IE to Start Automatic Upgrades across Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 - <AUTHOR> http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/12/15/ie-to-start-automatic-upgrades-across-windows-xp-windows-vista-and-windows-7.aspx

<comment><USER2> Microsoft should just start to bundle IE with new solitaire games, so that people would be forced to upgrade IE to get the new games. That should kill IE6 in a few hours.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but this has just made my christmas and new year. If this has a genuine impact, and means people are running IE8 in the _worst case_ , then I will be a very a happy dev.

Patiently waits to see browser usage trends once this rolls out...

<comment><USER4> I was thinking the same thing. On government contracts we're still required to support IE6 even though we can't seem to find an actual computer running IE6.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This move.. which as far as i can tell would be to make IE upgrades opt-out instead of opt-in, could be a seriously great one. It just might go a long way to killing off IE6 and IE7, leaving IE 8 as the only non-current version requiring support.

It's great to fantasize about no IE or the latest IE on XP, but in the real world this is a very positive move.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does this mean that IE9 will be available on Win XP?

It would be great, but I doubt that Microsoft will do something like that. Most likely Win XP users will get "only" security updates an service packs for IE7, Vista users for IE8 and only Win7 users will get the latest IE.

That being said, I can't see this as a big leap forward, since large majority of users will not get the latest browser update.

<comment><USER7> No it doesn't nor does it mean that safari 5 will be available for OSX 10.1 (another OS released around the same time).

What large majority of users still use XP? I'd be surprised if winxp was 50% let alone 80%. It's official there are more 7 installs than Xp so no majority let alone a large one.

If you want updates upgrade to win7, xp is over 10 years old. Ie8 already runs fine on xp.

<comment><USER8> I'm in FDA and XP is currently the requirement for us. Anything newer takes a request for exemption which is a lot of paperwork that will quite possibly be denied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about 'pirated' copies of Windows? I presume they're not getting updates at the moment.

(All the same, this is still a good thing.)

</comment><comment><USER10> So IE9 runs on Windows XP?

<comment><USER11> "Today we are sharing our plan to automatically upgrade Windows customers to the latest version of Internet Explorer available for their PC." First sentence of the article seems pretty clear to me, the latest IE that your PC can run will be installed. Not sure why the confusion.

<comment><USER12> I wonder why they decided to be so non-specific in this article. It would have been more clear to say "Users on XP will be upgraded to IE 8, users on Vista and 7 will be upgraded to IE 9 and later as new versions are released" or something of the sort. Instead, they spent a lot of time talking about why what they're doing is so great, and a lot less time talking about exactly what they are doing.

<comment><USER13> Because it's a press release. Users will be upgraded to the latest version available on their system. What more do you want?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> First off, IE9 doesn't run on XP. So what does this really mean? Does it mean we'll be writing hacks for 5 browsers instead of 10 now? Not good enough. This sounds real good but I get the feeling they'll make updating so convoluted or the opt-out process _too_ easy to the point where it barely has any effect. Lame sauce.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like the signal to hundreds of millions of Windows users to turn off automatic updates.

<comment><USER16> What? Why? What would their motivation be for clinging to IE6 or 7? I can see large corporations with awful, unsupported "enterprise" applications that only work with a specific browser not upgrading but end-users shouldn't care at this point.

<comment><USER17> Many of them think they care, and believe they have some reason to not upgrade. When you're running IE 6 or 7 MS frequently directs you to a 'time to upgrade, here's IE 8/9' page so they've been reminded plenty already.

The reasons I've heard from users include that they:

\- fear it will make their computer unstable

\- believe their hardware can't handle it

\- are comfortable with IE 6/7 and fear change

\- don't understand the extent to which the newer versions are faster/more secure/more capable

\- 'son/daughter/hubby/wife/computer tech told me not to change anything'

<comment><USER18> > _'son/daughter/hubby/wife/computer tech told me not to change anything'_

It's a lot better when they do follow that advice, than when they don't.

<comment><USER17> Sometimes the person dispensing the advice isn't right. I've heard this from people who were running IE 7, after all. Using IE 7 is a big enough problem in itself.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google CEO: AI is a bigger deal than fire or electricity - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40519204/google-sundar-pichai-ai-is-a-bigger-deal-than-fire-or-electricity <comment><USER4> I think there's an important distinction here in word choice. Sundar said more _profound_ , not _a bigger deal_. You could imagine that it's more profound in the sort of "what if we make machines that can think / feel / have souls" sort of way, which certainly can't happen with fire or electricity.

That doesn't mean it's more important than electricity. (As a bozo test - <USER2> does your AI work without electricity?)

Disclaimer: work at google, in a role completely unrelated to AI.

<comment><USER5> > (As a bozo test - how does your AI work without electricity?)

You design a system that can take in a store of energy of some sort and converts it into energy through some kind of process. You might call the energy source, say, food and the process of converting into energy could be called nutrition.

That's how you'd do it if you lost electricity I guess. Create a generator that takes not-electricity and turns it into electricity.

If you really have to go without electricity, you could make it run on glucose. We have systems like that running around, just not artificial.

And since we know neurons and brains work using electric pulses, you could say that turning glucose into electricity is also a solved problem.

Of course you could also say that without electricity (as in doesn't exist as a thing) you can't have brains so you'd never be able to come up with AI in the first place.

Altho I wonder if a brain would evolve that runs on something other than electricity if electricity didn't exist as a physical phenomena. That would be interesting.

<comment><USER6> I wish we knew how to imbue robots with chemical actuation mechanisms that actually worked (as opposed to some proof of concept demo of a simple electrolysis reaction in a bulky 3D printed silicone balloon).

If real muscle cells / limbs serve as a sort of reference, they would be vastly more space-efficient, compliant, and have higher power-weight ratio than any electromagnetically actuated servo we have today.

It makes me wonder if the "modern" androids in Westworld used electricity at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Company: Thing we have sunk massive amounts of cost into is a bigger deal than sliced bread."

</comment><comment><USER8> The application logic is currently smart enough. So long as the vision of AI remain around single, closed, data-oriented, monolithic applications AI will continue to be as impressive as it is now. It will get faster as the hardware gets faster, but it won't be what tech evangelists are hyping it up to be.

If the giant tech companies really want AI to be something _more_ they need to reevaluate what AI is from a very foundational and simplistic approach. Right now, the current approach, AI is just a big smart application, but it can never be smarter than a big single software application.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes it is. Allow be to boast, but over the last 4 years I have implemented automated credit decision systems replacing human credit analysts and event recommendation systems categorizing 3,000,000 events only on the description. The power these new technologies have is on the same scale as fire and electricity.

<comment><USER10> Is the primary advantage of these systems over human deciders that they make _better decisions_ or that they can be sold as being _free of bias_ in ending?

<comment><USER11> I'd think that the primary advantage is they _don 't require paying salaries_.

<comment><USER9> Same as not requiring people to manually turn on the gas lights in the evening.

<comment><USER9> Maybe adding to that is that is that from a practitioners point of view AI is marketed heavily because most of the large tech companies can increase higher utilization rates of their infrastructure

[1][https://e27.co/innovative-cognitive-services-new-oil- begun-r...](https://e27.co/innovative-cognitive-services-new-oil-begun- realising-impact-lives-20170410/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No it's not. It's "AI" on your terms sundar. I doubt I'll ever be able to tell Google Assistant to change her name to whatever I want.

<comment><USER13> Hotword detection is a solved problem. They could implement it in, well I don't know, a month or so, and change "hey Google" to anything.

They just don't want to let you.

<comment><USER14> I'd be happy if they'd just keep on working on "hey Google" until I can train it to understand me on the first try. It was like magic when I got my first Galaxy S3 but the recognition has only gotten worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is AI still intelligence if it does completely stupid shit that people currently do like racial profiling? Because to me, that's not intelligence. That is fucking scary as shit though that this non-intelligent software can now amplify the worst of human impulses many times over without any oversight or control. If that's what people like like Pichai are talking about--shit software given too much power by humans--then yeah, it's beyond terrifying. But if we're still talking about intelligence, we're not talking about systems like this.

<comment><USER16> If a neural network (or any other AI algorithm) includes race as one of its input variables, and through its training set optimization utilizes that trait in order to deduce who may be guilty of a crime, and the cumulative error is indeed significantly improved by allowing that trait as an input -- then we have the need to rationally define _exactly_ why this is bad, and what _exactly_ the AI is missing which is needed to address that problem.

I'd imagine the answer is something along the lines of the AI needing to incur a strong penalty when it falsely accuses or falsely casts suspicion, or misses a crime it would've found without that trait distracting it, etc. But the point IMO is that the only way to stop this problem is to understand it without being afraid of talking about it. You talk of the AI as being stupid for this problem -- but the stupidity lies in the axioms we're feeding it, and that only gets fixed by finding out where WE are going wrong in a rigorous and scientific way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> fire, electricity, and life/intelligence are result of the same - <USER3> equalization along the gradient between low entropy region in parameter space and the rest of the space, ie. 2nd law.

AI looks like the next step in that ladder as it isn't limited by physical limitations of a protein based life body, ie. it has all the chances to transcend the current practical limit of 1.5kg of wet live matter blob with 100B elements and 100T connections.</comment>


Interview with Japanese demoscener 0x4015 (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://6octaves.blogspot.com/2017/06/interview-with-japanese-demoscener.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> I have this firm belief that demo writers are literal gods amongst programmers. Nothing comes close to their knowledge and craftsmanship and the resulting art they create. To me it is the purest form of programming bar none. I'm in constant awe and have the utmost respect for these guys. Just had to get it off my chest. Thanks for reading!

<comment><USER3> Programming skill isn't a 1 dimensional space.

I used to feel like you. Having done some mediocre demos myself, I looked up to some of the best democoders a lot. Until I met them (hey, demoscene is tiny - just show up at a demoparty and meet your heros in person). I noticed that the top democoders were invariably:

        - extremely nice
        - better than me at graphics programming
        - worse than me at X

For example, at some point long ago I wrote a tool to synchronize effects to music. A famous democoder wanted to try it, I said "here you go", he said "shit, the API is in C++. I don't know C++". Turns out all these amazing demos were written in C and this guy had never bothered to learn classes, templates, etc etc. Of course there's nothing _wrong_ with that, but, well, it's just different skills. I mean every programmer I knew at that time knew C++. It's like working in web dev and not knowing any JavaScript at all. It was very surprising to me :-)

tl;dr I'm sure I make better scalable realtime backends than some top democoders would.

<comment><USER4> > tl;dr I'm sure I make better scalable realtime backends than some top > democoders would.

Exactly; some make magic happen in 4K, others can spin up 4000 high performance GPU servers in a matter of minutes, out-performing the supercomputers of just a few years ago while costing a fraction of it. It's amazing how much power some can squeeze out with the tightest of constraints AND how much power others can summon with the biggest of credit cards. These two overlap, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those on the East Coast who are interested, there's a small, but long running demoscene competition and hands-on retrocomputing museum every year at CMU called Demosplash.

It's great fun and one of the engineering professors (who's originally from Japan) participates in both. He and the retrocomputing club bring tons of old computers, including Japanese and European only machines and even write demos on them.

Some hi-lights:

May be the world's only Fujitsu FM-Towns Demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlCZTEUJlOo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlCZTEUJlOo)

A demo for the Fujitsu FM-7, a machine with two 8-bit CPUs: [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78816](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78816)

The first demo ever for the Looking Glass displays: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7hzM0a21E&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7hzM0a21E&feature=youtu.be)

The first demo ever for the Fujitsu FM-7: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VGK80il4Rs&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VGK80il4Rs&feature=youtu.be)

A 32Byte DOS Demo (with sound!): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSz7xlUkQFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSz7xlUkQFI)

And some live demos on an Apple Lisa and a Vectrex.

It's totally worth checking out.

 _edit_ also worth checking out, a demo inspired by...

A 1k homage [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pyIpoqpYt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pyIpoqpYt4)

<comment><AUTHOR> > May be the world's only Fujitsu FM-Towns Demo

Adorable! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank you for sharing the link! And here's from the latest posts (shameless plug).

"Who is Demoscener?" - What I've learned from interviewing them [https://6octaves.blogspot.com/2018/11/who-is-demoscener- what...](https://6octaves.blogspot.com/2018/11/who-is-demoscener-what-ive- learned-from.html)

<comment><USER7> An enlightening post indeed, but the title reads oddly - "Who is Demoscener?" suggests that there is a single person called "Demoscener" that your article is about, whereas as it's actually about multiple people in the demoscene I suggest you should rename it to "Who are demosceners?"

<comment><USER6> Grammatically speaking, you're absolutely right! But I had some personal reasons to name it that way :) Thanks for pointing it out! And thanks for reading!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some website designs are timeless!

[http://www.pouet.net/index.php](http://www.pouet.net/index.php)

</comment><comment><USER9> so happy the demo scene is still happening... my first taste of this was the future crew's unreal demo from 1992 (yes, i just aged myself a bit): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxGtPAhkEQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxGtPAhkEQU)

<comment><USER10> Future crew seems to have reached a lot of folks... I watched it for hours as a teenager in Croatia,looped on computer store's monitors. I still check it out every now and then - though watching it on YouTube just doesn't seem as satisfying!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The demoscene is largely European, so to see Japanese entries is interesting. There was a discussion on Pouet 15(!) years ago about this:

[http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=915&page=1](http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=915&page=1)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm just amazed this is still a thing. Are these demos always written in low- level GPU primitives?

<comment><USER13> Not at all. Many demos these days are either built on in-house engines which abstract things away (a group of tool devs builds those, while the actual demo devs/designers just work with the tools), or they're built on a premade engine. There are plenty of folks somewhere in-between, too, doing WebGL and the like.

<comment><USER14> Some are still done the hard way:

[https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is- born/](https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/)

<comment><USER15> Awesome. A meaningful program in 256 bytes is like a jewel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Coding on a Zaurus?! Proper hacker mentality

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

Seems like this little device might have a bit of a following:

>Arch Linux ARM has been ported in 2015 on the C3x00 models.

<comment><USER17> Imagine such device but with a colored e-ink screen. It would be pure bliss!

<comment><USER18> Shut up and take my money!!

The closest thing now seems to be the GPD devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I so miss the 80s C65 and Amiga demo scene in Europe, so much traveling, so much coding, so much fun.

I love the 'modern' demo 'Colonies'

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40H4OD6ZTvA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40H4OD6ZTvA)

<comment><USER20> I was just a kid coding his first space invaders game on a bbc micro when I saw my first demo on the Amiga.

It was like seeing in color for the first time, blew my tiny little mind and nothing was ever the same again. Kind of like when I went online the first time.*

*via compuserve dialing a London number (as it turned out, 12 year old me didn't quite get that) for hundreds of hours and no free calls in UK, even local calls, calls to London were expensive. I got my arse tanned for that I tell you hwat!</comment></comment>


Qualcomm says future iPhones will solely use modems from Intel - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/25/qualcomm-says-iphones-to-use-intel/ <comment><USER2> I remember seeing reports that the Qualcomm powered iPhones has superior performance over the intel variation. I wonder if Intel has been able to make improvements to reduce the gap?</comment>


New Mac Pro teardown reveals replaceable Xeon CPU - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/12/new-mac-pro-teardown-reveals-replaceable-xeon-cpu/ <comment><USER2> Seems I'm pretty spoiled by iFixIt - I really like their super high image sizes that let you really see every little bit of the board. These look like they were taken with an old mobile phone, smuggled out of some factory.

Seriously, OWC, nobody on your staff has a tripod, DSLR, and a desk lamp or clip light?

<comment><USER3> Your saying is unfair.

They already did the teardown work well from their article, why criticize them like you care about the appearance but not the idea.

<comment><USER4> Because the "appearance" is a huge quality point. Nicely framed, well-lit high resolution pictures are important in a photographic teardown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I felt old when I see this socket. I learned my way around personal computers on machines with 40-pin CPUs. Everything I do these days would be science fiction back when I started.

Not very plausible sci-fi at that...

<comment><USER6> The back of my brain sees hundreds of tiny little pins just waiting to get bent.

Fortunately I gather at some point they actually switched to slight protrusions on the socket that contact nearly-flat points on the CPU.

<comment><USER7> This is the Land Grid Array (LGA) socket type ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_grid_array](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_grid_array)) where the pins are on the socket and the pads are on the chip. This supplants the Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) sockets ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIF_socket](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIF_socket)), those being a reworking of the Pin Grid Array (PGA) packaging ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_Grid_Array](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_Grid_Array)) which was a higher density version of the Dual Inline Package (DIP) standard ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_in- line_package](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_in-line_package)) used for the 80286 and prior chips.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think that as arstechnica states that it's really accurate to compare the D-series FirePros to the Wx000 series of firepros; they seem more like desktop radeons with a memory bump. AMD's press release ( [http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/new-amd- firepro-2...](http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/new-amd- firepro-2013dec23.aspx) ) regarding the D series doesn't mention ECC memory, which is what tends to make the FirePros so expensive and is mentioned in the specs of every other FirePro AMD sells. Maybe there will be later clarification, but so far, I've seen nothing to suggest that these are much more than souped up radeon 7900s.

<comment><USER9> ECC server memory isn't that much more expensive than normal memory (it includes one more chip). Any reason it would would bump the price of the pro radeons? My thought was that it'd be The low volumes and additional design/R&D/enterprise margins. Apple buys in sufficient quantities that most of those things should be substantially decreased.

<comment><USER10> Better silicon. For example the main difference between the 290 and 290x is silicon. Better silicon will have more units enabled and could handle higher clock speeds. (Others are likely to be dead or dodgy). Although at 450 Watts I doubt there will be much in the way of high clock speed.

When it comes to workstation graphics Nvidia drivers behave differently when using a Quadro. (Eg: duel monitor support in Linux)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sad that a replaceable CPU on a desktop is "feature" or even noteworthy. I'm sure Apple will "fix" this.

<comment><USER12> It's possible that Apple could whitelist the CPU in the BIOS so that the system does not boot if you replace the CPU with one that isn't "approved."

<comment><USER7> About as likely as Microsoft being run by lizard people.

<comment><USER12> How so?

<comment><USER13> Apple's closed-ness is mostly about protecting the user experience.

\- OSX is only available on relatively expensive Apple hardware because Apple sets (high) minimum standards on quality and "official" OSX on shitty hardware would pollute the brand.

\- iOS apps are sandboxed and the App Store is curated to protect users from scammy/spammy/malicious apps.

\- OSX enforces code signing, again, to protect users from malware. It can be switched off by users who demonstrate clear intent and understanding of the consequences.

\- Parts that are non-user-serviceable are usually that way to achieve smaller form factor and higher capacities. The reason for non-user-serviceable batteries, for example, is that batteries are bags of dangerous chemicals inside of heavy and thick protective cases. Making _the entire laptop_ the "case" for the battery lets them get larger batteries in less space and weight. That it cannot be safely removed by a nontechnical user is a side- effect.

Your comment attributes a sort of "inverse FSF" religious sentiment to Apple, as if they make things closed and locked down just for the hell of it, because they believe in closedness the way Stallman believes in freedom.

Reality indicates that most of their restrictions are about protecting users who don't know better.... you're not going to "accidentally" replace your CPU. There's no legitimate problem that would be solved by whitelisting processors. Could they do it? Yes, but only if they exhibited some sort of fanatic obsession with preventing users from achieving what they want even when it serves no other purpose. Which would be stupid. Hence, it's as likely as Microsoft being run by lizard people :).

<comment><USER14> When I bought my MBA back in 2011 or so, I wanted 4G of memory. I didn't want a bigger SSD, but I had to get one - no choice. I didn't want a faster processor, but I had to get one - no choice. I ended up paying a lot more for stuff I didn't want or need, simply because the device wasn't upgradeable - not by the user nor the store I bought it from. How was my user experience? What was Apple's profit?

Apple segment their product range just like any sensible company. There's a range of products that increase in power, and in profit margin. People who can afford to buy the highest end products end up paying over the odds, because they're usually the least sensitive to price.

This doesn't mean that Apple is about user experience. Frankly, that's hogwash. They're about corporate profit, in the medium term. And if people end up buying lower end devices and upgrading it themselves, I can easily see them seeing this as a lost profit opportunity, and doing something like whitelisting. It's little different than Intel eventually getting around to locking down frequency multipliers, and selling unlocked chips at a premium.

<comment><USER15> You are the one who made the choice to get the tiniest, slimmest computer available. You made that choice. Don't come griping now that you had no choice: you did. You chose to get a computer so conveniently slender that, as an inevitable and obvious consequence, there was not room in the design for socketed RAM. Quit your griping and enjoy what you bought, or buy a slightly larger machine that has room for more upgradable components.

<comment><USER14> Are you a laptop designer? How do you _know_ it's not possible?

FWIW, it wasn't the tiniest slimmest computer available, and I already had a lighter PC laptop that also had a DVD drive (Toshiba Portege). It was one of the lighter options that ran OS X, but only a handful do by design. If I could have gotten something slightly bigger, lighter and with more upgradeable components, I would have. But Apple didn't sell it.

In any case, this is missing the point. You're reacting to what you perceive as my griping. But I'm not actually griping. My point is that Apple is motivated by profit, and divides the hardware they produce with market segmentation. If they get the segmentation wrong, or if there is a bunch more profit that can be extracted by segmenting it differently, they'll extract it, like any company should. Limited hardware expandability is a part of that segmentation, as it reduces the bleed of low-margin parts into high-margin segments.

<comment><USER7> There is literally _no room_ in the Air for socketable memory. Look at the teardown ([http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2013+...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2013+Teardown/15042)) if you don't believe me. This thing is 80% battery, 20% highly dense circuit board.

There's barely enough room on there for an upgradeable SSD.

Until they make a standard DDR3 socket that's smaller, there's simply no way to fit removable memory into a computer that thin.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can we please move past Apple's silly faux-real UIs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669879/can-we-please-move-past-apples-silly-faux-real-uis

<comment><USER2> Personally, the iPad book reading experience drives me crazy. The frills are utterly maddening, and the pointless detailing seems amateur-hour. Reminds me of the old Microsoft, where they used to tell designers that every portion of a screen had to have "information"--so they dinged a project made for their retail stores by a buddy of mine who created an animation of a shark coming through pitch-black water. So they made it blue and ripply instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> `We need to be cognizant of how much of the pre-internet world is now completely obsolete and unrecognizable to any one under 20`</comment>


What's Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder? - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/whats-causing-the-rise-of-hoarding-disorder/ <comment><USER3> Smaller living space means that you can't save the thing you will need once every five year anymore. A previously adaptive behavior becomes poorly adaptive.

Cheap disposable items. Where before you would have a few hand made item of high quality, you now get a lot of lower quality items. This is partially related to technological advancement. If things become obsolete fast, it doesn't make sense to build with quality. Anyway a consequence is that it's easier to acquire a large amount of stuff than before.

Anti-landfill propaganda. We are guilt-tripped for throwing stuff in the garbage. We are told to dispose of things in very complicated ways and then it may be easier to just not dispose of it.

Breakdown of community and family. Before we might keep things around by giving them away to relatives or friends. There is a satisfaction in passing the torch. But this option isn't as available anymore.

<comment><USER4> _> it's easier to acquire a large amount of stuff than before_

I suspect this is _the_ factor. A behaviour that is adaptive in an environment of scarcity becomes maladaptive in an environment of abundance.

When my grandmother was a child, practically the only thing that genuinely counted as "garbage" was ash from the fire. Pretty much everything else had a meaningful value. Scraps of paper could light the fire. Scraps of cloth could make a quilt or a rug. Vegetable peelings went to the pigs and not a morsel of edible food was wasted. Packaging wasn't a word anyone was familiar with, but boxes and tins would be saved for re-use. Furniture was repaired and re- repaired until it was only good for firewood.

A lot of people were essentially raised to be hoarders, either through direct experience or transmission of those values from their parents. That mindset isn't irrational, but it's a poor match for the 21st century. It's all too easy to lose sight of the purpose of those values and hoard for the sake of hoarding.

I think that similar factors explain a significant part of the obesity epidemic. The scarcity-era virtues of clearing your plate and being a generous host become vices in a world of supersized portions and supermarket offers.

<comment><USER5> Your historical explanation is reasonable and rational. The problem is that compulsive hoarders and eaters aren't. I mean there are persons that like to hoard, persons that like to eat much, but the extreme cases involve a personality disorder.

<comment><USER4> We didn't evolve to be rational, we evolved to survive. "Personality disorder" implies that there's something wrong with the individual, which I don't particularly agree with.

"Eat as much food as possible" and "hoard useful resources" have been successful evolutionary strategies for pretty much the entire history of life on earth. Abundance is very, very new. No species can fully adapt to a completely different ecosystem in a few generations. Most of us have at least some maladaptive responses to abundance. Some people eat too much, some people own too much stuff, some people drink too much alcohol, some people are scared or sad all the time for no obvious reason, some people lose their life savings to imaginary internet money, some people spend an unreasonable amount of time playing Candy Crush or reading Hacker News. We're just not built for the modern world.

I'm not endorsing hoarding as a lifestyle. I'm not saying that it's healthy or rational. I'm not saying that we should leave hoarders to their own devices. I'm saying that it's not _crazy_ , just an obsolete strategy. Looking through that lens gives hoarders a means of understanding their behaviour and gives us a means of helping them.

<comment><USER6> Hoarding useful resources is an important instinct. When the instinct is so strong it causes serious problems, and the person is unable to control the instinct with his will and intellect, or is unwilling to try, then it's a disorder.

I think that's a perfectly reasonable definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the comments in this thread to be counterproductive (bordering on disturbing/dangerous). Trivializing/dismissing the existence of mental disorders based on uninformed viewpoints can cause harm to others, in that they can feel ostracized and become less likely to seek the help they need. Comments like this are along the same lines as 'everybody gets depressed--you just have to choose to be happy'. Depression is a frequently a severe and life-altering disease, and I hope everyone can recognize this sort of statement as absurd.

Similarly, hoarding (as described in the article) is a _cluster_ of persistent behaviors distinct from related disorders (like OCD). Like any cluster (esp. clusters in a high-dimensional space, like human behavior), the class membership is inherently fuzzy--everyone exists somewhere on the hoarding spectrum or OCD spectrum or ADD spectrum. But by definition very few (~6%, according to the link) people are close enough to the far side of the spectrum that it causes severe distress to themselves and others. Think of it (very loosely) like cancer--virtually everyone has some cancer cells in their body, but our protective systems are usually able to keep them in check before they run amok. But once they do, it undeniably becomes _cancer_.

I don't really know how to say this in a better way, but trivializing or denying the existence of mental illness is cruel and reductive, and these sorts of attitudes tend to ricochet around. Please don't participate in doing so.

<comment><USER8> As an ADHD researcher, I've found many commenters on HN to be ignorant and still highly opinionated about ADHD diagnosis and medication, which was my thesis topic. Even highly educated, very smart individuals are growing up with inherent biases against these mental illnesses which they do not know anything about except heresay and pseudo-scientific nonsense.

A recent thread on ADHD brought these people out of the woodwork, and I received many downvotes for spreading my belief that the ADHD research community is not convinced of the over-diagnosis of ADHD, which many arm-chair experts seem to take as a given. It's simply good scientific behavior to not take this for granted, to do more studying, and yet numerous STEM experts have spouted their certainty that ADHD is overdiagnosed and we're drugging our poorly parented/educated kids into submission.

I don't know much about the other mental health disorders, but I'd be willing to bet HN at large is not well-equipped to constructively discuss hoarding, OCD, or even depression/anxiety. Though, I will say I believe depression/anxiety get less stigmatized than OCD and ADHD, perhaps due to their increased prevalence and incidence in today's world.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for all your comments (across many threads) that are helping to destigmatize these issues. ADD/ADHD and stimulant treatment is an especially loaded one. A lot of peoples' personal experience with stimulants is, "oh yeah I took Adderall during finals in college and went on a giddy cleaning spree-- no way we should medicate our kids with meth". Every person's physiologic response to stimulants is unique--and as you say, some people (like me) really and truly need them to function and be themselves.

That being said, I can relate to the sentiment that stamping a red ADD on a kid's forehead, loading their bloodstream with amphetamines, and sending them back to the same mismatched school environment (with little/no other plan of action) is _not_ a recipe for success. It wasn't for me, anyways.

Perhaps my hindsight is a little distorted, but I think a more personalized and interactive educational experience would have been the single most effective way for me to blossom educationally (and consequently emotionally). My drive to learn has always been there, but the differences based on environment, subject matter, and social setting were _extremely_ stark. I outright failed some classes and almost got kicked out of school. At the _same time_ in other HS classes (e.g. computer programming, web design, project- based business mgmt. class), I went above and beyond. I bought a C++ game programming as a 12-year old (and I built my own computer, with a friend)--the ambition was there, but that book is still sitting on my shelf unread. No one identified that interest as something that needed adult encouragement, so my adolescent passion for programming died on the vine.

To what extent to you (or others) study this sort of thing (i.e. personalized education for ADHD kids)? In particular, I'm intrigued by the potential of things like intelligent tutoring systems, experiential education, explorable/interactive explanations (AR/VR?), biofeedback/BCI, and so on. Are you and others bullish or bearish on these sorts of technological solutions to ADHD?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Couple of things. All it means being classified in the DSM is "now we can diagnose and bill for treatment."

Another, many commenters here are saying "Hur de hur, I have a lot of stuff, I'm such a hoarder." I have to think they have not experienced hoarding. My wife's mom is a hoarder. Literal trash fills her home and she navigates through unsafe tunnels of newspaper, disguarded food, broken things she has a pulled from dumpsters, and animal feces between her couch and the restroom. She gets distressed at the thought of removing any of it. She might do something with that broken or rotten thing one day, and not in the hack something together way.

Collectors, reusers/repurposers, and keeping things that can be legitimately used again are not hoarders. If the DSM definition includes them, it is only due to overly broad definitions to make billing for treatment easier. Take the definition of ADD; nearly every kid can fall into that definition when doing a homework assignment they don't like.

<comment><USER10> I had an elderly neighbor that was a hoarder. We knew because of the rats (which were otherwise largely absent from that town). One day she went into the hospital for a routine surgery and her kids showed up with a dumpster. They simply cleaned out the house, exterminated, and bought her new furniture. Hadn't seen anything like it before.

<comment><USER11> how did she react?

<comment><USER12> My ex-wife was a hoarder and I threw some of her things away while she was in a mental hospital. Cue screaming, crying, and rage that persisted for years. To her mind I had irreparably damaged the relationship.

I imagine the mother reacted the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tend to feel guilty throwing away stuff that can't be recycled (and even recyclable stuff, knowing that recycle recovery is nowhere close to 100%). As a result, I often end up hoarding stuff that I wish I didn't have, before finally getting fed up and just clearing out a bunch of stuff by throwing it away. As the article mentions regarding perfectionism, I have to be fed up enough that I'll just quickly throw away stuff instead of second guessing whether I might be wasting material that I might have a chance of finding a use for.

This is exacerbated by the fact that there is lots more to hoard today (massive amounts of junk mail, swag at every event, and product packaging getting ever fancier). I think akin to how many people suffer from a paradox of choice, I suffer from a paradox of abundance, and actually sort of wish goods and materials were scarce enough that you could put time and effort into making the most of what you have without getting overwhelmed.

<comment><USER14> I often do the same. Especially with plastic categories that are recyclable but not in all facilities / areas. I've found a local government app (in Qc) that indicates what to do with that. So for plastic category 6 i'm literally saving enough for a trip to the eco-center (not sure how it's called elsewhere).

But the really liberating thing for me is to reduce how much waste I have to get rid of. Right now this means going to shops where I can bring reusable containers for all liquids (drinking/cooking/washing) as well as avoiding places that are overly wrapping with plastics.

In Montreal some places are even starting to give discounts if you bring your own containers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article mentions something in passing that I think is important:

Potential and Value

The article only mentions it once. We live in an increasingly globalized world where our individuality can have an ever smaller impact on the enormous system. I think this drives a lot of people to have a feeling that they are living up to less than their potential and their value isn't that high. Maybe the whole system is living up to less than it's potential. But there is a lot of hopelessness about being able to influence it and our value within the system.

The reality is that much of what is horded has potential or is tied to something that had/has (like lost relatives mentioned in the article)

It seems like hording, like compulsive behaviors, allow us to create a small sense of agency in a world that constantly strips us of it and define potential and value by our own book.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, according to most of the world's apparent value systems, I am essentially human garbage as a middle aged person with no degree and a bunch of partial skills but no specialties who works menial jobs for a bit above minimum wage (or below, depending where you live).

On some level, I know I have tremendous potential, if I could find the right place to plug in. But the many complicated steps, obstacles and potential pitfalls awaiting me in that search are more than a little daunting. Also, how many of these workplaces really _deserve_ me at my absolute very best? In my experience, rather few.

Oh well, I still have my cozy spot with all my stuff, and my niece seems to think I'm okay, so that'll have to do. Just need to keep the main rooms clear so she doesn't trip over anything. When the world's values and your own aren't aligned, pick whichever rates you higher, I say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hoard digital media. I have thousands of e-books, movies, TV episodes, music, and games that I will never be able to consume in my lifetime. Not to mention all the time I spent obtaining the media. It does make me slightly uncomfortable to get rid of the ones I know I probably won't consume, but that feeling is mitigated by the fact that I should be able to easily re-obtain the items if I change my mind.

I don't know if this is related to physical hoarding, since I am an anti- hoarder when it comes to physical objects -- I prefer to have fewer things as opposed to more things, and have a strong aversion to what I call "cheap plastic crap".

<comment><USER18> Hoarding digital media has become kind of pointless with the advent of streaming services though. As a former DJ with eccentric tastes, I spent tons of time looking for, buying and cataloguing obscure music, then eventually digitizing it. But now I just listen to Spotify and Soundcloud, which already have virtually everything I ever collected and then some.

Of course, there are some gaps and the niggling sense of unease that something I like today might not be there tomorrow because of licensing changes or whatever -- but that's what cheap cloud storage is for.

<comment><USER19> I'm "hoarding" web sites with technical information. I've got TBs of disk where I mirror things. Because I started to notice that things just.. disappear. And they're not on archive.org, or their mirror is very incomplete. I'll never need 99.99% of the stuff that I copy.

But just yesterday somebody on a forum looked for information and mentioned a web site that apparently had that info at one point.. but had disappeared. Completely.

Except that I had a copy and could hand it over.

<comment><USER20> Why don't you contribute to archive.org instead?

<comment><USER19> It's not something I could do instead - it's something I would have to do in addition. And there's some problems with that - at the time I'm copying/mirroring, the site is out there on the net. Uploading (as in direct uploading) to archive.org of sites that exists would look a bit strange, I think. But if you mean to get archive.org to mirror instead - yes, I do that too, but the thing is, you can't get archive.org to recursively mirror anything. You can point save.archive.org (IIRC - they change the URL sometimes) to a not-yet archived site (or one which needs an update), and archive.org will copy _that page_. You'll have to click-and-walk through every page if you want archive.org to get a full mirror. And I have done that too, with a few sites. But that's a lot of time-consuming work. Just quickly mirroring a site that pops up during a technical discussion takes all of 30 seconds to set up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The only people I know who have profoundly cluttered homes filled with much more stuff than average had war or famine/poverty as a part of their personal history.

I'm sure this doesn't account for all cases and my sample isn't representative.

When I notice the extra items in the homes of hoarders I know, they're nothing that I haven't or wouldn't have acquired in one way or another -- they're things I would've thrown away.

I see no evidence in the article that a possible increase in (more likely recognition of) hoarding is a result of increased consumption and yet that connection is implied in the article again and again.

<comment><USER22> Having lived in poverty, particularly as a child, was certainly a trigger for many hoarders, but it isn't the only one. We just don't understand how mental disorders are triggered.

I know that I have trouble throwing stuff away if I think I might need it, be able to use it, or be able to repair it. Part of this is probably inherited from my mother, who I think might have ended up with a house like some of those you see on TV if it weren't for my father helping to set boundaries.

While I don't think hoarding itself is genetic, it is clear that there has to be a genetic predisposition that make it easier for this type of behavior to be triggered. My mother also ended up being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, and I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that there's a connection, although obviously I don't have the data to prove it.

<comment><USER23> > it is clear that there has to be a genetic predisposition that make it > easier for this type of behavior to be triggered.

You just described one of the major theories about the onset and progression of mental illness: the diathesis/stress theory of mental illness.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model)

see also:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My mom is almost entirely unable to throw things away. As a consequence, my parents have boxes and boxes of all kinds of stuff stored, including some of my toys from 20+ years ago. They live in a rather big house, but it is starting to encroach on their living space, and it does prevent them from using some of their extra rooms for their original intent, such as a dedicated washing room, so they could move the washer/dryer out of their downstairs bathroom.

Every time my dad and I try to bring up the subject of clearing all of that stuff away, she counters with claims like "but that's our winter clothes" or "as soon as I have the time", which never happens.

I've talked to her about why she tends to accumulate stuff like that, and she thinks it's because her family didn't have much when she was growing up, and her mother was a semi-functioning alcoholic. She says they often experienced simply running out of basic things, and couldn't immediately afford to replace it. So she internalized a need to keep everything around, never throw out or give away anything that still works, and always have at least one spare in storage.

They have three refrigerators (for three adults, my sister still lives at home), which are all stuffed full at all times. This leads to ~monthly rituals of cleaning out all the spoiled food, and then filling up the fridges again to repeat the cycle. When questioned on this behavior, my mom argues that they need to keep all the different spreads and stuff around at all times, because you never know what people might want to eat. We try to argue that it's perfectly OK to not have every single food you would possibly like to eat at any time available at all times, but she doesn't seem to want to agree.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm clearly a hoarder. As a child, I collected WWII stuff. Some, I found myself in battlefields. And some, I got through trade with other kids. And a lot of it got disassembled. Both out of curiosity, and for parts. So I had quite the collection. Basically, weapons, ordinance, hardware and electronics.

And now, I just keep broken stuff, or parts of it. Just about every display, for example, comes with a power cord (or now, brick) and data cable. Ditto with computers and keyboards. So I keep the best ~five of each that aren't in use, and donate the rest to a reuse center. I also have quite the fan collection. But I no longer save RAM, because it so rarely matches.

I also have lots of hardware. Metal stock, fasteners, etc. And scrap wood, left over from projects.

Sure, it takes up space. But I have a closet for that, and it's reasonably well organized. And if something breaks, or if I need to hack something, there's a pretty good chance that I'll have what I need.

<comment><USER26> Does not sound like you meet the DSM criteria for hoarding mentioned in the article. It sounds more like you are someone who likes hardware hacking and hangs on to a lot of hardware bits and pieces for that reason.

<comment><USER25> Maybe so. But my wife would disagree ;)

What did sound familiar was the sense of overwhelm. And the pattern of "don't touch my piles, because I know where everything is".

Some years ago, when we were living in an ancient farmhouse, I had a basement full of stuff. Bits and pieces of all the stuff that you need to keep an old farmhouse working.

I also maintained collections of books and documents used in research, for reference in case anyone asked. Now, at least that stuff is all on disk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think the simplest explanation goes like this:

1\. Hoarding is addictive behavior. 2\. The Opposite of Addiction is Connection ([https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-and-sex-in- the-...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-and-sex-in-the-digital- age/201509/the-opposite-addiction-is-connection)) 3\. Because we currently have less connection, we have more addiction—and hoarding is one instantiation.

<comment><USER28> >Because we currently have less connection, we have more addiction — and hoarding is one instantiation.

This makes the most sense to me. Connection and attachment are correlated. If there's no connection or attachment, we'll - more than likely - attempt to replace this 'x' thing missing with 'y' tangible thing.

Edit:

I think the problem of society always needing an enemy to attack, with the ferocity the likes of which hasn't been seen in previous generations, is only part of the problem. I'm going to refer to Bill Hicks' closing speech to give a general synopsis around this[1].

[1] - [https://youtu.be/tHzm01FQKEU](https://youtu.be/tHzm01FQKEU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Granted this is a layman's perspective, but it doesn't seem like much of a mystery to me.

On the one hand we have rampant marketing pushing the idea that stuff will make us happy, and on the other we have society telling us that waste is dooming the planet.

So we have significant pressures to a) acquire things and b) not throw them out.

<comment><USER30> Yes, but those pressures are applied to everybody while only a relatively small percentage of the population becomes hoarders. There must be more to it.

<comment><USER31> Some people emotionally bond with stuff just as readily as with puppies.

<comment><USER30> I was a kid when I first encountered the home of a hoarder. My mother brought me there because she was dropping off schoolwork to one of her students (a year younger than me) that lived in the home. I think that was just an excuse, I think she was concerned for the child who lived there. What I remember most vividly was the pile of toilet paper cardboard tubes. The pile was taller than I was, and wider than I was tall. That wasn't even close to the worst, but it stood out because it must have represented decades of hoarding. It takes a long time to use that much toilet paper.

That's not simple materialism. That's not loving your motorcycle like somebody loves a dog. It's a serious mental illness that shouldn't be taken lightly or brushed off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My parents grew up in the Great Depression. My dad still hoards stuff, because he remembers when you simply couldn't _get_ stuff. For example, he talks about re-using thread, not because they had no money to buy thread, but because there was no thread to buy because the thread factories had closed.

I wonder if the Great Recession had a similar impact on people. Staring the ruin of the financial world in the face may have left a mark on some people.

<comment><USER33> My parents did the same, but the stuff they kept was _very_ different to what we see from a modern hoarder. They'd been through the depression, war, and rationing. My dad remembered his childhood in the 30s where there simply weren't enough clothes and shoes to go around between him and his two brothers.

None of what they kept was consumer stuff. No crap. They didn't hoard records, magazines, electronics, clothes or what have you. Financially they were comfortable and had no need whatsoever to do so.

They kept screws, bolts, string (in the string tin), paper bags (neatly folded), plastic bags. Then they were reused and repurposed. Mum unravelled old jumpers and knitted or crocheted the wool into socks, scarves, blankets. She'd darn socks and mend rips. When she watched a soap opera there was _always_ the background noise of knitting. There was enough food in the cupboards and freezer for a month, yet they'd shop weekly and always replenish stock. Mum baked and cooked for the freezer too, which had the added advantage of being 1,000x nicer than any store bought bread or cake.

Dad kept an Aladdin's cave in the garage from old broken electricals and mechanicals. He could repair most things from what was in the cupboards and tins in there, and almost always did in preference to buying another. Clearing it after he died took forever, but was an education of an age when things were more substantially made. Every thing.

Their environmental footprint was a tiny fraction of me and my peers, though knew nothing of "environmentalism". I never quite understood why they didn't spend more, especially in retirement. I don't think they saw the point of spending, except trips and holidays. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Minimalism is the ideology of the rich - you don't need to keep stuff if you know you can simply buy it again next-day shipping. Keeping stuff "in case" it's ever needed again is the normal behaviour of normal people!

<comment><USER35> Really the rich in the UK are known for buying high quality stuff and wearing it for years Prince Charles has a favourite Barbour jacket that's 40 years old.

<comment><USER36> Is it definitely the same jacket - he only bought one originally and has never bought an identical one since?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> My untested hypothesis is that hoarding is a symptom of depression. That coupled with there are just "more things" to hoard these days.

<comment><USER38> > symptom of depression

Not all hoarders are depressed. Or have OCD. Which is why it has it's own classification (from tested hypotheses).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think there's just been a general decline in mental health. The suicide rate has been increasing steadily since 2000.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hoarding feels similar to over eating.

We need to eat but some people can't control the quality or quantity of food consumed.

Similarly, instead of collecting an appropriate amount of valuable and useful resources, they collect random nearly useless items and attach much value to them.

Could be a case of an ancient survival strategy that is no longer valid in the current environment.

<comment><USER41> You can't "control", but you can create an environment that's better or less for healthy eating. Look at the BMI difference between Japan and the US. In the US, the lobbies for processed foods have long been very strong, and it had its effects.

<comment><USER40> Sure. Perhaps we generalize them both and say that:

Modern capitalism exploits (perverts?) natural human behavior and can lead to maladaptive behavior in our current environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have a family member who has mild hoarding habits and the most striking thing is the emotional attachment to the stuff. Throwing out something is felt as though it is a personal attack and a loss almost equivalent to tossing the family pet.

To blame income, capitalism, live space, etc misses the point. The items don't have to be large or important. The space doesn't have to be large. The income doesn't have to plentiful.

If there is an increase in hoarding, it's probably due to an increase in stress and anxiety in life.

<comment><USER43> > The items don't have to be large or important.

I have OCD (which isn't hoarding, but manifests in similar ways), and it's as if there is not filter. _Everything_ is of equal value. That wrapper I just discarded, or this photo of my parents - they're of equal importance.

Yes, I _know_ they're of no use, but it _might_ be (is my OCD thought process).

<comment><USER25> > Yes, I _know_ they're of no use, but it _might_ be (is my OCD thought > process).

Hey, I know that "wrapper" is intended to induce eye roll. But I _do_ save some bags and packaging. For example, laminated packaging with an Al layer + Al tape = temporary repair of a cracked roof slate.

<comment><USER44> I only recently threw away a (unused) Starbucks paper cup from ~2010. Life circumstances around the time it came into my possession made me particularly attached to an image printed on it, and thus the cup changed apartments with me twice before I finally realized it's just a dust collector and I don't care about it _that_ much anymore.

People are weird. Myself included.

<comment><USER25> Yeah. My wife has a couple PBS "Downton Abbey" paper cups in the cabinet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Funny enough, in the past days I was thinking about _hoarding_ as a neurological disorder. It has similarities to keeping a lot of things in mind at the same time and re-iterate them over and over. The are quite a few mind- hoarders, as I call them, who basically hoard ideas and concepts to the point that they forget what is actually relevant here and now. Hoarding psychical objects might stem from the same cause inside the brain which causes the mind hoarding as well. Hence it can't be a psychological disorder alone.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is an epic talk on the psychology of clutter by a very subtly brilliant therapist. [0] I re-listen every few months and get new things out of it every time. Many of her points are in this article, but also many more and more deeply and personally contextualized.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3eODhBTO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3eODhBTO4)

</comment><comment><USER47> The article mentions divorce. I would say that you can be a hoarder but live with people that help you balance against hoarding. Beyond your partner, this is also true if you don't have a social life or don't live with other people. So, nowadays degrading social life (e.g. mobile phone addiction) could be a natural cause.

</comment><comment><USER48> The bit about hoarding not existing in the past except for gold was a real eye-roller. Stuff was expensive then so it wouldn't be abnormal and more readily pawnable. You could sell anything from old clothes to a dead horse or headless axe and get something of value from it. Virtually nothing was worthless.

</comment><comment> et-al No one's mentioned marketing? We're probably bombarded with more marketing than we ever have before. In addition, it's so easy to buy stuff with 1-click shopping with 2-day shipping.

It's known that web sites want to be addictive for people, but it's so they can ultimately sell people something.

<comment><USER49> Not sure that's really a deciding factor I think, at least not in the majority. Not all hoarders buy all the stuff they get. They just sweep up stuff that's free or some of them just keep candy wrappers or old newspapers. Sure, if someone is easily wooed by marketing and likes (or feels pressed to) buy stuff, this can exacerbate the problem, but from all hoarding stories the only thing that matches this was "Oh, this mustard is really cheap, better buy the whole case of 48 glasses" which was then discovered years later in the basement...

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm not a hoarder; I just see the potential for a future use that I don't quite know of for these cardboard boxes and paper rolls. Never know when you'll need a lot of cardboard ...

<comment><USER23> Get some gerbils, they love to chew up cardboard!

It would be like one compulsive helping out another.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGb4tqOMt1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGb4tqOMt1A)

(Only joking people, don't buy pets unless you are ready to properly care for them from cradle to grave!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I accept that it can be a disorder, but they don't say whether hoarding (or, 'organising' I think is more accurate) is just a natural human compulsion. From early childhood we seem to be drawn to collectible/hoardable/organisable items (baseball cards, Pogs, Pokémon, Barbies, etc). Maybe this hoarding disorder is a poor manifestation of a compulsion that we all exhibit in some way.

</comment><comment><USER52> This describes the hoarders that I have actually known:

" _But researchers have found a possible link between hoarding and PTSD among Holocaust survivors, and late-onset hoarding has often been linked to loss or trauma._ "

Of those I've known, all of them have had intense anxiety about their own mortality -- all of us have some anxiety about our death, but with hoarders that fear is close to the surface. I've had the impression that they hope to hold onto the past by holding onto physical objects from the past. If you keep a souvenir from a particular day, then it's as if that day has not yet ended, it will last forever.

<comment><USER53> A comment on one episode of Hoarders stuck with me: "I'm saving all this for my grandkids."

It was a mangled way of protecting him from death and the indifference of future generations.

But all it takes is a visit to a local estate sale to realize no one wants 99.9% of this junk, even your descendants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think there are multiple root causes which are society-wide.

One, is that the boomers were a post WWII generation and there was a huge need to keep everything, because people lost everything and much of it was unreplaceable: My parents were teenagers in London during the blitz and lost book collections, possessions being bombed out. They subsequently had kids, across the boomer window: Guess what culture we grew up in: a hoarder culture.

We experienced the 1970s oil crisis. So we kept candles and suger. We experienced periodic food and supply shortages. So we kept bulk buying.

We kept paper. We kept things. We kept old cars. We kept old electrical items. We repurposed them.

But then consumer society moved to replace, not repair. The problem is we didn't get our brains re-wired.

The other societal pressure is affluenza. We're under a huge amount of social pressure to keep buying stuff. If the rate of acquisition exceeds the rate of consumption, you can wind up accidentally in hoarder mode, stacked up with purchases "just in case"

Thirdly, social anxiety levels are skyrocketing, especially amongst the young. Anxiety feeds hoarding, because the pleasure moment in getting things is matched by the pain moment in shedding things. Its a cycle of emotional states feeding a buy-keep mode.

Fourthly, we're drowning in choice. Its a classic experiment, to offer three jams for breakfast, or twenty (if you offer twenty, people often avoid jam because deciding which is too hard). If you have too many choices, you wind up making bad choices to get "all the things" to avoid having to decide which to get. So you get two kinds of screws from the wall of twenty, or a box of twenty kinds? I went the twenty. Then, we have the choice problem disposing: which to keep and which to chuck?

Fifthly, the "dont be wasteful" moment works to stop buying but if you HAVE the thing, "dont be wasteful" says don't dispose of it. Dont "throw things away which are useful"

Disposal stores, Op-Shops, Charity shops, don't take electrical goods any more in OZ (safety risk) and don't take shoes and bedding (health risk) so these things stack up because adding them to the waste pile is "wasteful"

Society is hard sometimes. Its judgemental, and it adds pressures. These pressures feed hoarding.

Marie Kondo may be helping unwind it, but the back pressure is huge. She is a bit cult-y and maybe others have noticed what I see: people are disrespecting cleaning up, cutting down, going to 'wasteful' and 'disposable society' messages. Yes, its wasteful to buy unwanted things, and throw them away.

But we have the things, and if we stop buying the economy tanks.

What do we do?

</comment><comment><USER55> Consumerism pops into my mind. People want more and more and at the same time are terrible at getting rid of things

</comment><comment><USER56> Is the inverse of this extreme minimalism?

</comment><comment><USER57> And how can hoarders actually be helped?

</comment><comment><USER58> The psychological industry inventing new disorders and diagnosing normal human behaviors as a disorder, something that needs to be fixed.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_psychopath_test?language=en)

<comment><USER7> No. _Clinical_ hoarding disorder is _not_ normal human behavior--it causes "significant distress and/or impairment of personal functioning", by definition. Same goes with any other mental disorder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> >What's Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder?

Judging by the article taking something that's gone for ages without too many problems and recategorising it as a disorder.

<comment><USER60> You must have never seen a hoarder's house. Look up pictures.

<comment><USER59> My mum's something of a hoarder. It's never been a DSM issue though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Why is this page using 100% of CPU?

<comment><USER62> That seems unique to you. I'm not experiencing that, and I'm running vanilla chrome without an adblocker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> The unstated premise is that there is a rise in hoarding and that hoarding is a disorder. As this very article states at the beginning it was only within the last 5 years that it has been recognized as a psychological disorder. It's just as likely to be removed again depending on the profits, or not, of those seeking to exploit the idea of hoarding being a disorder.

<comment><USER64> I also doubt that it's on the rise. I always thought it to be a Baby Boomers thing because they are the last generation that suffered from material shortage in their childhood.

Similarly I believe information hoarding is a Gen X thing because we grew up in information shortage. Do Millennials download stuff? Maybe out of fun or for convenience but probably not because of the irrational Gen Xer fear that all the nice access to information we have could go away one day.

All of this is just my arm chair psychology of course.

<comment><USER65> Funny you'd say that. I keep a folder with gigabytes of youtube videos I downloaded in the event that they are removed from youtube. And, to tell you the truth, a chunk of them have actually been removed from youtube over the years!

<comment><USER23> This is why I have to laugh at people who deride older non digital technologies: film cameras (negatives last hundreds of years if stored properly), photographic prints (archive quality non acid paper last ~100s of years also.

I have 40 year old VHS tapes that are still good, vinyl records last a long time too.

Think of all these pictures we snap with our phones.

Most of them will probably be lost from disk drive failures, accidental erasure, hardware failures making them too expensive to recover, software obsolescence (pictures are on the device but they don't make the software to connect to the device any more)...

Meanwhile I have a box of family pictures, some of them from the 19th century (a few tin types), but most of them from the 20th century, that are still good most with negatives intact. I could print a brand new print of any of them anytime I want.

<comment><USER62> > Most of them will probably be lost from disk drive failures, accidental > erasure, hardware failures making them too expensive to recover, software > obsolescence (pictures are on the device but they don't make the software to > connect to the device any more)...

> Meanwhile I have a box of family pictures, some of them from the 19th > century (a few tin types), but most of them from the 20th century, that are > still good most with negatives intact. I could print a brand new print of > any of them anytime I want.

This is really where cloud storage solves those problems. The photos I care about are shared with friends and family and are safe from hardware failure or house fire. The only scenario they aren't great at is the inter-generational one, but if dad gives kids access it's no worse than a shoebox under the bed. They'll just have to pull stuff down into their own digital lockers before MasterCard and Google realize I'm dead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Consumer capitalism caused by an infinitely exponential increase in advertising compared to any other era of human history.

</comment><comment><USER67> For me, it was growing up with Sonic the hedgehog. I was trained that keeping as many rings as I could would ensure my survival.

<comment><USER29> If Sonic had really trained you, you'd have learned a different lesson: you can survive anything if you can keep just one ring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> It's a Symptome of schizophrenia. Not everyone with it runs around as hobo rambling. Instead you have plans, a myriad of them, and each item you got is justified by its usage by the recombination disease.

<comment><USER69> While it can be a symptom of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, hoarding itself isn't really a symptom of schizophrenia when by itself - <USER2> like you can have hallucinations and delusions caused by mental illness without having schizophrenia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> More disposable income and larger living space.

<comment><USER71> That alone won't cause people to have an 'uncontrolable need to accumulate everything'. Buying junk to fill a house that's too big is not the same as hoarding.

Please read the article.

<comment><USER72> > That alone won't cause people to have an 'uncontrolable need to accumulate > everything'.

My fiancee's grandmother (from a post-Great-Depression era) wasted a fortune (~$500k) on ordering from late night infomercials and anything else they could buy (buried in the hoard were total gyms and horse saddles, stacks of unread subscriptions piling for decades, etc). Their house was a veritable hoarder home that only stopped filling when they ran out of money. I'll counter your "nuh-uh" with "uh huh".

<comment><USER43> That doesn't counter "That alone". A single example doesn't prove that that alone may may cause it - even within that example, there may be other factors at play.

<comment><USER48> The multiple unused copies sounds like impulse control issues coupled with memory problems.

<comment><USER72> There was no issue with memory. The subscriptions were each individually fulfilled. It was just a mass (stacks of individual magazines monthly). It was fueled by relatively disposable assets plus anxiety. Storage space is a function of assets, which is why hoarders end up with renting storage for housing their junk.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Plugzr – The World's Smartest Power Outlet - <AUTHOR> http://www.plugzr.com <comment><USER2> Not sure what the compelling part of this is, I have about 6 of similar units (2 USB, 6 outlets and a LED light) that I paid ~$13 for. I use the USB ports with the appropriate cable. My tablets seem to charge fine.

Likewise I have some power monitors that I use for things that I want general measurements on, they are also pretty inexpensive.

So unless this unit is in the sub-$30 range I can do similar things today.

Looking forward to the release to see what the pricing model is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but as you mentioned you have several devices to use for different purposals and all of them need a free outlet when in use. With Plugzr, you have all these devices combined in just one single device - yet keeping your outlet free for further use.

Plugzr has a built-in charging dock, which needs no cables at all, as you can just plug your mobile device on to it without any cables. Additionally you have 2 USB ports which you can use with your existing USB cables.

BUT - with Plugzr you have a WiFi enabled smart socket which can be remote controlled AND which can do the power metering for you in real time via app. AND you have also a built-in smart LED light (with up to 16 million colors) which also can be controlled via app.

Cheers

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Soon available on Indiegogo with savings up to 50% for early supporters!</comment>


Steve Ballmer Says Smartphones Broke His Relationship with Bill Gates - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-04/steve-ballmer-says-smartphones-broke-his-relationship-with-bill-gates <comment><USER2> This quote tho:

 _" I wish I'd thought about the model of subsidizing phones through the operators," he said. "You know, people like to point to this quote where I said iPhones will never sell, because the price at $600 or $700 was too high. And there was business model innovation by Apple to get it essentially built into the monthly cell phone bill."_

Apparently he didn't realize cell phone companies had been doing that for nearly a decade before the iPhone.

<comment><USER3> I can understand why he didn't realize that. He's a super rich individual and chances are he doesn't personally pay his bills. What I find shocking is that no one in the chain of command bothered to mentioned to him that you know we could subsidize the price. Which tells me that something in high management around that era should be quite rotten.

<comment><USER4> I have a taken a new job every year or two for the past 10 years. Every place I go is ignoring best practices and mired in their tiny problems as though they were unsolvable. These problems would all simply evaporate if not for their incest of thought.

This behavior that you find shocking, I find completely normal and predictable.

<comment><USER5> I do business systems consulting and I cannot tell you how true this is... not only are they mired in their tiny problems, sometimes they jealously guard them as well.

I think the most common kind of manager-think is some sort of dedication to appear being conservative in judgments; this can be true for any low level supervisor through to the topmost levels of management. This results in two behaviors: 1) you don't go out on limbs and you work to minimize all risk rather than take well-considered risks; and 2) the problems you deal with daily are "safe problems" that everyone from the board to the employees have accepted as facts of life and their existence is unlikely to get you fired or put you in a bad light.... even if it ought. So you don't solve your problems because the solutions may bring unknown problems of their own. Taking risks, and failing occasionally, is simply seen as failure and successes aren't remembered as long as failures (we remember bad news better than good news)... and any new thinking or new action is seen as risk.

<comment><USER6> >not only are they mired in their tiny problems, sometimes they jealously guard them as well.

My current position is very much like this. They spent _months_ digging themselves into their current hole. Any attempt to replace their shovels with ladders turns into an argument over how long they spent making their shovels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >"There was a fundamental disagreement about how important it was to be in the hardware business,"

And that's not a settled answer. The two giants in mobile, Apple and Google, have diametrically opposite approaches. Apple has the entire verticle, from SOC to the OS. Google controls primarily the OS and application stack. Both are incredibly successful. Microsoft could never have been an Apple. But they could have been a Google. They could have had Android, and I don't think they would have complained if that was the case.

>Ballmer said the mistake was getting into handsets and tablets too late.

What is he talking about? Microsoft was in the handset and tablet business since the 90s. Their offering didn't resonate. They were also always afraid of cannibalizing their Office and Windows business. Their actions in the 90s and early 2000s also built up a lot of ill-will, so nobody was rooting for them.

>Apple Inc.'s iPhone would never sell because it cost too much? He now wishes he'd realized how Apple was going to make it work -- through mobile carrier subsidies.

That's also part of the problem. Ballmer was obsessed with Apple and while he focused on Apple, Android took over the market.

<comment><USER8> I remember when the Courier[1] demo came out. I was excited about it... Then deeply disappointed when it was unceremoniously shelved. It's speculation whether it would have been a successful product, but I think the idea back then had potential but Ballmer was unwilling to gamble on it.

[PS] On the other hand, he did gamble on long-term things like Azure, so it's not like he made all the wrong bets --but it seemed like an obvious bet to go with something like a Courier, specially after all the buzz it created.

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

<comment><USER9> To this day, I sometimes come across images of the Courier, and day-dream about what was possible the ideal portable for me. I loved everything about the potential of that project.

Still do.

<comment><USER10> You and me both. To this day I deliberately don't think about it, because it just makes me sad that what seemed to be incredible potential was shelved. I guess the Surface products are the closest to that potential, but for a long time all we had was the iPad and awful Android tablets. And I still feel like all of it doesn't live up to the ideals the Courier had.

I'm now going to go and forget this comment happened so I don't spend the day depressed about where technology went.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So Apple invented carrier subsidies for cell phone purchases just for the iPhone, and that's why the iPhone worked?

Yeah. Solid reasoning there, Ballmer...

They were a thing long before the iPhone.

But then again, hugely successful people almost never say: "yeah, I was an idiot who just didn't see it".

And he was very successful in terms of increasing revenue and working the markets.

<comment><USER12> That said, it still blows me away when I see my friends taking these "subsidies" without understanding that they are basically paying full price for the phone, if not more.

<comment><USER11> Where I live there is very high competition in the mobile carrier market, and subscriptions are incredibly cheap.

I'm always amazed at how many are actually throwing away money by accepting a 'subsidied' phone which forces you to take a contract 2-3 times as expensive as you would actually need it.

Even if you see it as 0% financing, in my quick calculations it always worked out to be more expensive than just buying the phone outright.

<comment><USER12> Here in Canada, prices are not cheap yet, but getting better slowly due to increasing competition. What I see is that the subsidized plan makes sense in the moment, in that it's the regular plan + the cost of the phone divided over 24 months, but the problem with that is that cost of a regular plan, or the features (e.g. amount of data, minutes) that are provided by it, are going to improve substantially over the next 6 month and even moreso over the next 12-24 months. If you can afford it, you're much better off buying the phone outright and then going month-to-month with the cheapest plan you can find. The problem is, most of the people doing this can't fathom affording buying the phone outright, but it's easier to stomach as a hidden cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hindsight is 20/20

More important decision would have been "consumer" vs "business". Even if they invested in phones earlier, it would have made no difference if the company was still run by salespeople focused on business seat sales.

</comment><comment><USER14> I actually think Ballmer really was the perfect finance-oriented CEO between tech-oriented Gates and Nadella. Except instead of 14 years it'd probably have been better a 5-8 years period or so. Sadly, 14 years was a too long period and maybe Microsoft lost some good trains along that time.

</comment><comment><USER15> People seem to be too rash to bash him about subsidies. Yes, they were standard before. No, phones at the time did not cost nearly as much. Prices of modern top-notch smartphones are insane. The trick was in hiding the price and Ballmer just did not expect how much people are willing to pay monthly. I wouldn't guess it either.

</comment><comment><USER16> It may be true Microsoft didn't want to get into mobile initially but this quote from Ballmer in 2007 about the iPhone says everything: "it doesn't have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine."

The [old] Microsoft was not able to see mobile as anything other than another way to sell outlook.

<comment><USER17> > The [old] Microsoft was not able to see mobile as anything other than > another way to sell outlook.

This is best evidenced by their pre-iPhone smartphones, most of which were little more than PocketPCs with keyboards and cellular hardware tacked on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Warning: This page autoplays video (/audio).

</comment><comment><USER19> The point they made about mobile carrier subsidies is surprisingly big. A $600 phone even today languishes without carrier support (though I believe on a carrier subsidy, the total cost of the phone ends up being something like a grand to the customer). But Apple kind of invented the concept of "phone-as a-service"?

</comment><comment><USER20> Gates-Ballmer era in Microsoft was incredibly successful, but not because they had technological insight or creativity.

It's hard to come up with any technological innovations from inside Microsoft in 80's and 90's. Microsoft strategy was to buy out companies that seemed to build something new and either integrate the software or bury it. Gates and Ballmer were both smart and ultra-aregressive ruthless businessmen. Technology was always secondary to business.

Few examples of their failures and corrective measures: The internet and the browser, Java and Smartphones. In each case they were hopelessly late and their reaction was buying spree, failure and repeat until success.

<comment><USER21> "any technological innovations ... in 80's and 90's"

What? Ok, first, do you think they've ever innovated anything? During the 2000's? What exactly?

Wasn't Windows NT, for example, innovative? The kernel is still powering the Windows operating system.

Internet Explorer was a hugely successful browser dominating the market.

Innovation isn't only creating something from scratch. One can also create innovative products by acquiring the basis for that and developing until it is successful.

Of course they're approach has been to "repeat until success". And they quite often get there.

<comment><USER22> > Internet Explorer was a hugely successful browser dominating the market.

Mostly because it was shipped with Windows and many people wont change it (Non tech). Furthermore, setting aside the anti-trust case, I would rather say they did not capitalize on that start they got IMHO.

<comment><USER23> Though the Netscape Mariner debacle probably didn't help either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know if Bill Gates also opposes Microsoft's manufacturing of other hardware such as Surface products or was it just the mobile phones?

<comment><USER25> I never detected that Gates was less than genuine in his zeal for the Zune (the few times he spoke about it, that is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The stars aligned(aka Jobs was brilliant) with the iphone. $199 cheap enough for consumer(with subsidy).

leverage people's current ipod music investment into the iphone. no buttons. slick design.

"felt like phone as an app on my new ipod."

really easy to use for non-tech people.

<comment><USER27> > leverage people's current ipod music investment into the iphone.

Yeah, no. Before streaming by and far the most amount of people didn't buy music in iTunes. They either torrented it or (if technically challenged) simply bought it physically and then ripped it to iTunes.

<comment><USER28> _" (if technically challenged) simply bought it physically and then ripped it to iTunes."_

Minor nitpick, but ripping from CD to iTunes in the early days was a nontrivial process for the technically challenged. I'd argue that audiophiles were the group most likely to have done this, i.e., to get lossless music files. (The resulting file sizes were monstrous, of course, and this eventually led to some storage issues. But I digress.)

I'd argue that the technically challenged were the _vanguard_ of buying music files on iTunes. The tech-savvy were torrenting, and everyone else found the iTunes store a really easy way to click and download music. In fact, I distinctly remember snarky comments back in the day about how paying $0.99 per track on iTunes was "a tax on technical illiteracy."

<comment><USER27> If you inserted a CD, iTunes instantly offered to rip it for you, fully automatically. Didn't even need to fiddle with settings, it was literally just pressing 'ok'.

I'd say of the technically challenged there was a subset that used iTunes to buy maybe a few tracks or albums, and certainly not enough to keep them 'trapped' in the Apple ecosystem.

<comment><USER28> _" If you inserted a CD, iTunes instantly offered to rip it for you, fully automatically."_

You're correct. I think my memory of product timelines in the early days is a bit hazy.

Even still, I'd love to see data that ripping from CD was a prevalent use case _at all_ in the early days. I believe it was originally intended as an onboarding process / ecosystem-lock mechanism. The assumption: a lot of consumers (at the time) have CD libraries; by allowing them to easily port over to iTunes, we can port their libraries onto our ecosystem; from there, we have them. That was clearly the idea...but I'd love to learn more about how common a use case this ended up being.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As a person who used to make their living completely off the msft stack and now is completely off it - I'd redo that headline to say every action of Ballmer's probably helped break his relationship with Gates - yes, Gate's Microsoft was very predatory and could be a very bad actor, but Ballmer's entire achievement was to help drive non-msft solutions to dominance and leave Nadella in a Sisyphean role -</comment>


Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present - <AUTHOR> http://jbayko.sasktelwebsite.net/cpu.html

<comment><USER2> Disappointingly dull I thought - shame there is potential for a great post under this title.</comment>


Ribbon Hero - <AUTHOR> http://www.officelabs.com/ribbonhero

<comment><USER2> I was semi-interested in checking this out until I was prompted to download Microsoft Silverlight to view the videos. No thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: Which RSS reader do you use? - <AUTHOR> I use Inoreader for a while, but know it started to limit subscriptions, or switch to payed version, do you know a good free alternative ? <comment><USER2> [https://newsblur.com/](https://newsblur.com/)

<comment><USER3> Tried gazillions of them, NewsBlur is the best (unless you need some fancy pants features like tiles or whatever).

Killer feature for me is the ability to group your feeds then making them availale via separate rss channels.

The mobile client is also pretty damn good.

<comment><USER4> Newsblur did add (somewhat recently) a "tiles" like view for graphic/image blogs to the web version. Newsblur might not always be the fastest at picking up hip new features, but I find that Samuel is pretty reliable about eventually adding the "greatest hits" of what everybody else has been doing.

It's also open source for those that want to try to directly contribute code fixes/ideas, but I've rarely felt that need. I'm happy enough just paying the Premium subscription every year and knowing that suggestions on the forums (used to be UserVoice, now is Discourse) get responses pretty quick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Miniflux ([https://github.com/miniflux](https://github.com/miniflux)) has a paid version but you can host it yourself

</comment><comment><USER6> Tiny Tiny RSS [https://tt-rss.org/](https://tt-rss.org/) I host it myself and love it.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I do is a bit elaborate, and probably isn't for everyone. I run Tiny Tiny RSS on my home web server. It aggregates all of the RSS feeds that I'm interested in, then provides them as one or more RSS feeds that it generates (which I read with gReader on Android) or in a decent web interface (which I use when I'm not using a mobile device).

</comment><comment><USER8> After running into Inoreader's limits I found Feedbro, it is a free extension for Chrome and Firefox and it does the job very well.

[https://nodetics.com/feedbro/](https://nodetics.com/feedbro/)

It is not open source but I haven't managed to find any negative comments on the developer.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.inoreader.com/](https://www.inoreader.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Feedly, it is free with small ads ( I do wish they highlight the ads in different colour though ).

I still wish there is an RSS Reader within Safari. Since all my bookmarks are synced to iCloud, there is no reason why my list of RSS feeds can't live within my iCloud as well.

<comment><USER11> Another vote for Feedly... it imported my Google Reader list ages ago and checks that box well enough for my tastes. I don't remember seeing any ads in it - maybe I'm ad-blind by now, or maybe uBlock is taking care of that for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Oldreader.

I don't have enough feeds to need their pro tier.

I am probably going to write my own soon for practice.

</comment><comment><USER13> I built a bare-bones one for myself a while back: [https://github.com/johnjones4/FeedPage/](https://github.com/johnjones4/FeedPage/) All you need to use it is a link to an OPML file with your feeds and Docker. Here's what my OPML file looks like: [https://gist.github.com/johnjones4/0fd1b1b47d62d826164bea990...](https://gist.github.com/johnjones4/0fd1b1b47d62d826164bea99015e5fbe)

</comment><comment><USER14> bazqux.com - it tries to mimic old google reader closely, have very compact ui, support hotkeys and loads comments inline. written by 1 guy in haskell/urweb. unfortunately its not free.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sage with Waterfox. Old, but I've never found anything better. When it stopped working in FF I had a day of mourning, and then when I found Waterfox I had a day of rejoicing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Slack

Created a slack for myself and do all kinds of integrations. Including several rss channels.

Usage: /feed [http://..](http://..).

</comment><comment><USER17> GNU Emacs + Gnus, using [http://gwene.org](http://gwene.org) to convert RSS feeds into newsgroups.

</comment><comment><USER18> ViennaRSS

[https://github.com/ViennaRSS/vienna-rss](https://github.com/ViennaRSS/vienna- rss)

<comment><USER19> I was the lead dev for Vienna for several years, and it still feels great to see a shout-out like this. Glad you enjoy it :-)

<comment><USER20> Used and loved it back when I was on OSX. Thank you for your work! Much appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Honestly I use a trivial client to download RSS-feeds and convert them to emails.

(I rewrote rss2email in golang.)

It means I don't need yet-another application/client and I can do sorting, tagging, etc as I would for emails. Doesn't matter which host I'm on, or where I am, the state of "new" vs "read" is maintained, for example.

</comment><comment><USER22> I use the Brief firefox plug-in, but I mostly use it for tracking YouTube subscriptions w/o an account

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/brief/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/brief/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I use Inoreader with Reeder.

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge/blob/master/rese...](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge/blob/master/research/blogs.md)

</comment><comment><USER24> Slick RSS ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slick- rss/ealjoljn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slick- rss/ealjoljnibpdkocmldliaoojpgdkcdob))

</comment><comment><USER25> I wrote one I like, but I was looking for a specific use-case. [https://github.com/Dotnaught/vulture- feeds](https://github.com/Dotnaught/vulture-feeds)

</comment><comment><USER26> I use Nextcloud's News app. On iOS I read it directly from my instance as it is responsive. On Android I used the Nextcloud News Android app from F-Droid

</comment><comment><USER27> Feedly via Nextgen Reader for majority of news and Foxish live RSS in Vivaldi to mimic Firefox live bookmarks, for local general news

</comment><comment><USER28> liferea - [https://lzone.de/liferea/](https://lzone.de/liferea/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Newsboat (open source) [https://newsboat.org](https://newsboat.org)

</comment><comment><USER30> Reeder (with Feedly as the backend)

</comment><comment><USER31> TheOldReader

</comment><comment><USER32> Thunderbird

</comment><comment><USER33> Feedbin for syncing and web. Readkit on MacOS. Reeder for iOS.

</comment><comment><USER34> Feedly and Blogtrottr.

</comment><comment><USER35> QuiteRSS on CentOS @ work. I like it

<comment><USER36> Another vote for QuiteRSS here. It's the only reader I've come across that's both decently fast on a large number of feeds and lets me define complex, REGEX based filters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Feedly

</comment><comment><USER38> Akregator

</comment><comment><USER39> FreshRss installed as a docker container in my local little server.</comment>


Automatic documentation, a restful-API toolkit for the django/flask framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pcloth/api-shop <comment><AUTHOR> core function: 1\. Configuration api generation. 2\. Automatically verify the data submitted by the request and convert it to a format. 3\. Automatically generate api documents and provide a web page for query and mock data presentation. 4\. Compatible with django and flask 5\. Container format conversion: list, dict, set, tuple 6\. Custom Format Converter, data_format.datetime format conversion class; '2019-01-18 23:25:25' to datetime 7\. Multi-language support. 8\. Document support hot overload. 9\. The default value supports method functions.</comment>


20 Database Design Best Practices - <AUTHOR> http://www.dzone.com/links/r/20_database_design_best_practices.html

<comment><USER2> "5. Keep passwords as encrypted for security. Decrypt them in application when required." stopped reading there</comment>