Spend 10 Cryptocurrencies with These Debit Cards - <AUTHOR> http://www.koinsbook.com/xinwen/blockchain/3112.html <comment><USER2> Every article on this content-farm site is ripped from other sites without attribution.

The original is here: [https://news.bitcoin.com/spend-10-cryptocurrencies- with-thes...](https://news.bitcoin.com/spend-10-cryptocurrencies-with-these- debit-cards/)

 _They didn 't even notice the obvious typo "toped" and repeated it verbatim._

Please flag down plagiarized content from sites trolling HN for clicks.</comment>


HealthKit Gets the Incentives Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://blog.picnichealth.com/apples-healthkit-gets-the-incentives-wrong/

<comment><USER2> Why would it have been a big deal if healthcare providers did decide to share health data back? It seems to me all this data is available from one's current and previous doctors. What type of information is the article referring to?

<comment><USER3> The article is referring to automated electronic access to your medical data (lab test results, diagnosis lists, procedure histories, etc). If you were able to get automated, electronic access to all of you medical information, it would be a very big deal.

Until very recently, medical data was only available from your doctors in the form of copies of paper records, and it's a hassle to pester all your doctors until they give you your records. Even once you got it, the data wasn't digital.

Because of Meaningful Use requirements coming online this year, patients now have to be given electronic access to their data (Meaningful Use requirements determine how doctors have to show that they use Electronic Medical Records in order to receive subsidy money/not get penalized). Electronic access takes the form of online 'portals' where patients can see their data. And although this is a big step forward, the information isn't given to patients in a form that is very useful--the data isn't easily exportable (for yourself or to send to other doctors), and if you've seen doctors in multiple systems your data isn't aggregated.

I'm also one of the PicnicHealth founders, and we're taking advantage of these portals in order to give patients automated access to their data.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, Noga here. What do other people know about EMR/clinical data integration?

<comment><USER4> (Slight rant):

HL7-all-the-things as a solution to interoperability (hey, v3 is this new fancy thing called XML!) The incentives are often backwards for hospitals to want true interoperability - this is with HIEs have been known to fail - "Why should I give my competitors all of these leads - I mean, patient data?". Add on top of that HIPAA (and state-by-state) requirements, and you impose significant overhead to sharing data even if an organization wanted to.

Health IT is a difficult problem not (primarily) because of technical challenges but because of human challenges (arbitrary updates because of regulatory requirements, requirements in software to mirror what was done on paper years ago, etc.) None of the low-hanging fruit will really change with HIT until we make incentives line up with what's best for patients (which will probably mean changing a lot more with the healthcare industry as a whole).</comment></comment>


Some of My Favorite Books about Programming | Viget Extend - <AUTHOR> http://www.viget.com/extend/some-of-my-favorite-books-about-programming/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Viget+Extend&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher <comment><AUTHOR> I know this isn't a totally original idea (as he mentions in the blog entry) but there seem to be a lot of folks newer to the filed on HN, like me, and I thought this was helpful and interesting.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your top most useful Unix commands? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> kill lets you send any signal to a process you have control over. Corresponding signal handlers allow a wide range of behavior changes.

<comment><USER3> A lot of people only know about its use for literally killing a process. But as an example of where I find myself using it fairly often is:

kill -USR1 <dd>

where <dd> is the process ID (obtained from ps) for the dd command.

Instead of killing dd, it reports back how much has been read/copied so far. Especially useful for working with large files and you decide you want to guestimate how much longer the copy will take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ls, find, grep, tar, cpio

But in truth, it's the bash scripting 'glue' that holds everything together.

</comment><comment><USER5> the semicolon ";" for chaining commands

ls -l

the "alias" command in a file for setting up quick-commands

</comment><comment><USER6> grep, find, tail -f (useful to look at log files as they update)

Extras: sort, uniq, sed, sftp, apropos, man

<comment><USER7> tail -F

This will also follow a log file if it rotates.

<comment><USER8> I just found out a few days ago that `-F` works with multiple files, too. When there's new content on one, tail prefixes the output with a header, telling you what file it is.

I've used that to watch all logs apache and descendant processes could be writing to:

      pstree -p $(pgrep -o apache2) \
      | grep -Po '[^}]\(\K\d+'
      | sed ':b;N;$!bb;s/\n/,/g' \
      | sudo xargs lsof -d 0-1000 -a -p \
      | grep -Po '\S+$' \
      | grep 'log' \
      | sort -u \
      | xargs tail -F

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> top

jk, but also not.

w !sudo tee % in vim, even tho that's not really directly a unix thing?

</comment><comment><USER10> history | grep <command halfway remember using>

</comment><comment><USER11> dirs -v pushd popd

</comment><comment><USER12> cd pwd ls

</comment><comment><USER13> cut, awk, sed, comm, grep

</comment><comment><USER8> git

</comment><comment><USER14> emacs&

</comment><comment><USER7> find, grep

</comment><comment><USER15> ls

</comment><comment><USER16> time cat</comment>


Don DeLillo on the Meaning of Seeing Earth from Space - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/12/don-delillo-anniversary-apollo/578266/ <comment><AUTHOR> just clarify: this is a link to a short editor's note and two wonderful paragraphs from a Don Delillo short story...</comment>


TestFlight SDK Released - <AUTHOR> https://testflightapp.com/sdk/

<comment><USER2> Previous to TestFlight, life was ridiculously painful for an iPhone developer to beta test apps. I wish they'd charge me, it's that good. I'd probably pay at least $100 a month.

<comment><USER3> I've heard a lot of praise for Testflight, and now we have people proclaiming "I wish they'd charge me". What's the catch - or put in a better way, what's their business model?

<comment><USER4> Gathering device UDIDs and offering beta testers on a platter to those that pay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These guys are killing it. Going to bake this in to my next test release of GetCloak for iOS.

One feature I'm particularly jazzed about is the logging capture support. It is so painful to explain to test users how to capture logs on iOS!

</comment><comment><USER6> Can this be used in a release distribution app or only beta test ad hoc apps? It sounds like it's only for test distribution, which is cool, but reporting on distribution apps would be nice.

<comment><USER7> I'd be very interested to know this as well.

I'm yet to use their framework, but am going to integrate it into my next project and these reporting features look _very_ attractive from a production perspective - and for free!

Does anybody know their business model? It's such a good idea but I have no idea how it wouldn't be making massive losses.

<comment><USER8> There was some sort of announcement (that I can't seem to find) that it is free for developers and that they plan on charging for some sort of enterprise version.

This blurb on TC briefly mentions a little bit about it: <http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/testflight/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Huge fan of the TestFlight App, helps me test out lots of startups' products. Also a huge help to the startups themselves and I think the SDK will be another great step.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've just installed this in an app I'm working on. It's amazing stuff. I don't know how they continue to offer all this for free. Waiting to be bought by Apple perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been using it since the first beta and it's a huge help especially when working with beta testers who aren't tech savvy enough to send back crash reports or to clearly explain what they're doing when they experience issues.

</comment><comment><USER12> This product is so amazing that it makes iOS provisioning and ad hoc distribution look professional, and that's saying a lot. Huge fan of this service.

</comment><comment><USER13> So awesome. Used them during our beta testing too and it was seamless.

</comment><comment><USER14> TestFlight are doing excellent work - congrats guys!

</comment><comment><USER15> What's the catch?</comment>


Ask HN: Any advice in finding a reliable programmer? - <AUTHOR>

A year ago, i started to build a social networking game on FaceBook through delegation; I would hire the artists and the programmer out of pocket. I had a good job then and i leaned myself from bad, wasteful habits, like eating out, going out, buying games, gadgets, etc. I would just pay my bills, food and focus everything on paying my people.
I bought a Mafia Wars blank canvas clone from a Russian programmer, Railorz.com, and i also bought modifications from him. The game is written in RoR with some PHP, AJAX, FBML and SSAS. Well, he started to get busy with other projects and walked away to make room. So i looked for another programmer running DXWebDesigns.com, but after working for 2 weeks he wanted me to accept some new and pretty draconian terms, namely that i had to get a new server from him, get a new domain from him and give him total control of my database. When i refused he did a bunch of damage to the server!
The Railorz.com guy responded to my email asking for help and accepted a job to fix the damage. I also found an Indian guy with little experience, but cheap, and i had him learn from the Russian anything he could while he could, as his time is limited.
The game was fixed, but it is barely functional, running in about 20% efficiency. I still have some pretty big bugs such as players no longer being able to level up, items page not available, etc.
I have my first 20 players yesterday right after i launched, but now that there is people waiting for it the pressure is higher to get it fixed fast.
I sent an email last night to both of my current programmers and i haven't gotten a response yet. I really need advice finding a reliable RoR programmer. I lost my job 6 months ago, but i do have some savings to pay them from, since my lifestyle is so lean in spending, but i can't continue guessing when he will have the time for me, because this game is what is going to be paying my bills and the savings are in the red.
I was thinking of getting another blank canvas built from good PHP and although it is more likely for me to find PHP programmers than RoR, the issue at the end of the day is to have someone that responds.
Thank you.
My FaceBook page: www.LUTOPiA.Co <comment><USER2> Learn Ruby on Rails and take over the development. Maybe it didn't make sense back when you had a job, but now that you're out of work you should totally try learning to code yourself. Maybe you could hire an expert trainer who could help you fix your app while learning the ropes at the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> How long would that take?

<comment><USER2> Well, you're not going to be a master after a week long crash course, but I bet with a lot of studying and reading, and a good tutor to answer questions and walk you through tricky parts of the code you could get to the point where you could at least read the existing code and grasp what it is doing after a week or two. From there it's just a matter of digging in and trying to solve bugs and fix stuff.

The best way to learn is to start getting stuff done. Once you can read the code you can start making changes and seeing what happens. You'll break stuff, that's OK as long as you're not making changes on the production server. You should have a local copy of the code on your computer that you can play around with without fear of screwing things up royally.

I'm not a Ruby on Rails hacker, I'm a Django/Python guy, but I'm sure there are plenty of good guides to Ruby on Rails out there that could get you started.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good advice for long term, but i need to find someone reliable right away and i don't know were to look.

I have tried sites like vworker.com and the coders there, so far, have been very flaky. I don't have time for that, it's an emergency situation.

Thank you for the advice.

<comment><USER3> what is your runway? if you've got only 20 users I don't think you can count on this to pay the bills if you don't have months of runway ahead of you and that you should get some work and then find someone to have a long term relationship with.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have 20 players right now, but they are personal friends and family that are helping me alpha test. I haven't even tried to make it go viral and won't until it works decently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you willing to pay them decent rates? (ie. 30+$/hr)

<comment><AUTHOR> Only if they are decent programmers, absolutely.

The price must match their skill, responsiveness and responsibility.

Do you know of anyone?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Listen to Google Assistant Reading News Posted in Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://javilopezg.com/chatbots-ii-how-to-make-your-phone-read-to-you-hacker-news-also-contents/ <comment><USER2> Interesting bot, but I don't understand why would it show only 3 top stories at the start. And saying "advance" after every paragraph is tiring.

As a side note, most of the Assistant bots I've seen are completely useless. Also I find it strange bots don't typically use the voice defined in Assistant options (why???).

Considering how Google is promoting Assistant as innovational tech, why didn't they create several cool "example" bots or partnered with companies which would profit from that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I can improve this but there are some restrictions (they are not too strict but they are): 500 characters per post, 2 posts each time, 8 suggestions...

Having these in mind, in which way would you improve it?

Thank you for your feedback.

<comment><USER2> Asking user aloud if bot should continue (after hitting a restriction) would be helpful. If I'm not mistaken now it stops reading and doesn't explicitly ask for any input (microphone icon doesn't count). So user has to look at the screen for possible options.

Sometimes I'm doing something else with my hands while listening, so that's one possible use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did some changes based on your observations. I hope you like it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Given the current state of affairs, it's beyond me why anyone would use any new Google data-collecting device. People are doing the opposite - trying to degoogleize their lives. It's hard, very hard. We, the aware part of the society, should educate users and discourage yet another Google data- collection channel.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a prototype, I was just testing that technology. Using dataflow you can be present in a lot of channels, but all of them are managed by a big company collecting data.</comment></comment>


GRiSP 2 – Erlang and Elixir on bare metal - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peerstritzinger/grisp-2 <comment><USER2> This is neat, I would have loved to see this a few years ago when I was working on a touchpad dimmer that I used Erlang on (the hardware was originally designed to run Linux so it was easy to put Erlang on there but having a lower-cost solution by not requiring Linux would've been great).

Erlang's remote RPC, high-quality CRDT libraries, and hot-code loading made it an incredible technology for implementing IoT software product features.

<comment><USER3> Would something like this[1] worked for your project?

[1] [https://medium.com/@Bettio/atomvm-how-to-run-elixir-code- on-...](https://medium.com/@Bettio/atomvm-how-to-run-elixir-code- on-a-3-microcontroller-b414773498a6)

<comment><USER2> Possibly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great! I haven't tried the boards (yet) but it's difficult to find good industrial ready boards out there. Combine that with the difficulty of handling precise & consistent timing below 1 ms in Linux then these boards are a real gem!

<comment><USER5> Question about Erlang: is it possible to send large blobs of binary data (e.g. video frames) from one process to another with the guarantee that the data is not serialized and the transfer is close to instantaneous?

<comment><USER6> If your binary is over some threshold (video frames almost certainly qualify) and the processes live on the same node, then the binaries should stay on binheap / refcounted memory and not get copied.

<comment><USER5> Ok, that's good to know. How would that work for a large tree with many small nodes? Is structural sharing possible between the two processes?

<comment><USER7> Not a priori. In practice, I'd guess that if we destructure a typical video frame, it will have a header which is somewhat tree-like and a payload which we are not going to touch and decode. In that case, we avoid the copy for the heavy parts of the frame, i.e., the payload.

A good trick is that if you have a full frame from the network, keep a pointer to the full frame. Then decode the header as needed on top. This way, since the frame is full, you are guaranteed that no copy will occur for the frame while you are processing it. Also, the redundancy of the header is likely to be small in overhead with this approach.

About 10 years ago, I did some work in Erlang where I was moving around 16 kilobyte blocks of data. I managed 800mbit at that time on that generation of hardware. The hardware on the board notwithstanding, I think Erlang is much better at handling this nowadays.

As for the structural shaing between nodes: it _is_ possible but only for data which is written very rarely and read quite often. In practice, the copying overhead in typical usage scenarios tend to be much cheaper than what people fear. One reason is that _after_ the copy, you obtain cache locality, though also potential increased cache pressure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure this counts as "bare metal" since it runs in a VM. Though doing it this way is probably cheaper then using an FPGA.

<comment><USER9> I'm not 100% sure but I think it's not running on a VM in the virtualization sense; by VM they probably mean BEAM, which is a VM in the same sense that JVM or python are VMs.

<comment><USER10> I was hoping they'd actually made a bare-metal BEAM implementation like the Lisp and Forth hardware that people have made in the past. This device looks like it's Erlang-on-BEAM-on-RTEMS, which is undoubtedly a more practical and useful thing, but less intriguing.

<comment><USER11> Its not really "on RTEMS", its more side by side. RTEMS is not a layer between the BEAM and te hardware its just helping by providing threads, TCP stack and file access. From a Erlang NIF or port driver (thats what we use to access the outside world in Erlang and Elxir) you have direct access to hardware registers and e.g. CPU interrupts.

<comment><USER12> If RTEMS is controlling the execution of your code, your running _on_ or _in_ RTEMS.

Direct hardware access isn't really "bare metal" in the same manner as software running in DOS is not bare-metal. direct-hardware access is provided in both.

<comment><USER13> RTEMS isn't "controlling" the execution of the code, it just supplies implementation for OS-specific utilities (effectively the POSIX API). The BEAM VM code is compiled to machine code and runs directly on the CPU. As peerst explained, if you write your own C code in an Erlang port driver for example, you don't have to use RTEMS at all.

<comment><USER14> Is there the ability to run multiple OS processes or is the BEAM VM the only thing running after boot?

<comment><USER13> You can only run one process in RTEMS (hence the name The Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems), however you can simulate other processes via threads. This is how we run the network stack and Wi-Fi configuration tools among other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Love the bookshelf in the background of Peer Stritzinger's video feed. FreeBSD, UNIX, and a huge row of O'Reilly books on the bottom shelf! I think O'Reilly are some of the best, most thoroughly reviewed technical books out there, I always choose O'Reilly if the topic exists as they seem to vet their authors quite well and make sure they have competent subject matter experts actually write and review the books!

#phsycialbooks #FTW

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this will support Joxa or Lisp-Flavored-Erlang. Those are pretty much all I use on the Erlang VM nowadays, and I would love to get more into embedded stuff.

<comment><USER13> Because it is the full Erlang BEAM VM it can run any byte code compiled for it, including Joxa or LFE. However, we only have extra helper tooling for Erlang and Elixir at the moment. You can create a release manually and include any dependencies you want though.

<comment><USER16> Oh!! That's super cool, I think I will contribute then.

Assuming that I'm not a completely incompetent at programming (which admittedly might be a stretch :) ), would you be open to someone making a PR and adding Joxa or LFE tooling?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is really cool. You can find out more about the project at [https://grisp.org](https://grisp.org)

</comment><comment><USER18> how does this compare to nerves?

<comment><USER19> Nerves is Linux with an Erlang init(1), built with buildroot, and using sysfs for peripheral I/O. This is BEAM on an RTOS, which makes it effectively bare- metal.

<comment><USER20> Well to be technical an RTOS is not effectively baremetal. But I agree that it is extremely 'close to the metal'.</comment></comment></comment>


Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) for Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://dragan.rocks/articles/17/Clojure-Numerics-4-Singular-Value-Decomposition-SVD <comment><AUTHOR> The source code for the software used: [https://github.com/uncomplicate/neanderthal](https://github.com/uncomplicate/neanderthal)</comment>


We should be talking about torture in VR - <AUTHOR> https://versions.killscreen.com/we-should-be-talking-about-torture-in-vr/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how torture in VR would be any worse than torture in real life. The focus should be on outlawing torture, not slowing down unrelated technology because it could possibly be used for torture.

Are we going to ban the drill? The hammer? Towels? Those can all be used for torture, but that's not the use case for 99.999% of all uses.

<comment><USER3> I think it's less about VR torture as a replacement for torture in general, and more about VR torture as a more effective replacement for current _psychological_ torture. There's nothing preventing them from continuing with physical torture to in addition, or as a supplement to VR torture.

<comment><USER4> Unless we're talking about some sort of implanted brain-machine interface that directly alters human perception I don't see VR being even an effective replacement for psychological torture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, torture in Virtual Reality is definitely something that could become scary in the future. I mean, there's already talk of using it to give someone the experience of being in prison for decades while only days have actually passed.

Now imagine if you could design a prison that mimicked the detainee's worst nightmares. You've probably seen stuff like A Nightmare on Elm Street or the Scarecrow from Batman, right? That could potentially become an actual thing if VR gets really advanced and its used for 'punishment' purposes. It might even be usable for actual brainwashing, if you design the environment so it deliberately destroys each and every one of a subject's political opinions or religious beliefs.

On the bright side, virtual torture could make for some pretty cool horror games in the future. There have already been tons of stories and creepypastas about horrifying games like this on the deep web.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Can't you just close your eyes?

2\. The caption for the Guantanamo Bay picture is not accurate. The detainees are kneeling waiting to be processed. (the picture was taken in the first few days Guantanamo opened as a detainee prison): [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/16/gitmo-o...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/16/gitmo- outdated-images/24874103/). Certainly bad treatment, but hardly sensory deprivation.

<comment><USER7> 1\. They can just sew your eyelids to your forehead. It probably wouldn't leave much scarring, your muscles are not strong enough to warrant the use of very thick wires...

<comment><USER6> Yes, but at that point they should just physically torture you, since they're already damaging you physically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some things just stick with you, and they come back to mind later when you read something, and the combination is either amazing, or amazingly terrible to consider.

 _It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that there were two small tables straight in front of him, each covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from him, the other was further away, near the door. He was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped his head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of him.

For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and O'Brien came in.

'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'

The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.

'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'

He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.

'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'

A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water._

\- George Orwell, _1984_

</comment><comment><USER8> Not exactly the same topic, but I don't know how I would feel about violence in VR. I don't ever cared about violence in video games, music and movies and such. I always thought that people arguing that violence in these games should be censored were just puritans. But with sufficiently advanced VR, I believe that you can really feel like what it would be like to someone who is extremely violent. And I wonder if this can desensitize someone to the point where their propensity to be violent is significantly increased due to VR usage. We'll need to take ethics in VR more seriously as VR becomes more mainstream and more powerful.

<comment><USER9> Same as it always was, isn't it?

You get old, the world changes, and you just can't hack it, so you turn to controlling others through violence and laws.

"Back in my day sonny..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Virtual Reality really isn't this immersive yet to be able to used for psychological torture, in fact the idea is almost laughable. Anyone that has used a VR headset knows that you don't actually think you are in the game, though the closeness of the screen and 360 degree freedom does definitely make it more real than looking at a TV 6 feet away, it is a longshot from actual reality. Additionally whats to stop the viewer from closing their eyes? Also, the torture techniques they mention in the article are far worse than wearing a VR headset...

<comment><USER3> Sometimes the rational mind takes a back seat to your irrational fears. How hard is it to cycle through thousands of the most common fears a few seconds for each, while tracking vitals, and note which ones give an elevated response? Tell the claustrophobe "it's okay, right past that door it's wide open!" Tell the arachnophobe "it's okay, it's not a poisonous spider!" Tell the father "Don't fret, those images of your daughter weren't real. What do you think we are, monsters?"

<comment><USER10> All of this assumes I somehow don't know I have a headset on, feeding me fake imagery. It only takes the action of the spider to jump at me but me not to feel anything to remind me that I'm actually in an empty room by myself. All 3 examples would be far more effective if they took place in reality though, and your last example would give the same response headset or not.

<comment><USER3> > It only takes the action of the spider to jump at me but me not to feel > anything to remind me that I'm actually in an empty room by myself.

I suspect you don't have a phobia like this, and have not dealt with people who do when they are affected by it.

> your last example would give the same response headset or not.

Meaning you view it as effective or ineffective? I used to think things like that had no effect on me. Absolutely none. Then I had children. Now I cry when a movie hints at a child losing a parent or parent losing a child. It's an involuntary reaction to the empathy I have for the situation. I can't control it at all, and this is in fictional settings with fictional characters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> that's crazy. i knew about the adult industry use of VR but this part never occured to me.

<comment><USER12> Never occurred to me as well--VR could definitely be used for torture, it would be very cruel indeed.</comment></comment>


Librarians won't stay quiet about government surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/10/03/librarians-wont-stay-quiet-about-government-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> Librarians have been fighting against the post 9/11 order since the first days of PATRIOT; it's sad that they get so much less attention and support than internet companies who are challenging the government for financial reasons rather than moral ones, and who also fight equally hard for the right to themselves surveil internet users without limit.</comment>


NSA Guide to Internet Research - <AUTHOR> https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/untangling-the-web-a-guide-to-internet-research-4903/

<comment><USER2> This is available on Amazon[1] and can be downloaded from the NSA[2]. I'm not sure why you needed to make a FOIA request.

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Untangling-Web-Guide-Internet- Research...](http://www.amazon.com/Untangling-Web-Guide-Internet-Research- ebook/dp/B00CSXXV26)

[2][http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/Untangling_the_Web.pdf](http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/Untangling_the_Web.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> jnorthrop, thanks for the other links.

One word comes to mind after reading the Preface... "Pretentious".

Seriously, someone is really full of themselves here.</comment>


Is insider guessing illegal? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-15/is-insider-guessing-illegal <comment><AUTHOR> This is Matt Levine's "Money Stuff" column for this morning. He discusses two topics of recent interest to HN:

1\. the insider trading case brought against an Equifax employee yesterday, and

2\. the CTS Labs security disclosures that may have been involved in a short sell on AMD shares.

Just putting this comment down to kick off discussion; his writing on financial topics is generally well informed and interesting. In particular his commentary here discusses the legality of trading when you have an informed guess as an insider, but no explicitly material nonpublic information.</comment>


Why Did Agile Originate In Software? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotnetcodegeeks.com/2012/06/why-did-agile-originate-in-software.html

<comment><USER2> It's also an area where there's a lower cost of pivoting.

When you combine that with an area that will realize returns more quickly than traditional businesses, you have a strong incentive to "MVP" your processes often and early.</comment>


911 services down throughout WA state - <AUTHOR> https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/several-agencies-across-the-state-report-911-outage/895324310 <comment></comment>


Show HN: Our new online face recognition demo - <AUTHOR> http://webdemo.pittpatt.com/recognition_demo/

<comment><USER2> Very good demo and it also happens to be related to my interests so here's my little analysis.

1, The face detection of this program is more impressive than the face recognition.

2, The detector is able to detect across variaty of poses and come up with a an estimate for the pose of the face. It does a lot more than the best opensource detector (openCV) out there.

3, If you download the mac program and open up the package contents, you will see that under the data file directory, it uses a different set of files (features.bin, log_likelihood.bin) for frontal and profile view detection.

4, If you look at the company's CEO's background and publications here:

[http://www.ri.cmu.edu/person.html?type=publications&pers...](http://www.ri.cmu.edu/person.html?type=publications&person_id=270)

It would suggest that the detector is using a histogram-based detector as outlined in his paper. The other detector made by CMU is the Rowley-Kanade one but I don't think that one is fast enough to run in realtime.

Shamelsss plug, I implemented a javascript face detector ( with source code ) here: <http://blog.kpicturebooth.com/?p=8> , it only handles frontal non- rotated faces =P

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have a few comments for you guys about our demo:

1\. Image to Image is a bit misleading because we are fairly strict in our online demo in pose requirements, so many faces are "non-suitable" because they aren't frontal.

2\. It works much better for video settings (but that type of online demo is way too CPU intensive) because we can organize each person into continuous tracks and we only need them to become 'frontal' once to do matching. And the more they are frontal, the more data points we have.

Here's an example of recognition applied to video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsjf3IDXef8>

<comment><USER3> Impressive. What's the implementation language? I assume C.

<comment><USER4> Why do you assume that? It could just as well be MatLab or something similar, that makes fiddling with multimedia very easy.

<comment><USER3> Performance

<comment><USER4> MatLab-performance can be quite good :-)

<comment><USER3> OK, I'm not familiar with MatLab performance. :-) But image processing is very computationally expensive, and the demo here is unbelievably fast. It must be optimized for its specific tasks. You just can't get that from a general package.

In retrospect, it's not surprising that they're optimizing some parts with assembler - even SSE (Streaming SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) Extensions <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_SIMD_Extensions>), which I hadn't heard of, but which is the kind of vector parallelism that gives supercomputers their speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Michael Jackson vs. Jackson 5

[http://webdemo.pittpatt.com/recognition_demo/view.php?id=N56...](http://webdemo.pittpatt.com/recognition_demo/view.php?id=N56RE2RST3297)

It needs a threshold of -3 to detect it, but it gets the right face (I think).

</comment><comment><USER5> So...how exactly does one go about getting a-hold of this technology? There is no download link and it's not clear if the contact link will result in my being sent a demo.

</comment><comment><USER6> My first R&D project at my company when I just got out of college was in image recognition, so this is pretty interesting.

Here's 2 I did:

[http://webdemo.pittpatt.com/recognition_demo/view.php?id=JKW...](http://webdemo.pittpatt.com/recognition_demo/view.php?id=JKWNVKFUCF167)

[http://webdemo.pittpatt.com/recognition_demo/view.php?id=Q9J...](http://webdemo.pittpatt.com/recognition_demo/view.php?id=Q9JA7ZVNZW158)

The second one pretty impressive, even if it's under the default 0.00 threshold. I mean, RMS's mouth is obscured behind a katana and it still got a -0.14.

You need to work on the PG recognition though. It doesn't seem to want to recognize two photos as being both him. :P

<comment><USER7> Funny, my first test was also a pic of RMS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> CMU has been working on facial recognition for a long time. VASC and the now defunct MAPS lab did quite a bit of research for recognizing objects in general as well as facial features. It is good to see a spinoff company that can make money from the hard work put into it. More info:

[http://www.ri.cmu.edu/research_project_detail.html?project_i...](http://www.ri.cmu.edu/research_project_detail.html?project_id=621&menu_id=262)

</comment><comment><USER5> I totally misunderstood what this is. You recognize and match two faces across two pictures! I thought you just identify that a face is there. You REALLY need to explain a bit clearer what it is - for you it's obvious, for a random person clicking through, it's not obvious at all. The Michael Jackson picture would be the best sample of this.

</comment><comment><USER9> who else thought of this?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uco5Ed-5y2U>

(synopsis: ancient mr. show sketch involving a corporate mascot called pit- pat. warning: swearing)

<comment><USER10> It was certainly the first thing that came to mind for me. After seeing the URL, I was pretty disappointed not to find a magical nonthreatening pansexual spokesthing on the actual page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Sorry, we are experiencing a large volume of submissions. There are 1 images ahead of you. You can try refreshing this page later, or resubmit the same image to see the results._

</comment><comment> cool-RR How is this better than what Facebook uses?

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks like something to give the government to track your EVERY MOVE.

Good job tho guys. Its pretty impressive.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems to work, good job.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is amazing... although it needs some additional work( no ideas in my head for now).

Did you use your own algorithm for it?</comment>


Startup Quote: Thomas Edison, co-founder, General Electric - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/6648402127

<comment><AUTHOR> Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

\- Thomas Edison

<http://startupquote.com/post/6648402127></comment>


Show HN: Chrome Extension to Manage Too Many Tabs - <AUTHOR> https://www.tablasso.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all! I made Tab Lasso with my business partner because he's kind of an information addict and always drowning under hundreds (sometimes thousands) of tabs.

It turns your new tab page into an overview of all your open windows and tabs that's searchable and organizable. It lets you close tabs, save tabs, and drag and drop tabs between open windows (and also saved windows).</comment>


Ask HN: What about Version Pinning? - <AUTHOR> Nowadays some languages/environments offer the possibility to pin the versions of dependencies. I have a colleague who is religious about the opinion that all versions of dependencies should be pinned. To me this is not obvious at all. I see potential problems with pinning versions but I also don't feel I know enough about the pros and cons. Let me list the problems that I see.
1) What about the dependencies of dependencies? If dependency A requires C and also dependency B requires C it could be that C is pinned to two different versions. Doesn't this cause problems? Do we end up with much duplication in the packed result in which two different versions of C occur? Might we in the end even end up with 10 different versions of C if it is something that is used in a lot of libraries?
2) In theory one should be able to install any version of a package as is proclaimed in the version pinning file but in practice this can fail because a particular version might be incompatible with system libraries. E.g., numpy depends on underlying C libraries in the system so we cannot have the same version on every work station. The same problem with GUI libraries.
3) There is the danger that the versions of the libraries are not updated very often and that one is programming against old versions that have problems that one would never have encountered using a newer version. Also, if one later finally updates one gets all of the incompatibilities at once instead of occasionally a small incompatibility that is relatively easy to fix.
I do see a few uses/advantages for version pinning. When one is going to create a release branch it makes lots of sense to pin the versions of everything at that point. Also, one wants to avoid the issue that the build breaks at the same time on multiple workstations because that just wastes everybody's time. <comment><USER2> I am a pinning Zealot. The last thing I want is something changing without my knowledge. After getting burned once or twice with a 'Jekyl and Hyde' situation, you never want to be vulnerable to that again.

Does it mean you have to be on top of monitoring dependency vulnerabilities and updates? Yes, but github does that for free now.

When I pin something, I know it works, period.

My dependency rules of thumb 1) limit dependencies to only major contributors that would be impractical to self code (or are tested / maintained enough to ensure top quality) 2) pin the version

This hasn't failed me to date.</comment>


The media's reaction to Seymour Hersh's bin Laden scoop - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/analysis/seymour_hersh_osama_bin_laden.php <comment><USER3> _" No phrase has been bandied about more than "conspiracy theory" in describing Hersh's reporting. Critics argue that he's accusing "hundreds of people across three governments of staging a massive international hoax that has gone on for years." How could that be possible?"_

The mass surveillance by NSA, GCHQ and the rest of the "Five Eyes" intelligence organizations involved thousands of people in several countries and was covered up for a long time, perpetuating the hoax that "the NSA only spies on foreign nationals". Then Snowden came along. Governments are pretty good at covering up their secrets.

<comment><USER4> While the scope was not known, Trailblazer, Thin Thread and Turbulence were known about, and whistleblown about fairly shortly after their inception.

The difference between when Binney & Drake etc blew the whistle and when Snowden did is the time that had passed since 9/11.

Binney started making noise in 2002, when the public mood was "If it catches bad guys, it's all good" Drake began making noise at the same time, and first went to the media in 2005, when the Iraq & Afghanistan wars, and the hunt for Bin Laden were still relatively well supported.

Snowden went public much later, and with much more detail, but if the first 2 (and the others who blew the whistle at the same time) had gotten media attention, the program may not have spread as far as it had by the time Snowden came along.

Governments are fairly terrible at covering up secrets, the question is whether the media or the public want to pay attention.

<comment> vezzy-fnord In fact, public awareness of massive NSA surveillance probably dates back to at least 1975 with the Church Committee: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee)

<comment><USER5> You realize the irony of linking to that article, with the following quote:

> Then on December 22, 1974, The New York Times published a lengthy article by > Seymour Hersh detailing operations engaged in by the CIA over the years that > had been dubbed the "family jewels".

Seymour Hersh was instrumental in bringing the CIA spying revelations to the public view then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> the intercept has reported[0] that all of the major points reported by hersh were first reported in 2011 by rj hillhouse, and the two stories seem to have different sources. hillhouse seems upset about not being given credit and accuses hersh of 'plagiarism', though that doesn't have any bearing on the truth of the matter. the fact that hersh reported details which hillhouse has stated she was aware of but explicitly chose not to disclose (that the seals dumped parts of bin laden's body out over the hindu kush on the chopper ride home) seems to prove that he was doing original reporting to me. the real tragedy is that we've already cemented the national mythology of torture producing the intelligence necessary to locate bin laden, thanks to zero dark thirty and the cia lying to cover its ass.

[0] [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/11/former- profess...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/11/former-professor- reported-basics-hershs-bin-laden-story-2011-seemingly-different-sources/)

<comment><USER7> A few parts of the story seem to be reasonable. There was widespread speculation that the ISI knew Bin Laden's location, even right after Bin Laden was killed. The story about the Pakistani general defecting seems to have been reported by others and seems reasonably plausible.

Some other portions of Hersh's story just don't seem plausible to me (the Vox piece made a number of these points and more, but personally I think these are the strongest). If Bin Laden was under ISI control, I don't understand why the Pakistanis would have wanted the US to send in SEALs to kill him in Abottabad when they could have just put him on a helicopter and had the SEALs kill him in Afghanistan. That would have avoided all sorts of embarrassment to the Pakistani military and intelligence services. The fact that the US penetrated Pakistani air defenses was very embarrassing to the Pakistani military, as was the fact that Bin Laden was living practically down the street from a Pakistani military academy - not to mention that it seems strange that the Pakistanis and Americans would have chosen to undertake all the risks of discovery of sending helicopters in to a peaceful town when the ISI, which was supposedly guarding Bin Laden, could have just quietly taken him to a remote area.

The business about SEALs dumping parts of his body out of a helicopter also seems strange - given how politically charged the mission was I would imagine that they would have been incredibly disciplined and professional. And Hersh's explanation for the breach in US/Pakistani relations following the mission just seems convoluted and implausible. It seems very plausible to me that the US went in and killed Bin Laden without Pakistani knowledge, and that the mission caused the breach. Hersh's explanation just seems like he's building up a whole convoluted series of explanations to justify his theory.

<comment><USER6> as far as why the pakistanis didn't just hand him over: hersh reports that they were receiving a great deal of saudi money to keep them from letting the americans know about him, presumably because they didn't want them to get him to talk about his ties to high-ranking saudis. the pakistanis conditionally permitted the raid, as long as it was explicitly a kill mission, which would stay in line with the saudi terms. again, the original plan was to kill him and take the body and announce a week later that he was killed in a drone strike on the afpak border, but that was scuttled when the helicopter crashed.

as for the unprofessionalism of dumping parts of the corpse of the most hated man in american history, perhaps you hold higher estimation of the moral restraint of a team of men who kill for a living than i do

<comment><USER8> He may be the most hated man in America History but I think the moral thing to do would have been to capture him and bring him to trial, but that apparently didn't enter into consideration.

<comment><USER9> They don't even give trials for American citizens abroad. Seems unlikely they'd do it for terrorist #1.

<comment><USER10> They're trying KSH - why not?

<comment><USER11> I'm assuming you mean KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed). I think it could be strategically valuable to be able to parade pictures of your former enemy looking like this: [http://usofarn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Khalid- Sheikh-...](http://usofarn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Khalid-Sheikh- Mohammed+.jpg) . It would have been awesome if we could have done the same with Bin Laden.

<comment><USER10> I don't know how my fingers wrote "H" for Mohammed, but yes, of course. :-)

I'm not sure I agree that it's strategically valuable - in an asymmetrical engagement, it seems like this just provokes sympathy and stokes recruitment.

Treating him (both of them, in fact) with dignity, respect, and an honest public trial including an accounting of their crimes might help, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The description of the response reminds me of Gary Webb: [http://www.focusfeatures.com/kill_the_messenger](http://www.focusfeatures.com/kill_the_messenger)

It doesn't make Hersh right (I don't know if he is or not), but I do know that a common response to outsiders who challenge insiders is to attack their character. It's a way of creating FUD and of deterring others.

<comment><USER13> I thought Hersh made a great point when he was on On the Media last week. If he's even partly right it means that the main media got the story very wrong and didn't do any real research into verifying the administration claims.

So either the media has to admit that they, as a whole, massively screwed up the story (not unlike the WMD stuff) or they can just attack Hersh and not seem to lose any credibility.

In other words, it's in their best interest he's wrong even if he's right. It was a very good interview.

<comment><USER14> Today, no _sane_ person takes what she reads/watches in the media on face value. Journalism as a profession has lost much of it's respect and credibility in my lifetime. Most news papers, TV/radio stations and online properties have some agenda or the other and they act according to that, openly and shamelessly, truth be damned (liberal, conservative, religious, left, right...whatever).

But even for them, attacking a very distinguished journalist's character, instead of analyzing his work on it's merit is new low.

<comment><USER15> Actually i see a lot of people who believe their chosen media with all the agenda that involves. You can call them not sane, but they're out there. Whether it's fox or something more or less extremist than that, they just don't want to analyse on their own.

They may be uneducated or gullible or lacking the will to question preprocessed information... But likely sane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good article - I agree that Seymour Hersh is being treated unfairly by the corporate news media. Remember that almost all of the news sources in the USA are owned by just a few corporations. It is my opinion that they actually care less about truth (or even profit) than pushing an agenda supporting the elite class.

<comment><USER12> > Remember that almost all of the news sources in the USA are owned by just a > few corporations.

Is this still true, with the explosion of Internet-based news publications? Also consider that, on the Internet, "in the USA" doesn't matter nearly as much. Americans can as easily read the Guardian, for example, as the Wall Street Journal.

<comment><USER17> > Is this still true, with the explosion of Internet-based news publications?

How many internet-based news sites are actually doing reporting, investigation, sourcing, etc.? Versus merely repeating stories from upstream new sites with or without additional opinion and/or analysis added on?

<comment><USER18> How many corporate media outlets are actually doing reporting, investigation, sourcing, etc., versus merely repeating stories from upstream PR firms, anonymous official sources, or talking heads?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Both the Government's "Seal Team Six - Fuck yeah!" version and Hersh's more pedestrian "ISI insider sold him down the river & it was a hit job" version have exactly the same corroboration - ZERO, NONE.

We have no body, no evidence of burial, no (faked or otherwise) pictures of the actual raid, etc.

Obama admin. feels happy to make up one version of events & now via Hersh we have another. We may never know the truth but I find Hersh's version a bit more plausible. Why?

1) So the Pakistani's who are always nervous of India trying to sneak into its airspace missed the choppers in AND out (even if they came in via the Afgan route)?

2) The ISI is the most capable aider & abettor of Terrorism in the world - they HAD to have known the Osama was in Abottabad (and more likely house- arrested him there).

The US govt. would have us believe that Osama was living the backyard of a Pakistani Military academy unnoticed & unknown to the ISI? This is an inconceivable lie.

3) There was a mysterious courier that lead to Osama thru the Hard work and Torturing of the CIA OR an ISI insider betrayed the location for money : which is more plausible?

Torture rarely yields credible intel & the possibility of the CIA stumbling onto some courier fortuitously & following him around meticulously is too many coincidences for me. OTOH a greedy ISI insider is not hard to believe.

<comment><USER20> > The US govt. would have us believe that Osama was living the backyard of a > Pakistani Military academy unnoticed & unknown to the ISI? This is an > inconceivable lie.

Over half a mile away is not living in "the backyard" of the academy. There are hundreds of buildings within a half mile of the academy. They aren't even connected directly by major streets. The bin Laden compound was a couple of side streets off the main road in that part of the city.

Unless Pakistan keeps track of who is living in private residences to a much greater extent than we do in the US, there is no reason to expect that they knew he was there solely based on the location.

<comment><USER21> Robert Baer's take on this (a former CIA case officer, Time.com's intelligence columnist) is:

"Abbottabad, I'll say it again, you cannot hide a foreigner in Abbottabad, for any length of time, without coming to the attention of the intelligence bureau first of all, which is Pakistani intelligence, and then ISI. [ISI is not a rogue element]. If in fact he was a prisoner there, [then] he was in fact a prisoner of the Pakistani Government, not ISI. So they knew he was there, certainly. Can you go, what was it, 7 years and hide in Abbottabad and [have them] not know?

Anybody who's lived in Pakistan will tell you that every day there's sort of a knock on the door, it's the police, they talk to the chokidar about the foreigners, what are they doing, you know and the rest of it. You simply don't set up a compound as you would in, I don't know, the desert in Nevada and not have people notice. Impossible, totally impossible."

Ref: Podcast linked from the article - [http://ianmasters.com/sites/default/files/bbriefing_2015_05_...](http://ianmasters.com/sites/default/files/bbriefing_2015_05_11a_robert%20baer.mp3)) at 09:55

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >Most journalists would never dream of confronting CIA officials with the same aggressiveness they now direct at Hersh—even though, less than six months ago, the Senate released a 500-page report documenting in meticulous detail the dozens of times the CIA blatantly lied to the public, the press, and Congress about torture over the past decade.

>Hersh's assertion, which has by now been at least partially confirmed by multiple news organizations, that bin Laden was found thanks to a "walk-in" tip—rather than by tracking his courier as the government has claimed—should be a major scandal. For years, the CIA has said it found bin Laden thanks to information about his personal courier—information that was obtained by means of torture.

An agenda to promote the ethical validity of torture.

<comment><USER22> This is the takeaway from all of this.

People who are trying to sort out which details are accurate and which are not are missing the point entirely.

The government lied about the way Bin Laden was killed, plain and simple. And they did it to justify torture.

None of us are any safer because of this.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, Hersh's story can definitely be considered to be a red herring answer to the government's lies, so the fact remains that even if Hersh's version isn't true to the last detail, Bush still evaded military service, so to speak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Unfortunately I get a page with no scrollbar, and I can't seem to scroll in Google Chrome 42.0.2311.135 (Linux).

<comment><USER25> I had to refresh before it would allow me to scroll. Not sure what the issue is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Link to the priceless _Slate_ interview, for anyone who missed it: [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/05/seymour_hersh_interview_on_his_bin_laden_story_the_new_yorker_journalism.single.html)

<comment><USER12> I highly recommend reading this as context; it's almost essential to understanding Hersh.

<comment><USER27> That he is cranky and hates he Slate interviewer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article, May 16th, seems like an incredible coincidence. I went to NYT to see if they had any updates, and instead found this:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/world/middleeast/abu- sayya...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/world/middleeast/abu-sayyaf-isis- commander-killed-by-us-forces-pentagon-says.html)

"... two dozen Delta Force commandos entered Syria aboard Black Hawk helicopters and V-22 Ospreys and killed the leader, a man known as Abu Sayyaf"

"Islamic State fighters who defended their building and Abu Sayyaf tried to use women and children as shields, but that the Delta Force commandos "used very precise fire" and "separated the women and children."

"The U.S. government did not coordinate with the Syrian regime, nor did we advise them in advance of this operation," said Bernadette Meehan, the National Security Council spokeswoman."

"The objective was the building, a multistory building," the official said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

"They said the American forces were able to seize laptop computers, cellphones and other materials from the site, which may prove useful in intelligence assessments."

</comment><comment><USER28> Considering the utter absurdity of the government's story, I find it hard to imagine any rational person could have ever believed it for a second. Considering Hersh's reputation, the criticism against him is unfounded. That raises a lot of questions. Like how to deal with an "ally" who would hide this information from us for years causing our wars to drag on longer and many more people to die. It's a disservice that the media is not covering this, but unsurprising considering the initial coverage and lack of skepticism to the initial literally incredible events they reported when bin Laden was killed in 2011. Stupidity is great, but it's not as great as malice and I find it impossible to believe that the reporters originally reporting the story in 2011 didn't know it was a lie. I also find it impossible to believe anyone is still defending that story now. Instead of real coverage of the issues, however, we just get the media talking about itself like this article. I'm glad articles like this exist, but it's indicative of the self-pleasuring role that media has taken in our society and the duty towards the people it has shirked.

<comment><USER29> I find it hard to believe any rationale person would believe ANYTHING the government has to say. I'm not sure if it has always been this way but now-a- days, and even with as bad as the media is, it's perfectly clear that the government will lie about anything it feels like. It's not just fiction and movies, we KNOW this from recently recorded history. Further, we don't even know if the "whitehouse" is blatantly lying or if they are being lied to by the intelligence organizations because we also know now that they will lie about ANYTHING to other parts of the government including the executive. So any time people start immediately pointing fingers at the POTUS and "whitehouse" I can see what their agenda is. It's so messed up there is no telling where the lies are originating from. Maybe the CIA/NSA should change their missions statement to "provide the truth". Whatever else they are aren't they supposed to be "intelligence" organizations? What good are they if they provide bad information?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why was the title of this post changed?

It's far less accurate and no longer reflective of the title of the post.

Frankly, in a conversation about the media's disgraceful reaction, you probably shouldn't change the title to support the same political agenda as the dominant narrative.

<comment><USER30> I reverted the title back after reading your comment, but on reflection, I think the edit is correct, so I'm going to put it back. I don't feel strongly about it, though, so if you all do, we'll restore the "disgrace" bit.

Generally we want HN titles to say what an article is about, not tell people what to think about it. This article is about media reaction to Hersh's story. For HN purposes it doesn't need to say more than that. The presence of the article near the top of HN already says a great deal.

Moderation decisions on HN aren't driven by political agendas (at least not that I know of). It should be clear from the fact that this article is currently #3 that we don't have a problem with critiques of dominant narratives, as long as they're substantive. I'd say this article clears that bar easily.

<comment><USER22> I have to disagree. The article is an unambiguous criticism of the media reaction to Hersh's article.

In the context of the media trying to control the narrative regarding Hersh's story, editing the title here really appears to be more narrative control.

While I can appreciate not wanting to tell HN readers what to think, this piece is an editorial and a criticism and deserves to be treated as such.

That said, thank you for your transparency and taking the time to respond.

<comment><USER30> No question it's a critique. IMO a devastating one. But I don't see why we should edit the front page differently? The standard for titles is that they be accurate and neutral. (Edit: it's the "neutral" bit that matters here.) HN moderation is about readers being smart enough to figure things out for themselves.

<comment><USER31> If there was a blog post titled "10 Reasons Rust Sucks", wouldn't that be the HN title as well? You can't make everything neutral.

<comment><USER30> That would likely not be a title we would let stand on HN. But I'd have to see specific examples. There's no algorithm for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Most of the big revelations seem to come from individuals who were or are senior members of the Pakistani security services, and the key takeaways (Pakistan knew where bin Laden was the whole time; Pakistan's air defenses were deactivated during the raid, otherwise they would have shot down the American helicopter; Pakistan played America in order to extract more military aid) all underscore the idea that the Pakistani security services are comprised of wily, street-smart seasoned operators who should not be fucked with.

</comment><comment><USER33> So the large media organisations - who tend to rely on government cooperation to produce most of their content - have done exactly the same thing that they did every other time. That's barely even news.

Does anybody have a proposal for how this situation might be changed?

<comment><USER34> Real investigative journalism is expensive. To check your facts and avoid being led astray by cranks or disinformationists (professional cranks) requires something akin to a private intelligence agency.

As long as nobody pays for news, there is zero incentive for anyone to invest that kind of money.

You get what you pay for. Pay nothing for news and get nothing but reprints of press releases.

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra When news about bin Laden hit, we in the outside world were wondering:

How can people make a national holiday of (a) death of a lone person (b) that might as well not happen?

<comment><USER35> Not to mention that he was conveniently "dumped at sea" after being reported dead by the PM of Pakistan long ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> >First of all, denigrating a legendary reporter who has broken more major stories than almost anyone alive as a "conspiracy theorist" because his story contained a few details a little too implausible for some people's taste is beyond insulting.

Besides this being a blatant appeal to authority can you blame people for thinking he is drifting into conspiracy theorist territory when he has claimed that US Special Forces have been infiltrated by Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta?

<comment><USER22> He didn't claim that they had been "infiltrated". He simply claimed a few high ranking generals were members.

The narrative he was trying to create was that the military literally considers our presence in the Middle East as a crusade, in the historical sense. And frankly, I don't think this is too far off.

George Bush used "crusade/holy war" rhetoric both publicly and (reportedly) in private. Religious indoctrination in the army is rampant. Eric Prince of Blackwater has been accused by former employees of trying to start a Crusade.

So what's your counter narrative? The higher-ups in JSOC and the military are all reasonable secular humanists?

The Pope is a member of the Jesuit order. This doesn't mean that the Jesuits have "infiltrated Catholicism", it just means the Pope is a Jesuit. If you think that Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta are "shadowy conspiracy groups", you need to stop reading Dan Brown books, and start embracing the fact that other people have different ideologies.

As far as your "appeal to authority" is concerned, yes, that's exactly what it is. That's how journalism works. Anonymous sources get quoted all the time for pro-military stories. Deal with it. Would you have criticized Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for using "anonymous sources"? Part of good investigative journalism is relying on the reputation of established journalists. And while you're right that this is an appeal to authority, your argument is nothing more than an ad hominem designed to discredit the narrative Hersh has created.

<comment><USER37> > He simply claimed a few high ranking generals were members.

He also claimed that JSOC was passing around "crusade coins" as part of their religious "crusade".

I don't know how he got 'crusade coins' from something completely benign ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_coin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_coin)) but that's the kind of "journalism" we've been receiving from Hersh in the past few years.

Besides which, if your interpretation of Hersh's comments were true then they simply wouldn't be news at all. "Some members of a typically-conservative organization are also members of a separate typically-conservative organization" is hardly worth a mention at all.

On the other hand the implied story "Opus Dei secretly in control of (or heavily influencing) America's special operations arm" _would_ be news, Sy Hersh-winning-a-Pulitzer kind of news... if it were true.

The comment you replied to wasn't claiming anything sinister about Opus Dei, that honor goes to Hersh himself.

<comment><USER22> The claim is that top ranking officials believe they are waging a traditionalist "Holy War" against Islam.

I don't know if your obsession with Catholic or military trinkets is simple misinterpretation or deliberate obfuscation. Hersh never made the claim which you put "in quotes". And it's disingenuous to claim he did.

If top generals believe they are fighting a Crusade, that's newsworthy.

If you want to address that narrative, I'd be interested to hear what you have to say. But as it stands, the strawman you're arguing against has no basis in Hersh's words or viewpoint.

<comment><USER37> > I don't know if your obsession with Catholic or military trinkets is simple > misinterpretation or deliberate obfuscation. Hersh never made the claim > which you put "in quotes". And it's disingenuous to claim he did.

From [http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/18/seymour-hersh- unleashed/](http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/18/seymour-hersh-unleashed/) (which, while paywalled, is only one of _many_ sources you could easily Google), they quote Hersh as saying, among other things:

"They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there's a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community."

I'll note that when I mentioned _Hersh 's_ alarm about 'crusade coins' (I'm sorry I missed the 'r'), you said that not only was it _my_ obsession, but that it could have been a deliberate obfuscation attempt on my part, along with being disingenuous.

Disingenuous to claim something that's actually true! What a world!

> If top generals believe they are fighting a Crusade, that's newsworthy.

Religious people will often perceive the world they live in through the perspective of their religion. When top generals start taking the nation into harm's way for their own pet religious principles then by all means, sound the alarm. Until then, as long as they're doing the 'right' thing by the country to the best of their professional (as opposed to religious) judgment and don't try to force their religion on subordinates (as the Air Force Academy has been actually accused of doing) then I don't give a shit what God they pray to or how they make that relationship work.

> strawman

Please, by all means, go talk to Seymour about his own words, which are apparently a figment of my spotty imagination.

<comment><USER35> Not sure why a specific challenge coin could not also simultaneously serve as a symbol of an effort such as a "crusade".

<comment><USER37> Might they make specific challenge coins for specific operations within whatever we're calling the 'war on terror' nowadays? Absolutely, and some of those coins might even be vaguely offensive.

But unless these coins were actually evidence of some sort of JSOC conspiracy to loop in Pope Benedict on U.S. counter-terror operations then why were they worth the attention of the Great Man who popularized My Lai and Abu Ghraib?

I'll leave open for now the question of why a group of people who _certainly know better_ would procure hard physical evidence of their nefarious misdeeds instead of executing the professional conspiracy that any snake-eater should be able to handle if they really wanted to. Since this is Seymour's world now we needn't concern ourselves with trying to find contrary evidence that would disprove Hersh's assertions, and then demonstrating why that evidence isn't actually problematic. Why, Seymour has told us this must be true, and that's all we need to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The best solution to all the questions posed by sceptics about the Abbottabad raid is contained in the book Osama's Angel. Why the Pakistani doctor was hung out to dry by the CIA. Why a burial at sea was chosen to disguise the truth. Why the DNA identification was unreliable and lastly and most importantly, why did the US administration send men to fetch the man when a missile from a drone would have killed bin laden and done everything a burial at sea did, without risking American lives. Why was no attempt made to capture the single most valuable source of information available? Why was a helicopter filled with SEAL Team 6 soldiers shot down shortly after the raid and why is the usually most secretive American combat unit publicly squabbling over who shot bin Laden? The story is much more convoluted than Seymour Hersh believes.

</comment><comment><USER39> I remember the response here on HN was generally similar to that of the mainstream media.

<comment><USER13> That's one of the problems with this story. Most everyone was glad for the hunt just to be over, a lot of people wouldn't _want_ to question it even if they thought it wasn't entirely aboveboard. Easier to say "it's finally done" and move on. The fact it took that long was embarrassing enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > As a simple example, which Hersh himself stated in this fascinating On The > Media interview, how many people knew about the Bush administration's > manipulation of intelligence before the Iraq war? Hundreds? Over a thousand?

Uh. Everyone? Everyone knew that. Everyone on the planet knew that. What are you talking about?

> How many knew about the NSA's mass phone metadata program aimed at Americans > until Edward Snowden revealed it? A thousand? Ten thousand?

The program that was revealed in 2006, 7 years before Snowden?

</comment><comment><USER41> Obviously I don't know if he's right or wrong, but that Q&A he did with Isaac Chotiner was hilarious

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/05/seymour_hersh_interview_on_his_bin_laden_story_the_new_yorker_journalism.single.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> Hersh's story is not well sourced, contradictory, and mostly wrong. From a simple verification perspective, it is difficult to keep track of how many anonymous sources he has, and which has made which claim. However, the chance that they are well placed enough to know all of the details they claim to is highly unlikely, especially with the compartmentalization of information. While ad hominem attacks are certainly not the correct approach, he has stated the information he heard from his sources with an excess of confidence, assuming that they have no agenda. He then places it in a narrative which

I only have direct experience with slices of the information about the events in the story, but it directly contradicts the narrative.

The question is not what you think about Seymour Hersh, the question is what you think about the motives of his supposed sources, and what that might indicate about their veracity.

<comment><USER21> From the article:

> Yet most of this criticism, over the thousands of words written about > Hersh's piece in the last week, has amounted to "That doesn't make sense to > me," or "That's not what government officials told me before," or "How are > we to believe his anonymous sources?"

Your post pretty much echoes the hit pieces this article is complaining about, and adds nothing new to the discussion.

<comment><USER43> No, he is making different points. Similarly, this is where I stopped reading the article:

> Barrels of ink have been spilled ripping apart Hersh's character, while > barely any follow-up reporting has been done to corroborate or refute his > claims

The original poster's point isn't "this doesn't make sense to me." It's that the facts do not comport with reality.

One of the things that those who defend this kind of reporting love to trot out is the idea that any criticism is fallacious, and is "ad hominem."

Of course, there is plenty of ad hominem response out there, but cherry- picking these responses as representative, rather than engaging with substantive refutation, and then claiming that there is no such refutation is argument in bad faith.

In fact, there is a name for that particular kind of argument: a straw man.

<comment><USER21> What point is the poster making? That the anonymous sources have their own agendas? - "How are we to believe his anonymous sources?".

Can you tell me what other points there are to be found in there?

> It's that the facts do not comport with reality.

Which facts, specifically? There are certainly none mentioned in that post.

<comment><USER43> I count a few points:

1\. The article is not well-sourced. a. There are many anonymous sources, which is generally a bad practice; SH consequently may over-represent confidence in his material. b. It is difficult to track how many anonymous sources there are. c. It is unlikely that these sources would have access to the information that they claim.

2\. The article has internal contradictions.

I'm sure that we can flesh these out more if you would like, but none of these are ad hominem.

Wrapping "exclusively anonymous sources are bad" as a criticism in with "Sy Hersh is an unreliable jerk" is also an argument in bad faith. The two are not equivalent, and the former is a sincere issue with this piece. Including it in with the latter has the effect of encouraging dismissal of both just because the latter is obviously fallacial.

<comment><USER21> 1\. It's a pity you stopped reading the article, because addressing the criticism of anonymous sources is about 1/3 of it.

2\. A discussion of specific internal contradictions in the article would be interesting and valuable, unlike the original post. [Might make sense to make a new post for it, so it doesn't get buried though].

As to the "facts not comporting with reality", should I assume you have abandoned that claim? That would also be an interesting discussion.

This is the whole point of the CJR article - that the media response so far has been largely fact-free.

<comment><USER42> No...it's not the criticism of anonymous sources, it's the lack of consideration given to the possibility that the anonymous source is lying. If you bring out an anonymous source that is making these kind of assertions, you need more than a claim that it's a retired intel officer to achieve credibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I thought the issue was it was based on the use of anonymous sources which might be hard for any journo to "disprove his assertions with additional reporting".

</comment><comment><USER45> So, the whole story was about how Pakistan knew about Osama bin Laden and allowed raid to happen?

Can anyone explain me why is this important?

<comment><USER46> The CIA tortured people.

Then Osama Bin Laden was assassinated.

Then the CIA said "see? Torture is unpleasant but it was needed here".

Now it turns out that they didn't get OBL info from torture but from some other method.

The CIA lied about whether they tortured people or not; then they lied about whether that torture was useful or not.

<comment><USER45> Wait, they actually stated that they couldn't have found Osama without torture? I don't follow US politics that close, so I must have missed it. Isn't it incredibly stupid by itself? Did people actually need confirmation that torture doesn't work?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> if any of this surprises anyone, they haven't been paying attention for decades.

</comment><comment><USER48> But I saw the movie /s

<comment><USER49> I think it started with the first actor President.

I should re-read _America_, 1988, Jean Baudrillard.

"You have the same difficulty today distinguishing between a process and its simulation, for example between a flight and a flight simulation. America, too, has entered this era of undecidability: is it still really powerful or merely simulating power?"

"Can Reagan be considered the symbol of present-day American society - <USER2> society which, having once possessed the original features of power, is now perhaps at the face-lift stage?

Give your emptiness and indifference to others, light up your face with the zero degree of joy and pleasure, smile, smile, smile. . . Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth. And it works."

The simulation, the movie, is greater than the dispossessed actuality, whatever that may be. A movie is visceral, gut thinking, truth. Why fight it, as long as there is a chicken in every pot.

<comment><USER50> at the time of this writing, this post is at the bottom of the page.

and it's probably the best one written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I didn't read through the whole thing... its huge.

Can someone please provide a tldr? Who gains by the conspiracy (if its one)? And what do they gain?

</comment><comment><USER52> It's sad that in all those conspiracy nuts, there might be some legitimate info that will never be heard. Sometimes I even wonder if conspiracy theorists are not just there to drown investigators in nonsensical noise.

Anyway, what would the conspiracy be about ? Getting Obama elected for a second term ? Or if OBL is not dead, announce him dead to make him get out of his hideout ?

One thing is true, being a conspiracy theorist today is not easy. /r/conspiratard seems to be a stranger place that /r/conspiracy although maybe it aims at keeping the mentally weak away from this stuff. I hate getting involved in things.

<comment><USER22> If the question is "who benefits", there's an easy answer for that.

The senate just published a 500 page report detailing the lies that were told by the CIA in order to promote torture.

The actual report was 4500 pages.

It certainly also helps the democrats look good on national defense, but I don't think that's really a root cause of the lie, just a happy accident.

<comment><USER53> So the beneficiary is the CIA and the benefit itself is that they still get to torture people? That doesn't seem like a very big benefit.

edit: I should make it clear that I think Hersh's story is interesting and I really wish other journalists would focus more on the story than on trying to assassinate his character.

I just don't know if permission to torture is a high enough prize to justify a cover up, especially since they could easily just torture people anyway and scrub the evidence if they're willing to resort to subterfuge.

<comment><USER22> Tell that to the CIA.

Diane Fienstein accused them of committing crimes in order to suppress the torture report.[0] A little lying about how Osama was killed seems pretty innocuous next to that, doesn't it?

Military operations are routinely "framed" in a light that makes for the most positive PR spin. See the Jessica Lynch story for a good example of this.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/the-cia-torture- co...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/the-cia-torture-cover- up.html)

<comment><USER53> > Military operations are routinely "framed" in a light that makes for the > most positive PR spin.

That definitely makes more sense to me than trying to keep torture in the toolbox. Looks much better as an all-American raid than a canned hunt where the Pakistanis already had him.

Even with the Feinstein thing, it seems more like any cover up was more about public perception than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's worth reading Hersh's interview with Slate. Hersh comes across as a complete nut job. [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/05/seymour_hersh_interview_on_his_bin_laden_story_the_new_yorker_journalism.single.html)

<comment><USER54> To me he comes off less as a nut job and more as a cranky 78-year-old who's being interviewed by a media outlet that's been attacking him pretty hard.

<comment><USER55> I agree. It's the problem when the other side asks the questions and edits the responses down.

Hersh was clearly annoyed that the interviewer wanted to talk about why the article did not appear in the _New Yorker_. The interviewer's agenda seemed clear: if the _New Yorker_ did not see fit to print it, then I can safely ignore it. (People really do think like this, of course.)

Why would a writer respect such an agenda? So Hersh lets him have it.

Then, the interviewer appears to back off that angle ("Can I tell you why?"), and gave a different reason: He said he's interested in the publication venue because that would indicate a bias in the American press. Hersh says that's interesting.

At the very end, the interviewer seems like he's trying to catch Hersh up in some kind of logical error regarding the venue question ("I feel like you are telling me two different things.") And then it's over.

There's just nothing there. The interviewer asks questions, with a transparent agenda, that a grouchy reporter has heard before. They are kind of second- order to the actual story (i.e., venue). Hersh gets annoyed and hangs up.</comment></comment></comment>


GitHub buttons "down," error cites blocking framing for "security purposes"  - <AUTHOR> http://markdotto.github.com/github-buttons/github-btn.html?user=prezjordan&repo=Melopy&type=watch&count=true

<comment><AUTHOR> Just as a heads up for fellow HNers using "GitHub buttons" on their project pages. Two of mine were affected (displaying many annoying alert popups). It seems GitHub has blocked framing of project pages (GitHub buttons operates as a render GitHub project page in an iframe).

For now, comment them out.</comment>


OpenCart project responds with profanity and censorship to GitHub issue - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/uppfinnarn/9956023

<comment><AUTHOR> Original report (as you can see most of it has been "censored for abuse" by dev.

[https://github.com/opencart/opencart/issues/1286](https://github.com/opencart/opencart/issues/1286)

Screenshots of original posts and responses: [http://imgur.com/a/GRIzy](http://imgur.com/a/GRIzy)

</comment><comment><USER2> I was treated similarly and subsequently labeled a "spammer" in his issue tracker, because I pointed out that OpenCart's password hashing is woefully inadequate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that was an epic meltdown. Good grief.</comment>


Bitcoin just hit $40 US (up $5 in a week) - <AUTHOR> https://coinbase.com/charts

<comment><AUTHOR> Unbelievable rise in such a short amount of time. This is an amazing event.</comment>


The Intelligent Plant: Scientists debate a new way of understanding flora (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant <comment><AUTHOR> Companion video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPql1VHbYl4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPql1VHbYl4)</comment>


Physically stronger Norwegian men are more likely to be married - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827317302549 <comment><USER2> Physical strength can lead to so many things. For example, building muscles release more testosterone and this can change a sense of well being and confidence, boons known to make it more likely to form relationships since the stone age? There's also the pure visuals. Then also strength due to an active, healthy lifestyle, indicators of someone who's got things straight in life. Really, this can be about so many things that I think it is near useless as a study. You don't know what it's about and what it isn't about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, big news. This is like saying that women with larger breasts get more messages on Tinder.

<comment><USER4> It's not exactly the same because in your example the causal relationship is pretty clear: women don't get larger breasts because they get more messages on Tinder.

In this study it's not obvious if men become strong because they are married, or they are married because they were strong.

<comment><USER5> Or a confounding variable: high achieving men work hard in the gym and in their relationships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would imagine that "stronger" men may tend to lifestyle habits (intentionally or unintentionally) that promote their desireability thus maintaining more marriage.

</comment><comment><USER7> Stronger men from a small town perspective is usually more desirable because of the physical demands of the farming/mining/milling culture.

</comment><comment><USER8> File this under the no shit category

</comment><comment><USER9> Marriage != Relationship != Sex.

To me this sounds like they are more likely to commit (possibly by being more desirable specifically for marriage), which is something I find interesting and would like an explanation for.

Maybe higher overall desirability encourages their partners to try to retain them?

<comment><USER5> Or people who are more likely to commit to long term exercise plans are also more likely to commit to long term relationships? Like, maybe it's a discipline thing. Are people with advanced degrees and skills that take discipline to maintain also more likely to be married?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope people aren't upvoting this study because it fits a certain narrative in their head - because the study explicitly states that it is not able, or looking, to determine a causal relationship between grip strength and marriage.

<comment><USER11> I am wondering what is the narrative you are preemptively countering and why is it important to disrupt that narrative?

<comment><USER10> The reason I'm posing this broadly is that there are a broad range of evolutionary psychology, incel, and PUA beliefs that subscribe to the view that a stronger partner is one that is deterministically more attractive to women. This paper doesn't support those views.

I can't think of many other reasons why this article would be upvoted. It focuses on a vanishingly small population of a certain age range in one part of the world. The conclusion I'm coming up with is that men born between 1923 and 1948 in Tromso, Norway who are married are more likely to have a higher grip strength than unmarried men.

<comment><USER12> > The reason I'm posing this broadly is that there are a broad range of > evolutionary psychology, incel, and PUA beliefs that subscribe to the view > that a stronger partner is one that is deterministically more attractive to > women.

But shouldn't, from the PUA, etc., viewpoint, that lead to _lower_ rates of marriage, since more desirable men should have less need to offer commitment to secure sex?

<comment><USER10> That only holds if desirable men prefer to not be married.

Also, being married doesn't prevent a man from having sex outside of marriage.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Advice to create a succesful future version of ourselves? - <AUTHOR> Ever so often we look back in nostalgia, rue missed opportunities and regret our (bad) choices. "What advice would you give a younger version of yourself ?" e.g. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12337537) makes frequent appearance on this and many other fora. But hindsight is 20/20, regret is simply wasted time and life is lived forward not the past.So why not invert the question: What do I need to do right now to be wildly successful in 5 years? <comment><USER2> > What do I need to do right now to be wildly successful in 5 years?

We don't deal with the Big Problems that scare us. Take a look at the force that controls every thought, feeling, and emotion in your life. Look for the weed, rip it out.

On this subject, Tony Robbins is brilliant > [http://fortune.com/2016/07/18/tony-robbins-netflix- documenta...](http://fortune.com/2016/07/18/tony-robbins-netflix-documentary- guru/http://fortune.com/2016/07/18/tony-robbins-netflix-documentary-guru/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Read this book [https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still- eboo...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still- ebook/dp/B00COOFBA4) it's all about how to build a succesful future version of yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been reading about building good habits and learning discipline lately and have been using those techniques to push myself towards a successful future. Things such as working on myself, always working hard on something (going to the gym, reading more, build more personal projects) and sticking to simple and easy routines daily. For the past month i've transitioned from waking up at 8AM to head to work to waking up at 6:30AM so that I can head to the gym before work. I know I can go to the gym after work if I want, but studies show you have way more willpower and control in the morning then evening, so I know if I wait til after work i'll come up with excuses 80% of the time to skip the gym, whereas i've only missed a scheduled workout once in the past month.

Keep building those little habits and eventually they will snowball to successful situations.

"Luck is preparation meets oppurtunity" \- Forgot who said this

</comment><comment><USER5> If I have 1825 days left to live, and afterwards my life would be passed on to another "soul", how would I live it?

</comment><comment><USER6> This was a exercise in the "Will It Fly" book early on.

I have started doing the 5 minute journal, and the sentence on how could I have made today better really helps with this aspect. You start to notice some patterns over time, and that can help guide change.</comment>


Six ways to experiment with AdSense and grow your earnings - <AUTHOR> http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/02/six-ways-to-experiment-with-adsense-and.html <comment><USER2> Can anyone explain why the original blogspot post ( [http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/02/six-ways-to- experiment-w...](http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/02/six-ways-to-experiment- with-adsense-and.html) ) links only to "invis.gif 1x1 pixels" ? I've been rechecking this url over past 12 hours with this same result.

Is this a hacking of blogspot? or something that happens there when a blogspot blog goes bad. Actually I note that the home blog page (<http://adsense.blogspot.com/>) also goes only to that .gif - odd, since surely this is a Google-developed blog, isn't it?</comment>


Source.io – Domain Name For Sale on Flippa - <AUTHOR> https://flippa.com/3079481-very-rare-opportunity-one-of-the-best-io-domains-source-io-no-reserve <comment><USER2> Amazing domain...</comment>


Show HN: Snailchat – Chat at the pace of real life letters - qat-farmer https://snailchat.app/ <comment> qat-farmer I'm the sort of person that doesn't like responding to messages straight away. I don't like being instantly accessible, I think that's an ill of the modern world.

As well as not wanting to spend all my time on my phone, I also want to take the time to write out quality responses. I've had enough of people getting annoyed at my slow replies as if I owe them a fast response.

To combat this, I made a chat Web App where chat messages get delivered at the pace of real life letters. On top of that, there's no annoying notifications or other annoying bloat.

Have a look, and if you want to reach out to me on the app my username is snailchat.</comment>