Show HN: Automatic web page content extractor for Node.js and the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ageitgey/node-unfluff <comment><USER2> Reminds me of an article I wrote a while back on the "meat algorithm" I had developed and used as part of LeadNuke to create more printable versions of pages. What had surprised me at the time was how simple it was to get just the main content of a page for like 95% of the pages I tried.

[http://www.alfajango.com/blog/create-a-printable-format- for-...](http://www.alfajango.com/blog/create-a-printable-format-for-any- webpage-with-ruby-and-nokogiri/)

<comment><USER3> I fear you're exaggerating the success-rate of your algorithm. Have you tried to test it, if so: How did you measure a successful extract?

The reason for my skepticism is Arc90's readability extension [1]. At the surface it looks more complex. I could of course be wrong!

[1] [https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/develop/reada...](https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/develop/readability.js)

<comment><USER2> A successful extract was measured as a page for which you could read with the title and body intact, and by which my application could call `content.text` on the result and get the plain text of a page without the header, footer, navigation, etc.

The complexity of the readability plugin seems to be due to the fact that it actually does a lot more than just making something readable. For example, the point of my algorithm was to strip all style information from a page and show only the content, leaving it to be styled according to the global stylesheet. Notice that my script not only removes linked stylesheets and style tags, but also style attributes of all elements. The readability plugin actually does things like counting reference links and styling them a certain way [1].

It has 53 lines dedicated to both getting and normalizing the article title, when the vast majority of the time, it's just the first h1 or HTML title attribute (which could be a one-liner and is also outside the scope of the "meat algorithm" since it's just trying to get the body) [2].

It has 22 lines dedicated to injecting a custom readability footer into the page [3].

It has 74 lines dedicated to converting all inline links to footnotes [4].

It has 55 lines dedicated to injecting typekit fonts [5]. And on and on.

It also does things like figuring out when to float an image in the article and when to make it full-width [6] (as opposed to just leaving the image inline with no styling, as my script does).

And it even dedicates 333 lines of code to finding pagination links to build content from multi-page articles [7], which my script simply doesn't do, since it only cares about the content of the current page.

It also does things like computing a content-weight score for parts of the page, I'm guessing to determine a relative heuristic for which parts are most likely to be the main content [8]. This is actually the path I had started to go down, before I realized that my much simpler version solved 95% of the use- cases I had, and that, for my purposes, I didn't really care if it failed 5% of the time.

I think the discrepancy in complexity can be explained really easily:

a) The readability plugin does a _lot_ of things not directly related to simply grabbing the content of the page.

b) There's a lot of complexity involved in trying to get it to work for that last 5% (those are the really weirdly-structured sites, for which you'd need to develop some sort of heuristic and/or learning algorithm).

In other words, no, I didn't exaggerate the success-rate. The readability plugin is just very functionally different. The algorithm in my article is also not the complete script; the algorithm was meant to be a base starting point to build from (certainly you would need to if you need greater than 95% success rate, which most applications would).

 _EDIT: Also should point out, my article was also meant to document my surprise in how easy it was to get a 95% solution. Most of the complexity I 've seen in other scripts is in trying to figure out all HTML nodes on a page which could possibly be related to the main content, so that you can scan for them and reassemble only those nodes. The breakthrough for me was that if you can find one paragraph tag, then you can just go up a level or two to the containing node, and blindly grab all nodes, whatever they may be, within that containing node. The main pages this doesn't work for are pages that don't use paragraph tags in their article body (e.g. plain text with break tags all over the place, which were surprisingly few and far between with my sample set)._

[1] [https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc4...](https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc45fbbb18bac12d6ddbfd04e83d64/readability.js#L490-L536)

[2] [https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc4...](https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc45fbbb18bac12d6ddbfd04e83d64/readability.js#L295-L348)

[3] [https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc4...](https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc45fbbb18bac12d6ddbfd04e83d64/readability.js#L350-L372)

[4] [https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc4...](https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc45fbbb18bac12d6ddbfd04e83d64/readability.js#L462-L536)

[5] [https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc4...](https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc45fbbb18bac12d6ddbfd04e83d64/readability.js#L538-L593js/blob/develop/readability.js#L538-L593)

[6] [https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc4...](https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc45fbbb18bac12d6ddbfd04e83d64/readability.js#L230-L249)

[7] [https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc4...](https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc45fbbb18bac12d6ddbfd04e83d64/readability.js#L1160-L1493)

[8] [https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc4...](https://github.com/Kerrick/readability- js/blob/4596857da3cc45fbbb18bac12d6ddbfd04e83d64/readability.js#L693-L772)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish there was an online demo. I'd like to compare it to diffbot.com(a saas tool we pay for).

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice!

As an aid to extracting the right body content, have you considered comparing multiple pages from the same site, and giving greater weight to content that differs (the article) rather than content that stays the same (the navigation)?

</comment><comment><USER6> How does this compare to Apache Tika? There is also a Node wrapper for Tika but don't remember the name of the module off the top of my head.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure Apache Tika is much more capable. For example, it supports html, csv, ppt, etc instead of just html. But it also requires Java/Maven and the installation process is far from simple.

Unfluff is a small, simple .js library that can be installed and used in seconds. It doesn't have any external dependencies on data files or other language runtimes. So it just depends on which tool is right for your job. If you are writing a quick script, this might be a lot easier to use.

<comment><USER7> > Unfluff is a small, simple .js library

it's written in CoffeeScript

(The transpiled JS files lack comments and meaningful new lines of the original CoffeeScript source.)

<comment><USER8> You can, of course, configure the coffeescript compiler to output a more readable compilation output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can I use it to monitor source code changes of a Google Code projects, eg ([https://code.google.com/p/dcef3/source/list](https://code.google.com/p/dcef3/source/list)), or a github project? If not can anybody recommend a good tool for this kind of task? Thanks.

<comment><USER10> If you look at the source of that page, you'll see:

      <link type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" href="/feeds/p/dcef3/gitchanges/basic">

which refers to an Atom feed for the project's commits.

Same for Github projects, e.g. at [https://github.com/petdance/ack2](https://github.com/petdance/ack2) you will find:

      <link href="https://github.com/petdance/ack2/commits/dev.atom" rel="alternate" title="Recent Commits to ack2:dev" type="application/atom+xml" />

<comment><USER9> Great! Thanks for the info, and sorry for the dump question without doing any research myself first - that idea occurred to me but I've never had the time to investigate into it :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks, I am making my own tool to manage my bookmarks and research and this is gonna be very useful!

</comment><comment><USER12> Pretty cool, I wrote a utility in Go [1] similar to this that also extracts and compresses related CSS, JS and images for offline use.

[1] [https://github.com/johnernaut/webhog](https://github.com/johnernaut/webhog)

</comment><comment><USER13> Not long ago I started a similar project, [https://github.com/mvasilkov/readability2](https://github.com/mvasilkov/readability2)

Works as a SAX consumer, pretty fast, not sure how accurate.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wrote a similar library a while back ([https://github.com/bndr/node- read](https://github.com/bndr/node-read)), but without the command line tool. This seems cool.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love it! Very simple and straightforward interface. Makes it very easy to incorporate into a bigger workflow. You've followed the "do one thing well" command line tool philosophy to a T.

</comment><comment><USER16> whats the unique value proposition of this compared to the bajillion other web scrapers out there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most basic scraping libraries require you to input a bunch of regexs or css selectors to manually specify what you want to extract from a page. They require custom coding for each page you want to scrape. This library is totally automatic - you just pass in an html page and it returns the most 'texty' text on the page with no custom coding.

There are of course other libraries like this (boilerpipe, Goose, etc), but they tend to be written in Java and Python. The very few existing Node solutions didn't fit my needs so I hacked this together. So for people looking for a quick and simple Node solution, this might be useful.

<comment><USER17> there is the boilerpipe library which I used to do a test on New Scientist a while back - we wanted to use ML to identify usefull clusters of content.</comment></comment></comment>


About unsupervised language models, or unicorns in South America - <AUTHOR> https://flancia.org/posts/about-unicorns-in-south-america/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. This is my first relatively serious try at writing an article about current events in the field of ML/AI, which is something I've wanted to do for some time now. All feedback is welcome, although I know attention is a scarce resource in the internet, so my expectations are adequately low :)

I tried to hit a scientific communication tone. My background in ML is relatively shallow still, although I'm working on it. It's a work in progress.

This article goes into a very positive (very likely too positive) direction, and glosses over lots of complexity and problems along the way to making good use of computational agents. My intent is to write a series of more in-depth articles on the roadblocks and dangers of this path, or similar paths, and to link to research in this field as I find it (and try to understand it).</comment>


Show HN: Chromecast app I built for a bunch of "video" sites - <AUTHOR> https://dabble.me/cast/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey all - something I put together last night after hearing the news of Google opening up the dev tools.

You can visit, for example, a TED talk, hit the bookmarklet and it will pull down the MP4 behind the scenes and present it on a layer that's now Chromecast friendly. Same goes for Vimeo, Plex.tv (without having to pay the $5/mo) and quite a few other video sites that are most likely against the TOS to link to.

Definitely open to hearing the thoughts of the community!

<comment><USER2> That is just awesome. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool! I was wondering how long it would take for someone to put something together after the SDK came out. Answer: not long!

Question: is this 1) transcoding like "cast this tab" does (assuming not), 2) routing the original data stream via my computer, or 3) having the Chromecast download the stream directly?

And if #3, are there any issues with login permissions, cookies, etc. not being present on the Chromecast?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I'm not doing anything special other than grabbing the MP4 and sending it to Chromecast, so I assume it's #3. As far as login permissions, I haven't run into any with my brief testing. I would assume since I'm grabbing the MP4 file directly (and sometimes even with the temporary timestamp to allow access to the file) it's not going to be much of an issue. Google put out a LOT of sample code to make this relatively easy to implement. Honestly, coming up with the REGEX that worked across as many sites as possible was the hardest part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for this!

I will definitely try it out with plex later today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since Plex transcodes to Chromecast friendly format, this bookmarklet will only cast if your original files are already in MP4, OGG, or WEBM format. So, don't expect your AVI files to cast with the bookmarklet.

Plex is awesome, though, and they deserve that $5/mo for making the Chromecast actually useable.</comment></comment>


0patching a 0-day: Windows gdi32.dll memory disclosure - <AUTHOR> https://0patch.blogspot.com/2017/02/0patching-0-day-windows-gdi32dll-memory.html <comment><USER3> An interesting effort - but the idea of a bug bounty program for 0patching won't work, at least not paid by the companies affected.

Patching 0-day issues usually is _not_ hard in itself. Usually it is just little errors like missing checks for buffer overflows, or some input not sanitized. What __is __hard is making sure that everything still works after the patch. And "everything" is quite a lot in the case of this issue (gdi32.dll). You have to make sure that all still supported software depending on gdi32.dll is still working as it should, that includes multiple Windows versions, multiple Office versions, multiple Internet Explorer versions, multiple ... you get the idea. Microsoft has a lot of products.

Not saying that I don't admire this, but I don't know if any company would be willing to install "some patch" by "someone" with no guarantee that it won't break other things or open other holes. I would always want to install an official patch by an official vendor because I have support and warranty.

If we're talking about some legacy software with no support and no vendor taking care of updates - this is something I could get behind and I think is useful.

<comment><USER4> What about getting vendors into changing their patching habbits? Instead of packing some hundred mega patches just provide micro ones when needed? As you said 0day issues are usually (not allways) easy to fix. Probably you alone are skilled enough to check this couple of code instructions by yourself - <USER2> is not the case with full-blown patch Tuesday packages. I am pretty sure that process could be much cheaper for MS.

<comment><USER5> > What about getting vendors into changing their patching habbits? Instead of > packing some hundred mega patches just provide micro ones when needed?

This was how things worked previously in the industry. There are a number of disadvantages to companies releasing multiple small patches throughout the month:

1\. Users may have to reboot their computers multiple times a week.

2\. Large corporations (with their own back-compat worries) do their own extensive validation of patches. Multiple small patches puts a large seriously burden on IT departments.

The industry has moved towards larger update bundles for good reason.

<comment><USER4> Well, with micropatching you don't need to reboot and you only have to review minimum code changes - and if the patch is not working for you you can unpatch it (with proper permissions, ofcourse).

<comment><USER6> Pretty sure this specific example would require a reboot, changing a Windows kernel DLL. There seems to be some confusion over whether or not the 0patch tool can update the kernel without a reboot, though. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13775550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13775550)

Patching a user mode app/dll would not require a reboot, just a restart of the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Stanka from 0patch here. If you want to enable or disable (aka "patch" or "unpatch" the application) you don't need do restart the application. Not even if your app is running and you've just install 0patch agent. This is how it is designed to work in user space. When the official MS patch is installed (hopefully with the fix) this particular 0patch won't apply anymore.

As we try to make 0patch agent robust and reliable we don't support kernel mode at this moment - we will make this step slow and with great caution.

<comment><USER6> Can you please clarify whether or not this specific patch is user mode or kernel mode? @johntb86 mentioned GDI is split and this is the user mode part.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our micropatch (7 of them, really, for 4 different Windows OS versions) for CVE-2017-0038 is user-mode. As are currently all our micropatches. Processes using gdi32.dll do not need to be relaunched to have it applied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> WMF/EMF has had an infamous history of security problems—most famously, RCE in 2005: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Metafile_vulnerability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Metafile_vulnerability)

<comment><USER8> It is truly an awful format.

Surprisingly it is still the only supported vector format in Office...

<comment><USER9> Hmmm, apparently 2016 and 365 support SVG finally?

[https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Insert-SVG- images-i...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Insert-SVG-images-in- Microsoft-Office-69f29d39-194a-4072-8c35-dbe5e7ea528c)

Only 17 years after the spec was established.

<comment><USER10> ..? I made a bunch of EPS for a coworker's Excel dashboard a while back, worked fine on 2013 and 2007.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Live patching is gaining the momentum - see Ksplice, Kpatch, kGraft, XEN and similar

<comment><USER11> This is not live patching.

<comment><USER6> A 0patch employee stopped by to explain that they live patch user mode only at this point on Windows, kernel mode is a future goal.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782830](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782830)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why does Microsoft not find and instead Google? MS is not a startup and it is their code. Seems weird that Google has to fine their issues.

What does this say about using Google software versus software from Microsoft? Or am I missing something obvious?

<comment><USER13> Google seems to have embarked on a mission to find vulnerabilities in everything that touches the Internet. Good for them (free marketing), good for us.

Forming an opinion about Microsoft vs. Google software quality would require knowing how many similar problems Microsoft found and subsequently patched in their software. Without that data, we can't tell whether Microsoft isn't putting effort into finding vulnerabilities in its software, or whether Google simply got lucky and found something Microsoft missed.

<comment><USER14> > Google seems to have embarked on a mission to find vulnerabilities in > everything that touches the Internet. Good for them (free marketing), good > for us.

And perhaps scaremongerings us to embrace the cloud, and thus ChromeOS...</comment></comment></comment>


Face-aware Image Cropping - <AUTHOR> http://ufoym.com/cropman/

<comment><USER2> Like blt said, there's not a lot of original stuff going on here, but I think it nicely wraps features of other libs in a way that just hands it to developers in a nice little package. It also packages the xml feature file for facial detection. That's convenient. It's like an HTML5 Boilerplate for this specific application.

If OpenCV is CV for the average developer, then this is a taste of CV for anyone.

Five year olds could use this.

</comment><comment><USER3> We've been doing this for years; it's built into many on-demand asset pipelines, like ImageResizer: [http://imageresizing.net/plugins/faces](http://imageresizing.net/plugins/faces)

</comment><comment><USER4> wow, a script that wires up a few command line parameters to a third-party library. this is truly news.

<comment><USER5> Wow, a typical bunk HN comment that adds nothing of substance.

<comment><USER6> yeah, it could do without the snark, but there is a point that this project doesn't really do anything other than wrap opencv with a short python script. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't see why it's made it to the front page.</comment></comment></comment>


Userland xnr jit - <AUTHOR> http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/userland-xnr-jit <comment><USER2> Apple added XO (VM_PROT_EXECUTE_ONLY) in iOS 10 and uses it in JavaScriptCore for JITing.

[https://opensource.apple.com/source/JavaScriptCore/JavaScrip...](https://opensource.apple.com/source/JavaScriptCore/JavaScriptCore-7603.1.30.0.34/jit/ExecutableAllocatorFixedVMPool.cpp.auto.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't seem any more practical a technique than printing the pages to paper and OCRing them on each access.. one signal and two expensive syscalls per randomly accessed page of memory is hardly cheap, especially in the context of a JIT</comment>


Show HN: Announce New Features to Your Users (with pirates & astronauts) - <AUTHOR> http://featurekit.co

<comment><USER2> I clicked your link, saw the loading animation, waited like ten seconds for it to do anything, then left.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. It's a bit heavy, but it is under 1mb & the pingdom average load time is currently 1.1s. I'll test around for edge-cases which might cause above-average load times.

<comment><USER2> It seems to just hang period. Console says that the Google fonts aren't loaded because their MIME type is text/html, not text/css. Don't know if that would stop the rest of the page load or not.

I'm on Firefox on Windows 8.1. No extensions installed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again for the feedback. Testing now on Firefox/Windows 8.1.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The hunt for a Microsoft Silverlight 0-day - <AUTHOR> https://securelist.com/blog/research/73255/the-mysterious-case-of-cve-2016-0034-the-hunt-for-a-microsoft-silverlight-0-day/ <comment><USER2> Wy aren't companies receiving zero day notification pay these people back ? Without it there is no incentive to disclose the bugs to get them fixed. It looks like Google Chrome is more efficient there.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is both clever and disappointing at the same time.</comment>


The 3 Best Things about Work in Mixed Reality - <AUTHOR> https://imagineality.com/2016/11/the-3-best-things-about-work-mixed-reality/ <comment><USER2> If those are the three best things, it seems like kind of a bummer.</comment>


Asciilands: An adventure game composed of text - <AUTHOR> http://asciilands.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> It's interesting. The algorithm the author is trying is of a kind I have tried and, I believe, a mistake.

If you are building a roguelike, just have a sentinel list of entities. That is, do not try to break the level up into a 2d array of containers. Just have a ring, each entity having coordinates, and iterate through it as you need.

If you want to have an ai occupy multiple spaces, have that. Have an 'avatar' ai object own one-to-many (plotable) entities.

The mighty Jeff Lait gave me this insight in a code review. I believe he added, "premature optimisation is the root of all evil." I.e. be happy to iterate through linked lists until you are sure it is a problem.

Check out his game Smart Kobald.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for taking the time to respond to the way it's currently done.

The diagrams can give a slightly wrong impression and it looks like I've communicated the actual behaviour poorly because it works very much like you've described; there are not several objects occupying separate tiles that move in a synchronised way (so the troubles described by zenojevski are not applicable here). The constituents have no self-awareness and store nothing but their own appearance. They come in and out of existence as the object moves and are mere "markers"; they can't be interacted with but instead refer interaction to the object itself.

In that sense, it very much does consist of an 'avatar' ai object with several plotable entities except that the avatar object itself acts as one of the entities while the rest are kinda 'hollow'.

The objects are stored in their locations so this method of spreading them across tiles makes the most sense and you're probably right to be critical of this approach however it reflects reality and part of my objective is to make a program that my friends can contribute to as they learn code themselves and the easiest concepts to grasp are those that reflect reality rather than more abstract ones.

Also it hasn't presented any problems so far so I'd rather work with it than around it.

I hope I've understood and addressed what you're saying. Thanks for checking it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Creator of Asciilands here.

First off, I'm aware of HN but I've never browsed or used HN before. This is my first post and I've had a quick look over the guidelines but I apologise in advance if I violate any established decorum.

The blog linked here by a friend of mine is indeed the full extend of Asciilands' current online presence. The game still has a long way to go as you might be able to tell by the fact that I'm blogging about fairly foundation features like the combat system etc. The first post on the blog talks about why I'm making it; basically to give back to the freeware community and to "make the game you want to play but can't because it doesn't exist".

The blog itself is something I do to keep a log of the development for historical interest once its finished and also to build something of a port- folio piece; code samples are great but a dev blog goes so much deeper. I also just enjoy doing it.

The blog, so far, has really only been read by a few of my friends, some people I studied with a few co-workers so I'm glad to see it has some appeal to people outside of those circles.

I'm happy to answer any questions and accept any feedback you might have on the blog or the project. Thanks for your interest!

<comment><USER4> I really liked the visual style.

Here is an in-game video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWw2HXFAieI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWw2HXFAieI)

<comment><USER3> That's a very old video of some of the earliest test content in the game but it gives and idea. It was basiclaly made as soon as things started moving. I've got a more recent video on the Asciilands facebook page and hopefully video content will start making its way onto the blog soon.

Glad you like the visuals, the appeal is very esoteric but I'm sure there's enough fans of ascii stuff out there to make it work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first two games in the XCOM series, UFO: Enemy unknown and Terror from the deep ([1] and [2], but you can't not know them) use the same kind of layout. Unfortunately this gave rise to a series of issues, largely for the same reason that you wrote about[3]:

> If you mind control them, you'll mind control only one square which will > become hostile against other parts of the alien and may even attempt to > attack them via reaction fire. Control all four sections, and they'll not > try to shoot themselves.

There is more, mainly caused by the "fixes" to other bugs, and frankly on the whole the results are quite hilarious. I guess that you should really really cover every corner for this to work well.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO:_Enemy_Unknown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO:_Enemy_Unknown) [2]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM:_Terror_from_the_Deep](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM:_Terror_from_the_Deep) [3]: [http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Large_units#Large_u...](http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Large_units#Large_units_in_TFTD)

</comment><comment><USER6> Where is the main site to this ascii game?

<comment><USER3> The blog is currently the full extent of Asciilands' online presence. It won't be ready to play for a while yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm.. So this is a MUD in a browser?

I could totally get into that. Just logged into the MUD that I grew to love to confirm the time I spent in there:

>stats Age : 75 days 3 hours 42 minutes 25 (Yep, that's actual "play time")

Looking forward to see how asciilands turns out.

</comment><comment><USER8> Weird, they color the word asciilands but don't link it anywhere. Couldn't figure out how to actually play. A Google search just gives the blog, which just seems to have dev entries.

<comment><USER9> There isn't a public release of it AFAIK. He is just blogging about the continued development.

<comment><USER3> This is correct; public release is a long way off and features are blogged about more or less as they are developed so the foundation level of the features described by the blog is indicative of the development progress.</comment></comment></comment>


As the U.S. Retreats, Canada Doubles Down on Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2017/12/canadanetneutrality/ <comment><USER2> Yet even with the NN, Canadians still pay the highest Internet and mobile charges in the world! [0] They are more taxed than anyone and they still have severe bandwidth caps. Given how their market is ruled by very few large companies, NN is a moot point for them since they pay through the nose anyway. They have no competition and that's a bigger issue. Their politicians always like to pat themselves on the back and are trying to present Canadian situation as better than the US all the time. But the reality is not so clear cut.

[0] [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/how- canad...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/how-canadas- internet-wireless-rates-compare-with-international-prices/article31379589/)

<comment><USER3> Eh. I live in vancouver and pay $34/mo for fibre and $40/mo for unlimited LTE + calling.

I lived in Florida and my net taxes, incl health insurance was the same

<comment><USER4> In Florida, I pay $20/mo for 10mbps cable and it includes 5 cellphone lines w/ unlimited voice+text and 100mb mobile data... $12/month for each additional gb or $45 for unlimited data, shared among the 5 cellphones. [https://www.xfinity.com/mobile/plan](https://www.xfinity.com/mobile/plan)

To keep the $20/mo, I will have to call them after 1 year of service.

In Canada, isn't there a data cap on your fiber internet? I think I have 1tb/mo here for my cable internet.

<comment><USER5> "I will have to call them" ends after a few years. I got brickwalleded trying to renew my starter fees last time; they've raised rates so many times and don't care (and added data caps).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What NN has to do with "freedom of speech, equality and diversity"? The whole article sounds like a bunch of duckspeak, repeating slogans without almost any actual informational content.

Wait, no, I'm wrong, there's one: Canadian NAFTA negotiators have indicated that they support inclusion of a net neutrality provision within the agreement's new digital trade chapter.

What this means? That Canada would require US to create certain regulations as a condition for signing NAFTA? Wouldn't it be kinda presuming - telling US which laws they have? I mean, Canada can have any regulations they want, NN or not, that's their business, but what this has to do with US and NAFTA?

<comment><USER7> I'm not familiar with Canadian law, but we can take an illustrative example from US law. Say you want to stand in the town square with a sign and talk to anyone who will listen about Yemen, or Black Lives Matter, or Universal Basic Income. That is your right, and it's protected by the First Amendment. Setting up a website where you write about your opinions is likewise protected. Eliminating net neutrality potentially makes it much harder for people's voices to be heard, much like the city government suddenly converting all roads into toll roads for the duration of your protest. To me, silencing the voices of the people, or allowing them to speak but not to be heard, impinges on freedom of speech and assembly.

<comment><USER8> > Setting up a website where you write about your opinions is likewise > protected. Eliminating net neutrality potentially makes it much harder for > people's voices to be heard

All the protections and net neutrality didn't help The Daily Stormer.

<comment><USER9> Net Neutrality helped The Daily Stormer alot. There are no known instances of any ISP, regional monopolies or not, throttling or censoring The Daily Stormer on behalf of the ISP's customers.

You might be dishonestly conflating NN into a recent event where The Daily Stormer couldn't find a web host or DNS registrar where inciting violence and terrorism was not prohibited by their terms of service.

Whether or not The Daily Stormer has a right to be hosted is a different debate, one that can only had in a world with Net Neutrality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is that why there is a virtual monopoly on internet connections and mobile options in Canada, and why Canadians pay some of the highest rates in the world for connectivity? Is this why Canadians only have one central news source, is the CRTC a bastion of freedom now all of a sudden? They do such a great job controling television and radio, let's trust them with the internet.

<comment><USER11> This is exact what people don't realize would have happened in the US if net neutrality was kept in place. Classifying ISPs as title II would require them to apply for broadcasting licenses just like television and radio must do. What's the problem with that? Since they can't operate without a broadcasting license, the government can now threaten to revoke their license if they do not comply. The government would be able to strong arm these ISPs to remove anything they deemed as unfavorable content or propaganda (fake news?).

Nationalizing the internet is not what we want here. The FCC's main responsibility is to regulate interstate communication. The FTC's responsibility is the promotion of consumer protection and the elimination and prevention of anticompetitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly. The FTC has much greater power to fight for consumer protections if the ISPs begin throttling, creating fast lanes, pricing tiers, etc.

The US's media machine has also consolidated, along with ISPs becoming content producers themselves and bordering monopoly status. The FCC just a few days ago announced they will work with the FTC to "return jurisdiction to the FTC to police the conduct of ISPs, including with respect to their privacy practices." [0]

Basically the FTC has more power to prevent and break up monopolies. By repealing net neutrality the FCC is saying they will hear consumers concerns and work with FTC to prevent ISPs from hurting consumers, because the FCC alone does not have the power to do that. It's also preventing the US government from forcing ISPs to comply by threatening to revoke their broadcasting license.

[0] [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2017/12/ftc-f...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2017/12/ftc-fcc-outline-agreement-coordinate-online-consumer- protection)

<comment><USER12> The FCC exempted ISPs from the arcane rules. Who would've sued to test that allowance? Verizon again? Your first and second paragraphs are FUD. Your second paragraph is also nonsense because Title II isn't nationalization. Ignoring the exemption, are companies operating under Title II nationalized? I don't know where this kind of ignorance comes from. I see comments like this and can only assume it's astroturfing or trolling but it has to be rebutted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let's please focus on breaking up ISP Monopolies, NN-like effects would be achieved, and much more, by doing so.

<comment><USER14> Let's do both!

It's clear that we need regulation until there is sufficient competition, so why get rid of regulation before competition exists?

<comment><USER15> > "It's clear that we need regulation until there is sufficient > competition..."

I don't think it's as "clear" as you seem to think it is. What does seem to be a matter of historical fact is that the FCC has _never_ been an organization which has had an interest in, or been able by fiat to, increase competition in the telecommunications industry. The US basically went for the entire 20th century with a heavily-regulated, government-enabled, monopolistic telecom network (AT&T, Verizon landline systems & DSL). The parts of the internet which have seen investment, growth, and improvement over the last 30 years? Yup, the unregulated, non-common-carrier networks (cable and fiber).

> "why get rid of regulation before competition exists?"

Because lowering barriers-of-entry into a market is _exactly_ the best way to encourage competition in _any_ industry. Before anyone starts an ISP (or any other business), they consider the costs of doing so vs. the expected payoff if they succeed. Regulatory compliance (especially FCC common-carrier compliance) is an added cost of doing business which absolutely could be enough to keep a business from starting up.

You don't need NN to get telcos to behave. When did Comcast lower their prices and up their speeds? When Google Fiber came to town. When did Google Fiber come to town? When they got the municipality to remove as many barriers-to- entry as they could

<comment><USER16> > Regulatory compliance (especially FCC common-carrier compliance) is an added > cost of doing business which absolutely could be enough to keep a business > from starting up.

Have you calculated how much does that really cost? I'd say it's several orders of magnitude lower[0] than the consequence of other regulations that are the real cause there are no more ISPs.

[0] (response to a comment I made wrongly stating it doesn't cost a cent) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15891156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15891156)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Our biggest advocacy group Open Media would say otherwise. Our regulations are constantly under threat by the big ~3 telecom companies.

[https://openmedia.org/en/ca](https://openmedia.org/en/ca)

Edit: Maxime Bernier, in his tweet, creates a false dichotomy between government regulation and more competition. Yes we need more competition, but no we don't need less regulation unless that regulation is a major contributor to getting started. Now granted, I don't know a lot about getting started in telecom, but I suspect there isn't legislation in place that actively discourages new players.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know what issue this could possibly address. Canada's problem is access and sometimes lack of available competition, not neutrality. I'm in a place where two of the major ISPs serve, and I have a gigabit downlink for not a huge amount of money, but just a few blocks away it's possible you only have one (DSL-only) provider who will barely sell you 20mb/s for the same. All of this is basically complete historical accident relating to deployment of cable TV.

<comment><USER19> We have a tenth of the US population and are slightly larger in size. My province alone is twice the size of California with a population of one million people. Infrastructure is a gong show when it comes to profitability.

In my province many areas are served by one provider, simply because it is not profitable to run infrastructure out to these areas. Near more populated areas there is more competition and major providers however. Hell, the only reason they have connections in the first place is because the provider was run and funded by the provincial government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sorry.. why is net neutrality even an issue? The moment a big operator tries to increase fees for faster speeds, customers will move to an operator that does not do those things. New technology will provide higher speeds at lower cost. So why does it matter to have net neutrality laws?

An problematic issue that tech might focus on would be to solve the problem of overconsumption of energy by cryptocurrencies.

</comment><comment><USER21> Are Canadian vpn services subject to NN regulations?

</comment><comment><USER22> before you get too excited...this is the same country that mandates that some % of TV and radio content be "Canadian"

<comment> 52-6F-62 It has something to do with being flooded with American content and perspectives. You see, it's been understood here for some time what kind of effect media can have on a population. This seems to be something America is just coming to terms with, regarding organizations like Sinclair.

It's been Canada's struggle for some time to maintain an identity in the face of some kind of ideological imperialism. _Manifest Destiny_ is still fresh on Canadian minds, and non-points like this implying some kind of tyranny are _grossly_ mal-informed. Our CRTC who made that ruling is the same CRTC who is ensuring net neutrality and mandating performant broadband internet as a basic telecom service. Things the FCC just thought not worth protecting for Americans.

edit: To clarify myself a bit: This is an impassioned subject for me. I think the US is a great nation—but implying something nefarious about Canadians' attempt at self-preservation, while residing next to a federation like the US, is incomprehensible.

<comment><USER22> in reality it means paying taxes so the CBC can make a shitty Canadian version of Law And Order that no one watches

almost none of the "Canadian" content relates any national values...it is almost uniformly just garbage remakes of US shows

<comment><USER23> Canadian TV has made some iconic shows. I don't think any country has has a show like Kids in the Hall. Degrassi Jr High, Mr Dressup, Today's Special, Road to Avonlea, Being Erica, Street Legal, Beachcombers, Wok With Yan!, Babar, Trailer Park Boys, Edison Twins, The Tudors, Just Like Mom, North of 60, ENG, Flashpoint, Friendly Giant, My Secret Identity, Da Vinci's Inquest, The Newsroom, You Can't Do That on Television, Danger Bay, Traders, Fraggle Rock, Catwalk, Dear Aunt Agnes, Hammy the Hamster, The Littlest Hobo, Passe Partout, Polka Dot Door, The Green Forrest, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Corner Gas, Arctic Air. Show me something derivative in that list.

<comment> 52-6F-62 And thanks to Canadian patronage of the arts and media, creators of Fraggle Rock including poets Dennis Lee and B.P. Nichol played influential roles in productions of international acclaim like The Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. It certainly doesn't stop there.

Let's not forget Second City Toronto, Rick Mercer, and newer comedic hits like Fubar and Letterkenny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The rest of the world needs to bypass the US with its internet routing.

<comment><USER25> At least China is doing that.

<comment><USER26> More than just them: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS_Cable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS_Cable)

<comment><USER27> >"[T]here is a growing wariness among the BRICS countries that when their data traffic goes through hubs in Europe or the United States, it incurs a greater 'risk of potential interception...'"

I don't know how they square that given it goes though Russia, China, India etc... as if those three neither had snooping capability nor wanted to be able to snoop.

<comment><USER28> Also, while it may drive up the price a little, the idea the NSA won't be able to tap into worldwide internet just because the bits don't travel through the US is naive.

<comment><USER29> No security solution is full proof but it's a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER27> How is that a 'step in the right direction' for privacy?

The whole proposition is preposterous. Russia, India and China all are known to monitor their citizens comms as a matter of course. It's not even hidden or prefaced.

If anything, this makes it easier for those countries to intercept their own citizens' comms --which is probably their whole intent.

<comment><USER25> At least you make sure that they are no monitored by US, in addition to their own government.

TBH, I am so disappointed with US government:

* Cannot take care of its own people

* Initiated wars and instability all over the world

* Cannot find the right leader

* Spying on anyone and everyone

What a fucked-up government...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Canadians already pay the highest fees in the world for internet access. Regulation is only going to make it more difficult for competition to emerge.

The solution to most of problems is competition, not regulation.

<comment><USER14> Let's be direct about what this "regulation" is.

Any action against net neutrality is action against customers. There is no value in removing net neutrality regulation, and it will have _no_ effect on competition.

Just because something can be described using the same noun does not give it the same meaning, value, or effect.

 _One_ (not "the") solution to this problem is competition. Since that competition does not exist, we resort to _another_ solution.

<comment><USER30> > Any action against net neutrality is action against customers.

How did you reach that conclusion?

It's like saying "Any action against all-you-can-eat buffets is action against customers".

Do you believe in pay neutrality, search results neutrality, store catalog neutrality, journal opinion neutrality, etc?

How about Tesla making superchargers free to Tesla cars only?

The world is not neutral, and that's completely fine. I don't see why it should be different for ISPs. If lack of options is the problem then all of our focus should be put toward making the field more competitive, not solidify and demotivate existing monopolies by dictating their business model.

I'm sure Net Neutrality is motivated by good intentions, but I can't see any long-term benefits to it.

<comment><USER14> Net Neutrality itself is an ideal. It is distinct from any regulation enforcing it.

Net Neutrality means the internet itself is a free market.

> How did you reach that conclusion?

I haven't heard a single point to the contrary, and yes, I have asked several times in several places for one.

The only statements I have heard against net neutrality regulation are against its being regulation, and _nothing_ else. The only parties with something to gain from a non-neutral internet are ISPs. That gain comes at the cost of abusing customers, to varying degrees.

Your original comment was lamenting the current lack of competition between ISPs. Can I take that to mean you believe in free markets?

Well, the internet itself is a market, and currently free (as in freedom) for the vast majority of its users. There are many obvious advantages to this. That freedom depends on users' ability to use it however they want to. Clearly any constraint on the use of the internet goes against that freedom.

For ISPs who want to increase profits rather than improve infrastructure, a non-neutral internet is clearly a way to do that, allowing for new sources of revenue, and the right to blame customers who use more bandwidth for "using the internet wrong", rather than themselves for not having built the necessary infrastructure.

Clearly, such actions are to the detriment of customers.

That brings us to the regulation part of Net Neutrality _regulation_.

Bad actors - in this case, ISPs who would rather abuse customers than help them - need a significant reason to do otherwise, usually financial.

There are two clear reasons we can give them:

1\. A free market. With competition, customers can choose the provider to support, giving ISPs a financial reason _not_ to abuse customers.

2\. Regulation. If it is illegal to abuse customers, and that law is enforced, ISPs have a fiscal reason not to abuse customers.

Since we _do not_ have a free market with competition between ISPs, the clear choice is regulation. If that point ever changes, I will be totally fine with removing the regulation, albeit my own (potentially unpopular) opinion.

Like any other Libertarian, I am very skeptical of regulation. Before I accept the notion of something being regulated, I am concerned with why it is needed, what alternatives there are, and what detriment that regulation will have.

So far, I have lined out why we need net neutrality regulation, what alternative there is, and why it is not currently viable, leaving me with what detriment the regulation itself will have.

After careful consideration, I cannot find _any_ detriment to net neutrality regulation.

The idea that this specific regulation will _hurt_ free market competition, which Ajit Pai claimed as his reason for removing the regulation, is not only nonsense: it is _malicious_.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Every Coder Should Read TDD By Example - <AUTHOR> http://www.codelord.net/2010/01/12/every-coder-should-read-tdd-by-example/

<comment><USER2> I found TDD By Example very elementary after reading about TDD online. I didn't really get anything new from it.</comment>


Clickpass (YC 07) launches - Founder's launch story, feelings and post-analysis - <AUTHOR> http://www.immadsnewworld.com/2008/03/clickpass-launches-launch-story.html

<comment><USER2> Bug report: I linked my hn username to clickpass. When I go to clickpass.com, I keep getting redirected to <http://www.clickpass.com/account_intro/intro_1>. Please always leave me with access to the landing page; I cannot even get to a support form now.

<comment><USER3> Hey mwerty,

I know what the issue is, sorry about that I am going to put in a fix. Thanks for the feedback!

update: fixed

<comment><USER2> Thanks and best of luck!</comment></comment></comment>


Google Employees Sleep In Alien-Like Pods - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5566465/google-employees-sleep-in-alien+like-pods

<comment><USER2> I'm impressed that MetroNaps has discovered the optimal napping position.

I think I would be more comfortable sleeping in a wierdo pod if there weren't people walking buy taking pictures of my limp limbs.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would probably nap all day.</comment>


Info-ladies make life easier in Bangladesh - <AUTHOR> http://southasia.oneworld.net/fromthegrassroots/info-ladies-make-life-easier-in-bangladesh/ <comment><USER2> This makes me think about how sometimes a tiny seemingly inconsequential amount of what you may have in abundance can make all the difference to someone with next to zero of it.

Its also amazing to me that, if people need it, some entrepreneur will start giving it to them, if at all possible.

I remember reading about this guy who had a cell phone and it only worked in one part of the village. And that's exactly where people were lined up to pay him to use it. very cool</comment>


Applied for job, got 351 page report of LIKED tweets - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/AdhocZone/comments/iaalsh/applied_for_job_got_351_page_report_of_liked/ <comment><USER2> Through the comments I noticed this: [https://github.com/Nick- Gottschlich/Social-Amnesia](https://github.com/Nick-Gottschlich/Social- Amnesia)

> Social Amnesia aims to make your social media (twitter/reddit) only exist > within a time period that you choose. For many people, there is no reason > they want to have years old tweets or reddit comments publicly accessible. > With Social Amnesia, set the time period you want to keep, whitelist posts > and items you want to preserve indefinitely, and let Social Amnesia wipe the > rest out of existence.

<comment><USER3> That's just awesome. Thanks for sharing. As an internaute, you should also google your gamer name and old forum's speudo. You may find some funny things about your past-self.</comment></comment>


Elon Musk to start hyperloop project in Maryland - <AUTHOR> http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-hyperloop-in-baltimore-20171019-story.html <comment><USER2> Approvals were supposed to be a gigantic barrier, but...

> Administration officials said they will treat the hyperloop like a utility, > and permitted it in the same way the state allows electric companies to > burrow beneath public rights-of-way.

>"We have all sorts of utilities beneath our roadways," Rahn said. "In essence, this didn't need anything more than a utility permit."

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.wired.com/2013/08/hyperloop-elon- musk/](https://www.wired.com/2013/08/hyperloop-elon-musk/)

"But he reiterated that he's got too much on his plate with both Tesla and Space X."

Guess things slowed down at Tesla and SpaceX.

<comment><USER4> Or he shrewdly got thousands of people to map out the first level problem space of this technology, and now swoops in with The Boring Company to capture the spoils of their work.

The origin story of The Boring Company: spontaneous genius while Tweet- driving? or carefully planned PR campaign?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was from Oct 19th and is somewhat old news by now.</comment>


Ask HN: Have You Ever Hired Developers to Work on Your Personal Projects? - <AUTHOR> I've always had this idea in the back of my mind that I could find some talent on vworker or whatever to work on the miriad of personal projects I've wanted to do. I've never actually done it though. Have you done this? What was your experience like? Was it successful or a complete failure? What was the project? <comment><USER2> Hired a developer on UpWork to build a basic dashboard for a startup idea I was working on. Dashboard got completed, code was fine, but took far longer than I expected. I guess you get what you pay for. Startup idea flopped for other reasons. Will try and write it off on my taxes this year.

<comment><USER3> tried that on upwork and as you said it take a lot longer than what you planned for ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That depends on what kind of resources do you have in more abundance or are more willing to invest in those projects... You might have lots of ideas and some spare time but not much money, in that case you'd be better off working on some of those ideas yourself (obviously time is a very limited resource so if it's only you, what you can accomplish is limited by the amount of time you can put into it). Or you might have lots of money and very limited spare time (or maybe you want to use the time for something else, or maybe you want to tackle several projects at once and just managing them all would take all of your time), in that case, if you can spare the money, it would make sense to pursue some of your personal projects with some external help...

</comment><comment><USER5> From my personal point of view, I've done many small-medium projects. I'd say on average 3-5 experiments per week (trying ideas out on JSFiddle, drawing pad or just an .html) and 2-3 finished projects per month. My main motivation is to keep learning and trying new things so it wouldn't make much sense for me to hire someone for this.

I've thought about it though for documentation and testing, but then again doing it myself and because I was a student (so no $) I also learned a lot.

BTW, What kind of projects are we talking about? I'm freelancing now :)

<comment><USER3> Franciscop, i have an idea that i am willing to fund. do you have a link of your work

<comment><USER5> Sure, you can see some projects here (all pinned projects are mine): [http://github.com/franciscop/](http://github.com/franciscop/) or in my needs- to-be-updated website [http://francisco.io/](http://francisco.io/)

But it highly depends on the kind of project, I will start in Toptal soon so money is not such a big motivator as it is the kind of project/things to learn/tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> le-mark I hired a freelancer once, i had a program static analysis project and I paid some one to pull the parser out of an open source project and package it up independently. The project didn't get much further than that. The money was wasted unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes. So far it worked nicely for me and got to establish professional relationships with a couple of them.</comment>


Show HN: The simple apache mesos framework written by golang - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ynqa/mesos-fwgo <comment><USER2> _in_ golang, not by

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for point out. I apologize for my poor English :_(</comment></comment>


Our Water System: What a Waste - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/opinion/our-water-systemwhat-a-waste.html <comment><USER2> <This state of affairs, which is the focus of a summit meeting on Tuesday at the White House>

It's so important to the Administration that they decide to hold the Summit when the President is out of the country?</comment>


Fructose increases diabetes and heart disease - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6954603.ece

<comment><USER2> If the conclusions of this study are validated, the food industry is going to be hit by a wave of class-action lawsuits that'll make cigarette litigation look like an amicable chit-chat.

If I was in the market I'd be shorting Archer Daniels Midland and a whole bunch of end-product companies starting with Coke and Pepsi. And when you consider how much of the meat industry has switched to feeding cattle on corn instead of grass...yikes. It may take a few years, but governments beset by rising medical care costs (many of which are obesity-related) are inevitably going to try for some recovery.

<comment><USER3> Lawsuits? Who wouldn't want a nice, insulating layer of fat to protect their heart? I use a Pepsi IV daily and haven't gotten sick in at least a week and a half.

On a more serious note, the food industry has an immense amount of power in Washington and I think change in just a few years is highly optimistic, but I hope you're right.

<comment><USER4> "On a more serious note, the food industry has an immense amount of power in Washington and I think change in just a few years is highly optimistic,"

For sure. This is an industry that arranged so that they can sue you if you diss them.

[http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2009/11/burger-...](http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2009/11/burger- bashing-and-sirloin-slander-food-disparagement-laws-in-the-united-states/) <http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1997Q2/eat.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To steal a line, nutrition is younger than it seems. We screwed it up fundamentally. This is just another example.

This study contradicts the glycemic index theory which claims glucose, specifically rice and potatoes, are the worst carbohydrates sources because they're high-GI. Truth is, we're better adapted to glucose. The body converts all carbohydrates (except fiber) sources to glucose, and then to glycogen. There's a reason blood sugar is glucose. The body prefers it.

Fructose - Glucose Study Showdown [1] _(a)13.9% increase in LDL cholesterol but doubled Apoprotein B (b) 44.9% increase in small LDL_

[1] Dr. Davis is a cardiologist that has reversed atherosclerotic plaque in thousands of patients. He recommends a diet where most calories come from fat. Here's his analysis of studies relating fructose to heart disease: <http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Fructose>

<comment><USER6> The idea behind GI theory is not (I believe) that glucose is bad for you, but that too much in one short hit is bad for you. Yes, the body converts all carbohydrates to glucose, but it takes much longer for complex carbs to turn into straight glucose than it does simpler ones, spreading out the absorption. It isn't about fructose vs glucose, but rather fast absorption vs slow absorption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This linked article is junk[1], but the study on which it is based is rather interesting:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/>

The gave either fructose or glucose based to volunteers over a period of 10 weeks, and seem to have shown a clear statistical difference between the reaction to the two. Although both produced similar total weight gains, there were consistent differences in how the volunteers reacted to each:

"These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically increases DNL, promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults."

[1] The "six times sweeter" claim is false, and indicates a lack of both fact checking and logic. If it was 6x sweeter, you wouldn't need anywhere near as much of it!

<comment><USER8> can we ban posting news article that are crappy summaries of studies?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, posters like pg are really turning this place into reddit ;)

<comment><USER8> This is really just a specific instance of "Please submit the original source". In this case there is often an assumption that readers cannot understand the actual article and we need journalists who interview scientists to summarize it for us. I almost always find that, as in this article, there are errors in the news summary, and I have come to the opinion that you can't learn anything about health by reading these kinds of health news summaries.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I agree completely. I much prefer a link to a paper and a self-comment to a confusing news item. I just couldn't resist the cheap laugh. Sorry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So it's time to get rid of the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Sugar_Program> (tariff on sugar, making fructose cheaper). That's going to make some growers and states really really mad.

<comment><USER10> I suspect that we'll see a much bigger push towards biodiesel as high fructose corn syrup continues to get attacked. Also, anybody capable of growing corn should be capable of growing soybeans, which is something that's also added to every type of food (if not an outright substitute). The corn growers will adapt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wait, this title is misleading. There's a huge difference between the crystalline fructose you can buy at good grocery stores and the High Fructose Corn Syrup manufacturers shove into every food they can.

It's like saying water must be bad for you since we tried forcing someone to drink 5 gallons at once and they got water poisoning.

</comment><comment><USER12> _"Even some fruit drinks that sound healthy contain fructose._ "

Uh... _fruit_ has fructose. All of them do.

<comment><USER13> If anyone can help me understand: what is the difference between eating a food with a certain fructose percentage on HFCS, and a fruit which has the same amount of fructose?

And what is the difference on drinking some artificial drink with a fructose percentage, and pure fruit juice, containing the same amount of fructose?

I saw a presentation once arguing that fruits come with "the poison and the cure", in that the fibers counter the fructose. But that doesn't sound very healthy under the perspective of the study, does it?

Also, does that mean that, again assuming what the study says, its better to eat glucose based sugar foods than eating fruits, on the "sugar" perspective?

<comment><USER13> Also, in the case of the juice, if it doesn't have the fibers that the fruit has, is it just as bad as soda then (assuming same fructose proportions, of course)?

<comment><USER14> Although there are plenty of junk juices out there -- the other bad things in soda give it an edge in nastiness over fruit juice.

For example: acidity. Typical pH ranges of colas are 2.5 - 4.2. It literally causes your body to breath faster (exhaling CO2 makes you more alkaline) and if necessary pull calcium out of your bones to maintain your body's pH between 7.35-7.45. If your pH drops below 7.35 you go into acidosis; much farther and you die.

Drink excessive soda and avoid exercise if you want weak bones and osteoporosis.

<comment><USER13> Right, but I dont mean junk juices. I mean natural fruit juices, the one just out of the fruit. They are supposedly full of fructose and no fibers, right? So are they just as bad, on a fructose point of view (as in supposedly has the bad side effects the article lists) as a cola with the same amount of fructose derived from HFCS in it?

<comment><USER14> Theoretically, maybe, but in practice, the food industry's HFCS sources are typically of abysmally low quality. It's almost entirely from genetically modified corn which has been reported to cause kidney problems for some people.

There's also pesticides and other contaminants.

For example, mercury: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/01...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012601831.html)

Most health food stores (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, etc.) have a policy against stocking products containing HFCS.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the explanation. The effects of the fructose enumerated on the article, tho, are the same.

I did read about the difference in proportions being the biggest propel fact too, it was mentioning a cup of tomato had about 3g of fructose, whereas a regular soft drink had +25g (don't recall the real numbers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> HFCS 55 is actually (according to Wikipedia, anyway), about as sweet as sucrose. Even pure fructose "is generally regarded as being 1.73 times sweeter than sucrose," so I'm not sure where they're getting the six times number.

<comment><USER16> Probably screwed up trying to say 6 times sweeter than glucose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Aside from the quality of the article, there seems to be a lesson about speculatively changing one's basic diets to things that _appear_ to be safer. Fructose was promoted as a substance which didn't have the high glycemic index of sucrose. Low and behold the final results seem to be worse.

The effects of the indigestible fats that still taste appealing probably won't be know for a bit but they could be scary. Who knows what final results will occur with other speculative alterations of the diet (fortunately, calorie restriction is very small fad).

<comment><USER18> The indigestible fats are demonstrably non-absorbable, so they are less likely to have subtle, sinister side-effects of which we are not yet aware. (By demonstrably, I mean they are easily detected, both by the consumer of said fats, and by lab tests looking for steatorrhea: <http://www.annals.org/content/132/4/279.2.full> ).

There are risks, and they are fairly well-characterized: you risk malabsorption of fat-soluble vitamins (K,A,D,E).

The fructose issue is far more terrifying, both because (a) it is absorbed, and (b) the epidemiology and biochemistry are plausible.

You know a product is bad for you when it has to put out commercials claiming that it's no worse for you than sugar...

<comment><USER17> Mmm,

Well, I believe that one can prove that these chemicals aren't absorbed by the human digestive tract.

I offer that one might INDEED experience "subtle, sinister side-effects" by way of substances which "merely" pass through the digestive tract. I know that eating fair quantities dirt or sawdust generally is rightly discouraged.

Of course, this isn't _certain_ ... bu, bu, but my point is that we moderns haven't so far done well by offering ourselves for science's experimentation.

There might will likely be a tipping point, where this science finally delivers more than it takes away. But we ought to take concerning whether we've reached that point or not.

<comment><USER18> I guess my point wasn't that Olestra has no important side effects, but instead that it has very important side effects which are in plain view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't sucrose just as bad as HFCS, though?

<comment><USER20> Sucrose can be regulated by your body with Sucrase, whereas HFCS cannot. Maybe that's part of the reason why so many Americans are overweight? Hard to escape HFCS in the average diet. Reference: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- fructose_corn_syrup#Cane_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- fructose_corn_syrup#Cane_and_beet_sugar)

<comment><USER21> Some Good documentary films about food...

<http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food>

<http://www.foodincmovie.com/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Corn_%28film%29>

(You can rent the last two on iTunes)

<comment><USER22> For some good reading on the subject, check out Ray Peat's article "Glycemia, starch, and sugar in context" at <http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glycemia.shtml>.

While not specifically about sugars, the Weston Price book is a good read about traditional diets as well: [http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Physical- Degeneration-Weston...](http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Physical-Degeneration- Weston-Price/dp/0916764206/).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I know when I eat a fructose-free diet, I have a much more "tame" alimentary canal, if you know what I mean.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Just last week I cut out fructose." --Kramer</comment>


SEBI (India) Says Angel Funds Must Not Invest in Cos Older than 3 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigwhat.com/sebi-angel-funds-297/

<comment><USER2> Makes sense. If they invest in companies older than 3 years, that would not amount to an early stage investment, what the Angel Funds are meant to be.

The fact that there are Angel Funds willing to invest in companies beyond 3 years in existence doesn't speak much for either the company or the fund itself!</comment>


Marc Andreessen: Flying cars are closer than you think - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/a/verge-2021/marc-andreessen-horowitz-verge-interview <comment><USER2> Look into zee aero, Google's super duper secret flying car concept. From what I could gather they're building a hybrid, using wankel engines to provide power and maybe some batteries or supercaps for the massive power boost needed on VTOL takeoff and landing.

Cool stuff

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is the thing - For something to fail you need just one factor to fail, for something to work you need all the factors to work together.</comment>


Astronauts say riding Falcon 9 rocket was different from space shuttle - <AUTHOR> https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/06/12/astronauts-say-riding-falcon-9-rocket-was-totally-different-from-the-space-shuttle/ <comment><USER2> Who can sum it up with the least amount of words: Liquid smoother ride than solid rockets

<comment><USER3> Which one is the Space Shuttle and which one is the Falcon 9?

<comment><USER4> The Space Shuttle had three liquid fuel rocket engines on the orbiter (pulling fuel from the big orange tank), but used two huge solid fuel boosters as well. The Falcon 9 does not use any solid fuel boosters.

<comment><USER5> And for relative thrust, the SSRBs (solid boosters) developed a maximum of 14.7 MN (meganewtons) thrust each, or a total of 29.4 MN. The SSMEs (liquid fueled RS-25 engines) produced ~1.9 MN thrust each, or 5.7 MN for the three.

Of the 35.1 MN of maximum total shuttle launch thrust, about 84% came from the solid boosters, only 16% from the somewhat misleadingly named "main" engines.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Boo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Booster)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25)

<comment><USER4> Percentage of total maximum thrust is one way to look at it. Another is to consider that the SRBs get dropped when the shuttle is going about 4,000 km/h, after which the SSMEs bring the shuttle up to 28,000 km/h.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a nice summary of commentary the astronauts have given since arriving at the space station, but I wish this article would cite the original events. =/

Iirc, this is some combination of a the "SpaceX press event" that they did as well as some words exchanged upon arrival. (I'm not 100% on that, though I do feel like all the quotes came from videos from their first two days in the shuttle.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it's more similar to a Soyuz.

<comment><USER8> The Merlin 1-D Vacuum on the Falcon upper stage is much more powerful than the RD-0124 used on the Soyuz third stage (934 kN vs 294 kN), but uses a single huge engine bell, whereas the Soyuz has four smaller engine bells. I would imagine this might make the Soyuz a bit smoother.

The Falcon also stages really early (this allows you to land the first stage), so the 2nd stage MVac engine is more powerful than is really ideal. As fuel burns away, I understand the MVac has to throttle down a lot to keep g-loads under control. I believe it can throttle down to something like 35%. Rocket combustion tends to get less stable at lower throttle settings, so this probably is part of what they're feeling.

<comment><USER9> Iirc, Soyuz also hot stages. So no dramatic zero-g cutoffs between stages.

<comment><USER10> You're right. The first stage (4 conical shaped boosters hanging off the sides) and the second stage (central core booster) all fire together to lift- off. When the side-boosters are depleted they jettison (and perform the Korolev cross) while the second stage keeps firing.

The third stage also starts before the second stage is completely depleted; this is why there's an "open grate" visible in photos of the rocket (about half way down the stack, see [1]), gives the exhaust somewhere to go before the previous stage is jettisoned. Hot staging is advantageous as you don't need extra ullage motors to deal with propellant being in the wrong place inside the tanks in microgravity. The Soyuz (and other R-7 variants) are brilliantly engineered; There's a reason they're still flying nearly 70 years on.

[1] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/So...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Soyuz_TMA-9_launch.jpg/1200px- Soyuz_TMA-9_launch.jpg)

<comment><USER11> You see a lot of that whole-system level engineering in Russian things imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fuck that's so cool. Imagine being strapped to that thing. Love hearing the astronauts candid experience.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if people will ride the Soyuz one day for that classic vintage experience.

Seems like such a vital part of our history.

</comment><comment><USER14> So it's like driving a convertible car with the roof opened? (Of course not literally)

<comment><USER15> The third-hand description that I've found best describing the single engine burn is that it is comparable to driving fast on a gravel road.

It's bumpy as hell of a ride due to all the vibration from the engine placement but otherwise it's not too bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is the difference in weight carrying capacities of the space shuttle vs Falcon 9?

<comment><USER5> LEO payload mass for the Falcon 9 heavy, fully-expended (no booster recovery) is 63,800 kg. With booster recovery, 30,000–57,000 kg. For the Space Shuttle it was 24,400 kg.

The total mass boosted by the shuttle was higher, but much of that was the orbiter itself, not usable payload.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are they comparing their Falcon 9 experience to Space Shuttle which flew almost a decade ago last time?

</comment><comment><USER18> And now we wait for Boeing.</comment>


Show HN: The Smartmockups App – Create stunning product screenshots in seconds! - <AUTHOR> http://smartmockups.com/app/ <comment><AUTHOR> When we first launched smartmockups.com as a small side project, we never anticipated the overwhelmingly positive response we received for the product. As a result, we've decided to take things a bit further by developing the Smartmockups app.

The Smartmockups app makes creating beautiful product screenshots a breeze, without using Photoshop. It offers over 200 premium mockups for both digital and printed products. It's loaded with awesome scenes for responsive web designs and cool perspective screen mockups. Additionally, you can easily change background colors and select from a variety of background gradients.</comment>


You're Worrying About the Wrong Bees - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/

<comment><AUTHOR> "Honey bees weren't affected by the [neonicotinoid] seed treatments. But wild bees were affected, and in a big way.... In this study, no mason bees (Osmia bicornis) began brood cells in the seed treated fields. None."

<comment><USER2> Bees don't live in cultivated fields anyway. Don't understand.

Further, any chemical - especially that one you spray on your grass in town - kill bees. They are acutely sensitive to ANY treatment. Since they visit a wide area (miles) your lawn treatment affects bees all over the neighborhood.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wild bees live adjacent to cultivated fields. From the cited letter in Nature: "Our second finding was that the insecticide seed coating correlated with reduced nesting of the solitary bee O. bicornis. To investigate this we placed three trap nests containing 27 O. bicornis cocoons (ExtendedData Fig. 1) adjacent to each of the 16 fields before the beginning of oilseed rape flowering and monitored if emerging females started to build brood cells. In six of the eight control fields, but in none of the fields treated with the insecticide seed coating, females started to build brood cells (Wilcoxon test Z 5 2.84, P 5 0.0045; Fig. 2b). Although the reasons why the bees failed to build brood cells when exposed to the insecticide treatment remain unclear, a reduced capacity to navigate[8,9,20,21] is a possible explanation."</comment></comment></comment>