been terrariums that have been sealed for 50+ years and are still thriving.

</comment><comment><USER24> This was pretty fascinating. I agree with the micropore idea for passive gas exchange although some of the gases leaving would be fairly pungent (ammonia for example).

I am wondering if you could put a tube in the water, vertically along the side which was facing sunward. Then using the heat from the sun to heat the water in the tube which would rise enough to create a natural aeration drip.

</comment><comment><USER25> I understand the "Low maintence" desire, as well as some curiosity, but isn't this just a unmaintained salt water aquarium? We all know how its going to end up..

Salt water aquariums are difficult to maintain but can be very rewarding and learning experience (Nitrate, nitrite, phosphates maintence etc...)

<comment><USER26> > We all know how its going to end up..

Uh, might be just me, but I have no idea how this ends up. I would expect dead very soon, but this has been going for over a year now, so clearly I didn't even get that right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> As an aquarium keeper myself I must say that this is the best YouTube channel ever. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Thank you for this, really amazing.

Anyone have an idea how did the crab survived for so long? What did it eat?

<comment><USER29> Presumably algae and smaller invertebrates, like all crabs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been waiting for an update on this on his channel for a while, really interesting stuff.</comment>


Show HN: An API for Customer Feedback - <AUTHOR> http://supportive.io

<comment><USER2> Very intriguing...an "its about time" API.

</comment><comment><USER3> is it for web or mobile or does it just work for both?

<comment><AUTHOR> We designed it as a REST API so it can work across all platforms mobile, web and desktop.

The API is super easy so it's simple to integrate within most apps. As time goes on we will be adding client libraries for common platforms, languages and frameworks to make integration even easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice work!</comment>


Modern Python Dictionaries: A confluence of a dozen great ideas (PyCon 2017) - happy-go-lucky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npw4s1QTmPg&t=749s <comment> happy-go-lucky The talk slides are at:

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3967849/compdict/_build/...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3967849/compdict/_build/html/index.html)</comment>


Existential Depression in Gifted Children and Adults (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/dabrowskis_theory_existential_depression_feb09.pdf <comment><USER2> > As one child described it, they feel "like abandoned aliens waiting for the > mother ship to come and take them home"

This is exactly how I felt. I can remember thinking those exact words when I was very young - although I didn't really start questioning the nature of reality until my early teens.

At some point, I realised that these thoughts were only causing depression, so I decided to simply stop thinking about them. I also became apathetic, and detached from my own emotions.

Ultimately, my own existential depression led to self-destructive behavior - perhaps this was related to the coping strategy of "Seeking novelty and adrenaline rushes".

Edit: I would like to add that I do not consider myself gifted. I simply have a rather narrow set of interests which I have become good at. I think it is particularly common for "technical" people to be told they are gifted, because to the untrained observer their skills can seem like wizardry.

<comment><USER3> Being called gifted only made it worse. I was not. None of them were. I'm still not. It was a lie. Why couldn't people just give me credit for working hard? That was the truth. Why was my success some magical unexplainable innate attribute?

<comment><USER4> I was a gifted kid, I got D's all through school because fuck doing that busywork, and then slept through college and did the bare minimum to graduate with honors, which means only studying for the exams in the car on the way to school... Meanwhile other people worked really really hard to graduate with a 3.0

Please tell me how my success is due to my hard work and not the luck to have been born to my smart-but-relatively-poor parents.

I know other people can spend their life working hard and not get to where I am, and people can work less hard than me and get a lot further. This isn't a game with very structured rules. Life is chaos, and you're doing yourself and society at large a disservice by ascribing your success solely to "hard work", because applying that dogma to people with an IQ of 90 isn't going to work out well on a large scale.

<comment><USER3> Or, a different interpretation: what's the benchmark for gifted? Who's picking these people out of the crowd, and how? The programs I saw didn't test objectively, were absurdly vulnerable to parental arm-twisting, and in some cases were drawing from a student body that was, on average, performing well below grade-level.

(N.B. Amount of hard work still dwarfed by blind luck.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22998852](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22998852)

BACKGROUND:

Happiness and higher intelligent quotient (IQ) are independently related to positive health outcomes. However, there are inconsistent reports about the relationship between IQ and happiness. The aim was to examine the association between IQ and happiness and whether it is mediated by social and clinical factors. Method The authors analysed data from the 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey in England. The participants were adults aged 16 years or over, living in private households in 2007. Data from 6870 participants were included in the study. Happiness was measured using a validated question on a three-point scale. Verbal IQ was estimated using the National Adult Reading Test and both categorical and continuous IQ was analysed.

RESULTS:

Happiness is significantly associated with IQ. Those in the lowest IQ range (70-99) reported the lowest levels of happiness compared with the highest IQ group (120-129). Mediation analysis using the continuous IQ variable found dependency in activities of daily living, income, health and neurotic symptoms were strong mediators of the relationship, as they reduced the association between happiness and IQ by 50%.

CONCLUSIONS:

Those with lower IQ are less happy than those with higher IQ. Interventions that target modifiable variables such as income (e.g. through enhancing education and employment opportunities) and neurotic symptoms (e.g. through better detection of mental health problems) may improve levels of happiness in the lower IQ groups.

<comment><USER6> I think the woes of intelligent people are the mental version of first world problems. Unintelligent people are sad and lonely too - and if the research is true - even more so than clever ones.

The myth that despair companions intelligence is properly due to confirmation bias. You don't have many stupid people talking or writing about the hurt they feel from being. Or its just a nice thing to believe to find exaltation in one's own suffering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I struggled quite a bit with an existential crisis a little over a year ago. The sense of despair I felt over the lack of innate purpose and meaning in life made it hard to get out of bed in the morning. I recovered from this aspect of it by reminding myself that evolution happened to shape me with a mind which craves purpose; so just as I fulfill my need for food, sex and companionship, I can create a sense of meaning for myself to meet this need.

The sense of meaning came from being, as Neil degrasse Tyson says, "A good, strong link in the chain of life". I decided to simply be a good human who attempts to be present and care for my fellow humans, to honor and respect life, and to try to leave society more healthy and stable. This is enough for me. Unfortunately, the existential risks which plague us (nuclear war, catastrophic climate change) not only frighten me because of the horrors I would experience, but also because they would erase my purpose. Grappling with the idea that humans could be wiped out due to our apathy, greed and proclivity towards violence is so thoroughly depressing that my only recourse is distracting myself. I meditate, get lost in friends, work and video games, enjoy travel, and try not to think about it. If civilization or our species will be destroyed within my lifetime, I want to at least have enjoyed the time I had.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know about "gifted," but I certainly suffer from this. I suspect most people have at some point.

I don't think of myself as "gifted." Some people have said I am, but I doubt it: I work hard, I read, I acquire knowledge. Anyone can do that.

Besides, even if I am gifted, It's not a healthy attitude to have. You start to get presumptuous, and arrogant, which means that you'll learn less. And I'm arrogant enough: I don't need a swelled head.

In short, statistically, I'm probably not gifted, and it's unhealthy to believe you're gifted anyways, so even if I am, I'm better off not knowing.

This might be totally insane, but it seems reasonable to me...

<comment><USER9> Some of the most arrogant people I know reject the notion that they are gifted (as in, born lucky) in favor of the idea that they just work hard and anybody else could do the same but everyone else is too lazy. I think there are some definite positives in recognising the advantages you were born with.

<comment><USER8> You can always be arrogant if you try hard enough. But not being arrogant is far harder.

Personally, I believe that I might have had a bit of an advantage in some fields. Not because I'm necessarily better, but because my approach functions better in that area. But most people _can_ do the same thing if they wanted to. It's merely that everybody has a limited amount of focus, and most people choose to spend it differently. Looking down on them is unproductive, and also incorrect: they're probably experts in something you don't know anything about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Gifted children" is just a special buzzword to make parents feel good about their high-functioning-autism offspring. That's how it worked here in Canada.

My first encounter with such "gifted" students was in elementary school, they had a class right next to ours. At the time, I never knew about the concept of "gifted students" but what I remember clearly is this: They were constantly bullied for their appearance and mannerisms (ie. very bad dress sense, lack of hygiene, awkward personalities, poor motor skills) fast forward to today, none of these past gifted-students are doing anything special or noteworthy in academia and or the workforce (from my research)

This is just my experience, but perhaps I'm being too harsh.

<comment><USER11> In my experience, intelligence is correlated with bad dress sense, lack of hygiene, awkward personalities and poor motor skills. I know a lot of professional mathematicians, and they all would have been bullied for these things things (like I was) if they went to my high school, though many of them went to private high schools.

Before anyone downvotes me because presuming the existence of a group of people that is more intelligent than others is elitist or arrogant, I would point out that it is no more so that presuming the existence of a group of people with less social skills or motor skills.

<comment><USER12> This is not actually true. Intelligence correlates with social skills [https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2015-strenze.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2015-strenze.pdf). It's just that math departments select for people who want a job where they have high degree of control over their environment and work on things they chose and want to spend lots of time on, and this makes it a good choice for high IQ people with autistic traits.

<comment><USER11> I don't really see support for that in the article, but most of the details are in the individual studies. The study does say

 _Kanazawa notes that intelligence correlates positively with evolutionarily novel activities, but the correlation with ancient activities is zero or even negative. That is also evident in Table 25.1 , which mostly lists novel school- or job-related forms of success that have the expected positive correlation with intelligence, but one of the most ancient forms of success, number of children, has a negative correlation (−0.11)._

I would guess that you are reading "social success" as "social skills" while in the article's terminology they mean by "social success" things like career success, education level etc.

As for mathematics, it's true that this is a very special case, and people select into mathematics based on both ability and personality. All I can say for certain is that I can identify a distinct group of people who are both intelligent and have autism spectrum traits, and they seem to occur more often than if these traits were uncorrelated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway-anon > This kind of sensitive awareness and idealism makes them more likely to ask > themselves difficult questions about the nature and purpose of their lives > and the lives of those around them. They become keenly aware of their > smallness in the larger picture of existence, and they feel helpless to fix > the many problems that trouble them. As a result, they become depressed.

Psilocybin mushrooms have a similar effect, however ironically I have used those experiences as a way of dealing with existential depression. Rather than coming away feeling "helpless to fix the many problems" I feel more like I've shed the weight of those problems.

<comment><USER13> I agree. There is no cure for existential depression, but the temporary changes in perception that occur during a mushroom/acid trip can be a huge boon. The sense of self is diminished as you are chemically forced to stare into the void. This death of the ego is a powerful kick in the brain and makes mortality more palatable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "As intelligence goes up, happiness goes down. See, I made a graph. I make lots of graphs." \- Lisa Simpson

[https://flowingdata.com/2008/06/20/lisa-simpson-on- happiness...](https://flowingdata.com/2008/06/20/lisa-simpson-on-happiness-vs- intelligence/)

<comment><USER15> Somehow I believe that the upper brain is here to deal with problems, and so is naturally correlated to suffering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminded me of a post recently that suggested liberal arts majors are typically better coders. I felt pretty good about myself reading that one too until I got to the part where it was written by somebody with a liberal arts degree, and like this paper didn't really give any evidence to support the claim except for some clearly self-serving unfalsifiable opinions.

There's some interesting stuff in here if you like to visit this realm of thought but you could remove any reference to 'gifted' and you wouldn't lose any of it.

<comment><USER17> > Reminded me of a post recently that suggested liberal arts majors are > typically better coders.

Better coders compared to what? Here's some anecdotal data: I've interviewed computer scientists and computer/electrical engineers for software work terms for almost 10 years now. I administer a pretty simple technical test just measuring the ability to read and understand a small function in C#.

Over the past ~8 years I've interviewed, less than half of computer science students complete the test without any errors, or trivial errors due to simple misunderstanding of the comments documenting the code. Probably ~80% of the engineering students complete the test successfully.

Take from that what you will. Perhaps I'm looking at a biased sample because the job descriptions I post simply don't attract the better CS students, but do attract good engineering students for some reason. No idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are way too many 'I's in this article for comfort.

It is a great ego-stroke to hear that you are depressed because you are a gifted snowflake. Odds are, you are depressed because you are not doing the right things (regardless of how gifted you may be).

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not going to touch on whether the 'gifted' only feel this sort of constancy of existential fear and depression. I don't think that matters. I think moving past it does.

It's a question of framing.

I have battled this sort of perspective, the existentialist depression, for a long time.

I am finally beginning to realize the radical openness of life can be viewed in another way. You can see this existential predicament we all share not as something ultimately harrowing , but rather a gift.

The future truly is open. Radically so. Existence does precede essence--rather there's no essence at all.

See what occurs as a gift, when you can.

The works of Samuel Beckett, though perhaps on a surface interpretation nihilistic and perhaps depressing, are actually a point of positivity for me. I find they really capture the open nature of life and its inherent lack of structure, or apparent (key word) purpose, and the human propensity, which is really quite admirable, to go on, in spite of all that.

The following are all quotes from Beckett I like to keep in mind when I am viewing life in a grim manner and want to improve my mood:

but who cares how things pass, provided they pass.

the end is the beginning, and yet you go on.

A story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.

\----

The important thing, I think, is to live. You can't control how things pass, but you can rest easier, perhaps, if you lay down your head knowing you at least tried.

I had a professor whom I will always cherish that said "what if, could have, should have, would have, if only" are the words of tragedy. I've finally taken that lesson to heart.

An importnat step for me was deciding and forcing myself to go out and do things I normally didn't do. I'm not an inherently social person, and I forced myself to modify that. I'm still not a butterfly by any means, but getting out there, meeting people, learning about them and how they lived their lives, genuinely starting to care about them, that all helps. Solitude, while it can be a sweet companion, I think is probably the worst possible thing to have when facing this sort of condition of existential worry.

A story is not compulsory. It is written, if you write it.

Sorry for personal ramblings, but I've been through what I'd call existential dread and its not fun, not fun at all. We only have one shot at this life thing. At the end of the day, spending it in a state of perpetual negativity is sorrowful. It's my hope, I guess, that maybe venting my own process of change and moving on from this incessant feeling of damnation will help someone else too, even just a little.

Keep on living guys.

<comment><USER20> Much appreciated. Thanks for the post

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Did I miss it, or was there no mention of the worst, most depressing problem of gifted children (or, most likely, adults): learning, and intuitively understanding, that they are not the smartest person in the room.

</comment><comment><USER22> _They become keenly aware of their small ness in the larger pic ture of exis tence, and they feel help less to fix the many prob lems that trou ble them. As a result, they become depressed_

I have heard it's the opposite: that smarter people are happier. I think the problem is these studies on happiness and psychology are so imprecise. maybe also anecdotal evidence and cherry picking.

 _Other char ac ter is tics of gifted chil dren and adults also pre dis pose them to exis ten tial dis tress. Because brighter people are able to envi sion the pos si bil i ties of how things might be, they tend to be ide al ists. How ever, they are simul ta neously able to see that the world falls short of their ideals. Unfor tu nately, these vision ar ies also rec og nize that their abil ity to make changes in the world is very lim ited. Because they are intense, these gifted indi vid u als—both chil dren and adults—keenly feel the dis ap point ment and frus tra tion that occurs when their ideals are not reached. They notice duplic ity, pre tense, arbi trari ness, insin cer i ties, and absur di ties in soci ety and in the behav iors of those around them. They may ques tion or chal lenge tra di tions, partic u larly those that seem mean ing less or unfair. They may ask, for exam ple, "Why are there such inflex i ble sex or age-role restric tions on people? Is there any jus ti fi able reason why men and women 'should' act a cer tain way? Why do people engage in hyp o crit i cal behav iors in which they say one thing but then do the opposite? People say they are con cerned with the envi ron ment, but their behav iors show oth erwise. Why do people say things they really do not mean at all? They greet you with, 'How are you?' when they really don't want you to tell them the details of how you are. Why are so many people so unthinking and uncar ing in their deal ings with others? And with our planet? Are others really con cerned with improv - ing the world, or is it simply all about self ish ness? Why do people settle for medi oc rity? People seem fun da men tally self ish and tribal. How much dif - ference can one person make? It all seems hope less. The world is too far gone. Things get worse each day. As one person, I'll never be able to make a difference." These thoughts are common in gifted children and adults_

I think these concerns are common to most people...not just the smart

<comment><USER23> I suspect your notion of intelligence includes more than the quality itself. Humans are complex systems and exist inside much more complex systems. If intelligence were purely adaptive then there would be a lot more of it than there is. If the adaptation of an organism didn't dominate the expression of it's qualities then they would always be manifest; They are not. When they are not, happiness is also often not. It is true that a more fully manifest human is happier. Also that as their happiness and observable intelligence are correlated. But what would result from intelligence that hadn't been able to fully manifest? I suspect the expression of many of these concerns. Your final statement equalizes on this point. In fact, the expression of these concerns is absolutely not equal among humans. I can appreciate the hesitation to accept their indication of higher intelligence. They're not remarkable thoughts. They're absolutely not thoughts we want to reward. They are only occasionally the product of excessive intelligence becoming maladaptive. A person that is failing to cope takes a fairly regular form. This form is ultimately _not_ an expression of their intelligence.

You seem to be talking about "adaptive" intelligence. I suspect this is in fact the nearness to an optimal quantity and not merely more of the quality itself. Also, that this fluctuates over time. Adaptation to it is a continuous process of the meta-mind. Ignorance can be recognized as a form of unconscious intelligence possessed by any finite thinking thing. The calculations of this intelligence precede the existence of any particular mind and needn't be known by it. Our capacity to know this form of intelligence is unlikely. Hence your perception of imprecision. The thing you wish were precise never will be. Psychology simply cannot talk about it. As a science it wouldn't intend to. It can only theorize about definable qualities. To understand and properly measure "adaptive" intelligence we would have to subvert the entirety of it's effects. We would have to know what it deemed unworthy of being within the finite knower; Merely to confirm that it was in fact unworthy of being known. We can only pontificate about what "adaptive" intelligence is. Perhaps we can assert it's the correlates of observable intelligence. This demands that it doesn't fluctuate over time. Anything we can know to properly define it is too finite. Knowing it would imply a more "real" intelligence we have yet to define. We cannot "know" the meta-mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wanted to share a couple of thoughts, because after reading the comments here, there seems to be some kind of discomfort with the word "gifted". I too, felt like the paper described what I've been through, but completely rejected the idea of being gifted, as it should be, because it furthers marginalizes the self from society. I believe that with some effort through introspection, reading and practicing everybody could have similar opinions or knowledge as the people described in those pages. But I had to look into what gifted meant to the author first before assuring my discomfort and luckily, I found a couple of definitions on the website, which are different at what everybody here is thinking he meant.

"Gifted and talented children are those identified by professionally qualified persons who by virtue of outstanding abilities are capable of high performance." I want to note the word "capable". A lot of you, I'm sure, have come to realize that you learn fast, and faster than most people around you, and that you have different interests: sports, music, intellectually, leadership etc. That means that you don't have to be as Mozart or Einstein to enter that definition of gifted.

The second thing I wanted to say was a little bit of my experience. Yes, I'm an idealist and have strong emotions. After realizing the joke that society is I became conflicted. First, because I came to realize that we all are at fault of "this way of life" by playing along with it. Second, because I can't do anything about it to accomplish the ideal world that I sought. And lastly, because nobody that I knew thought or felt like I did, and that, made me different and felt alone. I read some books that further threw me into the abyss, because I hadn't experience enough or wasn't mature enough intellectually to understand the good in them. Especially Camus' "The stranger", a novel that talks about the absurdity of life.

To make my comment shorter so that you don't get bored. I read Sartre, and found in paragraph what life represents for me, and that set me "free", as I'm an atheist, that knew there was no meaning to life, and thus, felt my existence and everything I did irrelevant:

"Man is condemned to be free: condemned, because he did not create himself, yet nonetheless free, because once cast into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

For me, that was how I started to feel ok. I was free to do everything I wanted, but I too, was responsible of everything, "good" and "wrong" of the consequences. That meant "I was" what "I did", not what I thought me to be; Seneca gave a great example when he said: "A coward, makes himself a coward", and I didn't want to be a coward anymore. It was time to live what I thought life should be. And then, I read Seneca's letters to Lucilius, and found in them, agreeable and useful ways in living a more content life. And it has led me to a better path (individually speaking), "the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference".

</comment><comment><USER25> At a very young age, I remember stairing at myself in the mirror and realizing I am I, and asking but what am I?!

</comment><comment><USER26> Another name for "common sense" which isn't that common for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER27> I hope folks don't interpret their depression as evidence that they are one of the 'gifted' ones—an error of affirming the consequent.

No-one on this forum is just average, right? Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average (!) .

<comment><USER8> Yep. I think most of us have this, gifted or no.

And plenty of people on this forum are average. Including me.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the average high school student doesn't browse HN, so maybe I'm not average in that respect...

Also, that joke was terrible. And it made me sad.

<comment><USER28> The quote/joke comes from the intro of Garrison Keillor's radio show "Lake Wobegon", about life in a fictional city in Minnesota. So, hopefully that makes it a little less depressing. :-)

\---Alex

<comment><USER8> No, nonononono. I _got_ the joke. That's why I'm sad.

Keilor's finally retiring this year :-(.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Memes, memes everywhere..

Existential depression, my ass! Gifted adults, and even children, would surely read things like Stepenwolf, On The Road, Cuckoos Nest, Nausea, Age Of Reason and the likes and cure themselves.

Depression is nothing but a set of acquired habits. Change in behavior, caused by traveling and excessive reading, will produce a different perspective upon so called reality and an altered set of habits which will change ones personality. For better or worse.

This kind of CBT goes back to the seers and sages of the East and the first great philosophers of the West somewhere about 600 B.C. It still works.

<comment><USER30> Maybe we're discussing different definitions of the word "depression" here, but depression isn't simply "walked off" or fixed with a change of perspective. To suggest so both ignores the reality of depression as a mental illness and repeats the same myth that people who are depressed are just confusing themselves.

<comment><USER29> Some people just did it. Some even wrote books based on such experience.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Apple Won't ARM the MacBook (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.realworldtech.com/apple-stays-x86/ <comment><USER2> A refreshing in-depth, well-reasoned, article. And I think all the arguments hold up well today. I forgot I was reading something from 2011.</comment>


Show HN: Ever wish you could save what you had just heard? Thank my 2-year-old - <AUTHOR> http://www.heardapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea for HEARD was born one evening as my wife and I sat at the dinner table and she described to me some funny thing my 2 yr old son had said earlier that day... I wondered out loud: "How great would it be to have an app that lets you save such cute little things (that usually came as a surprise)... but AFTER you had already heard them..." and she said: "that would be an amazing thing to have ... but how is that possible ?"

Well, by that time I already knew I had to build something like that, and a precursor to HEARD was born.... It has made us feel surprisingly empowered over the past several months we have been using it ....

Now HEARD is available for everyone to enjoy as an iPhone app available on the App Store ... Please check it out and share with people who you think might benefit from it. In particular any parents with young kids that want to preserve these wonderful moments with their children. Thanks guys!

<comment><USER2> It's a cool app because I have a goofy friend whose daily banter rivals Karl Pilkington. "I wish someone was recording this" is said daily regarding his routine.

That said, I personally would hate this app being used on myself. The thought of having to re-hear anything I said as a small child makes me cringe. My Facebook feed is now dominated by baby pics and I often wonder what the kids will think about having everything in their life since infancy logged on the internet without any say in the matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any info on what this does to the battery life? It is a cool idea but I can imagine it totally kills the battery if it's always recording.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for asking. I keep it running in the background regularly and get 12 hrs easily and 15hrs normal with my iPhone 5 ...

Compared to something like navigation which drains it in ~4 hrs.

So the extra battery drain will not be a deal breaker for many ... but it still might be for some.... Totally depends on the user's situation in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have said ... the variability is b/c of what else I happen to be doing with my phone that day...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great idea, but aren't there some laws that prohibit recording people without consent?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a few points that help:

1) This is not meant to be a spying device (given it can not remember anything more than 5 mins old anyway).

2)Instead it is meant to be kind of a "personal memory enhancer" .... so you are basically recording conversations you are a part of and there are no laws against that.

Infact an excellent use of this is to fight bullying, where you can capture the bully (or black mailer etc) without their knowledge and there is nothing illegal about it because you are a part of that conversation.

3) Nothing gets written to long term memory unless the user tells the app to do so.

4) we don't let the user do anything that they cannot already do with an actively recording (Apple supplied) Voice Memo app. We just it make more convenient to capture the interesting parts of their life without having to sift through gigs of audio data every day

<comment><AUTHOR> 5) There is a big toggle switch that lets the user shut ON/Off background listening ....

<comment><USER5> Ship it with a t-shirt that says "this conversation may be recorded for quality purposes."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks really neat. I'm going to give it a try. One suggestion: put an itunes link on the home page :)

edit: an _obvious_ link, I should say. I kept clicking around without luck until finally I thought to click the "app store" text.

Also, it was completely not obvious to me that I could scroll on the page, and when I did scroll and a menu appeared out of nowhere it freaked me out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points ... will fix :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How long before we see a video equivalent for Google Glass? Creepy.

</comment><comment><USER8> How long until it is available for android? With regard to the usefulness against bullying, you don't know what I would have given to have this app a year or two ago...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to hear about your situation few years back ... But I am glad you wrote this comment b/c up until you said it ... my comments about bullying were based solely on a hunch...

If one person in that situation can benefit from it today ... I would think the whole thing paid off...

I cannot give a date on Android yet, but its definitely coming ... :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Despite the drawbacks mentioned here, it's a very neat idea.

Also - kudos for making it happen. I know how hard it could be to have a nice idea and find some time to make it happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is 5 minutes the maximum? Consider extending that option. Bullying and Police abuse situations can last longer than 5 minutes before someone can be safe enough to activate the saving.

<comment><AUTHOR> It can be increased ... but not by a whole lot, as that means more RAM consumed by this background app .... (thats the way its currently designed ...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Two things:

1) Battery killer, right? 2) My phone is usually in my pocket... is it going to catch things that are, I don't know, 5 feet away if it's in my pocket?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both valid concerns ... it works reasonably well on both counts in my opinion (but others will need to try it to form their own opinions)...

Btw, I dog-fooded it for several months before deciding to release publicly, based on how useful I found it :-)

</comment></comment><comment> slash-dot Nice idea, but I don't really like the in-call style header visible everywhere. I believe there is no way to make it work without it without jailbreaking?

<comment><AUTHOR> I expect ios7 will make that part less intrusive ... will check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about the pocket? Does the recording still come through okay?

<comment><AUTHOR> Slightly worse than when holding the phone in your hand ... but overall perfectly audible. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> nice app and a neat site as well. how did you build it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :-) The site is built using a great (and very economical) theme from themeforest: [http://themeforest.net/item/vireo-ultra-responsive-app- landi...](http://themeforest.net/item/vireo-ultra-responsive-app-landing- page/full_screen_preview/4634837)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> NSA got it covered. They save everything these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> hehe ... did they not start a free backup/retrieval service for all the data ? One you can't actually opt out of :-)</comment></comment>


ITA Software - Puzzle Archive - <AUTHOR> http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/puzzle_archive.html?catid=39

<comment><USER2> The cofounder of Symbolics, Dan Weinreb, apparently works there as well. They also seem to do a lot of Lisp programming. Seems like a pretty cool company.

<comment><USER3>
      >> seem to do a lot of Lisp programming

However, the puzzles seem weighted to requiring a solution using Java.

<comment><USER2> And according to Dan Weinreb's blog, they will most likely not use Common Lisp again on another ITA project:

[http://danweinreb.org/blog/rumors-of-ita-acquisition-are- jus...](http://danweinreb.org/blog/rumors-of-ita-acquisition-are-just- rumors#comment-47943)

That's a shame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I spent quite some time working on the "palindromic pangram" problem. I believe I solved it, but my program took several days to finish, so there's probably an optimization I'm still missing. If my program is correct, the shortest palindromic pangram is length 57. Has anyone here done better (either a shorter solution or faster running time)?

</comment><comment><USER5> How can one improve in these sorts of problems? Crack open CLRS and read that?

</comment><comment><USER6> I see they're taking a hint from Google.

<comment><USER7> What do you want to imply? I do not see any connection to Google.

ITA had those puzzles for quite a long time. (Perhaps before Google was even founded?)</comment></comment>


Are any JavaScript developers excited for Blazor? - <AUTHOR> I see a bunch of hype about Blazor and have dug pretty deep into the framework and certainly see some exciting developments.<p>However, I haven't read much about the opinions of really talented front end engineers who currently love and prefer javascript / typescript. What do you think? <comment><USER2> This might be a better link: [https://learn-blazor.com/getting-started/what- is-blazor/](https://learn-blazor.com/getting-started/what-is-blazor/)

First I'm hearing of this project. It sounds cool, but I fear it will eventually die of neglect like every previous attempt to use !JS in the browser. Maybe if Microsoft pushes it heavily with their first-party sites?

</comment><comment><USER3> Nope

It's essentially front end coding for non front end Microsoft stack developers. Expect convoluted enterprise apps written in it.

</comment><comment><USER4> It looks interesting and should find a niche in LoB apps. The runtime is much to big for consumer facing apps.

</comment><comment><USER5> If anyone would be interested it would be c# dotnet developers

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not interested in many client-side frameworks. The reference to Silverlight gives a clue as to who it may be targeting.

> Unlike former platforms like Silverlight, it does not bring its own > rendering engine to paint pixels on the screen. Blazor uses the Browser's > DOM to display data.

</comment><comment><USER7> WASM will be cool when you can start writing Python, Go, Rust, or Clojure on the front end. Until then, I don't see anyone trying to make their lives more painful by running something like Java or C# on the front end.

</comment><comment><USER8> So you have to distribute the entire mono runtime with each individual Blazor app? And you're running your app code through not just one but two virtual machines (Mono, then WASM)? No, I can't say I'm too excited about that.

</comment><comment><USER9> never heard of it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why would they be? Isn't Blazor a framework for C# to replace JS with WASM?

</comment><comment><USER11> I am not interested in frameworks generally.

</comment><comment><USER12> no.</comment>


Inside a Chinese Bitcoin Mine That's Grossing $1.5M a Month - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/chinas-biggest-secret-bitcoin-mine?gble <comment><USER2> One comment which I haven't seen come up much is bitcoin mining doesn't actually have to be "profitable" to be useful. For example, if you live in a country that has restrictions to prevent capital flight (i.e. extra taxes on money transfers to foreign accounts, etc...), ignoring the potential criminality implications, mining bitcoins at a "forex loss" and transferring those bitcoins may still be a better net financial option than just transferring the money in whatever your native currency is.

I believe China used to have some pretty significant restrictions to prevent capital flight - I wonder if that has something to do with this mining operation.

<comment><USER3> This is actually a remarkably good point. The key concept here is that Bitcoin mining -- even at a "Forex loss" \-- will essentially trade electricity for Bitcoins, which can be used to purchase other currencies. Depending on what the miner values their local currency at, this can still make financial sense.

As an example: suppose you are a resident of country X, and you have 1000 XUnits that are valued at 1000 USD, but there are capital flight restrictions such that you can exchange your 1000 XUnits for only 300 USD. And suppose that you _need_ to exchange your XUnits to USD, for whatever reason. You then use your XUnits to buy electricity and mining hardware, and generate Bitcoins, and sell them for 750 USD.

Note that you could try to do the same with e.g. steel, barrels of oil, or widgets, but with hardware you'd be subject to import/export taxes, and the entire operation would have much higher overhead costs (comparatively, setting up a mining farm is pretty cheap).

<comment><USER4> Why not just buy Bitcoin directly? There's no requirement to mine these things in the first place if all you want to do is exchange them.

Someone could fly in via Hong Kong with a piece of paper that could unlock $100MM of BTC and nobody would know.

Meanwhile building a gigantic BTC mining facility will not go unnoticed.

<comment><USER5> Because the local currency would have to go trough the banking systems and if the seller's account is in any other country, then exchange restrictions are applied just the same.

<comment><USER4> They have paper money, which you can exchange for BTC. Money exchangers have been doing this for _centuries_ with different commodities to skirt around regulations, and BTC, gold, or jade figurines are all the same at the end of the day if there's an agreed value for them.

<comment><USER5> Well, yes.. but the person giving you paper money in exchange for BTC will make their own exchange rate based on the capital risk incurred in transacting volatile goods, which is very different than transacting gold or jade figurines. Unless of course you meet a BTC collector who has no immediate plans on capitalizing on his investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So since this video was made, the price has gone down by approx 35% and the difficulty has gone up by approximately 17%, for a total adjustment in revenue of about 50%, unless they added more machines, or upgraded their current ones. That's pretty brutal.

Ultimately (and not long from now if these rates of adjustment continue), mining will be a commodity business with a very small profit margin. When you consider that there are uses for low grade heat (like home and office heating), once the ASICs catch up with Moore's law, it seems likely that the profitability will be slightly negative for someone trying to run this kind of business. (As another reason, there will probably be people who have access to basically free electricity that would have been wasted, and just need to amortize the cost of the ASICS).

However, because mining is a zero sum game, we can conclude that the profitability of mining was very high at the time of the making of this video, or else the margins wouldn't have been able to drop as much as they did. This says that a rational large investor would choose to put their money into mining rather than directly buying bitcoins, if they were interested in getting into this space. That's probably why the price has been falling since the peak early last year.

<comment><USER7> > there will probably be people who have access to basically free electricity > that would have been wasted, and just need to amortize the cost of the ASICS

That's a really interesting point. I wonder if we'll see utility companies get into bitcoin mining as a way of profiting from their excess capacity during non-peak times.

<comment><USER8> Microsoft ran heaters at Quincy to avoid a contractual obligation. They could run ASICs.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/technology/data-centers- in...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/technology/data-centers-in-rural- washington-state-gobble-power.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

Then came a showdown late last year between the utility and Microsoft, whose hardball tactics shocked some local officials.

In an attempt to erase a $210,000 penalty the utility said the company owed for overestimating its power use, Microsoft proceeded to simply waste millions of watts of electricity, records show.

<comment><USER9> That article is pretty damning of the power company, not Microsoft. They issued a fine for not using as much electricity as they estimated, what's the logic there? And then the "utility commissioner" (unclear if he works for the utility itself or not) has the gall to blast them for "not being green"? Plus they are trying to paint the narrative as a "megacorp vs aw-shucks local farmers" that just rings hollow in light of the company's exorbitant fine.

<comment><USER10> The reason why this is done is because major industrial customers (e.g. data centers) often require upgrades to utility-owned infrastructure when they set up shop. Utilities will typically require what they call a 3rd party capital contribution (i.e. upfront cash payment) for some portion of the total cost, with the remainder to be recovered via their margin on the additional electricity consumed over the lifetime of the facility. You would also have the option of paying the full cost and making no commitment as to whether you'd actually use it.

If a customer moves in and says "oh yeah, I'm gonna need an average of 100 MW 24/7 for the next 20 years" and then turns out to only use half that, the utility is now short a bunch of a money that it spent upgrading its distribution infrastructure for that customer's supposed needs.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that's fine if you had a contract committing to a certain minimum, but any ideas how they are justifying asking for 3x the difference though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "the 400 bitcoin millionaires with at least BTC2,000 hold 40% of bitcoins" from [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316297.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316297.0)

This is the main reason I'm highly skeptical of bitcoin, not to mention wildly fluctuating value, little if any privacy gains ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2011/07/14/how- privat...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2011/07/14/how-private-are- bitcoin-transactions/)), and a host of other problems.

</comment><comment><USER12> According to Reddit, the mine in question has been shut down already:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2v02n9/life_inside_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2v02n9/life_inside_a_chinese_bitcoin_mine/codps2q)

<comment><USER13> That isn't surprising.

You can deduce from the video that their utility rate is ~$0.09/kWh.

That's substantially higher than other major bitcoin miners are paying.

<comment><USER14> yeah, he describes in the video how Dalian is a nicer location than the other buildings they operate. I imagine given the lower profits they could no longer afford the luxury.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very misleading title. It's grossing $1.5M per month. You still need to subtract operating costs, which will be substantial in a bitcoin mine. I'm sure power/land/cooling/etc is cheaper in rural China than many other places in the world, but there's no way it's free.

<comment><USER16> $80,000 per month electricity bill is mentioned in the video. Sheesh.

<comment><USER17> $80K per site. They are running six sites = $480K

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Was making $1.5mm, in October of last year. There are some off the cuff calculations in the reddit thread [0] that indicate the same setup would currently be netting only about a tenth of that amount now.

0 - [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2v02n9/life_inside_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2v02n9/life_inside_a_chinese_bitcoin_mine/codf387)

<comment><USER19> Based on the video, it looks like these guys likely swap out for the newest equipment as soon as it makes sense economically.

If I were making such an investment, I'd think carefully about the rate of computational depreciation (which is predictable) and probably hedge on the price of power. The only unpredictable thing in this setup is the price of bitcoin, which I believe they're extremely bullish on long term. You could probably figure out a way to hedge that, too, if you could find someone to take the action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What a depressing business. Making money out of noise, and warm air ...

<comment><USER21> And processing transactions. And increasing security.

<comment><USER22> > And increasing security.

Only for the Bitcoin network, which is like saying that putting a fence and armed guards around a plot of industrial wasteland is inherently good because it increases security.

<comment> vertex-four If there wasn't demand for Bitcoin (no matter how misguided you might think that demand is), Bitcoin would not be worth anything, and so mining it would be pointless as it would get you something that is not worth anything.

<comment><USER23> Sure. Bitcoin provides value for criminals (it may provide a little value for some legitimate use cases, but they're very marginal in comparison to the criminal uses). Those running the system are providing a service to criminals and receive a proportion of their criminal profits in return. Still a very depressing business.

<comment><USER24> That's like blaming cash for crime, it's just ignorant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And with current bitcoin prices they are now down to less than a million per month. These are the perils of bitcoin mining.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if they get new ASIC designs before they ship to consumers. I'm remembering buying mining ASIC and then actually getting shipped them much much later. We thought at the time that they were being held back and 'burned in' at a big mine run by the manufacturers mates. This would explain why they are so hush hush about where the devices come from...

If the ASICs already bought and shipped to consumers later, they would be effectively free!

Alternatively they might be using the low chips that failed QC and never shipped - they might burn out eventually but if you are running them yourself you can be prepared for that.

</comment><comment><USER27> The thing that interested me the most about this video was when they interviewed him on his thoughts of the future of bitcoin.

He didn't seem all that enthusiastic about bitcoin's prospects.

<comment><USER28> A true businessman

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> BTC is still very overvalued if there is still surplus profit.</comment>


Pretty funny...a site meant for php tutorials has a php error (see comments)... - <AUTHOR> http://www.phpit.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Error as copied from www.phpit.net - we all have our bad days, this one was just a little bit funnier than the others...hope you got a laugh from this one!

<Copied text follows>

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How Primedice was exploited for $1M in Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Stunna/breaking-the-house-63f1021a3e6d <comment><USER2> I don't think he did much wrong here. It doesn't appear that he actually broke in to your computers, he just submitted lots of bets.

If you're going to run a casino (whose entire business model is based on exploiting weaknesses of others for profit), don't be surprised if people try to exploit your weaknesses for profit.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with running a casino, I think it is fine. I just think that what he did is fine too.

EDIT: Except the part where you apparently didn't pay out all of his winnings. I'm not fine with that part. Also doxing one of your customers just because he made a profit out of you.

<comment><USER3> > EDIT: Except the part where you apparently didn't pay out all of his > winnings. I'm not fine with that part. Also doxing one of your customers > just because he made a profit out of you.

They asked him to stop playing at that point and he created a new account to evade that. I'm not sure why you feel people don't have the right to refuse service.

<comment><USER4> It's not that person's fault that these guys suck at enforcing their own policies

<comment><USER3> If you are explicitly contacted and refused service, its actually illegal to do what the user did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "To understand how Hufflepuff beat our system, one must understand how our provably fair system (RNG) works."

"Our database had seeds that were both inactive and in use at the same time all connected to Hufflepuff."

To me it sounds like your company simply didn't understand how the system you created worked, it sounds like you merely understood how you wished it to work. Gambling has always favored people who actually understand the system in place, by not understanding the system you yourselves were implementing you created the opportunity for a customer to understand it better than you. What you describe with your database having seeds that were both in use and inactive at the same time, sounds to me like you did not do a good job managing concurrency on records which were crucial to your business.

While I can not say whether the users did anything illegal, the post you have created to call attention to this does not make an adequate case for wrong doing on the users part. However your response does make an amazing case for you having responded to an implementation issue in your software very poorly, and I think would make future users who are aware of this less likely to use your service.

That is just my opinion given the information you have presented, as you seem to focus more on maliciously providing information of the person you are accusing as opposed to proving your accusations that the person in question committed a crime while doing so.

<comment><USER6> I'd be willing to place a bet on what sort of database technology they _weren 't_ using. Hint: it has three letters, starts with an S, and ends with an L. ;-)

<comment><USER7> SQL won't force you to respect flag columns in your application layer (unless your entire application is in SQL?).

<comment><USER8> From the article it sounds like constraints could have been used to prevent having multiple seeds linked to the same account?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I guess it depends on how good your constraints engine is versus what your constraints actually are. If your actual constraints can't be modeled, or if you choose not to model them at the database layer (e.g. for performance reasons) then you have to implement the constraints somewhere else.

I worked on a database that allowed (almost) every table to mark a row as deleted with a boolean-type column. This caused problems when you wanted to create a new row that had the same values for the table's key-columns as a deleted row. You can't just add the deleted column to the key and have all the functionality you want (multiple deleted rows with the same values in the table's key-columns). Each table could use (or not) the flag in different ways and there was no simple way to enforce consistent behavior across all tables. The constraint has to be placed somewhere else, either in explicit code, or by creating new abstractions inside the database that allow you to represent the actual constraints of your application.

<comment><USER9> There are benefits for marking a row as deleted w/ a boolean column though. Undo-ing deletes would be easy to implement, and retaining references to deleted records would be simple as well.

The solution the problem you described would be to use a surrogate key column (typically a UUID/auto-increment), and not natural keys.

<comment><USER7> There are reasons for everything in the database. Undo and historical records were the primary use case.

All tables had a unique, integer primary key.

However, if you want to enforce a uniqueness constraint across your data [eg. UNIQUE(name, location)], the constraint breaks when you introduce the boolean deleted column [and UNIQUE(name, location, deleted) does not provide the appropriate semantics]. The application semantics must be provided at some other level than SQL column constraints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _and time again to investigate and each time our developers could not find > any wrong-doing._

> ...

> _This was done by sending it more requests than it could handle in a small > time period, think hundreds of requests in under a second_

Sounds like your developers really messed up. The server logs would be the #1 place I would look. Where else really? How do you not notice hundreds of requests per second (from the same IP I assume)?

<comment><USER11> This was my question as well. How do you not notice 100's of qps from the same IP, and then go on to say, he was betting $8k/second. server logs, and basic networking chomps seems like it would have found this much quicker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm reflexively sympathetic to the small, scrappy startup. But...

...man this is not a sympathetic story. You're running a gambling site (morally shady and an obvious magnet for abuse), using bitcoins (another huge abuse magnet), you had very supicious gambling patterns (a massive red flag that no real casino would accept), and you just let the guy keep playing? That's not how you're supposed to do that.

And as for the whole "we had a timing bug in our code, and we couldn't find it even with hard proof that it existed, and then we finally thought we'd fixed it, and then we _asked the guy for the million dollars back_ (??!?), and then it turned out we hadn't fixed it at all, and he hit us up for another few thousand"? Like, that just sounds screaming amateurish.

If you can't be trusted to write secure code, or at least fix the bugs you find in it, maybe online bitcoin casinos aren't for you? And if you think asking people nicely to give you your money back works in casinos, maybe you don't understand the industry?

Edit: I'm not trying to be a dick, but I feel like the proper blogpost to write would be a grovelling "hey guys, I know it's super obvious, but if you're doing an online gambling website, monitor your transactions for specific patterns. Know what a real punter looks like, and aggressively throttle anyone who doesn't behave like one. Otherwise you'll be stupid idiots who lose a million dollars over a stupid bug, and then have to write a magnanimous letter congratulating the guy who exploited you for winning so much money (man that was painful to write)." You made some huge mistakes, and it doesn't sound like you really learned from them, or even identified them. Hint: Your core mistake was not a timing bug that emerged when your system was under heavy load.

</comment><comment><USER13> Lol. They (as any sane Casino operator would) should have booted this guy immediately on day 1, claiming they felt he was scamming the system. Sure, pay him out, but don't let him keep betting. Yeesh. I have to wonder if this was an inside job and they let him siphon those winnings. I am highly suspicious of most bitcoin companies, and I wonder if they're all just shells around vulnerabilities looking to siphon user deposits / investments.

<comment><USER14> That doesn't make much sense.

If they have a legit exploit, then kicking them will just make them create a new account. Or perhaps distribute the +EV betting over a bunch of accounts so that it was much harder to detect.

If they don't have an exploit, then you want them to keep betting and lose. And if you have no real basis for kicking them, then, what, your casino just doesn't pay out people that win big?

The casino's only real option here was to discover the exploit.

<comment><USER13> No, pay him out, but just don't let anyone bets that way continue betting. Betting that rapidly has to be a huge flag for even the dimmest of sys admins.

<comment><USER15> What is "bets that way"? It seems like initially all they knew was that some accounts were unusually active (betting every second, for hours) and implausibly lucky. They saw the flags, they just didn't know any useful way to react (which is also incompetence, but IMO different than what you said.) (I'm assuming a dumb rate-limiting solution would be off the table, as it would be ineffective at stopping the attack, and/or lose money as other players stop betting when they hit a limit.)

<comment><USER12> > What is "bets that way"?

I dunno, maybe anyone who is clearly automated (ie, betting every second for hours) and probably cheating (ie, implausibly lucky)?

> It seems like initially all they knew was that some accounts were unusually > active (betting every second, for hours) and implausibly lucky.

Exactly.

> They saw the flags, they just didn't know any useful way to react

The useful way to react would be to not let them continue betting.

<comment><USER15> But how do you reliably identify one anonymous entity? Like I said, putting a rate limit is going to turn away legitimate bettors (if too strict) and not make much of a dent in the attacker's profits (if not strict enough). Doing an "implausibly lucky" check is going to piss off legitimately lucky winners who might have given you more money (if the limit is too conservative), and/or not hurt the attacker much. Any per-account limits can be circumvented by the attacker making more.

Maybe they took some measures like this that they didn't tell us about. With that much money at stake, maybe "do something, anything" does make sense -- my point was there's no way for them to ultimately prevail until they understood/addressed the root issue, and knee-jerk responses could backfire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Uh, that post includes some doxxing.

From an observer's view, after fully reading it and seeing how hostile their response is, I can only applaud the player. To me it seems fair game. She exploited a weakness in the game, something that in meatspace is often hailed as genius. In bitcoin online gambling, race conditions are a part of the game that has to be expected to be attacked.

With their doxxing they lost any bit of sympathy I had.

</comment><comment><USER17> The (costly) lesson learned here doesn't revolve around Primedice's RNG architecture but the strict importance of testing.

We all face pressure to deliver but at the end of the day -like brakes on a car- testing is one thing you should never cut corners on.

Although another 2 weeks of testing may not have explicitly exposed the vulnerability, it surely would have offered a better baseline from which to evolve better heuristics for the analysis of the exploit when it did occur.

<comment><USER18> Testing is important, but I don't think that's enough for this sort of problem. What this needs is in-depth code review. Tests are only as good as the tests you write, and if there was no test to account for this particular issue nothing would have been caught.

For concurrency issues someone thinking real hard is as important as testing.

<comment><USER19> _someone thinking real hard is as important as testing_

With one caveat.

The "thinking real hard" has to happen before and as the code is written.

If you try to catch fundamental design problems and misconceptions during a code review, you're much too late. At that point there is a "status quo" i.e. the existing code, and a defensive resistance to change, even if you can demonstrate clear problems with said code. The end result is band-aids on top of band-aids, rather than a proper solution to the problems.

Edit: the article itself alludes to band-aids:

       our developer had improperly patched the glitch

i.e. they attempted a quick fix, instead of understanding at a fundamental level the overall mistakes in what they were doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "We heavily explored what we thought was every possibility, ran simulations and did the math and came to the conclusion that he was just incredibly lucky." ROTFL

</comment><comment><USER21> _Any information that leads to the return of the coins from this incident will be greatly rewarded. We invite you to analyze the above bitcoin addresses and find out where the bulk of the coins ended up if you have the skills._

What does this mean? Are they trying to _steal_ the thief (according to them). Shouldn't they inform the local authorities and let them handle the case?

<comment><USER14>
        > Shouldn't they inform the local authorities and let them
        > handle the case?

In which jurisdiction? The one containing the VPN IP addresses? Or the internet police?

An open letter to the internet asking for help ends up sounding about 1000x more effective than phoning this in to the "authorities".

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Strange choice to put a picture from the Ocean's Eleven series at the top of the article, seeing as how the thieves in those films are considered the protagonists/heroes.

I think a bit more information included with the article to verify this was actually a 'hack' would be helpful. I mean, was this akin to counting cards or what? It's hard to tell from the article.

<comment><USER14> Since the player was making hundreds of simultaneous requests, it sounds like a race condition in the casino's server-seed mechanism where the player was able to get the server-seed of future bets.

Obviously, the server only wants to divulge the server-secret of closed-out bets so that you can verify them as provably fair.

> Strange choice to put a picture from the Ocean's Eleven series at the top of > the article, seeing as how the thieves in those films are considered the > protagonists/heroes.

It's not so strange after reading a number of these HN comments.

<comment><USER22> I think the strangeness for me is that the article is written from the casino's perspective. They went so far as to dox the 'culprit' and are portraying him in a negative light in the article.

<comment><USER14> It looks like the attacker had some sort of celebrity status and fanfare throughout all of this: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=843892.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=843892.0) so maybe Ocean's Eleven isn't so far-fetched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23>
      ... did the math and came to the conclusion that he was just
      incredibly lucky

Woah. Red flag. Just incredibly lucky doesn't exist. Odds are odds.

<comment><USER24> I think they just mean, if you have 10,000 customers, it's not surprising if someone hits the 1 in 10,000 odds. You could say that person was "lucky", though they have no greater chance than anyone else of hitting those odds again.

<comment><USER12> They don't give us enough info to say for sure, but something tells me Hufflepuffs winnings were a few orders of magnitude less likely than one in 10,000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It is really interesting to me how different Bitcoin users' understanding of morality and the typical person's are. To almost any joe or Jane on the street, exploiting a weakness in someone else's security -- be it an unlocked door or an unchecked error code -- to acquire money from them without their intent, is Wrong. On the other hand, taking retaliatory action, such as providing what detail you can about that person in the service of returning the ill-gotten gains, is right.

Judging by the contents of this thread, the Bitcoin/hacker community feels just the opposite. How odd. I feel like this more than anything will impede the mass adoption of Bitcoin.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure the difference is really there. The fact that this place is a casino matters a lot. My understanding of typical morality is that it's _totally_ cool to exploit a weakness in a casino's games to shift the odds in your favor, and the casino's recourse is limited to trying to make this impossible, and banning people who do it (while still paying out whatever they won before they were banned).

However, it's not cool to break the casino's games from within. To make an analogy, if you discover that e.g. a casino's blackjack decks have twice as many 7s in them as they should, and you use that knowledge to make a ton of money playing blackjack at the casino, that's legitimate. However, if you break into the casino and replace all their normal blackjack decks with ones which have twice as many 7s, then use that knowledge to make a ton of money at blackjack, that's bad.

So the question is, which category does this particular attack fall into? Apparently they exploited a race condition, wherein outcomes became predictable if lots of games were played simultaneously. Is that exploiting the game within its rules, or is that breaking and entering?

To me, this feels legitimate. An analogy to physical games here might be finding a roulette table where the dealer under some circumstances lets you place a bet after it becomes apparent where the ball is going to land.

<comment><USER19> _if you break into the casino and replace all their normal blackjack decks with ones which have twice as many 7s_

I've always wondered about this from the other perspective. Why can't the _casino_ remove a few cards?

E.g. in Blackjack in a six-deck shoe the house edge is perhaps 0.5% to 2.0% against a "pretty good player" (depending on exact rules). Remove a few face cards and you would probably hurt the player by another 1% or thereabouts.

But you've now moved the house edge from 1% to 2%. Double the profit!

When is the last time you've ever seen any player at a casino ask the dealer to reconstruct the six or eight starting decks that are in a shoe? I've never seen that.

But I still do enjoy taking the occasional trip to Vegas.

<comment><USER27> >When is the last time you've ever seen any player at a casino ask the dealer to reconstruct the six or eight starting decks that are in a shoe? I've never seen that

You see the decks fanned out, each card visible, before they get shuffled and put in the shoe. It would require some sleight of hand from the dealer to cheat that way. If you're going to do that, it's much less risky to rig your slot machines or your craps dice or your Wheel of Fortune, where no one will ever notice any wrongdoing short of an audit by the gaming commission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _Sorry for the long read_

Didn't feel long at all; it was concise and had enough detail to satisfy a casual reader (me) with links to more detail if I wanted it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Some pretty hilarious YouTube comments on the linked video[0]: "could you please share your strategy in that video", "Please, Send your method of play and programs for this need". Sorry, but I'm pretty sure nobody's going to share their bot for making 2000 BTC in an hour.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSLXv5Tz1ZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSLXv5Tz1ZY) , linked from "$8000 worth of bitcoin every second for hours on end"

</comment><comment><USER29> So bitcoin casinos are legal ?</comment>


The dangerous allure of the "Billion Dollar Startup Club" - <AUTHOR> http://sethbannon.com/the-dangerous-allure-of-the-billion-dollar-startup

<comment><USER2> "there's a disturbing trend developing of people deciding to found a company simply to get rich."

\- ok I have to stop you there. This is not a new developing trend. It has always been a part of tech startup lore. If there is any current trend it's the democratization of startups. 10 years ago you needed $10 million in funding to build something real. 5 years ago $3 to $5 million. Today that's probably $1 -$2 million. The interesting thing about startups _today_ is that you can build real, decent, 10's or 100+ people startups without having to raise gazilions of $'s. Prior to very recently it was go big or go home entirely.

Which is a good point. Has anyone done any analysis on the YC/500 alums that fall in-between the Billion Startup Club and failing? My guess is there might be literally 100's of Olarks that are really great places to work with interesting teams doing millions in revenue that never needed to raise big dough. That option didn't really exist 5 or 10 years ago. The option to strike it rich though always has.

<comment><USER3> We (at Olark) are wondering the same thing. We just recently talked to Poll Everywhere (S'08) - they are also bootstrapped and well over $1m / year in revenue. Wufoo was as well (they were acquired in 2011).

If you're a bootstrapped company (let's say < $100k in outside funding) and you have revenues >> $1m / year, we'd love to hear from you!

Does it count if you raise after you hit $1m / year in revenue? I'll let you decide.

<comment><USER4> You make it sound like raising is bad. there is absolutely nothing wrong with raising and in fact it is a good thing.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't say raising money is necessarily a "good thing". Sure it gives you a bit of validation that someone would take a risk on you/your idea. But the data shows most companies will just burn through the money and never make a return.

Making profit is a "good thing". Raising money is just this side process that may or may not be necessary for your company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Though I agree with the general statements made by the author, on a tangent, I disagree with the 'solve a problem' advice which is constantly being touted.

I look at some of the largest start-ups or even companies, and they aren't solving problems so much as creating opportunities.

AirBnB didn't really solve a problem, they created an opportunity for you to rent your extra space, or find a place other than a hotel to stay.

This also applies to larger companies. Coca-cola didn't solve a problem, they just made something people really liked.

Apple and Microsoft didn't solve a problem people had. They didn't have computers, so what what problem could you have been solving by giving people an operating system. At the time, people didn't know what they would use a computer for, so what problem was being solved.

<comment><USER7> Seems to me like all of these companies solved problems - they were just problems that not many people knew they had.

Airbnb - I only use my place 90% of the year, but I pay for using it 100% of the year. Coke - Water doesn't taste very good. Apple/MS - secretaries are expensive. Can they be automated?

<comment><USER4> If it's solving problem that you don't know you have, I would consider it more creating opportunity.

<comment><USER8> Aging is a major problem everyone has, but few people think of it in those terms.

Generally when people talk about 'creating opportunity's' they just mean solving problems that people don't think of as problems.

In that context Google's quest to 'organize the worlds information' is really just solving the gap between what humanity knows and what you know. EX: Someone knows where the closest ATM is, but you have no idea. Someone knows what error code 237b means and what to do next, but you don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the OP misunderstands the words "billion dollar company". Which is actually completely understandable, since money is in the title you assume it's about the money.

Typically founders are product people, they want to solve a problem that exists in the world. But, to solve that problem, they need to make a big impactful company, that grows to dominate a particular niche or industry and disrupt the current way of doing things.

To these founders, "billion dollar company" is a shorthand for all these ideals: to make a great and lasting company, to solve a real problem for a very large number of people, and to make a real impact in the world.

It's not coincidence that this phrase is also important to VCs, for whom "billion dollar company" may have a different meaning, that being "make back the fund for our LPs". I say "may" because that's a simplistic view: many VCs are looking to make the world a better place too, and in many cases they have more money than they need already.

And to journalists, these mean "companies which we have to pay attention to". And when you think about, they're not paying attention because of the value, but because of the impact. Which is why journalists are always talking about consumer companies, because they have much more impact in the world than more successful enterprise companies.

Of course, that's not to say there aren't people in it for the money. But we rarely need to worry about them, since they rarely succeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that some use "billion dollar company" as shorthand for all the things you mention (a great lasting company, solving a real problem, and making a real impact). My point is that while it's often used as a proxy like this, it's a dangerous proxy because it's easily disconnected from the company's original mission(s). In this sense, it's an unhealthy simplification. Surely there must be a better stand-in for a startup's hard-to-measure progress towards achieving their mission than their valuation.

<comment><USER10> I couldn't agree more with your full post. It's almost become so obvious and cliche that people have forgotten why business exists. It's as if all the media hype puts the focus on the riches of the founder and not the value created by the product.

Every once in a while you see a publication do a retrospective of a failed startup. And every once in a while you see a blog post from a startup that exploded. But the statistics are completely skewed with distorting the reality of startup success. Mentioning that there are now X number of billion dollar startups masks how many startups are simultaneously failing. I would love to see a study that showed the total number of inflation-adjusted billion dollar startups as a percentage of the total number of startups started over time. This percentage may actually be decreasing, even though the media seems to be suggesting that there's a tech bubble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is just stupid. Pretty much any billion dollar company is meaningful by definition. You can't just manufacture something like that out of thin error. And what's the scary danger?

<comment><USER11> The only scary danger I'm familiar with from it (for businesses and entrepreneurs), is the potential for mass delusion and altering behavior based on believing the good valuation & funding times will never end. Falling into that trap is very common.

I've seen two large stock market / tech implosions in my relatively short lifetime, the 1999/2000 bubble and the smaller 2005/2007 pre-great recession era.

In both cases there was a lot of hubris around the notion that because you acquired a massive valuation, you had a business that was really worth that, and really had that sort of potential. It's a failure to separate the financial atmosphere at the time, and the reality of business when it comes to generating the sales and profit that it takes to support a given valuation over time.

You most certainly can manufacture a billion dollar valuation out of, essentially, thin air - it happened frequently in 1999.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > there's a disturbing trend developing of people deciding to found a company > simply to get rich

I understand what the author is getting at. But the purpose of a business is to make money. What's wrong with starting a company to get rich? My suspicion is that the author means something more along the lines of "There are too many people starting companies simply to make a quick buck."

All things considered though, I agree. There are simply too many people in the Valley chasing huge valuations and quick exits and not enough building sustainable companies.

<comment><USER13> I don't see it as something morally wrong. I think the point is more that you're less likely to succeed if you're just doing it because you see other start-ups getting rich. So you start a company just to start a company, instead of having an actually good idea that you're passionate about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author seems to be trying to dissuade founders who are only in it for the money from starting startups solely for that reason.

On that note, I would suspect that a company whose primary interest is making the founders money wouldn't necessarily have their customer's best interests in mind and would probably never reach a $1B valuation.

</comment><comment><USER15> "but the core purpose of these founders is clear – to make boatloads of money." This is false. If someone merely wanted to build wealth there are many options with a higher expected value and higher chance of producing life- changing results.

The stated billion dollar goal has several reasons behind it, the least of which is money. Diving into those reasons one by one could be very interesting; it could expose and analyze our core beliefs (both noble and less-so). Instead the author wasted the chance to do that and left us with something both simplistic and wrong.

</comment><comment><USER16> It was published by the Wall Street Journal. The opening sentence incorrectly attributes Forbes.

"Yesterday Forbes published a piece on 'The Billion Dollar Startup Club'."

[http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollar- club/](http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollar-club/)

</comment><comment><USER17> That footnote seems very unlikely to me. I would guess that there are far more companies valued at $900MM than $1B.

<comment><AUTHOR> Notice how there are 7 startups at the $2B mark, only 1 at the $1.9B mark, and none at the $2.1B mark. To me this strongly implies that entrepreneurs are indeed trying to hit these big round numbers.

<comment><USER4> What's wrong with that? Why would you raise at 1.9 or 2.1 instead of 2?

<comment><USER18> All things equal, 2.1 gives slightly less dilution to current shareholders but the same positive "optics" as 2. Likewise, 1.9 gives slightly more equity to the VCs but a lot less prestige to the company their investing in (so arguably they get less value).

The same psychology comes into play when pricing anything else. We price things at $1.99 rather than $2.00 because there's an irrational feeling that a price starting with a 1 is much less than a price starting with a 2.

I think the OP is just making the point that a lot of these $1B companies are priced as such because it gives some extra legitimacy, thereby increasing their chance of success and increasing the value of the VC's share. The question is whether this is speculation or whether investing at that price actually makes the company worth that price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It takes a peculiar kind of narcissist to convince themselves that the point of a business isn't making money, but rather to self-actualize themselves.

<comment><USER20> exactly. there's nothing wrong with making money legitimately. If the purpose were theft or exploit to make illegal gains, criticize away. But to make money legitimately, you have to create value for society. They are inseparable</comment></comment>


Before Flying Car Can Take Off, There's a Checklist - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/automobiles/before-flying-car-can-take-off-theres-a-checklist.html

<comment><USER2> Please change the link to pull back all pages at the same time:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/automobiles/before- flying...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/automobiles/before-flying-car- can-take-off-theres-a-checklist.html?pagewanted=all)</comment>


Reddit's discussion for a guy that lost interest in programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/73vm8/35_lost_interest_in_programming_system/

<comment><USER2> We're supposed to discuss ... a discussion on Reddit?

<comment><USER3> No, we're just supposed to wave as it sinks and disappears.</comment></comment>


Free, portable tool for developers to simulate server responses - <AUTHOR> https://www.httpdebugger.com/httpreply.html <comment><USER2> nice tools。 it can simulate a json response,and use spring restTemplate to access it.

@Bean public CommandLineRunner run(RestTemplate restTemplate) throws Exception { return args -> { String quote = restTemplate.getForObject( "[http://www.myhome.com/"](http://www.myhome.com/"), String.class); log.info(quote); }; }

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this a JAVA application?

For JAVA applications you need to add WebTools certificate to JAVA root certificates store.

You can find WebTools certificate here: C:\Users\\[username]\Documents\WebTools\Cert\SSL

Please check this article for more information: [https://www.httpdebugger.com/help/java.html](https://www.httpdebugger.com/help/java.html)

<comment><USER2> thank you for your comment.</comment></comment></comment>


How to solve a maze using shaders – Shadron tutorial [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GULy4vtkw6w <comment><USER2> The animation of the solution is beautiful.

I am amazed at where GSL has gone from a very specific domain language for OpenGL to almost anything. I know I shouldn't be too surprised, since almost anything can be built with any complete PL. Inigo Quilez turned me on to shaders in general before Shadertoy was developed[1]. This is the stuff that makes me want to toy code all night!

      [1]  http://www.iquilezles.org/</comment>


[Meta] Can We Take "Learn Python the Hard Way" Off the Sidebar? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/40s6dm/meta_can_we_take_learn_python_the_hard_way_off/ <comment><USER2> Honestly, zed kinda shot himself in the foot with his latest post. He was especially wrong when he said it was not turing complete. Plus, python2 is going the way of COBOL as its only getting LTS level support and no major updates.</comment>


The Last Pirate of New York - <AUTHOR> https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/aaargh/ <comment><USER2> >> The first known crime in what is now New York City occurred in the 1620s, when the Lenape Indians scammed their new Dutch friends by selling them Manahattan island twice.

I'm not one to scream about micro-aggressions, but look at that opening sentence. It implies that no "crime" was even possible before the arrival of Europeans, that prior to contact native populations did not commit crimes. Either the native were innocent children in a garden of eden, or they were wild animals with no justice system.

Perhaps this was the first _crime involving Europeans_ ... but even that suggests that the Europeans themselves had not committed any crimes prior to this deal. That's a big can of worms. I'd say, at best, this is the first _documented_ case of real estate fraud in the land that would become NY.

<comment><USER3> It says "known". It doesn't say that native populations did not commit crimes among themselves, only that we have no record of such.

I don't know whether that's accurate, but it doesn't seem too unreasonable. Pre-colonization records are sparser than post.

<comment><USER2> I'm rather sure that the natives knew then, and know today, of past crimes within their populations. Many such crimes were recorded in oral histories.

<comment><USER4> > I'm rather sure that the natives knew then, and know today, of past crimes > within their populations. Many such crimes were recorded in oral histories.

Sounds like a fun weekend project, go interview tribal historians for the tribes of that region for crimes that predate the first-"known" crime from TFA and submit it such that the author can publish a retraction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>