The worst year of my life - <AUTHOR> http://maban.co.uk/91/ <comment><USER2> No one should have to endure this sort of thing, which is somewhat worse than what I experienced myself (pervasive internet use is a significant amplifier).

Kids are a lot stronger than we give them credit for -- much stronger than adults, I think. Primary and secondary schools are an extremely harsh environment, because they have many of the same problems as prisons to a lesser degree. We forcibly put large groups of socially underdeveloped people together, and barely monitor the situation. Kids can't even really escape the systemic problems at home anymore, due to the internet.

Somehow, the vast majority of our children manage to come out of them more or less intact. This is nothing less than miraculous, one of the great unsung triumphs of human spirit.

I keep coming back to how nobody should have to endure this. This triumph is over an adversity of our own making. We can and should take this more seriously than any other threat to children, even though they somehow endure it, because it is more pervasive.

<comment><USER3> _Somehow, the vast majority of our children manage to come out of them more or less intact._

Except the ones who kill themsleves. Or the ones who are fundamentally changed for the rest of their lives. Or the ones who grow a hatred and distrust for the people in charge who did nothing to protect them. Or...

<comment><USER2> Sure, I don't mean to imply that bullying does no damage. Quite the opposite, in fact. The fact that _anyone_ can experience bullying, survive, and go on to be a productive adult is impressive. The fact that most do is downright incredible, and were there not so much evidence I would not have believed it possible.

This does nothing to lessen the tragedy of those who are not so lucky.

<comment><USER3> _The fact that anyone can experience bullying, survive, and go on to be a productive adult is impressive._

My point is that many don't. Perhaps most. Your comment serves as "comfort food" for those who would like to ignore the problem: "It's good that most children are strong! And it's a pity that some aren't." But _most_ aren't. People who can be changed so fundamentally for the rest of their lives aren't strong people.

<comment><USER2> If people take from my comment that we should ignore the problem, they have no ability to consider the basic morality.

We are psychologically _torturing_ a large number of children. That burden is on _us_. We create the situation where bullying is possible, and refuse to address that consequence in an effective manner. We refuse to even give children or their parents an effective tool to address it on an individual level. This makes me sick, and it should make you sick, too.

 _Anyone_ would be fundamentally changed for life by the level of psychological torture we inflict on our children. It requires significant strength just to not develop a serious addiction, run away, or commit suicide -- strength I don't see in most adults I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a former bully, my advice to anyone being bullied is to fight back.

I wasn't someone who would physically attack people, but I would relentlessly verbally abuse them. I'm not sure about the legal consequences these days but I know that if the person I picked on punched me in the face, I'd probably back down. This is what I have told my kids if they ever find themselves bullied. I'm not sure about the circumstances of the OP but I do think if you allow the bullying to fester, then kids who normally wouldn't bully start looking at you as a target and join in. The key is to not make yourself a target and if they know every time they bully you, that you will fight back tooth and nail, eventually they will choose someone else. It's sad and unfair, but true. It's like Lord of the Flies.

The one thing that makes me glad that I'm not younger is the fact that I didn't have the internet when I was a kid. I know for a fact I would have engaged in cyberbullying so I'm glad I never had access to a tool like this when I was at my worst.

<comment><USER5> As some who was/is(by managers) being bullied.

The best line of defense against bullying is to become indifferent to bullying. And act like despite the best efforts from the bully, you are just not getting bullied. Or the bully is trying his/her level best and you just don't take them seriously at all. Nothing pisses off bullies as badly as this. You can literally enjoy the expressions on their face when you see how you have defeated them mentally. And know one thing, bullying is mind tactics. And you have to fight it out that way.

Like many innocent looking nerds. I was not only bullied by kids, but by a few teachers too.

Last year, one of my school mates called for re union at a local cafe. Everyone gathered, among them was a guy who helped my Math teacher in high school to bully me. He not only bullied me, but fed the teacher with all sorts of wrong information and got me bullied through him. Anyways the guy was present, and he doesn't seemed to done anything much in life so far. Then my other friends sort of praised as to how far I had gone among all other dudes in our class.

For whatever that brief moment. It looked like the bully's face had dried, gone cold and the expression on his face looked like a greater defeat had been handed over to him.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, it sounds like you fell in the same trap that I was in for a number of years after school.

I'm sorry to break it to you, but in your case, the bullies have won.

> _For whatever that brief moment. It looked like the bully 's face had dried, > gone cold and the expression on his face looked like a greater defeat had > been handed over to him._

Years later, you still care enough that hurting the bully made you feel good (and in a serious way: by making him feel that he's a failure in life. Uppercut!) That's not a victory, my friend, that's defeat. Victory is when you're free of the long-term influence and side-effects of the bullying.

I strongly encourage you to examine your life and find which parts of it and of your character have been affected by this bullying, and set to work actually undoing the influence that this has had on you. As long as you let the bullying define who you are, you've not won. That's perhaps one of the most pernicious aspects of bullying - the long-term overshadowing of all the things you do in your later life.

<comment><USER5> I get the broad idea.

Actually I never went to the re union with those memories at all. But when I saw the person, I just recalled everything that happened back then.

>>Years later, you still care enough that hurting the bully made you feel good

Sorry but I never did anything to the bully, but he did it to himself. Instead of spending his time studying or making good use of the time in some meaningful way, his plan of action was pull down others.

That can work once or twice, with some helpless people. But life itself is a bigger problem, and you can't bully life. The fact that most bullies end up in prison or with permanent problems with anger and people issues. And then land up in life long economic misery, is a self infliction.

I some how get a feeling that most bullies realize the futility of physical power in a world where power and money hold the key to success. And then also realize its the innocent looking nerds who are likely to win big. There fore try to pre-screw/pre-revenge them for the likely outcome they will face in the future: "Ending up doing small time jobs for nerds themselves".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In 2004? This kind of bullying is inhuman.

I've experienced a bit of bullying (not cyber) and it really affects you a lot.

I was bullied for 2-3 years and it fundamentally changed me. Before that, I was a friendly, trusting person who wasn't afraid to lead. Now, I'm more on reserved and untrusting side.

I also found my sanctuary on the internet and it helped me recover a lot.

Anna, you're brave and strong. Had I been subjected to this level of bullying, I'd have broken down completely.

<comment><USER8> "This kind of bullying is inhuman."

Unfortunately it's very human. It's common human behavior, and common behavior among other social mammals as well.

Nature deals you and everyone else a more or less random hand of genes. Then, when you reach puberty, you duke it out to establish a pecking order based on relative fitness indicators. These determine who gets to mate with who, and who will be closest to the alpha males who will lead the tribe.

This is one reason that despite its trendiness I have never been able to accept the argument from nature. Nature sucks. Fuck nature. My hope is that we can start re-engineering this stuff as soon as we are able.

<comment><USER9> LessWrong: "we're running on defective hardware."

The argument from nature is completely ghastly from a moral perspective. I have never seen a solid argument that uses it. It's usually the domain of pseudo-intellectuals who are grasping at Internet points instead of actually thinking through the implications of what they're saying. It implicitly condones a huge swath of anti-social behavior in the pursuit of the all- important fitness. It inspires no hope, and it demands that you take an extremely unhealthy interest in your own self.

<comment><USER8> "The argument from nature is completely ghastly from a moral perspective. I have never seen a solid argument that uses it. It's usually the domain of pseudo-intellectuals who are grasping at Internet points instead of actually thinking through the implications of what they're saying. It implicitly condones a huge swath of anti-social behavior in the pursuit of the all- important fitness. It inspires no hope, and it demands that you take an extremely unhealthy interest in your own self."

That is very well put, and the last point is really an eyebrow-raiser. I've never seen it before, but now I cannot un-see. If you look deeply into the natural everything movement that's so popular right now you'll see an odd kind of cleanliness and purity obsessed narcissism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not adding to a sensible discussion perhaps, but I'm convinced that bullying is the result of inaction by parents and teachers/schools. Merely standing by and letting it happen is the worst thing you can do to your children.

As a dad with young kids, I can assure you that if this were to happen to them, I'd wage all-out cyberwar, on the kids _and_ any parents that didn't properly curtail their child's behavior after official notifications. From doxing and redialing faxes to bully-vision youtube channels naming and shaming their family. It isn't slander if it's true…

I've made it 100% clear to my kids that I've got their backs. It's my duty as a dad.

Edit: Yes, this story obviously struck a nerve for me. I was bullied as a 12yo kid for a few months. I was a good kid, and did well in school, which made me the outlier.

I remember how terrified I was when the bell rang at the end of the school day, knowing that the pests would be waiting for me on the way home.

I also vividly remember the day my dad took me aside and simply said: "Go ahead. You have my permission to make them feel sorry. I have your back. Just don't do it on school property."

The day I took action was a truly glorious and empowering day. Hearing my dad tell their parents afterwards they had it coming, supported by some photographic proof of damage caused in the past, was even better. Upside: nobody ever bothered me again.

This happened a long time ago, and not in the litigious USA where money and lawsuits get off every bullying 'precious snowflake', yet I'm certain I'd take that risk today, if official channels failed to ensure the (mental) well-being of my children.

<comment><USER11> >> As a dad with young kids, I can assure you that if this were to happen to them, I'd wage all-out cyberwar, on the kids and any parents that didn't properly curtail their child's behavior after official notifications. <<

Uh, cyberwar? No. This happened once to my one of my sons. I found out who the parents where (divorced, different locations) drove to both their houses, and said, "If your kid doesn't stop today, you, your kid and your family, are not safe outside this door. I never said this." I put on my best pycho face. Truly, I was psycho, so it didn't take much.

It stopped.

I was the target of intense intense bullying as a kid. Affected me my whole life until my 30's. No kids of mine was going through that.

<comment><USER12> >> I found out who the parents where (divorced, different locations) drove to both their houses, and said, "If your kid doesn't stop today, you, your kid and your family, are not safe outside this door. I never said this."

Hello, restraining order.

Seriously, there are good ways to deal with situations like this. Threatening people is not one of those ways.

<comment><USER11> >> Hello, restraining order. <<

Okay, I'll call that. Have you tried to get a restraining order? Do you know what's involved?

I've tried: Here's what you get:

What proof do you have? What is your relationship to that person? They deny it, how do you respond? More bullying, because they know you tried to go through the system, which favors the aggressor because authorities are too busy putting pot smokers behind bars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was bullied like this when I was in high school. My car was vandalized on several occasions, almost everyone would throw food at me if I entered the cafeteria, and I was hospitalized once after losing one of many fights. A friend of mine wasn't so lucky and ended up in a coma for six months. That kind of abuse never leaves you.

Every time I read a story like this it all comes flooding back.

Sadly even > 12 years on and I still don't have any good answers.

<comment><USER14> Do internet hugs work?

I was bullied from about 12 (right after moving to a new school, a VERY susceptible time, in hindsight) until at least 14.

I wouldn't call this justice but the main bullier ended up taking a shotgun to his own head just a few years ago. I have a feeling that bullying harms more than just the victims, it also harms the perpetrators...

<comment><USER13> The thought is nice.

I mostly share the story because the idea that you, alone, can stand up to these sorts of situations doesn't seem right to me.

<comment><USER14> In some (maybe most?) cases, you can. Bullies look for easy targets. So all you have to do is decide not to be an easy target and ignore any size difference. I told a story of doing that here, and it did work:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7646530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7646530)

The bully I mentioned above, who took a shotgun to his head? He only stopped bullying me when I threw a basketball into his face (suspension for me, of course). This was after at least a year or 2 of abuse in junior high.

Here's the thing about bullies- the school iteration is only one kind, and you can keep running into them later in life. In all cases you will have to stand up for yourself and fight a bit (perhaps not in actuality, as adults, but it's the same energy source).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is only one thing possible you can do that help in a situation like this. It is to fight back. Throw punches (literally), let them be suspended, arrested, do everything you can do to punish everyone who tries to mess with you that way. You will gain respect, because you have to, even if you sometimes lose a fight - legal or physically.

And I know how horribly hard that is while you are under constant attack. And how it feels how it will make only matters worse. One thinks "maybe it will stop if one just tries to fit in a bit more, or be a bit invisible" But it never does.

People behaving like this follow animalic instinct, not reason, so the only language they understand is on the same level. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to fight yourself - but hard responses are necessary, and a 2m police man talking angry to a teen is a hard response.

Edit: Tried to make it a bit clearer that it is not only about fighting physically.

<comment><USER16> This is very dangerous advice. You will most likely lose that fight, badly, because you are in the minority. YOU will most likely end up being suspended and arrested, because the bullies have friends who will testify against you, and they're the popular, trustworthy ones.

And escalating violence can quickly get to a point where consequences are completely out of proportion _especially_ when you're up against people who "follow animalic instinct" \- anything you do that makes them look bad compels them to retalitate in kind.

What you need is allies and/or support from authorities.

<comment><USER17> As long as one of the bullies is sufficiently bloody, maimed, or dead, you'll have accomplished your purpose.

Plus you can chose when to retaliate, every member of a group bullying you can't be with overwhelming numbers all the time, especially at their home and the like.

I too was "different", brilliant, and bullied to more than a small degree early on into junior high (8th grade) ... but I had over the years, starting in elementary school, established a reputation that while I was a generally very nice and good guy, if you crossed various lines there was _absolutely no limit_ to what I'd do to retaliate (note, with a continuum of force, just no upper limit to it). Oh, yeah, I started learning how to shoot in 1st grade, and was very good at it, although I'm not sure if that was clear to others until high school when I was on the rifle team (I certainly never made threats, especially of that nature).

The key, of course, is deterrence. Perhaps it's a Southern (USA) thing; I grew up in a culturally Southern area, one parent raised in it, another from the Deep South, although a skewed version of it, Louisiana and Cajun (French settlers who were forced to leave "Arcadia", a formerly French part of Canada). So unlike this victim, once a line was crossed, I did care about getting my adversaries hurt, that was the objective after all. Let it be cost free and you can see what happens.

Strange anecdote: one day when I was a senior it did come very very close to serious violence, the closest ever, but the adversary ran into a closed off for that period area where teachers were. His complaints that I was armed with a dog choker chain around my right fist fell on deaf ears as I silently and casually put it in my pocket.

I was later told by a school authority that the school would have done nothing to me if I'd beaten him up (!). Back then, at least (1979), I guess it made a difference having a perfect record of good behavior and being college track etc., vs. being a notorious trouble maker and not so bright (come to think of it, pretty much all the other bullies had given up by then).

If you can't bring yourself to retaliate, and it's clear to your adversaries ... don't know what to say or advise. But that you'll lose big time, as this victim did.

<comment><USER16> > As long as one of the bullies is sufficiently bloody, maimed, or dead, > you'll have accomplished your purpose.

Unless it's _you_ who ends up bloody, maimed, or dead, which I submit is the more likely outcome when faced with multiple bullies who are not all stupid and can lay ambushes for you as easily as you for them.

> I had [...], established a reputation that [..] if you crossed various lines > there was absolutely no limit to what I'd do to retaliate (note, with a > continuum of force, just no upper limit to it).

You got lucky that you never went up against someone with the same philosophy. A continuous escalation of violence is something you need to avoid _at all costs_.

Retalitate, sure, but not using violence, at least unless you have exhausted all other options. And kids _suck_ at judging whether they have, because they misjudge risks and will e.g. consider reporting to the police and being judged a sissy a greater risk than entering a violent confrontation that could leave them permanently disabled.

<comment><USER17> " _A continuous escalation of violence is something you need to avoid_ at all costs."

Absolutely, and my continuum didn't have all that many points.

E.g. while I never faced a multiple bully situation as you described above (the one in college wasn't of that nature), if the first exchange went as you posit, if and when I recovered from the ambush, I'd have "gone nuclear". In my case, methodically shot them dead from distance until inevitably stopped (if I didn't have those skills and weapons availability, command detonated IEDs).

Each level must be met 10 fold at bare minimum, e.g. the 50th time a stocking cap is stolen, push the bully into busy moving traffic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7646592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7646592)

Or just "get the hell out of town" one way or another; for more than a few respondents in this discussion that would have been the best option. E.g. if a credible threat of death is not something that fazes them, it's not much of a threat....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This reminds me of what happened to my self last year. I had a YouTube channel with Gaming Videos, they went to my channel created a fake Google+ account using my name and started posting offensive content on it.

They then went to videos with homosexual acts and posted comments with my name saying things like "I endorse this", etc..

On the Google+ page they posted Male Pornography all under my name.

I went to the Police here in Dubai and after a few weeks of no response I found out that they lost my file and that I would have to do another report to get anything done about it.

I eventually took it into my own hands, contacted Google+ send pictures of my passport and they shutdown the account and removed all Google query's of the page.

</comment><comment><USER19> Cyber bullying isn't any different from regular bullying. Just because technology is being used doesn't change anything. As most nerds/geeks I was bullied during my younger school days. Not quite as bad as in the story, bud badly enough. Technology was not used, but it was bullying all the same.

The real problem is simply that bullying, cyber or not, has no consequences. Back in the day I was punished more for fighting back than any bully ever was for harassing me. Until teachers and administrators are given the ability to actually punish bullies with real consequences, why would they stop?

By seriously punish I don't mean violence. Obviously the right punishment in each situation will be different. But the first idea that comes to my mind is to simply remove all the bullies and disruptive students from school and put them in a separate school of their own. Perhaps a military-style academy?

<comment><USER16> Cyber bullying _is_ different from regular bullying because it follows you to your home and your entire outside-school life. This is a huge difference.

<comment><USER20> Normal bullying followed me home from school. Okay so life-penetration wasn't as deep. But, to the point that walking into town on a saturday was risky business.

The difference with cyber-bullying isn't any of these things; it's just that it's much harder for other people to see happening (unless, of course, you show them the messages).

Quite a few times at school people would come across me being bullied; and more often than not they put a stop to it.

<comment><USER21> On the other hand, cyber-bullying doesn't physically beat the crap out of you. Which kinda sucks when it happens on a daily basis.

<comment><USER22> Could be both, as for example when not only do you get your ass kicked, but some prick uses the iPhone Daddy bought him to take video of it, which he later uploads so he can share the link around your entire school.

Just another point in demonstration of the fact that "cyberbullying" vs "(just plain) bullying" makes a distinction without a difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Looks like she doesn't want this to be posted here.

[https://twitter.com/anna_debenham/status/459673982149877760](https://twitter.com/anna_debenham/status/459673982149877760)

<comment><USER24> Wow, it is interesting that I didn't realise there were groups of people who knew enough about Hacker News to care about it, and would go out of their way, including buying ssl certificates and changing solver configs, just to block HN.

It is distributing to find somewhere you thought of as a "safe place" seems like such an upsetting place to others. I'm not sure what HN should do about this, but it is a very disturbing turn of events. Perhaps it is time to pack up and leave?

<comment><USER25> > somewhere you thought of as a "safe place"

Ha, you must not read a lot of the comments then. HN likes to whip out the sexist and/or victim blaming rhetoric quite often; it doesn't surprise me at all that someone would like to distance themselves from this site.

This thread is one hour old and there's already some victim blaming going on.

<comment><USER26> You've got to be kidding me. Almost all the responses here are positive and this forum is extremely politically correct. Just because there's an occasional bad apple shouldn't be an excuse for you to attack HN in general. Its unfair, overly critical, and frankly turns the bullying discussion into a meta-discussion about HN which is unhelpful.

As someone who's been on the receiving end of HN traffic, its a lot of eyeballs. Its one thing to write a personal blog posting for your 500 readers and whole other to find 500,000 hits that day.

<comment><USER25> Actually, this thread has been moderated heavily both by us and the mods as well. A lot of negative stuff has been downvoted or even removed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That is a heartbreaking read. I had to deal with bullying at school but what is described here is at such a different scale I feel it would be wrong to compare my experience to the author's. If, like me, you were surprised at first at the magnanimity she showed towards her bullies (not wanting them to get a criminal record) consider that even if you absolutely wanted them to be punished there would have been a psychological price to pressing charges and going to court, so it would by no means be an easy choice to make.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't think the term "cyber bullying" really conveys how serious it can be. I have no idea how anyone could endure this. It's inhuman.

<comment><USER29> It's the word "cyber", which is essentially an indicator for "Please ignore me, I know nothing about this subject" to anyone other than mainstream news media. If it was called online bullying, it'd be a different story.

<comment><USER22> Why does it need to be called " _anything_ bullying"? It seems to me that for anyone who's been bullied, or who hasn't but has seen what it does to someone who is, the noun stands quite well on its own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Heartbreaking story. As a father of an 8 month old girl this really tugs at me. Nobody should have to go through this.

On a positive note, Anna is a very talented designer. Hopefully the positive experiences doing meaningful work for appreciative clients will eclipse some of the pain in the past.

</comment><comment><USER31> When facebook was on the rise I had a situation when several students came at me for no reason. So many people behave like animals, hatred and bad jokes are like a source of energy to them. I failed to have a degree due to these people.

That was a reason I stopped using facebook too. I think the web should be used to drive people who have the same interests towards each other, but that's the opposite that happens: you end up confronting the people who know you and dislike you, and it's impossible to avoid them because you either work with them or you are in the same class.

What boggles my mind is when I read on the internet people saying "bullying is fine and it's part of life". Sounds like it's a game for them, and they don't realize that people just don't want to play with them.

If I could relive my teenage years, I would stab so many students. The scars bullying leaves on you are for ever.

</comment><comment><USER32> I can sympathise with the author. I didn't suffer to the degree that she did, but it was there none-the-less.

Sometimes bullies like this have no rhyme or reason other than they find some kind of self-worth in bullying. It's a difficult situation to be in, especially as a teenager where you feel like your only options are to either stay silent and suffer, or tell someone and commit social suicide.

<comment><USER7> The problem with telling someone is that they can't stop it completely! Author told the school and the bullies still continued.

Your point about self-worth is excellent. I've seen bullies being very happy/proud after teasing someone.

Sad thing is that all this changes you and hinders your progress a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I run an online service that connects teens with experienced lawyers who advise them for free (it is a labour of love).

Obviously I am biased, but I think we need more services that can help kids deal with online realities. In our experience, kids who are being bullied have no idea how to get the help they need and burrow instead. We owe it to them to change that.

I am convinced that the tech community can play a big part in that, it certainly has for my organization.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't understand why parents of those bullies did nothing? It looks like they all were informed (suspension, police)? And that - "I knew that if they got a criminal record, they might not be able to go to university. I didn't want that burden." looks like a strange position. Why would you care about that happening to someone who was giving you death threats?

</comment><comment><USER35> Stuff like this makes me proud that the internet and technology industry can give people a way of taking control of their lives back and finding a purpose and career when others are trying to deny it to them.

<comment><USER36> Just to play devil's advocate, consider that the Internet is what enabled this bullying to be as horrible and psychologically damaging as it was. It's not only tech geeks that get bullied.

<comment><USER22> Which is another way of saying that this technology, like any other, is morally neutral, and only the actions of the people who use it have any moral weight.

<comment><USER36> True, although I'd say the interesting part are the properties of the technology. In this instance, the cyber-bullying stuff is worse than traditional bullying because of the anonymity and lack of repercussions. Sort of a corollary of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory if you will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Relevant - interesting article from a couple of days ago: [http://www.care2.com/causes/ways-school-bullying-can- affect-...](http://www.care2.com/causes/ways-school-bullying-can-affect-your- life-even-decades-on.html?cid=tw_causes_bullyingimpact)

5 Ways School Bullying Impacts Your Life Even Decades On

"Following participants into midlife (aged 50), the researchers then tested for evidence of the known effects of bullying at regular intervals throughout the subjects' lives, and participants were tested for psychological distress as well as their general health, with tests at 23 and 45. At age 50, participants were also tested in terms of cognitive functioning, social relationships, as well as for general levels of well-being (these were assessed using standard scales).

What the researchers found was that, even after accounting for things like IQ and socioeconomic status at the beginning of the study, bullying appears to have a significant impact on people's lives for decades after the bullying has finished."

</comment><comment><USER37> That is really horrendous. Sent shivers down my spine just reading it :/

</comment><comment><USER14> FYI, she wants to block hackernews visitors (probably due to a hosting issue), so can someone throw up a mirror?

<comment> k-mcgrady Her Twitter implies she didn't want it here because she didn't anticipate a good conversation (i.e. she expected abusive comments on HN). So a mirror is probably the last thing she wants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> You know what would be awesome some sort of anti-bullying squad -- that dishes out some of their own medicine. -- Have maybe 10-15 people situated along the pathway of a bully's walk home, and cameramen to ask him questions... like Did you know most bully's bully because they hate themselves, what do you hate most about yourself, what makes you a bully? ... etc... -- get it all on tape, if they run--get their cowardice on tape.. youtube it for the whole world to see, enough instances of this happen, and it'll cut back on bully's I'd hope-- I wonder if To Catch a Predator had any statistics on if the program curtailed any predatoring...

</comment><comment><USER39> Everything in this article is terrifying and, somehow, what scared me the most was how much Internet is actually the world for so many people born not that later than myself. It is incredible how fast this change happened. Also, I know my role as a professional is doing nothing but making that a bigger issue.

As a side note: bullying (cyber or not) is not the same in all countries. In my hometown, when I was growing up and we were not that penetrated by american culture yet, nothing like this would happen. The worst thing possible was a light fist fight.

</comment><comment><USER40> > The answers to my secret questions on my accounts are all fake, so not even > a friend could know them.

Side note, this is good advice for anyone. Many sites use the same questions, and they're often stored in plaintext in the database. One compromised database on an unimportant service may expose vulnerabilities to your most sensitive accounts.

I treat these like any other password field, using random text as the answer, and store the random answer along with the password in 1Password.

</comment><comment> grey-area This story is a perfect candidate for that new comment filtering feature on HN. I'm not even sure a meaningful HN discussion is possible on this sort of topic anyway.

<comment><USER10> I beg to differ. I have no proof, but I suspect a large number of visitors to HN (technically inclined, perhaps not as socially developed as kids, most pretty darn smart) have some personal experience in the matter, which may explain the number of comments.

In terms of meaningful discussion, there are comments from those who were bullied and those who did (interesting perspective).

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> My sister went through the same things about the same time. She put a hockey stick in the face of the ring leader in the end, smashed her teeth and broke her jaw. She was arrested but the duty officers agreed to write it off as they'd already been contacted by my parents about the bullying it and they said the CPS wouldn't touch it in this case.

So up turns a guy at my door one day (the girl's father) ready to kick off at my sister and my parents. He was removed by our dogs.

Two years down the line from this, her father is in prison for robbery and the girl was in youth custody for assault.

Moral of the story: half the human race is shit not worthy of a breath of air. Fight fire with fire. No sympathy regardless of the background for any behaviour like this.

Also avoid living in shitty suburbs of Nottingham (this was Woodborough Road next to St Anne's).

</comment><comment><USER42> To the author of this post and anyone else who may be the victim of cyber- abuse: my heart goes out to you, but you _must_ fight back. Tooth and nail, fullest extent of the law, the whole she-bang.

It seems to me the victim in this account held back, thereby preventing justice and prolonging the abuse.

<comment><USER43> I think the problem lies in that we often never tell children this, don't support them if they try, and the system in general in its effort to make the problem no longer visible to the authorities (as opposed to actually making it go away) often finds the easiest path is to get the compliant target to shut up about the problem rather than the much harder task of actually fixing it. (They don't even realize that they're doing this... but when the kid's talking to the authorities for the fifth time because the first four didn't do anything, and the authorities give off a "this again? jeez", it's not hard to figure out how pointless the meetings are.) Which, as an adult, I now realize they simply don't have time for, but I wish they'd be more up front about it and let kids deal with that, rather than pretend they've got all the solutions, ban you from doing anything effective, then fail to do anything effective themselves.

I'm a male, and my tormentors were male, and I think that makes this a radically different situation than the linked article. But for me, I'm pretty sure two or three well-placed swings (they probably didn't even have to _connect_ ) would have made school orders of magnitude more pleasant for me. I wish I hadn't been raised with everybody around me telling me how wrong that always is, because in hindsight it would have been a great deal less wrong than what happened to me.

So, other parents, I encourage you to take a more nuanced approach than mine did. You certainly don't want to encourage violence for everything and sure, _start_ with the proper authorities, but I would encourage you that if that still can't fix the problem, stand behind your kid if they need to take a bit of action on their own. And please don't teach them complete passivity as the answer to everything. I was lucky in ways I didn't even understand at the time, and my personal psychological makeup was mostly able to withstand this and come out with very little scarring. Don't count on that for your child. I've observed that it's not true of everyone.

Incidentally, I submit as evidence the fact that people even here have a hard time agreeing to this idea. Think about it. You're asking one person to put up with _years_ of physical and/or psychological abuse to save a small set of bullies, who are by definition being bad actors... what? A bruised nose, once or twice? Bruised egos? What kind of fucked up ethical system have you all subscribed to where a bullied person is _obligated_ to put up with years upon years of inescapable abuse rather than _throw a punch_? Seriously. Please. Think about that for a moment, and stop valuing years of psychological and/or physical abuse at what appears to be "zero"... you are, and I am dead serious about this, part of the problem if you act that way. Bullying is _bad_. Really _bad_. Not just "I say the word bad and pat myself on the back for having Good Think", but really, really drive-people-to-the-brink-of-suicide-or-beyond _bad_. Don't mouth the words about how bullying it bad, _act like it!_

(And again, if something other than violence works, hey, great! It's not a good first resort. It's not the solution to everything and it isn't magic. But don't act like it's nuclear waste and take it entirely off the table at the cost of _years of soul-searing abuse_. It's a bad situation and there may not be a "perfect solution", but I find it abhorrent how many people even here would rather see someone put up with epic abuse rather that assert themselves even a little.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm really confused as to what the author did to upset this group of people. I find it hard to believe that so many people who go so far out of their way for such an extended period of time for absolutely no reason other than to harass someone for laughs.

Edit: What's with the downvotes? Are we not allowed to ask questions here anymore? Or is it inappropriate to not believe everything you hear at face value? It isn't even that because the author doesn't explain it at all.

<comment><USER45> Children don't need a reason to be absolute shitheads.

<comment><USER44> Perhaps once, but for such a long period of time? I don't believe it.

<comment><USER45> Do you have retrograde amnesia, or were you homeschooled?

<comment><USER44> What are you even talking about? Make your point if you have something to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> War, famine, disease, losing your liver -- all this pales compared to cyber bullying!

I was bullied as a kid, it was awful, but I was being hit with fists, and when I didn't have any money to steal, they'd hit me again. They also carried knives. I lived in a ghetto.

If this is the worse thing that happened to her in her life, she must have had a pretty good and happy life. I am certain that cyber bullying is real and can create a huge emotional torment, but what I read here is pretty lame. Colleagues post mean comments and it affects you emotionally? Seriously? Maybe it was much worse than the author can express, in which case she is just a bad writer, but her twitter reaction[1] made me think this is not the case, and it made me lose all sympathy for her.

If this stuff affects you, it's bad parenting. If you live in Disneyland and are this isolated from real life, it's only the fault of your parents who didn't teach you anything about the real life, where people are hateful, mean, and generally want to fuck you up in some way.

Because I am extremely arrogant and because I am always right, people hate me a lot, especially people on the Internet. This doesn't affect me negatively, this amuses me. Seven years back (wow, already 7 years!) some guy hated me so much, that he hired thugs to beat me up. Real thugs. With sticks. Sticks that hit me in the eye. I couldn't see for two weeks with my left eye. I still have floaters and flashes in my both eyes.

Did this depress me? No! I am now stronger, I learned a thing or two about self-defense and I got my revenge, except without violence.

[1] [https://twitter.com/anna_debenham/status/459673982149877760](https://twitter.com/anna_debenham/status/459673982149877760)

/edit: this was downvoted less than two seconds since when I posted it. Two seconds! HN readers muts read pretty fast, since I assume everyone here actually reads before downvoting. Surely that's true! As I said, amusing.

<comment><USER22> > because I am always right

Really? Your whole comment here constitutes a contemptuous dismissal of anything, suffered by anyone, which doesn't live up to your particular standard of "bad enough to cry over", and you say you're always _right?_ Certainly you're arrogant, but that's neither an accomplishment nor a cause of reasonable pride; as far as _right_ goes, I can only imagine that hit in the eye you took must have done something bad to your close detail vision, because you certainly give the strong impression of having badly misread the definition of the word. Here, have a dictionary link [1], and since it's online, you can zoom in on the text just as far as you need to, in order to actually _read_ it this time.

[1]: [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/right](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/right)

<comment><USER46> Wow you are weak. I apologise for the trollish statement, but in reality it was a test for the community; test that wanted to prove that some people just don't know how react on the Internet. It was an obvious bait, and you took it. If people feel offended for some reason, that _have_ to react, they _have_ to say something, they _have_ to complain. Just ignore and live with your life. This is why the article exists, because some people care when they shouldn't. Thanks for proving my point.

Hey! Here's an upvote though, because I found your comment very funny.

<comment><USER22> _Primus_ : "(something really stupid you'd have to be an asshole to say)"

 _Secundus_ : "That was really stupid, and you're an asshole for saying it."

 _Primus_ : "LOL I TROLL U LE TROLLFACE.JPG LE MFW LELELELE"

Nowhere easier to win an argument than in your own mind, I suppose. Seriously, though, what are you doing on Hacker News? /b/ is thataway, just past the dumpsters; when you get to the open sewer, you're there, so jump right on in.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apply HN: It's 2:30am; the baby's crying - <AUTHOR> Let's keep it short:
There are apps for everything and everyone, but these rarely do exactly what you want.
Some are more feature-rich (making them too heavy for the one task you need), or too targeted, missing some feature(s) you want.
The idea is to provide a cloud-based platform for personalized apps that do a small number of exactly the thing(s) a user might want.
But who's gonna develop these exotic apps? Let's make it dead easy for developers to publish small, but smart apps: the platform provides processing, storage, scheduling and integration capabilities, allowing apps to respond to events (e.g., app might run by sending SMS or when a tweet is posted).
The intent is to strip any overhead hindering developers from publishing pretty much any app they think of or commissioned to develop.
Use cases (and I mean actual apps currently used in the pilot stage):

   1. SMS-based TODO app (enhances feature phone capabilities)

   2. Customized morning SMS weather notifications
      * customizing info, units and formatting

   3. Tracking and notification of rare but important website updates

   4. Automatic code backup from GitHub to BitBucket
      * a royal pain otherwise

   5. Apply HN leaderboard and highly-voted newcomers daily email

   6. Near real-time tracking of Wimbledon match results vs. betting odds

 I'd appreciate any feedback and elaborate on how the prototype works, share app code examples and answer any questions.
* Shameless plug, for someone else: Maciej Ceglowski (of Pinboard, currently apply HN leader) gave a brilliant talk titled 'Barely succeed! It's easier!'. Check it out at goo.gl/j2SxTY <comment><USER2> It's 3:30, the baby's still crying, and I'm all confused. Maybe it's the exhaustion, maybe it's the wall of text.

What platform? Are you building it? Or are you building the apps? Or are you just saying that it _ought to_ exist? The only link you're providing is some talk on YT.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'm building the platform, not the apps. Apps will be build by developers independently, or after being commissioned by non-coding users. When the service is in decent shape to post link, I'll happily do so here, or in the show HN section

<comment><USER2> Aha, now it makes sense. Looking forward to that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just a couple of comments on some of your use cases.

* I don't use Bitbucket specifically, but what's difficult about mirroring code between two different git instances? I do it between GitHub and GitLab.[0] Local git config just needs to be configured to push to both destinations. Or perhaps I haven't understood the specific "code backup" use case?

* The Wimbledon match results vs betting odds could be interesting, but I would think the betting odds should very quickly reflect the match results. At least this would be my experience on Betfair. What's the opportunity here? Is it arbitrage between bookmakers?

[0] [https://github.com/phillc73/backblazer](https://github.com/phillc73/backblazer) and [https://gitlab.com/phillc73/backblazer](https://gitlab.com/phillc73/backblazer)

<comment> m-i-l _I would think the betting odds should very quickly reflect the match results._

In actual fact, the betting odds are sometimes updated before the broadcast results, thanks to bookmakers employing courtsiders[0] to transmit scores direct.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, much like the stock market responds to news, mostly faster than msnbc can discuss these. The issue this app solves is the ephemeral nature of the betting data. A simple scheduling feature allowed me to have historical data easily. Otherwise, go deal with a server, scheduled jobs, etc. Not impossible, just discouraging for many people that can develop, but don't want to deal with the overhead for every little application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess I'm confused. Is the crying baby a problem that will be solved by one of these small apps? If so, how? Because the tools that are provided do not seem like any tools that would be especially useful to develop a crying baby handling app? also - a link needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, the title has little to do with the app, more with my failed attempt at brevity. But an app that could stop a baby from crying would be awesome.</comment></comment>


An opinionated treatise (and rant) on lisp and language development in general - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/ttSY0yx7

<comment><USER2> That's a lot of bullshit. Some is even true.

The problem is not Lisp in general, the problem is about alternative languages for Windows in general. There is Microsoft and it does not provide a Lisp implementation. Ask them to do it. The provide C, C#, Basic, F#, and some other. But no Lisp. Microsoft also supports zero Lisp in any of their products. Nada. Nichts. That should give you a clue: if you want to program in the Microsoft environment, use something else, not Lisp.

Still during the history of Lisp, many attempts have been made to develop a nice Lisp for Windows: Golden Common Lisp, Procycon Common Lisp, Corman Lisp, CLOE, and half a dozen others.

There are actually two nice current Lisp implementations for Windows: Allegro CL / [http://www.franz.com](http://www.franz.com) and LispWorks / [http://www.lispworks.com](http://www.lispworks.com) . Both are really great, even under Windows. Both are commercial and relatively expensive. But when you run a proprietary and commercial OS, then it should be no problem to invest in a Lisp - if you REALLY NEED IT.</comment>


Leading Civil Rights Groups Just Sold Out on Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.republicreport.org/2014/leading-civil-rights-groups-just-sold-out-on-net-neutrality/

<comment><USER2> These groups seem more and more out of touch with the public that they purportedly serve. Just look at the outcry over their attempt to manipulate the objective merit-based criteria for NYC's Specialized high schools. [http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_3_nyc-specialized- high-s...](http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_3_nyc-specialized-high- schools.html)

While there is a critical need for better racial diversity at the schools, to try to 'fix' the problem at the 8th grade level (when it's usually too late) not only seems like a pure PR play, but it also hurts the thousands of sacrificing low income students who are currently getting accepted into these schools.

Civil rights in this country needs a disruptive reboot.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a member on any of these groups but I did find one on facebook & messaged them.</comment>


Grails + Bootstrap + Amazon + Jelastic = djacc.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.cavdar.net/2011/12/13/grails-bootstrap-amazon-jelastic-djacc-com/ I created an online metal music radio called djacc.com. In this post, I tried to explain it's infrastructure (APIs, Web Framework, CSS & HTML Toolkit, JS Library, Storage and CDN, Deployment & Hosting) shortly. <comment><USER2> Good effort. I'm new to grails but it seems very nice implementation.</comment>


Suite of 300 icons for web and user interface design - <AUTHOR> http://adamwhitcroft.com/batch/ <comment><USER2> Thank you very much for this. The website is amazing, UX is perfect and the content (the icons) is top-notch. I will someday re-pay you for this wonderful favor you've done to the community of designers like us, especially considering the fact that it's difficult to find good stuff without having to attribute the creator.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the kind words! Attribution is optional, but always appreciated :)

<comment><USER4> Off topic, but you might want to clarify the licence a bit. It's a bit nitpicky, but you did not specify if we can create derivatives (though your intro message about adding photoshop layer styles strongly implies it), and if can sublicence it, etc. You also might want to add some disclaimers that waive any warranty and liability you might have.

Try <http://www.tldrlegal.com/> and pick a licence, if you want to, that might help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. Here's _5 Gigabyte_ free ui/icons/psd interface. <http://www.bypeople.com/>

<comment><USER6> I...I don't even know how this can be offered for free. This is practically a whole marketplace worth of goods. Simply amazing.

Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER7> Nice icons indeed, but amazing? How is this more amazing than Linux, apache, node.js, PostgreSQL, Ruby on Rails, python, .... And mane more. All this software is also free... Just take a look at the Debian/red hat/Ubuntu repository, it is practically a whole marketplace worth of free goods...

<comment><USER8> <http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7ko53zcxv1qmsrb7.gif>

<comment><USER9> This is not reddit, and this link is not constructive.

<comment><USER10> Yes HN is slowly becoming Reddit, and all we can do is flag posts. But they just keep coming!

<comment><USER11> "created 77 days ago"

<comment><USER10> See <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4825390>, your logic is broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Adam this is awesome, the fact that you refunded people who had already purchased is even more awesome

<http://adamwhitcroft.com/2012/11/on-batch/>

Really great work

<comment><USER13> Totally agree.

It wasn't expected and I don't think anyone would have thought worse of him if he kept the money.

Actions like this restore my faith in humanity.

<comment><USER14> +1 for this line:

"Actions like this restore my faith in humanity."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be awesome if someone made a vector font for these like FontAwesome: <http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/>

<comment><USER16> csswizardry's [dead] post:

We're getting on it :D <https://github.com/csswizardry/inuit.css/issues/67>

</comment></comment><comment> why-el Fantastic work. The website is wonderfully crafted, and the icons are awesome. I really needed this. Quick question, where would one place an attribution to this work? I was thinking at the end of the about page in my application(s).

<comment><USER3> While an attribution would be appreciated, you aren't required to include one.

If you'd like to however, you can put the mention anywhere you'd like.

<comment> why-el Perfect, you got it. Again, fantastic work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> john-n Looks great, quick question someone may be able to answer: in the license he says "[free to use in] any personal or commercial work...Do not redistribute or sell", which is fair enough, but does that restrict use in paid-for apps (such as on mobile devices etc)?

<comment><USER17> I think that means you can use them in commercial applications, but you aren't allowed to sell the icons themselves.

<comment><USER3> Spot on.

<comment><USER3> @davidw - that is meant to refer to not selling or redistributing the icon pack as a whole - you are more than welcome to use it in any open source redistributed work.

<comment><USER18> It sounds like you want

<http://www.tldrlegal.com/license/CC-NC>

<comment><USER19> No, this differs from CC-NC in that you can use them in a commercial work, you just can't sell them on their own. Using CC-NC would prevent users from bundling these into a commercial product whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bookmarked.

As a developer with 0 design skills stuff like this makes me feel like I can fully complete my work.

I personally appreciate the fact that you did this out of love for your craft and respect for the industry. There are too few of you in this industry my friend.

Thank you

<comment><USER3> You are most welcome - thank you for the incredibly kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hope the creator of the icons is not upset by my forwardness, but I've converted these icons to bootstrap style icons for easy use. Visit <https://github.com/chrismarlow9/Batch-Bootstrap-Plugin> for the project.

It allows you to add the icons with pure CSS style (using rowXcolumn) class name. The CSS file isn't exactly small but I did this for the purposes of people making friendly names for icons and expanding on the project (I tried myself but I hate coming up with semantics for technical things. Anyways, enjoy. I simply used GIMP to Greyscale the image and invert the color to white. Transparent the image on your own (or maybe I will later)...

<comment><USER21> Thanks.. I came back to this post hoping I found find just this.

I'll get the size down later, but perfect for development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good on you for giving your hard work away.

I would make a suggestion though to tighten up those pixels in the demo png, the half pixels are making most icons look blurry <http://cl.ly/image/093M0z0z3a2W>

<comment><USER3> Thanks dude. I used tinypng to compress the preview (as it's pretty large) and that can produce mild artifacting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Whitcroft is also responsible for Climacons (weather icons) which have become standard for many apps. #hatTip

<http://adamwhitcroft.com/climacons/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to thank all of you for such an incredible response to Batch. It has far exceeded anything I could have imagined.

While I was asleep, a complete web font was made, a second is in the works, 2 CSS sprite kits were made and someone sent me a Photoshop CSH file.

I am completely blown away.

I'll spend some time checking these additions thoroughly before adding them to the Batch site.

Thank you all, Adam

</comment><comment><USER24> Thanks!

Not to be picky about the punctuation or anything, but I would have thought a comma would be good here:

"Each icon is a single Photoshop shape layer, meaning ..."

Alternatively, replace "meaning" with "so"?

Thanks again!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is an amazing set of icons. I'll make sure I use them and credit you.

Your giving this for free reminds me of the biggest problem Freelance artists/developers have : if one's a dev at heart, it's creating that fuels one's achievements. It's the fact that people are using the results. Problem is : how do I keep creating if I can't make a living out of it ?

And it's a hard one. I read so many headlines on HN which revolve around "launch a startup!", but never really do more than read them because of one single fact : i'm bloody not, and never will be interested by selling _anything_ , be it cakes, code or my secondhand ipad.

I totally suck at marketing cause I totally hate practicing this art (of which i do not doubt the usefulness).

It's taken me 40 years to realize that : 1) i'm not interested in sales/marketing 2) doing it takes me down a path of depression every single time i try and i'm better of doing other things like building my own house (took me 3 years) or working in mechanics (repairing engines) 3) most important : there's no shame in not caring about marketing/sales and (therefore) sucking at it.

I had the opportunity to team with a guy who excels at marketing, and am able to code for a living full time while still living in a small village on a secluded island with a good internet connection. I truly hope you'll meet one of these ! Cause your work is insanely good.

</comment><comment><USER26> Awesome! Would have paid for them. Donation coming your way!

<comment><USER27> How do you donate?

<comment><USER3> If you click the 'Download' button you have 2 options presented:

1 - Download the icons 2 - Donate & download the icons

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "If you use Batch in a Dribbble shot, the inclusion of a "Batch" tag would be appreciated so that I can keep a curated bucket."

I'm far, far too old to understand this, any clues?

<comment><USER29> From Dribbble's About page: Dribbble is show and tell for designers, who share shots — small screenshots of the designs and applications they're working on.

So, pretty much, he wants people to tag their entries with "Batch" when they use icons from the linked set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice work, but shame they're not in SVG format. Photoshop files are notoriously awkward to read for Open Source software.

</comment><comment><USER31> Awesome 404 page. <http://adamwhitcroft.com/gjhfjhg>

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd like this to be an icon font.

<comment><USER3> That's in the pipeline - they take a fair amount of time to get right :)

<comment><USER33> How about a css sprite for bootstrap? A complement to the standard glyphicons would be awesome, and if you goal is to see Batch in many designs as possible, that would probably help (beautiful work btw)

<comment><USER3> That's a great suggestion - I'll certainly do that. A single 16x16 sprite with an accompanying CSS file would be simple enough to knock up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I was happily upvoting adam's new account, and then remembered that this is hacker news:

        var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a'); for (var i = links.length >>> 0; i--;) {if (links[i].innerHTML==='adamwhitcroft'){var j=i; while (!links[++j].id){}; console.log(links[j], links[j].click())}}

If you paste this into WebKit inspector and run it, it will click all of adam's upvote links.

Here's a little puzzle - there is one trivial change that will change upvotes to downvotes. Can you guess what it is?

<comment><USER35> Yes, but I would hope it would not be used. This isn't what the point system is about on HN.

<comment><USER34> In general, no. But when someone is so generous, and I want to add to their karma, why put myself through the misery of finding and clicking on his upvotes? Like any tool, it should be used responsibly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very generous. I especially like the mit-ish license. I have this theory that permissive licensing will produce more goodwill and credibility. Hope I'm right!

</comment><comment><USER37> Looks rather interesting. Does anyone have any experiences using tools like ImageMagick for batch compositing/coloring/modifying PSD layers?

<comment><USER38> Use GIMP and write your own scripts, it's got a pretty comprehensive scripting environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Thanks a ton Adam! Any chance you can upload a set that isn't in Photoshop format (for those of us without Photoshop)?

<comment><USER40> Many third-party programs can also take PSD's. What are you trying to use?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great effort, definitely bookmarking this.

</comment><comment><USER42> Thank you. The Icons are amazing!

</comment><comment><USER43> I love this, thanks.. but is it only me that wants a set of non cuddly icons for once? I.e. easy on the rounded corners.

</comment><comment><USER44> Adam - If there was a way to share your address with me then I would be sending you some powerfully hopped IPA's!

<comment><USER3> Thanks, but no I'm not sharing my address on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Very nice job! I sent you a couple bucks.. it's not much but if I use them for something I'll send more :)

</comment><comment><USER46> Nice! I'm a developer with zero illustration talent. Even if I never use these, I donated anyway. :)

</comment><comment><USER18> I could see this replacing my bootstrap icons once this gets a CSS file.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'd like to see someone provide a free alternative to Glyphicons.

</comment><comment><USER48> Awesome, thanks for the sure. Looks great.

</comment><comment><USER49> Thank you very much for this gift!

</comment><comment><USER50> Thanks Adam. Beautiful icons.

</comment><comment><USER51> Excellent work. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER52> Ha, that's pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER53> Thanks for this Adam!

</comment><comment><USER54> This is amazing!

</comment><comment><USER55> very nice - thank you for these

</comment><comment><USER56> thanks this is amazing !</comment>


Kindle Books: Free, Fast, And Out Of Control - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/kindle-books-free-fast-and-out-of-control/

<comment><USER2> Trawling through the slush pile is widely recognised to be an awful awful job.

Why would you chose to do this? Why would deliberately chose to have 995 awful books, just for the 3 that are bad but readable (and probably not interesting to you) and the two that are ok?</comment>


Mars Astronauts Likely to Witness 1 Megaton Asteroid Impacts - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/508906/mars-astronauts-likely-to-witness-1-megaton-asteroid-impacts/ <comment><USER2> _Their model suggests that Tunguska-type events of around 10 megatons should occur roughly once a century and smaller 1 megaton events once every 15 years._

If the rate is 1/15 years on Earth, why haven't I witnessed any yet? I suspect the answer is that Earth is rather large. Mars may not be quite as big, but it's still quite implausible that our Mars visitors should happen to be at just the wrong place at the wrong time, even with a 5-times increase in risk.

<comment><USER3> It seems like if a 1 megaton impact were occurring on Earth every 15 years people would have noticed more than seems to be the case. You would expect more than one such event per century to occur on land and I think the vast majority of the Earth's land is populated, at least sparsely.

Also for the past 50 years or so governments have been very interested in tracking large explosions so even such events occurring over water should have been detected and, I would think, mentioned in the media.

<comment><USER4> Yes. This doesn't pass the smell test. I first suspected the article produces a garbled version of the research, but the abstract says the same too:

<http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.3273>

" In particular, for energies of one megaton or larger we find near one impact every three years for Mars, an interesting and concerning result for future Mars explorations. The corresponding calculations for our planet give a probability of one impact per 15 years"

<comment><USER5> Perhaps the "1 megaton" nomer is for what encounters our atmosphere, not necessarily what impacts our surface.

<comment><USER2> That might be the case, but then it's not really something to be worried about, is it? I mean, then they're basically saying that astronauts on Mars will see shooting stars a bit more often than on Earth.

<comment><USER5> It is, because on Mars there isn't an atmosphere there to burn up that 1 megaton asteroid into something more innocuous.

<comment><USER6> Just to be clear, Mars does have an atmosphere. It's pretty thin, but it's real enough to provide protection against micrometeorites and some of the radiation.

It ain't gonna stop a school-bus sized meteorite, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When they say one megaton, do they mean total energy released during entry or something? There's no way we're having the equivalent of a one megaton nuke (minus the fallout) on the surface every fifteen years ...

Or are we just in a dry patch?

Edit: The actual paper says 'impact' so I don't know what to think here.

</comment><comment><USER8> >Here's the interesting part: these guys calcaulte that Mars experiences a 1 megaton event every three years.

We've had orbiting satellites around Mars for over a decade. Wouldn't they be capable of seeing such an impact?

<comment><USER9> We've had launch and nuclear explosion detection satellites around the Earth for decades and we haven't detected anything like 1 megaton impact event every 15 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What does this actually mean? Obviously it is pretty obvious if it lands on top of you, but if there is a 1 megaton impact of a meteorite landing 10 miles away what are the consequences? Given the lower gravity and atmospheric pressure would you be basically sand blasted with remnants?

<comment><USER11> Using some online calculators for the effects of nuclear weapons, I suspect the answer would be that you'd be reasonably safe at 16km:

[http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABC_Weapons/Nuke_Effects_C...](http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABC_Weapons/Nuke_Effects_Calculator.htm)

<http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html>

I don't know if a meteor impact would produce the same prompt radiation as a H-bomb, but the much less dense Martian atmosphere might negate that.

<comment><USER3> Most of the ionizing radiation from an H bomb is produced by nuclear fusion or from fission from the trigger and decay products. An asteroid impact wouldn't produce any of that. The only ionizing radiation it might produce are some x-rays from the fireball plasma (but I'm not sure the plasma would even be hot enough for that).

The blast and thermal effects would presumably be comparable, however, so at 16 km you'd definitely notice (and might be in a very uncomfortable situation).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Nevertheless, these kind of predictions require further study._

There's the money quote. Quite literally.

There are all sorts of people who see the path to Mars littered with bags of money and are quite happy to insert themselves into the path.

</comment><comment><USER12> First sentence: _"Asteroid impacts are among the most feared of natural catastrophes."_

Maybe I'm being picky, but I don't think that this is actually true.

<comment><USER13> The word "among" makes it a pretty subjective thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ok so what is that in Hiroshimas?

<comment><USER15> According to 10 seconds googling, little boy and fat man were both somewhere around 20 KILOtons.</comment></comment>


Tower Web – A fast, boilerplate free, web framework for Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/carllerche/tower-web <comment><USER2> Definitely a framework to play with. Currently using Actix-web [https://github.com/actix/actix-web](https://github.com/actix/actix-web) and Tower Web seems like a more ergonomic web framework that still has async. Not sure that it can beat actix-web in speed and throughput though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool. Reminds me of how exciting it was to discover the Ruby framework Sinatra after using Rails for so many years.</comment>


Reading Every Issue of the New Yorker - <AUTHOR> https://notevenpast.org/reading-every-issue-of-the-new-yorker/

<comment><USER2> I can highly recommend this gem from the Annals of Psychoanalysis. Adam Gopnik's "Man Goes to See a Doctor" from the August 24, 1998 issue. An insightful tale of six years in analysis with New York's last Freudian: random associations, uncomfortable confessions, unleashed reminiscences—and that's just the shrink ;)

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/08/24/man-goes-to- see...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/08/24/man-goes-to-see-a-doctor)

<comment><USER3> Thank you, that was fantastic!</comment></comment>


JavaScript is always late - aug-riedinger

I love JS, but reading ECMA6 specifications, I have the feeling it keeps on being late: it introduces OOP when Functional Oriented Programming is the new trend! <comment><AUTHOR> It's no different to

\- Java with Functional Programming concepts in Java 8 - which was already there for FP-oriented languages like Haskell and Scala.

\- PHP, with OOP on PHP 5 - which was already there for Java, C++, C#.

I'm not aware of the innovations of other languages, but I'm pretty sure it's not just JavaScript. It's not also about being "late". It's just extending the language to cater more features to a wider developer audience as well as providing a more flexible language.

Just because someone bought a smartphone first doesn't mean I can't own the same exact model or do the same exact thing.

</comment><comment><USER2> Classes != OOP. JavaScript has had OOP, not quite since its inception, but quite close to it; it merely follows a different paradigm when doing so. In fact, ECMAScript 6's notion of classes is explicitly defined as being not much more than syntactic sugar over the existing paradigm.

As for functional programming, JavaScript has had that in some form for years. The addition of tail calls in ECMAScript 6 is an improvement for people who want to use this paradigm, but the language has had most of the old mainstays since at least ECMAScript 5, and some (like closures) date back further than that.</comment>


The $5000 Compression Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.patrickcraig.co.uk/other/compression.htm <comment><USER3> Poetic justice. I love this quotation from Mike:

"I think that I did not make a mistake except to believe that you truly intended to attempt to compress the data I was sending you."

Mike is happily preying upon people by taking their money to enter what he believes is an impossible contest, but the moment he is outsmarted he appeals to morals and calls into question whether Patrick was acting honestly.

I'm guessing there is some backstory on this newsgroup involving people who would claim to invent compression algorithms that do the impossible. I'm imagining that one day Mike thought "time to get these people to put their money where their mouth is."

Still, it's pretty low to pose the challenge without saying "I'm taking this bet because it's highly unlikely that you can actually succeed. This is explained in the FAQ. Are you sure you want to give me $100?"

<comment><USER4> Actually, it is most likely possible, it's just very difficult. For example, it is likely that the data file was generated using a deterministic computer program. And that program is most likely a lot smaller than the outputted data. Therefore, one could use that very program as the "decompressor" - voila!

The problem is - it would take astronomical computational resources to recreate that program, although there is a very straightforward algorithm to find it - just test out all possible programs starting from 0,1,2,3, and so on...

<comment><USER5> The data was taken from random.org, whose source of randomness is a physical process, highly unlikely to being "algorithmizeable" (is that even a word?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mike Goldman does not need to ever issue a challenge again.

It is WIDELY agreed upon by people who engage in this activity regularly (known as "prop betting") that the spirit of the law does not matter one bit.

He was way out of his element here and Patrick was well within his rights to do what he did.

<comment><USER7> A great set of stories from an amazing life: [http://www.amazon.com/Amarillo- Slim-World-Full-People/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Amarillo-Slim-World- Full-People/dp/B000GG4GS0)

Amarillo Slim engaged in these sort of prop bets all the time. Some of the more interesting stories where he "abuses the rules":

* He bet that he could hit a golf ball a mile, "as long as bounces and rolls are allowed... flat ground of course"... When the wager was accepted, he teed off at a frozen pond, where it wasn't that difficult to accomplish.

* Two variations on beating a champion at their own game:

\- Slim played Minnesota Fats at pool, "as long as I can provide the cue sticks"... And then beat Fats when they both had to play with broomsticks instead of real pool cues.

\- Slim bet that he could beat a very good ping pong player, "as long as I get to pick the rackets"... When the wager was accepted, Slim brought two identical cast iron skillets and let his opponent pick which "racket" he wanted. Without having practiced, his opponent didn't stand a chance. \-- Later, someone else approached Slim and wanted to do the same bet. They had heard of the original bet, and had an Asian pingpong champion "ringer". (It seems pitifully obvious to me that Slim wouldn't pull the same trick after the story was out, but apparently this gambler had his Asian ringer practice with a skillet and thought he would be "safe")... For the second bet, Slim used "standard" Coca-Cola bottles, and won again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The pigeonhole principle only applies to a _specific_ compression algorithm.

If you get to custom write the algorithm for the data you can arrange things so that for this datafile it will be smaller, yet larger for any other file, and still meet the principle.

i.e. this is not actually impossible. If you can find ANY redundancy in the data, and you can code a very small decompresser specifically for that, you can probably win.

And due to the nature of randomness, there are _always_ numeric streaks, and other patterns in the data. The larger the datafile the better the chance of finding some sort of pattern or streak.

The decompresser does not have to be large either - it would be perfectly legal to use a perl script for example. (i.e. so you don't have to use space writing IO handling code).

Edit: I suspect I may be wrong here.

<comment><USER9> No.

Let's say you have a file of size X. You want to write a program of size Y which will decompress an X-Y-1 sized file back to the original program. Does such a program and file exist for every file of size X?

Using the pigeon hole principle, we can see that it does not. There are 2^X files of size X, but only 2^(X-1) inputs of length Y+X-Y-1. Therefore, not every file can be compressed this way. It doesn't matter what your decompressor is written in or how, you still can't do it.

<comment><USER10> This is correct for the general case, but I think his argument is that for any specific file you can (almost certainly) find some redundancy and so find an algorithm to compress that specific file.

<comment><USER8> That is exactly my argument.

But now I think I'm wrong because what if you take the new data (i.e. the decompressor plus the compressed data), and try to compress that.

<comment><USER11> You can't compress indefinitely because presumably your algorithm does not shrink in size. If your algorithm was 200 bytes, you could never successfully use it to compress a 199 byte file.

If this were possible, there would be a minimum file size, beyond which further compression were impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an old story, but a fun one.

To me it is clear that Mike Goldman should have paid up. Patrick clearly completed the challenge placed on him.

While Patrick didn't obey the spirit of the challenge he obeyed the law, and Mike knew full well that the spirit of his challenge was impossible!

<comment><USER13> Also, I'm not sure it was very wise of Mike to assume the data was truly incompressible. It's unlikely someone would manage to compress it (certainly for just 5k), but if you truly believe you have a source for billions or trillions of bits and that those bits then have exactly 100% as much entropy - well, you're taking a lot on faith.

Indeed the fact that the content length was preselected implies some amount of regularity that might be (abused).

Oh well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's another approach:

Let the compressed file contain a hash (say, SHA1) of the original file. The decompression program then generates random files of the chosen size. If a generated file's hash doesn't match the desired hash, delete it. Now run the program for a very long time. The program is _likely_ to eventually reproduce the original file (along with a bunch of files that happen to have the same hash), and you win :)

<comment><USER15> Let's say you have a file of size n and a hash of size log(n). This means you have n/log(n) collisions (matches). I made a similar suggestion on another HN thread linking that same story (I suggested using two radically different hashing functions, one hash result would not necessarily have an evenly distributed result from the other hashing function when you vary the plaintext). Even while posting I thought that I _must_ be wrong, I just didn't _feel_ wrong about it. Now I do.

<comment><USER14> The purpose of using a hash is just to avoid running out of disk space. With enough disk space, you don't even need to hash/delete files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Previous discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4616704>

</comment><comment><USER17> Even without doing any filesystem tricks, the challenge seems quite possible. While it's true that writing a compressor that compresses all input data is impossible, this barrier is removed because the compressor only needs to work on a single file.

<comment><USER18> But you're forgetting what the challenge actually is. It is file+decompressor < input.

So by the very nature of it if your decompressor is non-zero in length, you have to find some efficiency/tricks to make the file smaller.

Realistically the overhead on the decompressor will be 10 KB and that is before any kind of actual logic, so you are looking at shaving a minimum of 50 KB off of the original file (which is completely random).

<comment><USER17> I'm not forgetting that. It's just that any specific random file will have (with high probability), patterns that can be exploited. It's not guaranteed to work on all files of course. The theoretical limit (per bijection argument) is that at most half the strings of length n can be losslessly represented in strings of length n-1, because there are half as many strings of length n-1 than of length n.

So if, for example, 2% of files can actually be reduced in size (I don't know what the actual number is, and if it is even computable) that's still positive EV in a $100 vs $5000 bet.

<comment><USER9> The file is not really random, though, since Mike generated it and had time to make sure it was a "good" file before sending it on.

That is, if the file was truly random, it would have a chance of 1/(2^X) of being all 0, where X is the size of the file. But since Mike would reject that file, the chance is actually 0.

Same for all files with easily exploitable patterns - for example, I am sure that Goldman checked that the file could not be compressed with gzip before sending it.

So the EV is probably not positive, even if there is a small chance that a random file of size X can be compressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is definitely possible to win this challenge though.

Consider an arbitrary long series of integers. Somewhere within this series of integers, there will be some kind of randomly created pattern, since this is a property of an infinite set. eg. somewhere within the data set, there could be the values [1, 2, 3, ... 10] or [1, 3, 9, .. 27] or [1, 2, 4, 16, 32] - <USER2> does not matter which of these patterns, exist, only that there does exist some mathematical pattern in the data.

The chances of there being no pattern in a big enough set of random data is impossible as there is a finite number of possible data combinations for bytes [1..256][1..256] etc. I guess a data set of 256^256 bytes would guarantee a pattern, but I'm sure there is a far smaller number that would give 99% confidence.

Once you find a pattern in the data, you can remove that pattern and replace it with code that will recreate the pattern using a data offset. ie. you remove the pattern from the data completely, and replace it with a smaller piece of code to recreate that pattern exactly and insert it into the correct position.

The key here is that once the data has been generated, it is no longer 'random data', but a fixed input. eg, you cannot compress a random unknown string of bytes, but you can compress the string [1,2,4,16..]

The output data would have all possible mathematical patterns removed from it, and the decompression code would be just a list of mathematical functions and data offset points.

<comment><USER20> You are recreating Kolmogorov complexity there. Kolmogorov complexity is defined as the minimal amount of program (for some programming language) to recreate the given string. By the definition, your strategy will compress the data no better than its Kolmogorov complexity. In this aspect, Kolmogorov complexity measures the data's true randomness. If the random data has been generated correctly its complexity should be near its length, however, so your strategy won't work. (And there is enough evidence that this was the case.) It does not matter whether the data is already known or not; it is the data's inherent randomness prohibiting you to compress it.

To be sure, of course, Patrick Craig did not compress it in the pure information theoretic sense. Mike Goldman failed to equate the goal to that information theoretic compression however.

<comment><USER19> If you pipe a random process into an image viewer, eventually you will get an image that can be compressed with PNG compression. If you let the random process run, you will eventually get enough of these images compressible by PNG that will allow you to save enough bytes to fit in a PNG decompression library. This may only occur after a ridiculous amount of bytes, but it is guaranteed to eventually occur following the properties of randomness.

So the method will work, but it may take a very large amount of data before it does. If the method does not work, it implies that a random process cannot generate an image that can be compressed with PNG - and that is definitely false.

<comment><USER9> But you also have to store the index at which the image occurs, _and the index is bigger than the gains from the compression_.

This is similar to the argument that since pi is (probably) normal, any sequence of characters appears in it and we can simply use indexes into pi instead of storing numbers.

The problem is that given a file of size X, that sequence of X bytes probably only occurs at more than 2^X places into pi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you're interested in efficient compression with English you might like the Hutter Prize (<http://prize.hutter1.net/>) - a €50,000 prize if you can compress the 100MB file _enwik8_ to less than the current record of about 16MB. They claim it's an AI problem. I guess it could be if you're compressing a bunch of different English texts, but this challenge has a single text. A program that provides very efficient compression of this text might not be so great for other texts.

Mike's challenge took a specially selected random file. As other people said, this was an attempt to show compression kooks that some files are not compressible (if you include the size of the decompressor).

</comment><comment><USER22> Makes me wonder if a "decompressor" adding generating hundreds of decompressed files by brute force (of which the original file is one) would be a valid solution. You could store a certain section of the original as the "compressed file"

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't find anything which solidly points to this challenge being 'likely' impossible.

This all is not so simple as pointing at Kolmogorov complexity. Randomness is not so much inherent as relative to the machine on which you're running your program.

[http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/how-powerful-are- ra...](http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/how-powerful-are-random- strings/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Why even bother with file concatenation? Just use 3M chars long filename for an empty file to "compress" 3Mb of data.

<comment><USER25> DOS I assume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't get it, why he didn't just write a simple algorithm and get the prize? It looks like an easy money

<comment><USER12> You mean, why didn't he write a simple compression algorithm which actually shrunk the data?

The short answer is, it was (almost certainly) impossible. You cannot compress random data. The only reason files you compress normally seem to compress is almost every file you come across normally contains some structure and therefore some redundancy.

<comment><USER26> It is not random, input file is constant. Surely you can write an algorithm to compress a specific file.

<comment><USER27> But the sum of your decompression program and compressed file would then be larger than the original data file.

<comment><USER3> Mike's contest didn't limit the total size of the (input, random) data file, so you could make it arbitrarily large to make the cost of the decompression program arbitrarily small.

<comment><USER27> If the data file is truly random, then there is no decompression program + compressed file that would be smaller than the original random file. That's the entire point.

<comment><USER3> I'm not saying you could! I am only rebutting your earlier line of reasoning.

 _IF_ you could write an algorithm that would compress a specific block of random data by any non-zero percentage, and _IF_ you can make the original random data arbitrarily large, _THEN_ the overall size of the code to implement this algorithm would not matter, because you could amortize it over an arbitrarily large random data file.

However I am _not_ claiming that such an algorithm to compress a specific block of random data exists! However other people are arguing that this is indeed theoretically possible: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025527>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just post the original data file on the web, then have your "decompression" program download the file. The "compressed" file could simply contain a URL.</comment>