The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (1987) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html <comment><USER2> "modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors..."

Given that "Turks" proper are a Central Asian people and not the original inhabitants of Turkey I have to wonder exactly what ancestors he is referring to.

Another point... maybe the skeletons before agriculture were taller, could be, but I'm guessing there are many more skeletons available from the agricultural period, so if the goal is maximum net skeletons, the agricultural period takes the prize (can't support a lot of people hunting gathering). There are probably plenty of tall skeletons from this period as well. Rulers who had the malnourished masses doing their work for them. But a malnourished skeleton still has more mass than a skeleton that just plain isn't there because the lifestyle never would have brought it into existence.

I've never been a fan of Jared Diamond. I think his analysis is too one dimensional and neglects myriads of factors in his quest for "the reason". I realize he is very popular and he does raise some somewhat interesting points at times. He just gives them too much credit for causing everything. Frankly, this piece sounds like it was written by a guy who wants to have a life a little bit freer than it is right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd agree that a hunter/gatherer lifestyle may provide a local maximum in some regions, at some points in time.

For instance, in Japan, the Jomon hunter/gatherers persisted long after they might have been supplanted by settled agriculturists just across the water. According to Jared Diamond in his later edition of Guns, Germs and Steel, the sheer fertility of Japan's land and seas allowed the Jomon people to maintain a relatively sophisticated culture, mitigating advances which might otherwise have arrived from the fertile crescent via Korea.

</comment><comment><USER4> Those non-working "parasites" include most of the people how made the important scientific discoveries of the previous couple of centuries. You can't do that if you've all got the same job and live in a society that can't sustain progress of any kind.

<comment><USER5> The thing I don't get about these articles is their author's complaints. They're complaining people ... don't kill themselves. But obviously they themselves don't suicide either.

So as I see it, they may have 2 intentions : 1) actually suicide themselves. But then why are they writing articles and also, no suicide ... So while this is their declared intention, it can't be their real intention.

2) increase their own success and, therefore increase their own environmental impact, success (and therefore kids) and all they say is evil.

This would also make them lying hypocrites : they're not looking to improve the environment, they're looking to make it worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If humans had never invented agriculture, we would have never gone to space and invented ways to track and prevent catastrophic asteroid impact. Plenty of non-human species will benefit from that, but I don't think this is a result the author predicted given this was written in 1987. IMHO, that trumps all of the ills mentioned in the paper as now we are talking about the future existence vs non-existence of the human race.

<comment><USER7> _we would have never gone to space_

Interesting conclusion. Can you elaborate how you got there? Did you perhaps fall victim to the "no free time" fallacy, that somehow agriculture gave us more time for leisure, study, etc?

Diamond writes _modern hunter-gatherers have at least as much free time as do farmers_ \- and this in land that is marginal, since we farmer-society-types have pushed them there.

A more intriguing line of argument might have to do with settled communities, etc.

Regardless of your line of argument, please ensure you do not succumb to survivor bias (because we got here this way we could only have gotten here this way, because no hunter-gatherer society got here, none can).

I look forward to rigorous reasoning.

<comment><USER8> Obviously, because most of us are neither hunters nor gatherers today. One modern farmer can feed 10's of thousands of people. Those people can specialize e.g. engineer, astronaut, teacher.

Hunter societies could never, ever have become this productive. There's just no leverage there. And ultimately, the local environment has a strict limit on supporting apex predators (hunters), which is orders of magnitude smaller than the environment 'tamed' and groomed for agriculture.

The whole hunter-is-better argument is silly, from a civilization point of view.

<comment><USER7> I don't believe anyone has argued _hunter-is-better_. The question is whether or not agriculture is better, and the jury is out. That is the point of the article.

They may be equivalent. Tough to tell. One may be better than the other. Tough to tell.

But to assume that just because we have agriculture and just because we did all this cool stuff the two are necessarily related is to make a logical error of the first order. History is contingent, not inevitable.

After all, how many thousands of years did we have agriculture with only the slowest of overall technical progress? Consider that life in the 18th century was, but for gunpowder and the printing press, essentially the same as life 18 centuries before the modern era, and about the same as life about 18 centuries before that.

Find the contingencies that caused rapid technical advancement starting roughly at the end of the 18th century, find the contingencies that made the last two (2!) centuries so much different that the 100 centuries that preceded them, and you might be on to something.

Now demonstrate that those contingencies simply could not have happened with the leisure time available to the hunter-gatherer.

I'm not saying one is better than the other. I simply refuse to make any assumptions. Survivor bias is a bitch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's ironic how there's a strain of progressives that want nothing to do with human _progress_.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure that most of the 7.3 billion of us wouldn't be alive without agriculture. So if agriculture was a mistake, does that mean most of us shouldn't be alive?

<comment><USER11> Isn't it a bit off point ? The article implies distribution of quality of life, not population count. 1 mostly happy billion versus 7.23b struggling and 0.07b accumulating wealth (if I subscribe to the 1% thing), which one do you prefer ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to > remain hunter-gatherers

The article doesn't give any reason why this would be the case, and it seemed a little stretched, anyone know why would farmers really want to kill hunters ?

ps: >Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others.

This feels naive at best. Biology creates classes, strong, witty, devious, etc etc

</comment><comment><USER12> Nary a mention of the much higher levels of violence in hunter-gatherer societies, past and present.

<comment><USER13> Where are you getting this data from?

<comment><USER12> Much has been written on the topic. Here's a fairly decent book.

[http://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful- Savag...](http://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful- Savage/dp/0195119126)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Always fun to enjoy a curmudgeon rant, but if you are honest and empirical about it, communism takes this black prize.

</comment><comment><USER15> Time to move beyond private property, hierarchies, and rule by force.

<comment><USER10> How would you possibly move beyond rule by force?

<comment><USER15> I hope in your day-to-day interactions with others, at the very least you strive for cooperation based on common understanding, social bonding, and mutual aid.

Even at my place of work, which has an implied hierarchy with force backing it up, I strive for this. When people need to pull rank or exert force, something is wrong. People who work together well work together without force.

Force is how you get people to do what you want when they don't want to do it. The only way you can think force is inevitable is if you think you can't live harmoniously with other people. To look beyond force as a means of social organization, one must be an optimist, but when you do that, you find all around you possibilities. The relationships that nourish and support us most fully are the least violent ones.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, no problem with your sweet outlook, though I don't appreciate the personalization of your response.

But what would I do if some unenlightened person sought to compel me through the threat of force?

<comment><USER15> You resist them with force.

Of course that's a little facetious. There's more to resisting force than simply meeting it with force in opposition. People live lives of resistance in all walks of life, and finding ways to get around hard, inflexible enforced conditions is useful to even powerful people. In general, the answer to your question is exactly determined b y the nature and context of the force.

Personally, I am a nonconfrontational person. I think avoiding confrontation has helped me find ways to deal with people who throw their authority around. On the subject of physical violence, well I don't want to spill personal details like that on a public forum.

<comment><USER10> And thus we find that force is the ultimate arbiter of human affairs.

<comment><USER15> I edited my comment realizing I was being too facetious. Force is usually the worst way to get anything done socially. If someone is using force, it means they have failed in every other way, and it'll lead to degrading social bonds, a reduction in cohesion, lower productivity, and future conflict. We live in a society that propagandizes extremely violent power structures and tries to pretend they aren't as violent as they actually are. If force were so ultimate and the true master of human relations, people wouldn't try to so hard to obfuscate it. Force is force. People dislike people who use force. That's why they bend over backwards to justify their force, or dress it up as some other means of mediation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The List Interface - <AUTHOR> http://nourdine.altervista.org/index.php?action=article&id=5 A tutorial on the List interface in java and all the pros and cons of its concrete implementations <comment><USER2> Iteration through a LinkedList isn't slower than through an ArrayList, in fact a simple test shows that on java 1.6.0_22 on my Macbook it is about 20% faster, and on java 1.6.0_17 on Linux about 10% faster.

Have you actually compared performance before making that claim? I can't see any reason why it would be substantially slower on any platform, except maybe due to locality of reference issues because of the overhead of storing a pointer to the next element.

Compared to an ArrayList, a LinkedList is slow for _random access_ as any treatise of the subject matter would tell you. See for example:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_list#Linked_lists_vs._dy...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_list#Linked_lists_vs._dynamic_arrays)</comment>


N2n(p2p vpn) for android. - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.zhoubug.n2n_gui n2n v2 for android. n2n is a peer to peer VPN daemon.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.zhoubug.n2n_gui
Get secure anytime, anywhere access to your computers from your Android device. Access your files, data and applications and get stuff done: • Access your home and work computers on the go • Control your PC as if you're sitting right in front of it • Get to your computer files and edit then from your Android device • Remotely run any application on your computer from your Android device To get started: Root access is highly recommended for correct n2n daemon usage
1. Using TUN.ko Installer to install tun.ko kernel module Make sure you have a rooted android phone. search tun.ko at google play store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aed.tun.installer 2. Install the n2n software on that computer Download the free n2n app(linux,bsd, Mac OS) http://www.ntop.org/products/n2n/ windows client: https://www.vpnhosting.cz/n2nguien.exe
Now you're ready to access your computers from anywhere with n2n from your Android device. • File Manager lets you save files directly on your Android device so you can work on them offline, plus move and copy files between your computers and devices. • Remote Application(ssh,remote desktop etc..) Access allows you to use PC applications from your Android device wherever you go. <comment><AUTHOR> n2n v2 for android. n2n is a peer to peer VPN daemon. Get secure anytime, anywhere access to your computers from your Android device.

Access your files, data and applications and get stuff done:

• Access your home and work computers on the go

• Control your PC as if you're sitting right in front of it

• Get to your computer files and edit then from your Android device

• Remotely run any application on your computer from your Android device

To get started:

Root access is highly recommended for correct n2n daemon usage

1\. Using TUN.ko Installer to install tun.ko kernel module Make sure you have a rooted android phone.

search tun.ko at google play store.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aed.tun.in...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aed.tun.installer)

2\. Install the n2n software on that computer

Download the free n2n app(linux,bsd, Mac OS)

[http://www.ntop.org/products/n2n/](http://www.ntop.org/products/n2n/)

windows client:

[https://www.vpnhosting.cz/n2nguien.exe](https://www.vpnhosting.cz/n2nguien.exe)

Now you're ready to access your computers from anywhere with n2n from your Android device.

• File Manager lets you save files directly on your Android device so you can work on them offline, plus move and copy files between your computers and devices.

• Remote Application(ssh,remote desktop etc..) Access allows you to use PC applications from your Android device wherever you go.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.zhoubug.n2...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.zhoubug.n2n_gui)</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Now is the perfect time to roll out a new freelance platform - <AUTHOR> The Elance is going to be shut down soon and merged into oDesk aka Upwork. And Upwork is an absolute disaster.
The messaging system doesn't work. The stats don't work. The search barely works. The ranking system is a joke. The invoices they send to clients are illegal in Europe.[https://community.upwork.com/t5/Clients/Name-on-a-received-invoice/m-p/92225#U92225]
And for the last few days, the job application system -- arguably, the most important thing on the whole website -- stopped working.
If you want to appreciate the full extend of the disaster, just visit their forum and see what their freelancers and clients have to say about it: https://community.upwork.com
They are already loosing people and the only reason anyone's still using them is the lack of a better alternative.
This is the perfect chance for a new platform. <comment><USER2> How can you build a platform that doesn't race to the bottom but allows it to extract the value added (and hence profits) from collecting and vetting great talent?

I always imagine the interaction with supply (quality freelance developer) and demand (company needing work done) to be like this:

Company: "I need great freelancers!" Dev: "I'm a great freelancer! My rate is $100/hr [or whatever]!"

[Company interviews Dev, sees prev results, feels happy w/Dev]

Company: "Great! We'll pay you that for the first few days on this platform, then engage you for long term projects off the platform. That way, we don't have to pay Matching Site the finder's fee."

<comment><USER3> The end point you imagine there often does not happen because it is REALLY useful to have an escrow agent inbetween. I use odesk/upwork personally, and it provides me a lot of value.

It bills my work to my clients weekly, and automatically withdraws the money from their credit card. This means if a client is unhappy with a freelancer it's easy for them to start a dialogue and start it early; and at the same time the freelancer has protection with less-than-honest clients and can lose, at most, a week's worth of work.

Compare this to normal freelancer contracts where the cash is typically paid monthly, with a delay of 14+ days after receipt of invoice. If a client acts in bad faith in that case, the freelancer loses a lot more, and to get money back, would have to go through international courts, which often costs more than the money they lost.

<comment><USER2> Very helpful insight, thanks. To summarize - the value added services of billing, monitoring and dispute resolution make it worthwhile for the contractor to use the service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Full disclosure: I work with Gigster.

We noticed the same broken things here. I don't want to give Elance/UpWork too hard a time - they can be good for some things (like Data Entry, etc) but clearly their model has some issues when it comes to development projects.

Where our model is different is that all of our projects have a dedicated Product Manager who overseas the build for fixed-price projects. The developers and clients deal directly with the project's PM (not with each other). That saves time for the client. It adds a layer but this counter- intuitively improves communication. I speak broken Spanish. So if I run into a Spanish speaker who speaks broken English then we can communicate. That's fine if we're doing something simple but if the nuance of different words matters then we'll do much better if we have a professional translator who's a native speaker in both languages in between us.

I actually interviewed the former CEO of oDesk for my blog a few years ago (long before Gigster existed) so I've been following this space and thinking about where it's heading for a while. That's why I agree with the OP about the opportunity for a new platform to rise in this space and the fundamental issue that a race to the bottom will impact the quality of the build.

@jalopy & @mithaldu - I think what you're alluding to is the simplicity of not having to deal with all the pain of being a freelancer (client management, paperwork, etc). That's our appeal to developers: we give them specs and they can just focus on building, not marketing themselves, client management, etc.

@logn - Eerily similar to how we operate.

<comment><USER5> Do you guys have any plans of hiring experienced remote PM's in a similar way that you hire freelance devs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The major issue I am finding with the new platforms like gigster and toptal is their negotiation strategies.

It is in their best interest to keep deal-flow high, which means that they try not to reject submitted projects and try to push the low prices onto the developer.

If a developer from India knows his chops and can run circles around JS- developers in Silicon Valley, he will also know that he can charge $100 per hour, over-deliver and still be cheaper than a bootcamp-JS guy.

Yet Toptal will negotiate a rate of $25 (or thereabouts), based on some average-pricing they use and justifying that "this is what most devs charge in your area, so $100 per hour will be too high, simply cause you're in India".

Also, this is a new account asking this question... It got me wondering whether this is some backhanded marketing-PR for gigster.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can confirm that Upwork is an unmitigated disaster. As someone trying to get started and hire a contractor, I couldn't figure how to do some very basic things. It's truly mind-boggling how bad it is.

Everyone involved in the design and programming should be placed on some kind of industry Do-Not-Hire list.

> the only reason anyone's still using them is the lack of a better > alternative

That, however, is not true. Freelancer.com has been around forever and is much better. (By which I mean it's functional — a vast improvement over Upwork.)

<comment><USER8> You really have a way with words. I loved reading your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My thoughts for a good freelancer platform (after having used them extensively) --

1\. Require specs. If needed make this be marketplace listed work too, to write a spec.

2\. Require flat-priced projects. Site moderators will handle scope-creep disputes.

3\. Track each project's overall cost and analyze how much each developer actually costs for projects.

I think this would help eliminate the problem that low cost hourly devs sometimes make up for their pricing in quantity.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a freelance developer and I hire people to do small, well defined jobs for me all the time from these sites (data entry, ms word to clean html conversions, etc.).

I've used elance extensively and I'm very, VERY disappointed with how the "transition" to upwork has gone. It is bordering on unusable and has added a lot of difficulty to what should be a straightforward transaction. What a disaster.

So yes, I would agree that there needs to be another competitor that is straightforward to use and definitely an opportunity here. I feel like Metcalfe's Law / network effects of the existing sites might be difficult to overcome, but its worth a shot!

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for the tip. I'm going to make one where the rates aren't disclosed in the search feature, and billing options are only available in per-day and per- week increments. :P

</comment><comment><USER12> What about Gigster? [https://trygigster.com/](https://trygigster.com/)

They are part of the Summer Class of 2015 for Y-Combinator and are really promising. You basically sign up to be a Gigster and then get paired with gigs that pay. Within a week you could be up and running with real projects that actually pay.

Gigster handles all the PM and HR related functions of a business and quickly gets jobs to you so you can start right away.

</comment><comment><USER13> Has anyone here even made any money from these sites? I looked at them a couple times to earn some beer money. The jobs are always vague or the low rates offered by some programmers makes the market less appealing.

<comment><USER14> I started looking for freelance jobs on Elance at the end of June for fun. I've since completed 7 super simple tasks and made $1200. It's definitely a race to the bottom and I'm lucky to have a cushy fulltime web developer job because it'd be hard to live off of Elance earnings alone. But as a hobby it's not bad. Completely agree though, clients tend to be super vague in their job listings and their budgets are miniscule. Every once in a while I find a gem though and it can be satisfying to help someone out remotely for some extra cash.

<comment><USER15> Do you have any ideas on what changes could be made to make it less of a race to the bottom? Charge a fee to post jobs? Enforce a minimum $/hr?

<comment><USER14> I honestly don't know if it's possible or even something that should be prevented. There will always be people in countries with lower costs of living that can offer to do a job remotely for cheaper. I don't know if it's fair necessarily to exclude them and keep pricing higher artificially just for our (developers) benefit. This is supply and demand on a global scale. Fortunately, I found that overseas developers who offer to do those jobs for pennies also often deliver subpar quality and have poor communication skills. That's where I can stand out and capitalize on that competitive advantage. Clients that want to pay ridiculously low amounts for huge, complex tasks are clients I don't want to work with anyways. They tend to be a giant pain in the ass. The overseas developers can gladly take them. Clients that know the value of my more expensive rates are the ones that tend to be easier to work with and have less unreasonable expectations. It's just a matter of trying to find those clients that get it.

<comment><USER15> > Clients that know the value of my more expensive rates are the ones that > tend to be easier to work with and have less unreasonable expectations. It's > just a matter of trying to find those clients that get it.

Based on your previous post, it doesn't sound like you get these kinds of clients on elance often. That makes perfect sense to me; elance and odesk have a reputation of being race to the bottom sites, so why would somebody go there looking for quality devs?

Thinking about this some more, it's possible the site I wished existed isn't in the same field as odesk and elance. Those tend to be for shorter, cheaper projects. What I'm looking for is a marketplace for higher end freelance devs, so it's easier for work to find me and so somebody else handles all the escrow details.

<comment><USER14> Absolutely. I skim every single job posting under web programming on Elance and sometimes a week goes by before one shows up that's promising enough to apply to. It's not ideal, but to me this is fine right now because I'm really just doing this as a hobby. I like the short and sub-$500 fixed price projects because it allows me to test the waters with a new client. If they are too annoying to work with, I get the job done quickly and move on. My goal is to pick up recurring clients this way over time that have already been vetted by me with these smaller projects. For that Elance is not too bad. Upwork on the other hand is a huge mess...

There are definitely some sites out there that help higher end developers and clients to find each other. I see gun.io mentioned a lot. Someone posted about trygigster.com here too. The problem I have with those sites is that they focus too much on the top 5% of developers and huge company clients. There are plenty of competent freelancers that aren't rockstar developers and many good clients that aren't Fortune 500 businesses. It seems there isn't a marketplace for those mid-range freelancers and clients. I'd love a site like that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What about freelancer.com? (formerly vworker)

<comment><USER17> Freelancer.com isn't "former VWorker".

VWorker.com (which was formerly rentacoder.com) has been bought up by Freelancer.com, which co-existed for some time.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's the perfect chance for a newer platform that already exists. If people are leaving because of trust issues, then they will go somewhere that people can already recommend which means it needs to already be released and have some customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not the trust issues, it's that the current platform is literally doesn't work most of the time.

But I do agree with you, a newer platform that already exists probably has a better chance. All they need is some marketing directed at frustrated upwork users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Excellent. Thank you for this. Perfect timing.

</comment><comment><USER20> freelancer.com is a similar, race-to-the-bottom type of system.

</comment><comment><USER21> Background: I am the COO of Toptal

While these technical problems with Upwork's platform certainly do seem very problematic, I'm not sure that "now is the time to roll out a new freelance platform" is the right conclusion, at least not without some revision.

\- For starters, there are plenty of open freelance marketplaces out there that operate pretty much exactly in the same way as Upwork (Freelancer.com, for example). Some are more specialized (like 99designs), but in general the list is pretty endless. Adding another identical platform to the mix is unlikely to accomplish much.

\- The real issue is that the operating model for freelance platforms has been broken. This has been the case for a long time, and is unrelated to Upwork's technical issues.

The open marketplace model falls short in several ways, many of which relate to the "race to the bottom" phenomenon that other responses here mention:

For companies:

a. There's no quality assurance and profiles/test scores can be fabricated.

b. You have to deal with a large volume of bids, and sifting through them defeats one of the top reasons people hire freelancers: to move fast.

c. There's very little in the way of protection on any engagement. The risk of your project getting botched by someone incompetent or your freelancer disappearing is significant.

For freelancers:

a. Talented professionals have to deal with absurdly low bids from unqualified people. Many freelancers are forced to lower their rate to below what they're worth just to get any work.

b. The large volume of bids for most projects means that it can be much tougher to stand out. The most talented freelancers are often the worst self- promoters.

c. There's no protection from clients with unrealistic expectations.

Long-term, these are the problems that successful freelance models will need to be able to solve at scale. Is this doable? I certainly think so - it's what we've been working on at Toptal. Here's what we believe the solution looks like, and therefore how we've built Toptal to behave:

\- All engagements need to solve these problems both for freelancers and for clients. Clients are looking for great freelancers and freelancers are looking for great clients. Therefore the solution is to thoroughly vet both freelancers AND clients.

\- Vetting must be rigorous and done in a non-automated, non-riggable, extremely thorough way. Freelancers must be able to set their own rates and not have to worry about low-bid contests. Only clients with serious projects who are ready to pay freelancers what they're worth need apply. No race to the bottom.

\- There must be a high level of support during ALL engagements, even at scale. Clients should only meet freelancers who were handpicked for their project, and vice versa. This also solves the problem of high bid volumes.

\- Support should continue throughout the engagement to resolve conflicts and ensure success.

This is exactly how Toptal has operated for several years now for freelance software developers, and it has worked quite well--even though we made some mistakes along the way. While this has been primarily in the software development space thus far, the principles apply to other types of freelance work as well.

Bottom line: Upwork's technical issues are certainly problematic, but there are larger issues that freelance platform models will need to solve in the long run.

<comment> some-coder Still I earn $40-50/h on Upwork while being from Eastern Europe and TopTal limits me to $25/h because "well, people in your region are poor, you should be poor too".

<comment><USER21> This is most certainly false. If this actually happened to you, email me: firstname.lastname@example.com.</comment></comment></comment>


The hacker's version of an embeddable social button - <AUTHOR> http://coderwall.com/blog/2012-01-16-the-hacker-version-of-an-embeddable-social-button

<comment><USER2> Very interesting concept.

However, I believe it is sort of misleading, because most users would except a social button to not change the current window, but rather just the state of the button itself. Also, there doesnt seem to be a way to reverse an endorsement, similarly to unlike a previous like.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be much happier with a replacement for the social buttons that don't tell Facebook/Google/whatever every website I go to until I click the button.

<comment><USER4> Take a look at the following link, it's exactly what those guys made: <http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/></comment></comment>


Automation and Make - <AUTHOR> https://swcarpentry.github.io/make-novice/ <comment><USER2> I've gotten to know cmake recently and it is a reasonable high-level language on top of make.

It's like make is raw plastic, and cmake is legos.

<comment><USER3> Makefiles can be elegant and simple or monstrosities. CMake files have a constant complexity level. At least in my opinion :)

<comment><USER4> There are (at least) two levels of CMake file: pre-3.0 legacy style with lots of FILE GLOB crap, and "Modern CMake" targets-for-everything" style. I find the latter much nicer, of course.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Isn't Just Violating Our Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/opinion/facebook-privacy-zuckerberg-society.html <comment><USER2> "Facebook is insistent on seeing its failures as harming individuals, never society as a whole. Facebook has been asking the wrong question consistently for more than a decade..."

Upton Sinclair: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it."</comment>


Two Years Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://blog.atom.io/2016/05/06/two-years-open-source.html <comment><USER2> I love Atom, and use it every day. (Happy anniversary Atom!)

But I don't get one very big thing about Atom: why is it so intimately tied to Electron?

Coming from a company that has a huge web site dealing in source code, and that even has a source code editor embedded in it, I can't understand why they would preclude Atom from running in a browser. Github offering online-IDE functionality seems like a such a natural extension to their business.

<comment><USER3> > I can't understand why they would preclude Atom from running in a browser.

If memory serves me right, I believe it was conceived to be a standalone commercial product, with tight GitHub integration; but somewhere a long the line, it became a free open source project that it is today.

I still don't understand why so much effort is being put into an editor though. I'm guessing people are drawing a comparison with the web browser war, with who owns the editor, will own the developer mind share.

<comment><USER4> The three applications I use every single day without fail are an editor, an email client and a web browser (I'm a developer/sysadmin). If you provide one of those, I'm going to see your brand all the time, even if I'm not directly aware of it. That's quite a powerful position to be in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From what I've seen Atom needs to do some perf work and also integrate some perf monitoring tools, especially for addons.

Other than that: kudos for the great OSS project!

<comment><USER6> I think the "Atom is slow" meme needs to die.

Obviously, if you are loading 100s of random extensions made by fledgling JS programmers you are gonna have a bad time. Obviously if you load a 2gb text file and try to syntax highlight it, you're gonna have a bad time.

The core editor is fast, looks great, and is stupid extensible. Yeah, it's not vim fast, and yeah it won't fly on your dads old compaq, but it's fast enough not to care at this point.

<comment><USER7> I tried atom a few months ago and it was slow. Loaded it up yesterday and I'm thinking of switching if only I could get decent autocomplete working.

<comment><USER8> Curious what problems you have with the autocomplete. I haven't had any serious issues with it (yet).

<comment><USER7> I mainly write JS. With vs code I can get some basic autocomplete with type script files (typings) and it autocompletes my own JS (including Docs). Atom will only show generic auto completion and won't even autocomplete my own files. I've given ternJS a try but can't seem to get it working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Happy Anniversary Atom. I switched from Sublime over a year ago and love it.

Never had an issue with slow performance, and I am using it on an 8 year old MacBook Pro, lol.

Then again, I keep my plugins to a minimum (around 10 or 12 I think), and I also tend to keep my code in small files of around 100 - 400 lines of code per file. I routinely work in 6 to 10 open files at once, but never had a slowness issue.

The 2 or 3 occassions where I've had to open a humongous log file, I've just resorted to TextEdit or Sublime...

<comment><USER10> Personally my top wish for this project is them handling standard in.

[https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/1729](https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/1729)

It's really the one big thing that keeps me on native editors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really love working with Atom and almost completely switched from sublime text.

One problem I ran into lately quite often is that there seem to be shared resources with Chrome/Chromium on Ubuntu 14.04. Sometimes Chrome plugins and Atom crash at the same time and I know of another Ubuntu installation where Chrome and Atom are having weird graphic glitches which render the computer unable to work with.

</comment><comment><USER12> Atom's great. I admit to chuckling when I read jokes at node programmers' expense. But it's really good editor IMO. Feature rich, just works.

</comment><comment><USER13> I almost completely switched from Atom to VSCode because of performance and nice IntelliSense for JS.

Reading this thread I gave a Atom another shot, uninstalling all plugins, and damn, how much faster it is :) I can open big files easily now.

</comment><comment><USER14> I just saw their Atom 1.0 promo video (click on the link on the home page) and I loved it.</comment>


Former Apple Exec goes to JC Penney and slashes prices by 40% - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2012/01/jc-penney-cuts-all-prices-by-40-permanently.html <comment><USER2> It's down at the bottom of the article, but this:

> _Penney will use whole figures when pricing items. In other words, you won't > see jeans with a price tag of $19.99, but rather $19 or $20._

is actually my favourite part of the whole thing. Taken together, it's a major overhaul that says, hey, sorry, over decades we'd gotten wrapped up in all these little marketing tricks to increase our sales and bottom line, but we decided it was time to treat y'all like grownups for a change.

I hope it works out for them.

<comment><USER3> My favorite as well. I've found myself in discussion with many on this logic for some time but rarely does it go mainstream. On a logical stance, all these moves represent honesty and no BS. Similar to when General Motors launched the Saturn line of cars with flat pricing. We owned a few in my family growing up and I remember my dad telling me one of the biggest reasons he bought it was because he knew no one else paid a dime less than he did for the same car.

<comment><USER4> "Similar to when General Motors launched the Saturn line of cars with flat pricing"

And we all know now how well THAT worked out. Haggling, whether successful or not, gives the impression to the customer that they are in control and are 'saving' money.

<comment><USER5> How about CarMax? They are flat pricing no haggle if I recall and they're going like gangbusters.

<comment><USER6> My guess would be they will haggle if the buyer wants to haggle. They aren't going to give up a sale. But, I've never shopped CarMax so I don't really know.

<comment><USER7> I had a roommate years ago that worked as a salesman at CarMax. He had about the authority to haggle as the kid taking your order at McDonalds. I think the volume is so high that if you don't want it at the marked price, someone tomorrow will. Of course, that was years ago at one lot. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is referred to as the "fast fashion" business model. H&M and Zara in Europe has been doing it for quite a while already. Wikipedia article here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_fashion>

It's not so surprising that they go for this business model, since "fast fashion" retailers have an average profit margin of 16%, compared to 7% for typical retailers, at least according to this source: [http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...
Basically it's "just-in-time" production coupled with "agile"-type response with regards to fashion trends and customer wants.

<comment><USER9> Not sure if that's entirely accurate. JCP is a mall anchor/dept store, not an H&M or a Zara. They sell other makers' labels. And this announcement seems relegated to the pricing domain, haven't read anything about them changing their production/distribution model.

<comment><USER8> I wasn't aware of that. That probably means the ideas behind this is a bit different, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I could see this being hugely successful. The only question is whether people have been conditioned for the sale season. Growing up in a household full of women who buy clothing and accessories all the time, they particularly save up for when holidays approach.

<comment><USER11> Johnson made no mentioning of eliminating popular sales seasons like Black Friday.

This New York Times article (yes, login may be required) is much more informative in regards to his plans: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/jc-penneys- chief-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/jc-penneys-chief-ron- johnson-announces-plans-to-revamp-stores.html?_r=1)

Johnson pointed out that last year, JC Penney had 590 promotions, which made it seem that everyone was always on sale in some form or another. Honestly, _that_ 's tremendously confusing for consumers, as you basically can't keep track of what's on sale. The net result is they were selling everything at such a low price, that a 40% cut puts it only higher than the average sale price with those near-600 promotions.

 _""So customers ignored us 99 percent of the time," he said. "At some point, you, as a brand, look desperate if you have to market that much." He will move to monthlong promotions, on which Penney will spend $80 million a month, he said, which is a decrease from Penney's current marketing spending level, which is more than $1 billion a year. And instead of mailed fliers, the company will send shoppers a 96-page catalog each month with a more magazinelike presentation."_

72% of JC Penney's revenue came form products sold at a 50% or higher discount. So a 40% across the board reduction on SKU prices still increases their ASP. Apparently from between 2002 the 2011, their average cost per item sold stood around the same, yet even as the average price tag rose from $27 to $36, JC Penney's margin never increased due to the 590 promotions a year. _"Now most things are on 60 percent markdown, and every time we do that, we're discounting Penney's brand"._

So less trickery around pricing, far fewer promotions at regular schedules with long intervals that consumers can actually respond to, and an attempt to increase the overall ASP of products. Sounds like a good change from their promotion-driven, brand-devaluing death spiral.

<comment><USER12> _Johnson pointed out that last year, JC Penney had 590 promotions, which made it seem that everyone was always on sale in some form or another. Honestly, that's tremendously confusing for consumers, as you basically can't keep track of what's on sale._

I agree. I wanted to buy a sports jacket at Macy's, but their continuous sales made me wait for a long time. Every time I would just peek into the store; and then convince myself to wait till the next big "sale" came along.

In a sense, it's like the "secretary problem".

<comment><USER13> Apt analogy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Also, new JC Penney logo and branding: [http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/jcpenney...](http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/jcpenney_nails_the_american_look.php)

<comment><USER4> "The new jcpenney logo, which combines the elements that have made jcpenney an enduring American brand, by evoking the nation's flag and jcpenney's commitment to treating customers Fair and Square."

Soo.. they made it look almost exactly like the US flag and made is square. Design genius. Personally I think the new logo is pretty crappy, wouldn't scale well and would lose most of it's appeal printed in B&W. Alas this debate should be saved for another thread.

<comment><USER15> "printed in B&W"

I haven't read a printed newspaper in years. Having said that, it's true that a good logo should still be recognizable without color. The new logo passes that test.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Knowing that I can pop in at any time and get a fair price is much better for than wondering if I'm getting screwed that particular day. Maybe it's an American thing - it seems that the rest of the world loves to haggle.

<comment><USER17> When was the last time that someone haggled at JCPenny?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there a website where I can go to see when normal retailers have had sales in the past, so that I might predict the arrival of the next one?

Better yet, imagine this data set: the price of every consumer good sold in retail stores, as a function of store and time.

What would be the impact of such a database, if it became widely available, say, from a company whose mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful?

<comment><USER19> "What would be the impact of such a database, if it became widely available, say, from a company whose mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful?"

More ad buys from the covered companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing to keep in mind is that this cheapens the brand. It's one thing to buy a $10 t-shirt at Gap and another - a $30 T at 60% discount at Banana Republic. They might be identical, but the perceived value of latter is higher.

This is a very ballsy move for the company. Must be desperate times.

<comment><USER21> I think the JC Penney brand has already been placed into this cheaper segment. They are squarely aimed at the mass market.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Most of the retail JCP outlets near me have closed. They are grasping at straws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thank you OP (kennethologist) for fixing the title of this article. The nymag title is "JCPenney Permanently Cuts All Prices by 40 Percent" which is certainly not true. Copy editor Bill Walsh writes:

 _The company meant "permanent" in the sense of regular prices as opposed to sale prices. It's lowering regular prices and cutting back on sales in a strategy that may or may not work. If the strategy doesn't work, the company has every right to change course -- and if it does, a bunch of news outlets will be revealed as big, fat liars._

Bill goes on to criticize lazy journalists who just write what they're told: <http://theslot.blogspot.com/2012/01/penney-want-cracker.html>

</comment><comment><USER23> For a really good explanation of what is going on, I highly recommend Brian Roemmele's quora post: [http://www.quora.com/JCPenney/Why-did-Ron-Johnson- leave-Appl...](http://www.quora.com/JCPenney/Why-did-Ron-Johnson-leave-Apple- to-become-JCPenneys-CEO)

Not sure if he was at Johnson's press event or not, but he has pictures from it and explains in detail Johnson's new strategy for JCPenny. Looks like a good bet to me.

</comment><comment><USER24> A long time ago I read a book called "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" [1] and one of them was don't get caught up with couponing (i.e. sales). They are like drugs: they quickly increase revenue, but now you are dependent on them to get revenue. I like how this exec thinks. (I also like how they'll round up prices to the nearest dollar)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing- Violate/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing- Violate/dp/0887306667) (not an affiliate link)

</comment><comment><USER25> It doesn't appear terribly novel to me, hasn't big box retailers done this for a long time? I don't recall IKEA doing out-right sales for an example (they have continuous clearances and promotions, of course, but not an "everything is cheaper in January" type sale).

 _For instance, jewelry and Valentine's Day gifts would go on sale in February, while Christmas decorations would be discounted in November._

Isn't the point of "seasonal sales" to clear stock? So Christmas stock goes on sale in January, Valentines stock goes on sale 15 Feb?

<comment><USER26> True, except Ikea (and H&M, Zara and Forever 21) only sell their own merchandise. Slashing markups on branded items on his scale is fairly novel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just informally talking with the women in my household, they all seem to hate the idea of not having sales. I told them that JCP will still have sales (Christmas, Valentines Day, etc.) but they were nonplussed on the whole idea. The first thing my wife did when she got her new JCP catalog was look for coupons and she was sorely disappointed.

I think it's hard-wired into some people's (read: women's) brains to not purchase anything unless its on sale. Every single one of them said it was a bad idea.

<comment><USER28> I agree with this fully. I know many people who wouldn't buy a pair of boots for $100, but would buy the same boots if labeled "Uusually $400, but on sale for $200!"

People don't understand the shopping experience. It's about going there, trying the clothes, getting good deals. The whole shopping experience starts at the parking lot: find the spot closest to the main entrance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For some reason I read the headline as saying that an Apple exec got pissed and drunk after being fired then stumbled into a random JC Penney and demanded that all prices be slashed 40%.

The actual news is _much_ more interesting.</comment>


Ask HN: What does HN think of Open vSwitch? - <AUTHOR> I have been using it for a project for half a year, and it has been wonderful. It seems very powerful and packs a lot of features. But I do not see popularity of it that I think it deserves. Not here, not on the internet, tutorials are limited. Maybe I am looking at wrong direction, anyways. Do I over-estimate it or is it really that good but only a few people know it? It is even supported on Windows with Hyper-V virtual machines.<p>http://openvswitch.org <comment><USER2> I recently had reason to get involved in networking at a low level and used it as an opportunity to see what all the SDN buzz was about. I came to have a deep appreciation for Open vSwitch and, like you, was surprised at the lack of good documentation and tutorials.

The man pages are very good, but beyond simple bridging the documentation is weak and generally seems to assume the reader is familiar with a lot of concepts in advance. In particular, there seems to be tremendous power in using OVSDB to control OVS across nodes. There is even an OVN project that looks very interesting. However, it seems that most documentation assumes your either using Open Daylight (which is itself a complicated mess) or that your using OpenStack or similar.

OVS is definitely in need of some love from the wider community and needs to come out from the shadows.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's mostly not discussed around here because it is fairly low-level plumbing technology, as is a lot of other network tech. You don't see much discussion about SDN approaches, routing protocols, ... around here either. Most "users" of Open vSwitch probably don't know that it runs in the internals of the virtualization platform they are using, since it is hidden away under other layers.

I haven't used it much directly, but it is quite nice and a good piece of software in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER4> I intend to write some articles on it very soon. I am just shocked to find someone like yourself on HN. Will favourite your message and be in touch soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please hit me at mustafa91 at gmail com</comment></comment>


Do we need a C++ compiler that allows only a subset of the C++ standards? - <AUTHOR> http://www.codergears.com/Blog/?p=1863

<comment><USER2> We have MISRA C++ and there are conformance checking compilers.</comment>


815 days – the longest streak on GitHub? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sartak

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. If it was some actual code - that would be amazing feat. But this?

Yes, he is persistent, but that's about it.</comment>


Hiking for Emails [video] - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/148060514 <comment><USER2> A great reminder that it's really the _connectivity between people_ that the internet brings that is valuable… "apps" etc. are just a convenient bonus for us in the first world, who take the connectivity for granted at this point.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing to see on one hand, some westerners, want to `heirloom' back to simpler times/aesthetics -- then to see this man who has strong dreams to get Nepal moving forward. Well, I guess it's interesting to see the cravings from the other perspective. Incredibly shot, too!

</comment><comment><USER4> Freaking amazing. Setting up a point to point wireless link is no small feat, let alone in 2002 where the hardware was much less available. Good cinematography as well.

I wonder what kind of hardware they are using today.</comment>


Typing stealth: a review of the CODE Keyboard - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/typing-stealth-a-review-of-the-code-keyboard/ <comment><USER2> I've read a lot of posts on programming-related blogs about the importance of typing skill and keyboards. Maybe it's just me, but at least as far as typing skill/speed goes, I'm not really seeing it. Sure, a lot of our job is typing, and you need some baseline level of skill at it, but I don't think I've ever been hindered in my ability to produce code and features faster by my not- particularly-great typing abilities. If I could wave a magic wand and make myself type twice as fast as I currently do, I don't think my overall productivity would change much at all. The majority of my time is spent thinking about the best way to create or fix something, researching options, etc. The actual process of getting the result of that onto the screen seems relatively quick by comparison.

I might even go so far as to say that, if your typing speed is seriously hindering your productivity, then your language may have too much boilerplate to it, and you might want to put together some code-generation tools for yourself.

On the other hand, I will say that I now prefer those ergonomic keyboards with the split, down-sloping keys. After extended fast typing on a normal keyboard (writing documentation), I sometimes get a mild wrist pain, and using this type of keyboard seems to prevent this without interfering with my overall typing. They seem to be surprisingly hard to find though, with like 5-10 of them on Amazon versus hundreds of conventional keyboards.

<comment><USER3> I have thought about this as well, and with that in mind, I've tried to take notice of how typing affects me (I'm a pretty fast typist, but I think this experience is not dependent on any particular typing speed).

What seems to be the main problem is that typing dominates my internal monologue. I can't continue to keep my ideas fresh in my mental "cache" while I'm typing, because the part of my mind that would be used for that is busy uselessly sounding out the text that I'm typing. So every second I spend typing is a second that I'm not actively maintaining and refreshing my conception of the big picture. The more code I have to type in between thinking about a problem and finishing the solution, the more likely I am to have to stop, rethink the problem, and rework a piece of code I'm writing to fit some constraint I lost track of.

Put another way, typing is a process that forces me to think through the exact implementation of a problem at a snail's pace (compared to normal mental operation). Not more carefully, mind you, but more slowly.

<comment><USER2> That might be part of the issue. My typing isn't particularly fast, but it is mindless. I spend virtually no mental effort on typing while I'm actually doing it, so I'm free to think about exactly what I'm trying to do and what the best way to do it is.

<comment><USER3> Hypothesis test (I'll tell you the hypothesis after you answer): What is the experience of thinking like for you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This layout still feels inferior next to my [http://trulyergonomic.com/](http://trulyergonomic.com/) keyboard. I was really skeptical at first, especially with the price tag - but I'd never go back now.

<comment><USER5> With a layout like that, I bet you can't go back. The shift keys are in such a very odd position, with Alt, a rarely used key, sitting in the prime spot.

"Ergonomic" keyboards tend to be trouble for anyone who's not a strict home- row typer. I cross over the middle a lot, like for "keyboard" the Y is for left hand. Maybe it's more like a piano thing, where you're sort of hitting chords, pairs of letters in sequence ("e", "y"), hands moving into position to prepare, versus regimented typing. That giant gulf in the middle prevents all that.

<comment><USER6> Have you tried an ergonomic keyboard? I tend to be a bit of a floaty typist as well, but a couple years ago I used a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard for a year. To my surprise, I found that I got used to it pretty quickly.

<comment><USER5> I have. My highly subjective opinion is that they're all wrong.

I've been typing on regular keyboards for long enough they don't bother me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My daily driver is the kinesis advantage.

[http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm](http://www.kinesis- ergo.com/advantage.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here. I wrote about it here: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/kinesis- advantage/](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/kinesis-advantage/) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why nowadays keyboards usually don't have L-shaped Enters? I can't imagine productively working without it...

<comment><USER9> Steelseries mechanical keyboards generally have L shaped enter keys. It's part of the reason why I never bought one.

I understand your opinion as a matter of preference, but why does your productivity require it?

<comment><USER8> I'm a programmer, so as opposed to prose-like text typers, I heavily use Enter for newlines. And I exclusively use my right hand's pinky finger to press it without precise aiming/thinking/looking.

It is really hard for me to do this for non-L Enters.

<comment><USER10> Funny. I'm also a programmer and I hate L-Enters because the backslash and vertical bar is in the wrong place.

It also means that either the backspace or the left shift is smaller, and I hate that too.

<comment><USER8> The only "sacrifice" for me is the small Backspace, and the backslash/vertical is just left to it. Both Shifts are big.

I have yet to find a mechanical keyboard with such a layout. And I think I can deal with smaller Right Shift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> __--__ I'm partial to my ergodox[1]. It does have blue switches, but if I decide I want to switch to clear I can do the swap myself.

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/7245/ergodox-review-an- ergonom...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7245/ergodox-review-an-ergonomic- mechanical-keyboard-via-massdrop)

</comment><comment><USER11> I just don't see why there's all the hype over this keyboard versus any other mechanical board (Filco, Leopold, Ducky, etc) other than PR.

For me personally, nothing beats an 87-key (standard 101-key minus the number pad, but with arrow keys and stuff above them) with Cherry MX Brown switches. Blues are also acceptable in a pinch (reminiscent of the old Northgate Omnikey boards). The only superior board is of course the IBM/Unicomp models with buckling springs.

All this is my opinion and preference; I have coworkers who love the "flat" chiclet-style keyboards like the Apple models; I can't stand them and they make my fingers hurt due to lack of travel. Bad habit from learning to type on a Selectric II in the late 80s.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Atwood designed the CODE keyboard as the answer to all of the touch-screen > typing we now do.

He designed a physical keyboard to replace a touch screen keyboard (which arguably no hacker would use for coding) that mimics a... physical keyboard?

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands I've been told by several people I''m a "heavy" typer. The old Dell keyboards I got from companies made my typing loud enough to hear like the author noted. The only way to suppress the clacking was to type slower and softer.

This keyboard looks like a good fit for someone with my typing style.

Edit: Thanks to everybody for posting links to their favorite keyboards, hopefully I can find a good one if this one doesn't work out.

</comment><comment><USER13> For those of us who work on a laptop all day, who don't want a separate keyboard for it, but could buy a new laptop based on it having a great keyboard:

Any suggestions for a laptop with a great keyboard?

Specifically any non-Apple laptop?

<comment><USER14> The Thinkpad keyboards are so great that I bought an external one for work computer. The mouse nub (or whatever it's called) is great, too, although I have a nice Logitech mouse for things like photoshop.

<comment><USER15> I'll 2nd that. I've only ever had one Thinkpad (X100e, no longer in production) but the keyboard is amazing. I don't know if other Thinkpads have the same "chiclet" style keys but it's made me way of future laptop purchases.. other keyboards just don't compare. The nub is interesting but I don't use the mouse a whole lot in general. When the need arises I don't mind reaching for the trackpad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This sounds pretty neat; a handful of modest little adjustments that could prevent a lot of headaches. Being able to instantly take Colemak with me to any computer would be amazing (although carrying a keyboard around everywhere I use a computer sounds iffy).

Now I've said some positive things, so I'm going to nitpick. This is HN, after all.

The first thing that stands out to me is that it doesn't seem like a lot of attention has been paid to ergonomic details. The lowest hanging fruit here, which I've never seen in any keyboard, is to put feet on the side _toward_ the user. In almost all cases, the way I've seen people's desks set up is such that there is no way for them to have a neutral wrist position (wrists not bending up). Worse yet, keyboards invariably have those little feet on the back, and people assume they should use them, which causes them to bend their wrists up even more. Ideally, a keyboard would let you fine tune its slope so that you can set it up exactly to your needs, although I have no idea how you would build that conveniently.

The second nitpick is with something Atwood says on the linked page:

> Nothing lets you get your thoughts out of your brain and into words faster > and more efficiently than a well made keyboard.

Technically that is true, in the sense that a stenotype is technically a keyboard. But the reason I'm picking this nit is that as someone who has made it a side quest to find _something_ better than a standard computer keyboard, this is a bit of a sore spot for me. The _minimum_ you have to be able manage on a stenotype to be a court reporter is 225 wpm for live testimony. That's a $50k/year job where a _requirement_ is typing faster than the all time world record for a typewriter-style keyboard.

That's a phonetic system, and it's not immediately obvious how to untangle all of the issues with making it work with programming. On the other hand, there's Veyboard, which is non-phonetic and more flexible, and seems like it could be used for programming in its current state. It's slower than stenotype, but far faster than a traditional keyboard.

My point is that it irks me that we have so many people typing so much and getting injured, and not much focus seems to be going into adopting a better, radically different approach. We have a handful of very expensive hardware options intended for specialized markets, and we have Plover[1] (nothing similar exists that I know of for emulating a Veyboard), and that's about it. And on the mass market side, we have less expensive, specially designed ergonomic traditional keyboards based mostly on shakily researched principles.

Would it necessarily help with RSI just to increase typing speed? That needs to be tested. But it seems likely that if you reduce the amount of time spent typing, you'll reduce the amount of damage.

[1][http://plover.stenoknight.com/](http://plover.stenoknight.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding ergonomics, I've been using a Kinesis Advantage for the last couple years ([http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/kinesis- advantage/](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/kinesis-advantage/)), and I would find it hard to return to a standard keyboard all the time.

The Advantage is absurdly expensive relative to other keyboards but for someone who spends a lot of time—too much, probably—typing, it's worth it.

<comment><USER16> I've been considering building an Ergodox[0], which has a Kinesis inspired key layout, but does not have the concave key well. In your experience with the Kinesis, would having a flat layout be a significant impediment to the comfort of another matrix key layout?

[0] [http://ergodox.org](http://ergodox.org)

<comment><USER17> I'm also a kinesis fan having used one nearly exclusively for the last 4-5 years. For me the concave layout is nice, it makes it easier to reach the keys, but it is not the key ingredient. The thing about the kinesis which would make it very hard to change back to a standard layout keyboard is the thumb based meta keys.

I've looked a the Ergodox myself as well as this one [1] which I'm not sure has a name yet. I read about it originally here on HN [2].

[1] [http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=44940.810](http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=44940.810) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6297356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6297356)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Would be really neat if it incorporated Topre switches instead, but I imagine that would make the price shoot through the roof.

</comment><comment><USER19> Has anyone noticed they increased background noise when demonstrating the volume of the keyboard?

<comment><USER20> Yeah, probably to more accurately capture the noise of the keyboard. That's why the laptop is so freaking loud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How quiet is it actually?</comment>


Morphin instantly grafts your face into GIFs - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/20/morphin-avatars/ <comment><USER2> Looks to me like they did some pose matching for 3D models from existing GIFs and then overlay your avatar overtop. Sort of like karaoke for animation.

Not really deepfakes because the entire character appears to be replaced.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. There's no Deepfake here. They've recreated each of the GIFs as a 3D model, and then do a reasonable job of converting a photo of your face into that model. Somewhat underwhelming.

Here I am as Obama doing a mic drop: [https://imgur.com/a/AzBNbBO](https://imgur.com/a/AzBNbBO) \-- it is apparently recognizable as me

Edit: with freakishly long fingers, which makes a change from the current president at least?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> so cool!

i think this kind of thing getting more realistic is a backdoor way to get governments to pay attention to verifiable identity.

what's to stop someone from making a video of the CEO of a public company announcing bad news while shorting the stock?</comment>


Uber CEO Travis has started meditating in an office lactation room - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/07/arianna-huffington-says-uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-has-started-meditating.html <comment><USER2> Isn't that oppressing the women who need it for biological reasons?

</comment><comment><USER3> Very bizarre that they spun this intentionally as a positive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, the optics seem a little tone deaf. I'm surprised he doesn't have an office he can close off for a few minutes and mediate in.

<comment><USER4> Not disagreeing with your intended message, but:

> Yea, the optics seem a little tone deaf.

Holy metaphorical synesthesia, Batman!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which are some companies most people do not know about but are large? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Data)</comment>


There's no limit to longevity, says study that revives human lifespan debate - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05582-3 <comment><USER2> The Italian study argues after a certain threshold age, lets say 105, Italians hit a constant, "mortality plateau, which was 50:50 odds of living to your next birthday, and thus since mortality is not increasing year on year, theoretically there is no upper bound on the age of a person. This may be true theoretically, but mathematical reasoning clarifies this somewhat. Even if you have 1 million humans aged 105 right now, which is probably a vast overstatement, they would diminish to 100,000 humans in less than 4 years, then diminishing to 1,000 humans aged 115 in 10 years' time. After this point, it's basically a question of statistics, as we keep halving the population yearly and get into statistically unsubstantial cohorts of humans. So, while it may be that some humans could live to 130-140 naturally, without fountain- of-youth innovations, the VAST majority of us will die much, much earlier.

The low-hanging fruits of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are calling to public health far more urgently than this pie in the sky limitless life.

<comment><USER3> Humans have a 1/3 lifetime cancer risk, and I suspect it will go up if we extend lifetimes. It's a wall to longevity. If we get past that wall, there's still proteopathys. There's no real approach to curing those yet (at least not that I'm aware of.)

<comment><USER4> Why do you think cancer is undefeatable? The risk of cancer rises substantially with age, and much of the increase in risk is probably due to the immune system malfunctioning.

<comment><USER3> We aren't there yet.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn- breast-c...](http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-breast- cancer-immunotherapy-20180604-story.html)

Oncology + new genetic tools (just sequencing, not even CRISPR/CAS9) is making amazing progress.

Things that would have been a death sentence 20 years ago now have reasonably hopeful mortality rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So biologists say there is a limit. But if you only look at the statistics from extreme examples of people over 105, mortality looks flat for a few years, so statisticians say we can live forever.

Is it just me, or is this just bad logic?

<comment><USER7> It's bad logic and bad journalism.

People have a 50% chance of dying each year over 105 translates to there is no limit to longevity?

Also, the critic in me makes me want to see the actual distribution because I would think there is a tail effect going on and a small group of people are just genetically living much longer.

<comment><USER8> My interpretation:

Death rates increase every year due to naturally occurring mechanisms in the body. Consider those mechanisms as a function with the body as a parameter and the output as a more aged body (or rather a body with higher probability of failure).

If the body reaches a point where the death rate ceases to increase year per year, it would suggest that those same naturally occuring mechanisms, thought of as a function, approaches some asymptote.

Note this doesn't necessarily mean you stop aging (in appearance), just that your body's rate of failure no longer increases. This suggests that if the reasons for failure can be treated properly, perhaps the body can remain in that equilibrium state indefinitely.

This study provides some preliminary evidence that such an asymptote may exist in the body's natural mechanisms. Both controversial and exciting. Worth exploring further.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. And the really cool thing is "Why?"

Because there are essentially two things that kill you. Either you die of something you get, or you die because your body wears out (as others have pointed out, we know body systems wear and become less effective with aging).

Therefore, _if_ mortality stops _increasing_ with respect to age at a certain point, but we know the body is accumulating additional wear that makes it less resilient, there must also be a corresponding _decrease_ in mortality risk with respect to random things killing you.

So essentially, if you're 100 already... you might have a statistically smaller risk to die from heart disease, cancer, etc than someone who is only 92.

<comment><USER9> > Therefore, if mortality stops increasing with respect to age at a certain > point, but we know the body is accumulating additional wear that makes it > less resilient, there must also be a corresponding decrease in mortality > risk with respect to random things killing you.

Agreed. I assume older people are receiving higher levels of care, and therefore have a lower risk of dying from random things.

For example, someone age 100 has a small chance of falling and receiving a life threatening injury when they go to get a glass of water from the kitchen. Someone age 115 might have a smaller risk, because they're more likely to be in a wheelchair, and therefore will not stumble and fall. Do they need to change a light bulb? The 100 year old might try to stand on a chair and risk falling. The 115 year old will probably have full-time care, and push a button to alert someone else about the light bulb. Older people usually travel less often, so their chance of dying in a car crash starts to decrease. They're no longer diving with sharks, so shark attack deaths decrease. They're less likely to be outside in a thunderstorm, so lightning related deaths decrease.

Some of those examples are a little silly, but I think the idea is right. When you go from 100 to 115, you decrease your risk of dying from random things (usually because you're no longer doing those things), but you increase your risk of dying from age related factors. These two cancel each other out, and the chance of dying on any given year appears equal. This would mean the study is wrong, and there is a limit to longevity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A 50% mortality rate per year translates into there being a <0.1% chance of living for 10 years. How does that translate into there being "no limit to longevity?" I seriously don't get the claim.

<comment><USER11> It means that mortality rate doesn't approach 100% around some given age, which would be the hypothetical biological limit. I don't see the issue.

<comment><USER12> Right. "You don't get worse at living after a certain point." Sounds like big news to me even if the "half life" was shorter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As we live, we forget stuff, we change, the situation around us changes. So it's as if we gradually die every day, to be replaced with a new self. The day we physically die is just the last time we die. Not to mention that we experience nothingness and coming back every night.

By analogy, is a continually trained neural net the same as a previous version of itself? Is it a different one, especially after a long time? Did the old version end/die by continuous accumulation of changes?

<comment><USER14> Reminds me of the ship of Theseus [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would have thought it's intuitively obvious that there's "no fixed limit on human longevity", and it's therefore obvious that mortality "flattens out": how else could it avoid going over 100%? It presumably is possible to say something interesting and non-trivial about the shape of the curve but it seems to be beyond the mathematical competence of the people writing these journalistic reports to do so.

Looking at the Wikipedia list of longest-lived people ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people)) I get the impression that the top two (Jeanne Calment and Sarah Knauss) don't fit, though I know that the case of Jeanne Calment is very well documented.

<comment><USER16> It's not intuitively obvious at all, since each replication of our cells leads to our chromosomes getting ever smaller until presumably it starts eating into genes that do useful things. Unless it's intuitively obvious to you that you could live without genetic material at all, it seems quite obvious that -- given current biological processes -- there is a limit, even if that limit is longer than where we've gone before.

<comment><USER15> Even if it were the case that each replication made the chromosomes smaller (personally I would guess that there is a non-zero probability of them not getting smaller and even a non-zero probability of them getting larger thanks to a mutation) that would still only imply a hard limit on the number of replications. You would also need to find a hard limit for how long a cell can survive without replicating. Good luck with that.

I content that there are no limits: however old you are, you have a non-zero chance of surviving another picosecond. The product of a finite number of non- zero real numbers is non-zero, therefore...

Some people may wish to retort that at some point these numbers become so small that they are no different from zero in practice. Those people are probably not mathematicians. They're not wrong, either, of course, but they're not making a valid argument for there being a limit.

There's no limit for the number of successive heads you can get when tossing a coin, either, though you won't in practice see more than a hundred if it's a reasonably fair coin. If there's no limit in that simplified, mathematical situation, does it make sense to hypothesise that "there is a limit" in the case of highly complex biochemical processes?

This is all very philosophical. It doesn't help us to estimate the chances of a given person who is alive and 115 years old today (there seem to be about five of them) one day breaking Jeanne Calment's record of 122. Are any bookmakers taking bets?

<comment><USER17> >Even if it were the case that each replication made the chromosomes smaller (personally I would guess that there is a non-zero probability of them not getting smaller and even a non-zero probability of them getting larger thanks to a mutation) that would still only imply a hard limit on the number of replications.

The fact that chromosomes get shorter during DNA replication is a scientific fact. Chromosomes have padding at the end called telomeres that provide a buffer from the 'useful' DNA. There is an enzyme that can lengthen telomeres, and its of great interest to scientists interested in extending human life.

There is almost no chance that mutations:

a) regularly occur in such a way that makes the chromosomal DNA longer, especially in a way that offsets the base pairs lost during every transcription.

and b) occur in the telomere area of the genetic code, after all the useful bits of DNA.

If mutations did occur at a rate that would counteract the shortening of the telomeres, the rest of your genome would be mutating so quickly you would almost certainly die rather quickly.

There are a whole host of other reasons why what you wrote is nonsense, and I don't have the time or the space to address them all. There is literally no fact to what you have written. It is clear you don't have even a rudimentary understand the biology of genetics. An understanding of math doesn't preclude the need for understanding the actual mechanism of how things work.

The following articles are a useful primer to understanding the flaws in your reasoning:

Okazaki Fragments: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okazaki_fragments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okazaki_fragments)

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

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

DNA Polymerase: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_polymerase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_polymerase)

DNA Replication: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_replication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_replication)

<comment><USER15> That's all very interesting, but...

> almost no chance

That's my point, really. It might not be a terribly interesting point, but you're conceding it, not refuting it.

Does genetics actually provide a useful estimate of the probability of someone reaching the age of 123 years? I mean: something a bookmaker could use? Is there any evidence that telomeres are practically relevant to the longevity of humans in particular, as opposed to organisms in general, some of which live very much longer than humans?

I humbly suggest that you turn down the pomposity a tiny bit. Read what you wrote there:

> There are a whole host of other reasons why what you wrote is nonsense, and > I don't have the time or the space to address them all.

What kind of impression do you think you're making?

<comment><USER17> I majored in Biology, with a focus in genetics and computer science because I wanted to go into bioinformatics. I could literally write 30 pages about why what you wrote is incorrect, and it would take several orders of magnitude more time than it took you to write out your hypothesis.

I provided resources for you to educate yourself. If you believe that it isn't a good use of your time, that's exactly how I feel about addressing the points you made beyond broadly saying 'this won't work, here are resources that address this on a level which you can understand.'

In this case 'almost no chance' is somewhat analogous to shuffling a deck of cards and finding them in order by suit and value, and then shuffling them again and finding them in _reverse_ order by suit and value, and repeating that feat 10 times over.

The length of a human's telomeres when they are born is about 11k base pairs. Chromosome 21 is the shortest chromosome, and has 46.7 _million_ base pairs. That means with random chance a mutation is 4200 times more likely to occur in the coding region of the chromosome than in the telomere.

Due to the way DNA Polymerase works, you will lose 20 base pairs of DNA on every replication. Ignoring everything about rate of mutations and the likelihood of insertion mutation, this means your chance of lengthening your chromosome through mutations is (1/4200)^20, or 1 in 2.6x10^72.

The odds of shuffling a deck of cards and having it come out in suit and value order is somewhere around 1x10^68.

That's using a best-case scenario as an example. Chromosome 1 has more than 5 times as many base pairs as chromosome 21, and you'd literally need to have this happen on every single chromosome every single time you had cell division.

<comment><USER17> A quick follow-up to this point. The exome, or coding region of the DNA is approximately 1% of the genome, so arguably the chances of a mutation randomly occurring in a coding region are 1/100 as probable as I suggested here.

There are a few caveats:

1) The non-coding region appears to be less useless than previously assumed. There are still 'highly preserved' areas in non-coding regions. If a section of the genome is highly preserved, it means that a mutation in that region probably results in death/non-viability of the organism.

2) We know the rate of mutation of the genome. If random mutations were really adding enough base pairs in the telomere region to lengthen it, the genome would be growing at an incredible rate.

There are a lot of reasons why it's also implausible, but they have to do with the amount of energy in a bond, etc. and other biochemistry stuff that I'm not qualified to comment on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I understand this correctly,

In the terms of probability aging distribution becomes memoryless for very old people. This would mean that the remaining lifespan for really old people would follow exponential distribution. Just like with radioactive decay, you could determine their half life. The half life could be as short as one year.

>At that point, the researchers say, the odds of someone dying from one birthday to the next are roughly 50:50

<comment><USER19> This could also be a subtle variation of the classic fallacy of confusing exponential functions with sigmoids

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This really has nothing to do with limits to longevity in any practical sense. That's just the publicity machine at work, the first line in mangling and misrepresenting the relevance of research. This paper is to do with a long- running debate over whether or not mortality risk reaches a high, flat plateau in extreme old age. The difference between limit and high flat plateau is academic for those involved. The outcome is much the same.

It does in flies, and there is very clear evidence for that. The evidence in humans to date is very sparse, and where people have done good work on the numbers, they have not seen signs of a plateau. So in that sense, that people have found a larger data set that shows it, that is fuel for the fire.

No-one has the slightest idea as to how you can balance the fundamentals of reliability theory with a late life mortality plateau. If damage is accumulating, and no-one really believes it stops accumulating, then your risk of mortality should keep on going up. What sort of mechanisms in a highly damaged biology could buffer that underlying reality? And why in very late life versus other times?

None of this, of course, has anything to do with efforts to treat aging or extend human life. It is an academic debate that will likely fade out before answers are found, made irrelevant by the advent of ways to treat aging and its causes. Methods of extending life will work by putting off or repairing the very damaged state. There will likely never be a large multiple of the present count of exceptionally physiologically aged individuals. Rejuvenation therapies are just around the corner.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if there is something like the study I heard of once that said, if an electronic or mechanical device lasts at least X years, it will almost always last X + Y years where Y is a much longer period of time. I heard that related to design, manufacturing process and material selection.

If it's true for things, it makes sense it might be true for humans.

<comment><USER22> It depends on the device, but there's also the phenomenon where failures go up after a certain amount of time just because parts wear out.

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

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If this is true shouldn't we see the maximum lifespan increasing as population has doubled several times?

<comment><USER23> Yes, but not much. Since mortality is about 50% for people over 100 (according to the article), doubling the population of humans should only see an increase of one year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm sorry to say it, but I always feel incredibly cynical about longevity tech. If we had a treatment that could extend people's lives indefinitely, what would that do? It would essentially put a price tag on life in a more direct way than we've seen before. It's hard to imagine that the powers that be would want everyone to have fair access to it.

Obviously, this kind of treatment wouldn't at first be widely available even if it worked. So how do we decide who gets it?

<comment><USER25> May I ask, why you don't feel the same way for any other medical research that saves lives? What's so different about curing aging?

<comment><USER24> Why do you assume I don't feel the same way about the things you mention?

In general, I think the economic incentives for medical tech are fucked up.

<comment><USER25> Well, you mentioned you "feel incredibly cynical about longevity tech", which seems to suggest that you feel differently on this particular type of research compared to others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Who wants to live long without staying young? I'd rather choose to die in my 40-es if I would get 25-yr-old body until the end of the life in exchange. Body/health (skin, brain, immune system, muscles etc.) anti-aging is the thing we need first, not longevity/immortality.

<comment><USER27> Out of curiosity, how old are you now?

<comment><USER26> I'm in my early 30-ies. I'm alright generally (I also look rather young and the doctor says my health is great) but I already feel loss of vitality, stamina, flexibility and regeneration. I felt like an invincible superhuman when I was 24 and now, despite maintaining fairly healthy lifestyle, my knee and back hurt occasionally, I can't f-ck without making a pause every couple of minutes (used to do it for hours contiguously and vigorously until 28), I have to eat healthy to maintain satisfyingly low weight (no wildly bad diet could cause a fluctuation in my weight until 24) etc. I also feel very satisfied by the life I have lived and occasionally think I wouldn't mind to die happily at any time the G-d would decide my time on Earth to end (yet I absolutely do mind to live long enough to get Alzheimer's, cancer etc, I don't fear death yet I do fear senility). I have started to work-out vigorously to revitalize and develop my body and mind recently so perhaps everything is going to change as I achieve the results yet I doubt things like my knee are going to regenerate (this has been scientifically proven impossible in 2017 or 2016 as far as I can remember although I can't find a link to the paper now). It seems it's a fact that 30+-yr-old bodies are generally more fragile and less powerful than 20-yr-old ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a 50/50 change once 105, and given that the odds of 32 coin tosses all coming up heads is 1 in 4,294,967,296 does that mean there's a 137 year old person running around somewhere?

<comment><USER29> Methuselah lived 969 years, so there's that data point. _ducks_

<comment><USER28> I'm only in my early 30's and I am already considering myself 35, at 969 you'd think you'd round up to an even thousand. I'll only believe that exact time if someone counts the rings.

<comment><USER29> The Hebrews took from the Egyptians a great love of numbers and numerology. 969 probably rolled off the tongue really well in their language. It was all originally passed orally in verse.

<comment><USER30> I once took up the Ussher chronology thing, wading through the begats, just to see if there was any sort of basis on which a person could legitimately convince themselves they _were_ doing a proper chronology. Turns out that 969 means ol' Meth drowned in the Flood his grandson was known for - or at least kicked off in the few months preceding it. I'm thinking "drowned in the Flood" is something you're supposed to carry away from the tale, in much the same way as he's listed as somebody's son and somebody's father, without any accomplishments worth mentioning, nor any notable piety. There's probably another part of the tale, now lost, that folks were originally supposed to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Given that theory, we never see people over about 120 because...?

<comment><USER32> Some speculations:

1\. there are few, as the world has 7billion++ people today and 120 years ago it was around 1 billion. You certainly are not going to meet them.

2\. Someone that is still sane past 100 years will not care about bragging his age to us younglings.

3\. Finally, we don't ask these people their age. And when we do, we don't believe the answer.

There are some histories of people with more than a hundred year. Li Ching Yuen[1] was a Chinese herbalist that lived more than 250 years.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ching- Yuen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ching-Yuen)

<comment><USER33> Any time I see these kinds of claims, I like to take a step back and think through a few points. Does it happen frequently? How much evidence would I need to shift my prior from unlikely to likely? Is someone trying to sell me something, literally or metaphorically?

This skepticism is borne from living a life of being gaslighted and conned in a high-demand religion, and breaking away. I don't doubt there are occasionally a few long-tail events that skepticism causes one to miss its reality, but as far as seeking mysticism or a hidden reality (hidden by whatever underlying power, be it gods or billionaires, pick your poison) I find life much less stressful and more fulfilling with a healthy dose of skepticism.

<comment><USER34> >This skepticism is borne from living a life of being gaslighted and conned in a high-demand religion, and breaking away.

That kind of statement begs for a story.

<comment><USER33> I don't want to threadjack, just will point out many of these stories can be found in Reddit's EX communities: exjw, exmuslim, exmormon, and similar. The evolution of these communities into support groups over time has been fascinating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I always link to [http://www.sens.org](http://www.sens.org) when aging comes up because their approach makes the most sense to me.

<comment><USER36> I've donated 300 USD to them this month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm so excited! Every time I read an article about longevity, its like Christmas morning.

Everlasting youth is going to be humanity's greatest accomplishment, and its biggest weakness.

<comment><USER38> It always comes to mind how many fictional immortal characters and creatures just basically choose to go into an eternal slumber. There seems to be a de facto consensus that it is actually pretty boring stuff.

<comment><USER39> Perhaps it is a way to deal with limitations of their brains. They usually have finite brains, which presumably have a limit on how much information they can store and organize and process.

Suppose you are an immortal working on some long term goal, some plan that will take a few hundred years to complete. It is a complicated plan and you will need to keep it all in your mind, along with its history as it progresses, in order to guide it to success.

If you try to lead an active life throughout all this, perhaps your brain will acquire too much irrelevant information, interfering with your ability to carry out your plan.

So you sleep for decades at a time, just waking up long enough to check on the plan, learn about changes to the world since your lest check, and make adjustments. Then back to sleep.</comment></comment></comment>