Icelandic logic behind the meltdown  - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904?printable=true&currentPage=all

<comment><USER2> I am Icelandic, living in Iceland so I know a thing or two about the situation. The article has some simplifications obviously but the overall picture is pretty much as he describes.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it is true that Icelandic males are over educated (for local industries) and aggressive risk takers, maybe software startups would have been a better outlet for them? Focus that aggression on being ramen profitable, instead of risking huge sums on assets you don't understand. At least then you have risk taking focused in a way that does not risk national solvency. (I suppose this advice would have also been good for Wall Street quants.)

What other economic activities would be a good fit for an educated population willing to take risks?

<comment><USER4> Uh, Wall Street did a excellent job at screwing at being Wall Street. Why do we have to blame some special Nordic trait for Iceland screwing up at being Wall Street?

<comment><USER3> "(I suppose this advice would have also been good for Wall Street quants.)"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets."

What a wonderfully simple explanation of mark-to-market!

</comment><comment><USER6> Summary: Silly, foolish, naive young Icelanders who obviously couldn't play in the big leagues with the trained financial professionals, lost billions and billions of dollars loaned to them by... um...

<comment><USER7> Michael Lewis is kind of famous for saying that those trained financial professionals don't actually know what they are doing.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar%27s_Poker>

But yeah, your point is good. Iceland could yet end up a net winner from its financial dealings, depending on what their creditors decide to forgive. Certainly those creditors will end up net losers no matter what.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> " _Iceland instantly became the only nation on earth that Americans could point to and say, 'Well, at least we didn't do that.'_ "

I'm not sure if that makes me feel good or bad.

<comment><USER9> I think Zimbabwe also qualifies. Probably plenty more...

<comment><USER2> The big difference is that Zimbabwe isn't playing in the big leagues, Iceland was supposedly a rocksolid 1st world country.

<comment><USER9> Seems like that's just better PR. 10 Years ago Iceland was, in most people's minds, something akin to Greenland now. Cold, desolate, poor.

<comment><USER10> These people obviously weren't well read. Iceland was well to do even 10 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is one of the funniest and more informative articles I have read in a long time.

<comment><USER12> I loved this bit:

"Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered [problems] peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called "hidden people"—or, to put it more plainly, elves—in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, "we couldn't as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.""

<comment><USER13> Compared with some of the things American financiers were believing during the height of the bubble, elves and trolls seem downright rational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A rebuttal: <http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/03/bubbles-and-sex.html> True, but it's still a great article.

<comment><USER7> That's a really terrible rebuttal. I was struck by the fact that Sailer seems to think it's impossible to be both aggressive and "cultivated." In my experience, these two traits are almost uncorrelated.

Also, his argument (insinuation, really) that female consumer spending in the US was a driving force of the sub-prime crisis completely is completely tangential to Lewis's argument, which is about male financial workers. (To my mind, both arguments seem unlikely and rather sexist. I'd like to think Sailer is being ironic, but no, he's not.)

<comment><USER14> Sailer agrees with you about the male/female thing. He's saying it doesn't seem to be a factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was in Europe during the Great Banking Failure of 2008. I was in London and was heading up to Stockholm. A quick kayak.com search found the cheapest airfare was on an Icelandic airline named "Sterling". I'd never heard of it, but then, I'm an 'merican, so I haven't heard of most of the European carries. So I sign on, for like 80 euro one way to Stockholm as I wouldn't be returning directly to London.

My flight was at around 7 in the morning, which meant getting up at 4 and hurrying from the Islington area in Central London to the airport. I still have to hustle to make sure I'm on time, and I really make tracks to get there.

And then the plane is late, and I'm stuck waiting at Stansted Airport for a couple hours. Ah whatever, such is the nature of airports. It really wasn't such a big deal.

But then I get the most surprising, strange, somewhat wonderful email I've ever gotten from an airline:

__________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Guest,

Please allow me to be the first to apologize for the very unfortunate circumstances surrounding the delay of your flight on the 15th of October 2008.

We are aware of our responsibility and we would of course very much like to maintain the trust your have shown Sterling. Having said this I would like to explain the cause for this delay and hope you can accept this apology on behalf of Sterling and myself.

I can inform you that we did everything possible to avoid the delay, which unfortunately happened due to a number of different causes. Sterling had unfortunately 2 aircraft that had to stay on ground because of technical problems, together with the fact our route network, which is built up as a coherent schedule, dependant on all aircraft serviceable and available, resulted in multiple delays, including your departure.

Of course, we tried to find alternative flights, but we were not able to fly at the precise time we needed them for and therefore had no other choice but to delay your flight. Sterling sets safety above all other concerns which we hope our guests understand and appreciate.

That being said, I can assure you that we are fully aware that the circumstances that you endured in connection with the delay were neither a pleasant beginning nor conclusion to your journey, and this is highly regrettable.

In light of the above circumstances and by way of acknowledgement that your experience was not the best with Sterling, I would like to offer you and your possible travel companion a gift certificate for 1 one way flight within Europe. The gift certificate will be valid until 10th of October 2009 and will be sent by e-mail, together with another copy of this letter.

In closing, I would like to take the opportunity once more to offer my regrets about the delay and I hope that you will accept the above offer and allow us to welcome both you and your companion to enjoy a more positive experience with us in future.

Best regards Sterling Airlines

Michael T Hansen Chief Commercial Officer

__________________________________________________________________________________

I got that email on October 17th, and I thought to myself, "Wow, those Icelanders are alright." The airline went bust 12 days later.

</comment><comment><USER16> went to iceland on my honeymoon over the holidays, and i can attest to the intense blame the general public places on the bankers and the politicians for what happened. we took a few bus tours, and on each of the the tour guides made a point to bad-mouth them.

</comment><comment><USER17> Would this have been worse (or better) if Iceland had not nationalised their banks and simply allowed them to go bankrupt?

<comment><USER18> It depends if having all of your country's assets overseas seized and gunboats arriving in Reyjavik would be better than the current situation or not.

When you owe other countries a ton of money and you're not paying, you either need a quid pro quo, a payment plan, or you're going to get your balls busted.

<comment><USER19> I did idly wonder if it would come to that, when Icesave announced it wouldn't honour guarantees given to British savers. Iceland's defence strategy during the Cold War was to umm, do nothing, and rely on NATO, knowing that it would never permit the Soviet Empire to gain such a strategic foothold. Even tho' the Royal Navy is but a shadow of its former self, invading Iceland would have taken all of one afternoon, if that.

<comment><USER18> Economically the UK almost did that by seizing Icelandic assets. Quite the _quid_ pro quo, pun intended ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess I would put it this way: The growth of societies needs and wants have far outpaced the capacity to deliver those. Not from a physical resource capacity but from an intellectual one. Combine this with the greed that is part of human nature, these large spikes and collapses will be common place until a new social-economic model is created. One that is a steady state model, which allows for the obsolesce of the antiqued without punishment.

</comment><comment><USER2> For those interested in the back story (or interested in a great data gathering startup) go to <http://datamarket.net/request_data/icelandic_economy/>

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm headed to Iceland in a couple of weeks, so this was a very apropos read. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER22> There are no countries anymore, there are only hedge funds...

<comment><USER23> But there are all sorts of things your hedge fund can't do if it doesn't have national sovereignty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The title here to this article is stupid, and the summary is even more moronic. However, the article is actually a pretty interesting read.</comment>


Why I'm Done With Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/9585/nomorefacebookfi0.png <comment><USER2> It's always a small group of people in my friends list who think it is a great idea to spam everyone they know with this crap.

There really should be a setting to ignore all application requests.

<comment><USER3> I get a huge amount of friends who spam me with this crap.

lmao whats even worse is when you're trying to find someone's wall because they have 50bajillion applications on their frickin page.

Reality Check: nobody honestly cares about your honesty box! Pirates and ninjas can go to hell! What the hell is the point of a super wall?! I'm not your top friend? Throw your ugly pet rabbits into that pot, there are homeless kids to feed. No, I am not interested in you, I am straight thank you very much.

Yeah half those applications are ridiculous. Many people liked facebook cause it was simple/clean, now its almost as bad as myspace.

<comment><USER4> I think a lot of people like those apps.

<comment><USER5> True, but that's the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The solutions are to:

1) Block every app you're invited to

2) Remove the minority group who send you all the invites

Both solutions combined work well for me

<comment><USER2> But you shouldn't have to do that! The thing just has a bad design that they can fix by letting people elect to ignore all requests. Then you wouldn't need to do any work!

edit: I'm down-voted for arguing against a recommendation to do the exact opposite that the site was designed for: networking with friends? While the parents suggestion is practical and what I will probably do, that doesn't mean I'm wrong about the site having poor design choices for settings.

<comment><USER6> I agree that you shouldn't have to resort to my tactics, but that's the only way right now

<comment><USER7> My list is longer then posted screen shot. My name starts with "A", I think its easy to select me when it says "send to 10 friends". I looked everywhere on facebook to just block all application invites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Want to leave Facebook, but I check it everyday hoping some random girl will poke me!

<comment><USER9> funny some random hot girl i dont know friend requested me a couple weeks ago, naturally i accepted because she is hot, now she spams me with application invites every day

I think it might be an elaborate scam by one of the app developers

<comment><USER10> well, give her a turing test and see where it goes...

<comment><USER11> Can hot girls pass turing tests?

I have anecdotal evidence that they can't, but then again, there are a lot of sororities on the campus I attended...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Except the page hasn't looked like that in about a month with the new UI tweak.

</comment><comment><USER13> What, the weekly "Why I'm Done With Facebook" post, on Friday?

You're 2 days late this week.

<comment><AUTHOR> question mark</comment></comment>


Cloud providers found to be leaking data cross-customer via dirty disks - <AUTHOR> http://www.contextis.co.uk/research/blog/dirtydisks/

<comment><USER2> Slicehost (now under Rackspace) sent a very cryptic email a few weeks ago saying users needed to "migrate" their servers, but gave no reason why. Then this mail went out on Friday:

 _We are writing to update you on the migration you recently completed, and to provide more information about the reasons it was necessary. We know that migrations can be inconvenient, and we thank you for your patience. Now that the migrations are complete, there is nothing more that you need to do regarding this issue.

When we announced the recent migrations, we explained that such measures are periodically required to promote the stability, performance, security, and feature-richness of our Slicehost platform. We were not able to share more information at the time, without putting you and other customers at risk. Now that the migrations have been completed, however, we want to provide you with the transparency that you expect from Slicehost. We now can tell you the timing of the migrations was driven by the need to fix a potential security issue.

We discovered the issue in collaboration with an independent I.T. security consulting firm that tested our products. The security consultants used forensic techniques to examine the underlying physical disk in newly created instances. They discovered that, in certain use cases, random fragments of temporarily stored data could be left behind on the physical disk.

In repairing this vulnerability, we have ensured that all data is wiped effectively whenever a customer vacates hard-drive space on a host machine. And through the migration that you and other customers have completed, we have cleaned up all fragments of remnant data. The security consulting firm that discovered this issue has performed follow-up testing and has found no remnant data on our environment.

We know of no case of customer data being seen or exploited in any way by any unauthorized party.

One reason is that the remnant data could not have been seen through normal use of slices, but would have had to be sought, using forensic techniques. It was not possible for anyone to specifically target a particular customer through this vulnerability, given the random and fragmented nature of the remnant data. Customers who encrypted sensitive data on slices would have faced no risk of exposure.

If we had made this issue public earlier, we could have opened the door for a malicious user to exploit the vulnerability. For that reason, we decided to keep information about the vulnerability within our company — until now, when the issue has been fully resolved.

Dealing with security issues is a constant in any type of computing or cloud- hosting provider. At Slicehost, we work to provide you with the safest, most- stable environment possible. We regularly consult with independent security consultants. We employ a large and growing staff of security specialists and IT engineers. We are proud of their work in repairing this vulnerability, and grateful for your patience.

If you have questions, please reach out to your support team. We are here to serve you.

Slicehost Support email@example.com_

</comment><comment><USER3> Summary:

The problem: When provisioning a disk, the provider reuses an old disk that has old customer data on it. Part of the disk is overwritten with the OS image but the rest is not.

The fix: Zero out the disk. Either when de-provisioning it, or when provisioning it.

The author's ability to turn 49 words into 2,543 words is quite impressive!

<comment><USER4> Also: we couldn't actually tell you this until now because we don't trust some of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing to consider here is keeping sensitive information on virtualized hosting setups block-level (full-disk) encrypted, for instance with Truecrypt.

<comment><USER6> Obviously it might seem silly to make this comment here, but would this really protect in many cases besides this one? It seems like almost every time the intrusion would occur somewhere where the intruder will have access to the mounted encrypted disk, no?

<comment><USER5> Full disk encryption is unlikely to protect you from anything other than custody issues at your hosting provider.

<comment><USER7> The idea behind this exploit:

The area on the SAN occupied by your disk contained a simple disk image. When your image is deleted and another is created overlapping the same spot on the host storage, they can look at their free space to see the contents of your disk.

If your disk happened to be encrypted, their free space would appear to contain garbage data.

Encrypting your disk would do you little good versus your provider if your VM can boot without your intervention... someone could just boot your VM to look inside.

<comment><USER5> Nothing you can reasonably do protects against a malicious (or compromised) provider; these are all controls that protect against provider mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A very interesting article about data leakage in cloud resource allocation. I'm impressed by the steps taken by all parties involved. Security vulnerabilities will continue to creep up over time as they do in most systems/services and the seriousness with which providers treat them is ever more important. What we have to remember is it's not just individuals hosting their own content that are at risk. More and more startups are utilizing cloud infrastructure which means we as consumers must be aware of where our personal data is going. I would love to see some sort of auditory process in place that verifies the security of cloud providers regularly and we as consumers having access to this information.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yay LUKS/dm-crypt kernel level disc encryption.

We had need for short-term (several hours) EC2 compute nodes with sensitive data from customers. They'd boot up and encrypt all the drives using a random key without persisting it anywhere. Even so much as rebooting them made any data unusable. YMMV =) I'm thinking one could set the key using a start-up file so reboot would be possible.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is not just limited to "cloud" services. Hosting companies recycle hard drives all the time. If you're lucky, they'll wipe it after they pull it out of your machine. If you're not, they won't.

It all comes down to what kind of recycling policies they have for old hardware. Ideally, all drives should be wiped and then stress-tested to avoid the problem where you eventually wind up with nothing but bad disks in the recycle loop. After all, _good_ disks stay in production and thus exit the loop, whereas bad disks fail and come right back.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why did this article so carefully not mention EC2 in the positive or negative?

</comment><comment><USER12> This isn't "new" information, and many providers already wipe before reprovisioning space. Off the top of my head, I'm aware of three. The paper's sample size is frightfully small (VPS.NET, in particular, is not a shining star of cloud hosting). All you have to do to find out if this is the case is run this on new storage that you've requested from your provider:

        strings /dev/<whatever>

This has nothing to do with "cloud", aside from rapidly reusing disks in that environment. This is the same problem with reusing disks in a datacenter, reusing disks at a dedicated host, reusing storage even inside a corporation, and so on. There is nothing "cloud-specific" about this in the slightest.

Of course, they wait until near the bottom of the paper to tell you that, so the title of the paper seems like a needless cloud scare which is really a shared-environment problem. Clueful people in hosting figured this out a while ago (publicly-used hosting has been around a long, long time). Long enough ago that you can measure how clueful your provider is by the usefulness of this trick.

<comment><USER13> The cloud angle is important because, as a cloud user, I have no control over the situation. More so, most people just expect the provider to take care of them as a result.

Regardless, it's why I'm willing to pay a little more for a company that will be proactive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At first I thought this was going to be the issue where people were sharing their EC2 instances and were leaving their keys or un-wiped copies of their private keys or tokens on images that others than stumble upon.</comment>


Google Warning: Millions of Android Phones Come Preloaded with Dangerous Malware - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/10/google-warning-tens-of-millions-of-android-phones-come-preloaded-with-dangerous-malware/#386ca587ddb3 <comment><USER2> Link to actual content here:

[https://github.com/maddiestone/ConPresentations/blob/master/...](https://github.com/maddiestone/ConPresentations/blob/master/Blackhat2019.SecuringTheSystem.pdf)</comment>


Younger Than The Xbox 360 - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/05/28/younger-than-the-xbox-360

<comment><USER4> These are basically random thoughts spurred by the points the article makes as opposed to direct statements about the content of the article...

Microsoft always intended to use games as a stepping stone to becoming a broader entertainment play. They were talking about this publicly as far back as the Xbox 1 (the former Xbox 1, now known as the Xbox 1 that isn't the Xbox One) in the 2001 time frame.

I'm fine with that strategy and even encourage it, but as a gamer I'm distraught with other decisions they _seem_ to have made (it is impossible to tell what decisions they've actually made from rumors or misreporting because they are failing on the PR/messaging for specifics of the Xbox One on a spectacularly epic scale currently).

In the long run, the Xbox 360 is kind of the odd duck of the Xbox line in terms of hardware architecture considering the old Xbox 1 was x86 based and basically a closed PC, just like the new Xbox One. Of course, the 360 happened to occur over the time period that Live proved that a full online experience for a console should be considered an essential component. (I just wish they'd stop raising the cost of Live while also increasing the amounts of ads it throws at you (without raising the value to suit), and stop charging for things that are free elsewhere (eg. Netflix, etc), and start using some of the mountains of money they earn from Live to provide dedicated gaming servers, etc).

The Wii U is actually a pretty nice device. I have one. I'll buy pretty much any system Nintendo puts out just to play their first party games, at least until they're forced to go the route that Sega did. But anyway, the remote touchscreen gamepad "second screen" thing is pretty cool I love using it for Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Instant. Being able to redirect the video play to the gamepad device's screen when the TV is otherwise in use is really nice, and it really makes things like searching a breeze compared to using a more traditional remote. Yes, you can achieve the same basic sorts of things with other consoles plus an external device like a tablet via things like SmartGlass, but with the Wii U it Just Works without having to dick around with anything.

<comment><USER5> Nintendo's success has always been driven by games, not hardware. While much of the punditry surrounding the U has legitimacy, it's failing mostly due to a lack of compelling first-party titles.

There was never a chance that the U would sell in the same numbers as the first Wii; the "non-gamer gamer" moment has come and gone. But if it had launched with a new Zelda, a new (real) Mario, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Smash Bros. (the list goes on), they'd be selling moderately well, with the game revenue as the cherry on top. Hopefully it won't be too late by the time those titles trickle onto the platform over the next year or two.

<comment><USER6> Nintendo thinks it won the last round and developed the Wii U in a vacuum, expecting success only to find out the world had moved on.

Sony thinks it was robbed of victory (or at least it's usual dominance) by MS in the last round and is eager for a straight up rematch.

MS has all the momentum so at least they can pretend they won the last round and seem primarily worried about competition from other entrants (mainly Apple, Google and Samsung).

<comment><USER7> Yes, this is certainly the popular wisdom, but the numbers substantially disagree. Nintendo _did_ win, at least numerically. It didn't win by PS2 margins, but it won. Microsoft does not have the momentum; they narrowly edge out the PS3 overall, and that's _down_ from the clear dominance they started this generation with. (Yes, even allowing for the PS3's later start.)

(If you don't personally like the Wii, hey, great. Neither did I, really. But it did win on most objective measures. Even the much-ballyhooed "attach rate" seems to be have been only _slightly_ worse than the XBox360 & PS3, certainly not enough to make up for anything.)

Microsoft is currently a narrow 2nd out of 3, in imminent danger of becoming 3rd of 3 in a year or two (in a parallel world with no new consoles), but common wisdom would seem to have them outselling everybody by 4 to 1 or something, which isn't even close. At least when Sony acted like masters of the universe with the PS3, they actually _were_ the masters of the universe. Microsoft's attitude has me very confused.

<comment><USER8> I can't find anything concrete, but I think it's fair to say that the attach rates for the 360 and PS3 are similar, and as you say, Microsoft is only narrowly 2nd out of 3rd in terms of consoles sold.

I think a case can be made for the 360 being more valuable than the PS3, though, just because of the online service offered by Microsoft. They had at least 20 million users paying for gold in January of 2012, which comes to around a billion dollars a year for Microsoft. Who knows what the operating costs are, but I'm sure they're doing well, especially considering that they show advertisements on top of the subscription revenue.

I can't find any numbers for PS+, but I'd be shocked if it's anything comparable to what Microsoft has going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know what else is younger than the Xbox 360? 7 year olds, a huge part of the incoming audience for this console generation which will probably last another 10 years, so until they're nearly adults.

Today's 7 year olds grew up in a world where Xbox, Playstation, Wii, Facebook, Android and iPad are a normal part of their universe. There's nothing novel or special about them. If this generation of consoles finds its audience with this age group like the Super NES did for me when I was growing up, the Xbox One, PS4 and Wii U will be much-loved despite their strategies, flaws, cloud computing, DRM or achievements. They will just be loved if they have good games.

We're all cynics who can look back and compare now to then, exclaiming how Facebook and Apple have stolen the market. But for 7 year olds, the world is the world, and they're only getting started. I envy them for the ability to be naive about this stuff. :-)

<comment><USER10> Except we can still play our SNES and NES. Due to the fragility of the systems and supposed rumors it is most likely today's 7 year olds won't be able to play their Xbox or Playstation when they are our age, sadly.

They sure don't make games and systems like they used to.

<comment><USER11> It's not just the fragility of the hardware, but also the increasingly firm stance against backwards compatibility.

No doubt this is driven by publishers, who'd rather focus on big topline profits on new releases than double-dip (or triple-dip) old titles. There's less and less ROI in investing the time, resources, and manpower to build emulation for old console hardware, or to get developers to do the same for their old games.

That being said, I predict we'll see a golden age of backwards compatibility and cross-platform titling within a few console generations. Not for folks like you and me, whose old (by now, ancient!) games are evolutionary dead- ends. But for the 7-year-olds of today, whose consoles are basically just fancy PCs in shiny shells -- and whose games are going to be built very similarly, regardless of platform, and distributed digitally.

<comment><USER12> There was no backwards compatibility in the 8-bit era. Backwards compatibility was a novel invention of the PS2 and the GBC.

<comment> T-hawk False. There was backwards compatibility long before the PS2. Just not in market-leading Nintendo's systems.

Way back even before the 8-bit NES, the Atari 7800 was backwards compatible with Atari 2600 games. So was the ColecoVision, although through a hardware adapter that basically was an entire 2600 on a chip outputting raw video to the ColecoVision.

And the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive had an adapter to play 8-bit Sega Master System games, running the SMS code on an auxiliary sound Z80 in the Genesis, so slightly hardware assisted but mostly built into the console.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _the Xbox One's heavily pushed smart-TV integration features seem to be > designed for an imaginary world in which people browse the web on their TVs > instead of the (non-Microsoft) smartphone in their pocket._

This overlooks a use-case that is common in my home: browsing the web with others in the room. It happens all the time in my living room that there are multiple people present and we want to look up something online, or share something with the group. Yes, we could pass around or huddle in front of a tablet or phone, but using the HTPC is the best shared-experience solution.

It's for reasons like this that I'm (so far) heavily leaning towards the Xbox One as my preferred choice as my nextgen console. If it's as fluid of an experience as they led us to believe during the unveiling (which is a big if), the Xbox One will become the #1 used device in my home. It will be the best way to view content in my living room, without having to hunt for remotes or wireless keyboards or switching inputs. And yes, it will also play triple-a video games. Sign me up.

<comment><USER14> Are you seriously trying to convince us that while you're _in-person_ sharing (shudder), your spouse / kids / siblings aren't in reality busy instagramming on their phones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Gotta love how he casually slips Tumblr and Instapaper in the list. Tumblr, I can understand, but Instapaper's influence outside of the technorati is highly overestimated by the technorati.

<comment><USER16> He slipped that in there, because the _entirety of his audience_ are aware of what Tumblr and Instapaper are. You're being silly.

<comment><USER15> He claims it's a list of "notable things". Instapaper does not fall into that category, no matter how you look at it.

<comment><USER16> Notability is in the eye of the beholder. I look at them both as notable products.

Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones are notable to a certain set of people. However, they are probably not notable to a large swath of South American tribespeople or even the 7+ billion people on Earth at large. This doesn't mean they aren't notable people in certain contexts.

Now, once again, Marco is writing an article to his audience, and his audience is aware of Tumblr and Instapaper and they find those products notable.

It's notable to his audience. Is this really that hard for you to figure out? Or do you have some personal anger/beef with Marco?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _> And the Xbox One's heavily pushed smart-TV integration features seem to be designed for an imaginary world in which people browse the web on their TVs instead of the (non-Microsoft) smartphone in their pocket._

This really jumped out at me as a silly statement to make.

Isn't the general idea of innovation that you imagine what people might want or need and then you build it? Why is it misguided for Microsoft to be trying something new that they think people will like?

My experience with browsing the web on a Smart TV is that opening the browser was a hassle, the interface was awkward to use (buggy on-screen keyboard), it was extremely slow, seemed to give me mobile versions of sites and - for some reason - was unable to stream content smoothly. If I had to guess as to why people don't browse the web on their TVs, it would be because the technology sucks. Mobile phones had browsers for years before the mobile web really took off. TVs could be the same. A few use cases that I can think of from my immediate family:

* Streaming web content while doing something else. Watching online guitar lessons while playing along, for instance.

* Watching TV while using another application. Tweeting while you watch chat shows, Skyping with friends while you watch a movie, creating animated .gifs on the fly and posting them to Tumblr.

* Browsing in a group. Huddling around a screen and/or passing a device from person to person is sub-optimal.

* Quick, voice-initiated browsing or searching. Currently performed using phones/tablets, this could easily spread to televisions if the technology existed. Pause your movie, open a browser, find a restaurant that delivers and order food without going hunting for your phone.

<comment><USER12> This is why I'm really disappointed in how Google kinda half-assed the Google TV thing. I want to see somebody get out in front of Microsoft with this... the Ouya is too focused on gaming, and the various TV-stick android devices are too small-potatoes. I want to see somebody like LG or Samsung notice this gap and make a nice set-top Android device... copy the PS Move interface so the user has a nice mouse-pointer/game-controller and a camera pointed at them for Skype. Just make the whole device a little set-top camera looking thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _I see problems with all three approaches. The Wii U depends mostly on casual gamers, but the best casual gaming device for most people is the iPad Mini._

Never underestimate the power of Pokemon though. That alone can potentially change the tides.

<comment><USER19> Never understood why people follow this notion. All gaming consoles are for casual gaming (relax on the couch, turn on, play , stop). The number of FPS' don't make a good indicator to distinguish between "hardcore" and casual.

<comment><USER20> I would hardly say the people who play Call of Duty 12h a day when a new one comes out are using their console for "casual gaming"

<comment><USER21> I'm not exactly sure what to call those people without being derogatory (brogamers, etc), but generally I consider those people to be separate from those who play a wider variety of games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "And the Xbox One's heavily pushed smart-TV integration features seem to be designed for an imaginary world in which people browse the web on their TVs instead of the (non-Microsoft) smartphone in their pocket. "

I don't think I've read a more accurate summery of the Xbox One than the above quote.

<comment><USER23> As someone with a PC connected to their TV, I beg to differ. My housemates and I use it all the time to browse the web- place orders on Seamless, use YouTube, even use Amazon Instant without having to use a slow, remote-based interface.

I'm not saying that many people do this, but I'm saying many _would_.

<comment><USER24> You're right. I think it's quite possible that the reason why nobody surfs on their TV is that nobody has made it an enjoyable experience _yet_.

Back in the days when we had to use WAP to get web access on phones, I'm sure nobody imagined that we'd be doing desktop style browsing on the small screens of our phones.

Even having PDAs/phones with great screens sucked. I had a Toshiba e800 PocketPC with a VGA screen, but browsing on that thing sucked. And then in 2007, along comes Apple with phone having a less dense screen than my e800 but a vastly better browsing experience. And now, with awesome browsing experiences available on all smartphones, people have trouble remembering how the Internet on a phone used to suck horribly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well said. The guys at Nintendo didn't realize that the WiiU will just cater to the KIDs who are mainly playing the dozens of iPad games.

The Wii was truly innovative. Everyone want it and to play it. Adults enjoyed it, they played with their kids. I remember my co-workers raving about them playing bowling with the family every night.

I see that not in the WiiU.

<comment><USER12> I think the WiiU was Nintendo's attempt to port the interface of their wildly popular DS console into the living room. The two-screen (one touch, one not) interface, the button layout - everything DS is in the Wii U. And it was designed with only a single controller in-mind - group gaming would be using the old Wiimotes.

Basically, a return to the hardcore world they'd abandoned with the Wii, taking what they'd learned from the DS and bringing it over.

The device seems to be a half-hearted move back towards core gamers, but they kind of got lost in the middle and got interest from _nobody_. Perhaps it's doing better in Japan where there's more room for that middle content - <USER2> complicated, elaborate overwrought single-player experiences without screaming about hardware power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> That list at the beginning of the article really is an eye opener.

That said, I don't agree with his take on consoles. Though I'm a little unimpressed with the Wii U, "almost changed nothing" is an exaggeration. HD Video, tablet controller, improved online functionality, etc. are all big to most gamers.

Also "the best casual gaming device for most people is the iPad Mini" may be true, but that's not in my mind what the Wii was good at. Wii was one of the best party-game consoles ever made (IMO only beat by the N64, however PS1/2 and XBox were great as well). Online gaming is more convenient for hardcore gamers, but if you just wanna have a few drinks and some pizza in a buddy's basement, nothing rivals Mario Kart or Smash Bros.

I'm a die hard PC gamer, but as soon as Smash Bros. drops for Wii U I'll be buying one. Halo is the only other exclusive title I can think of that has this kind of notoriety.

<comment><USER12> I'm constantly shocked at how completely Nintendo's competition has abandoned the field of couch gaming. Sony hangs in there with the various Little Big Planet titles, but otherwise the industry seems to ignore the ocean of distance between Call of Duty and Carnival Game Pack 4. Even Capcom made some absolutely _stellar_ entries in this genre back on the Dreamcast - <USER3> 2 is the only thing that comes close to the awesome mayhem of Super Smash in a 4-player brawl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I believe 2007-2008 represents the end of one era and the beginning of another. The changes that happened during that time were huge.

</comment><comment><USER28> All 3 strategies may be fatal - it's just that only the Wii U has been released.

<comment><USER29> Looking at the huge backlash against the XBox One in most gaming forums, it seems so, although there is a strong self-selection bias there.

<comment><USER28> Yet, people panned the iPod and iPad too.

But my reasoning against PS4/Xbox One is that gaming PCs are not selling well; phones/tablets are. The latter will be sudden death to consoles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ah, Xbox 360. I love it for the unbreakable power supply unit that does excellent work powering DIY 3D printers worldwide :).

</comment><comment><USER31> > _I expect the PS4 and Xbox One to both sell well. But I can't confidently > predict that either will outsell its predecessor._

PS2 is the best-selling video game console to date [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best- selling_game_conso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best- selling_game_consoles)

</comment><comment><USER32> Bing? Really? Come on, a rebranding doesn't make something new.

</comment><comment><USER33> How long can Sony bleed money from their electronics division?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/business/global/sonys- brea...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/business/global/sonys-bread-and- butter-its-not-electronics.html?pagewanted=all)</comment>


The Universe Is Made of Tiny Bubbles Containing Mini-Universes, Scientists Say - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5yngp/the-universe-is-made-of-tiny-bubbles-containing-mini-universes-scientists-say <comment><USER2> While the vice article is fairly descriptive I found the referenced original article to be a far better explanation of the research.

[https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/105](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/105)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Er, well. "According to some wild new theories that haven't been fully developed yet, the universe _may_ be made of tiny bubbles..."

</comment><comment><USER5> Probably they mean The universe is a space with many black holes that each contain a universe. A black hole starts life after a big bang.

</comment><comment><USER6> Actually, the top level bubbles are called microverses. The recursively smaller ones inside those bubbles are the miniverses.

</comment><comment><USER7> My head is spinning! ELI5 anyone?

<comment><USER8> In Minecraft, the whole world is made of cubes. Things are either cubes, or in the empty space where a cube could be. This line of theories (there have been many over the years) argue a few things.

First, our reality might also be made of similar Minecraft 'blocks' and block shaped empty space (that 'space is discrete, not continuous').

Second, that what a block does in one block shaped empty space is not necessarily going to tell us what it will do when it is in a different block shaped empty space. (This another way of saying the universal constants may change at different points in a discrete spacetime, which is ANOTHER way of saying different 'universes' exist within these points.)

Third, that the blocks and block-shaped empty space inform each others border/shape/volume and relate to one another in some way. (All of this together creates a larger structure, which they call a foam).

I think that's the basic gist. A quantum particle is like a block moving positions in this 'Minecraft grid', and as it does this it becomes subject to different universal constants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Couldn't even get the title right. "The multi-verse is comprised of many universes."

</comment><comment><USER10> Men in black</comment>


Do you know any programmers who exhibit these personality traits? - <AUTHOR> http://lispy.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/do-you-know-any-programmers-that-exhibit-these-personality-traits/ <comment><AUTHOR> Reminds me of a story:

 _There was once a monk who would carry a mirror where ever he went. A priest noticed this one day and thought to himself "This monk must be so preoccupied with the way he looks that he has to carry that mirror all the time. He should not worry about the way he looks on the outside, it's what's inside that counts." So the priest went up to the monk and asked "Why do you always carry that mirror?" thinking for sure this would prove his guilt._

 _The monk pulled the mirror from his bag and pointed it at the priest. Then he said "I use it in times of trouble. I look into it and it shows me the source of my problems as well as the solution to my problems."_

Where was I again? Oh yes, I do know someone just like the OP describes. I see his face whenever I look at this shiny piece of glass I carry.

<comment><USER2> There once was a monk who joined a monastery that mandated he only be allowed to speak two words every seven years.

After the first seven years, he said "cold floors."

After the next seven years, he said "bad food."

After the next seven years, he said "I quit."

The head of the monastery replied "Well, it's no surprise, you've done nothing but complain since you got here!"

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

<comment><USER3> you should post them at comicwonder.com, i would like to hear you tell those cheesy jokes.

<comment><USER3> doh, and its not even my site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Inability to absorb too many details verbally_ = personal fortitude to insist that others show a modium of discipline and occasionally write down what they want

 _Inability to multi-task_ = ability to focus

 _Inability to manage or even to "see" certain classes of "mundane" details_ = ability to distinguish the difference between and "issue" and a "detail"

 _Inability to organize_ = lack of the need to organize because of intense focus on the most important thing

 _Capable of working through entire books of information_ because of the ability to distinguish between "issues" and "details" (see above)

 _Capable of coming up with pretty good project ideas on his own_ = creativity

 _unusual degree of empathy_ = understands the "big picture"

 _Faults tend not to show up terribly badly_ but only to those tuned in to the "superficial", not the "important"

 _If he can team up with..._ = understands synergy

 _Is this guy sick?_ = a one eyed man in the land of the blind

<comment><USER5> _Defensive_ \- I'm not defensive, I just have alternate definitions for your criticisms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heh. That's my dad. And to a lesser extent, myself. And a couple former bosses.

Honestly, I think it's genetic. A bunch of my dad's relatives are also like this, and from stories I've heard of him, I think my grandfather was too. If you're working with someone like this, it's best just to find some way to use his talents while keeping his weaknesses from being too disruptive (eg. send him off prototyping this pie-in-the-sky idea while everyone else handles the day-to-day minutiae of getting stuff done). If you are this person, find a profession where the strengths matter and the weaknesses don't. Like research, or tech startups.

It's possible to overcome these personality traits with enough effort, but the good goes away with the bad. I found my concentration plummeted as I became more socially adept, as did my ability to come up with crazy-off-the-wall solutions that nobody else thought of. And I notice a big, big performance penalty from multitasking, moreso than most people.

<comment><USER3> i second these remarks. this guy seems to be explaining ME, and the more social i am, the harder it is to concentrate on code.

<comment><USER7> I hate to pipe up with a me too, but it's uncanny how I related to what you said.

I use to have my own office and pretty much just worked alone. While it's hard to slip into the zone, it's great when it happens for those magical 2 or 3 hours, and you do lots of work.

Now, I'm in a room with other people, and having to pay attention to everything else makes the zone slipping hard to do. Anyone know if self- hypnosis works here?

<comment><USER8> Headphones work in two ways: as a signal to others that you don't want to be disturbed and the audio signal should drown out environmental noise and prevent you from becoming distracted.

And practicing meditation can't hurt, it'll help with focusing.

<comment><USER9> I have to second the headphones idea. And if you don't think you like techno or trance music, you might change your mind after you code while listening to it (which is about the only time I listen to it).

Stuff with a white-noisy background and a steady, brisk rhythm tends to block out the din of the workplace and helps me stay focused for longer periods of time. Was the only way I could cope with the loud, obnoxious sales staff sitting nearby. Oh, and avoid music with lyrics.

<comment><USER10> I like the music that was submitted to the competitions at Assembly '05, '06, '07, etc.

ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/2007/assembly07/music/instrumental

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is everyone treating these things like flaws? I think this describes a very capable and creative person. So what if he can't organize his desk or manage his bills? Those are things that need to be done by the majority of people so society doesn't break down. This guys sounds like one of the few people with the skills and passion to actually make society move FORWARD.

"Curing" these problems with drugs or psychiatry sounds like a horrible idea. This sounds like a pretty accurate description of me (as I'm sure it is for a lot of us). If you offered me the ability to trade whatever makes me special for the ability to do mundane things I would tell you to piss off 100 times in a row.

Good for that guy. I bet we'll all benefit from something he created due to his "character flaws".

<comment><USER12> Would it surpise us to realize that most famous figures in fact, were in life, bastards? Abandoning their wives and children to write about dancing girls or daisies, to claim the surf break speaks "nothingness," to drain the vitality of those around them, to kick dogs, snort cocaine, dehumanize their inspiration --- only to be rewarded by their coveted devotees? No, we all have character flaws, if only for exhibiting none apparent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting.

What's missing, here, though, is the techniques to deal with this - yourself, without needing to be in an environment that condones your habits.

I've got most of those traits. Yet I survived 4 years in a large business consulting corporation, which is very unforgiving of this type of personality. And I'm now running my own business. Both of those activities are highly incompatible with the ADHD programmer mind.

How to do it? Well, there are many components to it. I should probably write them up on my blog one of these days. In fact, I've been planning to, and I probably will soon.

<comment><USER14> Could you post your URL here? I'd be really interested to subscribe.

<comment><USER13> <http://inter-sections.net>

Please note it will come in several posts, because there's several parts to that system.

(also, yeah, i know, I haven't posted in a while... though I intend to post something today)

I'll try to get started on it this week, then.

<comment><USER14> Cool, thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have many of these traits. I offer the following strong suggestion to others in this boat: treat these traits as character flaws and attempt to mitigate them.

About 2 years into grad school is where they started to really hurt me. I can't absorb many details verbally, and this never hurt me in classes. When doing research, however, many ideas concerning the details existed only in my mind or my adviser's mind. Mundane details also became extremely important, and finishing projects is crucial.

General suggestion: be active about organization.

Some specific suggestions:

Use source control for ALL projects, and follow "best practices." It's a matter of personal discipline as much as a way to go back in time.

Track your projects/tasks/subtasks: I like <http://www.rememberthemilk.com> , but a small notebook would probably be sufficient. Pick a task you are doing _right now_ , focus on that 100%, cross it off when finished. Pick the next task, do that 100%.

For all projects, specify an end point, or at least a point at which one stops to reevaluate.

The good news: if I could improve myself in this regard, anyone can.

<comment><USER16> I have these traits as well - 'INTP from a mile away'.. Organization has really helped me over the years, and I would agree with comments above about social activity being stifling creatively (which basically means we live in our own little world).

Tip for organization: Do not try to organize yourself - pay a consultant to set up a system for you. Every time I tried to get organized by myself it turned into another project. 2 consultants and $3k later, I had all my papers in a filing system, and a matching file system on my HD. I was able to stick with it and improve over time until it was something that kept me fairly organized for the last 3 years.

Bookkeepers and accountants that have been a lifesaver to keep books in order as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> INTP?

If so, one of the reasons he might have a hard time absorbing details given to him verbally: for a visual thinker, there's a point where spoken verbage (without the aide of note-taking) becomes overwhelming. It's why most of us loathe the telephone.

</comment><comment><USER18> On inability to multitask, see threads on three separate submissions to the same article on "The Myth of Multitasking."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253191>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222451>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232632>

</comment><comment> ryan-allen Check out the comment left by A.R.M. The INTP thing he's talking about is a scale on the Meyers Briggs Type Inventory, though I've never seen what he's referring to as 'extroverted intuition' exhibiting as ADD/ADHD symptoms, interesting...

<comment><USER19> I think he's mixing in a bit of 'Socionics', [0] which appears to be a Russian equiv to MBTI.

      [0] http://wikisocion.org/en/index.php?title=Socionics

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Scary. I started to think "I wonder if I can tell who this is to see if they're talking about me." Meh paranoia. :)

 _If he can team up with a solid detail oriented checklist/calendar type person, he can be an awesome supplement to a team or company. This doesn't always pan out due to personalities and politics, but when "the stars are aligned" things can really hum._

Fortunately my situation diverges with the spouse thing. My wife perfectly fits the detail oriented quote above. She laughs at me when I take a counter full of dishes and wash everything except one pan. I feel bad for his(?) "friend" that the situation hasn't worked out so well for them.

<comment><USER12> I'm actually recovering from paranoid schizophrenia. Slowly, I'm learning to simply analyze the noise. The signal is myth.

Not to be unkind. I live in rural kansas, where often you're funny to have called a thing by its right name.

Long day, I'm happy to be employed (finally!) but I'm broke, and my government check for being crazy doesn't come until the first.

<comment><USER21> I guessed you were crazy

Just from looking at the way

You wrote your phrases

<comment><USER12> I'm sure it was an educated guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This hits home for me as well. Are these traits really as symptomatic of ADHD as the commenters on the site are saying?

I have always disqualified myself because of this part:

 _Capable of working through entire books of information; does especially well with brief descriptions/examples followed by exercises. Capable of working for extended periods of time._

<comment><USER23> Yes, they are. Most people associate ADHD with hyperactivity, but there is an 'inattentive type' as well. It isn't as widely known because it mostly goes on it your head and people around you just think you get distracted easily. Being able to really get into _some things_ for extended periods is characteristic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I used to be like that, and I still am in many ways. The real reason?

He does not give a shit about the minutiae of life. He just doesn't care in an intrinsic level. He does not get satisfaction out of it. And that is a good thing in the long run, because those kind of tasks, as important as they may seem to some, really get you nowhere in life. Let the bureaucrats be bureaucrats and create things like java.

<comment><USER25> The irony is that it is easy for this sort of person to live only for the day, to not be materialistic, etc. All of the things that are in the Sermon on the Mount, but not practiced by the church at large.

This sort of person truly has meat and drink that other people know nothing about. Just watch out for the focus to shift and for the pendulum to swing the other way....

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The people commenting on that post are scary. They're making out like these traits are uncommon or indicative of personality or mental problems, whereas they are extremely common and usually not detrimental at all.

<comment><USER27> I agree, two good books on techniques for helping you manage issues related to ADD are

Driven To Distraction by Edward M. Hallowell [http://www.amazon.com/Driven- Distraction-Recognizing-Attenti...](http://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction- Recognizing-Attention-Childhood/dp/0684801280)

Healing ADD by Dr. Daniel Amen [http://www.amazon.com/Healing-ADD- Breakthrough-Program-Allow...](http://www.amazon.com/Healing-ADD-Breakthrough- Program-Allows/dp/0425183270/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Read <http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm> for another description and some insights into your friend's psyche

<comment><USER13> I read this article some time ago, and while it makes some sense, I find its utility dubious. It seems to just provide an excuse for depression, and probably helps shove people into the "bad" direction rather than the light one. That's a shame, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why does this link have a high proportion of incoherent comments? I'm not even to blame this time!

</comment><comment><USER30> To all those who share the personality traits of this "friend" of the blogger, how many of you believe your coding speed is slower than other hackers? From coding speed, I mean, say amount of time to finish a well defined programming project. Or to come up with an algorithm to solve a well defined problem and correctly implement it.

I obviously share many of these traits, and I know for a fact that I was slower than many of my peers in school, and later at work. I just had to spend more time doing the same amount of work. In the end though, I was able to produce similar results, albeit with more effort on my part.

<comment><USER31> I have to say the oposite. I am much faster, but just getting started, is the hardest part. There is always something else to do, procrastination is more fun that work.

<comment><USER25> What is needed is someone to give permission to ignore all the other details and just get one item done. The INTP is a commando problem solver killer... he just needs someone to "cover" for him so he can go in and tackle an objective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hit me very close to home, except for the organization part. I have a box for every last pin that I own. And this is how I cope with it.

1.

Organize stuff around you. Make a hobby out of it, see beauty in organization. The things that are lying around you, and they way they lie around represent you. Any thing you do carries a bit of your personality and nothing does more easily so than clutter ( or the lack of it ). Think of the space around you as a painting - how would you want it to be? What this brings is clarity, clarity is a prerequsite for focus. Good cooks have clean kitchens, great programmers indent/refactor.

2.

I am unaware of the passage of time mostly. You wake me, hand me a book and ask me after 10 hours how long it has been, I would say something like 2 hours. This is not good when you are working on a programming problem which has a deadline which doesnot permit degression. You have to do it now. To remind myself of the passage of time, I run a watch command on my linux terminal and make it play a sound every 5 minutes. At the end of every 5 minutes I mark a point in a paper. If I was working on the problem or was working on some GREATER cause. If I catch myself working for the greater good, I give myself a 0 for those 5 minutes, else a 1. When you monitor yourself like this, the mear act of monitoring and putting your awareness on how you deal with your time at a minute level makes you focus.

( This is like rescuetime, but I want the conscious act of marking on a paper, I think this is what helps me on a real time basis than the rescuetime report. Besides, even when I have my editor open, I might wander into thinking about the greater good. Only I can hold myself accountable in the end! )

3.

When I want to not focus but be creative ( yes, they seem to be opposite states of mind, I know this from my own experience ): Say I am desiging a large project or want inspiration I go for a long walk into the evening sun( Leave your cell at home dammit ). The walking motion has something which someone will probably explain using neurology in 20 years, but for now, take it from me: for Creativity/Design walk. If I have a small scale design problem like how to frame this function I walk inside my room, in the form of 8 ( or infinity which ever catches your fancy ).

4.

Caffine helps a lot, after a while the act of holding and sipping hot liquid takes over as a placebo, so you can experiment with various other less harmful stuff. ( yes, I can fool myself: its my gift and my curse ). Trance music helps too, The flow of most transmusic has a sense of urgency and it helps to absorb that into your psyche and show it in your action. I am currently using pandora for transmusic.

But the observation that the good will go with the bad is very true. I believe that this is an engineering trade off that has been built into some of our minds. Very much like risc vs cisc. We just need to learn how to consciously switch to the other mode. Because afterall the real strength lies in the "visionary streak".

I am still learning all these stuff myself, but someone said that if we had a word for teaching while learning and learning while teaching, the world would be a better place.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have most of these problems, and some of the good points. I am "dyslexic" and I'm guessing that if your friend saw a late-1990's shrink, he would be "dyslexic" too.

I even did the cleaning thing today on my desk; some important papers get pushed together, others got binned. Things that don't really have a place are still lying around.

I find that when I work with organised people, I do very well.

</comment><comment><USER34> These traits are all the same thing: Perceiving (from the Jungian personality types). It's pretty common, he/she's just an extreme case.

To manage it, force the opposite. If this person is micro-managed, he/she can be a star. I've seen it happen.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator>

<comment><USER35> More likely, they'll snap and stab your micro-manager in the face.

<comment><USER25> Heh heh. A collaborator would be better. Someone that could be excited about the right things and maybe steer a little via encouragement and reason. A truly anal micro-manager will simply humiliate the INTP.

The creative urge is a force of nature. Discipline is not antithetical to it... but control is pushing it. "Management" is right out. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would suggest seeing a psychiatrist. They might even be able to diagnose you from this post!

There are quite a few medications that might help, like Stratara, Wellbutrion, Ritalin, etc.

I'm not recommending this by any means (not being a doctor and all), but it's probably worth a look.

</comment><comment><USER36> Since I always feel like I am the exact person described by these stories, I am hereby chalking it up to bias and relegating them to absolutely minimal relevance.

But yes, I think I'm like this person. Of course.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's almost like he works a little differently from how the writer is accustomed. Autism! ADD! Medicate 'em!

It's the new witch hunt.

<comment><USER36> (you got that it _is_ the author, right?)

<comment><USER37> Right, I mistyped my comment. It is pretty autobiographical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> For a moment I was wondering if they were talking about me! Hits too close to home..

</comment><comment><USER39> Wall-E

</comment><comment><USER12> Mel, The Story of, Jr.</comment>


Carbon dioxide converted to electricity - <AUTHOR> http://asia.cnet.com/carbon-dioxide-converted-to-electricity-62221877.htm?Src=fb

<comment><AUTHOR> Admittedly the article is a bit light on specifics. Here's a little more information:

[http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/201...](http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2013/july/harvesting- electricity-from-the-greenhouse-gas-carbon-dioxide.html)</comment>


Show HN: Thotly - An Anonymized Layer On Your Local Reality - <AUTHOR> http://thotly.com

<comment><USER3> Interesting idea. So it's like an anonymous tweet-stream associated with a particular geographical location?

Comments:

a) It took me some time to understand what it was. I certainly didn't get it from the first paragraph, I had to scroll down. "Anonymized local layer on your reality"? Nobody is gonna understand what you mean by that. Really work on simplifying the product description so my mother could understand it.

b) It'd help if you provided some examples for things that you think people might use it for. All I see is some partially-obscured examples like "bread hot" and I'm curious as to what the hell ends with "bread hot" and is an appropriate thing to say.

c) You seem to be perfectly aware that trolling, griefing, pranking and general being-a-dick are likely to be a problem. It seems like it would be easy for bad content to drive out good. This seems like another good reason to provide more examples of what good content might look like.

<comment><USER4> My first thoughts echoed some of these -- what are people thinking that I'd actually want to read?

Most thoughts that people (myself included) have are better off left in their heads... I worry this would be something like the experience of sitting at a restaurant near one of those people who speaks every thought that comes into their heads.

Now make it anonymous... I think there'd be a few large categories of thots, based on the motivations that would drive people to stop walking and type in the text of a thot... attempts to shock, attempts to be profound/fascinating, and simple brain dumps.

The actually interesting content would unfortunately be pretty rare, I'd guess, but I'm admittedly curious to know how it goes.

It could help to have some kind of crowd-sourced moderating approach, possibilities of flagging/banning the shockers/spammers, and/or ways to highlight users with frequently-liked thots. But still, filtering down the comments of the masses by the masses still gives you the quality of YouTube comment content.

Possibly better approach -- some way to let users self-categorize, and prioritize thots in the right category? It'd be interesting to crunch numbers out of the thots based on number of spelling errors, vocabulary range, like profiles, icon/mood/emoticon associated by the thot-thinker, etc., and let different users get differently-prioritized streams.

*edit: make slightly less curmudgeonly-sounding

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I think we've accounted for this with the stream and how likes/dislikes work. By taking into account how people react, we want to make what resonates more visible. Kind of like HN (but I had never touched HN when I came up with this). As for flags, the threshold for nuking a Thot with a flag varies - it is a bit of our secret sauce as to how we optimize.

For self-categorization, that is coming in version 1.2 or 1.3. We know that as more people use it, content needs to get personalized. Definitely heading down that path quickly.

Quality content and the people who make it need to shine :)

<comment><USER4> The thing that facebook has taught me with a vengeance is that the definition of "quality content" is extremely subjective and personal. With my close friends, we often have a lot of overlap. But once I'm out of that small circle (into the larger & more intellectually diverse group of "everyone who has ever friended me for whatever reason"), there are tons of things people post that get lots of likes from their own circles of friends that I find trivial/boring/irrelevant, misguided/false, or even ideologically repugnant.

I'm not sure what kinds of content people are going to be posting as thots -- I'm curious about that (hopefully you'll post some data, like the okcupid data analyses at some point?), but I suspect that's going to be tricky to navigate.

Something like HN with a technical focus is safer ground -- but if people are making political "jokes" etc. in their thots (or thotting humor that treads the line of offensive), you could have a decent percentage of content that resonates greatly with some folks and really irritates others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been working on almost this same project for a year, while I taught myself the proper way to code a project like this. Were it not for my slow grasp of MVC and Javascript's self model, I'd have not started over 20 times and been first! =) Looks great and I'll be excited to try it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, best of luck! Ping me @kzorz if you want and maybe we can work together somehow instead of competing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are you going to be doing some intense marketing in small geographic areas? This is the type of app that depends on high participation in a small area - <USER2> have a hard time seeing how it will succeed without focusing on a small area first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we're starting on HN here just to get word out, but next up is hitting several cities in order. The stream makes it possible to enjoy without having anyone else nearby though, and you can keep participating in a thread you are in even after you've left an area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks great. Citing a specific use case (whether in a particular area or event like a concert) would really help your intended audience understand how the app can be valuable.

Awesome concept

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the look of the navigation banner, but for me it's really confusing to see more than one of them at once. "Features", for example, shows three copies down the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! It's to allow better single page navigation right now, but we may change that soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks fantastic! I've had similar ideas over the years but never executed them. How geographically specific is each Thot?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Right now it is about 2km, but that will change as density increases.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We got written up in TheNextWeb! Thanks to Drew there for the article :)

[http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/10/26/thotly-asks-us-to- answ...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/10/26/thotly-asks-us-to-answer-what- are-you-thinking-anonymously/)

</comment><comment><USER10> sounds like reddit / subreddits or maybe more like blockchalk

[http://blog.blockchalk.com/post/323747254/blockchalk- arrives...](http://blog.blockchalk.com/post/323747254/blockchalk-arrives-in- the-app-store)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't seen block chalk before - looks like no longer in the App Store. Thanks for telling us :)

<comment><USER10> they've pivoted because the idea didn't work, its now <http://blockboard.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking at what they have now, they have a pretty different value proposition. I wish them the best with the pivot :)

<comment><USER10> just wondering what you think the difference in value proposition is ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, BlockBoard looks more like a message board of commerce or friendly happenings. They want you to be identified as a person, which means you won't necessarily want to connect with everyone nearby.

For example, you don't really want to post in something like that that you think the Raiders are a terrible football team...at the raiders game...with your name on what you post along with a photo. You can get decked for it :P

What they appeal to more is those tightly knit communities of neighbors talking with each other and doing things, much different then we are.

Thotly is about ideas and what means something to you. Right now, what is happening or what you think. Soon, photos then sounds, music, questions, answers, whatever. We want to give people a way to say what they think and to be rewarded for that expression.

Think more like an idea forum than a bulletin board of stuff. BlockBoard has something good I think, but we aimed for something really different.

In the end though, it comes down to how people want to use it - that is our number one focus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, looks a lot like <http://noyouu.com>

</comment><comment><USER12> You should use some nice examples in the front page, i can think of:

In the Movie Theater: "Mortal Kombat is a really cool movie! no plot though"

In a restaurant: "The spaguettis in this restaurant are just out of this world!"

You get the idea. And please integrate with twitter somehow (maybe a twitter client that also shows the "Thots") and also republish to twitter if the user wants to.

Edit: typo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

Twitter is coming in just a day or two - but integration is tailored to letting you tweet what you found while keeping you unlinked from your Thotly device ID.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Infinite Monkeys – Pooling the Wisdom of Hacker News Comments - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thomshutt/infinite-monkeys

<comment><USER2> Let us not forget [https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says](https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says) \-- pooling the "wisdom" of Hacker News comments.

</comment><comment><USER3> For anyone interested, an active HNer Edward Weismann (edw519) made an eBook[1] out of his contributions on HN. Certain of his opinions can be disagreed with but there is a lot of wisdom in his comments.

[1]: [http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html](http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html)

<comment><USER4> > active HNer Edward Weismann (edw519) made an eBook[1] out of his > contributions

Perhaps we all should think of our contributions as material for a future book. Imagine the thoughtfulness of our comments and the reduction in noise.

<comment><USER5> But Hacker News isn't a platform for posting essays. You're supposed to have back and forth discussions. If all we get a treatises from on high discussion threads aren't going to be worth reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by the recent 'What are the most uplifting comments you've read on HN?' discussion [1], I've compiled some of my favourites into an eBook. Pull requests welcome!

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9393213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9393213)

<comment><USER6> May I suggest a gh-pages branch so one can view the html online?

<comment><AUTHOR> Done!

<comment><USER7> just submitted a little PR with a bootstrap-based index.html for easier reading, and to give the project a front page

<comment><AUTHOR> Merged - thanks for this, it looks so much nicer!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the name I thought it was going to be a book of text generated by a Markov chain trained on HN comment data. Took me a while to figure out it wasn't.

Anyway, good collection of comments. It'd be useful to have a HTML version linked in the README.

<comment><AUTHOR> The HTML version is now linked, enjoy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm currently working on a similar idea: [https://github.com/TimDaub/hnwisdom](https://github.com/TimDaub/hnwisdom)

I'm trying to collect wise hackernews comments.

</comment><comment><USER10> Brilliant idea. I regret that I didn't bookmark many pearls of wisdom (and wit) which appeared here.

</comment><comment><USER11> It'd be interesting to separate upvotes from downvotes somehow. I've observed that many of my most-upvoted comments receive a _lot_ of downvotes as well - usually for questioning HN conventional wisdom. And I find most of the comments that I really like, that I think are really outstanding, are at odds with the groupthink as well.

<comment><USER12> It seems to me that most of the claims that posts are "att odds with the groupthink" and claims that posts are "downvoted for questioning HN conventional wisdom" refer to posts that are in line with the frequently- articulated positions of at least as large of a segment of the HN community as any that they are at odds with.

Its natural to want to think that those who disagree with or downvote you are engaging in "groupthink" or defending "conventional wisdom" and those who agree with or upvote you are independent thinkers or rewarding independent thought.

But I don't think upvoting is any less prone to groupthink or downvoting any less prone to having a substantive basis.

<comment><USER11> Well, sure. You're not going to get upvoted at all if _everyone_ disagrees with you.

But I've noted a very distressing tendency toward comments accumulating significant downvotes not for being wrong, but for being different. Hell, I just got multiple downvotes for saying you should use containers for development even if you're developing on a Linux desktop, because containers are repeatable and your desktop is not. That's kind of a duh thing, but apparently people find it offensive. That's one example, but I've seen it happen a lot, and to a lot of posters making technically correct and logically valid points.

<comment><USER12> > But I've noted a very distressing tendency toward comments accumulating > significant downvotes not for being wrong, but for being different.

I've noted a very distressing tendency for people on HN to assume that no one could possibly disagree with their subjective interpretation of the relevance and degree of substantive contribution of a post, and to therefore assume that downvotes of posts that the complaining poster agrees finds to be insightful must be based on differentness, not on differing subjective interpretations on relevance and degree of substantive contribution. And, further, to state the conclusion of this stack of assumptions as a simple fact.

<comment><USER11> So do you think disagreement alone is grounds for downvoting? Maybe I'm weird, but I'll often upvote comments I disagree with, if I think they're interesting.

Downvotes as cultural reinforcement is a real problem. And it's a bad idea, imho. I've seen it in the technical community since the idea of comment voting was introduced back in the glory days of Slashdot, 17 years or so ago. It distresses me to see HN doing the same thing.

<comment><USER12> > So do you think disagreement alone is grounds for downvoting? Maybe I'm > weird, but I'll often upvote comments I disagree with, if I think they're > interesting.

Disagreement is fairly explicitly -- i.e., per pg -- an acceptable reason for downvoting, though I don't prefer to use it that way and will often upvote posts I disagree with that I feel add value to the discussion.

But that's irrelevant to my point in GP -- my point is that people to tend to present self-serving _assumptions_ about the motivation behind downvotes of particular posts as if they were established facts.

> Downvotes as cultural reinforcement is a real problem.

Downvotes as cultural reinforcement is a central element of community moderation -- "cultural reinforcement" is how the particular character of a community is maintained, and "community moderation" is expressly the decision to give that reinforcement to the community. And that's _just_ as true for downvotes-for-lack-of-substance as for downvotes-for-disagreement.

Having seen both unmoderated and primarily centrally moderated communities, I think community moderation is a fairly good approach (not without its tradeoffs), and HN's form of community moderation is, IMO, one of the better ones.

<comment><USER11> Yeah. As much as I knock cultural reinforcement of wrongheaded assumptions (it's no different in principle than fundie churches), community policing is better than the alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there any way to generate this algorithmically, or otherwise view the most upvoted comments on HN?

<comment><USER14> You mean like this?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments)

Linked via "lists" from the bottom of almost every page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists)</comment></comment>


Facebook's platform issues: Fewer developer activity, slower app growth - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/05/06/facebook-s-platform-issues-fewer-developers-slower-app-growth

<comment><USER2> Here's the full report linked to in this article.

[http://20bits.com/2008/05/06/the-state-of-the-facebook- platf...](http://20bits.com/2008/05/06/the-state-of-the-facebook-platform/)

<comment><USER3> I'm a bit surprised that neither this article nor the two currently on News.YC which reference it mention these reasons:

\- revenue from in-app advertising has been steadily falling

\- users have lost interest in apps and app invites, partly because the novelty has worn off, partly because they're sick of the spam.

Neither reason is surprising. Most Facebook ad networks run ads for other apps... it was an obvious mini-bubble. I believe CPMs were around $1 in November, and are now closer to $0.10.

As for invites, the effect of spammy apps on Facebook users is also not surprising. Combine desensitized users with belated and arbitrary measures to combat app spam (which the article did mention), and the end result is that the first big apps are left with their millions of users and the ability to promote new apps to their existing users, while developers new to the game have a much smaller chance to get explosive growth.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: At what age did you use a computer for the first time? - <AUTHOR> What were the specifications? (if you remember them) <comment><USER2> I had a Tandy Color Computer 2. It hooked up to my TV and used cartridges for games and programs. I was about 7 years old (1986). I tried to understand programming BASIC, but it was beyond me at the time and I didn't have anyone to explain it to me so I used it for the games for a few years. My favorite game was Dungeons of Daggorath which I still crave to play sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER3> My dad used to bring home a work laptop in Ukraine on rare occasions (I remember it having a trackpoint so I think some sort of thinkpad) and I'd sit there and mess around in Paint for a few minutes until he'd take it back. I can't remember the age, maybe..7? At one point around that age we got a computer lab in school. I remember we had to type in programs during the classes. We only had a few classes though from memory. If we typed the program in quickly enough we could actually spend time playing the resulting game :D I'm now a fast typist.

The first time I started _really_ using a computer was when we got one at home after moving to the U.S. - I was about 12 or 13 at the time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Age 2, Mac Plus. One of my earliest memories---possibly the earliest[1]---is the night my parents first set it up and had a box of disks they were using to install software on a 30MB external SCSI HD. I remember really wanting to use it, but I had to wait until the morning because they had to learn how to use it first.

I think we started with System Software 2.0(4.0), but it might have been an earlier version. Soon updated to System Software 5.0 and MultiFinder (and 4MB of RAM for multifinder). I remember the upgrade to System Software 6.0, because my copy of Dark Castle stopped working---eventually I figured out that there was a copy of System and Finder on Disk 1 and that I could boot from that instead of the external SCSI HD.

My parents bought the computer for office use in their jewelry design/manufacturing studio; so I could use it there when they were doing bring-kid-to-work-daycare, but they also often brought it home in the Mac Plus carrying case. I have fond memories of using the How to Use Your Mac tutorial: the mouse tutorial and the start was fun and something I could easily learn by watching; I remember the Finder tutorial that followed challenging as it had text instructions so at first I couldn't do it on my own and would need help ---I think trying to do the Finder tutorial played a big part in learning how to read.

I remember using Mac Paint a lot, but also watching my mother work on the computer and wanting to learn what she was doing: Mac Draw (for jewelry design), Excel[2], and CAT IV (CRM). My pediatritian was also a Mac user and would go to Mac World and would give me disks with SWAG games he got.

Later when my parents got a Macintosh Performa 575[3] to replace the Mac Plus, they made the fatal mistake of setting it up at home---I wasn't going to let that multimedia machine go! Luckily they made a good parenting decision and decided it would be better for my sister and I to have access to the Performa since they could get by a little longer on the Mac Plus at their office. Eventually they brought the Performa to work and replaced that with a PowerMac 7200/75.

[1]: Side note: Around this time also saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time; my father got it for me as a 1st birthday present.

[2]: I liked using simple expressions for calculations, but mostly making graphs; lots of pet graphs (i.e. 1 cat, and various numbers of fish).

[3]: Might be mistaken on the specific model.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seven or eight years old (1977 or 78). It was a Commodore PET, on which I spent many happy hours typing out ASCII animations in BASIC of stick figures sword fighting each other.

There were other computers in the house as far back as I can recall -- first one I remember was roughly the size of a mini-fridge and had removable disc drives the size of a pizza box; no idea what it was beyond that. Dad was what you might call an Early Adopter.

</comment><comment><USER6> About 19 years old, during college freshman year. $2000, early 1990s. Windows 3.1. No name beige computer.

Had a 3½-inch floppy disk drive. Agonized over getting 5¼-inch floppy drive also but didn't.

I was aware of Apple computers and might have looked into getting Macintosh Classic II but was swayed away due to perceived high cost. But my first clone PC computer cost me just about the same.

</comment><comment><USER7> Heh - around 11 - my brother and I went off over to the local colleges computer center and messed around on the terminals - pretty sure it was some PDP flavor - circa '76\. (A friend's mom worked for the college so they had kids drop by now and again.). Didn't know anything but was was neat.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was around 10 yo and it was a Sinclair ZX-80 (circa 1981). Later I had a Commodore VIC 20 as Xmas gift. I still remember spending two days of barely eating something and trying to figure out how it worked. too excited!

<comment><USER9> I guess I'd be similar, my first access to a computer was a 48k Spectrum in 1982, putting me about 7 years old.

It had a dead tape-deck though, so I mostly read the manual(s) and typed "10 PRINT "HELLO"; 20 GOTO 10", etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Around 6 or so I think? 386 running MS-DOS, dad taught me the commands needed to start up Prince of Persia. I had no idea what they did, just learned by heart.

      C:
      cd \
      cd games
      cd prince
      prince

</comment><comment><USER11> 8 bit 3.58 Mhz MSX 1 in the early 80s, I was 7 or 8. I had been learning Basic and Pascal from books and magazines for about a year already before I touched my first computer.

</comment><comment><USER12> Age 12. Tandy 1000 HX. 7.16Mhz 8088, 256K RAM, 720K floppy, 16 color Tandy graphics, Tandy sound (3 FM channels + 1 noise channel)

</comment><comment><USER13> Age 9. Apple ][ (1 MHz MOSTEK 6502, 4KiB DRAM)

No Plus, no Applesoft BASIC, no disk drive. Loaded software off cassette tape.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was around 10 when we bought a Commodore 64 in Vienna after the fall of the iron curtain.

</comment><comment><USER15> Mid 80ies (around 10yo), a Schneider CPC464 IIRC

</comment><comment><USER16> Age 17 in 1977, a IBM 1130, which I'm sure was pretty much the standard configuration including a hard disk: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1130](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1130) We students had hands on access since by then the model had been out for a dozen year and real users were using faster machines (it was leased by the local college for exactly this purpose, they had a 370/115 for the main computer), we loaded our punched cards (FORTRAN), broke it out of a loop if needed, etc.</comment>


Born to Run - the evolution of the human body - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2006/may/tramps-like-us

<comment><USER2> There are several billion human beings on earth. There is NO society on earth that relies on marathon running to survive. There are very few societies where people are at all inclined to run for long distances as part of the daily culture.

We may have the mechanism to run, but it somehow doesn't really strike me that human beings are made for running marathons. It just seems wrong to me. Marathon running is too taxing for us.

What I think happened is that the core human design was not especially built for marathon running. But at the critical point in history where marathon running was very much needed (for example, when the sapiens started expanding), all the marathon runners survived and took over.

For example, let's say the earth were suddenly to increase the temperature to 48° for the space of one year. A lot of people will die, but the ones who survive will be the ones that already had the capability to survive that type of heat. So even if the earth ever goes back to normal temperature, all remaining people will be people who can survive at 48° and the descendants of such people. So heat survival will become a new trait of all humans, but it does not mean that we actually need it anymore.

So I think that we have this ability because at some evolutionary point, we REALLY needed it. So now we don't need it anymore, but it's still there.

<comment><USER3> You can hunt deer on foot, you know. I've never done this myself, but as long as you keep your attention on one and pursue it, you can exhaust it. Then you sit on it until it stops breathing (or cut its throat with your flint knife or whatever).

It's also not that long ago that many if not most human societies required their males (at least) to be very physically fit and those that weren't were killed by the fitter males of other human societies. Why do you think there was a baby boom after WW2? The "fittest" (and the luckiest) survived and passed on their genes. It's ironic that the baby boomers are the first generation that were largely sedentary (e.g. driving everywhere, working in offices, etc).

<comment><USER2> The question is not if I CAN. Yes, I surely can hunt deer in that manner, but it's not very clever. And our advantage is that we are clever, not that we are physically superior.

If this endurance approach were really an effective hunting mechanism, then why are there no animals doing this? There is no need to have a huge expensive brain if all you need is just lithe enduring figures and an efficient gait.

And I once went antelope 'hunting'. You know what happens when they see you? The run, really quickly and they completely disappear from sight. You have no frickin idea where they are anymore.

Only in really huge savannas that are completely flat and with very low grass can you keep your eye on one animal and just follow it.

This whole idea of endurance hunting does not sit well with me.

The influence of the second world war on genetic culling, in my opinion, was pretty minimal. The second world war was really not survival of the fittest, it was survival of the luckiest. First of all, the physically fittest were most likely to die, because they were fighting in the front. And even among those fighting, how fit you are hardly had an influence on your death. Bombs and guns and falling buildings are not affected by muscle size.

And your other statement about unfit males being killed by other males is just plain old dumb. Where did you read that nonsense? Humans are dominant because of social structure and tool handling, and not because of physical strength. Any human society that selected for physical fitness would decay very quickly.

<comment><USER4> Wolves use tag team endurance hunting to bring down big game. They don't always hunt that way but the effectiveness of tag team endurance hunting probably has a lot to due with the evolution of wolves.

Edit: We where not always clever. Anyway building big brains takes a lot of energy and nutrients so having a high energy diet with meat supplements is vary useful for creating big brains. I think there was a transition period where humans where starting to get good at hunting and gathering which increased the value of large brains and at the same time giving us the resources to support them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bernd Heinrich (biologist and (ultra)marathoner) wrote a book that dealt with this—Why We Run: A Natural History. It's very good (like many of his books).

</comment><comment><USER6> To relate this to startups: see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_>(athlete)

A 61-year-old farmer, in 1983 he beat a field of professional athletes in a 875 km race because he didn't know you were supposed to sleep.

If that's not a metaphor for how to run a startup, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER2> He did know. He was just able to run while others were sleeping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, I just have to know how they did the cheetah experiment :)</comment>


Show HN: Renesca-Magic – Typesafe Graph Database Schemas - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/renesca/renesca-magic

<comment><USER2> Never thought graphs and databases could make such a sweet match ^^

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting project, thanks for sharing!</comment>


Getting Real: Copywriting is Interface Design - <AUTHOR> http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch09_Copywriting_is_Interface_Design.php <comment><USER2> This isn't just interface design, or product design. It's brand design, if you will. This is especially true if you're in the business of mostly consumer- facing software. The experience absolutely matters, and if you can consistently provide that experience in press releases, on the website, on the app, in customer service emails, in tweets... you see where I'm going. It's your voice. What you put on the button matters. What you say over the phone does too. Be sincere, and have a voice. It's Writing 101.</comment>


Bell Labs Centenary Homage to Claude Shannon - <AUTHOR> https://www.bell-labs.com/claude-shannon/ <comment><USER2> download pdf points to google.com?</comment>