The Rise and Rise of Television Torture - <AUTHOR> http://www.interpretthis.org/2014/01/05/the-rise-and-rise-of-television-torture <comment><USER2> There are four lights!

It is a long time since I saw that TNG episode, but I remember it as a respectful treatment of the subject.

Any television series in a modern setting in which characters that are portrayed as "good guys" use torture to achieve their goals is despicable propaganda.

There has been more of that lately.

<comment><USER3> I grew up watching Star Trek: TNG and that episode is something to remember indeed. It makes a strong rational and moral case against torture. While modern American TV shows do indeed do the opposite.

I think I know the reason for this. Gene Roddenberry was a WW2 veteran i.e. the Geneva Conventions had a personal relevance to him. In the wars of the past you had to assume that many of your own guys would be captured by the enemy.. and that you might end up being one of them. In that scenario a strong international condemnation of torture suddenly looks way more appealing. In contrast, America's modern "wars" (I do not think these one-sided affairs deserve that name) do not lead to a noticeable number of American POWs. And you no longer have to worry about being drafted yourself either.

I think the foundation of the acceptance of torture in contemporary America is the firm conviction of the supporters that they will never be at the receiving end.

This type of thinking is unfortunately widespread among humans everywhere. It is never moral and often unwise to support a system you would not support if you did not have a favorable position within it.

<comment><USER4> > In contrast, America's modern "wars" (I do not think these one-sided affairs > deserve that name)

That's a great point. America doesn't do wars anymore. They do conquests. And the American public at large seems perfectly fine with it (or they wouldn't allow it).

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't say that _the American public at large seems perfectly fine with it (or they wouldn 't allow it.)_ That's a very broad brush you're painting with. A large proportion, probably a majority, don't like what's being done with our military. We tried to get Bush Jr out of office after his first term, and that was a very close election with just as much evidence of vote tampering as the his first election. Obama was overwhelmingly elected because everything thought he would do things differently and restore our standing in the world, but that's turned out not to be the case. His reelection was much closer, and he probably only won because his opponents were so weak.

After all these years, I think the American public has largely given up on their votes making any difference whatsoever; President, Senate, House of Representatives, they mostly all do whatever their financiers want once they're elected, public opinion be damned.

Anyone want to come in and liberate us from our corrupt government? (I was going to say tyrannical, but I don't want to devalue that word; we're not there yet.)

<comment><USER6> There's been a joke for a few years: the USA needs to invade America, bringing freedom, providing democracy, constructing infrastructure, and creating jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think it's propaganda. It's a result of the same feedback loop that gives you the morality of soap operas, the absurdity of reality television, the voyeurism of talk shows, historically the extremity of circuses and freak shows: the need to be more attention-grabbing, more extreme, more must-see shocking than the next guy.

It's hardly news that watching that kind of stuff gives you opinions that make you a worse person.

The way I see it, fiction has a dark side and a light side. The dark side normalizes and revels in darkness, to shock and allure the audience. The light side is shocked _at_ the darkness and stands against it, to educate and enlighten the audience.

<comment><USER8> Good point, but I'd like to add some more context.

The average American male has access to all the porn he wants, UFC fights, FPSs, and so on. How is a network broadcaster going to shock and allure him in a way that will clear the censors? The list of options is short and torture is on it.

<comment><USER9> Then we should take it off the list.

<comment><USER10> No, it's incredibly entertaining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the article gets the causality backwards in saying that shows like this "are re-educating and changing attitudes towards this act." Major-network televisions shows are reactive. They're the product of focus groups and market surveys. They are much more likely to reflect trends in culture than to create those trends. They opportunistically take advantage of social trends that already exist.

This is clear if you look at how television lags society as a whole when it comes to other social trends. By the time CBS aired a show with two major gay characters (Will & Grace in 1998), more than a third of Americans already supported gay marriage. This year, "Modern Family" will feature a gay marriage proposal, now that 55% of Americans support marriage equality. Going back further, the networks didn't air an interracial kiss until Star Trek in 1968, a year after the Supreme Court (itself an extremely reactive institution), struck down bans on interracial marriage. As of 2010, more than 1 in 6 new marriages was interracial, but you'd hardly perceive that watching network TV, where interracial relationships are still highly unusual. The Brady Bunch, which ran from 1969-1974, pioneered portraying a blended family on TV, with two previously-divorced parents, but by 1969 divorce was already mainstream and divorce rates were comparable to what they are today (they peaked ~1980). In 1960, when TV was still idealizing stay-at-home mom June Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver, a third of the labor force was women.

Given the track-record of television when it comes to other social trends, I think it's incorrect to say that television is "changing attitudes" towards torture. More likely is that it's reflecting attitudes in society more condoning of torture than they have been in the past.

<comment><USER12> I think you are right about television being largely reactive, but I do wonder about feedback loops.

CSI is set in Las Vegas. They show multiple murders on a typical night shift, yet in reality there is "only" a murder every 2 or 3 days. Of course it makes sense that they would actually show things happening, but I wonder how that feeds into people's perceptions of the world (The "CSI effect" is apparently a real thing, so people have taken some lessons from it, right?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A similar issue came up when _24_ was popular:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/daily- dish/archive/2007/06/scalia...](http://www.theatlantic.com/daily- dish/archive/2007/06/scalia-and-torture/227548/)

\---

"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.

\---

<comment><USER14> _24_ is a much better example than Fringe. If Fringe depicts torture as a tool, it also depicts time travel as a tool and wacky science as a tool, but I don't see the author taking umbrage.

Fringe, like 24, is a work of fiction. The problem is not the series' content. The real problem is letting politicians and media use a work of fiction as an actual situation. Using "Jack Bauer" in the debate about torture is like using Planet of the Apes in the debate about space exploration.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author... I pretty much figured that 24 was generally acknowledged to be torture full. I wrote that piece after spending the holidays binge watching X-Files and Fringe. Such similar subject matter but such hugely different treatments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An interesting point in American fiction in particular, is that, generally it always has the lesson: "violence works" or "violence is the solution". Applying violence to a problem is a pretty common way of solving it. And, of course, a big enough nuclear bomb will fix any problem...

A line like Doctor Who's "everyone lives!" is very difficult to find in an american show.

(It's not that I have a problem with american fiction, I just find it curious)

<comment><USER8> Are you saying American fiction overplays how effective violence is compared to other options?

Because it's clear (and you may be acknowledging) that violence is the best option in at least some circumstances. Otherwise, prisons, soldiers, and police officers wouldn't be necessary.

<comment><USER15> Yes, my perception is that, in general, in American fiction, the way to go is with a violent solution! (Again, that's makes great spectacular movies, don't get me wrong, and it's a general thing compared with movies from elsewhere, not something that happens all the time)

For example, if you want to stop a meteorite hitting Earth, do not use rockets attached to its surface, explode a huge nuclear bomb!

If you have to start the nucleus rotation, do not make any chemical reaction or engineering project, just explode a huge nuclear bomb!

If you are a multibillionaire that wants to solve crime, just personally punch criminals in the face!

And we're talking about fiction, not real life. I'm ok with spectacular, but I can't help noticing it :-P

<comment><USER16> Violence is harming a person or living thing.

Blowing inanimate things up is just physics.

<comment><USER17> Eh, true. But on a basic level, with empathy turned down (and it is, after all it's just a show and no one is _really_ getting hurt), it's basically the same thing. "Other people" can just be meat that's in the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> People who coined the term enhanced interrogation should be subjected to the said interrogation. Joking aside, I agree with the overall point the author is making. There is a torture creep in the culture and people are getting insensitive to what it means. Because it feels good to catch the bad guy and do unspeakable things unto him and get the location of the ticking time bomb. What most people don't realize is that torture doesn't work. The person being tortured will give what ever information the torturer is looking for to stop the pain. However, that is an inconvenient fact that people tend to ignore.

<comment><USER19> Sometimes the subject _does_ have the sought-after information, and the interrogator _knows_ the subject has it, and people _will_ die if that information is not extracted. Sometimes asking nicely doesn't work, and neither does saying "Tell me! or I'll say 'Tell me!' again!"

Another inconvenient fact is sometimes it does work, and is an alternative to actual harm.

ETA: I'm surprised at how many here adhere to the notion "you can't ever know if the subject knows". We justifiably incarcerate people in peacetime, and kill people in war, on less information. As another poster noted: if the subject possesses a computer clearly connected with the issue, admits it's his, admits he knows the password, refuses to give the password, reveals the password under enhanced interrogation (with no physical harm done), and the password decrypts life-saving information, far better that than letting innocents die (or killing him putatively after the fact) because "torture isn't nice". Unwavering equalization of torture with crime (and invariant punishment thereof) is just as absurd as invariably criminalizing use of deadly force in defense of self or others. I get that sometimes/often/usually it doesn't work, but this broad insistence it is _always_ criminal is absurd.

<comment><USER20> This is a popular fallacy for supporting torture, but there are a couple things wrong with it.

Firstly, the most likely outcome of torture is false information and multiple sources from the CIA to the FBI and various levels of rank[1] have said that one of the most problematic issues with torture based intel is the extreme amount of time it takes to verify anything because most of it is made up. So in a ticking time bomb scenario, torturing someone you think has information may make you FEEL better, but it is a waste of time (which, by default, is in short supply).

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly amongst this crowd, the logic doesn't work. Statistically speaking, ticking time bomb situations do not actually occur in real life and basing institutionalized acceptance of torture on a fantasy what if scenario is intellectual fraud. Georgetown law's David Luban has an excellent 2005 essay "Liberalism Torture and the Ticking Bomb"[2] that takes a deep dive into the psychology behind this argument as well as the real-world applications. It's linked further down in these comments by @elipsey[3].

[1] [http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4498/does- tortur...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4498/does-torture-work- well-as-an-interrogation-technique)

[2] [http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...](http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017729)

<comment><USER21> To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue.

For the sake of argument: if it turns out that slicing off a man's left hand will always yield 100% verifiable information, should we still be doing it? My answer to that is still going to be no. The effectiveness of torture is besides the point.

<comment><USER22> > To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is > ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue.

I, on the other hand, favor it _because_ it sidesteps the moral issue and presents what is, in fact, a strong and compelling argument against torture that does not rely on first principles that are demonstrably not held by those who would advocate for torture in the first place.

The _fact_ that torture is wasteful _even if_ you ignore any moral considerations is a lot more powerful of an argument against it than one which requires the audience to accept that "torture is wrong" is true as a matter of moral first principles, no matter how much one might wish that the rest of the population would accept that moral principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think part of this is certainly the mystique of the cowboy cop trope [0]. They'll do anything to get their man, even if the man in the next room thinks they've gone to far. and they get results. And your rogue cop has to be bigger and badder than Harry Callahan and whomever came after.

And then a little of art imitating life, "real people are doing water boarding, the audience needs to see something worse than that"

[0] [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CowboyCop](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CowboyCop)

<comment><USER24> Yeah. When a good guy tortures, it shows he's how far he's willing to go to save the day. And when a good guy is tortured, it shows how tough he is when he resists (and he almost always resists).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The TV channels really should buy more Russian TV series and overdub them. The Russians have made tons of movies about the war with fascist Germany (and its aftermath because it did not really end on VE day) and there was a lot of torture used by both the Soviets and the Nazis. But it was often ineffective in that the victims either died without saying anything or they misled their torturers resulting in serious loss to the enemy who believed the info received from torture. And the folks who had real good info knew that they would be tortured, and when they realized that they were about to be captured, they either committed suicide or shouted to their friends to be shot to death.

In other words, anyone who follows the truth of torture use during a historical conflict will realize that it does not work well.

In fact, what worked better was to trick the person into revealing info. These were often set up as complex double and triple bluffs because the folks in charge knew that their prisoner would try to trick them back and therefore they had to outsmart the prisoner. In one case, the Nazis did a complex bluff where they booked up all the port time at three French ports, and all the rail shipping slots between France and Germany. They had two goals. To get a Soviet spy ring to report back with encoded messages containing the names of the three ports so that they could get a foothold in cracking their cipher, and convincing the English (and Soviets) that an invasion was imminent so that they would waste efforts. In fact the plan was to move additional forces to the Eastern front.

In that case the Soviet spies outfoxed the Germans when they learned that all the trains were empty and therefore did not report the port names in code. And this warned the Soviets of a German push coming up in the next few weeks so they were better prepared.

There are a lot of fascinating stories from the Eastern Front waiting for someone to take the trouble to overdub them in English.

</comment><comment><USER26> This recapitulates many arguments made by Georgetown law's David Luban in the excellent 2005 essay "Liberalism Torture and the Ticking Bomb" which we should all go read right now :)

[http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...](http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub)

<comment><USER18> I initially thought that this essay is taking on the advocacy of torture by liberals as in progressives. But then I did a quick read and found that the author uses liberal as in freely. I will be going through this in detail.

I think you may also like the essay {PDF warning} [http://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interro...](http://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf).

<comment><USER26> Thank you. It's nice to see an empirical discussion of this subject. I'll have a look at some of the cited sources too.

<comment><USER18> Empirical information is sorely missing from our discourse to the point that the general public doesn't question any more the pontifications of pundits. Case in point is the recent claim made by Stuart Varney on Fox that since two ships are stuck in sea ice in Antartic means there is no Global Warming. There is that another misnomer. I wish people start referring to GW as Climate change. Any way I am going off on a tangent here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very interesting! I would look at the depiction of torture in Fringe in another light though. X-Files was a cult show that ran on Friday nights (first few seasons) with low expectations. Fringe had high-expectations from the start, had J.J Abrams named attached and (this part is a guess) a more expensive cast. It never did very well in the ratings and was on cancellation watch for most of its existence. It actually did follow the "Monster of the Week" formula more often the first couple of seasons but then started emphasizing the overarching plot more often in the later seasons. The threat of cancellation, I think, explains the use of eye-catching tactics like torture, and how they seemed to retcon the previous season, each season and start an entirely different plot. They never expected to keep going and didn't plan very far in advance.

X-Files had very different constraints which were only relaxed as the years went on and their budget increased. You can actually see the point in season 2 where the show is beginning to become popular enough that they start having better make-up and effects.

<comment><USER28> "It never did very well in the ratings and was on cancellation watch for most of its existence."

I did some research and "Fringe" pulled 3 million viewers. Awful.

"xfiles" pulled 10-30 million viewers. Not 1.0 to 3.0, 10 to 30. Never quite hit 30 but got close, like 27 million.

"Survivor" used to pull nearly as many as xfiles but now only pulls about ten million viewers in the USA (out of 314 million total population, according to google, so about 30 out of every 31 people do not watch Survivor)

The premise of the article is normalization of torture is a great way to become a blinding success like the x-files, because it mentioned the xfiles and that was a highly successful show. However, comparison of the numbers shows normalization of torture is a great way to repel around 97% of the viewers of a successful show, not to become successful.

<comment><USER29> You can't really compare viewership numbers between the X-Files era and the Finge era. The media landscape is totally different now. 3 million viewers isn't necessarily "awful" when you're competing against just about everything.

<comment><USER28> You'd need to analyze glorification of torture across "everything" then. Also TV viewership hours, as reported by guys trying to sell commercial airtime, hasn't collapsed by a factor of 10 yet.

Another point of argument is TV is "free" and "omnipresent" so another way to phrase it, is in a country of 314 million people an excellent way to repel over 99% of the population from something widely available and free is to glorify torture.

Lets try a comparison. To remove financial concerns, as a thought experiment a nationwide burger chain could hand out free hamburgers to everyone who wants one. Then you could draw conclusions about levels of vegetarianism/veganism and such that would be untainted by economic concerns. I think this would be insanely popular. So here's a real world experiment in the same tradition, in providing something free to anyone who wants it, and in excess of 99% of the population rejects it, therefore it must somehow in a twisted logic define the values of a culture. Huh?

Their moral compass is right and well spoken, their writing style is pretty good, its just their reasoning and data gathering / reporting is awful. Their conclusion might even accidentally be correct, although not for the reasons they propose. As a philosophy paper they'd get an "A", journalism class would probably give them a "B" or so, but as a hard science lab notebook or paper they'd be skating along the "F" level.

Infotainment/Propaganda, unfortunately. Its too bad, its an interesting topic, and their hearts appear to be in the right place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "24" is one of the most brilliant (in its use, if not its composition) and effective pieces of modern/contemporary propaganda that I've seen.

I think it played a _significant_ role in U.S. society's development over during the first decade of this century. Hell, I observed this, first hand, in my friends. When your erstwhile quite liberal and at least mildly "flower child" longtime friend -- who "can't" miss an episode of "24" \-- starts telling you that maybe torture is necessary...

I hope Kiefer Sutherland has sleepless nights...

</comment><comment><USER31> Torture is pointless since the counter-interrogation method while being tortured is to never admit to anything. Giving any information just invites more torture because if there is a bit of info then there must be more and they will keep torturing you, at least according to the IRA green book. The French wrote about how useless torture is for intel as well when they decided to use it wholesale in the Algerian war. It produced nothing, yet in 2014 this fallacy is still around and we are still doing it.

<comment><USER32> The IRA green book may not be a reliable source of information on this. Wouldn't it give the same advice even if giving up information in reality usually made the torture stop? The book's goal there is to get prisoners to not talk, not to help prisoners have the least unpleasant experience in captivity.

I'd expect that the captor's expectation is that prisoners have a non-zero finite amount of useful information, and that in many cases the captor has some idea of how much and what kind of information the prisoner has. If the prisoner does not give up information, wouldn't the incentive for the captors to be to keep torturing because they are sure that there is something to get?

Strategically, it should be best for the prisoner to give up information that matches what the torturers were looking for, so that it is plausible that when the prisoner says he has no more that he is telling the truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can't help recalling Firefly, where (spoilers) only the worst, most sadistic bad guy (Adelai Niska) tortures people[1]. He does so using any method he can, not to get information but just because he loves to do it. It is obviously also a warning to other people not to annoy him, but this is almost a secondary purpose, at best equal with causing immense pain to his enemies.

This is a reasonably accurate depiction of torture, as far as I understand the science of it, and it's one of the few reasons torture might actually be used (i.e. at the orders of a complete psychopath.) - although Mal Reynolds seems unfeasibly good at resisting it (any evidence that this occasionally happens? I'd be interested to hear.)

[1] You can read about the character here: [http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Adelai_Niska](http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Adelai_Niska) and you can buy the DVD of the original series here: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Firefly-The-Complete-Series- DVD/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Firefly-The-Complete-Series- DVD/dp/B0001B3YTM) (check out, in similar items, the film Serenity, which rounds off the plotlines from the series nicely.)

<comment><USER12> Mal throws a henchman through an engine. The next guy talks without much bother.

<comment><USER33> Killing people is not the same as torture, and is not serving the same purpose.

The Firefly gang fight and kill all the time, the first episode forces a pacifist (Book) to confront his objections to violence in a nontrivial moral situation. What they don't do routinely as a tactic is _torture_ people.

A better counterexample would be Jayne and the fed: "Damn, and I was gonna get me a _ear_ , too..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I see it as a variant of the 'hedonic treadmill'. So many scenes of extreme behavior, by 'bad guys' and 'good guys', have already been done in filmed/televised entertainment, that audiences are habituated to all the usual situations and nastiness. New works must keep going more extreme, in both what happens _and_ what's shown on-screen (as opposed to suggested), to hold attention.

</comment><comment><USER35> I wrote a blog post about this back in 2005, when Hostel was coming out. It seems that's right about our fascination with torture on TV has started. While I cringe at my writing from 9 years ago, it seems like things have only gotten worse since then.

> With seemingly inevitable theatrical success of 'Hostel' and recent > mainstream movies such as 'Passion of the Christ' and 'Sin City' reveling in > accurately depicting violence and torture, I started thinking what does that > say about our society and what horrors are next in line for the viewers, > hungry for more blood and suffering. And then it dawned on me - almost this > exact situation was already predicted, in a dystopian 1966 sci-fi story by > Robert Silverberg called 'The Pain Peddlers'.

> 'The Pain Peddlers' depicts a scary, bleak and sarcastic view of the future > - in the early 00's, television is king. And what brings most money to TV > networks is live surgery. In the story, the main character is a TV producer > who got a very promising prospect - an old man suffering from gangrene and a > family, too broke to take care of the hospital bill. The old man needs to > have his leg amputated, and the family agreed to do it on live TV. It's the > producer's job to convince the family to have the amputation without > anesthesia - for more money, of course. Nothing brings in the viewers quite > like real human agony.

> Remembering this story, which I read long time ago, was a very scary > experience for me, because... in 1966, when it was written, it was pure > fantasy - the notion of something like that actually happening never > occurred to Silverberg or his contemporaries. But does it sound that > incredible now? With TV viewers getting tired of same-old reality shows and > public's growing hunger for violence, how long until a new reality show > depicting real surgery appears on, say, HBO? Probably not right away. But I > can definitely see something like that happening, not too far away in the > future.

<comment><USER36> I viewed Lethal Weapon as one of the early movies to glorify torture to get what you want out of bad guys. On TV the Shield took it to a much higher level.

<comment><USER37> I felt The Shield dealt with it very well though, especially the developments in the final episodes. We're supposed to hate all the people in the story that torture, and the 'wrong' of empathizing with them is spelled out in the end (in a much better way, I feel, than The Sopranos did).

In fact, I remember being somewhat shocked by Ryan's follow-up, "The Unit", which seemed much more pro-violence and torture (perhaps through some influence of David Mamet).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Casual, unthinking propaganda. And worse, unthinking rationalization for real- world torture.

So often you see the "good guys" being badasses by using torture, brutality, or simply ignoring the rights of suspects. And frequently they are rewarded for it, lauded for it, and there aren't any downsides. The good guys never screw up, the suspected bad guys turn out to be the real bad guys, and so on. All of this has become cliche as storytelling elements in police procedurals, but they give people a very dangerous idea about the value of torture and the non-value of the rights of the accused.

It's so bad that the vast majority of people doing it don't even realize what they're doing, don't realize how much they are propagandizing torture and police brutality.

</comment><comment><USER39> Ah, do you remember the old good times when Terry Gilliam's Brazil came out, and the idea of a SWAT team destroying your house, imprisoning and killing your husband, all due to a bureaucratic mistake, was a bizarre fantasy of a dystopian and dictatorial future?

<comment> vezzy-fnord No. It has always been plausible.

Just perhaps not a _SWAT_ team, specifically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've been noticing television and media getting more and more brutal over the years.

Batman and Robin have transformed from tights wearing guy's saying holy rusted metal to driving military hum-Vs with gatling guns.

The joker has transformed from a goofy prankster makeup wearing guy to a all out sociopath who slices happy faces into people with knives.

<comment><USER15> The first appearance of the Joker (Batman #1 1940) was incredibly scary and grim. He's a murderer, killing 3 or 4 people with poison that make them smile, and the general style is quite dark. [1]

Sure, comic books move to a different ground later, and the Joker in particular moved to be more of a harmless clown until the 70s, when "The Joker's five way revenge" (Batman #251 1973) made him back to a scary killer again.

It depends on taste, but to me the idea of someone using a joke cigar that explodes blow away a whole floor is quite brutal. It is brutal because it takes something "funny/harmless" and moves it to actually killing someone. In one comic he throws a cartoon 10 tons weight to someone. And you can see the blood of the crushed guy on the floor. I find that pretty dark. And I think that the contrast of bright colours, smiles and silly jokes while being a mass murderer is what makes the Joker an special character...

[1] [http://comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/27306/JOKER_f...](http://comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/27306/JOKER_first_appearance_052111.jpg)

<comment><USER40> That's interesting. I guess what I'm noticing is not so much the sinister intentions but the sort of gruesome nature with which it's portrayed these days. The joker has always been a sinister agent of chaos that kills people indiscriminately. But the Heath Ledger joker surgically implanted a bomb inside of a guy. He sliced peoples faces into smiley faces. That's stuff straight out of the movie Saw. The most the Jack Nicholson joker did was squirt poison gas out of the flower on his jacket or explode people. They just die, and that's that, nothing that gruesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Real torture has been policy for over a decade; no one has been prosecuted for it, and the evidence was intentionally and unashamedly destroyed.

Why shouldn't television reflect reality? Torture isn't wrong or illegal anymore in the US.

<comment><USER42> > Why shouldn't television reflect reality?

Because there's a cycle. TV reflects reality, but it also shapes reality. It shapes us.

> the evidence was [...] unashamedly destroyed

And without protest. I believe TV has made our society comfortable with torture, and thus we allow it to happen.

<comment><USER41> >Because there's a cycle. TV reflects reality, but it also shapes reality. It shapes us.

If you take the cultural studies view that our media is a reflection of our cultural unconscious, rather than a form of corporate speech from power.

>And without protest. I believe TV has made our society comfortable with torture, and thus we allow it to happen.

There was a ton of protest, and it didn't matter. It was the subject of hundreds of articles, and congressional questioning, and it didn't matter.

There's an illusion of control here. If you are arrested, and US intelligence agencies feel that you may be a friend of a friend of a Muslim of interest, you may be tortured - largely dependent on whether anyone knows you were arrested, and on what soil you were arrested on.

We allow it to happen because we love it, are indifferent to the suffering of foreigners and minorities, or are afraid of being tortured ourselves. Same reason they allow it to happen in Egypt, Turkmenistan, or anywhere else. Blaming it on TV is like blaming gun violence on video games.

That being said, when something purports to be a depiction of a historical reality, such as in Zero Dark Thirty, it is a travesty - but it's always a travesty when history is rewritten to glorify the powerful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The treatment of torture on TV is important for the reasons OP states. I disagree that torture is becoming more prevalent on TV, though perhaps because I watch less of it. Here are the scenes I can remember from childhood onward.

1\. Knight Rider - not exactly torture but Michael was in a contest with someone else to tolerate pain, afterwards it was revealed the other person was not connected to the machine.

2\. Star Trek - I can remember Kirk in a reclined chair on the Enterprise, looking up at something that was causing great pain.

2\. ST:TNG - The Picard scene is memorable because it affected so many people due to the show's popularity.

3\. Firefly - This was particularly well done / graphic because I think Nathan Fillion is very good physical actor.

One of the ways torture affects the lives of ordinary americans is through the Taser. Youtube has some eye-opening examples of tasers being used for the wrong reasons. Its a near impossible line to walk between non-lethal force and pain as coercion.

<comment><USER44> There are all good classic torture scenes, but realize that in none of them is the interrogator looking for information. Each scene was to break the subject, or to cause pain/death. Those instances of torture have no moral component past sadism.

The issue is when you depict torture as a morally good, effective method of protecting people. Thats when people begin to believe that its an agreeable act.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Police beatings have long been a staple of movies, theatre, literature. In reality, police beatings have been a staple of the exercise of authority since Kubrick's representative ape picked up that bone.

Selection bias: There's always been a generational slant, depending on whether revolutionaries or reactionaries were the more popolarly romantic at the time.

Truth: beatings hurt, and lead to more beatings. Pacificism always fails, except in art/fantasy.

Too lazy, depressed to cite the obvious. Wikipedia search quietly on your own.

(To those disappointed in the moral failings, hypocrisy of US, compared to grade-school patriotic version: Like Babe Ruth's boozing, FDR's disability, JFK's infidelity, polite media just didn't discuss certain unpleasantness. Guess what: it still doesn't. That's what worries me. And I'm the least conspiracy-minded malcontent I know.

</comment><comment><USER46> The very best torture scene I've read or scene was the one in Day of The Jackal - where they torture the legionnaire to divulge the location of the OAS leadership. Putting myself in his shoes, there is no way - no matter the importance of the information - that I wouldn't break.

The main difference between that scene vs. say Babylon 5 or StarTrek is not only the violence (for instance Captain Picard doesn't have electrodes connected to the end of his penis) but the fact the the person being tortured _knows for a fact_ he will be killed after it's all over. There is not psychological game going on: the reason he ultimately divulges information is so that the pain will stop. He _wants_ and begs them to kill him.

I've never seen an equally powerful scene in any movie or book.

</comment><comment><USER47> it's important to realize that our popular TV shows are full of propaganda. it's subtle stuff, not out-and-out endorsements of political or social positions, but more along the lines of assumptions that are reinforced and left unopened. the purpose of the stuff isn't to change people's minds, but to solidify norms. i can't even count how many times i've seen "set 'em up to knock 'em down" characters - usually in the bad guy role.

there will be a character, usually a bad guy, with a certain ideology that will be delegitimized (usually some sort of anti-status-quo or anti-power thing). sometimes they will portray the character's ideology as good- intentioned, to give an effect of objectivity in the storytelling. but ultimately this character will be shown to be misguided, emotional, immature, or otherwise ideologically inferior to the "good" character. i see this shit a lot in crime and law enforcement-focused shows. i'm sure some people would argue that i'm being hypersensitive and that there's no ulterior motive behind these portrayals, but i can't remember a single time that i've seen an anti- government or "rebellious" character not delegitimized in one of these shows.

yes, it's just a character, but our ideological positions are weighted quite a bit on these "stories" \- for many people, more so than facts. many hard-line conservatives would get angry at being called a "liberal", not because of their political differences, but because on some level they embrace a story where liberals are milquetoasty, limp-wristed, privileged turtleneck wearers, and conservatives are hard-working everymen trying to do right by their family. many liberals, for their part, embrace similar but reversed stories about conservatives. sure, maybe if you read hacker news you don't base your political views on stereotypes like this, but these stereotypes do their work by remaining in the back of everyone's mind. for average americans that don't explicitly try to be objective in their political and social positions, these stories actually hold a lot of sway. our TV storytelling enforces and solidifies these sort of stereotypes.

<comment><USER22> > the purpose of the stuff isn't to change people's minds, but to solidify > norms.

Well, no. The purpose is usually to resonate with norms that the intended target audience is presumed to already have, so that that target audience will feel comfortable with the show, come back to it, and show good stats so that the network showing the show will be able sell ads targeting that audience, so that they will continue to pay the producers of the show, who will continue to pay the writers of the show.

 _Occasionally_ shows have propaganda that is inteded to shape opinions, but mostly they are written to make money, which means selling advertising space, which means appealing to the existing views of a target demographic above and beyond all other considerations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The GTA5 torture scene with Trevor and the car battery, pliers, etc. was difficult to participate in. If I recall correctly, he at least didn't get anything useful out of him, which would've implied that the ends justified the means.

<comment><USER49> I came here to mention that Grand Theft Auto did a fantastic job satirizing (if you can call it that) the theme of torture and assassination.

In the game, you are forced to participate in torture of a guy for absolutely no reason. You have to select torture methods, then manipulate the controls to adequately complete the mission.

In another mission, as another character, you're forced to perform an assassination for a government organization. As the scene unfolds, it becomes clear that they have no idea what they're doing, and they're just reacting immediately to low-quality intel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's not just torture that's taking place on TV, it's violence in many forms.

When my sister asked me to described _breaking bad_ series, knowing her so well, the first word that came out of my mind without seven thinking was: Violent.

<comment><USER51> A man picks the side of violence, and is destroyed by it. Works better if you assume the final episode was a dream

<comment><USER52> It's not like picking the side of violence and being destroyed by it is some weird thing no one could expect...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Torture has become so common in tv shows it has become difficult for my husband and I to find anything to watch together anymore. The genres we used to both enjoy are so filled with torture that I can't stand to watch them. He is willing to, but doesn't enjoy those scenes. Are there really a lot of people who want to watch prolonged, gritty torture?

</comment><comment><USER54> The previous articles are about 'Scandal', '24' and 'Homeland' which are torture-filled entertainment. Quite a (linkbait-ish) leap to focus vaguely and exclusively on Fringe.

<comment><AUTHOR> I binge watched Fringe and the X-Files over the holidays. The most stark difference to me was the torture. Fringe in some ways is delightful and gentle. Especially in the portrayal of Walter's mental illness. It's very much like the X-Files in that regards. But even in a show like that they still packed in the torture. What blog post SHOULD I have written? I know Scandal is full of torture. Does our Sci-fi need to be as well? Why is that? What changed since the X-Files were released? That's the point I was trying to make anyway.

<comment><USER54> The difference for me was I turned off 24 & Homeland because it seemed to be nothing but torture over and over. Fringe - I really have to think about it because I don't recall any. I kind of recall weird bits of mad scientist-ish torture, but not long-extended anger scenes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The big lie about torture is that it's actually relevant to the matter under pursuit. The government really doesn't care that much about guilt or innocence, once it decides someone needs removing they go about doing it in the most politically expedient manner available.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm not that sure it's a new trope: '70s British cop shows ( _The Sweeney_ , et al) tended to show information being extracted by force, too.

However, it may say some things about the society where it's popular - '70s Britain wasn't a very happy place in some ways.

</comment><comment><USER57> The article is interesting, but what caught my eye more is the possibly spoofed DNSSEC cert.

<comment><USER50> Oh, so I am not the only one :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> "Are you not entertained!?" \- That is what drives it. People need more and more.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think every episode of "24" has at least one instance of torture.

</comment><comment><USER60> Considering the effectiveness of torturing (and whether "they" lie about it) kind of blunts the argument against torture tout court. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed the article.

</comment><comment><USER61> Yeah, and videogames cause people to murder. What a load of bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER62> Here's why, in the real world, the "good guys" almost _never_ use torture. At least, it's so rare that the likelihood of torture having a good use in one's lifetime can be rounded down to zero.

Torture isn't (despite what many say, wanting to believe that evil never works) _completely_ ineffective at getting information. It gets some signal (and lots of noise) but it's inferior to, and also _antagonistic to_ , more effective forms of interrogation. The world is morally murky, and it's rarely clear who the good and bad guys are, and it's a lot more effective to get someone to warm up to you and your cause. If you cause so much pain to inflict PTSD, you're never going to get someone on your side.

The "ticking time bomb" scenario is laughable when applied to real life. But it also makes one completely wrong assumption: that the torturer often wants the truth. Most who have used torture, throughout history, wanted the opposite.

Torture is _very_ effective at "extracting" a completely _distorted_ or just wrong account (false confessions and accusations) that can be used for political purposes, none good. If you want an exponential growth in the number of convicted witches, torture can do that, as world history has proven.

</comment><comment><USER63> Yes, but who are we to judge?

Who, indeed.

</comment><comment><USER64> I seem to recall in X-Files people just disappeared. The same occurs in many police dramas and even movies with similar settings.

Whats worse, showing torture or off screen killing people? These are not shows about bunnies and unicorns, they are about dangerous, exaggerated or fictional at best, subjects, and will not necessarily portray characters in the best of light.

<comment><USER65> I don't recall Mulder and Scully "disappearing" very many people. That tended to be the doing of other people in government. Other people in government acting nefariously was something of a common theme in that show.</comment></comment>


Depletion of Earth's Magnetic Field and Why It Could Mean The End Of Humanity - <AUTHOR> http://www.icr.org/article/depletion-earths-magnetic-field/

<comment><AUTHOR> "This force field deflects solar winds and all kinds of other space radiation away from the Earth. Without it, our atmosphere would slowly be blown away, turning our environment cold and dead, like Mars."

<comment><USER2> really? ICR on hacker news? i think you might want to post stuff like this somewhere NOT here..

<comment><USER3> Its almost a perfect example of "what not to post". The "End of humanity" was link-bait (barely mentioned in the article), the magnetic field stuff was pseudo-science, and the argument was once again (surprise) that the earth is less than 10k years old.</comment></comment></comment>


Nexus 5  $349 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/17/4850738/nexus-5-google-play-store-price

<comment><USER2> This striptease is very frustrating - and makes it difficult to plan purchases or have quality information. I hate the 'leak' marketing strategy, though I know it's probably very effective for Google keeping it in the news/blogs with no advertising. Hundreds of blogs are probably covering this same low- information 'latest leak' story and feeding speculation.. But what a colossal waste of everyone's collective time!

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who plans on purchasing the Nexus 5, I also find it extremely annoying that we don't have any solid information yet. Especially since these phones typically sell out extremely quick...</comment>


Replacing Redis with BoltDB – A Pure Go Key/Value Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.specto.io/replacing-redis-with-boltdb-a-pure-go-keyvalue-store/ <comment><USER2> BoltDB author here. I'm glad to see that Bolt is working well for the OP! It seems like a great use case for Bolt (multi-core, high read volume, local storage).

There seems to be a lot of focus on the performance improvements by commenters. Using a local mmapped KV can remove a lot of network and serialization overhead, however, I would caution others from thinking Bolt is a silver bullet. There are a TON of use cases where Redis would utterly destroy Bolt (e.g. high random write volume).

The two data stores have fundamentally different designs and purposes. For example, Bolt provides MVCC with fully serializable transaction isolation. If you need that then Redis isn't an option. If you don't need that then Bolt may be overkill.

As always, YMMV and be sure to test out different options based on your requirements.

<comment><USER3> This post makes me so happy. The key statement is here:

> The two data stores have fundamentally different designs and purposes

With all the datastore hooplah nowadays, it is really nice to see an author come out and say "this isn't for everyone" rather than "we're the fastest for everyone, period." and throwing around a bunch of meaningless benchmarks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a habit of not including a database at all when starting out a server app.

Instead I just use the language's native array and map types to store objects, and write simple functions to persist the data into a transaction log (usually a "newline-separated JSON objects" style file). On application startup, the objects are reconstructed by reading back the log file.

This approach can go surprisingly far. Memory is cheap, and not having a separate database behind a socket eliminates a whole class of potential issues and bottlenecks. The log file is easy to back up. If it grows too big, you can always compact it by dumping the in-memory structure.

(I guess I should add a disclaimer about "toy projects" and "serious production environments", because some people seem to get oddly upset about the notion of not having a "real" database for a web app...)

<comment><USER5> You can get surprisingly far with that approach, but as a database developer, I should warn you that something that "works" is not the same as something that works under rare failure conditions. See SQLite's famous document[1] to get an idea of how things can go wrong. It's not nearly as simple as it might seem. [1] [https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html](https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html)

<comment><USER4> Absolutely... But if I go with random database X because people are raving about it on HN, do I really have a better idea of how it works under rare failure conditions? Or how to fix those issues?

When it's my code and the persistence layer fits in a few screenfuls in a text editor, at least I know where to place the blame. Debugging database trouble is maybe the worst kind of work I can imagine.

<comment><USER5> I never recommend going with random database X, use something that's been around a while and has lots of users, then at least you know that you're statistically unlikely to experience a failure mode that nobody else has.

Rolling your own on disk persistence and recovery is like rolling your own crypto. What you don't know can definitely hurt you, you'd better be an expert, and even then you won't likely get it right the first time around. It's just a really hard problem involving complex interactions between your code, the OS, the filesystem, the disk drivers, and your disks all of which can cause data loss in very unexpected ways.

Your method can work, but it almost certainly has issues lurking that can cause data loss. You might be ok with that because it's a toy project, but it's obviously not a good idea for important data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not a useful article for many reasons:

\- Redis has no dependencies either

\- "weird responses" from Redis? Do you change your tools the minute they don't behave the way you expect, without investigation?

\- The title "Picking the right tool for the job" is the almost opposite of what's done here. It reads more like "Stumbling on cool Go software and picking what job it can do for me"

\- 400 (or 850) requests/second are ridiculously low numbers for an in-memory key/value store. Redis is capable of doing 100x that on small/medium machines.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I get with redis-benchmark on a small machine:

SET: 109051.26 requests per second GET: 109170.30 requests per second

with 32 byte dataset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Redis is a data structure server, BoltDB is a storage engine. They're not really comparable. If you know you need a storage engine, then using BoltDB might make sense. But if you're not sure why you use BoltDB over Redis (aside from performance and having heard of it), then maybe you didn't explore the question enough. You can't just replace BoltDB with Redis and call it a day, at least not if you want to have some sort of availability and more than 1 server in your service.

Also, using Redis as a key-value store for its persistence isn't really a great idea.

<comment><USER9> "Also, using Redis as a key-value store for its persistence isn't really a great idea."

Could you please elaborate on this point? I'm thinking of using Redis precisely in that manner and would love know about the drawbacks.

<comment><USER10> Redis is missing the D in ACID, meaning a successfully executed command is not guaranteed to persist to disk since Redis only flushes it's data to disk (if you do have persistence enabled) at configurable intervals.

So when you server dies you lose the changes since the last flush. I would not use as a primary storage for data you cannot afford to lose.

Have a look at this: [http://redis.io/topics/persistence](http://redis.io/topics/persistence)

Edit: you can configure redis to flush on every command that changes data...but you probably wouldn't want to use redis that way :)

<comment><USER11> This is acceptable for a wide range of apps. EtherPad, for example (which used MySQL) only flushed every second or two. If the database crashed, then yes, you'd lose the last couple keystrokes, but that was so extremely rare it didn't even register as a factor in the overall UX.

Edit: Also, you probably have bigger problems if your database goes down or your cluster falls off the map somehow.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely, but people should still be aware of the compromises and not confuse categories.

Very few apps can make do with only a key-value store and if you have to throw a relational db in the mix, why introduce more moving parts unless absolutely necessary? ACID, referential integrity, SQL. Sometimes it feels people are willing to ditch all this for very little gain.

Let's face it, how many apps out there can't really run a beefy relational DB with potentially an absurd amount of RAM?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We use BoltDB in production and it has been perfect for our use case. The Bolt source code is clean and is obviously written by people who Know What They're Doing. We discovered a perfect-storm bug due to some extreme demands placed on the DB, and benbjohnson helped us track down the problem and quickly provided a patch. Thanks Ben!

The bug in question: [https://github.com/boltdb/bolt/pull/452](https://github.com/boltdb/bolt/pull/452)

</comment><comment><USER13> _BoltDB can be imported as a library and can persist data in a file so you can use it as an embedded database – meaning you don't need a separate data store._

Serious question: BoltDB something like a Key Value store equivalent (congruent?) to SQLite?

<comment><USER8> Yeah that's about right. BoltDB is a storage engine that exposes a sorted key- value store with ACID properties.

<comment><USER14> More than just a key-value, it also has buckets so you can nest keys in other keys (and build your own tree), and it has excellent support for iterating on keys. It's a real nice engine to play with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As the writer of Rediscala, I can tell that a good redis client library should not be the bottleneck of your app!

The redis go client had probably some design issue.

<comment><USER16> The author was using redigo ([https://github.com/garyburd/redigo](https://github.com/garyburd/redigo)), which by my analysis is fairly performant.

One of the likely causes for issues is file descriptor limits or TCP tuning that you suffer when stress testing two dependent networking apps on the same server. BoltDB, being embedded, just works out of the box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hope the improvement isn't too surprising, you're basically dropping all the intermediate serialization overhead and command parsing.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you can live with an in-memory store (with or without a roll-your-own persistence model) then there are all sorts of lighter-weight alternatives to redis. It's when you need to share the data with multiple processes that tools like redis or etcd really shine.

</comment><comment><USER19> Related question, looking at BoltDB, saw LedisDB[1], just curious if anyone has used it and how that performs, as compared to redis? I mostly work with node/web applications, so in-process memory is fairly limited straight away. If the persistence guarantees of something like Ledis against BoldDB are better than Redis, it may be an option for a primary application data store.

On another note, really need to find time/excuse to play with go... It's been on my radar for quite a while now... but the use of JS all around has been very nice for my productivity.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Removing the dependency is just one part of the story. Another part is that > requests per second under heavy load increased from ~400 to ~850! Also, all > those weird errors were gone – using BoltDB with 10k concurrent users we get > zero errors.

Not exactly surprising. Redis is single threaded so if you will need to spawn multiple instances if you want to satisfy all cores. Which is what I assume is happening here.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure what the user did with Redis, but it's unlikely that you can saturate a core with, like, 1000 requests/sec unless you do complex/slow operation. But apparently the OP was just doing simple ops because otherwise the switch to BoltDB could be impossible or harder. So I guess there is something to dig to understand what was happening. The most likely cause is the execution of many fast commands in Redis without a pipeline, so that all the time was burn in RTTs.

EDIT: Anyway for my programming philosophy, what the OP did, regardless of performances, totally makes sense. I think easy to use and deploy is a _key value_ in software ;-)

<comment><USER22> There can often be issues with managing pools of tcp connections in clients - locking around accessing the pool, corner cases in state/lifetime of a connection in the pool, etc. In my experience with other databases and languages anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The OP says about Redis "I was happy with current performance". His problem with Redis was that it introduced dependencies on a separate process with all that entails in terms of deployment, distribution, etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> I use Boltdb and Redis in my current project. Boltdb made sense for the data that rarely changed and was more read heavy.</comment>


Brazil education standards contribute to learning crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-brazil-bad-education-20121118,0,623172.story

<comment><USER2> You can thank this guy for it: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire></comment>


FusionAuth integration with Spring Security - <AUTHOR> https://fusionauth.io/blog/2018/10/24/easy-integration-of-fusionauth-and-spring <comment><USER2> (Author) Hi, let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this an OpenID Connect integration and does it support RBAC?

<comment><USER2> Hi, yes, our security library uses OpenID to authenticate users which then in turn allows us to restrict pages based on user roles provided by FusionAuth.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, that answers my question.</comment></comment></comment>


How do I make money off of a popular MMOG game? - <AUTHOR> Suppose I have a MMOG with average of 2K concurrent players. What is the way to make money off of that without constantly losing money due to server costs?
What is the strategy? Is there a place where someone can learn more about things like this. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Just don't do what the guys at TreeOfSaviour, great game but also great failure. Try ads, app installs, and stick to what works for you.</comment>


Show HN: Parsify, instant markup conversion for developers - <AUTHOR> http://parsify.me/

<comment><USER3> I don't see the value in this service since markup conversion is built in to so many free libraries and services. What is the use case for this and who needs such as service?

<comment><USER4> +1 I wasn't aware that parsing markdown was "Expensive"

Kramdown does it in pure ruby, and stupid fast as far as I can tell, and that's single threaded with the GIL.

<comment><USER5> There was a typo. The pricing has been updated.

<comment><USER4> I meant expensive computationally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> C'mon, guys. Lightweight markup languages are hard. That's why there's the word "weight" in their name. It's obviously better to send data like this through the cloud, because it's going to be really, really, really expensive for your application servers to compute the markup transformation. Sending data to the cloud is totally free, and relying on remote services is way, way easier than hosting a library. Way easier. Someone has to implement the API for that vendor library. Them shits is hard.

Let's not forget that for every second you wait on this spectacular deal, you're literally bleeding money. While you deliberate, thousands upon thousands of customers lose their shit over the fact that your site doesn't have support for textile. They're rage-quitting your site, and their shopping cart was full. Did you hear that? Boom, you just lost a sale because you don't have Markdown on your site. You _could_ have Markdown on your site. Just sign up now, before you miss out.

<comment><USER7> If you buy this, you're automatically demoted from programmer to "computer guy."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's an incredibly expensive (1.5 cent per call) solution to what appears to be a non-issue. There are a myriad of open-source Markdown parsers, most of which are incredibly fast and easy to implement. What is the issue being solved, and why does it warrant such a high price?

</comment><comment><USER9> The interesting part to me is they are selling their service via mashape.com which is new to me. Its a neat marketplace for "cloud APIs". Some of the APIs are free or freemium. Here is a list of the most popular APIs:

      - Facial recognition API
      - Yahoo weather API
      - Multilingual sentiment analysis of text
      - IP utils
      - Barcode / QR code generator
      - DuckDuckGo Zero-click Info
      - Bitly url shortner
      - <USER2>

[https://www.mashape.com/explore/All?page=1&filter=popula...](https://www.mashape.com/explore/All?page=1&filter=popularity)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's like <http://developer.github.com/v3/markdown/> but also for textile and money?

</comment><comment><USER11> huh? this is like selling a strtok web service. i must not be understanding the target audience or intended use case -- what is it?

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://evernote.com>

You could have at least tried a different shade of green.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1.5 cents for a simple function call?

<comment><USER5> Hi, the pricing has been updated. There was a typo:

$0.0149 per extra

The caching system and DB are the main costs

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Way too early for an April fool's joke.</comment>


The First Battery-Free Cellphone [dupe] - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hackster.io/the-first-battery-free-cellphone-855307a4f30e <comment><AUTHOR> I've marked as dupe.

Original article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14716986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14716986)

First post to HN (wired article): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14659236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14659236)</comment>


Ask HN: How many hours of sleep are you getting? - <AUTHOR> Reading blogs and stories around the internet, I get the feeling that sleep is not as important as shipping a product. So how much sleep are you getting, and how has that effected your health?
Personally, I am getting about 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night for about 2 weeks, and then I have a big sleep of about 10hours after that.
Edit: More info. <comment><USER2> 8-10 hours.

Anything less than 7 and I get "brain fog." And my day is essentially ruined. Hard to be productive when your mind is mush.

Cannot tell if I am the strange exception or if only the exceptional cases (e.g. 5 hrs etc) are posting here. Kind of like asking people their height, only the people who are the extreme end of the spectrum give an answer and the whole thing looks warped.

</comment><comment><USER3> Average 10. When I'm really tired 12 to 14. I can do with as little as 8, but if I go south of 8 for more than 2 days in a row I will not be productive. The day is kind of foggy.

OTOH I have noticed that in these foggy days, especially in the afternoon, I get very creative insights. I just write them down because I can't use them on that day, but after a good night of sleep these insights come very handy in the next days.

EDIT: that's before I stopped coffee. My sleep pattern has been irregular these last few days. I don't enough data yet, but I seem to need less sleep. I guess my average will go below 10, maybe down to 9h. I'll see in a year.

EDIT2: I'm obviously not counting "crash coding" sessions. I may stay awake for 36h, with serious pain in old injuries past the 24h mark, and hallucinations past that 36h limit. My productivity seems low after 24h, so I don't bother and just go to bed.

<comment><USER4> What are you secrets to quitting coffee? Would love to give that a try myself but I fear I'd be nonfunctional for a few weeks during the adjustment.

<comment><USER3> Step 1: no longer have some at home - that's passive, just don't buy it no more. Finish what you have

Step 2: refuse to use it outside your home. That's more active, and may require a commitment. You can start by allowing yourself to drink one every other day, to mitigate withdrawal symptoms.

Decaf etc - I can't say how useful it is, I wanted to cut coffee and not replace an habit by another one. No more coke or redbull either, since the problem here is caffeine: the active ingredient in coffee is also present in coke and redbull and the likes (pepsi, monster, ...)

Google plus support group : <https://plus.google.com/communities/113447576520287991560>

So far, I have been very dysfunctional during the first 2 days, and at my 4th day I feel normal. I was expecting to feel bad for up to 9 days.

It has had an interesting effect: it seems like I need less sleep, something I noticed when I tried to reduce the dosage these last weeks (not quitting altogether), and completely counterintuitive!

It may be just a normal variation due to a very small sample size. I would be curious to see how much sleep I will need in a year from now. Of course, your results may vary.

<comment><USER5> I tried to live w/o any caffeine a whole week. Expect a hardcore headache!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always had a mentality that if I say I'm going to finish x, I finish x before going to bed. This, as you can imagine, means that I have a very unreliable sleeping schedule. I probably average 5 hours a night every week.

A really good comment I read on HN a few days ago recommended that I set an alarm for _going_ to bed not for waking up, It's been working really well for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't the hacker in you just forces you to ignore the alarm to go to sleep?

<comment><USER6> I forced myself to go to bed for a week at midnight and now I start to feel sleepy/tired around that time. I also stopped drinking coffee or energy drinks after 6pm.

<comment><USER7> I often end up almost entirely stopping coffee as soon as a term ends. Last time I did, I also forced myself to go to bed earlier and do some work at home before leaving for work. It worked for quite a while but as the term progressed and work from both job and university piled up, I started to not have time to follow this strict schedule and to drink more and more coffee. It's very difficult when your schedule is tight, but I believe it's better to stick to way nevertheless. Tomorrow, I'm starting this schedule again. Keep going on yours!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Average of six and a half hours. It was higher for a brief period when I returned from international travel and my body had no idea where it was anymore. Other than that, I wake up tired, which I mostly attribute to breaking a REM cycle, since once I get going, I'm pretty much great until the afternoon. I think a siesta would do me well, though, but I don't work in a siesta-friendly world. So, coffee. But never after 5, or I don't sleep until later.

My take on it is that I sleep when I'm tired, with the asterisk that I have work in the morning most days, and that means I should try to be tired before 11:30p. But I also look at it like I look at treatment of my laptop battery - if I spend more effort worrying about and attempting to optimize the thing than it's worth, then that is effort wasted. The best I can hope for is good sleep when I am sleeping.

All of that said, sleep is obviously important since we all do it. I wouldn't make a habit of not sleeping so I could ship, but I also wouldn't let shipping get in the way of many things, like time with my family. Maybe my priorities are messed up, but they're mine.

</comment><comment><USER9> This may have been far more useful to you as a poll.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe. I feel that the context surrounding the number of hours slept is also interesting. That may be missing if this was a poll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Given that I work full time, have two kids (one being a newborn), and play in a band I sleep very little 4-6 hours a night.

That said, I've been doing this for almost a decade when I was in graduate school and working full time.

Over the last 13 years I've probably put on 10-15 lbs. I try to exercise at LEAST 3 times a week while eating as healthy as I can within reason.

Sleep is critical for memory retention, keeping up your immune system, maintaining serotonin level, general stress relief, etc. With that said if you have to you can adapt running on limited amounts. You'll have to be careful w/ weight gain or depression.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree about the kids. However, it is the one thing that I would gladly give up sleep for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Average probably 5-6 hours, on balance.

I admit I'm a bit amazed to see the number of folks who report sleeping 10 or more hours a night; I've been assuming normal sleeping habits were around 8 hours a night.

Personally, I do best on 8 a night (i.e., waking without an alarm), but I sacrifice quite a bit of sleep trying to work more or less full time but also be a more or less full-time parent to a 4-year-old and a 7-month-old.

The trickiest part is finding long unbroken stretches of time to concentrate on harder problems; I can manage emails while distracted, or in short bursts, and simpler coding tasks, but solving trickier problems usually happens in the middle of the night.

I tend to alternate sleeping 2-3 hours one night (e.g., 6-8am), then 7-8 the next. I feel mostly normal even on the days when I'm running a more serious deficit and don't generally feel sleepy during the day, though I can tell when the side-effects (reduced patience, mental errors, etc.) are creeping up more, and I'll try to spend a few nights in a row sleeping more.

I don't generally drink anything caffeinated, particularly when I'm running on little sleep, or if I'm planning on staying up to work -- it seems to affect me much more when I'm seriously sleep-deprived, giving me an unpleasant jittery feeling; the worst part is that I can't sleep when I want to, but my concentration is ruined, so there's no longer any point to staying awake.

</comment><comment><USER12> I average 7-8 hours per night, which is basically as much as my body seems to need. I work for myself from home, so I don't have to get up at any particular time - I just sleep as much as I need.

This seems to work well for me, as I have had pretty much perfect physical and mental health for the last 10 years (nothing but the occasional cold about once a year or so), and I have high motivation, productivity, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> About 5-6 between baby and work. Feel okay but not amazing. I envy the people who can do 4 hours consistently and function.

</comment><comment><USER14> I spent years sleep deprived. Sleeping around 6 hours per night. Sometimes working 36 hours non-stop. Deciding to get a solid 8 hours every single night was probably the smartest thing I've ever done for my productivity and sanity.

</comment><comment><USER15> In the week I do 7.5 hours a night. 9:30 to 5am. I find I wake up feeling best if I get sleep in blocks of 1.5 hours (with a bare minimum of 4.5) so depending on circumstance I do 6 hours some nights (go to bed later) or 9 if I need to catch up some sleep (wake up later).

I find that consistently getting 6 hours is survivable, but if I do it for too long I feel quite sluggish mentally.

On the weekends the strict schedule goes out the window. I go to bed when I get home or if its a night in when I'm tired, and wake up whenever it feels right.

</comment><comment><USER16> 5 hours a night on weekdays and like 11 hours a night on weekends. I have figured out that I'm way more productive, happy and healthy on weekends because of the more sleep I get.

</comment><comment><USER17> Probably about 5-6 hours a night. People tell me that you can't have make up sleep... but during the weekends I'll hit the bed at 2am and wake up somewhere in the middle of the next afternoon and feel perfectly refreshed.

My problem stems mostly from the 7 years I spent working a night shift at a grocery store. It completely flipped my sleep cycle script and I'm about 400% more efficient/focused between 10pm and 4am than I am at any other time during the day/night.

<comment><USER18> About the same for me except that being a night person is why I used to work the night shift. My problem comes from the 7 years since then that I've spent working day shift.

I'm usually ineffective until about 10am, then good until the midafternoon, when I have trouble focusing for awhile, then good until the evening slump (transitioning out of work) then good until 2am-4am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I tend to go through phases of getting plenty and then getting none. Up until a couple of weeks ago I was getting 8 hours a night, steady but since then I've been back in the habit of only having 2 -5 hours per night, last night I got 3 hours, woke up at 4AM and started working, had my first weekend project finished by 3pm today, starting working on the next one, nearly finished that.

</comment><comment><USER20> The other night I fell asleep at 6pm, woke up 4 hours later (10pm) then done some work until about 4:30am and caught 3 hours sleep and I felt great the next day. It was really weird, felt like I was up all night but wasn't tired at all the next day until late evening.

Anyway, I usually get 6 hours on weekdays and feel crap for an hour before brushing my teeth etc.

<comment><USER21> You experienced segmented sleep [1]. Some argue that this is the natural way of sleeping, if you remove artificial lights and modern schedules.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It varies. I wakeup around 9am each morning without an alarm no matter what time I go to bed. I try to be in bed by 1am, but if I stay up until 4am I still wakeup naturally around 9. Sometimes I can go back to sleep for another hour and a half or so though if I stayed up really late.

I feel the same with 6-9 hours of sleep. Any less and I notice it though.

</comment><comment><USER23> I average about 8 hour a night. I'm not the best at keeping a consistent bed time, but I won't get out of bed until I know I've had my 8 hours. Thus, my sleep schedule tends to drift later as the week progresses, and then I can reset on the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER24> 4 or 8, depends on the crunch. But I feel refreshed at those two points. 6 hours or 10 hours feels incomplete. When working on long projects I can sleep twice for 4 hours per day and am extremely productive as it feels like two mini days in one.

</comment><comment><USER25> 5-6h weekly. I live very away from work(2 hour trips) and I still want to get home and go to gym&OSS.

But in the weekend I sleep a lot. Maybe 12h a day.

I wish I could have more time to balance it(and my plan is that I will in the future), 8 hours a day would be ideal.

</comment><comment><USER26> Around 7. Very rarely do I sleep more (waking up naturally). I've been getting 2h naps in the evening lately, and I really like it (in the night after such naps I'll sleep 6h or so).

</comment><comment><USER27> I have an average of 7 hours of deep sleep, as confirmed by my newly acquired sleep tracker. I generally feel well-rested and able to use my brain at its maximum.

<comment><USER28> Which one did you get?

<comment><USER27> I got the Fitbit One. You have to manually tell it you're about to sleep and you just woke up, then it tells you how long you stayed in bed, how many times you woke up, and how much deep sleep you had.

Based on that, I averaged that I needed 8 hours of in-bed time to get 7 hours of deep sleep, and then I had no need for the device anymore. Until my sleep patterns change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 5-7 hours on weekdays, and 6-9 hours on weekends. It varies a lot, but my Jawbone UP helps keep track - actually pretty awesome after their API came out.

</comment><comment><USER30> I feel like I lose productivity if I get less than 7 hours of sleep a night. I can't think as clearly and can't process as much information

</comment><comment><USER31> About 8 hours, sometimes more, sometimes less. I lift regularly, so there's no point in lifting if I'm not sleeping and eating right.

</comment><comment><USER32> I sleep once between 4am and 7 am, then again between 11am and 1.30pm. I now cant sleep for more than 3 hrs in one go.

</comment><comment><USER33> It would be interesting to try and link these numbers to some form of productivity / successfulness metric.

</comment><comment><USER34> 7-9 hours, consistent on weekdays and weekends(Dogs don't care about weekend. :)

</comment><comment><USER35> At least 16 hours a day lately. :-/ (No joke.)

<comment><USER36> I knew someone who slept that much but he was on SSRIs.

<comment><USER35> So am I...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 6-7 hours, 9-10 on weekends.

</comment><comment><USER38> 10-12

</comment><comment><USER39> 4

</comment><comment><USER40> 7 - 7.5

</comment><comment><USER41> For the last couple of weeks, I have been getting about 4 hours of sleep a day. It is maddening, with me resorting to ZZZQuil. It does knock me out, but I wake up 4 hours later. I have been used to waking up in the afternoon for years, and getting 7-8 hours of sleep. I recently had a schedule change and I am slowly going insane...</comment>


UK age verification plans will expose credit card details, increase fraud risk - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/a-sequence-of-spankingly-bad-ideas-483cecf4ba89 <comment><USER2> > (this is) against Facebook's official "Platform Policy", per the following > quote:

>> Don't use data obtained from Facebook to make decisions about eligibility, including whether to approve or reject an application or how much interest to charge on a loan.

Not only relevant to adult sites but all the 'social lending credit score' apps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course, the age verification thing kind of falls flat when you consider the large amount of sites that simply won't care, will be based outside the UK/in an area that has no connection to its jurisdiction and will just offer the same content 'illegally'.

That part likely makes much of this moot. So the legal providers will get punished, and the dodgy ones will just continue not giving a damn.

Edit: Also, the comment on the article had an amusing 'alternative (that apparently Germany uses for some things):

> having the postal service go to a (prospective) user's home and check their > ID.

Oh, the amount of ways that could be abused are endless</comment>


Radio Paradise, Music from the 70's to Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.radioparadise.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> You can also use "RadioTray" [http://radiotray.sourceforge.net/](http://radiotray.sourceforge.net/) or there official HD Slideshow player at [http://www.radioparadise.com/rp_2p.php?slideshow=yes](http://www.radioparadise.com/rp_2p.php?slideshow=yes)</comment>


Time is running out for supersymmetry and string theory [video] - <AUTHOR> https://iai.tv/video/time-is-running-out-for-supersymmetry-and-string-theory <comment><USER2> There is no "time" prescribed for developing scientific theories. There is no plan here. They take exactly as much as they need to be developed, not any shorter nor any longer. It can be days, months, years, decades, centuries, millennias. Or more. They can take zero large failures, 5 large failures, 1000 large failures.

<comment><USER3> Is there anything that would cause adherents to accept that it is a failed theory? All of the false predictions so far apparently haven't moved the needle much. After a while it starts to seem more like Aristotelian natural philosophy rather than modern empirical science.

It would be different if this belief was pushed by a few isolated theorists, but it's the major focus of the field and they will likely ask for billions of dollars of new public investment for accelerators to continue the goose chase, with no promising leads from any of the previous experiments.

<comment><USER4> It is not possible for an un-falsified theory to be a failed theory. Instead, among theories there is only more interesting and less interesting. It is up to each researcher to individually decide which theory they think is the most interesting, on the basis of what is the most promising. There is no scientific basis for doing that, because by definition we are talking about trying to guess which theories _future_ evidence will support.

Some people argue that since so much of the supersymmetric theory parameter space has been ruled out, that this reflects negatively on supersymmetry as a whole. However you must understand that this is exactly the kind of non- empirical argument that some stringers get so much flak for deploying. Nobody knows what the prior distribution should be over parameter space and it is not possible to do something like applying a uniform distribution, because if you do something as simple as algebraically re-arrange the parameters the uniform distribution over the new parameters will not be equal to the uniform distribution over the old parameters.

I can give you a concrete example to illustrate the fallacy of trying to measure the "volume" of the ruled-out parameter space. Suppose there is a grain of rice somewhere on a chessboard, and you are trying to find it by asking a person who can see the board whether the grain is in zone 1, zone 2, and so on. You count all the way up to zone 63, and the person who can see the board says "no" to every query. You conclude that if the grain is not on 63/64ths of the board it is unlikely to be on the board at all. Later, you happen to walk in to the room with the chessboard, only to discover that the man in the room had drawn a weird grid that mapped zones 1 through 63 to different parts of square A1, and mapped 64 to the entire rest of the board.

<comment><USER3> [deleted, since reading it would waste your time]

<comment><USER4> > _Even if you think the parameter space is "uniform" in some sense as a > probability distribution_

Quite to the contrary, I was arguing that a uniform distribution over parameter space was impossible to define.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What are the alternatives for understanding the nature of quark interactions? As I see it, string theory first developed in order to try to simplify the process of calculating the possible different interacting paths. The fact that string theory can directly describe particles is convenient, but seems like an instance of the Microcosm Principle [0] wherein quantum particles can be described as collections of quantum particles. We could drop all of this, but then we would have to return to the problem of worldsheets another way, right?

[0] [https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2008/12/the_microcosm_p...](https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2008/12/the_microcosm_principle.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I dunno, seems like this time thing could go on for a while.

</comment><comment><USER7> [video]

</comment><comment><USER8> it turned out a waste of time for the video.

</comment><comment><USER9> "95% of the universe we don't understand"

Telephysangelists should also start questioning the 5% of what they do understand. All we hear about is DM/DE as if the underlying assumptions that lead us to believe they exist must, at any cost, be true. It reeks of more lost decades of scientific discovery to me, but then again I'm just a bystander.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that's true. The ideas of Dark Energy and Dark Matter are the best explanations for actual observations. There is no pressure to believe that they must exist. They are just the best we have right now and competing theories must be able to be confirmed by observations which they usually fail at.

<comment><USER11> Observational evidence: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster#Significance_to...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster#Significance_to_dark_matter)

The blue is dark matter. The pink is normal matter.

It's thought that the two clumps of blue+pink there passed through each other. But the blues went right through each other, undisturbed, while the normal pink stuff formed a shockwave.

>most of the mass in the cluster pair is in the form of two regions of dark matter, which bypassed the gas regions during the collision. This accords with predictions of dark matter as only weakly interacting, other than via the gravitational force.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What they mean is time is running out for mass media to make money (by selling ads) talking about supersymmetry and string theory. Science and physical theories are timeless - they already existed before there were any humans, and they would continue to exist even after the sun explodes.</comment>


Open source == Business is True story - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ashishait/open-source-business-is-true-story-cfcc50281000#.bw2pg7c36 <comment><AUTHOR> In this post I have tried to summarise our journey with open source, and how we got more business by doing just open source.</comment>


How our immune systems could stop people from reaching Mars - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/09/02/immune-systems-could-stop-humans-reaching-mars/ <comment><USER2> 80 per cent of our immune system is in our gut. I wonder if they looked at the microbiome of the cosmonauts.</comment>


Ask HN: Rate our startup - <AUTHOR>

Hello Fellow HNers,
I'm currently a front-end developer and designer for a new start-up in Australia called Zombal. We just launched our beta version after several months of hard work. It's basically an outsourcing site geared towards scientific work and research. It enables those without the necessary resources to find someone across the globe that does have them.
From our website: Zombal is as a web-based service for putting people with needs in scientific, technical, and industrial research and information activities in touch with people who may be able to assist them. Members of the system will submit tasks or questions (otherwise known as zombs) that other members can bid on if they have the required expertise.
Any kind of feedback will be greatly appreciated. :)
To get a beta invite go to: http://zombal.com/get-invite
Thanks! <comment><USER2> It's a really, really neat idea. I think it would be helpful to have an obvious "How does it work?" link on the home page, though - I started looking around at the navigation and got sort of distracted by the lingo.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://zombal.com/></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Hacker News unable to effectively discuss difficult topics? - <AUTHOR> https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/101949243243816673 <comment><USER2> Being flagged off the front page because it is explicitly off topic per the guidelines is not a sign that HN is unable to discuss topics of its "difficulty" (and it's not even an especially difficult topic compared to many that aren't flagged off; it's just particularly egregiously off-topic.)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not a difficult topic. It's a topic that is spammed with discussion that is either: (a) members of two tribes giving each other the full nelson, (b) members of two tribes gloating with other members of their tribe saying that the members of the other tribe are stupid.

<comment><USER4> That sure sounds like a form of difficulty. Getting back to the original question, discussing difficult topics requires very disciplined moderation which most people/forums cannot afford.

"The fact is, it's very easy to moderate comment sections. It's very easy to remove spam, bots, racial slurs, low-effort trolls, and abuse. ... But once you remove all those things, you're left with people honestly and civilly arguing for their opinions. And that's the scariest thing of all." [https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war- thread...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/)

<comment><USER5> Whether people are civil or uncivil, most people don't have interesting things to say about almost anything, even if we're talking about something like concurrency. That's why those kinds articles are massively upvoted and undercommented, even though this is HN and technical things should be its forte.

But HN has gotten so big that even technical programming and math topics are too hard (harder than topics of gender and sexuality, of which people have plenty of words to say). If you feel you're the kind of person who is pursuing some inquiry with commitment, then you need to find other people who match you in energy and preparation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hacker News is the private toy of Y Combinator. Their guidelines and their moderation policies and practices can be rather opaque and capricious. On the whole, I'm glad HN exists but I don't like the direction it's going.

</comment><comment><USER7> HN is for technical/scientific discussions. It is quite common for political topics to get removed.

[ Edit ] As PaulHoule mentioned, also business.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are numerous specific isues in the report concerning Internet, Web, Silicon Valley, and related technologies, firms, practices, and concerns, most especially Facebook and Twitter.

Among other outcomes, the consequences and repercussions are all but certain to include massive changes to self- and externally-imposed industry regulation. The Net's age of innocence is over.

Blanket declarations that the story is off-topic seem at best parlous thin.

<comment><USER7> When in doubt, you could email hn [ at ] ycombinator dot com and ask them for clarification.

<comment><AUTHOR> I frequently do. And have in this instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >Why is Hacker News unable to effectively discuss difficult topics?

>(Russian election interference report flagged off front page.)

Why is a tech news/discussion board unable to effectively discuss politics?

<comment><USER9> Perhaps because the community prefers to use other forums for political chat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think it's a problem of discussing difficult topics, but rather there's a tribe mentality in tech that tends to coalesce around certain ideas/topics etc, and anything that's not within that sphere gets beat down.

</comment><comment><USER11> Dear Cake Baker News moderators,

I'm terribly disappointed that this community of thoughtful, interesting bakers can't seem to effectively discuss the topic of whether or not beans belong in chili.</comment>


PersonSpot simplifies social magazine publication – personal brand promotion - <AUTHOR> http://www.personspot.com

<comment><USER2> I took a look but did not "get" what this is about.

Is it a blog building tool or does it create something you can ship to others?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can say that it's a new type of blog building tool which allows you to publish your own online social magazines with content you identify through your social media feeds, discover on the Web or create yourself. You use PersonSpot if you are looking to express, promote, define yourself or your business, and ultimately create value for your personal brand by informing others (magazines)...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best equity splitting practices? - <AUTHOR>

Say there are 3 founding members with equal stake in a company. Would it be split 33.3%, 33.3%, 33.3%?
Is it common practice to reserve a portion of equity for VC's or early employees? And if so, how much? Or does everyone's equity just get diluted with each of these things.
And on the topic of vesting equity - say someone leaves before their equity is fully vested, say only 50% of their 12% stake is vested - where does that equity get released to? <comment><USER2> IANAL / Talk to a lawyer.

So you should leave equity for early VCs / employees, just realize that when VCs invest at a certain percent that's for the outstanding shares.

Lets say you have 1,000 shares. You and your cofounders each get 300, and you leave 100 for an early investor.

You get an investment for 10% of the company. That will calculate out to 91-ish shares, since it is based on the total outstanding shares (including the investors). The remaining 9 shares are still available, but not factored into voting, etc. You can use these shares for future investments without having to issue more shares (which dilutes everyone), setup an employee option pool, etc.

As for people leaving, make sure you have a 1 year cliff. If they leave before vesting all their shares, then the company repurchases the shares from them at the amount they paid for the shares. At that point, they are in the unallocated pool. Your founders can purchase them from the company, you can sell them to investors or give them to employees, whatever.

Make sure to file an 83(b) election for tax purposes (pay for the shares now when they are cheap...).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks! This was super useful.</comment></comment>


"We're more likely to fund people we know are smart from their submissions and comments on YC Startup News." So you won't look at our votes, right? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I can't think of a better way to draw specific attention to your voting history than asking this question. ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> It makes me a bit uncomfortable, too. YCNews is a month-long web interview. On one hand, it encourages thoughtful discussion, but on the other, it's a bit exhausting. I end up spending a lot of time crafting very short posts.

<comment><USER4> I think that's probably over-thinking it-

It's not about making a good impression to pg and his friends.. They're smart developers, and I'm sure they aren't going to turn down a team because they didn't participate in news.yc..

What YC does give is A) A user-driven techcrunch-style site, where people can discuss the nuts and bolts

B) Focus- The conversation on sites like Digg or even reddit can devolve pretty far, and people end up spamming the site. News.YC has avoided that in part, because their answers ARE "graded"

C) A chance to discuss things with other like-minded people. Out team is going to be applying to YC this summer, but even if we're not accepted, News.YC will be a good source of discussion with other people who are thinking along the same line.. Even if we had no relation to YC, I'd read/write here, if only so that I could see people's replies.

<comment><USER3> "they aren't going to turn down a team because they didn't participate in news.yc"; that goes against the quote above. I'm sure that they won't turn down a great application from a great team with a great idea. But they might use the posts to push up or down some team on the edge.

I don't write posts to look smart, but when I do write something, I am somewhat more careful than usual, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this about upmodding the Phil Mickelson comment from the YC dinner pictures?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=3921>

<comment><AUTHOR> No.

I just think that a lot of people would think twice about voting if that were to be considered in their YC application.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The way people vote on submissions and comments can be revealing as well, but you won't check those right?

<comment><USER6> We see them; you have to if you want to catch abuses like voting rings and sockpuppets. But I can't actually remember any votes, no.</comment></comment>