Black Swans - unexpected movements in financial markets. - <AUTHOR> http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm

<comment><USER2> What 'unexpected' everyone is talking about? Everyone has been pointing at US imbalances like low saving rate leading to dangerous dependence on consumption for growth (and consumers in turn depending on low rates to borrow) for 5 years at least.

What's unexpected is that it took so long to unravel.

</comment><comment><USER3> <3 Taleb. What's surprising is that people are surprised by this latest crash. Banks, throughout history, have never made money.

I worked in credit structuring for Deutsche Bank and saw first hand the manipulation of credit ratings to engineer 'profit'.

<http://www.kulveer.co.uk/2007/09/credit-crunch/>

<comment><USER4> You should have opened a hedge fund strictly based on shorting those banks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Read Taleb's book, "The Black Swan." Very timely these days.

[http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly- Improbable/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly- Improbable/dp/1400063515/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205761039&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER6> Honestly, Black Swan is not Taleb's best book. I would recommend you read Fooled By Randomness first if you have the chance...

[http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance- Market...](http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance- Markets/dp/1587990717)

<comment><USER7> In the above talk, he mentions that Black Swan is better than Fooled by Randomness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "igon value"? Surprised the editors didn't catch that..

<comment><USER9> I saw that and thought, " . . . I better not mention it or everyone will think you are a mathematician . . ."

Thank you, sir, for being willing to take that virtual wedgie for all of the math geeks out there!</comment></comment>


Border agents threatened to "be dicks" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/man-border-agents-threatened-to-be-dicks-take-my-phone-if-i-didnt-unlock-it/ <comment><USER2> 5-10 minutes seems like enough time to do a full system dump. And definitely enough time to install some malware. Are there any known rootkits or malware for iPhones that can survive a system wipe?</comment>


Alcohol does not kill brain cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.misconceptionjunction.com/index.php/2010/10/alcohol-does-not-kill-brain-cells

<comment><USER2> Alcohol does not kill brain cells but: "alcohol ends up damaging dendrites, which are the things at the ends of neurons" \- and - "[...]causes a vitamin B1 deficiency[...]. This, in turn, causes neuron death".

I'm glad that's cleared up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait, people actually believed this? I always thought it was just a joke.</comment>


How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/front-end-hacking/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript-in-2017-a934b801fbe <comment><USER2> It can be a pain getting the build system up and running but once you're writing typed JavaScript code with modern features like async/wait and ES6 modules along with live + hot reloading, it's impossible to go back. It's really trendy to complain about JavaScript changing too fast right now but the last few years have brought some great changes to JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> >It's really trendy to complain about JavaScript changing too fast right now but the last few years have brought some great changes to JavaScript.

I'd say they've made JS development _bearable_ , but great is really stretching it. We still don't have a type system, static analysis, multi- threading, first-class IDE support, or any of a myriad of other features that are standard in any modern programming language in 2017. I'm hopeful that projects like Blazor[0] and other efforts being made toward bringing _real_ languages to the web via native WASM will put JS to rest once and for all.

[https://github.com/SteveSanderson/Blazor](https://github.com/SteveSanderson/Blazor) [0]

<comment><USER2> Do you actually code in JavaScript? TypeScript addresses many of these issues and even statically checks for null variable usage which puts it ahead of some mainstream type systems in my opinion. I don't hear people making fun of Python for example and that has a huge following.

<comment><USER4> I mean, I do occasionally, but I think one big difference is that nobody is forced to use python. If they want a feature a normal language doesn't have, they can easily choose another.

That's simply not true for JS.

<comment><USER2> > I mean, I do occasionally, but I think one big difference is that nobody is > forced to use python. If they want a feature a normal language doesn't have, > they can easily choose another.

Most domains heavily constrain your language choice though...C/C++ for games, Java/Kotlin for native Android, Swift for native iOS, PHP/Node/Python/Java/Ruby for server-side. The libraries you need constrain the choice even more. I'd love to use OCaml everywhere if I could but there's just no support for it.

Anyway, my point is complaining that vanilla JavaScript is bad is a real disservice to modern JavaScript. What's so bad about it if you use TypeScript?

<comment><USER5> I love JS and especially the variety of tools available.

It's a double edged sword. But once you have your tools is great.

I love webpack, vscode, Typescript, npm, preact and mocha. All great tools to solve a specific problem.

So much better than a number of other language. Have you ever dealt with the horrors of package management with pip because it's inconsistent installs.

<comment><USER2> > So much better than a number of other language. Have you ever dealt with the > horrors of package management with pip because it's inconsistent installs.

Personally I'm surprised the null/undefined checking feature of TypeScript isn't raved about more which is missing from many typed languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We have recently implemented Angular4 in our project, and have started to pick it up. Recently picked up a story that was adding a simple confirmation modal to a page: "Alert" text in the top, body with some warning text, and a yes/no button.

This was my first experience with modern JavaScript frameworks and TypeScript. I wanted to do it right, so worked closely with team members who were more versed in this stuff, and followed the various recommended best practices.

By the time all was said and done the PR for this thing had 27 files in it.

For a modal.

This seems ludicrous to me. The frustration, somewhat humorous, expresses by TFA is completely understandable, though. While I came to appreciate TS, I'm still skeptical about this JS framework stuff. They seem overly complicated to me. (While I have only read casually about React, it seems similar in this regard.)

<comment><USER7> > This seems ludicrous to me.

Why?

UI is hard dude. UI on the web is especially hard because the technology has been growing progressively for over two decades.

<comment><USER8> _UI is hard dude._

It's been a solved (and re-solved) problem for decades.

<comment><USER9> But has it been solved if you take into account the various constraints/issues:

\- clients that range from tiny phone screens to full desktop screens

\- incompatibility when it comes to _what_ features clients support, and even _how_ they support it

\- a foundation not meant for UI's that is pretty much required to be abstracted away leakily (HTML, browsers)

\- serious limitations in payload file size for the entire UI codebase

\- much of the UI depending on asynchronous operations. The only 'UI' that I can think of that is similar is when I SSH into my server. All other user interfaces are mostly 'local'.

\- backend systems that are not optimized for these kinds of things

I am a relatively 'young' programmer, so maybe I'm utterly wrong about thinking that, considering the above, we're in kind of uncharted territory. By all means correct me!

All that said, I do get the feeling 'we' in the javascript world reinvent the wheel more than necessary. But perhaps that's because none of the historical solutions are 'complete' enough to get enough mindshare in the way that, say, Ruby On Rails was, or jQuery.

Also, personally I'm becoming more convinced that until all this stabilized, many of use (or at least I personally) might benefit from just not aiming that high when it comes to UI. If I'm honest with myself, an 'old-fashioned' backend that produces HTML with perhaps a few dynamically loaded components (as just HTML fragments, even) is perfectly fine and I truly doubt it would have a negative impact.

(hey carsongross, this is where you bring up intercooler.js!)

<comment><USER10> Have you ever done desktop UI?

It does your checklist for 2 decades.

<comment><USER9> I've done stuff with Delphi back in the day, but I'm not too experienced. Would you mind explaining point by point how desktop UI 'does' this?

For example, I can't really think of a desktop app where most of the crucial app/UI logic is reliant on async communication with a server. Most data is stored locally and permanently.

I'd actually really like to hear because I have been eying native development lately!

<comment><USER11> Young developer here too, but I started about a decade ago with robotics/desktop development. Thus, I can sympathize with the comment earlier that desktop UI has done all this:

clients that range from tiny phone screens to full desktop screens -- Desktop UI could support this if developers wanted to its just resizing a window. You just don't see it because devs assume the existence of a mouse which allows easing panning in a scroll bar window.

\- incompatibility when it comes to what features clients support, and even how they support it - Desktop UI has or had solutions: Swing, JavaFX, QT, Adobe's Flex.

\- serious limitations in payload file size for the entire UI codebase: There have been desktop XML UI for so long. The oldest I can recall would be Adobe's that went along with ActionScript to build Flex apps.

\- much of the UI depending on asynchronous operations. The only 'UI' that I can think of that is similar is when I SSH into my server. All other user interfaces are mostly 'local'. -- The desktop analogy here is some long running process. Whether that is a slow disk, long computation, or some network access, desktop UI solved this a long long time ago with a rendering thread and worker threads.

\- backend systems that are not optimized for these kinds of things - not sure what you mean here.

<comment><USER9> I think we're talking cross purposes. I'm not saying that there we never came up with better things; far from it!

Rather, disregarding how we got here, the situation we're in _now_ provides challenges that sort of justify the complexity and confusion we're in _now_. Maybe this comment better expresses what I'm saying: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14218425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14218425)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A refreshing read. Was expecting a satirical negative take on the complexity.

However, this only covers a small part of front-end development with VDOM based approach, and a few ES6 constructs (destructuring, arrow functions, let- const).

The author misses out on mobile development, Node JS and NPM modules, server side, and Electron-based desktop apps.

It's a good thing to take the positive approach, and get introduced to some interesting, low-barrier-to-entry items. At the same time, it would be prudent to keep in mind what lies ahead.

<comment><USER13> I sense that the target audience is probably people who are already developers but have a negative view on the current js ecosystem.

They are likely to be fairly happy with their existing approaches to desktop and server development and want to learn to use javascript where it is currently unavoidable.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this after 'brlewis linked it (it's his piece) in a comment because it really hit home. Like, I've never used Mithril, but I dove into React (both web and React Native) this year and it reminds me of when doing web stuff was _fun_. Which, for me, was _before anyone was actually using JavaScript_.

There are a lot of skeptics about modern JS frameworks, and I get it (my inclination in every programming environment I've ever worked in is to avoid frameworks, etc. until I know I need them), but _boy_ is this a big, and awesome, change.

<comment> aaron-lebo You know a lot of people are terrified of change and new stuff because it might mean their skillset is obsolete.

That's a lot of what this backlash against JS is. Some of the criticism is warranted, but a lot of it isn't, it comes from people who have never done anything other than sneer at the language, and for every issue JS has, you can find a matching issue in another language that either a) isn't a problem because there are idiomatic solutions or b) everyone in the choir knows it's dumb but they don't say it to outsiders, because why advertise your weaknesses?

JS today is very expressive (more expressive than Python simply due to good lambdas - not to pick on Python but it's a language that doesn't get the hate of a JS or Go), it's been fast for awhile, it's got a dozen new interesting frameworks, the tooling keeps getting better, etc. This can either scare you or represent opportunity.

We've got a 5k line JS app. It was written by people who weren't programmers, in a jQuery/d3 ball (it was still an impressive interface). Over the summer we've converted it to Mithril and modern JS, now it's half the size, our dev environment is setup with a simple npm install and npm start, we have reusable components that multiple people can grok and use, it only takes a 20 line webpack file to do this all, and before the summer started none of us had used the framework.

It's amazing what it has enabled us to do and how simple the whole stack is. I've been building desktop apps and small intranet web apps for a decade, they don't hold a candle to what's possible if you harness this stuff. People can complain all they want but this is what progress looks like. Someone might not think it's cool that you can write an interactive single page application in 50 lines of code that anyone in the world can access, but isn't that what we wanted?

It takes a day to grok this stuff, a week to build interesting stuff in it. It's worth the investment, you might actually learn to do things you couldn't before. That's fun.

<comment><USER14> > You know a lot of people are terrified of change and new stuff because it > might mean their skillset is obsolete. That's a lot of what this backlash > against JS is. Some of the criticism is warranted, but a lot of it isn't, it > comes from people who have never done anything other than sneer at the > language, and for every issue JS has, you can find a matching issue in > another language that either a) isn't a problem because there are idiomatic > solutions or b) everyone in the choir knows it's dumb but they don't say it > to outsiders, because why advertise your weaknesses?

I think a lot of the "sneering" is less about fear of "new" things and more about frustration that old ideas that they previously considered are now being presented as "new" by a generation of people who either did not see themselves or did not ask an oldster about the old ways.

The tell for me, is in what things get the most sneered at. Node and npm tend to get a lot of sneering, because they're essentially attempts at solving problems people had already solved before. People don't sneer as much at other things like React (except for its license and large number of dependencies, and the latter is really npm/language sneering).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a pretty good analysis. NPM, to me, is a pretty consistent string of "you did _what_ and _why_?" reactions. But once I get away from that, to stuff like React, my attitude changes to "oh, yeah, this is good stuff."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Having used only re-frame and Clojurescript for two years now every time I look at where the Javascript guys are I roll my head.

Is nobody even slightly wondering how OOP has infiltrated modern JS development?

Old school Java web development has fully seeped into Javascript with JSX replacing JSP, OOP everywhere.. It looks exactly like the bells and whistles of early 2000 web development.

<comment><USER16> That OOP is only skin deep. Look at the way data flows, which pieces of code need to understand any given data structure. Look at the preferred way of extending classes - composition. I think what we have now is not old-school anything, but cherry-picked good parts together forming a New Thing.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for the clarification and insight!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The whole story felt sarcastic and also a little nauseous. Not exactly sure whether there is intended sarcasm or not.

The process looks quite complicated where you have to figure out _lots_ of "buts," "whys," and "gotchas," while keep telling yourself, "What the hell?" all the time.

<comment><USER18> It's likely because it's a reaction piece to this article [1], which is almost entirely sarcasm.

[1][https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript- in-2...](https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript- in-2016-d3a717dd577f)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "I have to confess, the build setup is the most intimidating part of modern web development for me."

Here here.

<comment><USER19> I feel sorry for the generation who didn't experienced the "drop file on ftp client, it's on the internet" experience. No setup, no build tools ...

<comment><USER20> I feel worse for the me of eight years ago maintaining an SPA codebase where everything was thrown on window with dozens of global stylesheets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had a dev write some "modern" Javascript in a project. We neglected to test in slightly out-of-date safari on Mac. Took forever to figure out that "let" keyword was not supported.

<comment> aaron-lebo You're probably aware of this but that's why you put everything through Babel or Typescript to convert it. That setup is easy enough.

<comment><USER22> Assuming they read the post, they're not only aware of it but also read the post's author warning their fictional subject about the performance problems of using transpilers in production, and shrugging it off for the example because it's just a learning exercise and "easy to change later".

<comment><USER23> The warning in the content is (correctly) against performing the transpilation in the client; the fix is to run the transpiler on your server, preferably as part of your CI build process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b I was expecting another rant about how painful it is to navigate the hundreds of framework out there.

Nice to see that people who dropped JavaScript a while get to find that things are actually better today than they were.

</comment><comment><USER24> Want a library faster than mithril, no runtime download, & handlebars syntax? Try Sveltejs.

Rollupjs also has "treeshaking", meaning your transpiled bundle only includes the functions that are referenced allowing you to organize your code into large modules or even use a monorepo.

<comment><USER25> I am too old and I wrote an AJAX chat before AJAX was called that and before jQuery existed. This left a mark on my soul manifesting in a very hostile attitude towards JS.

But of course as JS spreads I am looking, reading and mostly just shaking my head. But man, Svelte _makes sense_. For the first time in about 15 years, a JS framework makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> you _don 't have to_ make a monolith web app, or use React, Angular et.al, or transpilers, not even JQuery. State can be managed by observable pattern or event listeners. example:

      app.on("new_private_msg", updateMsgBadge);
      app.on("new_chat_msg", updateMsgBadge);

      function updateMsgBadge() {
        this.badge.newMessages =
          PRIVATE_MSG.reduce(msg => msg.unread)
          + CHAT_MSG.reduce(msg => msg.unread);
      }

Parts of the app can be abstracted into micro-services. For example the signup can be it's own micro-service. Or using the plugin pattern each widget can be independent/untangled.

</comment><comment><USER27> Fantastic post. Best thing I've read on FE dev in many months. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER28> I think a more appropriate title is what it's like to learn front end web development in 2017, not much of the discussion has anything to do with language details and everything to do with MVC and html.

</comment><comment><USER29> Helpful post! Glad to see actual instructive examples rather than a thinly veiled "I hate js" piece.

</comment><comment><USER30> That's a very impressive demo. I did Javascript development full time from 2012-2014 (Node.js 0.8 and Angular 1.0) and it's amazing to me that essentially none of the constructs he mentions were available then. It wasn't that long ago!

</comment><comment><USER31> That article is focused on React/JSX. Having coded Nuxt/Vue apps I seriously can't relate. With Nuxt you don't even have the build/setup pains. It just works. It just builds.

<comment><USER32> You haven't read the article, apparently. It focuses on Mithril (not React). And Nuxt simply abstracts the build step away server-side, so it's still there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's too bad they don't address state management. Right now it's just showing how to bootstrap a static app without state changes. How do you even update your data in Mithril?

<comment><USER34> Static? That's half true.

      let planets;
      let planetFilter = planet => true;

The planets variable is static in this example, but planetFilter changes. The "Voila, it works" link near the bottom of the essay leads to a live demo: [https://brlewis.github.io/2017/planets.html](https://brlewis.github.io/2017/planets.html)

Was there a particular aspect of state management you want to hear more about? I'm thinking of a follow-on post. Not sure whether the next one should be state or build system.

<comment><USER33> Oh, you're right. The state management was so subtle that it actually didn't click when I read it. I don't understand how it knows to rerender though? From what I can tell you're just setting the variable planetFilter and that's it, while with React you would have to do a setState to register it.

<comment> aaron-lebo You write your templates to handle the state changes, like:

       m('div, {style: `display: ${status ? 'block' : 'none'}`)

Mithril's diffing engine does the rest. If status changes it knows to rerender that section.

<comment><USER33> But how does Mithril know that status changes? How does it know you just changed the variable?

<comment><USER35> By default, Mithril redraws the app after DOM events fire (in this case `onchange={filterHandler(func)}`), and when ajax requests are complete (using the `m.request()` XHR wrapper).

You can also manually trigger a redraw by using `m.redraw()`, but it is rarely needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The author should have mentioned Preact[1]. I'd argue it's better than InfernoJS

1\. [https://preactjs.com](https://preactjs.com)

</comment><comment><USER37> One day, with a lot of work, Javascript will have all the features languages like C++, Java, and C# had before JS existed.

</comment><comment><USER38> Well, at least it's a web project.

I'm doing mobile projects at the moment, and it feels like going back 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER39> Love the babel include in the src at the top. Great strategy for introducing beginners to modern js.

</comment><comment><USER40> Run away.</comment>


Idea for HN: Ideas for HN - <AUTHOR> Given the userbase of HN, I'm surprised that this isn't already a thing:
Pitching ideas for things and services that you've identified a necessity for, or would just like to see in the world, but do not have the time, resources or motivation to build yourself.
It could become a tradition like Ask HN, Show HN. <comment><USER2> > _It could become a tradition like Ask HN, Show HN._

Since I see these threads regularly enough, I think it's _already_ an unofficial tradition.</comment>


Dynamic programming practice problems - <AUTHOR> http://people.csail.mit.edu/bdean/6.046/dp/

<comment><USER2> Those problems were recorded by Brian Dean, he's now a prof at Clemson University <http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~bcdean/> He's a fantastic teacher and actually made good use of his tablet pc to help with teaching. If he didn't have time to finish a proof in class, he would email us a flash movie recording of the full proof and he also graded our homeworks in the same way. We'd get back a flash movie containing our typeset submission and he'd comment on each solution and sketch out any improvements or fixes. It was really fun to get feedback like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No longest common subsequence? Try that and then make it use O(n) memory instead of the O(n^2) of the simple dynamic programming algorithm.

<comment><USER4> Maybe that and rod-cutting were left out because their solutions are in all the books. How do you get it to use O(n) space? I remember the simple solution was to build a matrix bottom-up, the matrix of course being of size n^2. Do you get constant space just by throwing away non-optimal subproblems and adding a predecessor field to each node (a node being an individual letter)?

<comment><USER3> Yes, something like that. With the standard algorithm you compute a matix where each entry (i,j) in the matrix gets computed from entries (i-1,j),(i,j-1),(i-1,j-1). If you compute the matrix row-by-row then you only need to store two rows, because the next row only depends on the current row. You can reduce the cost from storing two rows (2n entries) to one row (n entries) by rewriting it in-place.

You're right that you'd store the solution string in a linked list, because they have O(1) non-destructive append. Or maybe there's another smarter and faster scheme than a linked list?

Edit: oh, you could just use an array for each column, and append the letter in-place. Or does this use more space because the prefixes are not shared among the different columns?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good God Man. Get a microphone that costs more than $2, or edit your audio after your record it. There's WAY too much static.

Also, give Mr. Roboto a valium so he loosens up. ;-)

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. The flash that the article links to explaining the integer knapsack problem sounds horrible.

<comment><USER7> Maybe the downvotes are for the second comment.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Tiny cross-platform web UI library for C and Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zserge/webview <comment><USER2> Congrats on the release! Why did you decide to develop it, what was the use case for you?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am working on some small audio/music related apps, such as Glitch ([https://github.com/naivesound/glitch](https://github.com/naivesound/glitch)) and I wanted a custom, cross-platform UI. I also tried to stay away from Electron because it's way too heavy for such a simple task. So far this webview library fits nice in this niche - memory usage is only a few MB or RAM, binaries are small, too.</comment></comment>


Show HN: NoHQ – Learn how to build a remote team - <AUTHOR> https://nohq.co <comment><USER2> Interesting articles. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER3> Like the Toolkit!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


How simple features become complicated - <AUTHOR> http://rc3.org/2009/03/10/how-simple-features-become-complicated/ <comment><USER2> "This is why I generally forbid the use of the word 'just' when people are making feature requests."

Agreed! Keeping "just" out of conversations involving feature requests is amazingly hard to do, but in my experience it works.

Laying down that rule does a surprisingly good job of making people aware of when they're getting ahead of themselves, and jumping out of their area of expertise when asking you to do something. "Can't you just ..." _teeth grate_

<comment><USER3> Seconded; I've liked that idea and become sensitized to my and others use of Just and Simply, since reading c2.com's wiki - I think the page is "JustIsADangerousWord".

<comment><USER3> <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JustIsaDangerousWord> and <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CouldYouJust></comment></comment></comment>


India 'loses' citizenship data in bureaucratic mess - <AUTHOR> https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/02/article/india-loses-citizenship-data-in-bureaucratic-mess/ <comment><USER2> Clickbait bs; data still there but site is taken offline over non-payment.</comment>


How Breakfast Became a Thing - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/how-breakfast-became-a-thing/ <comment><USER2> I started to read this with some interest, as someone who's spent many hours thinking about and trying different metabolic strategies, diets, etc..

Then about 30 seconds in my reading got disrupted by a fucking light-box asking me to sign up or log in or god knows what.. my instinct to close tab won out over my curiosity. Please stop this pattern. If you really think your content is worth having to (whatever)wall from the public, do so, but don't make me get into it and then shove something mid word into my face. This is the digital equivalent of giving me a magazine to read, waiting until you're sure I've got my eyes on it, then shoving a business card in my field of vision and telling me what you do for a living. It's a low rent tactic, annoys rather than grips your users, and it reeks of desperation to monetize.

<comment><USER3> This company produces great, great content. You _agree_ that it's interesting, from what you've read.

And yet apparently the most popular comment on their effort is that you don't want to spare the all-of-2 seconds it takes to click your mouse to close a pop-up? On a site that _isn 't_ plastered with ads, btw, and is generally very accessible?

I don't mean to take out my frustration on you, and I get where you're coming from, but maybe we as consumers should stop feeling so entitled, maybe _that 's_ the pattern that has to end here.

<comment><USER4> It really destroys the flow of reading though. These light-boxes should be more passive. I agree with the first commenter. It's super annoying and something nice becomes ugly.

<comment><USER5> Check out how DigitalOcean does this, on their tutorials. As you scroll down, a small box appears in the left margin asking you to sign up for the newsletter. It doesn't block any of the content and you can ignore it while you continue reading. That's nearly perfect, and an example of how to do it right.

I still find the animation of it appearing distracting and I think it interrupts the 'flow' of reading the article, but it was easy enough to block the element with my ad blocking extension.

As an aside, Firefox + Noscript are a thing of beauty. Using them I just don't see most of these annoyances. Yes, it 'breaks' many websites but this usually means a much faster page render without all the annoying stuff.

<comment><USER6> The problem is these boxes are designed to manipulate behaviour, not to avoid annoyance.

Unfortunately slamming a SIGN UP NOW!!!!! box in the middle of the page gets more people to sign up than a "Please sign up over here" box at the side.

The problem may be a lack of systems thinking.

If your metrics are sign-ups, then the aggressive pattern wins.

If your metrics are _committed_ sign-ups by users who are genuinely interested and aren't simply going to ignore your emails for the rest of eternity, the picture may be more complicated.

Too many UX people don't seem to think this one through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's just amazing how much "common knowledge" about food has been shown to be completely wrong:

      * Breakfast is the most important meal [0]
      * Saturated fat is bad [1]
      * Carbs are evil [2]
      * You regain more weight after a fast diet [3]

Many will argue but studies have show each one of these to be wrong.

[0]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/10/the-s...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/10/the- science-of-skipping-breakfast-how-government-nutritionists-may-have-gotten-it- wrong/)

[1]: [http://www.eufic.org/page/en/show/latest-science- news/fftid/...](http://www.eufic.org/page/en/show/latest-science- news/fftid/Study-no-association-dietary-saturated-fats-cardiovascular-disease- risk/)

[2]: [http://www.nature.com/nutd/journal/v6/n2/full/nutd20162a.htm...](http://www.nature.com/nutd/journal/v6/n2/full/nutd20162a.html)

[3]: [http://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-85...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587%2814%2970200-1/abstract)

<comment><USER8> I think if there's one big idea about nutrition, it should be that there are no one-size-fits-all answers. I skipped breakfast for most of my childhood, and I had no idea why I was so lethargic all the time. I was typically anxious from undone schoolwork, etc and had no appetite in the morning. I'd self- medicate with cigarettes.

I started forcing myself to eat breakfast about a year ago and my mind is so much clearer, seemingly as a function of relatively-stabilized blood sugar levels.

But that's just me. It could be totally different for someone else.

<comment><USER9> That was also my case as an adult. Solved by eating _much_ more at night, carbs included. I was just not consuming enough calories.

So, another myth - carbs are bad at night - that did not apply to me.

<comment><USER10> Carbohydrates are bad for me, period. I'm diabetic (type 2), and even the American Diabetes Association says I should be eating around 60g carbs/meal.

After some rudimentary data science liberally using the glucometer, I can tell you what my body does after all types of simple sugars as well as some complex sugars... And my limit per day is around 10g carbs. I will change this up to reintroduce some foods I may not normally eat (like high fiber low carb bread, or Ryvita rye crisps).

When I was initially diagnosed, my fasting was 161mg/dL and a1c=7.1 . Now, my blood sugar when I wake up in the morning is around 85-105, which is normal. I've also lost 50 lbs

<comment><USER11> Sample of one without correction for caloric intake?

See, losing weight fixes many numbers.

<comment><USER10> Correct. I only controlled for carbohydrates (total and [carb-fiber] for net carbs )

After 6 days of low carb diet, my hunger went down dramatically, and I started to feel better. I started to notice weight loss around day 10.

Now, the more I study about T2 diabetes, my 'guess' is that it's a metabolic disease. Someone who's T2 gets high blood sugar, the sugar is eventually processed to fat, causing extreme hunger when the glucose is out of the body (back to normal levels), causing the person to eat more carbs.

That would also explain why things like the Atkins diet does work for certain people; it works for those whom are predisposed to T2 diabetes. It doesn't work and can harm greatly those whom aren't susceptible to T2...

But that's my pet theory.

<comment><USER12> It's obviously a metabolic disease. Insulin is well described as a metabolic hormone. T2 diabetes is the signal not getting processed.

The big open question is what causes it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dropping breakfast from my diet as a regular thing, something as simple as just getting started later in the day on eating, has been incredibly helpful in losing (and maintaining lower) weight. It's not the only thing of course; generally eating smaller portions, and moving my butt more are the other two keys. Obsessing over exactly what I'm eating and how much has never helped, but just eating less... it sounds simple, but it's what works.

<comment><USER14> Also losing weight. I just cut my breakfast way down, to a breakfast bar, and coffee.

<comment><USER15> I've done the opposite actually. My breakfast is my single largest meal, with every other meal throughout the day being small. For me, my body prefers to have energy throughout the day, and doesn't like having food in my stomach when I sleep. Sometimes I go to bed "hungry" but at least I don't get indigestion or heartburn.

<comment><USER16> I tried the "breakfast as the largest meal" before, but I couldn't get by not eating much for dinner. A large breakfast made me hungry by mid-day, and so I'd eat more, by the time dinner came around, it was a light salad or some other low calorie food, which affected my insomnia. I can't sleep hungry, I'll stay awake, and miserable all night.

On the other hand, I found being hungry in the morning is short term, and once I got into a project at work or something, I just forgot about it. A light, later lunch (up at 4am, lunch at noon), and a big dinner, and It's not hard at all.

I think this just illustrates that there are actual differences between people. Maybe the primary difference for me is my insomnia. Some people don't have crashes several hours after eating a big breakfast, and they stay satiated longer.

<comment><USER17> I've found that sticking to a regular schedule causes your body to adapt. You get hungry when you expect food.

Personally, if I don't eat in the evening, I get tired and want to go to sleep, so I'll turn in at 9pm or so and then I'll get up at 2am and won't be able to sleep until 5am. Whereas if I eat, I'll stay up to 1am or so, and then sleep until 8am. Food primarily affects how much energy I have. More food, more energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In Japan, I learned what a truly healthy breakfast is.

Most days I eat a bowl of brown rice with a raw egg stirred in and a dash of high-quality soy sauce and topped with natto. Some days I'll also grill salmon or smelt. On the side, I usually have tsukemono (pickled vegetables) and miso soup.

Protein, probiotics, pickles...once you get used to it, the idea of eating sweet desserts for breakfast (which is what most people eat) seems counterproductive.

(By the way, it's probably true that many people in Japan eat the same crap as Americans do for breakfast——there's no shortage of bread, donuts, etc.)

<comment><USER19> I was curious if raw eggs were actually healthy after reading your comment. I was never allowed to eat raw eggs growing up. A little google-fu says he risk of salmonella is overstated and extremely rare, but the USDA and others still suggest avoiding raw eggs. Not much definitive on cooking vs. raw though.

<comment><USER20> Eggs won't get salmonella if they are refrigerated promptly after they are laid. Japan has higher food safety standards, so eggs produced in Japan are less likely to have salmonella than those produced in the US.

<comment><USER21> Eggs will also not get salmonella if their natural protective coating is not washed away as per regulations in the US (vs Europe.) In fact, American eggs would be illegal in most European countries and vice versa - American eggs must be washed and refrigerated, whereas washing European eggs is prohibited.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/why...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/why- the-u-s-chills-its-eggs-and-most-of-the-world-doesnt)

<comment><USER22> The rationale behind it being that European egg producers will put more care into making sure the raising site is actually clean.

<comment><USER21> I'm not so sure about that, we hear the same horror stories about factory farms as well. However, the chickens are vaccinated against salmonella, and that might have something to do with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I eat cereal and milk as a dessert at night in place of something like ice cream, because that is what it is. People who eat cereal for breakfast are no better than people eating donuts or other sweets, it is just an awful way to start your day because of the blood sugar spike and then drop which creates hunger pangs.

You can combat it by having a proper breakfast focusing on protein and low glycemic index carbs, eggs, steel-cut oats, omelettes, etc. A favorite of mine is proatmeal, make some oats and then mix in BSN Syntha-6 vanilla ice cream protein powder, absolutely delicious. The other way to combat it as suggested by people in this thread is to drop breakfast all together besides maybe having coffee and a granola bar.

<comment><USER24> I eat muesli at 7:15 and don't feel hungry until 12. Maybe people don't think of muesli when they hear the word cereal.

<comment><USER25> Depending on the composition, muesli is either close to oats, or packed with sugar ("45% fruit!").

<comment><USER11> Which is why I prefer to make my own. Candied and most kinds og dried fruit are nutritionally negative worth compared to fresh or frozen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How did priceonomics become a thing.. this seems like a clickbait site for the more intellectual crowd, less trashy than say buzzfeed, but ultimately not really delivering much in the way of genuine insight. It probably doesn't hurt that the name recalls "freakonomics", another brand which, while occasionally interesting, is far past its pull date as well..

<comment><USER27> What would you categorize as "genuine insight", then? I found the article pretty good, well written, and it actually taught something about the history of cereals in America that I didn't know (the fact that Kellogg had purely moral reasons for inventing what later evolved into the sugary Kellogg's that we know today was pretty interesting!)

Articles that can be called "clickbait" are generally not very well written, misrepresents information, and leave you with a feeling of not getting what the headline promised. That is not the case here, at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was just bringing this up as a possible thing the other day at work. It was always weird to me how marketed breakfast was. The irrational vitriol I received only further convinced me how much breakfast (specifically grains heavy) is due to marketing.

<comment><USER29> There's this idea that markets just discover and serve peoples' wants and preferences. It has to be tempered with the fact that our perceptions and even our identities are shaped by the information we are served with from birth. In this era, culture serves capital as much as capital serves culture.

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py For mice (and presumably for certain other mammals), 12-hour daily fast seems to have positive outcomes.

[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/a-12-hour-window- fo...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/a-12-hour-window-for-a- healthy-weight/?_r=0)

The study suggests this is true even if you cheat on the weekend.

I'm super-dubious of evidence showing that breakfast improves school outcomes (except where it helps meet kids' calorie needs). You know what else boosts school outcomes? Sedatives, because school is hella boring. That doesn't mean sedating kids or adults is a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER30> I need to eat around 3000 calories per day to support my powerlifting training, and if I don't eat something first thing in the morning with a shitload of carbs -- usually something like rolled oats, berries, and a few bananas -- then I'm usually gassed and feeling like crap by 10.

A few friends of mine fast intermittently and train in the morning before eating but it's beyond me how that is not just pure torture.

<comment><USER31> > A few friends of mine fast intermittently and train in the morning before > eating but it's beyond me how that is not just pure torture.

Practice. If you've never done it before, it takes a few days/weeks to get used to. Also willpower.

<comment><USER32> Saying that willpower is a factor implies that it is unpleasant, which is actually agreeing with the implication of "pure torture" that the parent comment implied.

<comment><USER31> Not really, it has nothing to do with it being pleasant or not. It means that you need to commit to actually doing it (like anything in life).

I'm absolutely fine with it and prefer it, like many other people. It's definitely not "torture".

Maybe it isn't for some but mostly it's about overcoming the change in routine and there's no shortcut to changing or building habits, it's just willpower.

<comment><USER33> Generally we throw a lot of words around sometimes:

Like calling something torture - that you voluntarily do to yourself because of an expected net positive outcome.

For the respect of people who suffers or have suffered from torture I think we should avoid that kind of hyperbole.

Same goes for calling sexism on any joke about gender differences. It's kind of disrespectful to everyone who has suffered from the real thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've dropped breakfast for about a month now and I feel so much better. I'm eating a heavy lunch and then dinner. Lost weight and it wasn't on purpose. As a result I've been questioning a lot of our norms. Not only when we eat, but what we eat and why. Loved the article.

<comment><USER35> This was my conscious weight loss strategy. Stop eating at 7-8pm in the evening and hold off eating _any_ food until noon or so, which gets a 16+ hour fast. I ate whatever I wanted (not crazy, but not spartan) and lost about 70g per day over a long period (110kg -> 95kg). This was in conjunction with exercising but I was exercising before without losing much weight. Not a very original idea but I was amazed at how easy it was (relative to 5:2, which gave me two workdays a week of 'thinking about food way too much').

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> When I was multiday camping and bicycle touring over mountainous terrain, I tried skipping breakfast once (it takes extra time), and it left me strikingly weak.

Very different energy demands from office work.

<comment><USER37> I had a similar experience when I was a bicycle-riding missionary in Japan. I unwittingly reduced my calorie count drastically one day by switching up my breakfast menu and had to return and refuel early. At the time we were riding about 60-80km a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Misleading title. Many cultures have a concept of a morning breakfast meal.

Title should be: How _cereal_ became a thing _in America_.

Where I grew up, breakfast was just eggs, bread, and tea (or milk-tea).

<comment><USER39> It does address the question of when and why people started eating breakfast. It just concentrates mostly on the foods eaten by Americans for breakfast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Obesity problem as well. I know some people don't like to hear it, but breakfasts can easily go 800 calories and up. You are starting off the day in surplus.

<comment><USER41> > You are starting off the day in surplus.

Generally breakfast comes after a 10-12 hour fast for most people, so I don't think this is the way to think of it.

<comment><USER40> True, I think a good policy is to eat when you're hungry. Not sure the body was necessarily meant to be constantly processing food all the time anyway.

<comment><USER41> Totally agree, and also breakfast is the 'easiest' meal to skip as well, along with mooted benefits of extending your overnight fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm more interested in how breakfast food became mostly garbage for so many Americans. May as well eat a Snickers, chili dog and a Coke from the gas station when you get up.

<comment><USER20> I'm pretty sure that's the primary question the article answers. Heavy marketing of highly sugary cereal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I find more insight and less conspiracy in "History of breakfast" from Wikipedia[1]. The Wikipedia article talks about different perspectives before 1800 since it is not clear why the article is talking about the American breakfast instead of focusing on different cultural perspectives (e.g. "Before cereal, in the mid 1800s, the American breakfast was not all that different from other meals").

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

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't drink coffee at all. I eat a vegetarian sandwich every morning when I go to work, it gives me a good start for the day, I feel sharp and focused all morning. Sometimes when the sandwich shop is closed I buy something like a chicken sandwich, and that makes me more sleepy and tired.

Lunch is usually a big pile of rice with some vegetables and meat. Wow, this makes it reeeally hard to stay awake at the afternoon, but there aren't many options for lunch near the workplace.

For dinner, my wife cooks something also usually rice with some meat and veggies. But about 1 hour before I plan to go to sleep I eat 1 or 2 bananas. I always had hard time sleeping, and I read that bananas are good for sleeping because it contains potassium. For me it works. Although this might be completely placebo, because bananas don't work for my wife.

</comment><comment><USER45> This may be an argument against breakfast for the sedentary, but athletes on extended training programs usually need to eat in the morning. You're much more likely to hit the wall on an empty stomach, a few hours into your training.

<comment><USER46> That is very much unsubstantiated, all kinds of athletes enjoy and thrive training fasted. It's probably much more complex in what's best for whom than just "much more likely to hit the wall". Type of metabolism, levels of fat adaption, type of activity, length of activity, etc all matters.

As an personal anecdote, I enjoy climbing in the mornings before having food, that's a few good hours of intermittent sprint type activity.

<comment><USER45> Sure it's more complex, but it you're still more likely to hit the wall. Also, correct me if I'm wrong but climbing isn't quite as cardiovascular as cycling for instance, and I'd be hard-pressed to find an endurance athlete who can survive with no breakfast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Title is misleading. It should be titled "How cereal became a thing". But that is kinda obvious and no one would probably click it then.

</comment><comment><USER48> If you have ever chance to read any ancient Greek historian, you would notice breakfast was a big deal back then. Xenophon for example mentions it about every time he describes how the morning starts in an army camp. This is just another click-bait article, don't fall for it.

</comment><comment><USER49> I was surprised to see no mention of Edward Bernays:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vFz_FgGvJI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vFz_FgGvJI)

</comment><comment><USER50> Breakfast is not a new thing, or it has anything to do with cereal or milk or donuts.. Just google image search Turkish Breakfast...

</comment><comment><USER51> I dont know why but if I skip breakfast I will 100% get a headache later during the day. Not sure why it's happening...

<comment><USER52> Do you eat a lot of sugar? I used to have pastries or cereal and sugar with my coffee at breakfast and sometimes throughout the day. Like for you, a skipped meal or snack meant headaches. I've since weaned off sugar and I can easily go many hours without eating or snacking. I no longer eat breakfast.

I suspect that the blood sugar spikes were addictive, i.e. my body desensitized and needed me to frequently consume sugar to keep my blood sugar level high.

Try gradually reducing the amount of sugar that you consume, and/or the total amount that you eat at breakfast, as well as the frequency of your snacks throughout the day. Eventually you should be able to do fine on two good meals a day and nothing else.

<comment><USER51> Interesting thought thanks, however I mostly eat cottage cheese or greek yogurt with granola in the morning, I almost never eat sweats in the morning.

<comment><USER52> For what it's worth, granola is heavily sweetened (with honey or maple syrup, which are effectively sugar).

<comment><USER51> yup, but I honestly only add like a tablespoon of it to add texture to yogurt. It's more like a stress sort of headache that comes from not having food, I feel muscle stiffness in the neck which causes a headache, really weird

<comment><USER7> Most yogurt in America is heavy on sugar as well.

<comment><USER51> Yep, but not the greek one, I am eating this one: [http://usa.fage.eu/yogurts/fage-total-plain#fage- total](http://usa.fage.eu/yogurts/fage-total-plain#fage-total) loads of protein and tastes great

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Personally I feel best with a very small breakfast (maybe just a coffee), large lunch and small or no dinner.

</comment><comment><USER54> this article kind of lags for a while (at least several months) as in march 2015 Bloomberg business wk just ran a cover story of the declining cereal sales across the board:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-26/for- kellog...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-26/for-kellogg- cereal-sales-recovery-may-be-lost-hope)

and the last several paragraphs about "breakfast-denying" seem biased as there are more studies to support the importance of breakfast.

</comment><comment><USER55> And yet, cereal is in decline, apparently because pouring two things into a bowl is too much effort, among other reasons. [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/business/cereals- struggle-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/business/cereals-struggle-in- us-as-tastes-and-rituals-change.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER56> Cereal is a sugar delivery vehicle, but juice is good as gold.

Right.

<comment><USER57> He probably means juicing, as in sticking fruits and veggies in a juicer and making something akin to a smoothie.</comment></comment></comment>


The Copyright Alert System: Moving to Implementation - <AUTHOR> http://www.copyrightinformation.org/node/709 <comment><USER2> I can't help but notice that I am confused[1] by this six strikes deal. So they're going to invest millions of dollars in a system to monitor and notify ISPs for the purpose of... educating people about copyright? With no significant repercussions? And you can avoid those education steps by just not being with one of the top 6 ISPs? Doesn't add up.

But if you read these articles, you'll notice that they sort of gloss over the fact that this appears to be a system for getting IP addresses of infringers _to the copyright holders_. Once they have that, we already know what they can do with it. The boilerplate suits stopped because they weren't economical, but who's to say that the big content owners haven't found a way to change that equation. MarkMonitor itself could even be that extra term.

I think the six strikes education system is a smokescreen. We're being misdirected from a pretty scary fact: the MPAA, RIAA and major ISPs have apparently pooled their resources to create a monolithic peer-to-peer monitoring system. Then they've sent everyone who should be freaking out about that on a wild goose chase of speculating about how the "six strikes" are going to evolve into full-on censorship. But that's not where we need to be focusing our attention. We need to ask _what else_ they can do with the data they collect from MarkMonitor.

[1] <http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/>

<comment><USER3> I would not be too surprised if action were taken to create a new law which makes it illegal for content creators to sell content directly to consumers. Such laws already exist that prevent car manufacturers from selling directly to the public, and they exist for no reason other than to create an artificial market in which car dealerships can pretend to offer a valuable service. Content distributors are now in the same position. They need to have an artificial market constructed to make it look like they are doing something of value.

Consider the viewpoint of a typical person in power today. They see these gigantic social institutions that provide a measurable portion of the nations GDP which might soon be torn apart and replaced by a decentralized, unorganized system with unknown economic value. Much of the history that they believe is worth knowing consists of the creation of massive centralized systems to aggregate supply and demand to solve the problem of distribution (both physical distribution of product and logistical distribution of work). To them, a move to a system where content creators distribute and sell directly to consumers is, at best, a horrifying step backwards.

The first step to making sure content creators can't sell directly to consumers, of course, is to insert themselves in the new means of distribution in order to wedge the old distributors into some new place created for them.

<comment><USER4> Exactly how do you propose that any statute could be devised to forbid the sale of "content" to consumers? If you can do that, you can just as easily forbid the sale of anything colored blue, or of books containing the word "prickleberry". The Constitution has something to say about that.

If you're going to argue that the content industry --- which is significantly smaller than the Internet industry, by the way --- is so powerful that it can simply disregard the Constitution, what's left to argue about? Here, allow me to win the resulting debate: "the content industry is going to get a law passed that will establish the death penalty for piracy". Oh no!

<comment><USER5> > The Constitution has something to say about that.

It has some say, but lately it's been repeatedly ignored.

> which is significantly smaller than the Internet industry, by the way

Unfortunately, I feel that the content industry lobbies way more than the Internet industry as a whole. This is slowly changing, but we still give far less political contributions than they do.

<comment><USER4> If you're going to say the content industry can ignore the Constitution, then what's to argue with? If they can do that, they can do anything. Disney can charge you not only for copying Mickey Mouse, but for also for simply _having mice in your house_.

<comment><USER5> > If you're going to say the content industry can ignore the Constitution,

I didn't say that. I was implying that the gov can, and it has been. Guess who lobbies the gov with more money?

<comment><USER4> Nobody is going to pass a law outlawing the direct sale of "content" to consumers. That was an extremely silly argument.

<comment><USER5> You never know. With the current trend being the sale of licenses and not the actual content, maybe one day in the future people can only sell licenses through approved license sellers. If you think that's ridiculous, what do you think people 50 years ago would think of what's happened to our airports? It's not that far fetched unless one thing changes: techies as a whole start lobbying harder and with more money.

<comment><USER4> The example of airport regulation does not make the idea of content sale regulations less ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also discussed here <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150>

</comment><comment><USER7> This really makes me want to upload all my (legally obtained) files to EC2 then download them. How could they ever tell whether the bits are licensed or not?

<comment><USER8> _"Over the course of the next two months, each participating ISP expects to begin rolling out its version of the CAS – a system through which ISPs will pass on to their subscribers notices sent by content owners alleging copyright infringement over peer-to-peer networks."_

They aren't looking at your traffic, they are waiting for complaints from third parties.

Third parties do this by connecting to P2P networks themselves and watching the traffic of certain files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Actually, they need a law that requires immutable MAC addresses, routers that expose their NAT tables and MAC tables to "trusted third parties", and ISPs to expose their physical-address-to-IP tables. Altering a MAC address, possessing contraband "open" hardware, would be a criminal offense. Like a car at the DMV, computers would need to be registered and private party transfers would have to be registered. Possession of a device with either an unregistered MAC address or an address associated with someone else would be a serious crime.

Let us hope that one day we get this, so that the MPAA and RIAA can be empowered to do the right thing and protect their copyright holders' rights.

<comment><USER8> Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what the point of such a law would be.

<comment><USER10> The point would be so you could identify an individual computer and upon investigation tie it definitively to an owner. As it stands you can easily change a MAC address and the translation of private -> public IP address done by a NAT capable network device combines the traffic of multiple computers to look like it is a single one. This means you can only attribute file sharing activity to a public ip which in practice might have numerous clients behind it.

Hence if there were a law like that and everyone obeyed it then you could generally identify the exact machine that did the file sharing.

<comment><USER8> You will only usually only know the MAC address of the last hop since a new layer 2 frame is generated every time a packet hits a switch or router.

For example if I watch the source MAC address of incoming HTTP requests to my server it always reports the MAC address as being the one for the router/firewall in front of the server even though the source IP addresses will vary.

The only way I can think this would be possible to achieve would be to require a signed certificate and HMAC (message authentication code) from the the originating client to be sent with every IP packet and make sharing private keys a serious criminal offence. Even then it would probably be basically unenforceable on any kind of scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Didn't we just have this discussion?

Edit: apparently not, hours ago we discussed "Internet providers to begin warning customers who pirate content" which is of course, different.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150>

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://lifehacker.com/5940565/why-you-should-start-using- a-v...](http://lifehacker.com/5940565/why-you-should-start-using-a-vpn-and- how-to-choose-the-best-one-for-your-needs) (why you should start using a vpn)

<comment><USER13> A VPN is not a solution, it bypasses the problem temporarily. A VPN provider is no different than any other ISP, they are subject to the same laws and regulations. And you really don't want to be surfing the web with an added 50-100ms latency just so you can pirate.

<comment><USER14> > they are subject to the same laws and regulations

True, but the VPN provider doesn't need to be in a country that follows these laws. Russia and China spring to mind as long term solutions.

<comment><USER15> Are you ready to give your credit card number to a service run by chinese or russians ? rememeber they dont follow US laws , wait til they screw you ...

<comment><USER16> Who cares? Your credit card company is American and as such you have all the American consumer protections on credit card purchases (which are actually very good.)

If I gave my credit card number to someone and they decided to sell it for $20 to someone who runs up $10,000 worth of monkey porn on it, whatever, it's not my money they're spending. I'd call Amex and have a credit the same day.

<comment><USER17> Bit more scary if they use your details for images of child sexual abuse.

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I still don't understand how this is legal. If you signed an agreement with your ISP for a certain speed of internet for a certain length of time, why can they just choose to violate the contract based on what some third party says?

And if they write anything about illegal copyright violations into the contract, I would hope some people who use P2P legally would challenge that (see if they get throttled, file a lawsuit).

<comment><USER11> ISPs have _always_ had explicit policies about not using their service or facilities to break laws. Your agreement to pay $xx/month for some number of megabits does not and can not and has never superseded the law.

... (d) you (or a subaccount associated with your Member ID) engage in conduct that is a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws); ...

[http://www.att.com/shop/internet/att-internet-terms-of- servi...](http://www.att.com/shop/internet/att-internet-terms-of-service.html)

<comment><USER18> Sure, but that doesn't (or shouldn't) mean that if I phone your ISP and tell them you broke the law, they can assume that's true and take action against you

<comment><USER11> 1) bo1024 explicitly agrees neither he nor anybody else will use his internet account for illegal activities

2) an ip address is seen uploading or maybe even downloading the latest Bieber album

3) the ISP's logs show that ip address was assigned to bo1024's account

Pretty much the only thing that can go wrong is that the company complaining does not have the authority to complain about that file and that's happened with automated DMCA notifications because they use some sort of dumb keyword monitors.

They don't need to automate choosing which torrents to spy on, a single person lurking on TPB's top 100 movies and musics would cover the majority of people by far.

Which route they go can make this all very accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If they really start doing this, it's time to rent a seedbox.

<https://www.feralhosting.com/pricing>

<comment><USER20> Sure, but a slim fraction of people who currently download content with bittorrent will resort to this. This will dramatically decrease the number of seeders and thus reduce the effectiveness of torrents even for those willing to pay for a seedbox. In any case, it will increase the cost of downloading pirated content and make legal options more attractive.

Once the vast majority of casual piracy is curtailed, more more focused enforcement against people on private trackers / seedbox providers etc can begin.

Sure there will be loopholes and ways for determined pirates to slip through the cracks, but the days where everyone and their brother can grab pirated content without worry are numbered.

<comment><USER21> What legal options?

Actually watching things on a physical tv?

<comment><USER20> Sure, or Hulu or whatever. Remember this enforcement isn't world-wide, it's only in the USA for now.

Yeah, this enforcement will likely expand beyond the US as they are pressing very hard in every trade negotiation. But legal options will expand over time as well.

<comment><USER22> It's only a matter of time until the US media organizations starts putting political pressure on others to implement the same thing. The only difference is we have no legal way at all to obtain the content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> educate or brainwash? I'm pretty sure the general public already knows about it with SOPA and every ad before the start of the movie.

</comment><comment><USER24> Seedbox in Europe, rented through a company in Canada, SFTP to me = awesome

<comment><USER25> Rsync would be better than SFTP, because you can start copying the file before it is done. I have large files copied to my laptop from my seedbox almost as soon as the download completes on the seedbox.

<comment><USER26> How does that work with bittorrent's out of order downloading?

<comment><USER27> I haven't used a seedbox, but it seems like the best arrangement would be to download the files from your seedbox using BitTorrent over a VPN. Your local client would only accept local peers (which the seedbox would be, virtually), so you aren't compromising your security, but you get your files almost as fast as your seedbox.

I'm pretty sure clients can be configured to make this work, but I haven't looked into the details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Are they only looking at P2P traffic? Can we start torrenting on port 80?</comment>


The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_quick_brown_fox_jumps_over_the_lazy_dog <comment><USER2> It should be:

"The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog."

Foxes are red.

Dogs are brown.

The addition of the word "red" doesn't harm the complete use of the alphabet.</comment>


Discovering Fractals: The Lorenz Attractor - <AUTHOR> http://lovehateubuntu.blogspot.com/2010/04/discovering-fractals-lorenz-attractor.html <comment><USER2> This may be a silly question, but what is it about a Lorenz attractor that makes it a fractal? I can't imagine that it's self-similar, which I remember as being a necessary condition.

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course ... it's a fractal (dimension = 2.05). Fractal present some degree of self-similarity, not a perfect one. In fact, this is the whole beauty of it.</comment>


FBI Director Comey at cyber conference: 'You're stuck with me' - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-comey-idUSKBN16F23N <comment><USER2> This is basically a political story. "You're stuck with me" is in reference to his conflicts both with the Obama administration last year and with the Trump administration this year; he's saying he intends to serve his full 10-year term.

Bear in mind, the "10 year term" the FBI Director serves is mostly enforced by norms. The FBI Director can be fired by the President or removed by Congress.

<comment><USER3> Or sidelined, put out to pasture, by revoking his clearances. He can be reduced to a figurehead if, perhaps, he was implicated in something that warranted a multi-year investigation. That would be more humiliating than being simply fired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can we please not let "cyber" become short for cyber security?

<comment><USER3> The use of "cyber" is good. It draws a bright line between the informed and ignorant, between the dolts who spend all day playing with powerpoint and the people actually running the show.

<comment><USER4> That's a good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Comey also reiterated a plea for technology companies to enable authorities to access encrypted data on mobile devices and in messaging apps.

At a "cyber" conference, whatever that means, but I assume it's the sort of place technology leaders will be hanging out. Aka, exactly the sort of people who would predictably react to his news that the FBI was unable to crack half of the devices they acquired through warrants with "oh, you were able to crack half? That's not good, we should increase security."

What's with the government's thick skull when it comes to what the technology community wants? I think the majority has been quite clear.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's certainly the kind of attitude that will warm people to his pleas for crypto backdoors /s

</comment><comment><USER7> This kind of foolish quip is further evidence that this clown is not qualified to lead the FBI.

Leaders don't broadcast how people are "stuck" with them. This is what a dysfunctional middle manager burps out when their mouth is moving faster than their brain.

Fire this idiot.</comment>


Ask HN: Change my consumer's buying mindset. - <AUTHOR>

Not sure if any of you guys have this problem too. Everytime I see a new gadget/toy/app, I would want to buy it and try. Most of the time, I dun need it, some times I know I can make a better one. But never I can get around it and actually go do it and deliver the better product to the market.<p>Not sure if you guys get what I mean. If you do, I appreciate some advice to get around this buying/consumer mindset, it is costing to waste my time and money on stuffs I dun really need. <comment><USER2> Have you asked yourself why you have this mindset? Is it for technical curiosity, social status, boredom or something else? Whatever reason you honsetly find for that, ask yourself how much of it is externally induced through advertising, colleagues, friends etc. Once you find this out, you will have made a first step towards knowing what _you_ really need and spending your money on just that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I'm primarily externally induced by the advertising and technical curiosity. Either which are very difficult to cut out with YouTube, and the media.

The pleasure side of having these gadgets/toys out-weight the pain of not accomplishing much with my apps. I guess I must find more leverage on the accomplishment side.

<comment><USER2> If the pleasure of consuming outweighs the pain of accomplishment, then what makes you think you should change ways?

<comment><AUTHOR> The pains of having paying all the bills out-weight everything!!! Even the pleasure of consuming! Wah la! You are good. :P</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to start building mobile apps? - <AUTHOR> I have always had a passion for technology. I have an undergrad in computer science but have spent the last ten years of my career on the business side of things. I built a few websites over the years (LAMP architecture), nothing fancy and mainly to learn and for fun. I haven't coded in a few years. Every time I decide to start again the thought of how far I've fallen stops me dead in my tracks.
I want to move from building simple php based websites to simple mobile apps (android, iOS, doesn't matter). There's no shortage of tutorials online but after an hour into the most basic tutorial I slowly get overwhelmed by how much has happened in web/mobile development and how depressing it would be to start at the "hello world" stage again!
What I'm looking for is 1) some assurance this is normal for techies at heart who havent been active in a while, and 2) some no-nonsense guides, tutorials that will quickly get me up to speed on mobile dev basics and help me get something out the door and on a device. I think once I'm over the initial hump it will get easier and come naturally but at the moment the sheer magnitude of what I don't know scares the bejesus out of me! Perhaps there is a meet up I can leverage of similar like minded people who are looking to kick start their coding/creative side again?
Tl;dr I'm a 30 something ex coder, want to learn mobile development, overwhelmed by how much I don't know, need help getting started. <comment><USER2> Go do 3 tutorials on [http://www.raywenderlich.com/](http://www.raywenderlich.com/)

Now pick a super super simple idea (hit a button make an image appear type simple) and try to do it on your own.

Then do 3 more tutorials on [http://www.raywenderlich.com/](http://www.raywenderlich.com/)

Try to do your super simple idea better, or with one extra feature.

Get the Stanford iOS course or Treehouse and follow that all the way thru.

Do you super simple idea again but with another extra feature.

You will be well on your way. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) Totally normal 2) Big Nerd Ranch Guides are quick and painless 3) Go to the library for the books (old books for iOS 6 and better are good enough to learn from); use the simulator for code. Don't worry about getting it on the device first.

With iOS, ignore older tutorials and always start with the most recent stuff. If you find code that's from, say, pre-2013 even, you'll find non-ARC stuff, people going through all kinds of hoops, a resistance to use storyboards, and in some cases, you'll be solving problems Apple already solved.

I think there is some online Stanford course that is pretty good that'll take you 2-3 days to get through to not feel so "hello world."

Also, one last note: Don't read everything and then try to make something. It's painfully boring. Try to build something complicated right off the bat and read to make that happen. A lot of iOS stuff is painfully boring to read about, but crazy fun to rip apart and break in XCode.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi.

I hire for a global tech organization, and I'd just like to give you a little bit of insight:

1\. Don't use middleware unless you have to. Your salary will be lower, and you won't get to work on 'as' amazing things. This includes Xamarin, PhoneGap, Trigger and all the things in between

2\. Pick one first. iOS or Android. Don't dual-learn. It'll take you longer. Get a decent foundation on one first, and pick the one that makes more sense to you from a language point of view. (hint: Objective-C is weirder than it looks, Java is insanity)

3\. I've hired people who had less than 1 year experience with mobile development who have subsequently turned into extremely senior developers. It's totally possible buddy.

4\. Reading is (mostly) useless to form a foundation. Pick a project, work on it, scrap it, begin again with newfound knowledge and keep doing that until you feel comfortable with the concept of creating mobile apps.

Hope that helps ;)

<comment> atom-morgan > I've hired people who had less than 1 year experience with mobile > development

Did they have < 1 year professional experience or experience through side projects, reading, etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Man... I hear you. I was a CTO for many years (I'm old, in tech years) and didn't even look at code for a long time. When I left that job to be a partner in start-up I was doing everything. Coding, sysadmin, pulling fiber thru the homemade server chiller... so I know what you're talking about.

If you get LAMP development and OOP, most things haven't changed. Java is helpful to learn, Ruby/Rails and frameworks work like template engines so if you get that concept you should pick up MVC pretty quick.

If you're going to build apps on mobile my suggestion is to work in iOS. There is lots of code out there to do just about anything you want to do.

I'm building an app in .net for my windows phone just to see how it works. Its very easy and they deploy really easily. So you might want to look there too if you have .NET experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> Find one of Rey Wenderlich's tutorials that matches something you're interested in and follow it. I don't think I would have gotten my first app done if it weren't for his site. They're just the right depth for getting something working. [http://www.raywenderlich.com/](http://www.raywenderlich.com/)

There are a ton of samples and open-source mobile apps. It's a whole lot easier to pick one of those up and start messing with it than it is to start from a blank slate app template.

It took me almost 6 months to submit my first iOS app and I'd done plenty of C/C++ and client-side UI work. It takes time to get moving and iOS can be frustrating as hell between the odd syntax of Objective-C and UIKit. Android is an easier transition for most developers.

</comment><comment><USER7> I really like Treehouse. Their courses are really well paced.

I am also learning Mobile dev (Android) in my spare time. Although I program all day long, I still was not able to pick up Android easily. I tried a few free tutorials online. Also bought a few books. But I would get bored easily and stop learning. Or I would find information overwhelming.

Now I am using Treehouse site. Their videos are pretty good, you build interesting apps and they explain some of the concept better. Their badges are kind of cheesy but also motivating.

They are $25/month though. But you can get 2 weeks free trial and check out as much as you can.

</comment><comment><USER8> First, words of encouragement: it's NEVER too late to get started again! If you enjoyed programming in undergrad, you'll LOVE how far things have come!

Now on to actual help. Building mobile apps can be intimidating just by the number of platforms. Beyond the www.raywenderlich.com and www.codecademy.com links, you should check out something like Apache's Cordova (cordova.apache.org) if you already know CSS and JavaScript. This way you can easily build an app for any platform.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think you should look at Appery.io, a cool way to build and deploy mobile apps on the cloud. To start with, your focus should be on what you want to build rather than how you build it. The idea is more important than the implementation. Appery.io lets you build nice prototypes and real mobile apps using their app builder. Try it and see if that takes you further.</comment>


Ritual Vitamins pulls in $10.5M from Founders Fund to scale the business - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/ritual-vitamins-pulls-in-10-5-million-from-founders-fund-to-scale-the-business <comment><USER2> well, that sounds like one heap of bullshit. Let us know when it IPOs so we can short it.</comment>


Tropicana abandons new packaging; Twitter is the new focus group medium. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/media/23adcol.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Is there no thought given to the sample bias this incurs? Twitter is definitely not a cross-section of nearly anybody's customers...

<comment> old-gregg How does it work? People actually _choose_ to follow Tropicana? Or, more generally, how's Twitter valuable for marketers if in order to deliver your messaging you've got to persuade your customers to "follow" you first?

Why would I want to follow Nike or even BMW?

P.S. Perhaps I'm just an 'untwittery type' - I find it hard to believe people actually use Twitter, period. I've tried and my response to 99% of tweets has always been _"why would I care?"_ \- if you're into assembling random facts about lives of strangers, just watching them in a cafe or on a busy town square is way more fun.

<comment><USER3> It looks like @tropicana isn't even owned by the brand. Most likely, they searched twitter for "tropicana", as many brands seem to do. If the company replies to the user from another account, it should show up even if that user is not following @pepsico or whatever (depending on the user's options).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually like the new Tropicana packaging (as shown at the top of the article). It looks more hip and healthy, like something that would be sold at Whole Foods, as opposed to the old packaging, which strikes me as more nostalgic (e.g. "Your Father's Orange Juice").

<comment><USER5> I'd have to agree with you there. It reminded me of some freshness and they did some good for the packaging, in my opinion. I might just go out and get a carton myself, for posterity, since they're discontinuing it.

It kinda reminds me of how when facebook changes its interface, people bitch and moan, for about a month, and then, they kinda just forget what it was like before.

This thing with tropicana just sounds like people resisting change, for tradition's sake, rather than evaluating the new thing on its own merits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I think of Twitter, "focus" isn't the word that comes to mind.

A focus group seems like an artificial channel; you can't possibly hear what 100k people are saying about your product, so you pick 200 and you hope it's a random sample. But you can read what 100k people are writing, with good enough algorithms, so it'll be easier to gauge the Twitter zeitgeist on topics (like the election), if there is a zeitgeist at all. Gave a thousand samples out in a city and no one comments? That might be a interesting result in and of itself.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So yeah this is more interesting to me because I geek out on brand design (and I actually liked the new Tropicana stuff here), but some really good material here about how BigCo's are using the net to react faster to customers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Definitely agree that they should return to the previous packaging as since it all looks the same, it's easy to get annoyed. However, the most recent carton I bought had a cool little orange shaped cap which I hope they keep.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have one of the new packages in front of me (bought by a friend), and I have to say that there is not a single thing that I like about it. It's hard to read (text is sideways), vacuous ("Drink in the spirit of the morning"), and the juice pictured looks sickly and pale. The most readable text, and hence the part my eye is drawn to, reads "Some Pulp". At best, it looks like a weak imitation of a high-end store brand.

I'm left with two questions:

First, why would Tropicana choose to change their existing strong brand to this, rather than launching this as a side-brand under a new name and testing the market? To my limited knowledge, there are probably the strongest brand in orange juice in the US. I don't see why they would take this risk.

Second, it sounds like many people here and elsewhere actively like the new look. Others, such as me, do not. I have to presume that I'm in the minority, otherwise the consumer resistance would have turned up during Tropicana's user testing. Any ideas on why what underlies the divide between the presumed majority who like the new design and the curmedgeonly minority such as myself?

<comment><USER9> I agree, except that I think the orange-shaped cap is very appealing - in the same spirit as the arrow in the Fedex logo. If they had changed only the cap, that would have been clever.</comment></comment>


Will AR's Killer App Be Social? - <AUTHOR> https://arinsider.co/2019/02/12/will-ars-killer-app-be-social-2/ <comment> core-questions AR's killer app is going to be construction, I think. Overlay blueprints and plans on top of the physical site and see exactly what should be done and where.

High precision site localization will be important. Probably a market for a good, small, physically robust localizer that supplants GPS inside buildings... the Qeng Ho would be proud.</comment>


Fancy.com "removed Bitcoin per Apple's request" - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/tib54ei.png

<comment><USER2> I don't want to go researching some random app, what does this do and what does it mean that it has bitcoin removed?

</comment><comment><USER3> Was it getting around Apple's IAP-only policy? Because that wouldn't be surprising.

<comment><AUTHOR> IAP is only for virtual goods, not real goods.

<comment><USER3> Oh! I remembered wrong from their fight with Amazon. Interesting.</comment></comment></comment>