Don't name your input elements 'action' or 'submit' - <AUTHOR> http://www.joezimjs.com/javascript/dont-name-inputs-action-submit/

<comment><USER2> You should always prepend variables, IDs, and classes with something unique to the project or page you're working on, it's just good practice. I've even used my initials on occasion.

I normally do a short acronym for my project followed by an underscore for these types of things.

Look at Google's search form, many of their IDs and classes are prepended with "gs_" and others are named something sufficiently unique so that they won't be accidentally repeated or overwritten.

Also, reserved words:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Reserved_Words)

[http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysqld-version- reference/en/mysqld-...](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysqld-version- reference/en/mysqld-version-reference-reservedwords-5-5.html)

[http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.keywords.php](http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.keywords.php)

[http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.php](http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.php)

<comment><USER3> I like to prefix the element name with the entity name that will be written to. That way, if I have a form that will be writing to the attributes of multiple entities, I know exactly what each represents. If two entities share an attribute name, then the element names will be distinct. For instance, if I have a UI where the user can enter order details and add order lines, then the elements that represent order attributes are prefixed with "order-" and the others are prefixed with "orderLine-". It is tremendously helpful during maintenance.

<comment><USER2> Yep, that too. "dm2_register_form_name_input" for example. You could probably mix upper/lowercase to format it better but for some reason I don't like to mix them, just personal preference.

I avoid dashes because the text editor I use doesn't select them as a whole word when I double click them.

<comment><USER3> Oops, I didn't mean to type "orderLine" in camel case. I usually use underscores in the entity and attribute names, and separate them with a dash, like "order_line-item_sku". That way, I can distinctly select the entity or attribute, or easily search for all attributes for a given entity, like "order_line-".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I ran into this issue a few weeks ago as well. It's a horrible legacy feature that still exists. It's actually even worse. If you have any form elements that are also named after an internal property of the form object, then that input will shadow the native property.

The only way to access it is to clone the form (without children) and then access that property.

I asked a question on stackoverflow about it:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22942689/form-elements- wi...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22942689/form-elements-with-a-name- attribute-that-is-the-same-as-a-form-property-shadow)

</comment><comment><USER5> Mirror / Google cached version: [http://goo.gl/UAzttI](http://goo.gl/UAzttI)

<comment><USER6> Heh, Wordpress. That's what I meant: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7701035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7701035)

<comment><USER5> If you got 0.3 req/s from wordpress, there was probably something wrong with your configuration or system. I run wordpress on absolutely ancient hardware via Apache SuPHP. It basically does a sudo + CGI-like exec _per request_. It still manages to squeeze out about 20 req/s.

Above setup was enough to withstand being at the frontpage of Hacker news. I'm guessing this website's problem is more related to Hostgator or whatever he's hosting it on. Perhaps a badly configured database backend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I attended a talk on UI design for devs a few months ago. The presenter asked us: "Do any of you run an S&M website? No? Then your buttons shouldn't say submit!"

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not exactly on topic. We're talking about the `id` and `name` attributes, not the actual text on the button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a basic namespacing bug in the Javascript DOM: forms should never have allowed input elements to shadow the built-in methods of the form object.

</comment><comment><USER9> I had to read that first paragraph about 5 times, and I'm still not sure what I read. There's at least one word missing, among other things.

<comment><USER10> > to make your simpler

Make your (code|life|waffles) simpler?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys. As soon as I get my hosting back up, I'll get it fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I ran into this gotcha 6-7 years ago when inheriting work on a shopping cart system. It took me at least a full day of debugging. I have used "submitBtn" as a name ever since.

<comment><USER12> I was just discussing this with a coworker this week. We had run into it about 13 years ago on IE 5.5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about "don't submit your form with Javascript" ?

</comment><comment><USER14> Scan your pages with this, at least your static HTML pages: [http://kangax.github.io/domlint/](http://kangax.github.io/domlint/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I suppose another incarnation of this problem, albeit less likely to occur in the wild, is to use an input name that is also the id of a different input in the same form.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here is my JQuery-based solution that I came up with a while ago for Nuggety.com:

$('<input type="submit" style="display:none;">').appendTo("#form").trigger('click'); $("#form" input:last-child").remove();

It adds a second submit button to the form and clicks it, then removes the button. Probably a better way to do this, but it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly an interesting workaround.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's down. Anyone have a mirror?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry guys. I didn't expect this to be such a big story. It's been a LONG time since I hit big on Hacker News.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Don't put your websites on Hosting Gator

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't really afford a better host right now. On days like this though, I'm definitely seeing that I need something that can handle more traffic

<comment><USER19> You might be able to. A $5 droplet on DO, configured correctly, should be able to handle a Hacker Newsering. =) The cache plugins for WP are really good these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Cloudflare and Quick Cache, but doesn't seem to help enough. The HostGator support guys recommended switching to WP Super Cache.

What's DO?

<comment><USER20> DigitalOcean, it's not shared hosting and therefore harder to configure, that being said it's definitely worth it. I've found that even on a low-end VPS you can juice it for more than you could with a high-end shared hosting account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Solution: form.elements['submit']

<comment><USER21> Ah I misread the problem, my bad. Explanation rather than (or in addition to) downvoting would have been appreciated though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The interesting thing is I have "action" and "submit" name inputs in every single form I've ever coded.

And I also .submit() forms via JS.

And I never had this issue...

<comment><USER23> Very easy to replicate:

With id="submit", throws a "object is not a function" error. [http://jsfiddle.net/nbkHs/](http://jsfiddle.net/nbkHs/)

Without, submits just fine: [http://jsfiddle.net/B8CV2/1/](http://jsfiddle.net/B8CV2/1/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Python rewritten in Rust? - <AUTHOR> Does it make sense to avoid GC/JIT by rewriting Python in Rust instead of C/RPython used for CPython/PyPy? <comment><USER2> No it doesn't. The implementation language doesn't affect what features the language runtime itself can provide.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's this talk by Dan Callahan from PyCon 2015 that touches on the very topic - "My Python's a Little Rust-y"[0]

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CwJ0MH-4MA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CwJ0MH-4MA)

</comment><comment><USER4> Let's re write the Kernel in Rust too.

<comment><USER5> Which kernel?

<comment><USER4> _the_ Kernel

<comment><USER5> There's more than one kernel. Your emphasis and capitalization does not make it clear which one you mean.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Portal 2 mod - with new lines by GLaDOS! - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8SdYz7cq04

<comment><AUTHOR> It's all interesting, but if you're in a hurry, the very best part starts at 6:20.</comment>


A Culture of Envy - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2014/08/11/a-culture-of-envy/ <comment><USER2> Everything he says is true, but boy no one wants to hear it. So much of modern identity is tied up in envy together with empathy.

Nowadays the way to demonstrate you are a good person is to express sympathy and empathy for various approved groups. You can even express some hostility towards your own group to show how noble and virtuous you are. Unfortunately, in the west, this narrative is deeply flawed - the most of the approved groups only suffer relative to others. They don't suffer absolutely at all.

If you give up envy, you take away people's ability to show what noble souls they are.

<comment><USER3> I've been thinking recently that Twitter is rapidly becoming a tool for people to claim Moral Superiority. There's all sorts of culture wars being fought, and both sides seem intent on showing how much more Moral they are.

That's always been around, but it feels like it's become much more intense online over the past year or two.

I think it may have been an inevitable phase of moving the world online, when I step back and try to look at it objectively. Suddenly billions of people are talking to each other and getting a sense of their place in the world. Naturally, they're trying to establish an identity in that mass of humanity. Staking out their territory.

Part of that is aligning themselves with a tribe. Some of the old tribal leaders (politicians) are extremely adept at that game and have been successfully pulling people into the highly (and quite intentionally) polarized divisions that serve the leaders' goals. You can see this at work when you see the masses parrot whatever the approved outrage of the week is (and this applies to all extremes on the political spectrum).

The key point is that these outrages are specifically selected for their ability to divide the populace into neat little tribes. A lot of political issues are chosen for focus because they serve as a Sorting Hat, if that makes sense. That benefits the people who are already in charge of those Houses.

I'd like to think this is just a phase, though. We're very early on in the game. People are just getting used to an idea that they can establish their identity in the big global world, and so far they're leaning on the old structures. Maybe in years to come they won't have to, maybe they'll find other ways to establish identity. At least I hope that's the case.

Anyway, this is kind of rambling. I should try to organize these thoughts a little better.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the only reason envy is related to this is that it's playing a substitute role for actual harm.

Here in India, you can actually say "look, starving children." "Look, these people need water." "These people need power." If I hadn't been stuck in a hospital for the past week or so, I'd have seen several people each day for whom empathy is a natural reaction. But it's pretty hard to inspire empathy for Indians or Africans.

In the US, it's far harder to find such people. No one would consider me a deprived person or particularly deserving of empathy (ignoring a temporary medical condition), yet I have far fewer goods and services than even most of the poorest Americans. This poses a conundrum for those who want to appeal to empathy.

That's where envy comes in. Don't feel bad for people because they have too little, feel bad because others have more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lets look at how envy drives some entire businesses:

1\. Instagram - completely based around lifestyle envy and like count.

2\. Pinterest - envy my "good" taste

3\. Facebook - envy my life and my baby

4\. Twitter - envy my wit and follower count

5\. Linked.in - envy my job and connection count

6\. Gmail (before open access) - envy my domain name for my email address.

7\. eBay - Envy my sellers badges and review ranking

I think social networking in particular has a strong correlation to using envy as being a "dark" social pattern exploited for growth and stickiness.

<comment><USER5> I use most of those services (except 2 and sort of 5) and don't experience the 'envy' that you associate with them. Perhaps your perspective on them is skewed or perhaps my use-cases are atypical.

<comment><USER6> I'd say your use-cases are atypical.

Envy is so much part of those services that it has even been played in comedy routines - or even in drama:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxVZYiJKl1Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxVZYiJKl1Y)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Juxtaposed:

> ...stop taking finite games seriously.

> 22,800 followers

> 900,000 views

edit: no insult meant to the author, and I appreciate the sentiment. I just found the advice and the bean counting to be ironic when appearing together.

<comment><USER8> Wow, good observation. That whole sidebar screams "look at my numbers!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been struggling with this and need some help from you wiser HN folks.

I've decided that I won't make money the #1 factor in my life and I do try and put it into practice. I have more savings than my friends who do earn much more than me.

Lately its occurred to me that such idealism may have some negative consequences in the long run. In a society where everything is predicated on how much money you have - the healthcare you receive , the education your kids get , the college they go to , I can't practically avoid playing society's finite games.

My dad is a guy who's never played any of these finite games. And the end result is that not a day goes by when my mom doesn't complain about him and his ways. It's hard to find other people who share such a world view.

And personally too , it's been very tough. It's a pretty common feeling but I have it too , that I lost my way somewhere and now I'm at some place where I can't motivate my self to find a way out. And frankly , I'm not asking for too much. If I got a decent job with some interesting work I'd be thrilled.

It's natural feel envy and snobbery. Especially towards the folks who grew up with you. I don't envy Elon Musk because he was never a part of my life. But if I were a smart kid in his class who grew up with him , maybe I'd feel a tinge of envy :P . Because you both came from the same place you feel that you could have done it.

You should never ever feel sorry for yourself. Easy enough to say but I can't seem to do it. And that's destroying me.

EDIT: Someone who actually walks the walk on this: [http://heuna.tumblr.com/post/2415073898/kim-ung-yong-a- child...](http://heuna.tumblr.com/post/2415073898/kim-ung-yong-a-child- prodigy-but-happiness-beats)

<comment><USER10> My take on it has always been, for money not to be a big factor in life, you need a certain amount of money. Otherwise you're constantly counting it, tracking prices, looking for income, etc.

To be able to make enough money to not have to be thinking about it all the time, but to forego the opportunity on idealistic grounds seems to be a painful shot at my foot; I will have made myself constantly worry about money out of my disdain for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ... wherein our author realizes they have been pursuing the wrong goals.

Yes, it is common for people to measure themselves against folks they consider their peers. Some of them got it from their parents who said to them, "oh, he's the best in his class" or "look at how clean and tidy your friend is, go wash up." Some of them got it from a desire to have a _score_ with which to compare. Some got it from girlfriends or wives who complained to them in reference to a comparison.

And then again, a lot of people have moved past that and started defining their values not through comparison to others but to their own internal values.

It might be an age thing, or maybe a maturity thing. At some point you realize in the end you are going to be dead, and killing yourself so that folks who are still alive will remember you, is not really a 'goal' that lends itself to a full life.

<comment><USER12> On the other hand, comparing yourself to others can be useful in giving yourself direction and ideas.

For a simple example, when I visit friends' houses, I am often taking little notes. "Oh, I love this sink. Hey, the placement of the washer is great." It gives me ideas, real-life-examples, for how I could improve my house to my own liking.

The same can be done at a personal level. Anything you admire about someone can be taken as a role model. Not because you want to outdo them. Rather because you want to be more like them.

Others may disagree, but I find other people very handy for "window shopping" life decisions and lifestyles. Does this guy seem fulfilled? Does that guy have trouble making rent? Which one do I want to end up like?

<comment><USER11> Fair point, I refer to that activity as "learning from others" as opposed to "comparing to others".

The key difference is that the reference standard is rooted in your internal values. So "you love that sink" as opposed to "everyone thinks that sink is better than mine, time to upgrade my sink."

Role models are good too, if you are evaluating the values that you believe in. But the key there is that you adopt your values because you believe in them, not because others think you should believe in them.

Like the author who was pursuing fame as a researcher because he felt others saw that as valuable, only to come into conflict with his real values which were that his family meant the world to him. In my opinion, letting yourself be driven by values external to your world view will always end up with you feeling very poorly about yourself in the long term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The book which this article is based on is _Finite and Infinite Games_ by James Carse.

[http://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James- Carse/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James- Carse/dp/1476731713/)

For some reason, the article mentions the author but does not explicitly mention the title of the book.

</comment><comment><USER14> A lot of the post feels like hyperbole to me - here's a successful and intelligent professor, telling people to simply do what they want to do, and not worry about 'competition' and finite games. He clarifies his views a little in the comments, relenting that one can still have healthy competition as long as it doesn't become 'war'-like.

Perhaps a more moderate summary of his message is "don't take the game too seriously, and know when to leave it". Or maybe this is just taking something that both the author and those he criticizes view as being binary, and viewing it as a real.

<comment><USER15> It's a matter of semantics, but perhaps we can replace "competition" with "inspired by" (a peer) to do more. Personally, this mindset has helped me a lot.

<comment><USER14> Sure, I feel that way about a lot of work related things. Honestly, at the end of the day as solipsistic as it might sound, you have to play the game where you're happy, and that's 'winning'. What game this is differs from person to person. Re: money, fame, etc, most us aren't Midases, and pursuing these metrics usually lead to significant losses in other (presumably important) dimensions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reducing the problem of inequality to envy is so totally, arrogantly disconnected from the reality of life on this planet that it makes me want to punch the author in the face.

This entire blog post can be summarized in one short sentence: "let them eat cake!".

Seriously, _" Take the regular jobs."_? What the fuck do you think the vast majority of people lucky enough to have a job are doing?

 _" Avoid conspicuous consumption."_ Well thank you very fucking much for that bit of helpful advice to the majority that have no fucking choice.

Envy is the standard lame excuses of the privileged that don't want to bother thinking about the consequences their privilege has for others.

His "finite games" are non-optional within a society of structurally growing inequality. You stop playing, you lose _everything_. Maybe not dramatically in one individual's lifetime (if, like his one and only example, you're lucky enough to be pretty fucking privileged to start with), but bit by bit, generation by generation, until there is nothing left but scraps.

That's what Piketty and Occupy Wall street were talking about, not about whether or not people can "choose" to buy a fucking BMW. Inequality is a growing cancer that gradually takes all choices away.

<comment><USER17> The book, "The millionaire next door" is based on extensive research on the consumption patterns of America's wealthiest and a surprising majority live below their means and don't play that game. They're wealthy is spite of being low earners -- in other words they play solid economic defense and often have a weaker economic offense than many. There are a lot of people driving BMWs who can't afford them, and the economic crises revealed a ton of people over- leveraged on mortages. Now, in that case there's certainly a strong argument that people were taken advantage of, and inequality is a really big problem -- I'm just not convinced the status game is something that must be played. Again, the book makes a compelling, fact based argument that frugality is a bigger determinant of wealth than high income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To pick a nit and hopefully spark interest in what is an amazing book, Thorsteun Veblen described a good purchased to create envy as "Invidious Consumption", which is a special case of conspicuous consumption.

Invidious Consumption is meant to divide people. Conspicuous only means some aspects of it stand outside the realm of 'utility' (which to Veblen includes aesthetics).

</comment><comment><USER19> Stopped reading at the luxury car point. Some people of means choose to drive luxury cars because they are powerful, comfortable cars with lots of safety features and bleeding edge technology.

I'm sure there are plenty of people that buy them due to envy, but to state that everyone who buys one is envious, or wants to evoke others' envy, is more than a little ridiculous.

<comment><USER6> > _Some people of means choose to drive luxury cars because they are powerful, > comfortable cars with lots of safety features and bleeding edge technology._

Probably the kind of people who have never heard or entertained the notion of diminishing returns, and think that spending $200,000 or $300,000 on a car will get you much more comfortable and "bleeding edge technology" than spending, say, $60,000, and not just an extravagant design and the envy factor.

(I'm also not sure why buyers of luxury cars in the US in particular want "powerful" sports cars in a country where the maximum speed limit we get is a kindergarten level 70-75 mph).

(Btw, and whenever someone writes "everyone" for a social group, he means "the majority of them". No need to point out some exceptions to "disprove" him).

<comment><USER20> > I'm also not sure why buyers of luxury cars in the US in particular want > "powerful" sports cars in a country where the maximum speed limit we get is > a kindergarten level 70-75 mph

Because handling and acceleration are useful and FUN even if you aren't red lining it.

> than spending, say, $60,000

The original author specifically denigrates BMWs, which you can purchase for less than $60k.

It's all relative, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Isn't it fundamentally just about the ability to manipulate one's environment, though?

Such capacity is the only thing I ever envy about others: the power to craft their environment and sculpt their own experience to fit their desires, regardless of content. The relative difference is entirely incidental, since I primarily notice only others who are further up the hierarchy.

Is it just me? It seems like a major fallacy to think that in general people desire power over other humans as an end in itself.

Perhaps it's the technocrat talking, but the ideal situation seems to be _Unenvied Power_ : pure power over one's environment, with zero conscious representation of that power in others' minds.

</comment><comment><USER22> As humans we need to feel a sense of accomplishment. When we lived in small tribes and villages it was possible for many people to achieve something in that small pond. Now we're all surrounded by giants. It's both humbling and depressing.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sharp enough to tell if this is a joke/parody site. He has the 'social media' stats in this weird prominent sidebar, which makes me think this is some kind of experimental-art piece critiquing social media.

</comment><comment><USER24> The concept that playing zero-sum games is socially unacceptable needs to come back. This would not have been a strange concept to a businessman of the 1950s.

</comment><comment><USER25> A culture of envy? Maybe. But in a world where the top 1% controls 50% of the global wealth, what is surprising about it?

</comment><comment><USER26> > I believe that if there is one thing humanity needs to do to get through the > next few centuries, is to reject envy and stop taking finite games > seriously.

That cannot happen as long as you want humanity to exist. Reproduction is the driving force, shaping everything from our behavior, including the search for status, which is an important mechanism in mating. If people didn't signal [[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Signaling](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Signaling)], evolution would be a lot slower (or maybe could exist at all?).

Now, status doesn't necessarily need to be related to wealth, however for the past centuries, that was a reliable indicator.

This is really basic evolutionary psychology, and I encourage the author the check it out.

<comment><USER27> A lot of things "slow down evolution". Glasses and contact lenses, or not throwing babies with birth defects from the nearest cliff. So that in itself hardly constitutes an argument against anything, slowing down evolution is perfectly fine.

It's not like fast or slow or no evolution make any difference when it comes to the heat death of the universe. Evolution does make "progress", but not really towards anything in particular; it isn't going anywhere. The universe, for all we know anyway, is a tightly sealed container we will not get out of and die in no matter what we evolve into -- so we might as well spend the time intellectually honest and compassionate.

> Now, status doesn't necessarily need to be related to wealth, however for > the past centuries, that was a reliable indicator.

On what planet? Make a list of the greatest minds of the last 100 years, and find out how much they cared about, or even despised, wealth. I know it's subjective to a degree what constitutes a "great mind" \- but that still beats the circular logic of defining success as material wealth, and then saying material wealth is a good indicator for success.</comment></comment>


Mac CLI – OS X command line tools for developers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/guarinogabriel/mac-cli/ <comment><USER2> I would advise finding another name for the tool. 'mac' is an obvious trademark infringement and it's only a matter of time before Apple lawyers come knocking on your door. Honestly I find it uncool to piggyback on someone else's brand in this way. The protagonists are different but it's the same fundamental issue as the "Ubuntu vs OVH" and "Let's Encrypt vs Comodo" stories we've seen recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice! Do you have any suggestion regarding the name? I'd love to hear some ideas.

<comment><USER2> I don't have any suggestions, but will be happy to send them if I think of anything.

The sooner you change, the better. Otherwise that is wasted brand equity for you. If you're going to work hard to build a great tool, the recognition for that should flow to a name of your own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for advice, and if you think of anything about the name just let me know!

<comment><USER3> I just thought of CLImax. Might be to sexually loaded though :(

<comment><USER2> Yeah... How about "mcl", "A Mac Command-Line tool"?

<comment><USER4> Already in use (though, pretty niche): [http://micans.org/mcl/](http://micans.org/mcl/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a seasoned dev on OS X I'm not sure if I see the benefits here. You get the same set of instructions but lose (or rather, don't gain, as a beginner) the chance to use google-fu.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. I will be updating the code to add modularity in addition of improvements to make it easier to use and extend.

<comment><USER6> That would be great! I would love to have some mac specific commands, but I don't care for the lamp/magento/git commands.

Is there a way to install only the dependencies that one cares about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm quite unfond of this command suite pattern that seems to be popular in cli apps lately. It's a very git thing to do. Why not just mac-whatever1 mac- whatever2? It has less coupling, basic autocompletion out of the box, and generic autocompletion very easily generatable in a context-free fashion, but less coupling alone should be enough of a reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree 100% with you. I am working on a modular version of the script and I will update the code soon. Thanks for your comment!

<comment><USER7> I appreciate your appreciating my jibe. Good luck with your suite and sorry for the little bit of negativity. Command line apps are my favorite type of apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem! I am glad that you enjoy command line apps as much as I do. Sometimes negativity brings energy to change what needs to be changed. If you see that you have ideas to contribute to the project, I look forward to your contributions!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's so wrong with the regular command line commands for most of this?

<comment><USER9> Well, would you rather remember: `sudo shutdown -r now` or `mac shutdown`?

Would you rather remember: `pmset sleepnow` or `mac restart`?

<comment><USER10> Is there complementary `linux shutdown` and `freebsd shutdown` and `solaris shutdown`? If no, then this utility only increases cognitive load.

<comment><USER11> then this utility only increases cognitive load.

how in the world does it 'increase cognitive load'? Seems like its just your opinion. I know how to shut down a generic linux box. But mac shutdoown or mac reboot is still easier to type and remember.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please, everyone, stop forcing HomeBrew as a dependency.

HomeBrew screws with your systems file permissions and installs directly into the standard system directories.

MacPorts ([https://www.macports.org/](https://www.macports.org/)) is at least a good, and it installs into the /opt tree, staying out of the way of anything Apple or Darwin wants to do when updating or patching your system.

Don't like MacPorts? There's always Fink ([http://www.finkproject.org/](http://www.finkproject.org/)), which installs into /sw and looks like Debian (i.e. apt-get).

HomeBrew seems like the worst of the three. :-(

<comment><USER13> i've been using homebrew since, like, lion and never had major issues. it also always worked across major and minor mac os upgrades. the things it does in /usr/local don't interfere with mac os.

in contrast, i somehow couldn't manage to efficiently use macports and fink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This project rather reminds me of Joel Spolsky's Law of Leaky Abstractions:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks like a nice collection of tools, but unfortunately the installation process assumes you want to install Homebrew (as if you haven't already), install pip, and install git, pv, and python through Homebrew. I don't want to perform those steps. I already have Homebrew, pip, and git installed, and I have pv and python installed using Nix.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true. One of the pending tasks on the script is modularity in addition of a customizable installation process. Stay tuned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I _really_ don't get this... it seems like simply a way to create an environment where you need to prepend 'mac' to every command.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would suggest another command. Instead of "XXX:extract" I use my little shell script, which runs correct unarchiver basing on the file name (or series of unarchivers for common cases like .tar.gz). So you don't have to memorise every command out there. Another useful functionality is to create a separate directory, if archive contains multiple "root" files, so the current directory won't be polluted by the bad archive.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is great! Could you create a Github Issue to move forward with that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why?

</comment><comment><USER19> How about 'climate'?

<comment><USER20> Ha - I just got it. CLImate, right? I like it. I was gonna suggest something like termtool, or just term.</comment></comment>


Aspects of Markdown - claes-magnus I wrote a text about aspects of Markdown, because I love Markdown. The text contains no new insights, but I think it is important to sometimes repeat what has already been said. Read it, if you are interested in this format at http://unfolding-programming.net/essays/2019-11-06-aspects-of-markdown <comment><AUTHOR> Please use the URL field when submitting

<comment> claes-magnus Oh, my mistake! Will do in the future. :) Thank you for pointing this out!</comment></comment>


Will Bitcoin Take Off in India?  - <AUTHOR> http://btcgeek.com/will-bitcoin-take-off-in-india/ <comment><USER2> I have seen Bitcoin rise in India in the last few months. Many of my friends in India now know about Bitcoin and are excited about it. I know this is anecdotal but still.

Also, I don't think Bitcoin is going to be popular because of the weak government that is mentioned in the article. I like that the government said no regulation to Bitcoin in India</comment>


How is an ATM secure? - <AUTHOR> http://security.stackexchange.com/q/32917/1873 <comment><USER2> I wouldn't say ATMs are secure, they're regularly stolen here in Uruguay, and in Argentina as well (just 3 days ago they stole 1 million from one (1), and one was stolen today here in Uruguay ).

They're regularly lifted and carried away here in Uruguay, one police officer said:

 _""ATMs are still being stuck to the ground with glue," said one visibly angry commissioner yesterday morning (March 22nd), investigating the unusual theft of yet another ATM, which was completely lifted by thieves, who took it "like a bag of brownies". This time, they "lifted" the cashier that was installed in 4896 between Ariel and February 28 streets, just two blocks from the Sayago mall , and took it away after opening the glass door with a magnetic card."_

Plus, they're error-prone, I've been victim of such an error several times (the ATM failed to give me the money but withdrew from my account, which SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN), in one of the cases I never got my money back (from Bank Boston Uruguay, which is now Banco Itaú). I'm of a mind that, for small amounts of money, you're better off having it "under the mattress" that in a bank (see: Cyprus, unresponsive banks, etc...). We've had a Cyprus-like bank freeze here in Uruguay, and much worse than Cyprus in Argentina (they forcibly turned their dollars into worthless pesos a few years ago (3) ).

(1) <http://www.ambito.com/noticia.asp?id=680399> (in Spanish)

(2) [http://www.lr21.com.uy/justicia/25139-otro-cajero- automatico...](http://www.lr21.com.uy/justicia/25139-otro-cajero-automatico- volo-en-la-madrugada) (in Spanish)

(3) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito> (in English)

Edit: by the way, the faulty ATM in my case was an (old) Diebold machine. So you can imagine I wouldn't trust one with my vote either :P , though I sadly do have to trust them with my money. (fortunately, voting is still manual in Uruguay).

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing LoJack hasn't moved into that market yet?

<comment><USER2> Actually, they do have a sales office here in Uruguay (I think Argentina as well), but they mainly cater to high-end cars (which are stolen and shipped to Paraguay regularly).

Banks aren't very well managed here (at least from what I've seen from the IT side), so they're probably skimping on the security.

Edit: Along the same track, I wanted to comment on one of the points made on StackExchange by Kaz:

 _Today's ATMs may be more secure than yesterday's ATM's, but the track record has been spotty.

fake ATMs have been set up by criminals and used to duplicate bank cards and collect PINs. This takes advantage of the fact that whereas ATMs authenticate users via cards and PINs, users simply trust that ATMs are real by their visual appearance and bank logos._

 _genuine ATMs have been outfitted with criminal equipment to collect PINs, in response to which ATMs had to incorporate new physical measures._

A band did this recently, but only managed to steal U$ 20.000 before being spotted. They installed skimmers on 5 ATMs on popular places.

Another guy managed to steal U$ 450.000, but was captured (news in Spanish).

<http://www.montevideo.com.uy/notnoticias_133463_1.html>

An example from Brazil (in Spanish, but with very clear pictures):

[http://www.taringa.net/posts/offtopic/4349623/Estafa-en- Caje...](http://www.taringa.net/posts/offtopic/4349623/Estafa-en-Cajeros- Automaticos.html)

 _ATMs have been simply ripped out and hauled away by criminals._

This happens a lot here, as mentioned.

 _ATMs are open 24 hours a day and in deserted areas, creating opportunities for criminals to coerce victims into extracting cash. Prior to the ATM, it was not possible to kidnap someone at knifepoint and take them to a bank and 3 in the morning in a seedy part of town._

This is scarily common (that is, it happens often enough not to make the headlines) in Argentina, and has happened several times in Uruguay.

Example from January (in Spanish), it only makes for a footnote in the Crime News section:

[http://www.clarin.com/policiales/secuestran-Liniers- llevan-r...](http://www.clarin.com/policiales/secuestran-Liniers-llevan- recorrer-cajeros_0_843515721.html)

 _As a general observation, new security measures introduced in banking usually tend to be designed to protect the banks from liability, rather than the safety of customers or their capital._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of ATMs are actually Windows PCs with a full-screen banking app, and those apps can and do crash from time to time.

A few weeks ago I came across a donation kiosk for a charity, installed in the cafeteria of a newly built highway service station. The donation app had apparently crashed, leaving the machine with vanilla Windows 7. Some kids managed to start MS Paint and were busily drawing squiggles on the touchscreen. If you started IE instead and visited a website with a drive-by download, you could have easily installed a backdoor on it.

</comment><comment><USER5> As Tom Leek points out, it's not safe, it's about reacting to tampering.

Nothing is inherently safe, so the key is to have the money inside rendered useless.

Be it broken-glass, seals, radio/gps, there are probably many other ways of detecting non-normal use (given ATMs is usually bolted). Add that to the fact that it's incredibly risky and difficult to physically remove.

What you would end up with would be useless or marked money.

So, it's not 100% secure, but it is a futile target.

Off topic: You can compare this to cryptography. Given an attacker has (physical) access and knows your system, it should still be impossible to crack.

</comment><comment><USER6> They aren't secure, at all. For example, most NCR ATMs can be physically opened with one of three keys that are easily available online. Many (especially at non-national banks) are running XP and only sporadically patched, if at all. Most NCR machines have a default admin password (one for Aptra Edge and one for Aptra Advance). Once you are in you can do whatever you want, from changing the XML for the greeting screens ("FEED ME A STRAY CAT") to replacing the animations and movies with whatever you like.

The parameters controlling what is locally allowable on the machine can be changed by editing the right config file - is $500 going to be the maximum allowable withdrawal or $50,000? If you know your way around the actual machine configuration and the operator panel you can do fun things like tell the machine it is full of $1 dollar bills when it's actually full of $20s - you just have to know what the opacity value is for the bill scanner.

The only factor here is physical security to the electronic components, which is exceedingly poor. The interior safes are very strong even once you've opened the external cabinet, so you won't be physically taking the money out very easily. Except for Triton machines, those things are ridiculously flimsy.

</comment><comment><USER7> There was a guy who did a hack on them a while ago. I think I saw it up here but I don't remember the link. A quick search brought this up <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmR0yvBTbTc>.

I think that goes to show that some ATMs are less secure than we'd like.

</comment><comment><USER8> This question reminds me of one morning when I went to work, I saw an ATM in this condition at the subway station:

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Distributeur_billets_...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Distributeur_billets_attaqué_01.JPG)

So no, they're not always secure.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't the image title say that it's a ticket machine, rather than an ATM? My French is terrible, so I'm quite possibly wrong.

<comment><USER10> The french title actually says that's it is an ATM ("billet" means bank note in french)

<comment><USER9> It does mean bank note. It also means ticket, as in plane or train ticket. And the linked picture doesn't really look like an ATM.

<comment><USER10> That's true and I'm pretty stupid (and french) :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They are not just safe, they are also great for gaming [http://www.break.com/index/hack-an-atm-play-angry- birds-2419...](http://www.break.com/index/hack-an-atm-play-angry- birds-2419069/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Hahaha, bomb-proof-safe? Not in Brazil, which thieves are using TNT to explode ATMs and get the money.

</comment><comment><USER13> The phone line would be a method of accessing the machine, with weak physical protection. It can be accessed out of sight of surveillance.</comment>


.NET Core: Still a Microsoft platform thing - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/09/net_core_still_a_microsoft/ <comment><USER2> I feel like part of the reluctance with accepting C# and .NET as fully open source platform, outside of the Microsoft ecosystem, is somewhat due to Azure. At the moment, the three main cloud providers basically vendor-lock you. There's no great standard body controlling cloud providers at the moment. Sure Terraform tries it's best to provide cross-provider APIs, but it's not the same as a standard. As such, most companies that pick .NET will pick Azure. Then developers are right back into the feeling of the old-school Microsoft proprietary vendor-lock.

I feel relatively similar about Visual Studio. It's pretty clear that it's a 2nd class citizen on Mac due to being build on top of Mono. Java apps built on the JVM feel pretty much the same whether on Windows or OS X. Mono on the other hand...it just feels like a monkeypatch. I think porting things from Windows to OS X is tough because OS X has so much foundation in UX whereas even new Windows machines are still behind 2009 MacBook Pros. This just makes Windows apps ported to OS X feel sluggish to me (and many of the features are stripped). Purely opinion.

I'm actually trying .NET Code and Visual Studio in a professional setting for the first time and I'm not hating it. WSL is what originally put Microsoft back on my radar and I'm starting to take them more seriously these days.

<comment><USER3> > I feel relatively similar about Visual Studio. It's pretty clear that it's a > 2nd class citizen on Mac due to being build on top of Mono.

"Visual Studio" for Mac is Xamarin Studio, not Visual Studio.

The naming suggests they are the same, or at least equivalent, software, but that is not the case. They are completely different code bases.

Visual Studio has over 20 years of Windows legacy. There is no Visual Studio for Mac nor will there be any time soon.

Visual Studio Code on the other hand, being Electron-based, does have a consistent cross-platform experience.

> the three main cloud providers basically vendor-lock you

There's a wide range of lock-in you can build yourself into, or not. Services and features between Azure and AWS have a large intersection. Automation is where you typically run into the most vendor-specific stuff, as you alluded to - VMs, RDBMS, Redis, blob storage, media services, etc. are easy to adapt over multiple providers.

<comment><USER4> [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio- fo...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-for-mac-top- features-of-the-new-editor/)</comment></comment></comment>


After 100 years, scientists are finally closing in on Einstein's ripples - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/after-100-years-scientists-are-finally-closing-in-on-einsteins-ripples/ <comment><USER2> I wonder of someone can help me with a misunderstanding. If "spacetime" is the medium which conducts the matter and energy we (and our stars and planets) are made of, how can we ever know that it's expanding or contracting? If we look at it like Flatland, how could a Flatlander know that the sheet he lives on is actually rippled? He simply traverses his "space" unaware that he's bobbing about in a third dimension. Also in this case, you'd never be aware of being spaghettified[1] by the changing of space.

So the laser light has to travel via space and if space contracts, it still has to cover the same amount of space (although, from an external extra- dimensional perspective, it might 'slow down' in a contracted space), and would thus not produce these interference patterns.

If, however, our energy and matter are not 'conducted' by space, then I suppose I can begin to comprehend why such an experiment might work.

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

<comment> T-A > If we look at it like Flatland, how could a Flatlander know that the sheet > he lives on is actually rippled?

He builds a device which emits flat-balls (all right, circles) traveling at a known constant speed. Then he measures the time it takes a flat-ball to reach a target and bounce back to him (they are made of flat-rubber). And he discovers that there are fluctuations in the travel time, well above what he'd expect from known error sources.

Being a flat-Einstein, he then deduces that Flatland is rippled in a third dimension, and the flat-balls are taking longer to traverse a rippled surface than a flat surface, because /\/\/\/\/\/\is longer than </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment> when you have to move along the surface of the ripples rather than go through them.

<comment><USER2> I feel you've done little but directly translate the LIGO experiment into Flatlandian physics. That doesn't answer the question.

Use a sheet of paper as your Flatland. Draw two points, measure the distance. Crinkle up the paper. There's still the same 'distance' of paper between the two points. Should the points be able to travel, they have to traverse the same number of paper molecules whether the paper is crinkled or not. No one living in this Flatland can measure the crinkles in this space because they live inside this space. They would need to step outside their own space with some ability to measure variations in a third dimension.

If the physics of a universe necessitates movement from one point to the next (let's suppose these points are Planck length apart, call them 'Planck- points'), if particles must be translated from Planck-point to Planck-point and can't skip anything in between, how are we to ever measure that Planck length expanded or contracted? Surely if it "takes longer" to traverse an expanded Planck length, then it hasn't expanded, but there now exists more space - more Planck-points.

If gravity wells stretch and contract _matter_ (rather than space), then this fits my mental model. If they actually stretch _space_, within which matter exist and along which matter traverses, I struggle to see how we could ever detect space deformations without stepping outside our own space.

<comment> T-A > Use a sheet of paper as your Flatland. Draw two points, measure the > distance. Crinkle up the paper. There's still the same 'distance' of paper > between the two points.

Because the paper is not elastic. Spacetime is; it stretches. So a better analogy would be the rubber sheet with masses rolling around on it, and deforming it, which is often invoked in popular introductions to spacetime curvature. Like all analogies, it has its limitations, but it does capture the essence of the classic Wheeler quote: "Mass tells space-time how to curve, and space-time tells mass how to move."

> If gravity wells stretch and contract _matter_ (rather than space), then > this fits my mental model.

Gravity stretches and contracts space AND matter, the latter to the extent that it can overcome the chemical bonds (and other forces) trying to keep matter together (gravity is weak, so that takes a lot of mass). We see the stretching of matter all the time as tides. Moons torn apart by it when they get too close to their planets (the Roche limit) is a more dramatic example. Spagettification of matter falling into a black hole an even more dramatic one. You can think of gravitational waves as an oscillating, self-sustaining tide traveling at the speed of light.

By the way, there is a thread of thought which takes the analogy of spacetime with an elastic solid quite seriously: [http://arxiv.org/abs/gr- qc/0408051](http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0408051)</comment></comment></comment>


Kraken confirms July the 20th #ethereum Hardfork - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/stephantual/status/753874489939783680 <comment><USER2> Ethereum developers really put themselves in a horrible position.

1\. Undisclosed investments on DAO from top ETH devs

2\. The 5% "consensus" on hardfork

3\. The inherent fragility on the implementation design of smart contracts

The whole situation is really messy and Ethereum foundation didn't step up to think what's best for the future of Ethereum. The most important gripe for me is that there is still no proper retrospective from the Ethereum organisation and how will they prevent this from happening again.

All these made really unattractive the use of ETH, not to speak of value storage of course.

I hope Rootstock will learn from Ethereum's mistakes and do better.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand the rage of some people against this decision. Cryptocurrency should be about free association of individuals and not about blindly following a flawed protocol that just happened to be the first implemented. If the consensus or vast majority vote is to upgrade the protocol, then that is what should be done. If everybody decides to stop using etherium and issue IOUs in the value of the currency they held, and use that as money, also fine. If they decide unanimously to change the protocol to give one person all the money, so they can build a huge goat idol, then that's the collective decision.

No doubt the contracts and the protocol will be refined many times until they convey the intention of the community better.

The beautiful thing about a correctly implemented cryptocurrency is that single actors cannot act against the majority will of the community. But that doesn't mean we can't shut down our computers for a minute to reconsider the rules of the game, if we find a new consensus.

<comment><USER4> That's the thing though, they aren't changing the protocol, they are just reversing the transactions that fed the DAO. The DAO was flawed, not Ethereum, and now Ethereum's stability and promise of immutability are being sacrificed so that a bunch of people (including the lead devs of ethereum) who made a bad, uninformed investment don't have to lose their money.

The 'consensus' was not by a vast majority either, unless you consider 5% a vast majority.

<comment><USER5> Could you please let us know where you got that 5% figure from? I thought (according to the latest post on Ethereum's blog [https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/07/15/to-fork-or-not-to- fork/](https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/07/15/to-fork-or-not-to-fork/)) that the voting was done just on [http://carbonvote.com/](http://carbonvote.com/)

<comment><USER2> Actually it's ~3.5%. Meaning about 3.5% of the total ETH supply has been used to vote.

<comment><USER3> Do we know much of the user base / computing power that corresponds to? And how many users abstained from voting?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And what happens once another exploit occurs? How many hard-forks will there be due to the tyranny of the sore-loser majority?

<comment><USER7> I was wondering the same thing. Turns out the answer is: probably. Elites will always bend the system to their advantage to avoid losing control.

It'll be fascinating anthropology though. We've never seen a cryptocurrency betray its fundamental principles to help a few rich people save face before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So. the intent of the DAO was _not_ specified in the code unlike claimed by all the hype. If I was a potential investor, I would be extremely curious to find out where the intent of DAO nowadays _is_ defined.

<comment><USER9> The website says: ([https://daohub.org/explainer.html](https://daohub.org/explainer.html))

By Creating DAO tokens through interaction with The DAO's smart contract code, you expressly agree to all of the terms and conditions set forth in that code. If you do not understand or do not agree to those terms, you should not Create DAO tokens.

[...]

The DAO's smart contract code governs the Creation of DAO tokens and supercede any public statements about The DAO's Creation made by third parties or individuals associated with The DAO, past, present and future. The software code currently available at [https://github.com/slockit/dao](https://github.com/slockit/dao) is the sole source for the terms under which DAO tokens may be created

<comment><USER8> > you expressly agree to all of the terms and conditions set forth in that > code. If you do not understand or do not agree to those terms, you should > not Create DAO tokens.

Now it seems to me that there are plenty of people who have neither understood nor agreed with the terms and conditions, and explicitly decided that the code was not the intent of the DAO. So, the question remains, what is the intent of the DAO? If the old code was not the intent, we have no reason to believe that any of the future versions would be either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I couldn't be more opposed to this decision. It's a terrible precedent to set, and I think fundamentally undermines the ideals behind the Ethereum network. The DAO should live or die by its own code. A hard fork should only be done to save the Ethereum network itself because of a critical flaw.

</comment><comment><USER9> What about customer ETH in Kraken's possession on the other chain, assuming it persists. Will they return it to customers or keep it for themselves?</comment>


When Do We Have Empathy for the Mentally Ill? - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/when-do-we-have-empathy-for-the-mentally-ill/ <comment><USER2> I think that deep down, mental illness is not really accepted as something real. We tend to believe in free will and how people are responsible for their own actions, and we tend to apply this to the mentally ill too, and this is exactly why free will is a flawed concept.

As long as we do not conceive that mental illness is a thing, we won't tolerate it and the mentally ill will never be able to accept they have a condition, so they will just be a burden to themselves and others.

I always relate with human beings knowing they can make errors because of their mental process or even their mental issues, even mild. Lurking on certain subreddits like JusticeServed, I can often see how some people in the US believe in capital punishment and have literally no mercy towards faulty but natural human behavior. I don't live in the US, so I might be biased, but I'm surprised how people can have such hard belief in free will ("you can make it if you want" etc).

<comment><USER3> That's a deep rabbit hole. What about the will of those on JusticeServed? Were they free to decide to be on that?

As a naive young person, I hoped that a metal illness was just that, an illness that can be cured.

After discovering mine, the curtain was pulled back, revealing the 'trick' all along behind the illusion of cure, was just suppression. Bacteria are killed, sometimes Viruses too. But thoughts, and feelings cannot be cured or killed, they must be suppressed.

For 'Free Will', one should be free to control one's will.

I can't pass through doors in the first try, or the 20th, sometimes when I'm by myself.

Some people cower right before a fight they've prepared for, for months, they knew fight day was coming.

Anger kills people, people 'see red'.

If these thoughts and feelings are your will, hopefully we find out that they're free, not you.

<comment><USER4> The reality is you don't have a will, just variables & events creating the person you are in the current moment.

<comment><USER5> Given that you would say that everything in our life is determined at birth? We just don't have enough knowledge to fast forward the simulation?

<comment><USER6> The opposite of free will is not necessarily pre-determination. It's probably the case that events proceed randomly at atomic levels and this randomness snowballs into more macro events (e.g. neurons discharging).

<comment><USER4> Still pre-determination if you have a system that is deterministic but influenced from an outside force and the outside force executing the alterations is not in the system being influenced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >For example, one vignette described "Terry," a 28-year-old woman who felt deeply sad for the past four weeks and lost interest in activities she usually enjoys. In the "biological" version presented to the study participants, Terry's father also suffered from symptoms of depression, a doctor told her as a teenager that she might have an imbalance of neurotransmitters, and an MRI scan revealed that she had an unusually small hippocampus, which could affect her reaction to stress. In the "psychosocial" version, Terry's father died when she was five, her mother has always been highly critical and not very nurturing, and Terry suffered from a recent breakup and problems at work.

>...respondents felt less empathy for the fictional patients when they read the biological explanation.

Am I missing something here? Of course people would empathize more with a person who has relatable experiences. Nobody is going to relate to "an MRI scan revealed that she had an unusually small hippocampus" but almost everyone has experienced relationship troubles and problems at work.

<comment><USER8> My read is that, if you think about it, yes, it's somewhat obvious that would happen—but the question is, since that's clearly not fair behavior/right, what do we do about it?

It seems clear to me that it's not right since in both cases the causes are outside the control of the afflicted person—even more so in the case of a brain structure anomaly; and a common ethical heuristic is to not blame someone in such a situation—but practically speaking, because people can't relate to the brain structure issue, they won't empathize as much.

Another ambiguity here is what's meant by 'empathy'. If you take it to mean 'relate to' (which is one meaning of course), then it's vacuous to say people have more empathy for those they can relate too. But there's another usage referring essentially to a cognitive mode wherein the empathetic person acts with understanding toward someone they're engaging with. It's surely easier to enter that mode when it's something you can personally relate to—but that isn't necessary: we can become empathetic in this way just through an abstract understanding of someone's situation.

<comment><USER9> >but the question is, since that's clearly not fair behavior/right

Is it?

In the second scenario, I empathize with _the painful experience_ , not just with the outcome (depression). Even if both fictional characters are described as having the same state _now_ , how they got there matters to us. We feel empathy for _what they went through_.

I don't think there's anything wrong to have different emotions towards a person who has just been robbed, compared to someone who hasn't been (but doesn't have more money in the bank account).

We have codified this in our laws. We give different punishments for the same crime depending on the criminal's path and emotional state. We literally judge people based on what they went through. Why is it _wrong_ or _unfair_ to _feel_ differently towards the two fictional characters in this case?

<comment><USER8> I do have to agree with you insofar as the studies' particular results go: in both scenarios, the patient suffered: in the first scenario because of a lifetime of depression, in the second because of the same + the trauma of the early life experiences. So, if we follow your dictum:

> We feel empathy for what they went through.

(which I mostly agree with) —then yes, the relatively higher portion of empathy should go for the character in the latter scenario (which matches the results of the study).

That said, if we generalize the study and apply it to the setting it's concerned with (medical practitioners empathizing with patients)—it's not a matter of relative measures between multiple patients; it's a question of whether the empathy a patient may (or may not) inspire is sufficient to cross some threshold for a medical practitioner.

If the fact that the cause is of biological origin is sufficient to drop the empathy response beneath that threshold —then it's problematic (the paper points out supporting research for just how problematic it is). After all, the person who has suffered a lifetime of depression does deserve empathy from a doctor/therapist, even if not as _much_ (I guess) for somebody who suffers additional afflictions on top.

Actually that makes me wonder how much dealing with many patients who are very badly off (and deserving much empathy) moves the threshold for the doctor, so that maybe they can't empathize so much for patients with situations which are legitimately bad—but not _as_ bad as what they've seen a lot of...

<comment><USER9> OK, I think I see your point. Maybe we can train the professionals to act out of reasons other than empathy? Or be more attuned to the current state and not the history. (Don't know if that is possible, or what specifically needs to be done).

<comment><USER10> The real issues at hand with this research are 1) prescribing medicine too often and 2) interacting with patients too little.

If you take a look at the original research (linked to from the posted article), then you can skip to the discussion section to see the authors wording of what you are taking about. They are saying the same thing as you, essentially, in a more specific and sophisticated way (page 4 of 5)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Using a throwaway for potentially obvious reasons. I have a very hard time having empathy for my mom. She is diagnosed manic depressive, bipolar, schizophrenic. I've witnessed her deteriorate over my entire life. You can tell me all day that it biological. I can utterly accept that. I can't accept that a bright woman has fucked up her life to the point where she is homeless. That she has alienated all those who would help her. That she would destroy her own environment and blame the imaginary. We've had to decide to leave her to herself and not help due to the manipulation that comes with it. Her phone is blocked. We've moved addresses. I don't know if empathy is the right answer. It sucks. The whole thing sucks.

<comment><USER12> I have nothing but sympathy for you. You no doubt wrote this knowing some, perhaps most people would not understand your decisions and chastise you for them. They don't understand, maybe never will.

At the same time, I implore you not to give up. For people with mental illnesses like you describe, access to reliable Healthcare is everything. A good doctor who monitors their medications is everything. If I were to describe the situation in engineering terms, I'd say that every single support such a person receives is load bearing. Which is why it can be just so difficult, when only one failing can lead to collapse.

I hope you are able to help her, provide her with something. If nothing else, try to put a roof over her head. Being homeless makes all of those other problems of access worse.

It does suck. I hope you try again. If you need someone to chat with feel free to reach out to me. My email is mayreply at my name dot com.

<comment><USER13> I have to ask, why is it his responsibility? If his childhood is so bad that he has no connection to her why should he work to improve her life rather than the life of any other homeless or mentally ill people?

It's like a double whammy. Not only is your childhood destroyed, you now are somehow considered by society responsible for her just because she is your biological mother.

<comment><USER14> Responsibility is a loaded word, especially in these cases. I'm not sure it's what you intended, but your simple question has a much more judgemental and condemning tone than the entire post you're replying to -- even though you are defending the OP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My ex-grilfriend married herself in one day, after I accompanied her to a hospital for her "severe insomnia" problem, without even telling me.

Out of sadness and anger, I cut off all of our contacts. A month later, she emailed me saying her psychiatrist said she had suicidal thoughts, and she wanted to see me. I went to see her immediately out of worries. That's the first time for the past 3 years I felt that she was not normal. For example, she was extremely talkative and she jumped between different topics that don't even have any connections. I knew that she had a history of depression for 10 years. But I don't know if it was a mis-diagnosis or her depression had developed into bipolar. She said her marriage decision was made during her maniac episode. She only loved me. But she decided to stay in the wrong marriage, because she couldn't punish her husband for her wrong decision. After making sure she didn't have the suicidal thoughts, I left.

I started to read about bipolar and learnt that during its maniac episode, a patient trends to make high risky decisions that he/she would regret afterwards, including spending lots of money, and having affairs.

And then after a month, she wanted to see me again, for a farewell, because she had to leave the country. She told me she had an affair with another guy and got pregnant. Again, she said she only had loved me, but she made wrong decisions during her maniac episodes. She said I could forget about her because she had turned into a different person, not the same girlfriend I ever had. Even I had read wikipedia and even a website about bipolar infidelity, it was really hard for me to accept everything. Again, out of anger, I told her I despised her and would never trust her. This time she blocked my contacts.

I don't know how I should accept and understand her, forgive her and help her. She mentioned that she wanted to leave me, because she knew I loved her, so she can't become my burden. That deeply saddened me.

For the past a few months, I have trapped myself in a loop of thinking about everything happened and feeling being used and then all the nice time we had together. I struggled a lot, not knowing if I should pick up the phone.

<comment><USER16> You're lucky to not have entered more deeply into this relationship. Maybe she sensed you're a nice person and gave you a break. Better suffer a bit now than a whole lot later on.

<comment><USER17> > Better suffer a bit now than a whole lot later on.

This is just one sentence, you can re-read it many times. Yet, the guy would not really appreciate the depth of its meaning - since he doesnt know what it means to live with a bipolar or close to a bipolar person. Its a circle of hell of its own, he was only slightly touched by the sickness and is still shaken, compared what it can be after longer time. Words just cannot describe how awful mental illnesses are.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, a friend of mine had a similar situation, but understood his girlfriend's condition. He stuck with her for a _long_ time (even when she suddenly got married to a different guy). I don't want to speak for him, but despite the incredibly calm way he handled the _many_ difficult situations he was put into, I know it had a pretty big toll on him. Now he's out of the situation completely and I think he is much happier.

With some mental illnesses, you can't really have an effective relationship. The ill person is literally incapable of it, even if they really _want_ to be capable of it. It is not a kindness to try to have such a relationship -- for either party (imagine the hell of guilt the other person must have towards the OP!). I've had good friends who were mentally ill and even that is quite taxing, but you need to know your limits. Again, it does no good at all to offer something to someone when you have no realistic ability to make it work.

I don't think you need to be nasty about it (usually... sometimes it might come down to that). Even if the person has done incredibly bad things, perhaps having sympathy for both parties (yours and theirs) is appropriate. But as the healthy person, you have to be firm and clear about what is possible -- and incredibly often that is _nothing_.

I really wish there was another way, but you don't dive into the water to save a drowning person, when you don't know how to swim. Instead of 1 person drowning, there will be 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > It's possible that biological explanations lead clinicians to see the > conditions as immutable.

This an error in thinking about how the brain works, and unfortunate if true, regardless of what level of "clinician" it refers to.

Perhaps both frameworks for understanding are equally valid, but the "psychosocial" explanation is several layers of abstraction above the "biological" one.

As I've said before on the same topic [1]: 1) the brain is an organ that obeys physical laws 2) behavior and perception depend entirely on the brain 3) of course environment is important, but how is that represented in the brain? It's still physiological, which inevitably includes chemicals/biology/whatever you prefer to call it.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16445950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16445950)

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure that I understand the first sentence of your comment - are you saying that you think it is an error for the authors to make that specific conclusion? Or are you saying that clinicians should never see mental illness as immutable?

<comment><USER19> It's an error for the clinicians to think that biological = immutable

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We find medical conditions hard to really solve. Most people just can't begin to cope with a medical explanation of mental issues in terms of seeing it as treatable. That's a concept not even in its infancy. We've barely conceived it. It is still gestating.

Also, with the psychosocial explanations, there is an element of blaming someone or something else. Most people will feel they are the victim of something unjust and that resonates with many people.

Mental illness typically has both components. Family is known to compound mental health issues that have a biological component.

My sister minored in psychology in college and took some graduate courses in it later. She once told me "We must not have the genes for schizophrenia or someone in the family would surely have it given how the family operates" and then talked about how schizophrenics go do inpatient therapy, get better, go home to the nutso family and get worse again.

I think we need better parenting resources for families dealing with neurodivergent offspring. I've seen time and again that parents don't know effective means for dealing with such kids and it actively creates problems which then become very intractable.

I'm good at that and did some work for a time with a related organization and spent a few years trying to figure out how to blog about such subjects. That never really got traction. Articles like this give me a twinge of regret and guilt that I never figured out how to more effectively share what I know. I'm convinced that better parenting resources for difficult kids would really make a difference in the world.

But, I just don't have a path forward. You need fertile ground for such seeds to take root and I've never found that, basically. Then I got badly burned by someone who used information in my parenting blog to manipulate me and it's a case of... Whatever. Not my problem.

<comment><USER21> >My sister minored in psychology in college and took some graduate courses in it later. She once told me "We must not have the genes for schizophrenia or someone in the family would surely have it given how the family operates" and then talked about how schizophrenics go do inpatient therapy, get better, go home to the nutso family and get worse again.

It is said that if C-PTSD was correctly diagnosed, the DSM manual would shrink to a small booklet. At lest 85% of the mentally ill suffered some kind of abuse according to a recent study, and since the parents know they can't do anything that leaves physical marks, many smarter people get more creative - teaching them things wrong, or not at all; ordering them to do something, then punishing them for doing it; (or a semi famous case of a man who was among other things deathly afraid of water, because his father's punishment of choice was spraying him with a hose) etc. All that while maintaining the image of a sweet person outside home, so that nobody trusts the victim, because it's "impossible" that such a nice man/woman would do something like that to their child...

It's doubtful there is a biological component at all, since the Nazis killed off most of the mentally ill in some parts of Europe, but the prevalence rates remained unchanged.

I'm all for freedom, but there should be ways to remove the child from their parents when it's being raised in some nonstandard, and clearly dysfunctional way. There should also be some equivalent of witness protection that would give the people a new identity. Once it gets known the person is "mentally ill" people will harras them, try to convince them of nonsense (or that some common knowledge is actually false) for the kicks, or otherwise "gaslight" them, (well knowing that nobody will trust the person) so there is no way they could get better with such a label at home.

<comment><USER20> I used to participate in the online gifted community and was somewhat respected as a knowledgeable person with good ideas. As such, people would email me and talk to me about their parenting challenges. So I got to talk to a fair number of parents who were at wit's end. In many cases, I was able to help them untangle their mess.

A common theme is that bright toddlers can wind up with screwy ideas because of being bright toddlers. They are just smart enough to leap to ridiculous conclusions based on partial information and incomplete mental models.

For a time, my oldest was deathly afraid of ladybugs. We lived on the third floor and there was a tall tree just outside his window. He ended up with yellow and black ladybugs in his bedroom.

He was terrified. I laughed about it, but shut the door and let him sleep in my room. I couldn't understand why he was so afraid of these harmless insects, but I respected the fact that he was.

Years later, he was able to tell me what he couldn't articulate at the time of the incident: because they were yellow and black and he knew bees were yellow and black, he was convinced they were bees. He couldn't explain how he knew the color while having no idea they looked nothing like bees.

When he was about seven, he similarly reacted with terror to rolly pollies. They are completely harmless.

So I collected a few up and put them in a dish with lettuce. I figured he was mistaking their antennae for mandibles, and he was. He thought they would bit him.

I told him they eat plants and showed him the chewed lettuce. I explained the antennae were how they smelled. They were not for biting. I held them in my hand and showed my son "See, they are smelling me."

He got over his fear of these harmless bugs. His fear was based on incorrect conclusions due to partial info and the ability to make inferences.

After providing the right mental models to some parents, they were able to help their children also let go of phobias based on similar circumstances.

But most parents don't have access to those mental models. Instead, they are given models that make the problem worse.

Humans are not going to stop having a childhood phase. We aren't going to start springing fully formed from incubators or something like that. There will always be a long period of growth in which they are taking in a lot of knowledge.

Furthermore, parents in the US are going thrown to the wolves. There are studies and articles out there showing that American parents are incredibly stressed out in ways and to degrees you don't see in most developed countries.

If we want parents to do a better job with their kids, we need to design a supportive system that helps them raise their children. One of the consequences of our current model is that the societal message to parents is that authority is inherently abusive and cannot be trusted. This tends to poison their relationship to their children. If society were more of a "good steward" for the people, parents would have an easier time being good stewards to their kids.

If you don't put those pieces in place, adding aggressive measures to take kids from parents just deepens the problem.

Positing that parents are merely intentionally abusive for no real reason and there isn't a biological basis and then seeking to add more punishment to the system is broken on the face of it. A lot of abusive parents are trying to control a child and simply don't know how to get good results. A punishment model isn't very effective.

I was a homemaker and full-time mom for years. I am frequently pissed all over by career women who think what I did has no value. I have been told he people on Hacker News that college education is wasted on a mom and homemaker.

But the reality is that raising healthy people is a serious challenge and requires a lot of knowledge and skill, especially if there are any special needs, including a high IQ. Very smart children are endlessly curious and "curiosity killed the cat." Patents of gifted kids are often tearing their hair out.

And we aren't providing them the support they need. Then we wonder why so many people are dysfunctional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Given the journal and the time it was published, are we sure this is research that would replicate? I looked at it and I don't see anything egregiously bad- looking, but I don't know much of anything about experimental design.

I hate living in the world where I have to ask that question -- and it does seem that there has been an improvement, such that modern research is less likely to be based on faulty analysis. 2014 seems like it could be on the borderline, though.

A comment from someone with more knowledge of statistics and experimental methods would be helpful.

<comment><USER10> This study was submitted to Track II for review by the Editorial aboard at PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) 4 years ago. The study was conducted by psychologists at Yale and editing by a professional at University of Melbourne, AU.

You can find the full article, free at [https://www.jstor.org/stable/43278786?mag=when-do-we-have- em...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/43278786?mag=when-do-we-have-empathy-for- the-mentally-ill&seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents). The article contains a full materials and methods section to aid with replication. The study design was simple enough to allow for relative ease of a repeat study. The authors applied relatively simple and traditional statistical methods (a more complex ANOVA) along with a mechanism to ensure that they were measuring empathy correctly by correlating measure of empathy with a separate measure of personal distress. You can dig into the details in the article, but it all seems to line up well.

In summary, you could probably replicate this yourself using Survey Monkey and Wolfram Alpha.

<comment><USER22> So am I right in concluding that the design was simple enough to be mostly forking-paths-free, and there weren't any oddly specific choices made in the analysis (to dig a "significant" result out of the data)?

The fact that it could be replicated from details in the paper without excessive expense or difficulty is also reassuring, even before knowing if such a replication has taken place.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely, this was a straightforward research design with a straightforward statistical analysis. The statistical significance was strong.

To give you a better mental model: they essentially came up with two sets of 6 words where one set was paired to representing empathy and the other to personal distress. The authors then grouped doctors to receive either biological or psychosocial stimuli and asked them to rate themselves on each word after being presented the stimuli. Statistical analysis was simply comparing the results.

Another noteworthy item is that they also included another set of six words to be rated, which they did not use in the statistical analysis, but which they claimed were used as fillers (words like angry, resentful, joyous, etc. - implying that they took care to not make it readily apparent what specific variable they were measuring).

Study integrity aside, they found that schizophrenia vignettes elicited almost the same magnitude of empathy for either bio or psychosocial explanations and depression showed the widest gap.

<comment><USER10> In all honesty, I'd recommend that you spend an evening perusing the actual research article as it is a good example of academic social science research, in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > "That's one reason why efforts to encourage empathy for people with > depression, anxiety, or other mental disorders often focus on the biological > basis of the conditions."

There is a deeply insightful book called "Against Empathy : The Case for Rational Compassion" by a Paul Bloom. I hadn't thought too much about it until I read the above quote assuming empathy to be a Good Thing and that researchers and doctors et al should strive for greater levels of it. I think practitioners should at the very least make the distinction between empathy and compassion. We need more compassionate doctors, not empathetic ones. And disambiguating language opens up all sorts of incredible and sophisticated interactions.

<comment><USER24> I found the premise of that book to largely just be disputing definitions [1] with a very particular definition of empathy that isn't actually how people use the word.

Something about it bothered me - I think that it felt like a straw man arguing a position nobody really has just to be very pedantic about his specific usage of the word empathy.

[1] [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing- definitions)

<comment><USER25> I don't see it as disputing definitions at all. Paul Bloom is clear what he means by "empathy" and doesn't carelessly apply his argument when the word "empathy" means something else. In fact at the same time he argues that empathy by his meaning isn't good practice for doctors he says the "empathy training" for doctors that he is aware of is a good thing, precisely because the word is used in a different way. He defines certain terms in certain ways for the sake of making his argument while acknowledging that the same words are commonly used in ways that his argument doesn't apply to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I saw someone post to HN once in an article about a cancer vaccine - "Doctors want patients, not cures". Really stuck with me.

Modern society categorizes people. When a citizen fails to adapt to society (for better or worse) and they feel a certain pressure to submit to the opinions of an "expert", they become part of a revenue stream. The DSM-V has them figured out.

Many types of mental illnesses are symptoms of the environment. We are spending too much time looking at MRIs, that is, looking inward - the brain structure must hold the clues to the "cure".

But the brain molds to interface the user with its surroundings. It is the effect, not the cause.

Perhaps show empathy for the mentally ill once they've spent years being drugged out by attempted "cures".

<comment><USER27> I've had the pleasure of working with a number of doctors who are well- respected in their field.

I never once saw one more excited than the times they'd describe what it was like to find out a patient was a candidate for a targeted therapy and bring them back from death's door.

Most of them do this to treat, and I believe they'd be very happy to be out of a job if it meant fewer children, parents, or simply humans, had to die.

<comment><USER28> Even "very good" doctors often don't know the state of the art procedures and treatments for their craft, as I have personally discovered since a close family member began receiving cancer treatment. From my experience, the vast majority of doctors' response to bringing up experimental treatments or care - or even recently approved, well-researched treatments - is a mindless affirmation of "that's the future", meaning they don't know anything about it. If you press them, most will say that they prefer to start patients with XYZ, which means "I want your business but don't know about that treatment". This happened to my own sick relative, a pharmacogenomics researcher, who said it reminded him almost exactly of trying to get clinicians to incorporate _basic_ gene panels into their practice (e.g. don't give this patient warfarin because they have this gene which will make them bleed to death).

As a society we are much too afraid to call shitty doctors shitty doctors. Having parents in medicine, I grew up hearing about them all the time.

I do believe that most doctors would not consciously and maliciously decide to sacrifice people's health for money. I also believe that most doctors aren't particularly diligent about keeping up to date on medical information throughout their careers; for every developer with 30+ years of experience who has treated a job as a job and worked with the same tech staff for all his life without bothering to learn new ones, there's a doctor doing the same with medicine.

<comment><USER27> It's true that there are such doctors. My experience is not necessarily typical, as these were faculty at a well-regarded cancer hospital and always very close to new developments.

The ones I mention, being involved in clinical trials and new treatments/diagnostics makes them particularly appropriate for this discussion because they are at the intersection of translational treatment and patients. (Cures vs patients) You're right that many doctors aren't called out like they should be out of some misguided deference, and I'm disappointed to hear how many of them are in cases which matter so, so very much to you, if not to them.

With regard to your personal experience, remember that no professional will care as much about your or your loved one's condition as you will. You (or your loved one) are the only patient you're treating, and I encourage you to advocate as necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is mildly interesting because people who are mentally ill and who get treatment will report a contrasting experience.

When we ask people about stigma we see those with an illness usually described by a medical model (schizophrenia, bipolar) experience less stigma than people with an illness usually described by a psycho-social model (especially the personality disorders, where levels of stigma are remarkably high, even from mental health professionals).

<comment><USER30> The article did touch on that briefly:

> The authors note that their findings can't be extended to all situations. > For example, other research has found that trial judges tend to impose less > severe sentences on people with mental illnesses when given a biological > explanation for the disorder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I refrain from making crazy people jokes when I realized that as many as a quarter of certain subpopolutions, e.g. middle age US women, may be on psychoactive drugs for one condition or another. Pretty good chance of hurting soneones feelings then without knowing it.

</comment><comment><USER32> The literal definition of empathy is rooted in the ability to understand and relate to someone else. Doctors can't empathize with most patients, nor do they need to. I think sympathy is the word this article is looking for.

<comment><USER33> I went through a couple phases of clinical depression as a young man, and now that more than a decade has passed, I can't relate to that person who didn't have the willpower to get out of bed for 6 months. Even though that person was me, it's hard to imagine now what that is like. But I can certainly sympathize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Almost always. And almost everybody is more or less mentally ill in a way or another, me included.

<comment><USER35> You're probably just fine aside from a slight self-deprecating tendency or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Two somewhat related ideas,

\- [http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/pdfs/szasz.pdf](http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/pdfs/szasz.pdf)

\- [http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/07/contra-caplan-on- mental...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/07/contra-caplan-on-mental- illness/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Not when she's my ex and is psychologically abusing our son. No sympathy for the devil

</comment><comment><USER38> I think people had more empathy for the mentally ill before the advent of science or religion.

Science will reduce and dehumanize all that makes that human to a nameless patient file while trying to fix the issues.

Religion might demonize and ostracize.

I feel that before all of this because there was no explanation, the mentally ill were just treated as having a different mindset. I mean.. if we tried to "fix" all the artists that have lived, the world would be a much bleaker and empty place without their art.

<comment><USER39> Sure... [https://about-history.com/the-cruel-way-people-with- mental-h...](https://about-history.com/the-cruel-way-people-with-mental- handicaps-were-treated-in-the-middle-ages-will-make-your-stomach-turn/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Let your friends add songs to you playlist. One Spotify. Many DJs - <AUTHOR> https://gotanyjungle.com <comment><AUTHOR> Because when you're at the park playing music, everyone should be able to add the songs!

Here's a playlist for all you good people. Add me some songs

[https://gotanyjungle.com/quick-hound-18](https://gotanyjungle.com/quick- hound-18)

And listen along at home

[https://open.spotify.com/user/slartybartfast/playlist/1zta1T...](https://open.spotify.com/user/slartybartfast/playlist/1zta1Tj2zUtMoZB4cr0iuJ)

<comment><USER2> Should be a good test for how the platform scales if it makes it to the home page. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha - Thanks man!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would happen if AI would write Presidential Speeches? - <AUTHOR> I recently watch idea channel video on ai (link at the bottom), while this video tackles art. I was wondering a lot about what happen on with Melania Trump speech, and would happen if computers would analyse and process past speeches in order to create a new one. Has anyone used google ai tool to make art? I'm wondering after seeing films written by Google Deep mind AI. How would a speech written by AI sound like?<p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbd4NX95Ysc <comment><USER2> It would sound very absurd, coz speech is not just about statistical relationships between words based on some large speech content.</comment>


Linux vs. BSD: Huge difference in UI responsiveness - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2007/08/23/linux-vs-bsd-whats-the-difference.html

<comment><USER2> I don't like this. It's like PC-BSD is trying to steal marketshare from Ubuntu instead of "fighting" against the common enemies Mac OS X and Windows.</comment>