Going hungry affects children for their whole lives - <AUTHOR> https://mosaicscience.com/story/food-poverty-nutrition-health-austerity-child-development-diet-benefits/ <comment><USER2> > Hunger during childhood can have a ripple effect that we are only just > beginning to understand.

I come from Africa and I attend talks at a medical research lab, many of which often end up involving malnutrition for obvious reasons.

I have seen a lot of research talking about how malnutrition affects kids intellectual abilities, immunity and more. This is not a problem we are just begining to understand.

[Edit]

It's also fairly common knowledge that children who get malnourised never catch up in many facets of life.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am struggling to understand how not having enough money for food is possible in a first world country. You can feed yourself for about $1 a day per person with careful budgeting, or $30/month.

That is the equivalent of 3 hours of work at minimum wage in the UK, and if that is an amount an individual is unable to spare, then that person clearly qualifies for governmental assistance, especially one with three dependent children.

EDIT: See below comment for satisfying the calorie requirements on $1 a day, or consider that you can get 1 kg of rice for £0.45 which contains 3,650 calories.

<comment><USER4> Rewind about, jeeze, nearly 20 years for me. A dollar a day is pretty much what I narrowly avoided starvation on.

I got by on about $20/mo (in addition to free food). I would heat a solitary potato in a toaster oven for breakfast. Just the potato. After bumming a ride to high school, I would wait until lunch. I had Free Lunch (I was poor). That was usually a hamburger, a milk, and something resembling some kind of vegetable approximation. I would steal one additional hamburger and sell it for $0.50 or $0.75 (don't recall which) which was a deal to the other person. On the way home, I would stop by the store and turn that profit into a single can of Campbell's soup. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes, I could not get a hamburger to steal, so no dinner. Nothing on the weekend unless I could bum food at friend's houses (worked out more often than it probably should have). When I got to university, I could reliably get closer to $2/day and that meant that I could get a Jumbo Jack and two tacos for lunch. If I chose to not eat for a few days, I could get a Little Caesar's pizza.

There were periods of more food or less. Things got better over time. By my second year at university, my then-girlfriend-now-wife and I (and our small kid) were eating regularly. I think our budget was $30/week. I put on like 60lbs in two or three months. I had folks I barely knew tell me I was looking better. But man, I can recall just wanting enough liquidity to be able to afford a dang pizza. That lasted until well after getting my degree.

<comment><USER5> If you don't mind me asking or answering, what put you in such dire circumstances growing up? Low income family, or were there other factors? Totally understand if you prefer not to discuss.

<comment><USER4> Happy to talk about most of it. It was my normal then. I like me, and my history is part of that, so, yeah, no worries writing a bit about it. Low income for sure. At one point, my dad took off to go live with his girlfriend and that left me at the house. He eventually came back, but I was on my own for quite a while. I did not have a vehicle yet and we were 10 miles outside of town in a small mountain community. Kinda hard to get a job. I heated my water and cooked my food on a wood burning stove and took cold showers for a while. I would usually get rides to school from my buddy down the street. If he couldn't, then I'd ask a neighbor. The other part to understand is this did not feel "dire" \-- only in retrospect as a well-to-do software developer am I like "yeah, I guess that was abnormal." It is part of who I am.

So, more crazy story time. When my dad took his hiatus, he left the house in a state of semi-construction. He had tore down a wall to do some addition (really, no clue how he was planning on affording that). That made heating kinda hard in the mountains in winter haha. Winters would get down into the 20s (f) at times. I mostly kept to the back bedroom at that point (where the wood stove was) and took some plastic sheeting and made a partial barrier to channel some heat into the restroom. I once came home to find that raccoons had tore up all my food stores. As I was cleaning up, they tried to come back to get "their" food. Stubborn things. I was throwing stuff and shouting at them and they were just like, "yo, bro, you done? we gots to eat." Finally ran them off. Learned to be better about how I stored any extra food I might scavenge up.

To add some more color, this above was when I was about 17. Two years prior, I became a dad. So my then-girlfriend-now-wife (still together 20+ years later, and I'm paying for my oldest to go to college which feels nice) was living at a way different spot on the mountain. So I would get rides for the ~50 miles or so over to her place on weekends when I could. I did not live with her at the time for a couple of reasons. Most of which was I was determined to graduate high school and get into college, but also her situation was not much better than mine aside from some state aid.

Eventually, graduated high school, got a (nearly) full academic scholarship to a nearby university. By the second year, an uncle had given me a small truck so I was mobile and able to do graphic design work for the university. My wife and I were able afford a (very) small wedding and move in together. Things have been hard, but they always are getting better. I've worked in photography and design during school, after in insurance, stocks and mutual funds, I've been a math teacher, did some construction, and most recently I am a software developer. I've really found my calling here and I have been blessed with a fantastic company to work for, great friends at work, a healthy family (now three kids), and a very supportive wife. We are living the dream and we are so very far removed from our humble beginnings. It really was a lifetime ago. I really don't regret a thing (though it would have been nice to have been as well off as we are now much earlier haha). I've known folks with really messed up history and I've heard real horror stories of how others have grown up. My story is really not all that bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My wife is an evolutionary anthropologist and she says that you set your baseline for life under the age of 5. Things like metabolism, reproductive strategies, etc.

There is this great study of Indian girls adopted from an orphanage into Western families. After being adopted, the girls reached menarche at the ages of 7 or 8. The evolutionary signals are clear: if you are starving and then get a huge influx of calories, your body interprets this as temporary so you better reproduce while the going is good.

<comment><USER7> I didnt downvote, but a source/link would be interesting

<comment><USER6> This one of them. Apparently it's been replicated a couple times.

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a6eb/0fba1aa656d7f4f9617c7d...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a6eb/0fba1aa656d7f4f9617c7d35915807f58b94.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Food addiction, overeating, and the resulting obesity also affect children (and adults) their whole lives, leading to immense increase in disease and a shortened lifespan, amongst other problems.

What a strange situation we have where there are people simultaneously starving with insufficient food and nutrition, and also a massive population that is dramatically overfeeding their way into catastrophic health problems.

</comment><comment><USER9> my guess would be that the protein will be too low and the quality of carbs are bad at poor households. my depression went away after switching to high fat/no carb with at least 20 gramms of protein per meal. So poor people prolly get more calories from refined sugar and cheap carbs.

When younger, I was hungry in school and would sometimes be in pain from it. Never stopped worrying about food ever since. Most of my anxiety is gone now, but I keep cat food just in case and insects(mealworms) as a secondary food source should things ever go so bad that everything falls appart.

<comment><USER10> The nature of "poor people food" varies widely depending on where you are and what is cheap locally. Rural poor, for example, often have game animals and garden vegetables as a significant part of their diet, which is pretty healthy as such things go. When I lived in the Palouse, lentils and peas figured prominently because those were local crops and therefore approximately free. The diets of the urban poor are admittedly worse in my experience.

<comment><USER7> +1-ing on that to add also "poor" sometimes means access, not $ .

For example some "food deserts" exist where the most available food is also the least healthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fortunately in the US we have largely replaced hunger with obesity. ;-(

</comment><comment><USER12> What about kids that choose not to eat? I served chicken cordon bleu last night and half the kids revolted and decided that going to bed hungry was better than eating.

Seriously though, our middle child won't eat anything. He basically subsist on baby carrots and chicken nuggets. He's been like that since he was 3 years old. We thought he'd eventually outgrow it, but he is 14 now and is about 18" shorter than all his peers. We've taken him to doctors and psychologists and other people who specialize in this kind of stuff to no avail. I can't help wondering if he will be similarly affected as mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER13> My daughter won't each cheese. Except for mac-and-cheese, and cheese raviolis, and a dozen other things that have cheese. Basically, anything she liked before she decided she didn't like cheese, or that she didn't know had cheese before she decided she like it. How do you not like cheese?!? It took over year to convince her that pizza had the good type of cheese.

<comment><USER14> Sounds like my sister. She never got over it. Still hates cheese. Eats many things with cheese in it, unless the cheese is extremely prominent. She'll eat a pepperoni and cheese pizza, but not a straight up cheese pizza for example.

<comment><USER15> I'd be tempted to make her sausage pizza every time she came over and just slowly reduce the amount of sausage on it ever time... (or mini-pepperoni - the important thing is that it's small).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> TLDR for those of us who have a job?

<comment><USER17> > In one six-year study, McIntyre and colleagues found that young people who > had experienced hunger had a significantly higher risk of developing > depressive symptoms. And another large analysis showed that children who > went hungry were similarly at risk of developing some kind of health problem > within the next ten years. Hunger, the researchers wrote, had a "toxic" > effect:

<comment><USER16> Thanks. I wonder if child hunger and subsequent depression are really just two symptomatic manifestations of the same underlying cause (e.g. socioeconomic issues increasing the likelihood of either) rather than being causally related.</comment></comment></comment>


10 Weird Psychology Studies - <AUTHOR> http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/12/10-weird-psychology-studies-vote-now.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, submitted before reading guidelines. I should have cropped the starting number and gratuitous adjective. Sorry HN!</comment>


Forget Google Glass. These Are the Interfaces of the Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/06/forget-glass-these-are-the-interfaces-of-the-future/

<comment><AUTHOR> Noting that the words "Forget Google Glass" are appearing with high frequency these days in the media.</comment>


The farmer who makes 'ethical' foie gras - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/18/the-farmer-who-makes-ethical-foie-gras <comment><USER2> (2015)

</comment><comment><USER3> Foie gras is no more cruel than any other meat product.

This is another example of misrepresentation for dubious reasons, manufactured outrage.

<comment><USER4> It's not foie gras as a food that is the problem; it is the _captive force- feeding_ by which it is typically produced.

Sousa has _proven_ that not only is force-feeding unnecessary, it produces an _inferior product_ compared to his methods.

<comment><USER3> Captive force-feeding is manufactured outrage. It is not a problem at all, nor does it hurt geese.

This PETA-style "fight" for animal welfare...</comment></comment></comment>


Flagger: A browser add-on to troll the NSA harder than ever - <AUTHOR> http://flagger.io/

<comment><USER2> Nice try, NSA.

"It can:

\- access your data on all websites,

\- access your tabs and browsing activity."</comment>


Weekend project: Multiplayer game to type fast(er) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tarunbatra/type-faster <comment><AUTHOR> I developed it as a weekend project, and to help me hone my skills in Sockets and front-end. Would love to see some suggestions and new approaches. :)</comment>


Google Cloud Platform free for 60 days - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/free-trial/

<comment><USER2> Google has to do something extraordinary to prove it can provide adequate support. It's support reputation is absolutely abysmal - why would I build a business on system of a company that tries to not have human contact?

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I was once wronged by Google Checkout (before it closed, obviously). I couldn't get any response at all from the company, so I called a few numbers and eventually a random developer at Google looked up and gave me the name and phone number for the director of Google Checkout. I posted the number in a few forums where other incredibly frustrated merchants were looking for help.

Instead of getting some people to respond to the messages these people apparently left, within a day, the number was disconnected. _That_ is how they tend to deal with customer service issues.

<comment><USER4> Not to defend Google's attitude towards customer service, but you do realize it's inappropriate to post someone's work phone number as a public-facing custom support line, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has been around for quite sometime[1].

It's also cool to note that there are usually free credits involved in most Google Cloud competitions and some Google Udacity courses. Off the top of my head, I think I might have enjoyed a total of about $3000 since 2013.

Oh and there's the $100000 for Startups[2] that'd be cool to get at some point in time.

1: [[http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/11/google- cloud...](http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/11/google-cloud- platform-live-introducing-container-engine-cloud-networking-and-much- more.html?m=1)]

2: [[https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/](https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/)]

</comment><comment><USER6> I signed up for this last month. Apparently only most things are free, as I got a bill for $4 after one month. I tried contacting support to figure out what's up with that. I haven't heard back yet.

</comment><comment><USER7> The submission's title is somewhat misleading, it's _$300 in credit to use for 60 days_. Comparing to other IaaS trials this is better than Azure[1], the same amount but less time as vCloud Air[2], and difficult to compare directly with AWS[3].

[N.B. I work on vCloud Air]

[1] [http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free- trial/](http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/)

[2] [http://vcloud.vmware.com/service-offering/special- offer](http://vcloud.vmware.com/service-offering/special-offer)

[3] [http://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/free- trial/](http://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/free-trial/)

<comment><USER8> I work for vCloud Air too. Nice to see you on HN Matthew :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are getting started with Google cloud and looking for apps (WordPress, Drupal, etc) or dev environments (Rails, Node.js, PHP, etc.) give a try to the free Google Cloud Launchpad [http://google.bitnami.com](http://google.bitnami.com) (Disclaimer, I am one of the founders)

</comment><comment><USER10> For new customers only, apparently.

I've signed up for some of Google's cloud services in the past, but not their IaaS stuff, and never as a paid account. I wonder if it's safe to create a new account to get this free trial, or will that just risk getting my account banned?

</comment><comment><USER11> I find Google Cloud ridiculously expensive.

I can get a VPS for $1.5 per month and it will have 50GB SSD, 1GB RAM, 2 CPU cores, 1 Gbps link.

Google Cloud's cheapest server, f1-micro, costs $7.3/month, comes with 0.6GB RAM, a shared CPU, and zero storage.

<comment><USER12> which VPS provider?

<comment><USER11> [http://lowendbox.com/blog/boltvm-18year-1gb- and-36year-2gb-o...](http://lowendbox.com/blog/boltvm-18year-1gb- and-36year-2gb-openvz-vps-in-piscataway-or-los-angeles/)

That's just an example. There are even cheaper ones out there.

<comment><USER13> That's actually pretty big apples and oranges, not including the difference between a relatively static VM and on-demand instances (GCE, EC2).

It's OpenVZ, not KVM so you're getting a container, not a VM. That might be better for some people, or make no difference, but it's a important distinction. You're stuck with the host's kernel. This can make distro choice/upgrade interesting. RAM overcommit on the host side is easier, etc.

You aren't buying 50GB of SSD storage. You're buying 50GB of RAID10 spinning disk with SSD cache.

No mention if 1Gbps uplink is the host's uplink or if you get 1Gbps uplink out of a link bundle on the server. Given the other things, I'd suspect host has 1 or 2 GigE connections that you're sharing. That could be a big deal if one VM can saturate a significant portion of the server's network capacity.

I'm sure it's fine for a normal blog, secondary DNS server, or something like that but once you go below ~$5/mo on low-end VM/container hosting there tend to be gotchas.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't Be a Crehater - <AUTHOR> https://officehours.io/streams/post/hBduhAnKT8v4ZmFcQ <comment><USER2> Interesting piece, but I don't like whatever word-wrap is going on; quite distr acting to have to jump arou nd a line end with no hyphen, IMHO!

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. That sucks. It's fine in Chrome and Safari, but we need to fix this in Firefox.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Internship ended early, two more months until school. Work available? - <AUTHOR>

My summer internship in San Francisco ended early and I still have two more months until school starts (University of Washington). I plan on working on my own projects while I'm still here, but would rather meet some more companies and ideally even work for someone / freelance a little.
I'm focusing on front end work currently (I was using Backbone at my internship) but also have a lot of experience with PHP / MySQL.
I've worked at Google and Microsoft as well as a ton of my own projects over the years.
Contact me at sfintern02 at gmail for more information! <comment><USER2> Might want to give us a way to contact you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call, added.</comment></comment>


On Task Systems - <AUTHOR> http://blog.evantahler.com/blog/on-task-systems.html

<comment><USER2> Looks similar to what Kue <http://learnboost.github.com/kue/> already does. I wish node had less fragmentation and more consolidation on these types of libraries/frameworks.

Nice article breaking down the features and patterns of queue/task engines if nothing else!

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I haven't heard of Kue. I'll take a look!

Source for the curious: <https://github.com/learnboost/kue>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The article's statement "Putting them within a transaction is also no good, as you can't read and make decisions on the result (is the result of the select null?)" is not correct. You can implement task assignment in a SERIALIZABLE- capable RDBMS using a single "UPDATE ... SET assigned_to = 'me' WHERE assigned_to IS NULL" statement, or the equivalent of "SELECT FOR UPDATE" at the beginning of a transaction in order to examine the row in advance.

<comment><AUTHOR> good call, I'll update that.

I generally assume mySQL's feature-set, which I probably shouldn't do without clarification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my experience, I've found that it is much more reliable to use message queues instead of databases as the backing for job scheduling.

Learning a complex but powerful MQ like Rabbit can be a little bit of a chore, but it more than pays off in the long run.</comment>


Show HN: BlokSCAD, CAD app using scratch-like blocks - <AUTHOR> Http://rgegriff.github.io/blokSCAD <comment><AUTHOR> Hiya!

I built this over the weekend. It is still pretty broken, and the code quality is garbage-level at this point, and only some features work, but it's still surprisingly fun to play with. I plan on adding many more fixes, features (hello, save and load buttons!) and blocks. in the next few days.</comment>


Simple Fields – a Custom Fields Plugin for WordPress - <AUTHOR> http://simple-fields.com/

<comment><USER2> We've been using Advanced Custom Fields ( <http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/> ) for 2+ years now, has anyone used both and can comment on how they compare?

</comment><comment><USER3> Just had one of those "this is exactly what I was looking for" moments

<comment><USER4> I had a 'I know someone who might be looking for something just like this' moment myself. Not that good, but hey.</comment></comment>


Issue #3 – Better Late Than Never - <AUTHOR> http://neovim.org/news/2014/sept/

<comment><USER2> Reading about neovim is very cool. It's nice to see such an actively beloved open source project which is all about modernizing an old tool (and that means 90% "backend" stuff), and it's a big breath of fresh air to see how well organized they are.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. When the initial fundraising campaign was happening I figured it was just going to fizzle out eventually when the guy driving it got bored. Boy was I wrong... this is a seriously organized effort.

<comment><USER4> Very glad you guys feel that way! To anyone at all interested and having some free time, feel free to see if you can contribute something at [https://github.com/neovim/neovim](https://github.com/neovim/neovim). Anyone is welcome to help out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most importantly, thank you Bram Moolenaar! Vim is the probably my most productive tool and it's certainly my favorite.

If you donated to Neovim, consider also donating to Bram's charity.[1] All of us who have benefited so much, and for free, from Bram's efforts owe him thanks, respect and much more.

[1] [http://iccf-holland.org/](http://iccf-holland.org/)

(I'm a satisfied Vim user and see no need for any major revision. Perhaps others with different needs feel differently, and it has been discussed before: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7287668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7287668) )

<comment><USER6> Just curious why no love for ol Bill Joy?

<comment><USER7> And Tim Thompson

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a vim user for many years, I'm also glad to see this project take off, and will give it a spin soon.

Just curious, how is this project being received by Bram Moolenaar, the creator (and BDFL I believe) of vim? ... Just found an answer [https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/vim_dev/x0BF9Y0Uby...](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/vim_dev/x0BF9Y0Uby8)

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, it's been a few months since he last wrote that answer. Would be great to hear what he thinks about it now. I don't think anyone expected such success (based on what they have accomplished so far in terms of development).

<comment><USER10> With a bit of luck we'll have a gcc/egcs situation ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Compiler_Collection#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Compiler_Collection#History)).

Basically GCC was falling behind, a fork called EGCS was a lot better after a while and at a certain point GNU just dropped the old GCC and adopted EGCS as the official GCC.

Of course, Neovim first has to make a release for this to happen. And Bram has to let go of the legacy platforms (sorry Amiga!). He can support them via older Vim versions, I don't think it would be a problem for anybody...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This thread is a good example of why the policy requiring that a post title must match the article title doesn't always work.

The title is okay within the context of the site it's on, but it's completely nonsensical on its own without that context.

<comment><USER12> It used to have Neovim in the title... I'm not quite sure why a mod would remove that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reading through the Github proposal for Go plugin integration, I'm pretty confused about Neovim's plugin architecture. I had thought that Neovim's plugins would be language agnostic, with external processes communicating with Neovim using msgpack-rpc (presumably paired with some method of telling Neovim to start those processes).

However, it looks like the proposal for Go integration is very much Go- specific, following the example set by Python-specific integration code. This makes me significantly less excited about Neovim's plugin architecture, since it now seems to me like every language may need support to be manually added to Neovim anyway. What's going on here?

<comment><USER14> No, the architecture is still pretty much language agnostic. My `providers` branch[1] generalizes the python integration, for example. I discussed the possibility of plugins building on this to provide the equivalent functionality to the current python implementation.

In regards to the Go integration, it's been decided it would be better to have a host like in the case of the python plugin, but the main rationale for that is not to create too many co-processes.

[1]: [https://github.com/fmoralesc/neovim/tree/providers](https://github.com/fmoralesc/neovim/tree/providers)

<comment><USER13> Okay, it sounds like my fears are unfounded, but I still don't really understand it. What is a host in this context?

I know that the plugin API is still in flux, but I really wish it was documented anyway. Actually, I'm not even sure how anyone was even able to start coding something like this without a design doc existing first.

<comment><USER14> The current python integration works by having a python interpreter interact with neovim, instead of the python interpreter being in-process. [EDIT: All python code runs in this interpreter.] This is what I call a "host". It provides functions that implement this API:

        :python // executes python code, eg: :python print 1+1
        :pyfile // executes a file, eg: :python pyfile test.py
        :pydo   // applies a python expression on a range, eg: 1,2pydo return int(line)+1
        pyeval(...)  // returns the value of ..., eg: :echo pyeval("1+1")

A ruby-host would have similar functionality, for example, as would a scheme- host, etc. You name it. My proposal in the tracker was to allow such host- plugins to define the equivalent ex commands and viml functions instead of hardcoding them in neovim itself (like it currently does for the python integration commands and functions). This is currently difficult because of some limitations in vim's structure.

A go host, however, would possibly need to work differently. The idea for now is to have a process that checks for go files in a folder, and bundles them into a big executable that registers external functions in vim like a dynamic host would.

Nothing in the above means a plugin couldn't simply talk to neovim by itself, without using the host architecture. All a plugin needs is to talk to neovim thorough the msgpack-rpc api.

> I know that the plugin API is still in flux, but I really wish it was > documented anyway. Actually, I'm not even sure how anyone was even able to > start coding something like this without a design doc existing first.

Agreed. That's the goal of that discussion (I believe), to come up with a good design.

<comment><USER15> > My proposal in the tracker was to allow such host-plugins to define the > equivalent ex commands and viml functions instead of hardcoding them in > neovim itself

Defining methods via msgpack-rpc and calling through vimscript is already possible(send_call will block until the connected plugin returns a response). Here's what Neovim still needs:

\- A way to spawn plugins through vimscript. This was fixed [here]([https://github.com/tarruda/neovim/commit/acf17dbefef379ecb8e...](https://github.com/tarruda/neovim/commit/acf17dbefef379ecb8e8d95da0fb39d2d12acfc4)) and will replace the initpython/initclipboard options. This alone will be enough to implement the golang proposal.

\- Modify vimscript to enable definition of lower cased functions and commands, and commands that accept heredocs. This will let us move the knowledge about other languages/interpreters from the C core to vimscript, though it has the disadvantage of introducing incompatibilities with vim in the future

<comment><USER14> Of course. I meant the second point.

> \- A way to spawn plugins through vimscript. This was fixed > [here]([https://github.com/tarruda/neovim/commit/acf17dbefef379ecb8e...](https://github.com/tarruda/neovim/commit/acf17dbefef379ecb8e...)) > and will replace the initpython/initclipboard options. This alone will be > enough to implement the golang proposal.

This is neat.

Thanks for all the work, btw, tarruda. neovim is a great project, and you deserve a lot of credit for pushing ahead with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love how they're also contributing upstream to libuv. This is how you do an open source, community-focused project.

<comment><USER15> Also, There have been some contributions to msgpack-c:

\- [https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/84](https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/84)

\- [https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/109](https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/109)

\- [https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/113](https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/113)

\- [https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/118](https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/118)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am seriously glad that this is a thing. I donated after the original bountysource, and seeing the momentum I may just donate again.

<comment><USER17> Addendum: if it weren't for Tim Pope and his Vimscript mastery, I would already be using emacs in Evil mode.

<comment><USER18> +1. Tim Pope is the best. Neovim looks like it's shaping up to be the best, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm really looking forward to seeing neovim make it possible to put it in a nice GUI. I know it's an application that meant to be used with the keyboard, but gVim always refuses to behave in maximized windows, doesn't handle random window widths, etc. Is there a good workaround while this dream is coming true?

</comment><comment><USER20> What's the equivalent of Newvim for Emacs? I had hopes for Deuce [0], but it seems stagnant.

[0] - [https://github.com/hraberg/deuce](https://github.com/hraberg/deuce) "Emacs under Clojure"

<comment><USER21> The GuileEmacs project probably.

<comment><USER22> The GuileEmacs project never really getting off the ground with much momentum is probably the only reason I still use Vim. ELisp just kills any motivation I have to 'make emacs my own'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there any way to link to neovim as a C library instead of using the messaging protocol? Also, where is the documentation of the protocol? I wasn't able to find it after a few minutes of browsing.

</comment><comment><USER24> Kudos for keeping up the commitment to publish regular updates. The newsletter gives the whole project a feeling of momentum and integrity.

</comment><comment><USER25> Totally off topic but this reminds me that I need to see if I can figure out how to get Nvi to compile on OS X Mavericks. I know, I know, but it has a special place in my heart because it was the first version of Vi that I ever used.

<comment><USER26> The project seems intent on keeping the build and distribution processes up to date along with the evolving codebase. For example, you can install now via Homebrew:

        brew install --HEAD https://raw.github.com/neovim/neovim/master/neovim.rb

From there, it's not going to be difficult to get a build from your own clone up and running.

<comment><USER27> nvi is a reimplementation of vi, and is unrelated to neovim, a refactoring of vim

<comment><USER25> Correct. By the great Keith Bostic!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If they can make Vim feel more modern and allow plugins to integrate better, I'd be very very happy to move to this software.

</comment><comment><USER29> :x == :wq

(I love conciseness.)

</comment><comment><USER30> I haven't been keeping up with neovim, but does it completely freak the fuck out whenever I forget I have caps lock on the way that vim does?

<comment><USER30> I seem to be getting downvoted, not really sure why.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Least Overwhelming Field of Programming? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
Part of my career is in web development. I'd love to pursue another field. But I am weary of overwhelmingness, accidental complexity, "plumbing" and tools.
I don't want to keep spending my energy on connecting dozens of systems in 8 different languages and endless layers of abstraction just to launch a web app. I love the web, and I loved making web apps and websites, but today I rarely feel it's worth the hassle.
What are the least overwhelming fields of programming?
Ones that: - not as complex as the web - are "slow" (as in, the opposite of ever-changing JS world) and mature - more concerned with either end user problems (apps) or important fundamentals, but not the middle ground complex engineering problems (e.g. kernel development) - maybe, closer to math and theoretical CS (because math is the dream of "zero accidental complexity, pure problem domain")
Desktop app development? Quite overwhelming, it seems. macOS/Swift maybe?
Mobile? Android, even with Kotlin, isn't very nice (at least the last time I tried it). Not sure about iOS. Maybe, sandboxing and lots of limitations are rather good?
Microcontrollers? ML? Computer vision? Robots?
I appreciate any input.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I think you can do simple and powerful web programming without pursuing the latest front-end or back-end frameworks. Just use jQuery and frameworks like symfony or django, or others depending of your favorite language. Those are mature technologies that have been there for years.

Mobile might be less complex if you stick with the default native language and tools.

I'd say maybe embedded programming is the field where you have the least plumbing, but is more complex on other matters (chip power and consumption).

I wouldn't recommend machine learning, computer vision, and certainly not robotics, which is tedious to make it work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say Symfony and Django are pretty complex still. I remember the "good old days" of vanilla PHP and bad coding practices as the simplest, most free- feeling web dev I knew.

>Mobile might be less complex if you stick with the default native language and tools.

That's where I'm leaning so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Web often seems to me like the _least_ overwhelming field. There are so many people doing it well that there are tools to make everything pretty easy. All of my biggest problems are people/org problems.

Maybe your problem is that doing something professionally will always force you to spend time on parts you find uninteresting?

I agree mobile is awful. You might find 2D game dev to be fun, if you hyper- focus on a single platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I know what you mean. In terms of the quantity of tools, people and solutions it's hard to beat web.

>Maybe your problem is that doing something professionally will always force you to spend time on parts you find uninteresting?

Maybe. But that's just part of the problem. The other part is breath-first nature of work. In web, you have to cover a lot of different bases in order to get things going. I imagine in mobile dev it's more of a depth-first nature. There are _less_ things to think about.

>You might find 2D game dev to be fun, if you hyper-focus on a single platform.

Thank you, I haven't even considered that. Quick look at the current state of Unity and it seems like it could be interesting. I like to draw [1] and the idea of drawing game art sounds appealing.

[1] [https://rakhim.org/honestly-undefined/](https://rakhim.org/honestly- undefined/)</comment></comment>


World's First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/worlds-first-flying-file-sharing-drones-in-action-120320/

<comment><USER2> This is even worse of an idea than the balloon thing.

Those drones can stay in the air for at most 15 minutes. This means that you have to have someone constantly rotating the drones and changing their battery. So then you go and arrest whoever is running the drone 'base'.

I put a keychain camera on my $100 remote control airplane. I don't suddenly own a Predator UAV.

</comment><comment><USER3> So I don't get it, how are these supposed to be powered 24/7? This just seems like a publicity gimmick to me.

If they were serious, wouldn't some form of high-altitude solar balloon with solar powered rotors be better?

</comment><comment><USER4> A great idea, but in my country would be targeted by stones and vandalism.</comment>


Emulated Iopl() - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/804143/62a4315bd4931e9d/ <comment><USER2> The most interesting for me was the comment:

"I actually have a project that uses iopl to provide shell script access to ioport. Yes, you can write device drivers in shell script ...

[http://git.annexia.org/?p=ioport.git;a=summary](http://git.annexia.org/?p=ioport.git;a=summary) "

And there in README:

"At first glance it would seem that /dev/port would be the best way to access I/O ports. However /dev/port under Linux is fundamentally flawed because it only allows byte-sized access to ports. For example if you write a single long (4 bytes) it will turn that into 4 individual outb operations.

Instead we use iopl(2) to raise our I/O privilege level so that we can do the correct in<size> and out<size> operation as requested."

<comment><USER3> Oh hello! It's possible to write (only very simple) device drivers with ioport, here's an example: [https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/ioport- command-line-ac...](https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/ioport-command-line- access-to-io-ports/)

To address your point about /dev/port (I think I was having this conversation on one of the internal Red Hat kernel devel channels): [https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/ioport/](https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/ioport/) I still think it needs to be fixed.

I should also for completeness mention vfio, which is a rather better way to get access to some devices from userspace.</comment></comment>


A Lua interpreter in the NetBSD kernel - <AUTHOR> http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/luakern/ <comment><USER2> Is this still being worked on? That page was last updated in 2010.

<comment><USER3> I can't speak to lunatik, but there is active work bringing Lua into the NetBSD userland[1] (NetBSD -current, which will be tagged NetBSD-6 when it's ready). The notion is that interfaces will be build up around it, allowing scripted access/control of anything from POSIX calls to userland application access (dhcp, gpio[2], for example).

      [1] http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/the_lua_scripting_language_in
      [2] http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/share/examples/lua/?only_with_tag=MAIN

<comment><USER4> After reading your links, I'm still unclear what the advantage of having lua _within the kernel_ is. Remember, this is different than simply using Lua for installation tasks. The Kernel should expose all needed routines to user-level programs anyway.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you; lunatik is related to the other work in that they're both on NetBSD, and I _think_ Marc Balmer is driving the userspace work, and at least familiar w/ the kernel-space work, so there's cross-pollination of talent.

Honestly, I think I would rather see the userspace work out of core (ie: not shipping w/ NetBSD) and just put into pkgsrc (NetBSD version of Ports, or dpkg, etc) as a NetBSD-only package.

The kernel work -- I'm just not familiar with deep kernel hacking, so perhaps it's my ignorance, but an interp in-kernel doesn't sound attractive to me. I think I'd rather see kernel access pushed to userspace, like FUSE/PUFFS[1] does for filesystems, or even how procfs allows reading/writing kernel from userspace. Jamming more into the kernel, _especially_ an interpretter makes me shake my head. It could be fun as a personal project, or a Clever Hack, but for a shipping production-ready system... reminds me of when RedHat introduced it's in-kernel http server[2].

All that said -- NetBSD is _still_ the most attractive Unix I'm aware of. I occasionally consider a Linux or FreeBSD, but haven't left yet, since NetBSD 1.6 (c. 2002)

[1] <http://www.netbsd.org/docs/puffs/>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TUX_web_server>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A long while ago I hacked some small forth implementation into the Linux kernel. It didn't really do anything useful though, and was a pretty simplistic implementation. It was kind of fun though.

<comment><USER6> Vaguely related, ALSA comes with a lisp interpreter.

<comment><AUTHOR> The user-space library alsa-lib contains a quite complete lisp interpreter, not the kernel module.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this sort of approach a security nightmare ?

<comment><USER4> More to the point, what value can be got from having an interpreter in the kernel?

Having the interpreter always available in user space seems more logical.

<comment><USER8> What value could Lua bring to a Unix kernel?

You could do some fast and very sophisticated manipulation of network traffic streams without requiring that each packet be copied to and from user-space. You wouldn't even have to develop much packet-twiddling code. There is a surprisingly large amount of network-specific open source Lua.

Wireshark, the most popular network protocol analyzer, has dissectors written in Lua. [0]

Nmap, the network mapper and port scanner, has a Lua-based scripting engine to allow session and endpoint property discovery in great detail. [1]

The popular intrusion detection tool Snort Security Platform (SnortSP) has included a Lua interpreter since version 3.0. [2]

Yes, keeping the interpreter in user-space is safer. I have a hard time imagining sandboxing within the language runtime being able to deal with some of the nastier traffic. Perhaps one prudent thing to do with an in-kernel interpreter would be to use a project-specific sanitizer that could reliably escape tokens and keywords found in live traffic.

[0] "Lua Support in Wireshark" <http://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsug_html_chunked/wsluarm.html>

[1] "Nmap Scripting Engine" <http://nmap.org/book/nse.html>

[2] "A Pig(Snort), A Moon (Lua) and one very happy developer (Bill)" <http://www.linuxsecurity.com/content/view/128135>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish the resources were thrown at something a little more USEFUL in NetBSD as there are so few to go around. Maybe like ZFS or BTRFS support...

I LOVE the BSD's especially NetBSD - what else can make some of my old sentimentally attached hardware work so well.

I think I might be the only one running NetBSD as a DOM-0.

<comment><USER10> It's a volunteer organisation and folk are going to volunteer for what interests them, regardless of the stipend.

<comment><USER9> Yea - I know - just wishful thinking by a user/very occasional contributor to the bad minorities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very, very cool project, but... using Lua for the kernel's process scheduler? Lunatik is an appropriate name in some regards.</comment>


Perverse Incentives in Academia - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/632?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EmbeddedInAcademia+%28Embedded+in+Academia%29 <comment><USER2> Interesting to read. At high contrast level, the author might be true.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you *use* HN? - <AUTHOR> 1) How often do you check it (and for how long each time)?<p>2) What's your routine while on HN? Do you just browse through the highest voted articles, or maybe go through the new, or just ask HN, or different? <comment><USER2> HN has a very high almostSignal-to-Nosie ratio. By that I mean that it has a lot of stuff that looks _almost_ like something very important, but it's just not directly applicable to me at the moment. Kind of like talking to a really super smart interesting person -- but only about stuff they'd like to talk about. It's great to be here, but information is engaging and scattered all over the spectrum. I would say it's like drinking from a fire hose, but a fire hose goes in one direction. This is more being a great swimmer and jumping in a raging ocean. Lots of stuff to enjoy and keep you busy.

Because of this, I'm writing my own app for processing the web. A "browser for the easily engaged". It pulls the articles from all the major tech sites, including ranking, then it pulls the target articles. It learns what I like and don't like by doing Bayesian filtering on the client-side. Sort of a meta meta tech news app.

After all, how _would_ a hacker consume news, if not by hacking it?

<comment><USER3> _It learns what I like and don't like by doing Bayesian filtering on the client-side._

As a fellow geek, I like this _idea_ but I've checked out similar systems over the years and found I could never fully get on board.. why? Because I ended up checking the source _anyway_ to make sure I didn't miss anything that I might find interesting but that the filter filtered out anyway.

I can trust filtering for e-mail, since it wipes out _non-content_ (usually). But filtering out content I "might not like" is tricky - I learn more about the world by being exposed to things I don't (initially) appreciate so I like to see a little noise in the mix. HN provides a sort of filtered noise that strikes just the right balance for me.

<comment><USER2> Yep I'm right there with you. I agree with everything you say.

So instead of filtering, I'm starting with Bayesian ranking. I agree about the pop-back-over thing too, but I wonder why? I'm really curious to see why I would pop back over to the regular site. As I identify these reasons, I can decide whether or not these are good reasons or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Between twice a day and twice a minute depending on how distracted I am.

I usually look for titles that catch my interest, gradually working my way down the page and becoming less selective.

Often I read the comments first.

<comment><USER5> pretty similar case here.

<comment><USER6> Just up vote please. Replies are for adding to the conversation. If you are just going to agree, that is what the up vote is for.

Note: I do realize the irony of this post. I assume this is a new HNer and I hope to help educate him and all those who happen to read it, instead of just down voting him.

<comment><USER5> yup, I happen to be a newbie.

And I appreciate and welcome the consideration to educate (no sarcasm intended, mean it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use my own site to check HN, <http://hackerbra.in>

In terms of grabbing top comments quickly for articles that take my interest, it's unbeatable.

edit: if someone is interested, they should make a plugin that scrapes HN, to allow hovering over a HN item to see the top comment(s). (it can also scrape my site if it encounters a temp ban on HN -- although Javascript can scrape anyhow, so it could be done client side.)

\-- in fact hovering or right-clicking over any Comments links around the web to reveal comments would be awesome instead of having to be forced to click through all the time, including in the rss reader. Also, bookmarking or somehow recording any particular useful comment would also be great. You could also use that bookmark data and similarly send it to a central site, to build up a new social news site based on comments. (it could end up looking like <http://hackerbra.in/links> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments>). Headlines are linkbait now, stories are poorly written, but comments can and do have insight.

Another use would be in hovering over shortened links. OTOH, it could be something webmasters install. The Backtype API would be useful for this, but it is too limited at present (no url lookups.)

<comment><USER8> It's funny how people are using the ".in" domain to complete english words. I always read them as "hacker bra in india", though.

<comment><USER7> Am I supposed to reply to that? I chose hackerbra.in over hackerbrain.com (which I've also got) because after a while, you learn to ignore the dot. :)

Here's the logo: <http://hackerbra.in/upcom4.png> \-- no bra, no India (If India was concerned, they would've placed proof of business entity requirement, like with .com.au. And, big props to India for that wise decision.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If news is pot then HN is heroin.

So many interesting topics, so much stuff to learn, so many smart people.

Actual 'use' of HN? I've found a number of people here that I would not hesitate to call friends, a much larger number of acquaintances and a few people that I work with, one on a day-to-day basis.

If I have a question that matters to me I don't hesitate to post asn "Ask HN", and for the most part they are answered in a way that is both enlightening and of a different caliber than what I'd get from other sources.

</comment><comment><USER10> Usually the HN icon is what I click on in my bookmarks bar when I need to open a new tab in Chrome. So I end up glancing at the site a hundred or so times a day, but usually not for more than a few seconds at at time. I used to spend a decent amount of time on this site each day, but not very much anymore.

As I'm writing this comment, I notice that there are basically no stories at all on the front page that interest me. I like the stories that are more intellectually interesting, whereas everything on the front page is at best topical, although most of it is very derivative even for topical stuff. Right now I don't feel like there's a single story on the front page where I'd learn anything interesting or useful if I read it, and the gossipy article are too predictable for me to care.

</comment><comment><USER11> I spend more time on the "new" page and the "comments" page than the top stories page. I sometimes check the most active or highest voted lists. I come here sporadically, sometimes not for days (or weeks) at a time and sometimes several times a day. Often, a good comment on the "comments" page leads me to find a very interesting discussion listed under an article whose headline wouldn't necessarily grab me. My bookmark is to my own comments ("threads" page) and I go there first and see if I need to reply to something someone has said to me. Then I look around for other stuff.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like to look at HN and get some inspiration and keep my finger on the pulse of the startup scene.

But the truth is that if you spend more than a little time here each day, then it's no longer career research. It's just another form of procrastination that keeps you from getting stuff done. So enjoy HN, but don't overdo it.

<comment><USER13> I find that's where reading it on a mobile phone is great. I can read it while I'm out and unable to do work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I use HN mostly on my iPad even if the website isnt perfect for a touch device..

Btw does somebody know a website to read HN on the iPad? (something like iCombinator for iPhone but for iPad)

<comment><USER13> Hi, I'm the creator of <http://ihackernews.com>. I believe the site works pretty well for the iPad, but I don't have access to one so I'm unable to verify it. Can you test it out and let me know what you think and if anything is broken? I'd love a screenshot if you can and I'll address any issues right away.

<comment><USER14> Perfect thx you! I'm gonna send you screenshot of course!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I check it at least five times a day, normally reviewing the comments. Favourite posts for me are requests for help, e.g. to review sites or ask a general question like this one, because you can generally learn something from people's experiences of various problems.

</comment><comment><USER13> I enjoy reading HN so much that I ended up creating two sites[1][2] just to make reading it more accessible on my mobile phone.

I read HN first thing when I wake up, right before sleeping, and all through the day... often in little one or two minute bursts, saving links for items I want to read later. I start out on the home page, move to /ask then finally /new.

It's a great way to be motivated by reading about people who are creating amazing products. I find myself being pushed to do more when I see others talking about what they are creating.

[1] <http://ihackernews.com>

[2] <http://viewtext.org>

<comment><USER16> Thank you for making these. I now read HN more often from my phone when I have a few minutes spare.

I usually scan the comments before reading an article and if nothing's changed since my last visit I then scan through the new submissions.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Let me know if you find anything that can improve the experience for us all.

<comment><USER7> A comments extractor would also be useful with VT (probably easier to do with sites with a comments and rss feed, but you couldn't get all comments nor their thread.) Also, getting multi page articles on the one page would be cool.

<comment><USER13> My number one priority is combining multiple pages into one. I'll try to start on that today.

Just noticed you are in Israel. I was there last year, loved it.

<comment><USER7> Check out readability: <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/> [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/readability- browser/id3755428...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/readability- browser/id375542824?mt=8) Note, its bookmarklet applies some type of stylesheet, no redirection of page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 1) Usually once or twice a day. It's in my morning read and I read in the evening after work. When I'm at home I read HN on my TV through a Mac Mini. If I'm reading it at work over coffee first thing then I'll use my laptop.

2) If it's my morning read at work then I'll skim through the headlines on the main page looking for information security related stuff, and use instapaper for anything that looks like it's worth reading on the train home. Maybe 5 mins tops over coffee.

If I'm at home on the weekend I'll read the main page on my TV in the morning for about 20 minutes. In the evening I tend to read the main, ask and new pages for up to an hour.

</comment><comment><USER3> Despite being an RSS and Twitter junkie, I nearly always visit HN directly (ditto for Reddit) and end up visiting nearly all of the front page items in the course of a day except those I know I won't find interesting from the title alone (right now, for example, the Django release news). I typically visit between 1 and 10 times a day. More if I'm involved in an ongoing discussion.

A few times a week I'll visit /new. This isn't enough but I find it too fast and furious, especially with showdead on. I'd be more likely to visit /new all the time if it only showed posts from users with >100 karma, say.

</comment><comment><USER18> I check it in the morning, and in the afternoon if I'm bored with nothing else to do (otherwise, I'd be on it all day!).

I often stay around ten to twenty minutes on the site (as interludes to read the comments as I read the highest voted articles).

As a bonus, I'd say that I'm as green as grass on HN; I made my account yesterday after about a week of lurking. I think its signal-to-noise ratio is higher than other sites (I'm thinking of Proggit here) and the comments make for a _genuine_ discussion.

</comment><comment><USER19> I ask a lot, because we all get something out of the answer or answering a question.

I check it a couple of times a day, but rarely do I go the "new" (which I think I should do more).

</comment><comment><USER20> Now using SmartPeople <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1584005> Site: <http://nasr.ath.cx> (it goes to one of my non perso or pro emails), I have selected to be alerted by what some of you are saying. It appears to be a very interesting way to discover the good links & discussions.

<comment><USER20> Result is that I am not checking HN every 10 min anymore in fear I miss some good stuff, I outsource this to the ones of you which taste/judgment I trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I check once or twice a day, mostly using <http://hckrnews.com/> to minimize the timesink.

I use it as metanews as often as news - if there's a big piece of news, I don't have anywhere else to pick someone's brain about it than HN.

Sometimes I just browse the general index serendipitously - often with great success.

<comment><USER13> Did you create hckrnews.com? I really like it.

Edit: It looks like it was from @wvl. Wvl, please put contact info on either your website or hn profile.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=wvl>

<comment><USER22> Yes, hckrnews.com is me (email in my profile).

I use it to read Hacker News -- I leave it on the 'all' filter and scan the new items a couple times a day. The browser extension lets me see which comment threads I've read that have new comments, and then highlights those new comments for me. At the end of the day, I'll usually filter it down to the top 20 to see anything I might have missed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> HN is one of about 10 feeds that I have running through Yahoo Pipes and then into my Safari RSS bookmark, which shows a count of how many new interesting things I have to read. The pipe pulls a feed of articles that have more than 20 points (newsyc20) and then filters out any articles about zed shaw, lisp, clojure, haskell, etc. (Nothing against these things if you're into them, but I'm not.)

The bookmark RSS folder also contains my other aggregated, filtered feeds which include Twitter friends that don't talk too much, mentions, a highly- filtered list of affordable VPS deals, and a couple of good signal-to-noise blogs.

<comment><USER24> i also read the newsyc20 feed that contains only hn stories with at least 20 points <http://feeds.feedburner.com/newsyc20>

google reader says 211 subscribers

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm subscribed to the RSS feed, and I click through the comments to each article I find interesting. If the comments are interesting, I'll click through to the article as well.

I've never submitted a link, but did a couple of "Ask HN" threads.

</comment><comment><USER26> the search function (by google) is a little bit hidden (in the footer and not the top-right). yet is a door to a goldmine of wealth for people working on a startups.

pretty much every typical "startup question" has ben answered there in great detail.

besides the search i watch hn about twice a day. i actually started off with giles bowkett's mini app[1] (makes daily overviews of new-posts-of-the-day) in order to make reading hn less racey.. well, give that i now read hn straight from the source, i now accept that i rather have it a bit more racey :)

[1] <http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com>

</comment><comment><USER27> I check it every ~3-4 hours or so. Usually takes about 15 minutes.

I go through front page and look posts that are interesting to me. Then I go straight to the comments.

If the comments raise my interest in the actual article, I go read that.

On repeat visits, I tend to stick only to new stories, and stories where I saw an interesting conversation developing.

In big threads, I do a CTRL F for "minutes", "1 hour ago", "2 hours ago", "3 hours ago".(would make my life a lot easier, if pg had some way to highlight comments from a specific period...i.e. highlight every comment made within the last [3 hours][V] <\---that's a drop down box)

<comment><USER7> There's a plugin at bottom that will red margin new comments since last visit: <http://hckrnews.com/about.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I almost always start with the comments. If the discussion is interesting, I'll follow the link.

That said, I usually start with the link on PG essays and YC write-ups.

</comment><comment><USER29> Scan the whole frontpage once a day (takes about 30minutes) and then come back to check new submissions whenever procrastinating/taking a break. I scan the frontpage and occasionally older submissions, open tabs for submissions which seem interesting (and comment tabs for submissions which lead to discussion [claims/opinions/etc.]) and instapaper big articles for later reading.

</comment><comment><USER30> About once a week. I just look at what's visible on the viewport and click on what strikes my fancy. Occasionally I scroll "below the fold".

<comment><USER9> If you visit that infrequently make sure you visit the 'best' list (<http://news.ycombinator.com/best>) and the archive <http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I use Fivefilter's full-text rss(<http://fivefilters.org/content-only/>), which scrapes hacker new's rss and convert it in to full-text version. I can then read all articles right in my Google Reader. And I also jump to the actual post on HN to read the comments if I find the topic interesting.

</comment><comment><USER32> I check HN for five minutes 0-5 times daily, open tabs that look relevant to my interest, and read as I have time.

I come to HN to look for articles that describe how to do things better/optimize tasks (generally that thing is/task relates to hacking/start- ups). I then think of the broader applications of these ideas.

</comment><comment><USER33> I try to only upvote posts that genuinely bring something interesting and ignore the linkbaits!

</comment><comment><USER34> I use hn like everyone else. The one unique thing I do is I load the frontpage and run my "hotness sort" bookmark which sorts articles by points plus comments per unit of time. Same for ask hn. I also view long posts in threaded mode to save scrolling.

</comment><comment><USER35> 1) once a day, for five minutes 2) <http://news.ycombinator.com/news> opening articles/topics in tabs, things which I find interesting I look at the comments and possibly comment myself.

</comment><comment><USER36> I come here after I finish what is in my google reader. I then look at the top few pages for cool stuff, and read it. If there are lots of comments or I want to talk about what I read, I go to the comments.

</comment><comment><USER37> I check it probably 10 times a day, its much better than other "social sites"

<comment><USER3> I agree, though Reddit can come very close _if_ you customize the Reddits you're subscribed to. If you want to get a high SNR, you can unsubscribe from "reddit.com", images, WTF, and things like that, and pick up programming, technology, math, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Twice a day, start of morning & end of day. Read headlines, and sometimes new.

</comment><comment><USER39> I follow newsyc20 on twitter.

<comment><USER40> <http://twitter.com/newsyc20> \- same here

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> site:news.ycombinator.com keyword, keyword, keyword

<comment><USER3> Do you actually use the commas? If so, does it make a difference? In my experience it doesn't, but you might know more about Google searches than me.</comment></comment>


IPhone 5 Sleep/Wake Button Replacement Program - <AUTHOR> http://ssl.apple.com/support/iphone5-sleepwakebutton

<comment><USER2> My iPhone 5 sleep/wake button has been pretty much dead for a month or so now (it would sort-of work if you pressed it multiple times with feeling) and this program was finally the kick in the pants I needed to deal with it. I had AppleCare, so it would have been covered either way, but the thing was getting on my nerves.

It was even more painless than I expected. Got a same-day Genius Bar appointment on Friday, backed up my phone, walked over to the Apple Store from work. Waited 5 minutes, spent maybe 5 minutes going through the replacement song and dance, and walked out with a new working iPhone in my pocket.

</comment><comment><USER3> My iPhone 5 is the worst smart phone I've ever owned by far. Seemingly days after my warranty expired, the sleep/lock button and the volume down button stopped working. It's great that they're recognizing the sleep/lock button issue and I will definitely be taking advantage of it, but I'm still left with a broken volume button

</comment><comment><USER4> In Turkey they replace any iPhone with broken home button or sleep/wake button given it is within it's warranty time. And it takes roughly 10-15 minutes to walk into the Apple Store and walk out with the new phone.

Replaced two phones in the past 2 weeks.

<comment><USER5> i'd love it if it were as simple as that in Canada.

<comment><USER6> It literally is. I had volume button broken two weeks after the purchase. Went to the Apple store, 15 minutes later came out with a new phone.

<comment><USER5> excellent. i'll give it a go.

<comment><USER4> You should get an appointment for the Genius Bar so you don't wait, at least in Turkey. I'm assuming all Apple Store's are the same?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They also have a software solution in the form of a floating overlay (similar to Facebook Messenger). I saw the feature recently and it allows you to trigger both the sleep and the home button.

</comment><comment><USER8> My wife's phone has this issue. She took it in two days past the 1 year warranty period (last month) and they refused to fix it.

<comment><USER5> "As of April 25, 2014, the replacement process will be available in the U.S. and Canada. In other countries, it will be available as of May 2, 2014."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> GF's phone has this issue. She says "If I use my teeth, it works."

I don't even...

</comment><comment><USER10> They should do this for the home button as well. Both my 3GS and 5 have developed finicky home buttons.

<comment><USER11> I've had this issue with an iPhone 2 and 4, and was able to permanently fix it in both cases by applying acetone to a cotton swab (Q-Tip) and cleaning the home button with it (allowing a small amount of acetone to enter into the seam). In both instances, the home button worked like new afterwards, for years. Your results may vary, but to maximize your chances, I'd suggest using a high grade acetone (e.g. from a home improvement store) as opposed to nail polish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I look forward to a similar press release regarding the iPad mini home button...</comment>


Ask HN: Bootstrap for HTML emails? - <AUTHOR>

Constructing a HTML email that works properly in various email clients is tough. The email needs to work in browser based clients as well as native clients such as Microsoft outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mac Mail. Anyone who have attempted it before will know the pain.<p>Is there a library / framework that can create nice HTML email messages which are properly formatted for various email clients? <comment><USER2> Yes! Here you are:

<http://htmlemailboilerplate.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Mailchimp gives away templates that are tested for the most part. You don't even have to be a customer, but I'm sure they'd love it if you were.

<http://mailchimp.com/resources/html-email-templates/>

<comment><USER4> I tried one of mailchimp's new templates and it was a disaster. It was all jacked up on Outlook. So beware. Mailchimp is great software, but I don't think their QA on the newest templates was up to the standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Campaign monitor also has some free templates: <http://www.campaignmonitor.com/templates/#galleryThumbs>

I really like the idea of a "Bootstrap for HTML" emails. :) Maybe you can ding @mdo or @fat on Twitter and see if they'd be willing to throw in some "here's how twitter does email" templates into github, like they did with Twitter Bootstrap?</comment>


Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket to carry moon rover to historic Apollo 11 site - <AUTHOR> http://dock-of-bay.blogspot.com/2011/02/elon-musks-spacex-rocket-to-carry-moon.html <comment><USER2> I wish the Apollo 11 site (LEM, flag, plaque, footprint) were off-limits. Everything should still be perfectly preserved up there, and it should stay that way without lots of rovers going all over it.</comment>


Ask HN: How to implement innovation time policy? - <AUTHOR> I'm gauging the feasibility of implementing innovation time (20%) policy. What should be the main guidelines so that it could be inclusive and mutually beneficial to all parties? E.g it is neither treated as overtime nor slack time and something valuable eventually comes out of it. Any tips or pointers to successful/failed attempts are appreciated.<p>Also, what could be the right angle to approach management to fully get on board with it? <comment><USER2> Revolve your budgeting around the 20% being treated as gone.

If you cannot do it, don't do it and don't put up gimmicks for it; While hackathons have been really helpful in creativity, the sore impression they drive in an otherwise stressful workplace is: _great, more work to do_ or _I need to now get back grinding that old thing again_.

What it really means is: You cannot have innovation unless your culture favors it, period.

<comment><AUTHOR> Personal opinion but I find conferences and trainings _more_ of a waste of time, and obviously they are more expensive as well. I see innovation time as a complementary practice to hackathons. I very much agree with the cultural aspects, but hopefully innovation time could have a positive effect on it as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've tried doing something like that in my very small company (two employees) and I think I wouldn't do it again.

\- There's always too little time to get things done in time. If people do something else 20% of the time, you are even less likely to finish things quickly.

\- I did not make any rules, so people just tend to work on their hobby projects that aren't necessarily "innovative", and I'm not sure how much they learn in comparison with other activities (eg. going to conferences)

\- if people have a good idea, I think it is better to let them work on it on "regular" time rather than "innovation" time.

\- if employees have enough freedom what to work on, special "innovation time" might not be needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> For more detail, this is a very big company with room to experiment.

 _I did not make any rules_

Do you think that it could make a difference? Some of the guidelines I'm thinking about:

There should be a clear goal probably with time bounds as well. Budget should be estimated. No individual teams, there should be a minimum number of people involved for each project.

<comment><USER3> Yes, a clear goal sounds like it would help. There should be something to work towards.

I would also plan for some way of presenting the result of the project (eg. a presentation to the team).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally I prefer allowing devs to submit proposals for projects, basically innovation time but they say upfront what they're going to be doing and if approved it becomes a project that is managed the same way as ordinary work but the client is the company itself. In my experience devs have proposed (and eventually built/ongoing) a new data API, a mobile app, a huge refactoring, framework upversioning, a massive dependency reduction, a geographic dashboard for our datasets, an optimisation engine and a prediction engine. Probably added more value than any other scheme I've seen.</comment>


Chase Bank: we help small businesses (by locking their accounts) - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2103809433/wiphone-a-phone-for-hackers-and-makers/posts/2537406 <comment><AUTHOR> Did a Kickstarter, got the money, now in China trying to finish it. Tried to send over a wire to pay for stuff and Chase's fraud detection algorithm cut off online access. Now they say I have to fly back to the US to unblock it. (Totally disrupting the project.)

Details in the link above. Feel free to jump on twitter and let them know what assholes they are being:

[https://twitter.com/Hack_EDA/status/1139769365119684608](https://twitter.com/Hack_EDA/status/1139769365119684608)</comment>


Show HN: A Starting Point for Great Documentation - <AUTHOR> http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/doctemplate/

<comment><USER2> Great work! A few things:

\- I think your front page might be a little bit confusing. Are you providing a tool or are you explaining how documentation should be written? Upon reading more closely, it looks like you are doing both, but since the site as a whole isn't visually organized to demonstrate that, it's a little confusing. Do you actually want to do both? If so, I would recommend creating a visual organizational structure that makes that more clear. If you mostly care about the tool, I would suggest removing the documentation guidelines from the homepage entirely and putting them somewhere else.

\- For a documentation site, I think you could really use some more thorough documentation. I understand you are in the early stages of this project, but right now, the question I have (following the line of thinking on your homepage) is "I understand how to install and make an index page, but how do I _really_ use this tool to document a project?"

\- In fact, I don't really even know what kind of documentation this tool is designed for. Documenting programming projects? From the example questions you give in the documentation guidelines section, I suppose that's correct. I think you should better flesh out exactly why your project is the one to go with for documenting my next project. You start to get into this in the second paragraph, but really, by the end of the introduction, all I have is that your project will help me understand how to start writing good documentation and it decouples design and content. I think you can do better.

Again, I like what you are doing here, and congrats on shipping!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! This feedback is great and gives me a good idea of what to do next.</comment></comment>


A German Financier Wants to Turn Magic Mushrooms into Modern Medicine - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-psychedelics-evangelist-a-german-financier-wants-to-turn-magic-mushrooms-into-modern-medicine/ <comment><USER2> Check out Figure 6 in this paper: [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.201...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2014.0873)

"we ... compare resting-state functional brain activity in 15 healthy volunteers after intravenous infusion of placebo and psilocybin—the main psychoactive component of magic mushrooms. The results show that the homological structure of the brain's functional patterns undergoes a dramatic change post-psilocybin, characterized by the appearance of many transient structures of low stability and of a small number of persistent ones that are not observed in the case of placebo."

Psilocybin promotes neuroplasticity/neurogenesis, and the effect isn't subtle. Yet its application is still on the fringe. It's not surprising that this makes a financier salivate. It's more surprising that it isn't yet a gold rush.

<comment><USER3> Yes back in my day they were called drug dealers. Cries regulatory capture by the rich to me.

<comment><USER4> Well if it wasn't for the rich it would still be a complete taboo. I'm thankful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure if taking some shrooms can help cure depression but it can really change your perspective on life. Maybe that is what folks are talking about in this article. You are going thru all this pain and suffering, it affects your family , loved ones. It really sucks, we have all experienced something like that. If the patient takes a dose of shrooms (insert mind altering drug of choice) it could help give them a new perspective on the world, their live, and their place in nature.

<comment><USER6> Considering there's pretty compelling research that ketamine can help people that suffer from depression and MDMA in conjunction with therapy helps those with PTSD, I really think we should take a very hard look at what drugs should be illegal and why. I'm honestly not convinced there's a good reason most of the schedule 1 drugs should be illegal.

They all seem to have lots of therapeutic uses. Throwing that away seems like a huge waste.

<comment><USER7> I think that is one, of many, exact reasons they are illegal. The government will do anything to protect big pharma and these substances are not patentable. Nor do they need to be taken often for beneficial effects. That scares the living shit out of pharma companies that sell a lot of garbage like anti depressants that aren't even shown to be effective and often lead to worse outcomes like suicide. I'm surprised about what the guy in the article is doing and conflicted on whether I support it or not. Nature already provides this medicine in an almost perfect form. Extraction is trivial. I see no need for synthesis or especially for patenting it to the detriment of the natural mushrooms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome. Another molecule that is an ongoing target of persecution, now showing commercial value so it can be patented, productized, prescribed (with individuals as _medical subjects_ rather than self-actors), and otherwise subjugated for the matrix's approved use(s). Then we can pat ourselves on the back celebrating fake "progress" while the resulting revenue continues fueling the very root of the problem.

Actually ending the war on drug users means voiding the entirety of its errant laws, full stop. Anything short is just perpetuating this violation of natural rights wherein individuals are restricted in how they may effect their own consciousness.

</comment><comment><USER9> "The therapist can also steer them away from the notorious "bad trips" sometimes associated with magic mushrooms."

Bad trips are where the most important breakthroughs occur and lessons are learned

<comment><USER10> I was considering taking a trip on magic mushrooms, but a friend mentioned they had an acquaintance have a bad trip where they hallucinated spiders crawling all over their arms and they did significant physical damage to the arms in the process.

I'm not against growing from a bad trip, but I don't want lasting physical damage from the experience. Would love to hear any advice or suggestions experienced users have in how to mitigate a bad trip.

<comment><USER11> Before I get into mitigation strategies, I'll get into the two primary reasons that people have bad trips (and they are inherently tied to each other often). The first is the actual catalyst, the second is secondary but usually leads to the first. The primary thing that people describe as a "bad trip" is a positive feedback loop of negative thoughts. I use positive feedback loop in the scientific sense, meaning that when you have a positive feedback loop of negative thoughts, the thoughts feed on each other and create more negative thoughts. The second is feeling physically unwell. Unfortunately mushrooms don't taste great and people react physically in negative ways oftentimes, including but not limited to puking (most common) but also upset stomach and weird bowel movements. Knowing this, it's easy to see how feeling physically ill can lead into the primary cause of bad trip, positive feedback loop of negative thoughts. It's hard to avoid feeling physically ill for a lot of people but knowledge of the physicality of what you are feeling (and contrasting that with the mental aspect) can help people to avoid bad trips. In other words, I can tell myself that the reason I might not feel too hot right now is simply because of the way my body is digesting mushrooms, vs any mental aspect of my psychology.

To mitigate a bad trip:

\- Be in a comfortable environment where you feel safe. This is usually where you live or the abode of a close trusted friend. It's not recommended for the first psychonaut voyage to try something someone hands you at a concert. That's a risky way to go about things.

\- Have several comforting escapes set aside. A warm blanket and a bed are two very easy ones.

\- Music that you are intimately familiar with helps. It also helps to have multiple playlists of music style that you enjoy as change of music can help break any positive feedback loop. Under the influence of psychedelics, music enjoyment and perception is significantly enhanced and can act as a complete change of mood and does wonders to break thought cycles.

\- An experienced sitter to talk you through what you are feeling. This is the single most important thing that can break the cycle for people, so try and have this if you can, although not everyone will have this luxury.

\- I've found that I have less negative physical response when dealing with extract vs raw mushrooms. I like to make tea, but there are other ways that are preferable to just eating the mushrooms as they are.

\- Depending on your mindset, it's generally a good idea to avoid mirrors when undergoing your first voyage, as this will send you into a contemplation of self quite easily, and you might not be mentally prepared for that yet. Later on in your voyage of discovery, you might want this though.

Lastly, I want to try and dispel the notion of what psychedelics are based on your post. I cannot speak to your anecdote that you relay in your post, but no one I have known (myself included) experiences mushrooms in the way you describe. I feel like media in general does a very bad job of describing and portraying what psychedelic experience is like. Users typically do not hallucinate things out of thin air like spiders on arms (though I am not saying your anecdote is untrue!). Oftentimes the hallucinogenic experience is more along the lines of completely new life being breathed into things that you normally perceive as everyday objects. For instance, you normally witness much greater depth perception of fractal-like objects (tree leaves/branches are a classic example) or normally static patterns like patterns on wallpaper will begin to move, breathe, and pulsate with life. You can conjure patterns from nothing when you close your eyes, but this is only a much amplified effect of the normal experience you have when you close your eyes and attempt to perceive the patterns that your blood vessels create.

I want to wrap up by saying (and it sucks that I feel like I have to say this) that I'm a well-adjusted member of society who works 9-5 as a software engineer and pays taxes. Jobs was a big user of psychedelics. For a lot of people psychedelics can be a good thing. They helped me conquer a lot of long- standing anxiety issues I developed in my youth and helped me discover my love for dance. Used correctly they are a really powerful and helpful tool for self improvement and just connecting with the world in general.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for taking the time to reply; I appreciate all of the advice you have provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've heard of Compass Pathways before and it made me wary of supporting them.

[https://qz.com/1454785/a-millionaire-couple-is- threatening-t...](https://qz.com/1454785/a-millionaire-couple-is-threatening- to-create-a-magic-mushroom-monopoly/)

</comment><comment><USER13> The idea of achieving peace by drugging the population reminds me of Stanislaw Lem's book "The Futurological Congress", where this interesting concept was turned into a fun to read and thought-provoking SciFi novel.

</comment><comment><USER14> So can the SEC seize the money from Compass if their investors get indicted for securities fraud?</comment>


Unpatched WordPress vulnerability allows code execution for authors - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ripstech.com/2018/wordpress-file-delete-to-code-execution/ <comment><USER2> "2018/01/24: The WordPress security team estimates the time to fix to be 6 months."

RIPS could have at least waited one more month. It sounds like Wordpress gave their HackerOne extension deadline.

Also, lots of typos and bad wording in the article makes it look even less professional. For instance, if I didn't know the context, the following sentence makes absolutely no sense:

"The value of $_POST['thumb'] could hold the, to the WordPress upload directory relative, path of any file, and when the attachement gets deleted, the file will get deleted with it as seen in the first listing."

<comment><USER3> It has been more than 7 months since the issue was reported, I don't see how this lacks professionalism. They even created a temporary fix.

<comment><USER2> The unprofessional part is disclosing the issue publicly 5 months after the company estimated it would take them 6 months to fix it.

It's a bit ridiculous that such a high-risk bug could be given so much time for it to be fixed, but that's how HackerOne's guidelines go. [https://www.hackerone.com/disclosure- guidelines](https://www.hackerone.com/disclosure-guidelines)

(I'm personally a fan of a tiered system wherein high-risk bugs have a hard deadline of 3 months or less before public disclosure, and medium/low risk bugs a much longer deadline)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another day, another WordPress vulnerability.

And people still justify using it 'because it's easy and simple for non-tech folks.' The non-profit world is _riddled_ with it.

<comment><USER5> The more time I spend in IT the more I appreciate extreme simplicity. Sure wordpress claims to be simple for the average user, but its always whats under the hood that counts.

<comment><USER4> I'm all for actual simplicity, not a facade of simplicity over complex and inscrutable internals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've put my wordpress behind a firewall, in a docker container, and mirror it with wget to my actual webserver, serving the static files. I sleep better at night.

</comment><comment><USER7> > case 'editattachment':

> check_admin_referer('update-post_' . $post_id);

Seems like you wouldn't be able to actually use this vulnerability without a valid nonce, so I don't see how you would trigger this unless you have some sort of malicious plugin also installed on the site . . ?

<comment><USER8> Some sites have plugins that allow users to create accounts with minimal permissions.

An attacker could create such an account, then abuse a legitimate nonce to delete files.

<comment><USER9> Not sure why someone would do this, but even without a plugin you can go to General Settings and set New User Default Role to Author. This would give any new accounts the ability to exploit this.</comment></comment></comment>


Teenager Arrested In England For Criticizing Olympic Athlete On Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/31/teenager-arrested-tweets-tom-daley

<comment><USER2> The title here is no reflection on what subsequently happened. This was no mere "criticism." After the initial tasteless and insensitive tweet there came an outpouring of vile, abusing, threatening, and downright nasty material.

This has been submitted here a couple of times[1][2], but the mainstream press haven't included anything but the most mild of the tweets. Copies exist elsewhere of some truly disgusting sentiments.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4316070>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4316294>

I have more references if you want.

 _Edited for grammar and spelling._

<comment><USER3> Here is a complete conversation for those who enjoy some Twitterdrama

<http://imgur.com/a/aHDr0>

<comment><USER4> Thanks a lot for this; after reading the BBC coverage, it sounded like a complete overreaction. Regardless of whether or not this action was justified, the extended tweet lists certainly put it a little more into perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The wording in this title has been changed to imply that it was an over- reaction. If you look at the actual title and what was said it wasn't 'criticising Olympic Athlete'

</comment><comment><USER6> It was not just for the Twitter posts, but also his racist and homophobic YouTube videos.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clickbait.

<comment><USER2> That's obviously a criticism, but it's currently a big story here in the UK. There's been a lot of vile twitter traffic around this, and someone has been arrested because of it.

This actually tracks into all sorts of privacy issues, and legal issues, and questions of what you can and can't say in media such as twitter (and facebook, etc.)

Do the racist, homophobic rantings of an individual enjoy the protection of "free speech"? When do taunts turn into outright bullying?

These issues have been around for ages, but with Twitter there is the "opportunity" for the pitchfork-toting mobs to get out after people. Where does the right of the individual to speak his/her mind end and the protection of those against whom vitriol is directed begin?

<comment><USER7> Oh it's an interesting story, but (like you were saying) the title was a bit misleading. That's all.</comment></comment></comment>


Central owncloud servers hacked - <AUTHOR> https://central.owncloud.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just received another email:

Dear users of central.owncloudorg,

after the official ownCloud forum central.owncloud.org was target of a hacking attack we were able to resolve this incident. The intruder contacted us and we managed to establish a cooperative contact to him in which we were assured that his only challenge was getting the data, not using it in any way. After reviewing his statements and setting up an agreement we can assure you that no harm was nor will be done.

For the full story please see our blog post: [https://owncloud.org/news/owncloud-forum-hack-why- password-s...](https://owncloud.org/news/owncloud-forum-hack-why-password- security-is-more-important-than-ever/) Also feel free to use our social media channels to stay updated.

We are very sorry about the trouble and apologize for any inconvenience. Luckily, no real damage occured. This will be the last email we're sending to you about this topic

All the best Florian and the rest of the ownCloud team</comment>


Taking "Me, Inc." Public: Market Caps for Individuals - <AUTHOR> http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/07/taking-me-inc-p.html <comment><USER2> I don't think the author realizes this, but what he is really doing is pointing out that sometimes slavery can be beneficial for slaves.

Selling your future output net of cost-of-living is essentially what slavery is, after all; and the argument the author is making -- that if one could buy someone's future output (or the future output of a group of people) then one would have an incentive to invest in education and health care and other services which would maximize that output -- is one which dates back to at least the Roman republic, and probably earlier: Roman slaveowners would often pay to have their slaves educated or trained, because it increased the slaves' value more than the education or training cost.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not slavery if one is willing to be enslaved.

<comment><USER3> There's a reason that freedom is usually held to be an 'inalienable right' (one that can't be sold). Even if, theoretically, it might benefit someone to sell their freedom, its too dangerous to allow such a transaction to be considered legitimate.

<comment><USER4> _Even if, theoretically, it might benefit someone to sell their freedom, its too dangerous to allow such a transaction to be considered legitimate._

That is simply untrue. We sell our freedoms all the time. I sell big chunks of mine in two-week increments when I work; I sell my freedom for other times when I go home to an apartment where there are certain limits on my behavior.

<comment><USER3> There is an implicit quantifier in the phrase 'sell their freedom'. You read 'any', I meant 'all'.

<comment><USER4> Right. If you're okay with selling it in increments, but not selling all of it, there's probably a cutoff. And your cutoff is probably lower than 99%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We used to have a market for private ownership of individuals; thanks to Wilberforce et al., we don't any more (at least, publicly, in OECD countries). Is there some reason to believe that public ownership of individuals would be less evil?

Debt by individuals is still allowed, though. Generally you can do anything with debt financing you can do with equity financing, no? Student loans are an example of this, as applied to personal development.

Some "intellectual property" laws are another gray area. If someone becomes an expert in a patented process, the owner of the patent gets to decide, essentially, how much that person is allowed to earn with that expertise — and how much they have to pay in rent back to the owner of the industrial property. Utility patents and trade secrets have this property; copyrights and mask-work rights less so; and trademarks and design patents least of all.

</comment><comment><USER6> appreciate the commentary, however i was really only using the individual market cap example as a way to calculate an estimated value for the overall asset class... in all likelihood, the financial instrument in question would likely be for an aggregate group, not for one individual. (see my updated clarification)

that said, i'm sure there are ways to limit moral hazard in the individual case, and most certainly there would be a regulatory if anything like that ever came about that would not allow anything approaching slavery -- or at least no moreso than credit card debt and/or personal bankruptcy.

(seriously: it's an imaginary financial engineering exercise, not a moral liberty question. you folks can now get your panties unbunched & proceed with the discussion ;)

ahem.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sure that in practice it's a quagmire of ethical and practical details, but the idea is quite intriguing. It opens the possibility of divideds, (hostile?) take overs, stock buy backs, options for people who take a risk on someone.

It could be great.

</comment><comment><USER8> Mike Merrill is an American individual who already has succeeded in becoming a publicly traded person:

<http://kmikeym.com/>

Shares are valued in real time by trades made on his open public market, implemented as a web application. Shareholders vote on major life decisions, such as whether he should engage in certain business ventures, and even on very personal questions, such as whether he should get a vasectomy.

Buy some shares, try it out!</comment>


Show HN: Android app to run your chitfund business - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.centerlimit.chitspro

<comment><USER2> For those who, like me, had no idea how what a Chit Fund was and why it would need managed - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund).</comment>


The Complete Guide to Building Strings in C++ - <AUTHOR> https://www.fluentcpp.com/2017/12/19/build-strings-from-plain-string-up-to-boost-karma/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised at how the author fails to mention fmtlib [1] with near-printf- like performance and sane (Python .format-like) formatting syntax, which also happens to generate much smaller binaries than Boost.Format.

[1] [https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt](https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt)

</comment><comment><USER3> Informative article. In practice, using ostringstream is the most useful technique.

</comment><comment><USER4> Author doesn't have a comment section unfortunately, perhaps he reads this. Instead of the stream iterator, use a stream _joiner_ and not deal with the crummy trailing delimiter.

Also to_chars offers better formatting than to_string.

<comment><USER4> to late to edit: there IS a comment section but my ad blocking had blocked it -- and someone else pointed out the stream joiners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> cheap jabs at the venerable printf(...) notwithstanding, this article is ok. however, i must confess, string formatting still sucks in plain C++, and snprintf(...) is not too shabby.

<comment><USER6> The cheap jabs are all incorrect, as well. Any compiler from the last 10 years will warn you if you don't match your printf format string to the arguments. printf also supports reordering arguments using the %m$ syntax (read the man page). And yes, you can extend printf with your own types.

A better guide to using strings in C++ is here: [https://yosefk.com/c++fqa/io.html](https://yosefk.com/c++fqa/io.html)

<comment><USER7> Does the compiler also warn when you don't use a literal format string?</comment></comment></comment>


Founders Interview with Marc Benioff - <AUTHOR> http://startup.supercoolschool.com/classes/611

<comment><USER2> Was this interview live or via email?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It was via Email.</comment>


Show HN: Charlatan – A Go Code Generator for Testing Interfaces - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/percolate/charlatan <comment><USER2> Author here, I hope you find this project useful. Please let me know if you have questions.</comment>


What Fruits and Vegetables Looked Like Before Humans Intervened (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://curiosity.com/topics/this-is-what-fruits-and-vegetables-looked-like-before-humans-intervened-curiosity/ <comment><USER2> What they don't say is that the natural peach is also the ancestor of cherries, apricots, nectarines -- all the stone fruits -- and also almonds.</comment>


Decentralized Email – A New Age of Data Security - <AUTHOR> https://utopia.fans/networks/decentralized-email-a-new-age-of-data-security/ <comment><AUTHOR> Which email do you use now?</comment>