Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.suny.edu/2014/03/future-cities-lit-by-beautiful-bioluminescent-trees/ <comment><USER2> The processes involved are orders of magnitude below the scale needed to produce usable light. And in the plants it's been tested in, it's also fatal after a short time. These aren't trivial problems, and they're not going to be solved by a designer photoshopping a concept.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, I once did the calculation, they use the protein luciferase, which requires 1 molecule of Lucferin and 1 molecule of ATP per photon produced! That means if you were to produce say 200 lm (about the output of a 40W incandescent light bulb) you'd need kilo's of ATP and Luciferin a week. Don't expect useful light.

<comment><USER4> Only kilos? Compared to bamboo that actually sounds feasible.

<comment><USER5> (warning: I am not a biologist)

The problem is that generating ATP requires sun or sugar in plants (depending on the specific metabolic process involved), and that the total amount of sugar produced during the day as part of photosynthesis is tiny relative to the amount of ATP necessary to fuel the light at night.

Consider that humans burn 100-150 kilos of ATP daily (according to Wikipedia). This is only possible because we are recycling ATP continuously, fueling the recycling process with sugar and oxygen that we consume at rates several orders of magnitude higher than what a 20 year old tree could produce in the same period _.

_ I can't find numbers for peak _sugar_ production in plants, but considering how many maple trees it takes to make a single small container of maple syrup, I think this is a reasonable statement to make for now. I will stand corrected if someone has good numbers. :)

<comment><USER4> Well apparently a tree can permanently sequester "up to 48 pounds" of carbon per year (numbers are unclear, some mix up carbon and CO2, bamboo is more, but it makes a good ballpark max). Let's assume a tree that glows instead of growing for simplicity. 48 pounds, times 30/6 to get the number of ATP produced per carbon atom, times 507/12 to account for how much heavier ATP is than carbon, comes out to 12.6 kilograms of recycled ATP per day.

<comment><USER5> One order of magnitude, I stand corrected :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This over-hyped crap _again_? Humbug!

Call me when someone solves the _REAL_ problem, which is the energy budget needed to make the amount of light people actually want.

That'll probably involve some way to shunt externally-generated electrical power into the tree.

<comment><AUTHOR> They way I see it, it's not going to completely replace street lighting. It's going to supplement available light, thus reducing our energy consumption among other benefits like producing oxygen. I'm especially excited about the possibility of genetically modifying trees that produce edible stuff to have bio luminescence, that'd be pretty cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Serious question - what happens in fall when the leaves fall off the trees? Also, with a simple light bulb, or even lamp post, it can be replaced quickly and cheaply. (OK, maybe not cheaply for the whole lamp post, but relatively easily.) But planting a tree takes years for the tree to grow. This doesn't seem realistic to me, though it does seem really cool.

Also, how much light do they give off? All of the images on the post are computer generated. I'd like to see a photo of this actually working.

<comment><USER8> This probably should not completely replace street lamps, but could help better light some areas that are naturally dark and shady. Trees, instead of concealing the streetlights, would give off some light.

Consider evergreen grasses that could probably be made to glow, too. Such grass could nicely light up park lanes at night. Slightly glowing evergreen bushes growing along a walkway could help one walk at night.

Also, consider how helpful such a natural illumination would be during a power outage, especially when it happens due to a natural disaster. The light might be faint, but it will help people orient themselves, help rescue helicopters recognize the terrain, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember backing a kickstarter project back in 2013 which accomplished the same thing on a small plant. As of today, it barely emits enough light and it's all but ready for production. Check it out: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing- pla...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants- natural-lighting-with-no-electricit)

<comment><USER10> I too backed this project! Disappointed by the output, but still happy to see it reach production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's a super cool idea.

I do wonder about unintended consequences. Invasive glowing trees might wreak havoc on ecosystems, especially on tree dwelling nocturnal creatures. At least they'd be easy to spot :)

<comment><USER12> Its highly unlikely that these plants would ever succeed as an invasive species because the energy consumption required to glow puts the plant at a massive disadvantage. I ordered something similar from a kickstarter a few months ago:

[http://www.glowingplant.com/](http://www.glowingplant.com/)

They say that within a couple generations, the glowing feature quickly disappears due to natural selection.

<comment><USER13> Actually quite a few scientists tried to stop that kickstarter because of the dangers it could prove to the ecosystem:

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true- north/2013/jun/0...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true- north/2013/jun/06/kickstarter-money-glow-in-the-dark-plants)

<comment><USER4> That article seems mostly seems worried about future projects. And I'm not sure what scientists you're talking about. Is it this line:

> 116 organizations have called for a moratorium on any release of synthetic > organisms. The UN convention on Biological Diversity has urged countries to > exercise precaution in any release of synthetic organisms to the > environment.

Well if I click on the link I find a very interesting sentence:

> With synthetic biology, instead of swapping existing genes from one species > to another (as in " traditional" genetic engineering), scientists can write > entirely new genetic code on a computer, "print" it out and then insert it > into living organisms — or even try to create life from scratch.

Swapping a couple genes from one species to another sounds _exactly_ like what they typically do to make a species glow.

And yet after that sentence they seem to change their definition of synthetic biology to include both those categories.

It tastes like doublespeak to me. "Companies are doing not just X but Y! Ban Y! (also we defined Y to include X)"

<comment><USER14> "Synthetic biology" in technical usage refers to custom sequences which are written on a computer then chemically assembled _ex vivo_. This is a widely used technique. It is distinct from the technique of extracting and amplifying a sequence from one organism and inserting it into another, although the results produced can be similar.

Source: I work in a molecular biology lab.

<comment><USER4> So let's say there's a gene that might be useful to me. I have a listing of base pairs, but it would be very expensive to extract DNA/RNA from actual specimens. I chemically assemble an exact recreation and inject it. Is this synthetic biology?

<comment><USER14> Yep! Although the result might be the same, the technique used is synthetic biology. Usually the synthetic route is more expensive but a lot simpler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Similar work to the 2010 Cambridge University student iGEM team - [http://2010.igem.org/Team:Cambridge](http://2010.igem.org/Team:Cambridge)

Here is their research for bioluminescent trees - [http://2010.igem.org/Team:Cambridge/Tools/Lighting](http://2010.igem.org/Team:Cambridge/Tools/Lighting)

</comment><comment><USER16> This doesn't sound great, what about all the tree dwelling critters that would be unable to hide or sleep?

<comment><USER8> They could sleep on another tree.

<comment><USER16> Indeed, I did incorrectly assume this could/would be in all the trees on the street.

<comment><USER17> I think it depends on city density. Many streets in SF have about as many trees as light poles, so you'd probably have to replace all those with the glowing ones to make enough light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How much energy would a tree expend producing light? Would that kill it? If not, what extra input (in terms of nutrients, care, etc) would it need? Would these trees cross-pollinate those not intended to glow? What environmental impact might that have outside cities?

Lots of questions.

</comment><comment><USER19> _So while we humans use a massive amount of generated electricity to defeat darkness, Jellyfish create their own light deep underwater without solar panels, wind turbines, or hydroelectric dams. Instead, the organism generates power completely autonomously._

They don't need energy, they just generate it autonomously. Why didn't we think of this earlier? The logic is flawless!

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe I follow YC stuff too much but it seems this be an attempt to build momentum for the YC company working on this? [http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/11/glowing-plant-is-one-of- y-c...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/11/glowing-plant-is-one-of-y- combinators-very-first-biotech-startups/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not working for that startup or any startup for that matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are a lot of problems with this that have been outlined in all these comments, and 99% are true.

I would instead take advantages of photoautrophic organisms that already are bioluminescent like Dinoflagellate.

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

They can have a startling effect in large numbers and feed themselves with daylight.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence#mediaviewer/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence#mediaviewer/File:Bioluminescent_dinoflagellates_2.jpg)

Some video of their effect

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

<comment><USER22> I saw this effect off the beach near me a few weeks ago, it was quite captivating as the breakers were lit up as if by an underwater neon (I actually thought it was an artificial light show of some kind at first). But although deeply impressive, it certainly wouldn't have had a meaningful effect on visibility of the neighbouring land. Moonlight is much more effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why not leave the night sky dark? It's like we have this 30,000 year old phobia that we can't ditch... there are no more tigers lurking in the darkness.

<comment><USER24> Even if there were, wouldn't a more elegant solution be to engineer glowing tigers?

...perhaps not.

<comment><USER25> William Blake would probably agree [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172943](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172943) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyger)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I heard on NPR they are trying to bring back the American Chestnut, which is being killed by a fungus from Asia. To be able to plant this genetically modified tree outside of test beds will take 5-10 years in just regulation issues alone. So even if they made this bioluminecent tree tomorrow (Which in itself is impossible) we wouldn't see these on the side of the rode for another 10+ years.

</comment><comment><USER27> Luciferin isn't what makes jellyfish glow, that's GFP. GFP, at least, requires a specific light input to cause the glow (UV at a particular wavelength depending on the molecule). I don't know about Luciferin, though.

<comment><USER28> Luciferin is what makes fireflys glow. Luciferin really produces light from chemical energy. GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) is just fluorescent, not luminescent.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciferin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciferin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Turning off the lights takes a chainsaw and ten minutes of labor per light. Turning them back on again takes transplantable saplings and a 20 year wait. Some ideas get less elegant the longer you look at them.

</comment><comment><USER30> FAQ on a similar glowing plant effort: [http://bioglowtech.com/FAQ.html](http://bioglowtech.com/FAQ.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> it seems to me that if this can be pulled off, it would be Nobel worthy. I mean, it would not be less cool than a blue LED, would it?

<comment><USER32> LEDs are vastly brighter than bioluminescence. And engineered bioluminescence isn't actually new. It's one of the easiest things to engineer, and it's one of the first things the gene tech people did when they started playing with this stuff.

This 'designer/architect' seems more like a self-promoter.

There's an entire class of 'designers' who see themselves as gifted idea people, but in fact they lack the scientific literacy to realise why some ideas aren't good engineering.

Real designers do clever stuff that works in reality, not just as a concept in an illustration.

While I'm all for high quality bioengineering as a future trend, I suspect it's quite a bit harder to replace current technology with it than this 'designer' thinks.</comment></comment>


Documents reveal how Russia taps phone companies for surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/russia-sorm-nokia-surveillance/ <comment><AUTHOR> Dupe: the other one is at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21005650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21005650)</comment>


Interactive Visualizations for Profiling R Code - <AUTHOR> http://rstudio.github.io/profvis/ <comment><USER2> This is quite cool stuff. The folks at RStudio are really constantly releasing updates to their core IDE and ecosystem that are creating a lot of value for a lot of data science teams. I hope my code always runs fast, but next time it doesn't, I will be reaching for profvis!

</comment><comment><USER3> I am curious if it is possible to make it working in Jupyter Notebook.

(For me it works from RStudio - it launches a website. From Jupyter it does not work for me.)

<comment><USER4> It doesn't look like it. It seems a specific Rstudio IDE feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Commenting to bookmark for future use...</comment>


Why are we obsessed with the Nazis? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/06/why-obsessed-nazis-third-reich <comment><USER2> Because they lost, and it is free to criticize them. Also there were survivors.

Stalin killed millions of their own people too and how many films you see about it? Few films about China revolution too. It was not politically correct.

Part of my family comes from a communist country. If the party came to acknowledge that you stored pictures or any other document or proof of "past errors" you will have lots of problems, so most people destroyed them. Delation was normal even between family members.

When you kill them all, there is very few people that could write the History. Most of what we know of the native Americans genocide comes from the very few Americans that opposed that. But most Americans were certainly ok with killing the people there if they and their families could profit from it.

<comment><USER3> [Slightly OT] Amazon just put out a pilot of _The Man in the High Castle_ , an alternate history about the Axis powers having won WWII based on the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RSGFRY8](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RSGFRY8) (watch! since popularity and feedback determine which shows get picked up and I'm hoping this one does).

<comment><USER4> For those who read the book, one of the changes might be very disappointing. They really seem to be taking out the best theme of the book, I would say the entire point of the book in favour of an alternate history that lets them have a resistance movement that gets to chant "USA USA USA".

This Atlantic article explains it better than I: [http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/01/man...](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/01/man- in-the-high-castle-when-a-nazi-ruled-world-isnt-so-dystopian/384708/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the info+link, I'm going to stay away then. I agree, this is so important in the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Part of the obsession with the Nazis is because so many people don't understand what they were about and why. For instance, this article implies that they were just racists. Racism is a consequence of their ideology, not the reason for it.

Worse, we even have used them to short circuit discussion and close off self criticism with the "Godwins Law" trope. (godwin never said that those who use nazis as an example are wrong, he merely said eventually they would come up.)

We've (the USA) become a nation of holocaust denying racists because we believe that only germans (genetically) can be fascist and thus what happened in germany could never happen here, and anyone who brings up parallels automatically loses the argument.

Just because some people do so poorly, does not mean there are not parallels. Many of the propaganda pieces you see against muslims in the USA are similar to the ones against the jews in Nazi germany. The ideology of "you tell people they are being attacked and then you get your war" rings true here as it did in Nazi Germany. Even the precursors to the rise of fascism in german have existed here and had some similar consequences - high monetary inflation, economic problems with a lack of jobs, a lack of self esteem combined with a "we're the best country' form of nationalism. etc.

The nazis were never really properly studied in my schooling and my understanding is that history teaching has gotten only more superficial since.

A lot of understanding of what's happening in the USA and the world at large came out of an initial early interest in german history (because I lived there) and the consequent study of economics (Ludwig von Mises, a jew, prominent among them, who was scoffed at when he told other jews that they would have to leave austria because the nazis were going to invade.)

Anyway, the superficial understanding of the nazis and nazi era germany expressed in this very article is why we need to actually study the subject, obsessed or not.

<comment><USER7> I'm German but spend a lot of time in the US. I don't mind Nazi/WW2 jokes (even though I've heard all of them a hundred times), I don't mind that as soon as I mention that I'm from Germany someone will eventually bring up the Nazis/WW2 in conversation, I don't even mind that (very few) people think I'm a Nazi. What gets me every time though is how many people think that it could have happened only in Germany because the US is somehow different (as you said "genetically"). It's really unsettling.

<comment><USER8> Just start asking them whether any of their ancestors owned slaves. Also why do they let people without insurance and money simply die helpless.

<comment><USER9> You can blame the American healthcare system, but the idea that people don't get immediate life-saving treatment is simply not true.

They will get the immediate treatment that they need. It might be more complicated, expensive, and painful than if it was dealt with earlier, but it will still happen.

Look at the EMTALA. The wiki page is pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It was the latest party in Western world that launched a World War & proceeded to coldly, methodically and institutionally to exterminate groups of people based on their race, skin color, belief.

Now the reason I mentioned the War is because the War they started was lost by them. Had they won, who knows what the history would have been like.

It is also worth mentioning that US population has not necessarily been that terribly outraged by what Germany was doing. There were German communities that celebrated the fall of Paris at their Octoberfest festivals. Also Eugenics was going in full swing in US has well. Sterilizations of "inferior" people was praised as the new way forward.

US businesses have not exactly come clean in their dealings with the Nazi germany. Especially, IBM and its Hollerith tabulating machines. Those have alledgely been using in concentration camps. And those were not just buy and forget type deals. They had to have IBM technicians go visit the sites to fix and maintain them. For all I know, IBM hasn't opened their archives yet to be scrutinized for their connection with the Nazi Germany.

<comment><USER11> Sweden had an active eugenics program until 1975 and practiced compulsory sterilization until 2012. Eugenics was extremely fashionable across the Western world and only ended because of its association with the suddenly- unfashionable Nazis.

The U.S. had groups like the German-American Bund because the U.S. was and is a diverse country with freedom of speech. Other Allied countries had similar groups, such as the British Union of Fascists. Actual support for Hitler was a small, fringe minority.

On the other side of the scale, individual Americans had been traveling overseas to fight against the Axis powers for years, dating back to the Spanish Civil War when the 2,800 American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought to defend the Spanish Republic. Also, the US supplied the Allies with $50 billion worth of food and supplies (over $650 billion in today's dollars), contributed militarily to the war, and spent another $17 billion ($160 billion in today's dollars) on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe afterwards. So, maybe let's take a look at everything in context and consider that, yes, individual people in a free country will sometimes support the wrong foreign leaders but "the US population" was not behind Hitler and repeatedly reelected governments that went above and beyond to contribute the nation's wealth and manpower to Hitler's defeat.

<comment><USER12> The US population wasn't totally anti-Hitler at first, mostly because Hitler didn't go full evil until pretty far into the War.

The early parts of fascism looked good. Germany was growing economically when the US was shrinking in the Great Depression.

The early mistreatment of minorities was swept under the rug. Remember, in 1935 the United States could probably be described as a lite-apartheid state. Jim Crowe wasn't all that different than Nuremburg laws.

The deathcamps came only after the war started. And it is pretty clear nobody believed the actual horrors going on in them.

It's easy to say that the world kept their eyes shut, but even Jews on train cars to Auschwitz didn't know they were going to an extermination camp.

But Germany was a first world, educated, fairly liberal country. If the holocaust could happen there, it could happen anywhere on earth.

<comment><USER13> > And it is pretty clear nobody believed the actual horrors going on in them.

I've read conflicting things.

[http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=3946...](http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394663#17)

> As for the implementation of the "Final Solution" and the murder of other > undesirable elements, the situation was different. The Nazis attempted to > keep the murders a secret and, therefore, took precautionary measures to > ensure that they would not be publicized. Their efforts, however, were only > partially successful. Thus, for example, public protests by various > clergymen led to the halt of their euthanasia program in August of 1941. > These protests were obviously the result of the fact that many persons were > aware that the Nazis were killing the mentally ill in special institutions.

> As far as the Jews were concerned, it was common knowledge in Germany that > they had disappeared after having been sent to the East. It was not exactly > clear to large segments of the German population what had happened to them. > On the other hand, there were thousands upon thousands of Germans who > participated in and/or witnessed the implementation of the "Final Solution" > either as members of the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, death camp or concentration > camp guards, police in occupied Europe, or with the Wehrmacht.

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard)

> The mass of ordinary Germans did know about the evolving terror of Hitler's > Holocaust, according to a new research study. They knew concentration camps > were full of Jewish people who were stigmatised as sub-human and race- > defilers. They knew that these, like other groups and minorities, were being > killed out of hand.

> They knew that Adolf Hitler had repeatedly forecast the extermination of > every Jew on German soil. They knew these details because they had read > about them. They knew because the camps and the measures which led up to > them had been prominently and proudly reported step by step in thousands of > officially-inspired German media articles and posters according to the > study, which is due to be published simultaneously in Britain and the US > early next month and which was described as ground-breaking by Oxford > University Press yesterday and already hailed by other historians.

<comment><USER12> IMO that is a lot of should have known, and maybe that is true.

But there is a reason the Jews didn't really fight back. They had no idea at the scale of death going on. They figured they were really being resettled in the east.

The reports of extermination camps were considered just rumor or propaganda.

<comment><USER11> Some Jews did really fight back, because they did know what was going on: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _The ideology that underpinned Stalin's policies of mass extermination died in 1989 with the fall of communism, but the racism that drove Hitler's lives on in myriad forms that continue to trouble the world today._

The opposite is true. While countries like North Korea and Cuba continue to experience the joys of communism in all its range (from genocidal to merely impoverishing), the west is so obsessed with not being racist that we will let heinous crimes slide, or even actively cover them up, like in the Rotherham sex abuse scandal.

I do wonder why communism gets a pass. Is it because they won and had half a century more for propaganda? Because intellectuals like the idea of central planning?

<comment><USER15> Arguably, the Nazis carried out fascism to the letter, while the USSR, North Korea et al have created a highly bastardised version of communism.

<comment><USER16> I think that it's arguable that the Khmer Rouge carried out the closest attempt at pure Communism, but it's not like that turned out all that well.

That said, plenty of people associated things like the Stazi/KGB with Communism. I haven't actually _read_ Marx's manifesto, but I highly doubt that his "worker's paradise" involved disappearing masses of people and a "report your neighbour, Comrade" mentality[1].

[1] Though I _do_ know that he thought that there would be a progression like "Democracy => Socialism => Communism" and that each transition would involve bloody revolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The three-book series on the Third Reich by historian Richard Evans[1] (the author of the essay kindly submitted here) was recommended to Hacker News readers in a comment in August 2014. I am glad I saw that recommendation. Three volumes of thoroughly footnoted history covering a lifetime (Bismarck's era to the end of World War II) in a large country was a lot of reading, but I'm glad I plunged in. The Allied war effort against the Nazi regime was a big part of the young experience of several of my uncles, and undoubtedly shaped the childhoods of both of my parents. And of course the result of World War II redrew the map of Europe. I think it's useful to be aware of the facts (and Evans's book series digs deeply into the facts) and not just the legends about the Nazis.

Anyway, the Nazis still have followers today. I have been doing research on a younger generation (that is, people with birth years like my parents, in the 1930s) of neo-Nazis[2] in the postwar era, and there are even people younger than that (birth years in the 1980s and 1990s) who haven't learned enough about Nazi history to know that the Nazis are no example worth following for anyone. We must never forget.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard- Evans/dp/01...](http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard- Evans/dp/0143034693)

[http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-Power-Richard- Evans/dp/014...](http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-Power-Richard- Evans/dp/0143037900)

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Third-Reich-at- War/dp/0143116711](http://www.amazon.com/The-Third-Reich-at-War/dp/0143116711)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Connection-Eugenics-American- Soci...](http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Connection-Eugenics-American- Socialism/dp/0195149785)

[http://www.amazon.com/Funding-Scientific-Racism-Wickliffe- Pi...](http://www.amazon.com/Funding-Scientific-Racism-Wickliffe- Pioneer/dp/0252074637)

[http://www.amazon.com/Race-Racism-Science-Interaction- Societ...](http://www.amazon.com/Race-Racism-Science-Interaction- Society/dp/0813537363)

</comment><comment><USER18> Because "if it could happen in Germany, it could happen here".

22:35 <&scythe> Do you understand why the Americans all had a problem with democracy?

22:35 <&scythe> And the Australians and Canadians were on board?

22:36 <&KinGAleX> Because you're mostly Germans?

A belief in American idealism -- up to about 1933 or so -- was that democracy was naturally, thermodynamically, the end-game stable state of human civilization. Sure, other democracies had failed in the past, but there was always an excuse. It was easy to believe until 1930 that the replacement of a democratic system with a despot could never happen in a _modern_ democracy. After all, Italy had always been poor, and France had become a stable republic post-1871. Weimar Germany, at the time, was the world's second-largest economy, and had a largely fair and free electoral system.

Imagine tomorrow that Japan, modern Japan, becomes a Nazi-like dictatorship, and you start to see some of what the appearance of the Nazis in Germany looked like to Americans in the 1930s. We're obsessed with the Nazis because Naziism is an idea we can be afraid of; we don't have to worry about Americans trying to form a caliphate or having a Marxist revolution. We're totally unafraid of, say, Japanese-style imperialism, because Americans could never adopt a early-20th-century Japan-like imperial culture, _obviously_.

</comment><comment><USER19> Because the people who have the biggest reach in telling stories about history (Hollywood) are American and the Nazis made an impact of the US via their impact on the Jewish people. If the US or US citizens has suffered the Rape of Nanking I imagine that we'd have more films about evil Japanese or films about Stalin or Pol Pot if your population of film makers were related to people who suffered under those despots.

It may be somewhat myopic, but it's understandable. At worst, it ignores other people's pain and elevates one people's suffering as the only suffering. But it is still understandable (if lazy).

</comment><comment><USER20> I used to wonder why people hated on Nickelback so much. I mean yeah, they suck. But there are lots of bands that are worse. Go to your local metal bar and you'll find two of them tonight. Or listen to the full albums of most one hit wonders.

And there are bands that are more successful than Nickelback too. They're not even on Wikipedia's list of the best selling music acts, though they're not too far off. They've never won a single Grammy.

But it's virtually impossible to find a band that is both. If you multiply suckiness by popularity, you get a number in Nickelback's case that's astronomical. And I think that's what makes them so fascinating to people. It's not that they suck, and it's not that they're so successful. It's that they suck AND they're successful.

The Nazis are similar in that they were quite evil and quite "successful" (for a very evil definition of the word success, at least). They were really the Nickelback of genocide.

<comment><USER21> Ha. For me it's because Nickelback was so overplayed in Canada, so if you didn't like them anymore you couldn't get away from them. Canada has regulations that radio etc has to play a certain amount of Canadian content so they were heavily used to fill that quota.

<comment><USER11> Ah yes, the same infamous Can-con regulations that foisted Celine Dion on an unwilling world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Same thing happens in Russia. People in power, who were brought under Soviet regime, now soft-suppress research and education about Soviet wrongdoings. Honestly can't wait for them to retire / die out.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Nazis are the only real villains left. People will laugh at you and probably call you a McCarthyist or Nazi if you are anticommunist.

<comment><USER22> Islamic terrorists?

<comment><USER23> It's much safer to pontificate on the evils of the past than challenge present evil, especially given the sponsors of Islamism, such as Saudi Arabia, are very wealthy and influential.

There is also the association, in the West, of Muslim terrorists with immigration (as Islamist terror attacks in the West have largely been committed by immigrants). Many in the media sympathize with the ideal of open borders and focusing on Islamism is seen as potentially undermining this idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "We" aren't.</comment>


Protobuf Web API in C# - <AUTHOR> https://christianfindlay.com/protobuf-web-api-in-c/ <comment><AUTHOR> Learn how to use protobuf serialization with REST services on C#</comment>


Cody Wilson, Who Posted Gun Instructions Online, Sues State Department - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/us/cody-wilson-who-posted-gun-instructions-online-sues-state-department.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> > "I can't think of anything quite analogous," said Floyd Abrams, a noted > First Amendment lawyer. "But on the face of it, it seems to me like a > serious claim."

Really? Sounds almost exactly how in the 90s restrictions were placed on exporting cryptography, by placing strong software crypto on the US Munitions List.

> Mr. Wilson, 27, claims he spent thousands of dollars over the next two years > on lawyers who helped him file paperwork in an effort to comply with the > regulations, which are known as ITAR.

"International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) The regulations control the export and import of defense-related articles and services on the United States Munitions List (USML)."

So why can't, just like with strong crypto, Mr. Wilson place his drawings behind a web form where you certify that you are within the United States and will not export the drawings?

<comment><USER3> > So why can't, just like with strong crypto, Mr. Wilson place his drawings > behind a web form where you certify that you are within the United States > and will not export the drawings?

Having read other articles about Cody he believes that all information should be free, global, and non-censored. Similar to the cypherpunk philosophy. His decision to use potentially dangerous information as an example of this idea had the intended side-effected of drawing out ideological opponents. Such as the media and regulators.

As a result, the public is now forced to seriously question the limits of free flowing of information thanks to the internet/3d printing/decentralize file sharing/etc. As we know from media piracy, attempting to suppress information on the internet usually results in the opposite effect. Which is what happened to Cody's files, tons of people reposted it all over the internet immediately after the regulatory legal threat was issued.

Anyone could check that box saying they're American or use a VPN. Then distribute the file via torrents. Which makes the whole regulatory process seem like a public spectacle rather than an effective deterrent.

The crypto wars from the 1990s is certainly analogous.

<comment><USER4> I look forward to buying his books of printed G Code [1] which would build a gun from scratch when OCR'd or typed back in.

This reminds me, I still have the PGP source book on my bookshelf.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-code](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-code)

<comment><USER5> Where did you see any plans of his to publish g-code in hard-copy?

<comment><USER4> I didn't, but I'm assume he's familiar with the PGP debacle (and if he's not, I just emailed him).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this specific suit is valid, but it does raise questions about where the line should be drawn. With just a little creativity, it is _very_ easy to build extremely dangerous weapons from off-the-shelf parts. I won't mention anything specific, as some HN karma is not worth the slightest chance of these weapons being used. I will mention one of my rejected ideas, as there is a straightforward countermeasure: laser blinding devices. Powerful infrared laser diodes are cheap, as are the optics and electronics to drive and focus them. Such lasers are invisible and cause permanent damage faster than one can blink. They have a range measured in kilometers, and they are small enough to be mounted on consumer drones. Combine this with face recognition/tracking, and you could permanently blind any target who dared to show themselves in public.

Do you think someone who published the specifics (parts list, blueprints, source code, etc) of such a device should be punished? I do, even though I think there's an obvious countermeasure. Likewise, while Wilson's 3D-printed gun is a toy, not everything publishable is so benign. Before we hop on the train of free-speech idealism, we should realize how fortunate we are that nobody has discovered a convenient world-ending weapon. Considering the amount of energy pent-up in ordinary matter, we've been _incredibly_ lucky. SILEX[1] came close, but thankfully its specifics have been kept secret. And had physics turned out slightly differently, building a nuclear weapon could have been as easy as putting sand in a microwave.[2]

As much as I hate to admit it, there is such a thing as dangerous information. Until humanity becomes wiser, I think our only (terrible) option is to silence people who try to spread it. Again, this specific case clearly falls under free speech, but it's important to keep future discoveries in mind.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_isotopes_by_lase...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_isotopes_by_laser_excitation)

2\. This example was originally used by Nick Bostrom.

<comment><USER7> > As much as I hate to admit it, there is such a thing as dangerous > information

I do agree with you on that but the problem, as always, is who decides what's dangerous information? What if I published the blueprint of a blinding drone with the genuine intention of it being used against pests? Eventually you end up with some bureaucrat ruining some kid's life just so he can climb a bit up on the hierarchy ladder. And then there the issue of cost effectiveness. Should we really waste resources on silencing people when it's so easy to publish information anonymously?

<comment><USER8> Well Blinding weapons are banned by the Geneva convention use would be considered a war crime.

<comment><USER9> While true, how would that begin to cover domestic use outside of warfare? I didn't even think the current discussion was even covering warfare.

<comment><USER10> Causing injury to another person is generally already illegal.

<comment><USER11> The question isn't about causing injury. It is about possessing a device (or even knowledge) _capable_ of harming someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> it seems to be well established practice in the US that ITAR takes precedence over the 1st in the well defined by ITAR cases - for example, due to ITAR, Elon Musk just can't exercise his 1st by publishing Merlin's blueprints. The same is here - if plastic handgun falls under ITAR - qua. If not - qua for the State Department. It seems that instead of the 1st Amendment lawyer, here ITAR specialist lawyer would be more useful.

Of course, if it is a clear ITAR item, then the fight for the priority of the 1st Amendment is a noble, yet most probably destined to fail, endeavor.

</comment><comment><USER13> Just as some additional information, being prosecuted for publishing the blueprints to a very dangerous weapon is a textbook (as in, I read it in a textbook) example of where it is generally believed that your right to free speech does not provide a good defence.

Whether Wilson's ideas fall under this is probably arguable, but going on free speech alone is sketchy, to say the least.

<comment><USER14> Certainly not generally believed by anyone (including lawyers) I know. There's not much to interpret in "...shall make no law..."

The problem, as stated everywhere around this post, is who draws the line, considering the line is against the letter and spirit of the law. The whole reason the clause "...shall make no law..." is there is because _any_ law is self-serving to a group of people wishing to control another group.

While you may consider weapons speech to be over a line you have arbitrarily drawn in the sand, this guy over here believes hate speech is a more dangerous type of speech and would like to draw his own line.

Pretty soon the government considers anti-government speech to be "hate speech" against the powers that be...

"No" law. Not "not many" laws.

<comment><USER13> The supreme court has numerous times affirmed limits to free speech. For example, the espionage act has been ruled constitutional. Military officers are prohibited from releasing classified information. You're in trouble if you call in a bomb threat.

You segue onto hate speech and drawing lines; this seems irrelevant here.

Were a Lockheed Martin worker to send the plans for the F-35 to China, they'd be put in prison.

Were Intel transmit the designs for that supercomputer that Intel weren't allowed to build in China to get around export regs, they'd be put in prison.

If it were the case that the constitution allowed the government to (say) prohibit the exporting of certain military hardware (say, a nuclear bomb), but not prohibiting the export of an incredibly detailed document explaining every nuance, datum, etc of producing that same piece of military hardware, I'd argue that the constitution needed a brief update (perhaps as you mention to 'shall make not many laws'). To my knowledge, it does not.

Then either this case will lead to failure, or success by arguing that any export regs on ideas are unconstitutional (thus leading to the bizarre problem above) or a success by proving that the export regs do not, or should not cover what he has produced.

<comment><USER15> _Were Intel transmit the designs for that supercomputer that Intel weren 't allowed to build in China to get around export regs, they'd be put in prison._

If Intel were to publish detailed instructions for building this computer in a book, there's no question that it would be protected by the first amendment.

<comment><USER13> what if they were to not do that, and instead just email them privately (as hypothesised)?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mouse Cursor Dynamics - <AUTHOR> How is the motion of the cursor calculated on various operating systems (are different X window managers different)? I'm curious how the original Alto dealt with the mouse movements compared to the Lisa, Macintosh System 6, macOS Sierra, Windows or Plan 9's rio. What is the difference in acceleration, etc.?
Also, is there any impact caused by using a third-party mouse? Would an Apple mouse provide different dynamics than a Logitech (accounting for the differences in the hardware of the two devices)? One step further, if there's a difference between first– and third–party mice, are there differences among third–party mice?—i.e., does the manufacturer matter at all or are the cursor dynamics all calculated by the operating system—e.g., would a Logitech mouse connected to a MacBook behave the same as a Microsoft mouse (or an Apple mouse) would behave from a cursor movement dynamics perspective? If so, what calculations determine the result? If not, what are the differing algorithms?
Has anyone done a study to determine what dynamic users prefer and/or are most efficient at using? <comment><USER2> This is a rather obscure question. I'm curious, why do you want to know?

I assume the smoothing/acceleration etc. that is applied at the OS level is independent of differing mouse models. However, different mice may have different onboard sensitivity and preprocessing configurations.

With regards to specific details for various obscure operating systems, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to research that yourself.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone willing to speculate on 'software in 100 years from now'? - <AUTHOR> Or is it just so far out that it's too ridiculous to even guess? Arthur Clarke made a few good guesses. <comment><USER2> AI writing code and discover millions of new breakthroughs every day for the good of mankind. While people living in alternate reality satisfying all there pleasures.

<comment><USER3> I predict context-aware spell correction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't see humanity surviving this long and if it does I think it would be pretty close to what we have today or even older

<comment><USER5> I beg to differ but slightly : humanity will probably still exist in 100 years but probably less numerous and less technological than now.

At one point natural resources depletion and the effect of climate change will reduce human population to a fraction of what it is now. The remaining ones will have to make do with less technology and more manual work.

I'd encourage every HN reader to read the Archdruid Report, eye opening.

<comment><USER6> The historical trajectory is for energy to get cleaner and cheaper/more available. This is more likely to continue than not (wind, solar and nuclear power are all abundant and not particularly expensive using _present day_ technology (and I think many opponents of nuclear would still prefer it to not having magic holes in the wall)).

<comment><USER7> _The historical trajectory is for energy to get cleaner and cheaper /more available._

I beg to differ. At least for heating, which is necessary for a lot of climates, and also often for cooking, wood is actually arguably the cleanest, easiest to establish, most universally available and most sustainable.[1] The historical trajectory is that it has been becoming impossible to obtain for most people because they are being progressively squeezed in to some sort of megacity of apartment boxes designed for worker drones, cars and mass- consumption. Some of them have never even seen a forest.

[1] [http://woodheat.org/why-heat-with-wood.html](http://woodheat.org/why- heat-with-wood.html)

<comment><USER6> Wood has some carbon cycle advantages, but it absolutely isn't clean (especially in the stoves available historically, modern stoves do better), and it obviously isn't sustainable for human civilization as we know it (prior to the widespread use of coal, forests were shrinking).

(I say as we know it because some civilization that hasn't existed might tend to slow growth prior to achieving a high standard of living)

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than anything else from virtually any angle for local heating, at least. Cooking too, in most cases.

Basically, wood is a huge win because it doesn't rely on having a vehicle, a credit card, a petrochemical distribution system, a bank, electricity and bureaucracy to manage all that, etc. Once you tally up the pervasive bullshit (transport, regulation, real state of reserves, enabling technology, overheads for the above) around most energy sources, you realize they're a hell of a lot more expensive and less long-term reliable than wood.

One axe, some land, a bit of time: sorted.

<comment><USER6> You are romanticizing the axe something powerful.

Have you ever cooked and heated for an extended period of time using wood that you fell with an axe? I haven't, but the little bit of axe work and wood splitting I've done is enough to dissuade me from being excited about it.

<comment><USER7> Heated, yes. Cooked, no. It's not that hard.

Anyway the points I was arguing were 'get cheaper' \- clearly not the case when discussing a transition from free (grows on trees) to paid (to a private utility, often a monopoly, and one upon which you are dependent) - and 'get cleaner', not the case when moving from wood to other-system-plus- transmission-and-bureaucracy-overheads.

I agree with 'more available', though we've paid dearly for that in environmental damage.

PS. To thread originator, thanks for thearchdruidreport meme, I was skeptical but there are some really interesting thoughts there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly, this isn't that far out to guess, and it probably won't be nearly as futuristic as we might imagine.

For example, in 1967 Dennis Ritchie began work on the c programming language, still highly used today only almost 50 years later. In 1962 the Chinook helicopter when into service. Almost 35 years ago the US Space Shuttle went into service, and we still haven't seen a huge amount of new innovation there. Though maybe it will come.

Anyway, the point is, 100 years brings amazing innovations (before 1967 there was no c, after all! So it was amazing). But, progress happens a lot more slowly than I think most realize in our science fiction laden society. We probably won't have any strong AI Robot Overloads in 100 years. Most likely we'll still be writing software to solve our day to day challenges while sitting around and complaining about how poorly other software engineers write their code.

</comment><comment><USER9> At some point in less than 100 years, the contemporary equivalent of today's software will then be a type of telekinetic programmable matter. But you don't really program it. Its more like a number of beings work closely together via wirelessly connected direct neural interfaces to imagine what might be possible, while AGIs work behind the scenes to implement and integrate these fantasies. These are then realized by some type of physical particle arrangement at some resolution.

With enough engineering we could accomplish a crude approximation of this magic today. To really guess about 100 years from now is impossible. Chimps couldn't predict the evolution of computers and we can't predict ASI technologies.

</comment><comment><USER10> Moore's law continued, all of Earth 2015's data could fit on the head of a pin. However, operating systems continued to get "smarter" with built-in features and AI that always require more storage and processing power than is available, causing everything to be slow and buggy, and everything gets more buggy the longer you use it.

No software is allowed release on the mass market unless it fits Apple's TOS (Apple is now the world government as well). All apps will be politically correct and use no porn, swear words, violence, or mention anything hinting at a competitor to Apple.

AI that can fix bugs and manage its own size will be a mere 10 years away.

<comment><USER11> > AI would rather use Android phones and takes over the world.

Seriously though, I'd rather speculate on the risk of the super AI a company has developed until then turning against the company itself. Not from a 'destroy the world' type of scenario but from a 'marketing desaster' scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think it'll look _that_ different as far as technologists are concerned. There'll be software engineers who write code that interfaces with hardware and other software APIs. The languages will change, the ideas might change, but the jobs will still exist.

What will _really_ change is the sophistication of people who interact with software - the end user. They'll start writing code (within the confines of an application suite) in a big way. At the moment I imagine only a single digit percentage of users can write a macro or use a scripting language in an application, but that will change _immensely_. Everyone will use 'code' to manipulate data in their job. There will be a fundamental shift towards understanding things on an abstract 'everything is just data' level. The real question is whether that's 100 years away or 20 years away. I suspect it's going to be _much_ closer to 20.

<comment><USER13> I have to remind you of Excel. A large fraction of office workers today use it to 'code', transforming data given the rules they wrote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Humans try hard to be smarter than their "software" counterparts. Start-ups emerge with a problem to solve "How to make a normal human smarter than any machines". Economics would be decentralized, and ultimately survival of the fittest. If only I could live to see all this.

</comment><comment><USER15> 100 years from now and still nothing is better than emacs

</comment><comment><USER16> Half Life 3 released.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think that won't exist "coders" or "programmers" or "developers" anymore. From the core, machine will be programmable by natural language. The basic rules for "talking to machines" will be teach in schools as a subset of the regular language learning.

As today there are no more monastic scribes, there won't be coders anymore. "Writing code", ie, talking to machines will be easy enough for universal reach.

</comment><comment><USER18> The commonplace luxuries of tomorrow will be the rich persons luxuries today. Personalized service will become mainstream. We will have fashion designers, interior decorators, mentors, tutors, financial advisers, constantly at our disposal. Cars will do the driving. Nearly the entire world will become bi(tri)lingual, with deep contextual and instantaneous translation (and history) for all travel and business dealings.

</comment><comment><USER19> I liked Vernor Vinge's idea that a programmer will be called "software archielogist" and his main job is unearthing existing pieces of code created over the past hundred years and putting them together. Sometimes it feels like we're already at that point.

But you'd think with 130 years of software behind us we'd have code for everything.

</comment><comment><USER20> Mathematics has evolved since Pythagoras, but still remains the same foundation.

Language hasn't changed much since Gutenberg invented the printing press.

Programming hasn't changed that much in 50 years since Lisp, Fortran, Pascal. We have more libraries, frameworks, tools, but it's still the same loops, conditions, functions.

I predict with total confidence things will be the same.

<comment><USER21> IMHO to get our rising unbounded complexity under control, Turing completeness will come to be seen as a curse to be avoided. Untyped Lisp will be seen as a lowest common denominator "failure mode" (ala Greenspun's tenth rule), not as a language to deliberately program in.

Adopting this philosophy means that it will be a language designer's responsibility to incorporate as many compatible features as possible ( _not_ as macros!) to avoid the temptation of layering a lisp.

(That is if languages continue to develop, rather than the slop-on-slop mentality fully taking over).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As you mention Arthur Clarke I'll guess that some forms of modern magic will be made possible by technology of the future.

</comment><comment><USER23> We'll still be stuck running everything on some iteration of Unix.

<comment><USER24> From this reddit comment: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/338tx5/vim...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/338tx5/vim/cqiyma2)

> Long after everything else you know has gone to dust, Vim will be there. > Some version of Vim will be running on whatever computer triggers > armageddon.

<comment><USER25> Armageddon gets caused by someone trying to quit Vim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> GNU Hurd 2.0 will be released and will be a major success.

</comment><comment><USER27> We'll be writing software for the new Apple Watch

</comment><comment><USER28> Prediction: There will be software in 100 years.

</comment><comment><USER7> Neoglyphs, a new meta-symbology unifying mathematics, statistics and a broad swathe of human language semantics will emerge, drawing heavily from Chinese and early 21st century international signage: Japanese の will win out on Chinese 的 (for indicating possession). Grammar will be absent to simplistic, with a Chinese/Tai-Kadai/Austronesian rather than Indo-Aryan structure (ie. use of amorphous noun/verb concept ideograms and adjunct tense-particles where necessary rather than tedious verb conjugation). This new symbology (glyph library) will be the standard pedagogical language across the world, and the normal interface language for all software. It will quickly begin to effect semantics in the few major remnant human languages, the vast majority of which died out between the early 20th and mid 21st century. Long-form reading will become even rarer. The lyrics and snapshot-imagerie of the rock and instagram generations will give way to a resurgence in poetry, lauded for its vaguearies, which will be widely appreciated in a mix of classical Chinese and the neoglyphs. This will be automatically set to music by algorithms, in personal stylistic preference. Interface code itself (windows, scrollers, presentation systems, graph generators, etc.) will no longer be programmed by humans, instead they will be generated automatically against semantic and contextual preferences linked to the user, much as some advanced unix users enjoy customizing their shell. The challenges of code reuse (portability, parallelism, etc.) will be solved automatically in almost every case. Most software will derive from expert systems which translate human wants in to functional software using simplistic visual metaphor and iterative design in the lounge-room. Increased availability of pure and micro-dosed drugs of all current and yet to be discovered genres will play a big part the more creative outputs from these sessions, which will essentially complete the union of human/biological abstract thinking and the speed and technical prowess of the machines. In the 20th century, Frank Zappa said "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer." At the dawn of the 22nd century, countries will have essentially become dormant anachronisms, but good drugs and revolutionary thinkers (no longer titled programmers) will by definition possess their own widely recognized neoglyphs. Many of the thinkers will be those previously considered disabled or challenged by society at large; the autistic, the handicapped, the psychonauts, the other-large-mammals - whose capacity for modes of reasoning apart from the mainstream will finally become valued. Finally, 0xDEADBEEF will disappear as a meme, since beef in real life will no longer exist except for the ultra-rich.</comment>


Seattle judges throw out 15 years of marijuana convictions - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45637826 <comment><USER2> This is absolutely great and needs to happen in many more places. One of the worst parts about the draconian mandatory sentencing laws so many places have is that prison turns otherwise good people into criminals. It's almost like the entire process was designed to be that way. Not only is prison itself a harsh environment that treats people like chattel, and often forces people to make morally suspect decisions to ensure their own survival. But once they're released they're given a scarlet letter that prevents them from integrating back into society. They can't find jobs, and sometimes even housing. They're finances and credit are generally in ruins from abruptly losing everything. It's no wonder so many people re-offend and generally for worse offenses. The system takes away everything and prevents them from even attempting to claw there way back. And to top it off there are these ridiculously long probationary periods where the smallest offense can land one back in prison. Oh and lastly they take away you're right to vote so you become literally an invisible member of society as far as politicians are concerned. But hey drugs are bad, and anyone who does drugs is bad /s.

</comment><comment><USER3> The actual motion from the City Attorney which outlines the rationale. [https://news.seattle.gov/wp- content/uploads/2018/04/HolmesMo...](https://news.seattle.gov/wp- content/uploads/2018/04/HolmesMotionToVacateMarijuana.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> For comparison, what happened just after alcohol prohibition ended in the USA?

(I'm not American, so not too familiar with this.)

<comment><USER5> Things bounced back petty quickly. It only took about 80 years for us to start having access to good beer again.

More seriously - I don't think organized crime went away. It was a big problem before prohibition, and it continued to be a big problem after. However, it may have been weakened by the loss of an extremely profitable revenue source. Alcoholism dropped precipitously during prohibition, and started coming back again after it ended. Given that the US has a huge problem with drunk driving, one could probably make a cogent argument that, with the repeal of prohibition, we replaced a relatively small but sensational amount of organized crime with a large, but relatively socially acceptable, amount of disorganized crime. One might presume that other crimes that tend to go hand- in-hand with alcohol, such as domestic and sexual assault, also got a boost from the repeal.

I'm not sure how well any of this applies to marijuana. With marijuana, the worst (non-government-imposed) externalities seem to be related to how gangs behave when they're financed by the illegal marijuana trade. With alcohol, the organized crime was a problem, but the worst problems seemed (and seem) to be a direct result of how people behave when they've been drinking.

One common thread, though, is that opposition to both bans seems to be a reaction to government overreach as much as anything else. The penalties being handed down for alcohol possession were every bit as outrageous as the ones we see for marijuana possession nowadays, and that played a big part in public perception of the law.

<comment><USER6> Excuse me but the wet lawn mower clippings mixed with cinnamon and spicy chai with a shot of 5w40 for texture that is currently in vogue is not "good beer". I want a beer I can drink, not one I have to endure.

<comment><USER7> It's why I just drink cider now. Hard to find quality ones, but when I do they don't involve getting punched in the face with hops.

<comment><USER8> I live in a tiny town with a surprisingly popular brewery with ~8-10 beers on tap. IPAs. Every. Damn. One. Of. Them. And my local beer shop switched distributors so now I can't get my preferred beer (Prairie Bomb!).

<comment><USER5> Might as well continue this tangent. I haven't lost nearly enough karma on it yet. :)

I think that, if you're going to be a very small brewery that has that many different beers, they basically _have_ to all be IPAs. The high alcohol content will help make the beer more resistant to going stale, and the hoppiness will cover all the flaws and consistency issues that you're very likely to have if your brewmaster is spreading themself that thin. By contrast, if you're making something like a helles lager, any problems you have with finicky things like the mash or the primary fermentation will to have nowhere to hide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about the people who were convicted 15 years and 1 month ago? Or 16 years? Or 20 years?

Feels pretty arbitrary.

<comment><USER10> > Judges in Seattle have decided to quash convictions for marijuana possession > for anyone prosecuted in the city between 1996 and 2010. Possession of > marijuana became legal in the state of Washington in 2012.

Another question is why didn't they quash convictions between 1996 and present, or between 1996 and 2012 when it became legal? Such _obvious_ questions that aren't addressed by the article -- and this is the BBC no less.

<comment><USER11> Why leave out 2011-(mid)2012?

<comment><USER12> Supposedly because they had a policy that caused them to throw out all cases in the meantime, like it is done now in some jurisdictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "542 people could have their convictions dismissed by mid-November"

That's not the number I was expecting when I saw the headline. That's 36 people a year, in a city the size of Seattle. I was expecting it to be thousands if not more.

Maybe shows that not very many people are ever convicted for simple possession alone. It's usually an additional charge along with dealing, violence, or both.

<comment><USER14> The judge threw out convictions that occurred in Seattle between 1996 and 2010. In 2003, Seattle effectively decriminalized marijuana by making enforcement of cannabis laws the "lowest priority". That covers half of the window the judge looked at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what will happen in Canada once October 17th, the legalization date comes.

<comment><USER16> I'm hoping more Canadians become stoners and push wages up for people with clean urine

<comment><USER17> how exactly would having more stoners up the wages?

<comment><USER18> Smaller hiring pool leading to higher wages for the sober drones is the implied hypothesis here if I am reading it right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's an earlier source: [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-c...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-court-agrees-to-vacate-misdemeanor-marijuana- convictions-prosecuted-before-legalization/)

And the writing has been on the wall from about April: [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-a...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-asks-court-to-dismiss-marijuana-convictions-from-before- legalization/)

</comment><comment><USER20> If this happens retroactively, 2/3 of the jail pop[ulations would be free to live their lives without pain, despair, the misery of 6x10 21 hours a day even. Fact.

<comment><USER21> Do you have a source for that? Not saying you're wrong but would be interested to read.

I had a quick look but couldn't find one.

<comment><USER22> I'm not even sure what he's trying to say, but if he means to imply that 2/3 US prison inmates are inside for drug offences, it's nonsense. The real number isn't even 15%. See [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/releasing-drug- offender...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/releasing-drug-offenders- wont-end-mass-incarceration/).

<comment><USER21> _According to the Bureau of Prisons, there are 207,847 people incarcerated in federal prisons. Roughly half (48.6 percent) are in for drug offenses. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are 1,358,875 people in state prisons. Of them, 16 percent have a drug crime as their most serious offense. There were also 744,600 inmates in county and city jails. (The BOP data is current as of July 16. From BJS, the latest jail statistics are from midyear 2014, and the latest prison statistics from year-end 2013.) That's an incarceration rate of about 725 people per 100,000 population._

Looks like for federal prisons it's as high as 48.6%, but that looks like it's for all drugs not just cannabis.

It's also probably too big a leap to speculate how many people are incarcerated for drug related incidents (theft to get money to feed a habit for example). Crimes which would probably be greatly reduced in a treatment over prohibition system.

<comment><USER23> Your quote says that 16% are in with drugs being their most serious crime.

48% include drugs as a crime, but 2/3 of them have a more serious crime as well.

So I'd say the parent is right that 16% are in for drugs and would be set free if drugs were legal. The others in that 48% wouldn't be.

<comment><USER24> I wonder how often the more serious crime wouldn't have been charged had the drugs not let to it? For example, carrying a firearm isn't necessarily illegal, but carrying a firearm and weed in a place where weed is illegal is most likely a separate, non-drug charge like "carrying a firearm during the commission of a crime". Also how many non-drug arrests would have never happened if the officer hadn't been able to manufacture reasonable suspicion by simply saying, "I smell weed".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wonder if the asset forfeiture involved in all of those cases have to be returned ?

</comment><comment><USER26> i was surprised that its only 500-ish people.

</comment><comment><USER27> > "For too many who call Seattle home, a misdemeanour marijuana conviction or > charge has created barriers to opportunity - good jobs, housing, loans and > education," she said.

The problem isn't the marijuana convictions, the problem is a society that believes people with criminal records can and should have their entire lives ruined for it. It's a society that doesn't believe in rehabilitation, just "good people" and "bad people".

<comment><USER28> No offense, but many with criminal convictions are bad people. I know it may be nice to think otherwise. However there just are many people out there who are difficult if it not impossible to fully integrate into society.

then you run into not society but government issues as well. just some examples my cousins run into all the time, they have to use temporary agencies to filter people and stock crews each week. Why? Drug convictions can ban them from some sites their company does work at. It can also jack their company's vehicle insurance and health insurance cost. Plus, go figure, those with more than one don't turn out to be good employees. They used to do direct hires, they even tried VA recommended people. some just hang on long enough to start collecting benefits again or meet eligibility requirements. they have good jobs to offer as do thousands of small employers do but they cannot afford the cost of that risk.

but ignoring their hiring issues, occupational licensing which prevents competition in many fields can include clauses that block those convicted of a crime from entering a field and drug convictions doubly so.

<comment><USER29> > many with criminal convictions are bad people

What do you do with "bad people?" Are they to be forever a drain on society? I agree that it's a government issue, but we should be rehabilitating our criminals instead of (just) labeling and punishing them: [https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/wh...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why- scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/)

<comment><USER6> >What do you do with "bad people?

I think he's usually using it synonymous with "deadbeats you don't want to hire anyway"

<comment><USER30> I think our biggest problem is we bundle a huge part of the "criminal" spectrum together.

The fact that we incarcerate for drug possession seems pretty strange. Petty crimes have way too high of cost in and out of prison.

I associated with a boy in highschool who shortly after graduation murdered two unarmed people in their home with a sawed off shotgun. I would consider him a very bad person.

Both the petty and the extreme carry the same label. Each join the untouchable class.

I'm not sure how to fix that, but it's an issue worth solving

<comment><USER31> I use to work in youth corrections. A gang unit I worked on housed one young guy who got behind the wheel drunk on his sixteenth birthday and accidentally killed someone, and another young man who contracted an STI from his girlfriend and decapitated her. These two young men slept 3ft apart and were treated equivalently by the system.

You've pinpointed a major flaw that is mostly invisible to the public.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: How long do you spend in unproductive meetings? Meeting Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://mazement.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Mazement offers a data-driven approach to supporting teams towards running productive meetings. There is a demo which doesn't need you to sign up on the site. I'd be really interested in your thoughts on the website and product. Ultimately would you sign up? If not, I would love your feedback as to why. :D</comment>


Bill Announced on April Fools' Day Doesn't Exist - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/trump-declared-he-was-working-on-a-second-step-act-the-proposal-doesnt-exist <comment><USER2> >It is unclear if Trump misspoke when he said: "Today, I am announcing that the Second Step Act will be focused on successful reentry and reduced unemployment for Americans with past criminal records. And that's what we are starting right away."

I don't think it's unclear. I can read this as "getting the ball rolling" and not "this bill is starting right now."

Last paragraph nails it:

>Holden gave a similarly upbeat assessment. "If you told me two years ago that we'd be talking about 'Well, the Second Step Act hasn't happened yet,' that means the First Step Act did happen, and that's a big deal," he said.

Also the title is non-informative..</comment>


Latest DIY Craze: Brain Hacking - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/reviews/the-latest-diy-craze-brain-hacking/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=032014

<comment><USER2> Not really new, I have seen someone talk about it in HN Kansai about a year and a half ago.</comment>


Ask HN: Now that Inbox is officially dead, what email client should I use? - <AUTHOR> The Gmail interface stresses me out with the deluge of emails it presents to me. Is there anything out there that comes close to Inbox's bundles? <comment><USER2> Outlook!! Feels fresh and works well. Also categorises mails into Focus and Others depending. Find it really useful on phone. Prefer default Gmail website on Desktop.

</comment><comment><USER3> Forget about it. Use Thunderbird with IMAP.

<comment><USER4> There is something to be said for using a solid client that is both provider and platform agnostic. You don't get used to fancy features of some client, just to have lose them. It forces you to build habits that work across multiple setups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand "stresses me out with the deluge of emails". If you're getting tons of emails that you don't need or want, take a minute and unsubscribe from those mailing lists. If not, set up filters to do whatever with those kinds of emails. Idk I guess I've always been pretty organized when it comes to emails. Appending my email for each service or site I sign up for etc.

Anyway I just use the stock mail app on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm trying these: Spark and Spike email

[https://www.cnet.com/how-to/google-inbox-is-dead-but-you- can...](https://www.cnet.com/how-to/google-inbox-is-dead-but-you-can-use- spark-and-spike-apps-instead/)

<comment><USER7> All these services have to basically read your emails to send you notifications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just received a newsletter that had an ad for [https://frontapp.com/](https://frontapp.com/).

(They say they are "The #1 alternative to Google inbox".)

Haven't tried them though.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use Gnus. One of its nicer feature is scoring, where every message gets a score and then only high-scoring messages are shown until you ask for the low- scoring ones.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe it's a sign that you need to move away from Google at least Gmail?</comment>


How Cassini Will Begin Its Date with Death on Saturn - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/science/cassini-saturn-rings.html <comment><USER2> Pardon my ignorance, but what is the point in sending the Cassini probe to burn up in Saturn's atmosphere? Are there no more useful observations it can make, and if there isn't right now, can it not just be parked in orbit around Saturn until later? I mean, just the launch vehicle itself cost $422 million according to Wikipedia.

<comment><USER3> The article didn't say, but off-hand I would guess it's for the same reason they crashed Galileo into Jupiter ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(spacecraft)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_\(spacecraft\))), namely to avoid any possibility of contaminating one of the moons (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Titan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Titan)) with life (e.g., bacteria) from Earth.

<comment><USER4> Are we not actively trying to terraform Mars? Why is "life contamination" seen as a problem for our solar system rather than a goal?

<comment><USER5> The days of colonialism, when Europeans showed up on foreign shores, killed the natives, and claimed the land as their own, are over.

<comment><USER4>
      are over

You mean like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Israel?

<comment><USER5> Those are proxy wars and/or puppet governments, which is a different thing to colonisation. There is somewhat more regard for the rights of the native inhabitants than in the past.

If we ever find alien life, the Outer Space Treaty prohibits colonisation in the sense we're using here. Of course this is a very easy treaty to sign up to at this point in our development of space travel. If space travel ever becomes cheap enough to enable exploitation of resource on distant planets I imagine those laws will see some amendments.

<comment><USER4> So, why is it a goal to send humans there? Humans breathe out bacteria constantly and will guarantee contamination of Mars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cassini gave us so much amazing information. Lakes on Titan, giant geysers on Encaladus from an underground ocean, a moon that looks like the death star, our first lander on an object further than Mars, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't Cassini have some nasty nuclear fuel? Probably best to put it where no one could get at it.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you can't read: [https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiK7sLIo8jQAhViLZoKHdPwCKAQqQIIHjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F11%2F25%2Fscience%2Fcassini- saturn-rings.html&usg=AFQjCNGK77fbavJgWmyzg1XzJNIThj25_g) (skip subscription by going through Google)</comment>


Transparency report for the first half of 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2016/12/transparency-report-jan-jun-2016/ <comment><USER2> I'm looking at this report with a very skeptical eye; I moved away from Dropbox after they brought Condoleezza Rice of all people on to their board of directors to oversee privacy issues. But it seems pretty comprehensive.

It's interesting that West Virginia is the only state that didn't receive any account information requests. Hey everyone, if you want to dodge the feds, move to rural Appalachia! I also find it hilarious that they got a half-dozen requests issued to the wrong company. Who do you think they were supposed to go to? My money's on Box.

And it is complete bullshit that they can only give a range of '0-249' for national security requests. But the big NSL case is still grinding through the 9th circuit court of appeals, right?

Anyways, my biggest concern is with the phrase, "Non-content provided." This feels like a similar weasel word to "it's only metadata," and it reeks of parallel construction to me. It's odd that they provided "non-content" for 96% of subpoenas which didn't refer to nonexistent accounts, but provided actual content for 0% of subpoenas. I'd like them to go into more detail about why that is. If they're constantly resisting requests to provide full content, then good on them. But they don't go into any detail.

<comment><USER3> Serious question, what was the big deal about hiring Condi Rice? I'm not saying I condone her political career, but is there some obvious link that would indicate that she's operating at Dropbox to the detriment of its users?

<comment><USER2> There's no huge deal, I just see the way that companies fill key positions as signals of their intentions. I don't think that she's working with the CIA to spy on all of the company's users or anything, but I do think that her past actions show a history of complete disregard for individual privacy. So when the company hired her on their board to deal with issues of privacy, I read it as a signal that they are unwilling to meaningfully stand up for their users' privacy, and they're probably not adverse to quietly compromising it for a quick buck.

I was already not hugely impressed by the service, so I just switched to a more secure cloud backup provider that costs about the same. I guess it was more the straw that broke the camel's back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really wished Dropbox would give users a way to perform client-side encryption of their data. There are ways to do this (e.g. via Boxcryptor or via EncFS), but they all degrade the usability and are too difficult to set up for most users. Encryption could be limited to certain folders (as not everything is sensitive), and the ability to do full text search could be partially preserved by doing indexing on the client. Especially for businesses this would be a great boon and protect not only against government surveillance, but also against hacking of accounts.

<comment><USER5> I presume they save a lot of money on space/upload speed if they can verify the hash of your data matches data already in their store. I'd be really curious to learn what percentage of data overlaps between accounts.

<comment><USER6> Yes.

For a while, I've actually tried uploading stuff to small TrueCrypt containers. Everything above 50 MB per container is absolutely unusable for cloud storage.

Now I'm simply on ownCloud (well, Nextcloud to be precise) with the encryption enabled on the backend when the data is at rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this more of a public statement about the report than the link to the actual report that's hidden behind a link at the bottom of all this?

The only thing I've learned is that they're a part of some coalition about the transparency. The report itself is much more interesting.

Maybe it's worth switching the link to [https://www.dropbox.com/transparency/](https://www.dropbox.com/transparency/) ?

</comment><comment><USER7> I really find Corporate Speak annoying as hell. How could anyone read this and take it seriously? ..."Here at Dropbox.. We earn your trust...". The whole "Here at $X" is the most annoying part.

<comment><USER8> I see language conformity through two lenses: risk and scale.

I'll speak to risk first.

If you are a company delivering a report to shareholders, the risk is primarily downside risk. It's unlikely for your stock to skyrocket if you say something clever, but it might fall if you spook them. This is because the default assumption for companies is that management is already competent, so the risk distribution has more downside than upside. I see corporate speak as a tool to avoid spooking folks and triggering this downside risk. (Notably, there is a positive feedback loop, where non-corporate speak becomes a stronger signal as it becomes rarer.)

On the other hand, if you are a startup company trying to break into a market, the risk is primarily upside risk -- if your communications go well, your business could eventually grow by many multiples. And achieving growth almost always means differentiating yourself from competitors. The reason that many startups eschew corporate speak is not necessarily because they are smarter, but simply because they are adapted to their environment. Avoiding corporate speak is the correct strategy when your upside risk is high.

The second issue is scale. It applies to both the receivers of the messaging and the senders of the messaging.

If you are selling to a specific niche, you can use the language and sensibilities of that niche when crafting your message. But if you are selling to a broad base composed of many niches, this customization of language is no longer possible. Anything too non-standard risks distancing certain niches. This is why when you are selling to a large audience, your communication necessarily needs to be blander than if you are a selling to a specific niche.

Another force that pushes corporate speak is coherence. When you have one voice, as individuals or startups might, it's easy to keep messaging consistent and coherent. Avoiding mistakes is easier, because there's only one point of failure. But as your company scales, you suddenly have hundreds of people putting out communications (and there is constant turnover among these folks). In this setting, it's hard to keep the style of these communications unique and consist. It's also harder to prevent dumb mistakes, since there are now hundreds of points of failure. Relative to more personal or unique styles, corporate speak is easier to apply across large organizations.

Lastly, and relatedly, I think corporate speak often arises as a result of people optimizing individually. If I'm putting out communications, I could get fired if someone doesn't like my bold/honest/creative take. But if I put out something bland, especially in an environment while others are putting out something bland, I'm not going to get fired. It's a similar risk argument as above, but applied to people. If I write a great a blog post for my company, no one is going to double my salary. But if I write a disastrous blog post for my company, I'm getting canned. The risk is asymmetric.

<comment><USER9> One of the best replies I've ever read on HN. :)

I think you nailed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is nice and all, but what interests me as far as transparency goes is:

\- what is up with client's high CPU usage when there is disk activity outside Dropbox folder;

\- actual technical reason for needing to install kernel extension on macOS (previous answers on HN were something like "we need to do _things_ that Finder API does not allow").

<comment><USER5> This is pretty off topic – the transparency report is specific to legal requests for data. I don't see how it would be relevant to muddy the term 'transparency report' or to couple that report with explanations of features, no matter how opaque their implementation is.

<comment><USER10> Preface says:

 _One way we work to earn that trust is through our commitment to transparency about government requests for user information._

I think explanations for these kinds of things would work significantly better for making users trust Dropbox more.

No need to include those in report, but I'd rather see a page about reasons behind weird behaviors than a bunch of numbers (which might as well be random from my layman's POV).

<comment><USER11> Sure, and that'd be great feedback for them in general, but is pretty off topic when the topic of the thread is that thing that you just quoted.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Divide any number By 9, 90, 900 and so on in just 5 seconds  - <AUTHOR> http://mathema-tricks.blogspot.com/2012/01/dividing-by-9-90-900-and-so-on-into.html

<comment><USER3> Unrelated note, you can do simple multiplication by 9 with your fingers: place your palms on a table and imagine your fingers are numbered 1-10 from left to right.

4 * 9? Lift up your fourth finger - you have 3 to the left and 6 to the right - answer is 36.

8 * 9? Lift up your eight finger - 7 to the left and 2 to the right - <USER2> is 72.

I hope it's not totally common knowledge thing.

<comment><USER4> Never knew this one. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is obviously cool and all that, but I see one problem with these kind of shortcuts - children (who this site targets) have no idea why this works and how. They memorise it and go about their lives using it. They know it works, but have no idea why.

I'm ranting about it because I have 2 kids who learn all sorts of similar stuff at school, but teachers fail to explain why these things work. (and in most cases I suspect they don't actually grasp the idea themselves)

<comment><USER6> I'd correct you by saying that they'll memorize it for as long as it's useful for passing a test because the teacher wants them to solve something a particular way. They'll soon forget it. I learned long division in 3rd grade, relearned it in 6th grade, learned the algebraic polynomial version in 10th grade (then was shown/told synthetic division which is cooler)... and at this point I know I'd struggle doing any of those. I'd rather use a calculator and get back to doing whatever it was that required the answer. In these crazy times where even most elementary kids have phones with calculator capabilities there's no excuse to be parading these mental tricks as "math".

I do agree though that a proof of this would be much more interesting than the technique itself. If I have kids I intend to teach them math myself. I don't think I was introduced to the idea of formal proof until 8th grade geometry, and everyone hated _those_ proofs since it was a bookkeeping exercise of writing down every algebraic step and what theorem/axiom allowed you to perform it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The same technique for dividing by 9 in base 10, also works for dividing by 255 in base 256, so you can quickly calculate N % 255 by adding the bytes of N together.

Useful for algorithms like this: <http://stackoverflow.com/q/295579/12048>

</comment><comment><USER8> Unrelated, you can square quickly a (reasonably small) number ending in 5: multiply the number without the 5 to the number one larger and append 25 to it. Example:

      85*85 = (8*9).25 = 7225

<comment><USER9> Did you mean it's only fast when it's a small number, or does it fail at some point?

EX: works for 10005^2 and 12345^2.

<comment><USER8> It works for any number, I meant "reasonably small", because for those it can be done mentally.

<comment><USER9> Cool, thanks I was sitting there trying to think why it would fail for large numbers. But, (x * 10 + 5)^2 = x * x * 10 * 10 + 2 * x * 50 + 25 = x * (x + 1) * 100 + 2 .

<comment><USER9> edit '+ 2 .' should be '+ 25.'

so: (x * 10 + 5)^2 = x * x * 10 * 10 + 2 * x * 50 + 25 = x * (x + 1) * 100 + 25.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also fun is squaring two digit numbers in your head: [http://blog.jgc.org/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-in- yo...](http://blog.jgc.org/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-in-your- head.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> An alternative way (but more intuitive) to find approx a / 9 in your head: result = (a x 0.1) + (a x 0.01) + ...

so e.g. take a random number, 22103 answer is about 2210 + 221 +22 + 2 = 2455

<comment><USER12> To be more complete: .1a + .01a + ... + (digit sum / 9) will give it to you. That's actually what this method is doing, it's just poorly explained.

22103/9 = 2210 + 221 + 22 + 2 + (2+2+1+0+3)/9 = 2455 + 8/9

So your ones digit ends up being 2+2+1+0+(any whole part left over from the digit sum), your tens digit is 2+2+1, your hundreds digit is 2+2, and your thousands digit is just 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why this works: [http://blog.jgc.org/2012/03/how-to-divide-by-9-really- really...](http://blog.jgc.org/2012/03/how-to-divide-by-9-really-really- fast.html)

</comment><comment> why-el Unrelated, but relates to 9: if you take any two digit number,say 59, and you deduct the sum of the two digits 5 and 9, it yields 45, a multiple of 9. Interestingly, this is true for any two digit number. I used this trick in a game where I labeled all multiples of 9 with a sign, asked my sister to perform the operation above, and claim that I can guess the sign, because all multiples of 9 share the same sign. :)

<comment><USER13>
      > Interestingly, this is true for any two digit number

Not only for two digits numbers. Also there is a trick based on that: ask someone to think of a number (two-digits, or greater). Ask to subtract the sum of digits from that number. Ask to multiply result by any number. Ask to cross-out any digit, except 0 and then say remaining digits to you in any order. Then you say what digit was crossed out. The secret is simply: you add the digits told to you till you get one digit number, and then subtract it from nine.

E.g.:

      Original number => 42
      Subtract the sum => 42 - 6 = 36
      Multiply by any number => 36 * 666 = 23 976
      Cross out 3 => 2976
      Name the digits in any order => 2679

So you got 2679. Calculate digital root: 2 + 6 + 7 + 9 = 24, 2 + 4 = 6.

9 - 6 = 3 <= there is your answer.

See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_root>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casting_out_nines>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool Trick. Reminds me a bit of vedic math:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_math>

<comment><USER15> Yes! And, this reminds of amazing "Mathemagic" series of videos by Khurshed Batliwala. Here's one: (a+b)²=a²+2ab+b² - But Why? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_TJymgXgM>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting fact: If the sum of all digits in the dividend is a multiple of 9, then it can be assumed that the dividend is a multiple of 9.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why don't you just divide by three two times? This would be a lot easier to remember and most likely will be faster than the other method.

<comment><USER6> Or get an approximate answer by dividing by the appropriate power of 10, which is pretty much the fastest method. I think the "5 seconds" editorialization is BS.

</comment></comment><comment> no-espam Professor Trachtenberg (early 1900) comes to mind for doing speed math.

<comment> no-espam Wow, downvoted for posting info related to a professor who was held in nazi concentration camp and kept his mind lucid with math?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trachtenberg_system>

<comment><USER18> +1 for the Trachtenberg system. I only wish we were taught these methods at school, in addition to the 'normal' way...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Uhm, 5 seconds? I can type X/9 into Google or my smart phone in 1 to 2 seconds.

<comment><USER20> I think I can reason why you are down voted. May be it was the delivery style of the message than the message itself. But I think it was unfair to you as you have a valid point. If you strictly want to asses the fastest way to arrive at this result in today's day and age. Your solution is probably one of the fastest ways to do that. I think the author's mathematical tricks would have been very useful in a world where personal computing is not where it is today... say prior to the advent of calculators.</comment></comment>