Cancer Isn't a Logic Problem (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://cancer.nautil.us/article/186/cancer-isnt-a-logic-problem <comment><USER2> > Systemic approaches are important, but we need to consider that the system > of cancer goes far beyond the biochemistry of cancer cells. Cancer relates > to our fundamental constitution as multicellular organisms, our limited > lifespan, the epidemiology of the aging population, socioeconomics and the > future of society. Those who believe that the problem of cancer can be > solved by killing or reprogramming cancer cells need to take a step back > from the molecular technicalities and take a look at the bigger picture

He knows that this approach won't work before it has been attempted? I'll listen to criticism when it is followed by a suggestion for a better approach. And vacuous statements like "step back and look a the bigger picture" don't count.

<comment><USER3> The ability to actually reprogram cancer cells relates to...

>our fundamental constitution as multicellular organisms, our limited lifespan, the epidemiology of the aging population, socioeconomics and the future of society.

Like, hey man, you do realize that the killing or reprogramming of cancer cells goes far beyond the molecular technicalities of actually doing it?

Yup. It's a pretty vacuous critism.

<comment><USER4> Medical technology is lacking. With sequencing, we have a very hard-to-use, slow and readonly hexedit. With crispr, we have a very buggy and feature incomplete sed -- more like ed actually.

It cool to have some sed, but we may not even need that. We just need the equivalent of basic modern unix tools, like find, grep and rm, that work reliably, with good specificity and sensitivity.

Yet basic unix tools in medicine are decades away. Maybe it will be nanotechnology, maybe it will be more hacking around current solution.

Still, the problem is just:

find /body -type cancer_12BA |grep -v cancer_12BA_market_but_usefull_stemcell |xargs rm

The solution is technological, not philosophical.

<comment><USER5> Your crispr = sed analogy is apt because DNA is basically code.

Cells, however, are not files, so I would be careful extending the analogy. There is no "find" command for the same reason you can't run "find" on your physical bookshelf--objects in 3d space are not indexable files on a hard drive.

Perhaps we'll eventually have microscopic robots that can search out specific cells, in the same way Amazon uses robots to retrieve items in their warehouses. But that's a very different problem space, where the focus is largely mechanical rather than programmatic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone who works at a place mentioned in this article, I can tell you, we do not subscribe the belief set he says we do, and actually, likely agree with the author that cancer is a systemic disease that involves not only the tumor, but also the TME, the peripheral immune system, other organs, etc. The "tumor only" view of cancer is dead and has been very a while, and even "Silicon Valley" knows this.

Also, for those here: checkpoint inhibitor therapies are a "better approach" that incorporate a systemic activation of a patient's immune system to kill cancer, and they really, really work (see: Nobel Prize this year to Jim Allison).

<comment><USER7> This is also not perfect, as for example those with autoimmune conditions will not always work and can actually get worse under immunotherapy. My wife has stage 4 lung cancer due to Scleroderma immunosuppression medication and is struggling with the treatments due to the reactions ( immune system attacking non cancer cells ).

<comment><USER8> As a cancer survivor, my heart goes out to you both.

As someone who also works for a company that makes a checkpoint inhibitor, one of our chief efforts is to better understand what makes them work for some patients and not others. Not only would this knowledge serve the lucky patients by tuning their therapy for better efficacy and lesser side effects, but would help us know more about how CPIs fail, and ideally, to enable their use in the many, as yet, unlucky patients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article is really bad. What is preventing nanobots, for example, from completely eradicating the problem of cancer at some stage of technological development? It's like the author wants cancer to have some mystical power over us forever and is fitting all current endeavors to that narrative.

<comment><USER10> I'd say the article is realistic, based on how oncology is currently done in the medical field.

As for the question of whether nanobots can completely cure cancer, that's scifi. Actually identifying tumors and removing them is a hard classification problem followed by a careful surgery. Generally this is done using advanced imaging, radiologists who interpret the images, guiding surgeons or doctors to either do tumor resections, or select chemotherapy. Nanobots are just a tiny version of the tumor resection, with the added problem that nanobots don't exist, they don;t' have the computational power to discriminate invasive tumors (at least, the current generation of "robot pills don't).

So let's focus on what is tangible in the near future: additional use of machine learning based on large training sets collected across hundreds of studies. That is in fact very likely to counter the author's hypothesis.

<comment><USER11> It is sci-fi just like having the entire world's knowledge at your fingertips was sci-fi 100 years ago.

If it is physically feasible, which it is given we have immune cells and they are just evolution-created versions of these nanobots, then it is just an engineering problem and we humans are pretty good at engineering things.

Things will keep moving forward; macro approaches such as your suggestions will work insofar as we can find the cells. In the end it will probably be a mixture of re-engineering our immune cells to better identify and protect against cancer, macro approaches such as the ones you mentioned, and more.

It is a hard problem, of course, otherwise we'd have it solved by now, but we've solved hard problems before. And with AI it will be easier and easier to do so.

<comment><USER10> you know I've worked in this field for over 25 years and while I started out thinking nanobots were going to cure diseases, I haven't seen any realistic evidence showing they have a promising future, even 100 years from now. I think it;'s much more likely we'll just study immune cells more and use them for therapy without creating nanobots.

<comment><USER12> > _I haven 't seen any realistic evidence showing they have a promising > future_

We're not yet at nanoscale manufacturing in one of the few domains with the scale and capital to fund its development: microprocessor manufacturing.

<comment><USER13> What do you think editing DNA to make a protean is? You don't get smaller scale than individual atoms, but it takes more than an atom to do anything.

<comment><USER12> > _What do you think editing DNA to make a protean is?_

Re-defining biology as "nanobots" renders the latter word useless.

<comment><USER13> Biology runs on the same physics as anything else. At best nanobots get a wider range of atoms to play with, and that's it.

<comment><USER12> > _Biology runs on the same physics as anything else_

Paper planes and fighter jets run can be modelled by the same physics. That doesn't mean they're the same thing. "Nanobots" implies greater degrees of freedom and function than purely biological techniques can manage. (For example, by incorporating digital circuitry and novel materials into the mix.)

<comment><USER13> Nanomachiens are to small and fast for digital circuits.

As I said, they can include more types of atoms, but that adds little as life already makes use of a wide variety. It's basic capacity that's the issue not micro optimizations. Further, depend on a non organic atom and you can't self replicate without being fed it.

At the smallest scale you can't for example take a picture, you need to detect stuff by touch and respond before bouncing off while traveling at 50+MPH. Make a vast structure like a cell and movement and energy become major issues.

<comment><USER12> > _Nanomachiens [_ sic _]are to small and fast for digital circuits_

"Digital" means a logic model. Not a physical technology. Atomic-scale digital circuitry—completely foreign to life as we know it—is certainly plausible.

Your claim is that anything that can be done at the nanoscale can be done by "editing DNA to make a [protein]." I'm saying the latter is a subset of the former. Given all we have, at this point, is theory, it's a reasonable point on which to disagree.

<comment><USER13> I get what you mean by digital, the problem is analog is _vastly_ faster and more compact. Digital essentially reduces the solution space adding overhead. It's not a technical problem it's the core tradeoff for going digital.

That's not to say proteins are as efficient as possible. Just that they are fairly close to the limit of what's possible at 1 to 100nm. Now start talking micrometers's and I can see some things changing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Really interesting article.

Cancer is definitely shapeshifting and it's a constant battle on all fronts.

One drug may work now (eg. anti folates) but then remission fails and it's back to the fight.

The primary tumor may go into semi-remission but mestasis may happen then you have to treat that instead.

The tumors suck so much energy from the person's body so it can attack on that front too.

I think immunotherapy is the future and am really sad that it is so expensive. It's like Elysium, Keytruda is ~$400k it's sad how costly these drugs are.

I think diet, environment, and habit are the things that have the most effect over time because it's really just your cells multiplying in an uncontrollable rate and the body cannot stop the function or the garbage collectors are unable to make the cell perform aptosis.

There are many things that go in and out of your body over time that will help increase or decrease the amount of these types of cells that are produced.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> fwiw, there is an excellent (pulitzer prize winning, fwiw) book called "The Emperor of All Maladies" by Siddhartha Mukherjee which gives history of cancer treatment and research, coupled with author's experience as an oncologist.

</comment><comment><USER15> The author seems to think there's a certain class of researchers with software backgrounds who want to cure cancer; have the hypothesis that cancer is, always and everywhere, a purely genetic phenomenon; and enshrine this hypothesis as indisputable fact ignoring all evidence to the contrary. This seems like a straw man.

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://xkcd.com/1831/](https://xkcd.com/1831/)

<comment><USER17> On the flip side, sometimes people are able to solve a hard problem simply because they weren't tainted into believing it's impossible. [1]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig#Mathematical_st...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig#Mathematical_statistics)

<comment><USER18> The George Dantzig case actually isn't a counter-anecdote to the XKCD observation, because Dantzig was already a graduate student in a phd program at a top statistics department when he solved those problems.

XKCD isn't criticizing the positive mindset of naive-but-gifted researchers; it's criticizing the attitude of experts in one field that their expertise necessarily gives them unique and powerful insights into solving problems in another field.

Perhaps a better counter-anecdote would be all of the mathematicians in the 1950s - 1980s who solved hard program design problems with little or no experience actually programming computers. That really was a counter-example to the XKCD mentality: a bit of mathematics was far more useful than knowing the instruction set of the latest IBM mainframe...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I would argue that one of the biggest barriers to fighting climate change is the blind belief in technology as _the_ solution to any problem facing humanity. In many ways it is a cult. But in order to fight climate change we might need to turn to simpler, more low-tech solutions.

I mean, we're spending all that effort flying to the moon and trying to program cancer cells, while all we really should do to fight cancer is clean up the air we breathe, stop spraying pesticide on our food and lead less stressful lives. Just saying...

<comment><USER20> That is not how cancer happens. Cancer happens because we live and some factors make it more likely that cancer happens. But even in a clean world we would get cancer...

And btw., how would you clean up the world?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cancer research largely proceeds in the wrong direction, towards ever more personalization to mechanisms specific to one tiny fraction of cancer types, or tiny fraction of tumors in that cancer type. Then people are surprised at the low cost-effectiveness of the expenditure. Which is not to mention that cancers will cheerfully evolve around an attack on any mechanism not vital to their operation.

Insofar as anything needs hacking, it is this wasteful focus in the research community. The research community needs a dramatic refocusing onto mechanisms that cannot be evaded and which occur in most or all cancers. The canonical example is to interfere in telomerase and ALT telomere lengthening. That can't be evaded, and all cancers do it. Shut these things down and cancer stops. Any cancer, any type, any stage, using exactly the same therapy. Yet the amount of work in this area is tiny in comparison to projects that verge on personalized medicine per tumor.

<comment><USER22> <quote>The canonical example is to interfere in telomerase and ALT telomere lengthening. That can't be evaded, and all cancers do it.</quote>

Yeah, and so do adult stem cells. As long as your patient doesn't need intestinal walls, skin, or blood, this will be a totally successful treatment!

Have you entertained the hypothesis that people studying cancer might know more about biology than anti-aging cranks?</comment></comment>


Scientists discover 'why stress turns hair white' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51208972 <comment><USER2> This is really good to know, but this experiment makes me very uncomfortable. It sounds like they had to torture several mice for days to get this result.

I suppose they didn't know what they'd find, but I don't think it's appropriate to intentionally induce high levels of pain in animals just to see what happens.

<comment><USER3> I think it's really important to put their torture in proper context.

[https://animalcharityevaluators.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/...](https://animalcharityevaluators.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/donation-allocation-chart.jpg)

This statistic from animal charity evaluators, show just how small a percentage lab testing makes up for in the total amount of animals we use and kill.

If your goal is to effectively reduce animal suffering, the only place that makes sense to start is factory farming. The conditions animals endure are much worse than most testing, and the scale is difficult to comprehend.

I don't mean to trivialize the suffering these mice went through, I just think it's important to make clear that we cause the same amount of suffering every time we eat meat, something that brings us much less value than this research.

<comment><USER4> With the growing amount of consciousness towards ethically-sourced meat, I'm not sure your statement is 100% true

<comment><USER5> "Ethically sourced meat" is essentially a marketing gimmick. It generally doesn't denote conditions that are meaningfully different from "normal" meat.

<comment><USER4> So, you're saying that farm-raised, open-pasture, free-range, or other titles are meaningless? I don't think that is true when the labels are used honestly

<comment><USER5> Legally speaking, yes. AFAIK the only one of those terms that carries any legal requirements is "free-range," which is defined only for poultry, and the requirement there is literally just "has had access to the outside," without any stipulations on how much of its life that access applied to or what "outside" means (so, for example, a small patch of pavement behind the factory is totally free-range).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that there is no mention of hydrogen peroxide. About 10 years ago, there was a flurry of news that greying hair was a result of a buildup of hydrogen peroxide[1].

Many scientists guessed that this buildup was caused in part by lack of sleep, as they believed that one of the benefits/purposes of sleep was the removal of hydrogen peroxide, and other waste, from cells. The lead photos in many of these articles was side by side photos of presidents at their inaugurations and at some point during their term.

[1] See, e.g. [https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/05/reversing- hair-g...](https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/05/reversing-hair- grayness-by-suppressing-oxidative-stress/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, I'm twenty-nine years old, and my wife started noticing white hairs a few months ago. I thought that the "stress turning hair gray" was a myth...now I guess I have a good excuse to actually use my vacation days.

<comment><USER8> You know, avoiding white/grey hair is _not_ the only reason to go on vacation...

<comment><USER7> Heh, yeah, but I guess I still have some vanity left in me. Sometimes it takes some silly catalyst to force you to do something you should be doing anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the title is misleading.

From the article:

Pain in mice triggered the release of adrenaline and cortisol, making their hearts beat faster and blood pressure rise, affecting the nervous system and causing acute stress. This process then sped up the depletion of stem cells that produced melanin in hair follicles. ... In another experiment, the researchers found they could block the changes by giving the mice an anti- hypertensive, which treats high blood pressure.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-

So, while stress may cause high blood pressure, it appears high blood pressure causes the white hair per the data in this article. I'm pretty sure things other than stress may also cause high blood pressure. From the article's title, they blame stress. What about all the other things that cause high blood pressure?

Then there is discussion on how to stop this from happening by blocking a protein which appears valid, but still a misleading title.

</comment><comment><USER10> Could stress turning hair white actually be an evolutionary adaptation that provides an advantage to stressed people? Perhaps white hair is associated with maturity, and the appearance of maturity might confer social advantages to somebody who's being stressed (younger people might be more willing to assist them?)

<comment><USER11> Maybe.

It's always good to play the game of asking whether such a signal is honest? ...why not just be unstressed and get white hair if it garners attention and help? Which demands thinking in terms of tradeoffs ... What is the cost of premature white hair? Etc etc etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Men and women can go grey any time from their mid-30s

It can start earlier than that - I found my first gray hair around 16, and I'm now in my early 20s with pretty evenly mixed salt-and-pepper hair along the sides (the top has decided to run away, rather than go gray).

</comment><comment><USER13> >> In tests in mice, stem cells that control skin and hair colour were damaged by stress from intense pain.

How did this get past the ethics committee?

<comment><USER14> It probably was a valuable experiment and took efforts to minimize unnecessary harm to the animals?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "We now know for sure that stress is responsible for this specific change to > your skin and hair, and how it works," says Prof Ya-Cieh Hsu, research > author from Harvard University.

Interesting! I would have guessed stress's involvement was mostly myth and actually just natural aging based on genes.

<comment><USER16> _> I would have guessed stress's involvement was mostly myth_

Looking at Barack Obama's hair before and after his first term, I would have said the opposite...

<comment><USER15> Sure I've seen the meme, but it's not enough on its own. You also have to compare that to other people at a similar age over the course of 8 years... Many people turn gray in middle age, not just presidents under stress!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool but the most of us will probably get irreversibly gray already by the time they release a drug.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _" Pain in mice triggered the release of adrenaline and cortisol, making > their hearts beat faster and blood pressure rise, affecting the nervous > system and causing acute stress. This process then sped up the depletion of > stem cells that produced melanin in hair follicles."_

<comment><USER19> Would caffeine lead to early graying then?

<comment><USER18> Not sure, pain seems more stressful than caffeine, but you'd have to test.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some chemotherapy drugs cause white hair too.

</comment><comment><USER21> No wonder Drumpf's "hair" is not responding... It's either a wig, or he's clueless of the circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER22> Too bad for science purposes that Trump dyes his hair.

<comment><USER23> That fascist is turning my hair white.

<comment><USER24> I don't know why you went back on ten years' worth of advocating to keep politics off HN, but your HN posts have been getting increasingly political, increasingly partisan, and (to judge by this one) increasingly degenerate. Would you please not just stop this trend but reverse it? We badly need the senior users of this site to contribute to preserving it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER23> Hi, you're right, I'll eliminate them.

My guts are tied in a knot half the time wondering what's going to happen; if this is the end of free and fair elections, and maybe the beginning of something worse (this is a good summary: [https://twitter.com/willwilkinson/status/1219638176953839617](https://twitter.com/willwilkinson/status/1219638176953839617) ), and I guess that seeps through in my comments.

As to my degenerate comment - it's actually the truth. I've started to get white hairs in the past 6 months, and while I can't prove the cause, as above, I am very worried. My wife's family lived through fascism in Italy, and I've read enough, in both Italian and English, to not feel uncomfortable using that term even if it's a strong one. But, yeah, I guess it's incendiary and not appropriate here until it's in the history books.

A question for you: housing and urbanism come up a lot here, and I think that's also something that's inherently political, but I don't see moves to keep it out. Without doubt, it towers over local politics in the Bay Area, and has repercussions up here in Oregon (and beyond) as you may have seen perusing my comments. I feel the level of discussion is generally better regarding those issues, and it's certainly not as partisan in nature. But it is certainly political.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the thoughtful reply David. Unfortunately I'm on a plane and am about to be told to close my laptop. Will try to come back later—but also we can discuss this via email@example.com anytime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Now if only they'd get on to MPB. There's money to be made hand over fist in the untapped exploitation of male vanity. I'd be first in line. Rogaine+fin+nizoral just doesn't cut it.

<comment><USER26> I don't know that I'd call what I have "vanity" so much as "not wanting to come to terms with the state of bodily decay as a reminder of my inexorable march to the grave". But you're right there's money to be made hand over fist. How much to press the snooze button on the mortality alarm?

<comment><USER27> I don't care what you call it, just make it stop and i'll give you money!</comment></comment></comment>


Install Android 2.2 on a jailbroken iPhone over the air - <AUTHOR> http://mobiputing.com/2010/11/how-to-install-android-2-2-on-a-jailbroken-iphone/

<comment><USER2> I've been helping with iDroid and Bootlace, and I can tell you that a lot has progressed over the last couple of months. Power management has been a huge priority, and while some of it is there now, much more is to come. Also, it runs incredibly slowly on a 2G, but quite reasonable on a 3G, and absolutely awesome on a 3GS. In fact it feels faster on a 3GS than on a real droid phone.

Part of the reason that it runs hot is the screen power management is incomplete, so it's always on, albeit dimmed. This should change soon.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't even run on the iPhone 3GS? Also, the iPhone 2G and 3G have identical processors, so I'm not seeing where a speed difference would come from...

<comment><USER4> First 2 iPhone generations had a 600 Mhz ARM 11 CPU but they only ran at 400 Mhz. iPhone 3GS was about twice as fast with a much better Cortex A8 CPU and a 600 MHz clock.

Besides he said it's working even faster on iPhone 3GS than on a Droid 1 (same CPU and clock). Did you even read the comment?

<comment><USER3> Did you even read my comment? :(

I've read the code, there is no iPhone 3GS support -- yet. Here's a link to the project's wiki, note all the red under 3GS: <http://www.idroidproject.org/wiki/Status#iDroid_7>

Secondly, my point was about the iPhone 2G vs 3G (not 3GS), in reply t "it runs incredibly slowly on a 2G, but quite reasonable on a 3G". They -- as you said -- have the exact same processor, so it can't really run very different on one or the other. (In fact, I have it on both right in front of me, it seems about the same running iDroid.)

Could someone explain the downvotes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI: if you install this, boot into iDroid, and can't figure out how to reboot: The power button is simulated by holding the iPhone's home and lock buttons simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know how well this works, I mean for real -- not just as something to play with?

Last video I saw of Android running on iPhone seemed very buggy and sloooow.

<comment><USER7> A friend tried it on his 2g iphone and got 15 minutes battery life. Useful as a proof of concept. or as engineering work in progress, but not as a phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Personally, I've been occasionally watching the efforts to put Android on the HTC HD2 (WinMo 6.5, left behind for 7). Seems to be going well, with reasonable battery life, etc. although not "over the air" install. Look up the XDA developers forums.

</comment><comment><USER9> nice, hopefully now I can try the 8pen thing

</comment><comment><USER10> Why every video on youtube is with 2g or 3g?

not a single 3gs so far</comment>


All the acronyms behind MPEG - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pkh.me/p/10-audio%2C-video-and-broadcasting-industry.html

<comment><USER2>
        Note: x264 is NOT a codec, it is a H.264 encoder software

x264 is a codec, H.264 is a video format.

<comment><USER3> I just fixed that paragraph. It will hopefully avoid some confusion.

By the way, x264 isn't really a codec, it is just an encoder. I'm also not sure calling H.264 a video format is really correct, it's more like a codec standard to me. But I guess all of this is just wording bikeshed :)

Thanks for spotting anyway.

<comment><USER2> It's a very easy subject to confuse, thanks for making a correction.

H.264 is literally a document, describing a bitstream that represents a video. Calling H.264 a 'codec standard' is correct in the same way that calling ISO C89 a 'compiler standard' is correct; there are several things you can do to C code without compiling it (for instance, intelligent preprocessing, interpreting, static analysis..). In the same way, there are things you can do to an H.264 standard video without encoding or decoding it (remux, retime, cut, join, ...)

I don't seriously intend you to take this remaining sentence to heart, but to play the pedantry; libx264 is the encoder. x264 generally refers to the command-line client, which happens to contain several decoders - a trivial native YUV decoder, but since about r1400, it's often statically built with all of ffmpeg/libavcodec's decoders, which makes ./x264 or x264.exe a de-facto H.264 decoder (even if it can only output H.264 again)</comment></comment></comment>


Breaking a Toy Hash Function - <AUTHOR> http://twistedoakstudios.com/blog/Post4706_breaking-a-toy-hash-function

<comment><USER2> Fascinating writeup! I enjoy it when a writer thoroughly details an entire thought process like this, instead of just focusing on the end result. This is precisely the type of content that belongs on the HN front page.

<comment><USER3> This is also one of the first articles I've seen on hn in a while that had a decent number of comments, all of which were fairly positive and/or insightful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "On the other hand, the equivalent imperative code is stupidly hard to get right because you end up mixing everything together in a big jumble. (I spent my time doing other things while the computer did the tedious work.)"

The PL geek in me really likes this nice demonstration of the power of higher order functions, as opposed to C-style for loops, when it comes to getting things done.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow! I've never before seen C# LINQ in action. I must say, it's amazing! I hope more languages would adopt this.

<comment><USER6> I vaguely remember LINQ from when I had a real job, but this is way cooler. I just remembered it as chained function calls on a database query return (you could do your filtering in C# instead of in the SQL) but this just looks like SQL (or better - python) _in_ C#.

<comment><USER7> The syntax in the article desugars to the method calls you remember (which are the common HOFs). Since the calls are lazy, they can also generate SQL when asked to execute.

<comment><USER8> I've not heard the term 'HOF' before and didn't find it/expand it with a cursory search. Could you define/expand it?

<comment><USER7> I had (mistakenly) thought it's a commonly known term.

Wikipedia explains it better than I could [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher- order_function](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_function)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Brilliant. OP, thanks for writing; submitter, thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER10> Seriously impressive write-up! I love it, and really want to have a go at doing something like this myself. Where's the best place to start? I know a _tiny_ bit about hashing functions, enough to know not to ever write one myself... ;)

<comment><USER11> You might like the Matasano Crypto Challenge [1], or maybe just a coursera course on crypto [2].

1: [http://www.matasano.com/articles/crypto- challenges/](http://www.matasano.com/articles/crypto-challenges/) 2: [https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto](https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was really interesting to read, it also made me somewhat nostalgic since I started programming "seriously" thanks to JASS, reading obfuscated JASS code from DotA maps to answer questions in the official forums helped me make many great friends, get a moderator position and collaborating in beta-testing, great experience for my young years :).

</comment><comment><USER13> This is an excellent writeup. Break a crappy RNG next!

<comment><USER11> [http://xkcd.com/221/](http://xkcd.com/221/)

\- Can't be seeded.

\- Fails to use all possible outputs in range.

\- Causes philosophical thoughts.

<comment><USER14> Never expected to run into anyone else from wc3c on HN. Salut!

<comment><USER11> Bonjour.

Ce n'est pas une grosse surprise de trouver des gens de wc3c sur HN parce que les deux sont des communautés de programmeurs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I periodically write about the elements on Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/03/21/why-i-elements/ <comment><USER2> So... Why?

The article didn't even answer their own question. Unless the answer is truly just "because he enjoys it". Which doesn't make this very interesting. He didn't even really get into what goes into writing a great Wikipedia article or the review process.

Wikipedia's review process, and community is great. And their attention to detail, and high standards for quality are part of the reason Wikipedia has become such a great resource. This article addresses none of that.</comment>


Why Socialism? Albert Einstein (1949) - <AUTHOR> https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism <comment><USER2> > A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, > would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would > guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child.

One wonders if the author would have changed his mind if he had been able to see planned economies in practice after 1950.

<comment><USER3> I consider myself somewhat of a socialist, but I think a planned economy is a terrible idea.

As Einstein continues:

> _" Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not > yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete > enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the > solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it > possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and > economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and > overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith > a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?_"

I think it's fairly likely for a planned economy to result in the enslavement of the individual. Of course so can an unregulated free market economy. A better approach is not to centralise all this power at all, but keep power and control over the economy decentralised, and the only thing that needs to be handled by any kind of government or however you want to call your centralised bureaucracy, is enforcing some basic constraints designed to ensure those rights of the individual: preventing their enslavement, en ensuring they have access to the means to live a happy life.

In other words: a regulated free market economy with a Basic Income. For everything else: just let the people figure it out for themselves.

<comment><USER4> > a regulated free market economy with a Basic Income.

While I wholeheartedly agree that that's a good idea, I think the government should probably be a smidge more involved in some areas.

I feel like letting people make up the rules as they please is just asking for mini-dictatorships popping up like you see these days with HOAs. Freedom of setting your own rules, but I think it's more important to limit the cases where your only freedom is to get out.

Natural monopolies are another instance where the government should probably step in to avoid a small group of people curtailing the freedoms of large groups. A good current example is the way ISPs currently face no competition. Of course even in these instances a light touch is preferred, In the case of ISPs you might imagine the government owning the fiber, but the ISPs providing the service. This should prevent one ISP in a regio dominating and keeping the competition out. Another example of this is public transit: Railways ought to be shared infrastructure, instead of being owned by a single company.

I'm all for maximising freedom, but what often gets lost in the discussion is how and when to limit freedoms to prevent the freedom of one person encroaching on that of another.

<comment><USER3> > _" I feel like letting people make up the rules as they please is just > asking for mini-dictatorships popping up like you see these days with > HOAs."_

> _" Natural monopolies are another instance where the government should > probably step in to avoid a small group of people curtailing the freedoms of > large groups."_

Sure, but those are all examples of regulation in order to guarantee rights and freedoms. And there are absolutely cases where the free market simply doesn't work or works very inefficiently, like public transport or health care.

But in cases where the free market works fine, with a little bit of regulation or even without any, I think that's preferable to replacing every market with a plan economy.

<comment><USER4> No need to start with "but" if you're agreeing ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem of a planned economy is the economic calculation problem and lack of a mechanism for decision making (i.e. prices). Mises and Hayek laid this out VERY clearly, as early as 1922. The planner cannot possibly know enough to make the right decisions.

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

<comment><USER6> That article had an interesting reference to a 2019 book addressing this from tech POV:

"Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski are releasing a book in 2019 that argues that multinational corporations like Walmart and Amazon already operate centrally planned economies larger than the Soviet Union, proving that the economic calculation problem is surmountable."

[https://www.versobooks.com/books/2822-people-s-republic- of-w...](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2822-people-s-republic-of-walmart)

The book page has blurbs from Cory Doctorow and Ken MacLeod among others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are > unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective > labor

Except the number of people in extreme poverty worldwide has decreased...

<comment><USER8> Sure, people say that a lot, but is this because of China turning away from socialism, or is it because China has proved a planned economy works better than a free(er) one?

Half full or half empty...

<comment><USER7> China has proved that (i) it has access to vast rich western consumer markets, and (ii) that a dirty dubious economy with no transparency produces cheaper goods than a well-regulated one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lets solve the social inequilibrium - by taking a simplified, spherical human from a uniform material.</comment>


Ask HN: Firefox v. Chrome - <AUTHOR>

I've been a firefoxer for quite a bit, but the blogosphere seems to give props to Chrome...thoughts? Should I make the switch? <comment><USER2> I'll continue using firefox, until they release adblock for chrome.

<comment><USER3> AdSweep has an extension for Chrome. I was waiting for ad-blocking in Chrome before switching over, and AdSweep seems to do the trick. <http://www.adsweep.org>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On my system Chrome is only fractionally faster, if at all. What it does is present an incredibly more fluid feel with the way the tabs gently slide out at the edge of your vision, and the fonts seem to be more carefully rendered.

Also, when you see the web pages in Chrome you see them with all the ads intact. The pages are designed for ads so they have a more aesthetic impact with a greater variety of detail, color and incident.

(On the other hand, it has loaded the page ads and all as fast as Firefox with ads blocked.)

Overall it seems to me that 70-75% of the sense of Chrome being better is subliminal, the effect of a better aesthetic impression.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oddly, Chrome does a worse job of displaying Gmail in my set-up (Windoze) than Firefox. I'm not at all sure why. I can't see my Gmail contacts list at all in Chrome, unless I switch to "older version," while in Firefox I only need to switch to the older version of Gmail to EDIT the Gmail contacts list. (The Gmail contacts list is still largely a broken mess compared to any installed- on-Windows email client I have ever used to keep a contacts list for group emails.)

I still mostly prefer to use Firefox, because email is my primary application.

<comment><USER6> That's odd I use Gmail contacts every day and I've never had a problem on Chrome or Firefox. The old gContacts was finicky but ever since the version with merge, it's been A.O.K.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was an avid Firefox user for years, but one thing which always annoyed me is it becomes a complete resource hog. So I ended up switching to Safari upon the first beta of 4. I hated it at first, I love it now — nice and light, fast as hell, and has Webkit awesomeness!

I can't wait for a decent build of Chrome on OSX though, should be fun; <3 the idea of one process for each tab!

</comment><comment><USER8> Chrome.

I can't wait for a [fully functioning] Chrome for Mac.

It's speed reminds me of Firefox when it first came out. I miss those days.

<comment> ryan-allen Safari 4 Beta closely compares with Chrome on Window's speeds. I've been using it for weeks every day and had no problems with it.

It's way quicker than Firefox, that's for sure, try it!

<comment><AUTHOR> does safari work as well for PCs as it does for macs?

<comment><USER9> I've heard very good things about it on PC. Safari 3 PC was tripe; 4 seems to be much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the simplicity/extra screen space of Chrome. It's like browsing Firefox in full screen (which I never actually did). No toolbars, extra security (even because it's still new and not very popular), and great startup speed.

Overall I think it's the bias towards usability in favor of facilities that does it. Even the speed is a symptom of this.

</comment><comment><USER11> I use Firefox because I'm pretty entrenched in it now, and I know my way around it a bit better (obviously). The extensions mostly keep me though.

Chrome is easily a better built and designed browser (maybe because it's newer) and if they could give us extensions I'd have to seriously thing getting used to the UI, and using it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Chrome, if you can deal without the extensions (for now).

Chrome's faster, more stable, and uses Webkit. But I'm biased.

</comment><comment><USER13> Chrome is better for ASP.Net sites.

<comment><USER14> That doesn't make any sense. Do you have any evidence supporting this?</comment></comment>


Encrypting your cat photos - <AUTHOR> http://m.linuxjournal.com/content/encrypting-your-cat-photos

<comment><USER2> For me, it was better to follow the "non-mobile" link: [http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/encrypting-your-cat- phot...](http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/encrypting-your-cat-photos)</comment>


Kentucky Derby Bans All Interchangeable Lens Cameras for 'Security Purposes' - <AUTHOR> http://petapixel.com/2013/04/23/kentucky-derby-bans-all-interchangeable-lens-cameras-for-security-purposes/

<comment><USER2> _Churchill Grounds says that the measures were developed after consulting with several law enforcement authorities following the Boston Marathon bombings last week._

Wait, what? Weren't those photos _helpful_? Wouldn't surprise me if they were using that excuse to keep people from being able to profit off of their photography, but like the blog states, the extensibility of the lens doesn't matter when smaller models can still outperform their larger, extendable counterparts.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand. What possible security purpose could this serve?

<comment><USER4> Concert venues like House of Blues have had similar restrictions, but it had nothing to do with security - they just didn't want people taking "professional" photos or videos of live performances.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't Facebook and/or Google offer paid ad free versions? - <AUTHOR> Youtube has an option. <comment><USER2> Facebook's biggest asset is their data. My guess is that if they can't show you ads, they lose some of the ability to track you and your behavior in terms of interaction with the ads, interaction which creates additional valuable data. Due to network effects / Metcalfe's Law, if you eliminate ads for X percent of the user base, this will have a disproportionately larger (downward) effect on the value of their data in aggregate. Which may not be totally offset by whatever revenue you can collect from users directly in premium subscriptions. I would bet they have surely done the math on this.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be a mistake to offer a paid version of either the search engine or the traditional social network.

Both are more lucrative than a rate at which users would be willing to pay.

US + Canada ad revenue for Facebook will be around $15.x to $16 billion for 2018. That's $64 per year per user (MAU). That is likely to continue to climb over time, almost guaranteed to reach toward $100/year. How would they possibly convince people to spend $10 per month to hide ads on Facebook? It would never happen, it's not worth it. It's nowhere near a large enough inconvenience for ... 99.9% of global users. You'd get a tiny set of users to pay; the time / engineering / upkeep / support / payment handling etc. for all of that, wouldn't come close to justifying what they'd get in return. The best case scenario is they break-even on the offering, vs what they'll be yielding on their monthly actives with advertising a few years out; a more likely bad case scenario, they can only command $3 or $5 per month for the 'feature,' and it becomes a big losing proposition instead.

Also, reducing their display potential / ad volume, is a real negative financial event for their overall business model, for both Google search and Facebook. They benefit in numerous ways from having more display potential, rather than less (not least of which, those advertisers will spend that money on alternative digital venues instead, building up competitors).

YouTube ads are interruptive, as with traditional tv ads. Facebook ads / promoted x are overwhelmingly text and sometimes with an image. You can scroll right on by the Facebook ads and continue with your use of the social product.

Facebook Watch, assuming it continues to grow into a legitimate YouTube competitor, may offer Facebook a reason to launch a paid subscription system however. People may pay to avoid the interruptive video advertising.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it would send the wrong message. It's like saying 'You get a bad experience unless you pay us'.

They want convey that you already have a good experience.

<comment><USER5> Same reason google doesn't offer this for gmail.

<comment><USER6> Google does offer it for Gmail; it's just bundled with other services not a la carte.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Because you are the product.

They are selling you, your spending power and your data.

Their business isn't to be ad free you are their business.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would bet that the ones that pay are probably more valuable for advertisers than the ones that don't pay.

</comment><comment><USER9> Google have dabbled with this -- see "Contributor". However they've changed the formula a few times.

Disclosure: I might, at some point, be competing with them. Or not. Life is complicated, y'know?

</comment><comment><USER10> In general I think they make more money from the ads.

These giants are also increasingly becoming so powerful that they leave people nowhere else to go.

With that leverage they don't have to treat you and me all that well.</comment>


Can Crows Make Mental Pictures of Tools? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/science/crows-toolmaking.html#crows <comment><USER2> "Could they look at a tool and just based on mental image of the tool — can they recreate that tool design?" Dr. Taylor said. "That's what we set out to test, and that's what our results show."

I can't. I'm unable to visualize things (I believe I have Aphantasia) so when I create something, I have to do it a piece at a time and see if it satisfies the requirements of each step. Makes for a lot of trial-and-error.

<comment><USER3> Fun anecdata: I have ADHD, and aphantasia.

Regular stimulant-class drugs make the aphantasia a bit less—I become able to picture things for about a second at a time before the image "flickers away."

The tyrosine-hydroxylase promoter Bromantane ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromantane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromantane)) completely fixes the aphantasia for as long as I'm taking it.

(As well, the equivalent happens for music—I go from being unable to improvise even two notes of pleasant melody, to being able to hum decent songs, and also "rap"—i.e. improvise poetry with correct rhyme and meter. All in a flow state where I'm not really providing any conscious executive control to direct the results, only to constrain them.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course we can</comment>


Plastic Pollution - <AUTHOR> https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution <comment><USER2> Recently, I was campaigning for an environmental NGO in Germany (summer job) and til now I didn't know that Germany is such a big plastics-user! Why I wouldn't have thought of that? Every 2nd person we approached answered with "we already do so much to avoid plastics and protect the environment, you would not believe!"... But at least we are actively approaching this issue, as the EU is banning single-use plastics![1]

Another observation (ofc an anecdote): No one did deny the actual existence of the problem - but the richer the person was (judging from his appearance), the more did he deny our (western world) contribution to the problem! (at least as a responsible consumer)

[1][https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-environment- plasti...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-environment-plastics/eu- moves-to-ban-single-use-plastics-idUSKCN1IT160)

<comment><USER3> I'd love to hear reasons why Germany is so horrible in this statistic. Why do we have 2.5x as much plastic waste per capita as France?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this focus on plastics is actually harmful to the environment. _The_ crucial issue of our time is climate change. Unless we can get climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, trying to reduce plastic is sweeping the deck of the Titanic.

The biggest barrier to climate change is convincing people to act. All this talk about plastic just consumes bandwidth.

In addition, this reinforces the the worse fears about environmentalists.

1\. Many times the effects of plastic pollution in the ocean are exaggerated. There is not a huge island made of plastic floating in the ocean.

2\. The amount of plastic that a western first world country contributes through plastic straws is basically a rounding error.

3\. Plastic straw bans inconvenience the average person while not being a very efficacious way to reduce overall global plastic consumption.

Many people fear that if they give governments the mandate to regulate carbon, the government will pass a bunch of regulations that will just inconvenience them but not actually help with climate change in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER5> 1\. [https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/podcast/june14/mw126-garbagepa...](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/podcast/june14/mw126-garbagepatch.html)

2\. NAFTA per capita plastic consumption 139 kg

Western Europe 136 kg

Japan 108 kg

Asia (excluding Japan) 36 kg

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/270312/consumption-of- pl...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/270312/consumption-of-plastic- materials-per-capita-since-1980/)

3\. Is not having a straw really the struggle people make it out to be? A simple change in harmful habit multiplied by billions of straws adds up quickly.

<comment><USER6> > Is not having a straw really the struggle people make it out to be?

Counterpoint: are straws really the problem? Last I checked they were a fraction of a percent of total plastic, whereas things like fishing nets made up slightly under 50% of total plastic. Haven't seen anyone forego seafood or demand seafood caught without the use of plastics though.

<comment><AUTHOR> True and not true. By itself, reducing straw use has negligible effects. It's whether it would lead to a change in behaviour (better management of use of plastic) that's key, I think.

It's covered as one of the FAQ questions [1]

 _[A]re straws a big deal? Not really. It 's estimated that if all straws around the world's coastlines were lost to the ocean, this would account for approximately 0.03 percent of ocean plastics. A global ban on their use could therefore achieve a maximum of a 0.03 percent reduction. Why have straws in particular received so much attention? Probably because: (a) for most people (not all — some people struggle to drink without one), straws are unnecessary; and (b) it's a quick and low-risk step for businesses to be seen to be taking active steps in addressing this issue._

 _Reducing plastic straw use is — for the most part — not a bad thing to do. It can reduce plastic use a little. If this is a first step towards large- scale commitments to tackling plastic consumption, then it 's a useful contribution. But as the late David MacKay noted: "If we all do a little, we'll only achieve a little". We must do a lot; we must tackle the high-impact options that will make a difference at the global level._

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on-plastics#are-plastic- straw...](https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on-plastics#are-plastic-straws-a-big- deal)

<comment><USER4> So basically, the straw ban is not really doing anything else to help with plastics in the ocean. In return, it has turned into a meme among some political groups how the environmentalists are trying to micromanage our behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also their FAQ on Plastics [1]

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on- plastics](https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on-plastics)

<comment><USER7> From the FAQ under what can Governments and policy-makers do:

" _As a general sense of magnitude: if all countries had the management infrastructure of high-income countries (i.e. no mismanaged waste with the exception of littering), global plastics at risk of entering the ocean could decline by more than 80 percent._ "</comment></comment>


Show HN: Entrylog – A Simple Way to Collect and Showcase New Features - <AUTHOR> http://Entrylog.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everybody!

Are you wasting time building a public changelog and roadmap with features that don't work? Entrylog is here for you! Entrylog offers a beautifully designed changelog and roadmap where users can submit and discuss features.

We see that many companies spend a lot of time and effort creating a solution for collecting user feedback. In almost all cases, time is spent on creating features that don't work. We created Entrylog to solve these issues! Implementing and collecting user feedback ensures a huge increase in user engagement. This way you retain many customers.

If you have any questions let me know!</comment>


Ask HN: Are state sponsored ads on YouTube a new thing? - <AUTHOR> Over the past couple of days I was subjected to ads on youtube of a new kind - at least to me. None of those ads clearly displayed who ran them, and both were of political/diplomatic nature. The small link underneath the video showed that the first one came from the Polish Prime Minister's office and the second one came from the Turkish public broadcasting company. I'm wondering whether this is a new trend or I just missed those up until now. Also, shouldn't youtube make it clear when it runs state sponsored ads? I mean it seems a bit hypocritical to vow to go against fake news and then not implement some sort of guidelines when monetising states' official discourse. <comment><USER2> YouTube will mark those now "YouTube will start labeling videos that receive government funding" (Feb/2nd) [http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la- fi-tn-youtube-...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn- youtube-news-20180202-story.html)

Maybe they were suppressed for a while and now resurfaced?

<comment><AUTHOR> My understanding is that these new policies apply to videos, not paid for ads. Maybe these ads are actually an answer to these policies? What I find disturbing is that you could watch the whole ad (in the Polish case) and never know who ran it as you're just provided with a hashtag at the end of it.</comment></comment>


Unveil(2) – Unveil parts of a restricted filesystem view - <AUTHOR> https://man.openbsd.org/unveil <comment><USER2> Not a very insightful comment but I really like the way OpenBSD names system calls - both `unveil` and `pledge` are great, descriptive Unix-y names for what these system calls do.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious. To me, unveil means reveal information, while the intended purpose for this tool is to hide it. Why do you think it's such a descriptive name?

<comment><USER4> While it implicitely hides everything on the first call, it unveils the arguments. Reads really natural. I imagine typical usage would be:

        fork();
        unveil("/home/jakob/", "w");
        unveil("/etc/some_config_file", "r");
        unveil(0,0);
        exec();

<comment><USER5> > While it implicitely hides everything on the first call

I think that's the really weird bit, I guess they didn't want multiple functions but it would make more sense to veil() (hide everything), unveil(path, mode) (show that path) and lockveil(), something along those lines. Or maybe use some sort of mode constants e.g. veil(VEIL_INIT), veil(VEIL_REVEAL, path, mode), veil(VEIL_LOCK).

<comment><USER4> What benefit would requiring veil() before unveil() have? There is no point in calling unveil() if the file system isn't hidden. Making the hiding implicit reduces the number of possible mistakes people can make when using the API.

<comment><USER6> You could be more sure that something else didn't already unveil things you want hidden in your current invocation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a pretty major limitation of the interface:

QUOTE

It is important to consider that directory results are remembered at the time of a call to unveil(). This means that a directory that is removed and recreated after a call to unveil() will appear to not exist. Non directories are remembered by name within their containing directory, and so may be created, removed, or re-created after a call to unveil() and still appear to exist.

ENDQUOTE

So it's not really path-based, but rather translates a path at the the time of the call to some UUID (or just an inode? But then how is inode re-use handled?) for _that_ particular directory.

So if you unveil("~/myapp", ...) and the user does something like `mv ~/myapp ~/myapp.back && mkdir ~/myapp` the program won't see anything under ~/myapp anymore, since it's not the same directory, even thought it's at the same path.

<comment><USER8> > or just an inode? But then how is inode re-use handled?

inodes have generations. Each reuse increments generation. (ino, generation) tuple uniquely identifies an object within the file system.

<comment><USER9> This is correct, however generation is mostly needed (and was created) for NFS, and rarely used for anything else. Unveal lives in kernel, it just keeps a reference to vnode ([https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/03249988e9bbffb48a568839...](https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/03249988e9bbffb48a56883955bda316855561b9/sys/sys/proc.h#L428-L433))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This design is so thoughtful. Thanks to fork, you can easily sandbox a child process to a specific subtree of the filesystem: fork, unveil(0, 0), run untrusted user code.

I wish OS X and windows had this.

<comment><USER11> Is sandboxing on macOS not exactly this (albeit with a different API)?

<comment><USER12> It is. You have to write the rules as a Lisp script, and there's a scary "this is sort of deprecated, use the new Mac App Store stuff" paragraph in the manpage, but yes, it does allow exactly that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a presentation from Bob Beck entitled Pledge, and Unveil, in OpenBSD: [https://www.openbsd.org/papers/BeckPledgeUnveilBSDCan2018.pd...](https://www.openbsd.org/papers/BeckPledgeUnveilBSDCan2018.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> This discussion from 39 days ago has some good links plus whether there is a Linux equivalent:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17277067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17277067)

<comment><USER15> I want a "merge" or "link" posts UX feature. Conceptually like merging bug reports.

<comment><USER16> We do merge posts while the discussion is still happening, but afterwards we aim to preserve context as much as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is neat but I am still partial to slower but fully generic approaches for syscall filtering, such as BPF.

Sooner or later you run out of clever English verbs for the plethora of fixed- function ones.

<comment><USER12> > fully generic approaches for syscall filtering, such as BPF

How do you constrain filesystem access to be under a list of allowed directories using BPF?

I briefly looked at it, and there doesn't seem to be a good way to manipulate strings. Everyone seems to be using chroot / bind mounts for that on Linux, which adds crap lines to `mount` output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > unveil can be locked, preventing further filesytem exposure by calling > unveil with two NULL arguments.

This is nice and I bet it will be preferable to blocking further unveil calls via pledge. Doing it with pledge would depend on the code path. Just as an example, are you connecting to an IP address or a hostname (requiring a "dns" pledge)? Are you reading from stdin or opening a file directly (requiring an "rpath" pledge)? The current pledge state wouldn't matter when removing unveil access via unveil itself, much simpler.

Pledge is already outstanding but combined with unveil I feel like a kid in a candy store.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think the unveil(0,0) call to disable/ignore further calls is intuitive. But I'm not sure how you would improve on it beyond creating an unveil_disable() call.

<comment><USER20> The hardcoded zero literal for the flags could be replaced by a named constant.

unveil(0, UNV_LOCK)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to put first by creating a new app – performance or privacy? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN!
I have currently a dilemma - to sacrifice my new web based application's performance or user's privacy. Both are harmed in a minor manner, but still.
The situation is following - I have to choose either to apply my tool on my user personal web pages so that I don't break the page loading style, order and time, but brake users privacy - anyone can see in what ways my app is used in the particular webpage and the information may include user private data (such as future changes, content text versions etc.) via an insecure client-side validation. Or I can do it vice versa - brake the users web pages behaviour and keep users private data safe. There is a possibility to let the user choose what method to use, but I guess that makes the tool too complicated to use (explain the differences; lower overall trust in the tool; time to develop both solutions).
Which path would you advise to choose?
As for a real world example - let's take http://www.convert.com and http://optimizely.com A/B testing tools (both are chosen randomly in search of current, similar problem solutions). The first one loads the website test instantly but anyone with basic code knowledge can check what particular webpage tests are in progress. The second loads only the test you are allowed to see, but for a short time the users web page flickers from the original to test design. <comment><USER2> What is at stake? Is this a finance app? Is it keeping track of people's dog sitting appointments?

The money/time involved in the application should drive the security measures.

No need to put a padlock on your bag lunch. And don't keep $10,000 in your wallet.

Another thing, try to balance actual cost with potential cost. Somewhere around 10:1 is a good place to start. Think insurance actuary tables. Are you constantly being attacked? Are your user accounts worth millions? Would a break-in reach international news?</comment>


Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment - <AUTHOR> http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-stem-cells-for-eyes-20160201-story.html <comment><USER2> The comments on the corresponding Reddit thread suggest this shouldn't be trusted.

Relevant comments include: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_wo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_woman_sees_again_after_stem_cells_treatment/d3egavx)

> This is an advertisement puff piece about a "treatment" that nobody believes > to work. There's not even a plausible mechanism as to how a retro bulbar > injection of mesenchymal stem cells could regenerate axons. It is the > ophthalmology equivalent to "one weird trick to lose belly fat".

[https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_wo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_woman_sees_again_after_stem_cells_treatment/d3e8l3g)

> Weiss is not following the usual steps of clinical studies. Among other > things, he didn't test his treatment theories first on lab animals or using > computer models, or randomize his trials by using either stem cells or > placebos in study participants. He didn't test the procedure for safety on a > small group before moving to a larger trial.

<comment><USER3> There's a epistemology problem in modern science.

There was a reddit AMA a while back about some guy who was paralyzed and got stem cell treatments in China and can walk now[1]. In the thread nobody believed him, especially all the people chiming in with lots of credentials. The thread is really sad. The rule seems to be, if the U.S gatekeepers didn't approve it, it doesn't exist, no matter the empirical evidence.

Liz Parrish's gene therapy to increase her telomeres is another example of this. No matter how many labs measured her telomeres before and after, in some people's minds it's not science because it didn't go through the relevant gatekeepers.

[1][https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/k1hts/i_am_a_28yr_old...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/k1hts/i_am_a_28yr_old_american_who_went_to_china_to/)

<comment><USER4> This list includes a few nobel prize winners:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- experimentation_in_medici...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- experimentation_in_medicine)

The fact that these folks driven to test on them selves is a fair indication of how bounded the box can be.

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

and

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

Are two great examples of folks going way out of the box to prove a point, and seeing reward for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A separate thought: Patients searching for and trying traditional and non- traditional solutions. From the article: "...a doctor pointed her to [https://clinicaltrials.gov/](https://clinicaltrials.gov/) , the National Institute of Health's clearinghouse of studies. There she found Dr. Jeffrey N. Weiss in Margate, Fla., who was enrolling blind patients in an unorthodox stem cell study."

This seems to have occurred after the patient pursued "...Chinese herbs and acupuncture...."

With so many anecdotes of patients seeking non-traditional approaches (note: for example, Steve Jobs), I'm heartened to see this patient connected to a traditional treatment which ultimately helped her (note: also, too, see Scott Adams). Caveat: I'm wording this inelegantly, and I think non-traditional methods can help, in some cases, for palliative care.

<comment><USER6> Shouldn't the treatments you refer to be called "traditional" instead of "non- traditional"? Most of what we do in Western medicine is modern and not ancient.

<comment><USER5> Point taken : o )

I wrote with Western medicine in mind as "traditional", in the sense that it is standard practice, here in the United States. I can see how that's ambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The stem cells, in this case, were retrieved from the patients bone marrow.

Dr. Weiss claims, "...60 percent of his 278 patients with macular degeneration, glaucoma and other diseases have regained some sight."

"Dr. Alexis G. Malkin, who examined Belton before and after the procedure, still would hesitate to recommend it to other patients. While Belton's improvement has been dramatic, she said, she's still legally blind and sees only "islands" amid blind spots.... What was the mechanism? ... Had she done nothing, would she randomly have gotten better on her own? That seems exceptionally coincidental."

<comment><USER7> > The stem cells, in this case, were retrieved from the patients bone marrow.

One of two methods, other than cord blood.

What's It Like To Donate Stem Cells [http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/tre...](http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/treatmenttypes/bonemarrowandperipheralbloodstemcelltransplant/stem- cell-transplant-donors)

What's It Like to Get a Stem Cell Transplant [http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/tre...](http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/treatmenttypes/bonemarrowandperipheralbloodstemcelltransplant/stem- cell-transplant-process)

<comment><USER8> The write-up on donation is a bit off. First, I don't think anyone is still harvesting marrow with needles. "Barbaric" and "dark ages" is how I've heard that described.

The section on peripheral stem cell harvest is how it's done. Stem cells are mobilized using Neupogen injections, although a better (more expensive) drug called Mozobil gets much better results. To collect the cells it's a daylong process like dialysis. The link says through a large vein through the arm but they like a big fat vein for their central line, so more likely a small surgical procedure to put one in the chest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My dad has glaucoma and did the same surgery. Not much improvement after 1 year has passed. Another eye doctor says it might take another 4 years to see some difference...

<comment><USER10> Similar experience here. A friend of mine had glaucoma but also did some surgery to remove a calcium extract from the eye. It helped a little but the vision is still the same

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> non-embryonic</comment>


Appathon – Prize: $5K and 6-week Incubation Mentorship - <AUTHOR> https://appathon.atsign.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you believe that people should own their data, then the @ppathon is for you.

As a program for aspiring entrepreneurs, the @ppathon will allow teams to develop compelling consumer apps on the @ protocol, a permissions-based protocol that will revolutionize how the internet handles people's data. You'll automatically adhere to complex privacy regulations and save time on some of the tedious aspects of coding mobile apps.

You'll have 3 weeks to familiarize yourself with the @ protocol and form your team. You'll then undergo a 2-week training period with several mentoring sessions before participating in a 5-day hackathon. At the end, your team could win $5,000 to bring your app to market, along with a 6-week period of mentorship to incubate your idea and hopefully secure funding.</comment>


Adopting Microservices at Netflix - <AUTHOR> http://nginx.com/blog/adopting-microservices-at-netflix-lessons-for-team-and-process-design/ <comment><USER3> _Netflix doesn't have an HR manual. There is a single guideline: "Act in NetFlix's best interest." The idea is that if an employee can't figure out how to interpret the guideline in a given situation, he or she doesn't have enough judgment to work there. If you don't trust the judgment of the people on your team, you have to ask why you're employing them. It's true that you'll have to fire people occasionally for violating the guideline. Overall, the high level of mutual trust among members of a team, and across the company as a whole, becomes a strong binding force._

Christ on a bike, that sounds horrific.

All this approach can do is replace codified guidelines with unknown, arbitrary ones. Who defines what "NetFlix's best interest" is? In an organisation of that size, conflicts of interest must happen all the time.

Is this just a fancy way of saying "If we don't like you, you're out of the door?"

<comment><USER4> G'Day, I work at Netflix, and we hire what's been called "fully formed adults". Here's a quote that can explain it better than I (also see the full article):

Source [https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented- hr/ar/1](https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr/ar/1):

"Hire, Reward, and Tolerate Only Fully Formed Adults

Over the years we learned that if we asked people to rely on logic and common sense instead of on formal policies, most of the time we would get better results, and at lower cost. If you're careful to hire people who will put the company's interests first, who understand and support the desire for a high- performance workplace, 97% of your employees will do the right thing. Most companies spend endless time and money writing and enforcing HR policies to deal with problems the other 3% might cause. Instead, we tried really hard to not hire those people, and we let them go if it turned out we'd made a hiring mistake."

I trust myself, and everyone on my team to act in Netflix's best interest. Throughout my career, I've worked with many professional engineers who could have been trusted to work in the company's best interest. But there have been many times when we've been prevented to do so, due to process. So I've been fascinated at how Netflix is operating, and it's been great working here.

It's important to know that a key role of management is to provide context to employees: what problems exist, what challenges we are facing, what opportunities might exist, what's important to Netflix right now. So that we know what to do, and how to exercise judgement.

I've written about working at Netflix earlier this year on my blog (someone else posted a link).

<comment><USER5> I think rather than "fully-formed adults," what's described here is mutual compatibility. Which is kind of unfortunate, as weird as that sounds.

We'd all like to work with people who operate with the same understanding, ethos, sense of humor, etc. It makes the day better, right? No office drama, no awkward meetings. But I would contend doing this tends to put you at a genetic disadvantage, and that some types of confrontation are essential for growth. Introducing only like-minded people will produce linear results.

What codified HR rules do is put some workplace guidelines around humanity - that allows a dissonant group of varied people to, you know, be themselves without necessarily worrying about conforming to avoid ruffling feathers.

Perhaps it's more nuanced than that, but it sounds more like "hire people you like" expressed somewhat condescendingly as it is.

<comment><USER6> I got something very different out of it - it reminds me of Auftragstaktik, or leading by mission. Instead of adding explicit restrictions on employees, give them freedom of action. It takes trust that they're the kind of person that would make the kind of decision you want. In other words, having a shared "adult" background.

<comment><USER7> My employer treats us as 'fully formed adults' also. It's fantastic, especially after the years I spent in government, where we were all treated like children who required policies on every damned thing to guide us.

An obvious example is about how you use your computer. In my old job, it was highly regulated. Want to install Firefox on your machine? Sorry, that's against IT policy, we only support IE. Your machine is locked down to prevent unauthorised installs, and even if it weren't, you'd be up for a warning for violating the policy.

In my current company, the sysops still limit what they support - for example, they're not willing to support OS X Yosemite users yet, and recommend users stay on Mavericks. But, if you want to upgrade to Yosemite, you can, just don't ask the sysops for help fixing it. And if your broken Yosemite install is impeding your work, well, we trust that you'll resolve it one way or another.

Or another - alcohol. In the government, alcohol at work was banned. A beer at lunch could get you fired. When we had Christmas parties, alcohol was provided, but on a token-per-drink basis. Everyone got two tokens. My current company, the beer fridge is a treasured perk. There are no rules about how much beer you can drink, or when you can drink it. So far, no raging alcoholism has impeded work.

What I really notice is that when you treat people like adults, they respond like adults, and when you treat them like children, they respond like children.

<comment><USER8> >In my current company, the sysops still limit what they support - <USER2> example, they're not willing to support OS X Yosemite users yet, and recommend users stay on Mavericks. But, if you want to upgrade to Yosemite, you can, just don't ask the sysops for help fixing it. And if your broken Yosemite install is impeding your work, well, we trust that you'll resolve it one way or another.

Sorry, but as someone who works in IT security, this sounds like an absolute nightmare. Even if you have a small company comprised only of intelligent developers, those developers do not necessarily understand the latest malware threats or what sorts of software can introduce risks. Wide-open FTP servers and Tomcat servers with default passwords are a major issue. I would actually say developers probably introduce more threats into our environment than any other demographic.

Whitelisting software installs from specific domains (google.com, mozilla.org) is okay, but a carte blanche policy is usually a very bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "If you ask any developer whether a slower development process is better, no one ever says yes. Nor do management or customers ever complain that your development cycle is too fast for them."

I've never known a developer not to speak up when the development cycle is too fast or a user who is not averse to the resultant buggy software.

<comment><USER10> You're confusing 'development cycle' and 'pushing code'.

Pushing code too fast is clearly a problem that causes bugs, and neither developers or users are a fan of.

The 'development cycle' includes the total time to implement something, including time taken to fix resultant bugs.

Where you can speed up the development cycle without introducing more bugs (eg. by implementing comprehensive testing and QA practices), then no one is going to complain.

<comment><USER9> I think you draw an important distinction, but I don't believe that either of our comments are incorrect. I was explicitly referring to a development cycle that is too fast. After all, developers are humans and not machines. Perpetually fast development cycles lead to mental exhaustion, missed vacations--bugs. Unless, of course, you exist on a team that is staffed over- capacity such that the absence of any single developer has an immaterial effect on development cycles. I suspect that is not the case for most of us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I'm missing is actual examples of services split in micro services, with particular focus on the db (originally one db, then split in multiple dbs, one in each micro service).

From the talks I kind of inferred that sharing is a good example of micro service, but that's also a good example of something that one could outsource to addthis, sharethis and similar (at least, I'm speaking from the perspective of a relatively young startup).

</comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting that this is an advertorial for nginx ... I'm currently working on implementing a microservices system, but have instead opted to use ZeroMQ for the connections, and utf-8/json for the request/response interfaces... Which in my mind seems a bit more sane once you reach behind the publicly accessible API (though also means that you have to wrap anything the public/website needs.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't understand the dichotomy between speed and efficiency. What's speed is the author talking about, and whose efficiency?

</comment><comment><USER14> The submission title should include 'Lessons for Team and Process Design', as it's a part of a series.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, the title was shortened after I shared the link here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks like a thinly worded ad for Nginx Plus.

<comment><USER16> I think it is thickly worded. Entire sections have nothing to with the technology you choose. I particularly liked the culture section.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hacker Tools - Open Source Chrome extension for Hacker News. - <AUTHOR>

Link: http://www.gethackertools.com
Hey guys, I love Hacker News like all of you do, I spend a good portion of my time reading interesting content and the best, your replies... My only gripe is extra functionality that I know PG doesn't want to have to deal with... So I came up with this idea to make a super extension that does all the things I want, plus merges all the other cool HN extensions into one...
Only problem? I don't have much time to put into it, so I figured why not open source it, and allow anybody in the community to fork it, improve it, add functionality, whatever they want, so all of us can benefit from a great extension. My vision for this extension is basically like Reddit's RES which has TONS of functionality and extras right ontop of Reddit and everybody loves it.
Today I put in the first bit of code on the extension and pushed it for usage. Currently the first feature is highlighting of OP's replies in threads. (http://d.pr/i/sIzR) So guys, go ahead and fork it, add features, whatever, I am open to pull requests and everything. I want it to be something we all can work on together, and be proud of. <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://www.gethackertools.com>

OP Highlighting: <http://d.pr/i/sIzR>

</comment><comment><USER3> Some feature suggestions:

Add collapsible comments (previously done here - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2680632>) -- this is my most-used HN browser addition.

Refresh the 'More' links at the bottom of pages so you never get an 'expired link' error.

Add username tagging. Easily one of RES' best features.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've added them to the read me. I really dig the username tagging feature, so I'm gonna see about putting it in tonight/this weekend.</comment></comment>


MD and CS - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently in medical school and picking up CS through online courses and personal projects. I was wondering if anyone can provide examples of how a background in CS/programming has played a part in his/her medical careers. <comment><USER2> Depends on what area of health you want to focus on.

PCP/patient interaction - WhatsApp Doc, a iOS app that is based off books/resources like this: [http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13...](http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13683) that help patients plan their apt. with specialists/PCP ahead of time.

Pharmakinetics - More for pharmacists but apps that store drug information for different drug regimen that the patient is on and figure out if there's a bad interaction.

Health Informatics - More in hospital and clinic settings. Electronic medical records.

Personal Genomics - 23andme as a consumer startup; but data mining and analysis based on either SNP or more available in the future, whole genome sequencing for a person ($3000 and declining)

Retail Medical Devices - Tracking devices for diabetics that is linked up to their mobile devices, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> UCSF magazine recently published a series of interesting articles on this...

[http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/11/110281/harnessing-power- pre...](http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/11/110281/harnessing-power-precision- medicine)

I know you asked specifically for examples from people who used CS in a medical career (rather than general advice), so I do apologize for not really answering your question and giving general advice. But you might want to look into data science. Coursera had a good data science course that will probably be repeated - it didn't have anything specifically about medicine, but you would get introduced to Python in a data science context. My guess is that you'd be able to use your domain knowledge in Medicine to take this in an interesting direction.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am not a physician, but these people are doing some interesting stuff with machine learning and graph databases in the medical field: [http://www.medgle.com/](http://www.medgle.com/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Conversely, has anyone currently working in an IT position had to deal with physicians? What was the context? What skills did you wish the physician had? What made it easy or difficult to collaborate on a project?

<comment><USER5> When I was in high school, I had a little business running on the side to install servers to backup files for physicians. I got paid about 300-400 for about 2-3 hours of work. Though I told them it usually takes about a full day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm an MD and have also done extensive software development in the health care field. You can't get in touch with me if you'd like more info albin (dot) stigo (at) gmail (dot) com.

</comment><comment><USER7> You'd be someone that Epic wants. They make health care software.</comment>


Big telecom money sets up clean sweep of broadband bills in Sacramento - <AUTHOR> http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/big-telecom-money-sets-up-clean-sweep-of-broadband-bills-in-sacramento/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

"Senate bill 649 won narrow, bipartisan approval in the senate yesterday. The tally was 22 yes votes – 21 were needed – with 10 noes and 8 abstentions. Instead of trying for a rational makeover of the way local governments make decisions on where wireless facilities can be installed, lawmakers opted for a multi-million dollar gift to ... telephone and cable companies. SB 649 streamlines some permit processes – too much or too little is open to debate – but also requires local governments to rent space on street lights, traffic signals and other "vertical" infrastructure they own at a giveaway price that is, in many cases, hundreds, even thousands, of dollars below market value."</comment>


Financial Times values Greenland at $1.1 tn, Buy rating in mock sellside report - <AUTHOR> https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/08/16/1565947959000/Greenland--upgrade-to-BUY/ <comment><AUTHOR> The _Financial Times_ values Greenland at $1.1 trillion. While done in a humorous tone, the mock sellside research report uses an interesting sum-of- parts valuation model:

* $300-400bn for possible oil reserves.

* $500-700bn for rare earth minerals.

* $200-220bn for potentially developable land.

The report points out that the US has a good track record of accretive acquisitions, with the Louisiana Purchase, Manhattan island, and Alaska all producing 7-9% in annual returns. Interest rates are very low, easing borrowing the money. A risk is other bidders, specifically Canada and China, making offers, although the newspaper points out that China is busy with Hong Kong at the moment.</comment>