Association between physical exercise and mental health: a cross-sectional study - happy-go-lucky https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(18)30227-X/fulltext <comment><AUTHOR> This was a cross-sectional study. Here's an opposing result for anxiety and depression:

> Testing Causality in the Association Between Regular Exercise and Symptoms > of Anxiety and Depression

> Context: In the population at large, regular exercise is associated with > reduced anxious and depressive symptoms. Results of experimental studies in > clinical populations suggest a causal effect of exercise on anxiety and > depression, but it is unclear whether such a causal effect also drives the > population association. We cannot exclude the major contribution of a third > underlying factor influencing exercise behavior and symptoms of anxiety and > depression...

> Setting: Causal effects of exercise were tested by bivariate genetic > modeling of the association between exercise and symptoms of anxiety and > depression, correlation of intrapair differences in these traits among > genetically identical twins, and longitudinal modeling of changes in > exercise behavior and anxious and depressive symptoms.

> Results: Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations were small and were > best explained by common genetic factors with opposite effects on exercise > behavior and symptoms of anxiety and depression. In genetically identical > twin pairs, the twin who exercised more did not display fewer anxious and > depressive symptoms than the co-twin who exercised less. Longitudinal > analyses showed that increases in exercise participation did not predict > decreases in anxious and depressive symptoms.

> Conclusion: Regular exercise is associated with reduced anxious and > depressive symptoms in the population at large, but the association is not > because of causal effects of exercise.

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/210112)

There's a huge bias in popular reporting toward studies concluding that interventions are helpful.

<comment><USER2> The thing is, since a few we actually know now how exercise helps: it builds _resilience_ against depression[0][1]. The press release from the Karolinska Instituted website[2] explains it fairly well, but in short: when you're stressed, you produce kynurenine. How kynurenine works precisely is unknown, but what _is_ clear is that having chronically elevated levels of it can induce all kinds of mental illnesses. Skeletal muscle creates _kynurenine aminotransferase_ (KAT), an enzyme which breaks it down.

The subtlety here is that this building _resilience_ is not the same as fixing the _causes_ of depression[3].

(I'm a bit surprised this research isn't mentioned in these papers)

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6349/eaaf9794](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6349/eaaf9794)

[0] _Skeletal Muscle PGC-1α1 Modulates Kynurenine Metabolism and Mediates Resilience to Stress-Induced Depression_ , [https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(14)01049-6?cod...](https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674\(14\)01049-6?code=cell- site)

[1] _Kynurenines: Tryptophan's metabolites in exercise, inflammation, and mental health_ , [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6349/eaaf9794](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6349/eaaf9794)

[2] [https://ki.se/en/news/how-physical-exercise-protects-the- bra...](https://ki.se/en/news/how-physical-exercise-protects-the-brain-from- stress-induced-depression)

[3] [http://pbfcomics.com/comics/treatment/](http://pbfcomics.com/comics/treatment/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That theory would seem to contradict the study I cited, no?

Both papers you cite are by the same group, and I don't think the results represent a consensus of the experts.

<comment><USER2> Not necessarily: in another study it was shown that kynurenine levels went back to original levels in patients who only exercised[0].

> _Conclusions: Physical exercise positively affects mood and cardiovascular > fitness, but does not lead to long-lasting changes in plasma levels of > kynurenine and KYNA in patients affected by mild-to-moderate depression._

So that would suggest that the body just reaches a new equilibrium. Again, the point is that _resilience_ does not fix _causes_ \- it could be that this is similar to trying to fix traffic jams with more roads; the only real fix is to get rid of the cars as much as you can (after which having an extra lane can make traffic go smoother).

> _Both papers you cite are by the same group, and I don 't think the results > represent a consensus of the experts._

IIRC, that kynurenine does _something_ is apparently well-established, and not just by this group. Also, that first paper has quite a few citations, you can check for follow-up research on Google Scholar[1]

[0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5384718/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5384718/)

[1] [https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Skele...](https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Skeletal+Muscle+PGC-1%CE%B11+Modulates+Kynurenine+Metabolism+and+Mediates+Resilience+to+Stress- Induced+Depression&btnG=)

<comment><AUTHOR> > So that would suggest that the body just reaches a new equilibrium.

This is another degree of freedom in the theory, right?

I mean, this could all be true for all I know, but as an outsider I think this falls into the category of stuff I can't judge, and (like a thousand other theories investigated by experts and published in impressive places like _Science_ ) hasn't yet risen to the level of consensus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How does a study like this control for the fact that if you are depressed, you might not want to exercise that day? And thus it's mental health that drives how much you exercise, not the other way around?

<comment><USER4> The study itself addresses that they didn't prove causality between exercise and reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression

<comment><USER5> They are not very careful to avoid implying the expected outcome, though, which should be understandable as it refers to common wisdom. e.g. "more is not always better" is part of the interpretation, nevertheless they don't imply any causative effects (on the landing page, at least; didn't read the paper).

In that sense, if feeling too depressed for extreme sport, maybe a walk ever now and then should at least not be neglected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is sure to quickly fill with personal anecdotes, I can attest to experiencing this phenomena myself, but I wonder what we can do with this information? I think it's already in the "everybody knows" category, so how do we get those who need it the most to take advantage of it? The extreme presentation of these conditions typically impedes one from becoming physically active, thought I do look forward to the success that I'm sure will be the first soccer league for agoraphobics.

<comment><USER7> I think most people associate "physical exercise" with _having to spend an hour at the gym_ or something similar.

What they should be thinking is: going for a walk around the block, not getting the car for close by errands, not taking the elevator, going for a bike ride, etc

<comment><USER8> See, this is some of my own problem. I personally despise going for a walk for the sake of going for a walk. The same for a bike ride. The only times I've enjoyed such things is when part of my unhappiness was at home and it was one of the few escapes available. I don't find these fun at all. Doing actual exercise sounds dreadful and embarrassing. Not to mention that finding basic gear is expensive and hard to find (I'm just talking about a sports bra here - unfortunately, if you are thin with breasts, these get incredibly hard to find and expensive and often must be mail-ordered, which makes them risky).

Yet I'll walk _to_ anywhere within a half an hour's walk. I'll do that daily. Grocery store? walk. I'll go longer at times. I'll take the stairs. I'll go out hiking and walking to _see_ something or _do_ something.

Unfortunately, if I have nothing to see or do - no work or lack the means to do something - I rarely do these things. These have generally been the times when my mental health is worst as well (though that trend has changed the last few years). It makes me despise these sorts of reports.

<comment><USER9> I totally agree with you. I go to gym and weight train 3 days a week and I spend one day running as far as I possibly can (8-10 mile range). If someone asked me to go for a walk, I would just slouch down in my sofa and ignore them. I hate walking without purpose and as an exercise it does pretty much nothing.

<comment><USER10> Personally, I hate exercising but I do about 90 minutes of high intensity cardio every day (with no end goal like grocery shopping; just for the sake of exercise). It's masochistic and I wish I were the type of person who actually enjoyed it.

For me, it just took having the self-control to commit to an exercise regime. Eventually it became easier because I track my exercise and having a break in it (even if I am traveling or on vacation) feels really bad.

I doubt it would work for everyone, but I think it was necessary for me because I live in a city and even if I walked everywhere (which I do), I would never get enough exercise to offset 8-hour days of sitting at a computer desk writing software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I personally find that exercise only contributes to good mental health outcomes when it is part of a system that monitors and directly, daily, addresses issues of physical exhaustion. Experiencing exhaustion and a desire to push through it was my personal #1 link to depression and anxiety. I found that just laying in bed and relaxing has a much higher likelihood of vanquishing my depression and anxiety than exercise ever did, and exercise, even a simple walk, can actually make the symptoms worse by contributing to the exhaustion.

This is _my own analysis and experience_, of course, so YMMV. There are additional important approaches to anxiety, like identifying stressors that need to be addressed (situations, goals, relationships, etc.) and attending to various facets that contribute to a feeling of purpose and promise. But after learning to look at my symptoms through the lens of "exhaustion" (whether it be productivity exhaustion or fitness-induced) I no longer suffer from chronic severe anxiety and depression, and my psychiatrist long ago pronounced me cured. Some people here may benefit so I share this in case it helps.

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Lying in bed is pretty much my #1 link for depression and anxiety (unless I'm sleep deprived and need to sleep).

<comment><USER13> Same here. And exercise immediately cures it. I wonder why OP is physically exhausted so much

<comment><USER11> Don't limit it to "physically", just imagine a person who pushes themselves really hard in all aspects of life. That pretty much describes who I was. Beyond a productive person, more like a natural stress-bringer.

<comment><USER14> Personally I find physical exhaustion, from a long hike for example, a lot more pleasant than mental exhaustion. The first feels positive (helps me sleep well), the second feels negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm interested to see how VR affects overall mental health among gamers. There seems to be some crossover between heavy duty gamers and mental health struggles (just from my own observation) and VR is starting to be a natural progression for gaming. And VR gaming is often a real work-out, focusing on a lot of movement as well as physical dexterity.

<comment><USER16> I'm interested in this as well. I had a friend play Beat Saber for 3 hours straight, burning literally thousands of calories. He said he felt amazing for the rest of the day.

On the flip-side, I personally experienced some serious post-binge depression after playing Talos Principle VR for a few hours. It's not very physically engaging, with a somber atmosphere throughout. I felt so weird taking off the headset and jumping back into reality.

Though I think both scenarios just go to show how powerful VR could potentially be in the medical field.

<comment><USER17> Let's be honest, though. He didn't burn thousands of calories. You are underestimating how efficient the human body is.

<comment><USER15> Actually I think this is really important. I don't have any science to back this up but I feel like the human body actually changes its tradeoff between efficiency and instantaneous performance based on some so-far-undescribed factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For many months now I have been bad at paying bills, filing tax etc due to anxiety and depression. It is like paralysis. But reality does not wait for you. There are consequences like fines and court orders. How have you overcome this? I feel I will be happier if I can manage my duties better.

<comment><USER19> I've noticed this pattern in myself that I like to call Automatic Pointless Resistance which is especially active when I'm anxious. I overcome it by completely ignoring my feelings and getting started on tasks regardless of how little I want to do them, or how much I think I'm going to screw them up. Sometimes the disconnect is profound, my brain just doesn't want to do something but my body knows what to do. Even if it's something mentally involving like filing taxes, I just ignore any thoughts that say I must be doing it wrong, I should stop and plan it better, etc. And before I know it, the task is well underway and I'm often even enjoying it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Original Article author here - happy to help with any questions people have.

Also sorry about the paywall - you can get the article either through sci-hub here [http://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/S2215-0366(18)30227-X](http://sci- hub.tw/10.1016/S2215-0366\(18\)30227-X) or you can email me and i'll send you a copy direct!

<comment><USER21> Awesome.

Question:

Why are you wasting your time?

Do you wish to apply a blanket cure for the unknown multitude causes of mental health issues?

Why do you think reductions in the self reported "mental health" of the general population is useful for people who have been hospitalized with mood disorders?

Don't you think that people who lie about how much exercise they do also might be lieing to themselves about their mental health?

<comment><USER20> 1- surely we're allowed to waste our own time if we like!

2- nope, and actually my entire research agenda has been around helping people find a treatment that is most likely to work for them specifically! (we also founded a company to bring the research to market- springhealth.com)

3- that is beyond the scope of the paper, and we didnt use the word hospitalized once

4- yep, and thats a good example of one of the pitfalls of self-reported surveys. in general, i am a bit less cynical and in our experience, most people aren't filling out surveys to intentionally lie or sabotage.

hope this helps!

<comment><USER22> You didn't deserve that response. Good job on the paper and keep up the good work. Your findings are supported by other research as you already know.

<comment><USER20> thanks! <3

we've had a wonderful positive response to this article, and people are overwhelmingly excited and motivated to try and exercise more because of it (even at relatively lower intensities or volumes -- every little helps). even if we are extremely cynical and say theres zero benefit of exercise for mental health, then people will still be getting known improvements regarding diabetes, stroke, cardiovascular disease. Nobody is advocating for exercise at the expense of alternative treatments like meds or therapy, this really is just a (potentially large) extra benefit.

<comment><USER21> Aw, hearts!

:/

You established ZERO causality in your study! How can you even say you are a scientist and say this has a (potentially) large benefit?!

And you did not even distinguish between mental health and mental illness.

The fact that you are excited that you got a "positive response" from this article just tells me you are a neoliberal shill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This study was flawed from the start. They asked people if they were ever "diagnosed" with depression when there is no clear cause of depression. Depression can be lifelong, short term situational, caused by drugs, etc.

It also relied on self reported physical activity! Ha!

It is worthless to extract anything regarding mental heath and exercise from this study.

<comment><USER23> I'd consider the value to be motivational ammunition for an intervention that generally has few downsides and multiple possible benefits for the person affected. Your point about stigma does counterbalance that somewhat.

In other words, would I put the overview on the coffee table in my wife's office (she's a psychiatrist) for her patients to see? Yes.

<comment><USER21> They did not establish causality in the study, yet you would put it out for sick people already stigmatized and thinking they are "lazy", "just need to get out of bed", etc as another burden for them to carry?

Are you a sadist?

Let me give you a personal anecdote. I suffered depression and anxiety and fatigue for years. I tried to be active but it made me feel worse. Turns out I had late onset partial biotinidase deficiency. I take biotin, my depression and anxiety are gone and now I can work out like a normal person.

What good does this study do for people like me and the probably hundreds of thousands of people like me? I would in fact it harms people like me because it lays a simple cure over a complex and diverse issue.

<comment><USER23> In this or anything else, exercise isn't suggested as a cure.

Almost without exception, the people she sees are looking for ways to help move themselves forward. By the time they get here, they realize (and it's part of the education that goes with the practice) that mental illness is extremely complex, not every treatment helps everyone, and there's no single magic bullet. And yes, serious metabolic workups are a big part of the practice.

So while I appreciate your perspective, I take issue with the claim that (in this context) it is suggesting laziness as a cause for their illness, or sadism on my part.

<comment><USER21> I'd be interested if your wife tests for Biotinidase Deficiency...? There are no "serious metabolic work ups" for mental health. Sure, they test thyroid, maybe iron and B12 if you press them. But beyond that?

I am telling you, as a person who suffered from suicidal depression, that seeing a pamphlet like that in the past would make me feel worse, not better. But why listen to me? I am only the patient.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Newton's Post - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/newton-s-post?show_todos=true

<comment><USER2> I wonder if they know that "Standing on the shoulders of giants" was probably an insult to Robert Hooke</comment>


List of best startup advises from founders - <AUTHOR> https://www.scalelib.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

I recently spend some time collecting all the relevant resources about startups - from idea to fundraising to have everything in one place.

Any text/video/podcast that you think should be added?</comment>


Python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master, slave terms - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/11/python_purges_master_and_slave_in_political_pogrom/ <comment><USER2> This is equivalent to Farmers banning the word "hoe". This just strikes me as kind of silly. I forwarded this to an African-American friend who works with Python a lot. His response was "Lol, why?"

</comment><comment><USER3> love it how some people are so easily butt-hurt about these kinds of words, while other people in slave families in other countries have no problem configuring their IDE drives without getting insulted by the terminology.

<comment><USER4> As I was familiarising myself with Go recently I was surprised to see the word "panic" so often. Panic disorder is a real and debilitating disease. I wonder when that terminology will change. But at least it's not as bad as other languages where you need to spawn and then kill child processes. "Abort" is another word we shouldn't use since it reminds some people of the killing of unborn babies. Don't even get me started on the fact that most web pages are predominantly white.

<comment><USER5> I'll bite. These terms, and particularly "panic" and "kill" have negative connotations in software. These are things that we generally prefer to avoid when creating our systems. On the other hand, the terms "master" and "slave" have been used in the context of databases with an entirely neutral sentiment, and I think that's where the problem lies, as it (slightly) normalizes the word "slave".

<comment><USER4> So you reckon if a parent was triggered about the murder of their own child they'd be consoled by the fact that it's a bad process that's being killed?

And you reckon a slave who is triggered by the word "slave" would care about that little detail just the same?

Has anyone even asked slaves or former slaves if this is something they care about? Perhaps they'd prefer the word "slave" not being buried by becoming taboo.

Have you asked a father how he feels about this wording, after his partner aborted his child without his knowledge?

Or, are you just making stuff up to justify these changes because they make __you __feel better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple did this a long while ago replacing with leader and follower.

<comment><USER7> Apple also extended their crusade against firearms to modifying the way iOS displays the pistol emoji, rendering it as a toy water pistol, an entirely different object from a deadly weapon.

This sort of newspeak ideology-based purge is bad for everyone. Political agendas have no place inside of general purpose communication tools. This is no different than running an automated string replacement that changes the word "handgun" to "squirt gun".</comment></comment>


The Pulse Oximeter - A small device that's made thousands of operations safer - <AUTHOR> https://mosaicscience.com/story/safer-surgery-pulse-oximeter-mongolia <comment><USER2> It's not even a little yellow box now. Fairly recently they are now battery powered tiny clips over your finger with a built in display just big enough to show pulse and oxygen levels.

Apparently they are cheap enough and so easy to use that nurses are buying their own and carrying them around along with their stethoscopes.

The only concern, like with stethoscopes, is they are likely to be the dirtiest instruments in the room and they are so quick and easy to clip on a finger it's easy to forget to wipe them down before and after each use.

To try to cut down on this germ vector, they also make a disposable version of the sensor that goes on your finger that can be left with each patient instead of traveling with the monitor.

<comment><USER3> For example: [https://www.amazon.com/Santamedical-Generation- SM-165-Finger...](https://www.amazon.com/Santamedical-Generation- SM-165-Fingertip- Saturation/dp/B00R59OTOC/ref=sr_1_6_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1487644208&sr=8-6&keywords=bluetooth+pulse+oximeter)

<comment><USER4> I own one of these for hiking at high altitudes. Very useful to know if it drops below 90%!

<comment><USER3> I have never even thought of that as a use. Interesting! Gonna try this next time I'm at elevation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dislike this title and article.

The article itself has 786 words across 9 paragraphs before the titular device is _mentioned_. Finally, after another two paragraphs, it's identified as a pulse oximeter.

The title is clickbait - I would suggest "Pulse oximeter saves hundreds of lives by monitoring blood oxygen levels". Or better yet, some actual statistics.

<comment><USER6> Very true, I did not realize it was talking about a medical operation. Plus, I expected the yellow box to be some sort of black box. I only read the comments to figure out what the title was trying to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr: It's a pulse oximeter.

<comment><USER8> Thank you.

I know many people like them. But, I can't fucking stand long form. I don't care were someone grew up, or what the fuck their mother does, or how you've decided to shape and construct a "story". Just tell me the fact and let me move on without wasting my time on your fluff.

<comment><USER5> I agree. All this does is make me uninterested in reading the article. The 786 words of exposition were unnecessary. Maybe this Reader's Digest format appeals to some, but I prefer substance from scientific articles.

<comment><USER9> I have to laugh (in good humor) at your post, as Reader's Digest provided/provides excerpts of longer pieces.

<comment><USER5> My mistake, then, and I suppose with the name that does make sense. I just thought I remembered reading and not really understanding various long articles like this in it in various waiting rooms as a kid. Bad example, but I hope my point still makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> just dont forget and put the blood pressure cuff on the same hand as the pulse ox!</comment>


Launching Our Crowdfunding Campaign - <AUTHOR> https://letsencrypt.org/2016/11/01/launching-our-crowdfunding-campaign.html <comment><USER2> This is a no-brainer for any LetsEncrypt user:

      - Take the amount you paid for certificates last year
      - Divide by any number, let's say 10
      - Donate that amount to LetsEncrypt, and continue to get free certificates all year!

I agree with some commenters that it would be great to see LetsEncrypt bolster their revenue with reasonably-priced offerings such as wildcards and EVs. But you can't argue with the progress they've made so far. If there is enough community demand, I'm sure they'll get there.

Though their stats page[0] appears to be broken, last I heard they had surpassed 5 million certificates. To meet their current funding goal of $200k for a month, that equates to $0.04 per certificate per month, or $0.48 per certificate per year!

EDIT: Their stats page is back. Looks like they have reached 10 million certificates. So halve the above numbers!

[0] [https://letsencrypt.org/stats/](https://letsencrypt.org/stats/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your support!

I'd also like to point out that even if you never get a certificate from us yourself we're still helping to protect you when you browse any of the millions of sites we help to secure.

<comment><USER4> How much money does LetsEncrypt receive from monthly reoccurring donations?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm. I'm skeptical that this approach is sustainable to cover the same $200k every month.

Is this truly needed to cover operations? In other words, when this falls short, are they in danger of going insolvent at some point?

I'd much rather they go some different path to cover the shortfall. Perhaps reasonably priced wildcard and/or EV certs, while leaving regular certs at the "free" price level?

<comment> ygjb-dupe >Perhaps reasonably priced wildcard and/or EV certs, while leaving regular certs at the "free" price level?

IDK, wildcard certs encourage really bad practices, and I don't see the LE team liking the idea of issuing them.

EV certs means a significant increase in costs to actually go through the processes required (audits, etc) so that browsers will accept them, and then the increased costs of doing due diligence when issuing certs. Unless they want to grow in that direction, it seems like a poor business choice.

Yes, it means they run the risk of going insolvent; despite the fanfare, and the pace at which they have moved themselves into a critical niche on the web, they are still an open source project, and are supported by sponsorships and donations.

I expect that there are some significant players that would invest to keep them around, but it can be hard to continue to making an impact when you subsist off of crumbs.

Anyone who's career depends on FOSS should at least read [https://files.puzzling.org/wayback/pay-for- foss/](https://files.puzzling.org/wayback/pay-for-foss/)

<comment><USER6> Could you elaborate on why wildcard certs are a bad idea? I've heard this from several sources, but I haven't read a breakdown of why people think this.

If I'm running a web application, and want to provide an interface where separate teams sign up and access their version of the app at team-name.your- app.com, what's the alternative? Or is it that this is considered unwise, and I should just put team-name in the URL path instead?

<comment><USER7> The primary issue with wildcard certificates is that it encourages certificate reuse between server environments. Even the act of transferring keys around carries a certain degree of risk. With a wildcard certificate though, say you have a very secure shopping site, and a user run forum:

      - https://checkout.example.com/
      - https://forums.example.com/

Your wildcard certificate for * .example.com covers both domains, and can be shared between both servers. Nice! You've saved a bundle of money on certificates. But there's now a security risk: Say an attacker manages to compromise forums.example.com through some vulnerability in the forum software, and steals the private key for * .example.com. They can now set up their own server hosting checkout.example.com, successfully execute a Man in the Middle attack, and steal sensitive customer data without the end user being any the wiser.

Issuing separate certificates prevents this scenario by enforcing a separation of responsibilities. If each server has its own set of keys, then a security compromise on forums.example.com does not spill over to checkout.example.com, because the key used on one server is useless to impersonate the other. Obviously a key compromise at _all_ is a bad situation, but you want to architecture your environment so that a compromise has the least potential to do damage, and that's the basic argument against wildcard certificates.

<comment><USER8> Good writeup. In addition, using discrete certificates makes managing them easier, whether for renewal, squashing SHA-1 and the like, or revocation. It can be a big headache to track down all the places a wildcard cert worms its way into at large, penny-pinching orgs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been working on a rollout of LE for our platform that I'm honestly now thinking about pausing -- a crowdfunding campaign is the opposite of confidence-inspiring in terms of longevity.

Any chance LE can make some official statement regarding their operating budget/burn? My strong preference would be to use them but I can't recommend transitioning to someone trying to make up single months of Opex by begging for donations.

<comment><USER3> Diversifying income is something every responsible non-profit should be doing, and that's what this is. If I were you I'd be more worried if we didn't do something like this.

The bulk of our support comes from corporate sponsorship, another component is grants, and the third is individual donations. Individual donations are likely always going to be our smallest source of revenue but it's still an important source to develop.

We'll be around. Go ahead with your rollout, I hope it goes smoothly and that it inspires you to contribute back what you can.

<comment><USER10> Although it's not really intended for this sort of thing, I wonder if you could shoehorn Let's Encrypt into Patreon. If you're just trying to diversify your revenue it seems like Patreon would provide a more predictable cashflow than doing periodic crowdfunding campaigns.

<comment><USER11> They could just offer a simple subscription (yearly or monthly) with user- chosen price tag, aka recurring donation. Call it "individual sponsorship", make a pretty login window and a little dashboard once logged in, that's it. Like if we had to pay for a subscription to use LE, except we don't need to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For everyone shocked at the $200k/mo, there is a lot of previous discussion here [1].

Their staff cost about $200k/person, and their total budget for 2017 is 2.9M!

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12541383](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12541383)

</comment><comment><USER13> It is disappointing that such campaigns are required despite the tremendous value being created.

Any useful service costs money to build and keep running. Perhaps easier renewals have led us to forget that efforts to make the internet more secure require a lot of hard work and resources (money). LetsEncrypt doesn't generate income by selling ads. Users ought to consider donating.

</comment><comment><USER14> I believe that they could get some additional extra money from unlocking domain quotas.

Due to technical bug my domain got black listed for a week, and I had to buy a new domain due to the deadline. I couldn't have used QA cert server.

<comment><USER15> How does that generate more revenue for them?

<comment><USER16> By offering a paid option to remove your quota on a domain. (or raise it)

<comment><USER17> I would find this pretty useful on occasion. Not to mention, it makes more sense to me than selling cheap wildcards, because now you've got a product, and you're potentially encouraging poor security (as pointed out by other commenters in this thread). Seems much more aligned with the goal of Lets Encrypt in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why not choose less US centric fundrising platform? There aren't any? For example I am missing choice of currency. If I were to donate in dollars I would have to pay bank twice for changing currency.

<comment><USER19> I assume that their expenses are in USD, so _somebody_ will have to pay conversion fees. It's just a question of whether they're taken out before or after the number you put in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Oh wow, $200k for a month? That amount is astronomical for a crowdfunding campaign, and it still only buys one month :/

<comment><USER21> You think that's a lot? I'm not trying to single you out and please don't take this as a personal attack. But it's disturbing to me especially in light of the dyn attack and others people STILL are not getting how badly our security infrastructure is horrendously broken and/or non existent on the net.

Letsencrypt are one of the good guys. They are fighting the good fight. With the admirable goal of trying to get the web moved entirely over to SSL. It's an uphill battle because we have _decades_ of SSL being a pain in the ass to deploy and maintain. "But certificates are not hard to generate and deploy!" Over 50% of the web disagrees with you.

People have got to start taking this stuff seriously. Everyone _should_ be donating monthly to OpenBSD for OpenSSH which _everyone and their grandmother_ uses in their infrastructure but they take it for granted and don't donate. Which I personally find appalling that it's so widely used and yet supported so very little for such a vital part of _everyones_ infrastructure.

SSL is the same way, it's a vital part of _everyones_ infrastructure and both the OpenBSD folks and lets encrypt should be bankrolled by the tens of millions each year from both individuals and the corporations who use this software on a massive scale. Seriously, Cisco, Juniper, Oracle (yeah I know it was a waste of bits to type that name here), every corporation using SSH should be pouring millions into the OpenBSD foundation and you should all be ashamed and publicly called out for not doing so!

<comment><USER22> Why not both?

Yes, LE are the good guys, and everyone _should_ be donating mountains of money to them, and the bsd-folks. But that doesn't negate the fact that $200K a month is a crazy amount.

<comment><USER23> In what way is this a 'crazy amount'? If it were 100% personnel costs, it would only pay for a dozen or two people max. Is that an unreasonable number of people working on SSL?

There are literally thousands of people working at SSL companies. 1100 at Comodo alone.

<comment><USER20> It's not a crazy amount for running a company. It's a crazy amount _for a crowdfunding campaign_.

<comment><USER23> if you think that's crazy.. take a look at the amounts on this page:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I want to donate using Paypal not a credit card. Is there a way to do it?

<comment><USER25> Why would you want to use Paypal? It's a terrible service.

<comment><USER11> Why is Paypal terrible? (Honest question, I find it to be a great service. Am not US-based, if that matters.)

<comment><USER20> Its fees are just sheer theft. I just used it for collecting money from friends for a small paintball event I want to organize, and it kept 10%! Seriously, people sent 5 euros, and I got 4.48, for no reason I can see.

Not to mention that currency conversion is a complete ripoff. I avoid PayPal like the plague.

<comment><USER26> Paypal's fees are 2.9% + $0.30 USD, which is pretty standard among commercial- level (and you were using it commercially, otherwise they'd have sent it as a gift) processors that don't require a merchant account. Braintree is 2.9% + $0.30 USD; Stripe is also 2.9% + $0.30 USD if you're under $1m/year.

<comment><USER20> I don't know anything about commercial stuff. All I know was that I wanted my friends to send me $5 so I could pay the paintball guy, and PayPal kept 10% of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As the ease of use and zero cost of LE prompted me to use way more certs this year they get a donation.

</comment><comment><USER28> Place to donate via PayPal.

Also take a page from buffer and release your expenses and revenues.

I'm willing to donate any time I get a cert from you guys and I'm sitting on all this free PayPal money to give you, but can't via indygogo

<comment><USER3> We just added the PayPal button back to letsencrypt.org, it's near the bottom of each page now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Give me wildcard support and I'll be more than happy in donating.

<comment><USER20> You should be happy to donate _now_. LE is the best thing to happen to the web since zombo.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> How about a different type of funding model...Let's call it a "Refunder"

-A LetsCrypt certificate is ultimately free

BUT

-You must pay X amount of dollars to get one (a fair and low amount)\

-After 30 days, you can cancel/refund your payment

-BUT you still get to keep your certificate...

Probably in something like this, a fairly high percent of people will not bother to pay / are happy to continue to pay. LetsEncrypt certificates are still always free but at least this way human laziness means that LE important work can be sustainable into the future.

<comment><USER31> They'd lose so much money on processing fees. I'd imagine any processor would drop it like it's hot if you had a super high refund rate, even if on purpose.

Wouldn't it also break the whole automatic side of things?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one disappointed when crowd funded projects offer so much in terms of rewards?

I get it when it comes to crowd funded products - actually getting the product - but do you really need the overheads of making and shipping (and in some cases handling returns) on physical rewards? Anyone in the know - How much does this eat into the raised funds?

Another comment here mentioned they're likely after corporate donations - I'm guessing they get processed outside of indiegogo?

<comment><USER32> I'm not sure that a single sticker for $50 really qualifies as a large reward. I'd be very surprised if these cost more than $2 per sticker, including distribution costs (note: the entire process from production to distribution is very likely to be outsourced).

It's nice to have some sort of recognition to people who give you money, it seems perfectly reasonable to me.

<comment><USER31> In this case it's actually done pretty tactfully, you're not effectively just paying for a new hoodie. I was more speaking in the general sense as a loud thought, in hindsight it's not really relevant to bring up in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would like to get an email/client signing certificate from LetsEncrypt. Is this on the roadmap?

<comment><USER34> Comodo offers free S/MIME certificates.

[https://www.comodo.com/home/email-security/free-email- certif...](https://www.comodo.com/home/email-security/free-email- certificate.php)

EDIT: A quick google showed me that there are also others that offer S/MIME for free

[http://kb.mozillazine.org/Getting_an_SMIME_certificate](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Getting_an_SMIME_certificate)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I absolutely plan on contributing to the campaign and I totally get that the rewards are symbolic but I _still_ found it a bit strange that while for $50 you get a sticker and for $100 you get a t-shirt, you get the same sticker + t-shirt if you contribute $250.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder why they don't collect email addresses for people using their service. It would open all sorts of opportunities for marketing, soliciting donations, and also service announcements. I mean, I heard about this campaign on Hacker News, not directly from Let's Encrypt.

Also, I'd probably sign up for a small recurring donation if it was possible. Recurring donations could become a significant and reliable source of funding.

Edit: I am not suggesting they start spamming everyone and ask for money. An opt-in email list for topics not strictly related to service would be good.

<comment><USER3> We have a lot of email addresses provided for certificate accounts but we'd prefer to use them only when necessary, because that's what people had in mind when they gave them to us. When we collect email addresses via marketing efforts we may use them for future marketing efforts (with the appropriate opt-out options, of course).

<comment><USER36> Of course. Is there a (low volume) mailing list somewhere I can sign up to get announcements for things like this?

P.S. Let's Encrypt rocks! I just donated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why not just make it open source? And let other people work on it and just cover 3 people managing this + architecture costs. You don't need 2.9 mil per year to process 60k certificate requests a day with system that is practically finished. What else is there to do which open source community could not do it itself? Thousands of companies and developers use letsencrypt, a lot of potential man power to help if you ask me. You could easily cut costs 5-6 times. Or am i missing something here?

<comment><USER3> I think you're missing a number of important things here. We operate on a pretty small budget for what we provide. I doubt you'd be happy with a CA that operated with a smaller budget.

1) Our software is already open source. That doesn't mean we get the development work that we need when we need it for free. We are constantly working on various features and fixes that need to be deployed weekly if not more often, and usually based on a close working relationship with our operations team. Security fixes need to be produced in hours or less, not when a volunteer contributor gets around to it. Our engineers also spend a lot of time every day digging through hundreds of GB of logs to find or verify service issues.

Keep in mind that our software is deployed by very few people other than us, because in order for our software to be useful you need to have done a massive amount of other (expensive) work to set up the legal, compliance, and technical context.

2) I'm not sure where you get 60k requests per day as a representation of our system load. Between ACME API interactions and OCSP it's many millions.

3) The CA needs to be monitored 24/7\. Our infrastructure is necessarily more complicated than your average web API or application, and it's constantly being maintained and improved. Open sourcing doesn't address the issue of having highly qualified and trained staff building and monitoring secure systems.

4) There is a huge amount of tedious compliance and legal work that has to be done in order for us to continue to operate.

5) We operate in a compliance environment (WebTrust/BRs/root program rules). We have a lot of obligations, mostly for good reasons, that make what we're doing very different from "write some code, throw it on GitHub, deploy on a cloud service and be done with it."

<comment><USER37> I see, that makes sense. After researching a little bit more on WebTrust etc. I can see your point and what I was indeed missing.

2) I thought i saw around 60k certificate requests in statistics on your site.</comment></comment></comment>


Frickin' Awesome: CloudFlare Automatically Learns How to Stop DDoS Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudflare.com/thats-freaking-awesome-cloudflare-automatical <comment><USER2> CloudFlare looks cool but the sit does a lousy job explaining the service. I even watched the video. I'm actually more confused than when I started...I thought it as a cloud layer like Heroku, but you keep your current host, and don't install anything. How does this work, is it DNS? Why is it so cheap?

<comment><AUTHOR> Works via DNS. Takes about 5 minutes to sign up. Tens of thousands of sites using the service. Currently powering than 2,000 page views per second for more than 100 million unique visitors per month.

<comment><USER3> That's a pretty good ad copy there, at least for this geek.

<comment><USER4> I disagree, it took a follow-up question to get the real answer to what it is. (A caching reverse proxy.)

I undertand that you'd never ever say the words 'caching reverse proxy' to normal people, but if someone on HN asks 'what is this doing' you can probably feel safe to use the technical terms.

Good ad copy, if you're aiming at geeks and only geeks, doesn't spare the jargon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This all sounds a little mysterious to me. Their FAQ promises a lot of weird stuff, like protection against "web software vulnerability", whatever that means. How does CloudFlare achieve "comment spam" protection? They check each and every post request sent to my server? Isn't that going to add a lot of overhead? Can I just say that it's hard for me to believe that CloudFare has enough servers and bandwidth to do that.... I don't understand the extent of what CloudFare is offering exactly. What kind of spam protection is that exactly?

<comment><USER6> It blocks threats based on IP, threats which includes spammers. I wouldn't worry about how much servers or bandwidth they have... they seem to have more than enough.

<comment><USER7> _I wouldn't worry about how much servers or bandwidth they have... they seem to have more than enough._

That is a very scary off-the-cuff assumption to make.

<comment><USER6> Contact them directly and maybe that will ease your worries, but based on the amount of servers and DCs they have been adding to their network recently, I wouldn't worry about it.

<comment><USER7> Our business hosts off of AWS and two other hosting providers, in addition to utilizing Cloudkick, Sendgrid, Geckoboard, Dynect, and Chartbeat.

It is my job every day to "worry" about how PAAS providers might not be able to deliver services to my business.

We're now in contact with Cloudflare to see how we might progress, but understand that a random posting that says "don't worry" without any substantial background makes me worry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As this is a DNS based service, If I were a hacker, couldn't I just skip all the protection CloudFlare offers by hardwiring the website's domain + IP in my hosts file?

<comment><USER9> CloudFlare is actually a CDN proxy, so you could overcome this by hardwiring your web server firewall rules to the CloudFlare platform.

<comment><USER8> Ah, so basically use IPTables to detect if the request is originating from CloudFlare's CDN, and if it is not redirect it via CloudFlare?

<comment><USER7> No, you would configure your firewall to only allow requests from CloudFlare's infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Judging by its description (CDN-like functionality?), it might also do a great service if it offered to dual-stack the sites that use it. Even if time before June 8th runs short, I am sure they would get _some_ new customers because of this.

The anti-ddos functionality is indeed pretty cool. I guess the reliable detection of "anomaly" vs. "spike in traffic" is the secret sauce - but if not, would be entertaining to know more about that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been using Cloudflare since the beta, and I think I love them almost as much as I love Apple.

<comment><USER12> Their services look interesting - What specifically do you love about them? How have they improved your site?

<comment><USER11> Very nice DNS management, faster page loads, reduced bandwidth usage and server load, and all of the nice security features (blocking malicious clients, XSS protection, etc). And all of it with practically no configuration and it's free unless you need SSL (and/or more advanced security features).

Also, they pass along a country header which comes in handy if you need to know which country a user is in without having to set up GeoIP and keep it up to date.

Oh plus they sent me a t-shirt.

<comment><USER13> you sure you don't work there?

<comment><USER6> He's telling the truth; it ACTUALLY does all this stuff (including the t-shirt, which is nice and soft :) )... and for free, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. I attempted to sign up on CloudFlare's platform but received the response that I must contact them directly to "use the features of CloudFlare" for my domain. I'm interested in testing CloudFlare, but I don't feel like having to submit a blanket request in a generic "contact us" Web form.

I wonder what the reasons are why my business is excluded from participating from initial sign-up? We are a highly trafficked site, so on the surface it seems to me someone might be talking to me shortly on the "up-sell" side of things. Agh..

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a limit in place for big sites (top 2,000 according to Quantcast, if I recall correctly). Email us the site and we'll get the block lifted. Not an upsell, just something we do to make sure we're watching carefully when big guys come on board.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the quick update - understood on the methodology. We're at about 2400 on Quantcast if I recall, so I'll pop in and shoot you guys a message.

Just a quick suggestion.... you might indicate that to the requestor instead of the generic "contact us" response. You could easily drive away someone who might want to POC your service but then ultimately decides to move on to the next task. And that someone could be a big guy.

Thanks again!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. It's a remnant from when we first launched on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 7 months ago. We'll get the error revised, and I'll get the restriction lifted ASAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stop DDoS ? DoS and DDoS are 2 different animals, DoS are simple to stop.

"One of our user's site was under a denial of service (ddos) attack earlier this week"

I like the distributed website caching for static pages. Would be interesting to have pay for what was served model . . .

<comment><USER15> The nice thing about distributed caches is that the closer the cache is to the user, the lesser the traffic traversing wide-area. So, the main hosting website wouldn't even see all that traffic!

But I guess these make sense only for static content...

<comment><USER6> You could use it for non-static content (like forums and such), people do it and it tends to work fairly well... or so I've heard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How does it 'learn' what is illegitimate traffic? (An actual explanation rather than just vague claims/graphs would be truly "frickin' awesome".)

What's the risk it misclassifies real surges in interest as illegitimate traffic?

</comment><comment><USER17> I assume it only makes sense for US companies with US visitors? Or do they have other locations? Latency from Europe might be to long?

<comment><AUTHOR> Data centers worldwide: Hong Kong, Tokyo, Los Angeles, San Jose, Chicago, New York, DC, and Amsterdam.

Coming soon: Singapore, Dallas, Miami, Paris, Frankfurt, and London.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, sounds great, Amsterdam is good enough for Germany already I think, I'll give the free plan a try.</comment></comment></comment>


Attack Technique: Pivot to the Cloud Using Pass the Cookie - <AUTHOR> https://wunderwuzzi23.github.io/blog/passthecookie.html <comment><USER2> Saw this. Also was discussed at 35C3:

[https://c3lt.de/35c3/talk/CK3DWH/](https://c3lt.de/35c3/talk/CK3DWH/)</comment>


LogicBlox – Datalog REPL Tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://developer.logicblox.com/content/docs4/tutorial/repl/section/split.html <comment><USER2> Funny to see this come up -- I just read this paper by a primary author of LogicBlox:

 _Next-Paradigm Programming Languages: What Will They Look Like and What Changes Will They Bring?_

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.00402](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.00402)

(In addition to seeing it cited by the Souffle paper I mentioned in a sibling comment.)

It was an interesting paper that gives a flavor for logic / declarative programming, e.g. how to reason about performance, and the problem of tiny changes causing asymptotic performance differences (a problem that SQL shares).

But I think it is mistitled -- it really is about a particular problem domain and is not about programming languages in general.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that paper, he didn't use these words but I might summarize it as predicting a merger/unification of programming language with database. Expressing programs as declarative operations over data with an optimized implementation injected by a compiler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great starting point for learning Datalog interactively: [http://www.learndatalogtoday.org/](http://www.learndatalogtoday.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Uh-oh.

      Unable to connect, sorry! Internal error message: HTTP Error 502: '<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">

      <title>502 Proxy Error</title>

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid
      response from an upstream server.

      The proxy server could not handle the request POST /connectblox.

      Reason: Error reading from remote server

Additionally, a 502 Bad Gateway
      error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

      '

      addblock 'cost[icecream] = c ->
         string(icecream), int(c).'

      No active workspace

Is that HN's hug of death now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure, I reported it to LogicBOx who's looking into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the current state of the art in Datalog performance?

<comment><USER7> RDFox uses datalog to apply inference rules to graph data, it has some state of the art algorithms for making datalog multi-core. It still uses SparQL, which is really similar to datalog for querying. There's some recent work on horizontally scaling datalog queries, but I hadn't seen anything in production.

Probably the most popular implementation is datomic and its free variants. Which has a lot of convenience to it as you can embed custom java functions.

It's not datalog but cypher has a lot of amazing ideas like easily combining algorithms to potentially recursive relationship queries, eg, "Give me the all shortest paths between these two peoples where there's at most 6 hops" -> allShortestPaths((n1:Person)-[*..6]->(n2:Person)) .

<comment><USER8> I work on Crux [0], which is also a Java-friendly Datalog database. It sits on top of lazy EAV indexes in RocksDB/LMDB so it's pretty fast and scales well (though technologies like Neo4j/GraphBLAS will be faster!).

We don't have online REPL just yet but Nextjournal is pretty great if you want to play through the tutorials interactively [1]. The other unique angle is that Crux gives you "bitemporal" Datalog queries. Oh and the MIT license :)

[0] [https://opencrux.com](https://opencrux.com)

[1] [https://nextjournal.com/crux-tutorial/](https://nextjournal.com/crux- tutorial/)</comment></comment></comment>


ODROID-W – Raspberry Pi compatible board with smaller form factor - <AUTHOR> http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G140610189490 <comment><USER2> Very interesting board!

Right now, powering a Raspi with batteries, without desoldering the onboard regulator, requires an external regulator circuit, preferably a switched one. This board seems to eliminate the need for such an external regulated circuit. Inbuilt RTC is also a plus.

From what I can tell, this is more powerful and cheaper than the Raspi compute module too.

However, on the minus side, I don't see anything said about its audio capabilities. Is the audio subsystem of Raspi - from driver to userland - supported at all?</comment>


Ask HN: Why Ideas Suck? - <AUTHOR> I jotted down a few startup ideas. After sometime when I thought about them, they seem like useless.
New apps are popping up making millions.
Why cannot I find a profitable idea? <comment><USER2> Because your ideas are generated internally. You're creating something before its necessary.

Find something that brings people pain, and then solve that pain. Your ideas will be generated from externalities.

Your thinking should shift from "how can I make this idea work" to "how can I solve this problem".

Fill in natural blanks. Don't try to create, try to solve.

<comment><USER3> Ideas can be generated internally, if you have the pain yourself. This is actually better than finding a pain for someone else that you don't know yet. But totally agree, focus on problems first, and then find a sufficient solution, otherwise you are a hammerhead shark gone fishing

<comment><USER2> That's a good point, and probably a better way of saying it.</comment></comment></comment>


Optimism vs. Complacency vs. Pessimism - <AUTHOR> http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/mindsets-optimism-vs-complacency-vs-pessimism/ <comment><USER2> I don't know a kinder way to say it: this is not a good article.

There's no simplistic "one way" of being optimistic, pessimistic, or complacent. They are spectrums of viewpoints. Each attitude offers usefulness in some situations (e.g. the complacent person, unsatisfied with things being broken that are expected to be unbroken, might get up and fix them, or alert someone else to the cause of the break and get help; meanwhile the optimist might not register a problem because he sees a future upside when it will improve, and thus is less morivated to act in favor of change).

I think the cultural idea that optimism is all good while complacency or pessimism are all bad, is harmful. Optimism has many benefits and it may be true that cultivating a more optimistic disposition is usually beneficial.

But this doesn't preclude there being destructive modes of optimism or constructive modes of complacency or pessimism, and for some people, their disposition might just be complacent or pessimistic, and often it may not even be their conscious choice — it's just how they are wired. Yet they can still be amazingly effective people, good partners, friends, parents, workers, etc.

It's just another way of living life. Some people are cautious, spontaneous, cheerful, miserly, non-serious, cold, possessive, controlling, loving, kind, happy, neutral, antagonistic, deferential, etc., etc.

Being pessimistic, optimistic or complacent is just yet another aspect of different ways to live life. Not unequivocally better, not unequivocally worse.

It gets tiresome to see a topic of personality treated in such a shallow good vs. bad sort of way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please try not to redefine the english language according to personal preferences.</comment>


How Blockchains mirror Nature - <AUTHOR> https://blog.consensusx.com/biological-parallelisms-inside-blockchains-homeostasis-hormesis-and-blooming-migration-in-bitcoin-deb7c886771e <comment><USER2> NASA would define life as "A self-sustaining series of chemical reactions capable of extracting energy from its environment and capable of Darwinian evolution.

Self-sustaining?

Nope.

Chemical reactions?

Definitely not.

Capable of extracting energy from its environment?

Unless you count people plugging in GPUs as the Blockchain's doing, no.

Darwinian evolution?

Hell no.

Overall conclusion: No.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like HN doesn't like metaphors :) Since it's flagged, I will repost with a different title.

<comment><USER3> People are reacting to the clickbait title, not the use of metaphor. As the submitter, you should be able to change the title of the submission. If you no longer can, contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer so they can update it on your behalf.

Continuing to submit a post tweaking the title to improve it's chances can be viewed as spamming, particularly as it appears that you're also the author. Please don't do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some replies are responding to the title as if the author _literally_ meant "living organisms".

Instead, I think it's clear that the author is speaking of an _interesting metaphor_.

It's similar to how we might talk about all the various Javscript libraries and framework flavor-of-the-month as a sort of "Darwinism" and "natural selection". E.g. it's a marketplace of coding ideas and the ones with staying power demonstrate "survival of the fittest".

Or to write about all the worldwide computers executing high frequency trades on the stock exchanges as an emergent "super-organism".

<comment><USER5> He describes phenomena that apply to every market ever (not to mention simple control loops). How are blockchains any different?

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there something wrong with engaging in the mental exercise of mapping these phenomena in one context? In this case: Blockchains?

<comment><USER5> It's far fetched, there's a broad spectrum of systems one can fit the same metaphor to, and like those systems it offers no insight about them.

What is the conclusion and what does it mean for blockchains? What is the benefit of modeling a blockchain as a living organism?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Betteridge's law.

<comment><USER7> Yes, and flagged.</comment></comment>


Snap's share price sinks, trades just above IPO price - <AUTHOR> http://nasdaq.com/article/snaps-share-price-sinks-trades-just-above-ipo-price-20170615-00941 <comment><USER3> Facebook is playing pretty vicously - adding stories to _three_ of its apps, when realistically the only app that is similar to snapchat is Instagram - <USER2> I'm happy for it either way.

Facebook apps do some stupid shit, like in Messenger, why the fuck does the back button take me into a camera looking at my ugly mug? Why does swiping down from the top to get to the top of my messages list sometimes again open a camera to my double chins? What in the _shit_ is going on with the stupid circles smack-dab in the middle of my conversation history? And why on earth can't I swap the camera around mid-video in an instagram vid?

But it's nothing, _nothing_ compared to the crime against humanity that is the Snapchat UX. It is an abomination, and a buggy one at that. I've heard it's at least more responsive on iPhone, fine. I've even heard arguments that it's esoteric on purpose - you have to be young and "with it" to "get it." Friends have to ask eachother "omg how did you do that filter" or whatever, which allows a moment of millenial smugness. Fine, that can be a reason, and we can lump it in amongst the thousands of other UX charges we should levy against Snapchat.

<comment><USER4> > But it's nothing, nothing compared to the crime against humanity that is the > Snapchat UX.

Every time Snapchat's UI/UX is brought up on Hacker News it's _praised_ as "it facilitates the joy of feature discovery!" (example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859860](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859860))

It's a post-hoc rationalization that I am still not happy with. (even moreso 2 years later with more apps like Facebook/Skype copying Snapchat verbatim)

<comment><USER5> Devil's advocate:

Instagram is not a "serious" photo app. It's strictly for fun. if you want to shoot serious pictures, you use a purpose built app, or heck, even the built- in app on your phone. Making the UI a hide-and-seek game, or at least abandoning traditional UI design for something that puts form over function makes sense in that context.

There's an actual game on Steam called "Please, don't touch anything" where this kind of random discovery is the whole point.

Not sure I'd prejudicially dismiss it as "millennial smugness" though.

<comment><USER6> Instagram is not just a camera app anymore. It's strong point is distribution and discovery. There is a huge pro photography community on there. They all shoot with serious DSLR/Mirrorless setups, edit shots in Adobe Lightroom and then post the resulting photos on Instagram for their following to see and engage with. Do not dismiss the pro use case for Instagram because it is massive.

<comment><USER3> Yup, this is exactly what I do, though as a hobbyist. My instagram "feed" has very few pictures not taken on a DSLR and edited in lightroom. My stories, on the other hand...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well........

\- no control by stock owners

\- no immediate plans to produce profits

\- whistleblower lawsuit in the works by former employee who claims they seriously inflated user metrics

\- a shitload of shares about to become free trading, with a declining share price, you've got to think alot of employees are going to go stampeding to the exits rather than holding

\- record short interest by the street

\- one of the main IPO banks (JP Morgan) just cut their target from $20 to $18 for the stock,

\- The same bank doesn't have an almost guaranteed BUY rating on the stock, and has rated it as a HOLD/Neutral, which is the equivalent of a sell in sell side analyst parlance

\- a miss on their first earnings

\- their biggest rival, Instagram, is doing well in competing with them, and they have Facebook's large pile of money and audience behind them

\- and the macro climate of people expecting a market cooling coming soon, in those cases people tend to flock away from speculative companies to the old fashioned kind that make money.

SNAP might be a long term good company, but its going to be a rocky ride in the short term.

<comment><USER8> > a shitload of shares about to become free trading, with a declining share > price, you've got to think alot of employees are going to go stampeding to > the exits rather than holding

> record short interest by the street

This is double counting the same thing. The reason there's short interest is because there's a bunch of employees that would like to sell now but cannot. I suspect that much of these short positions will close out when the lock-up ends and employees sell into the market.

I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't back-channel deals along the lines of "you short it now and close when my lockup period ends, and I'll use my locked-up long position to unofficially hedge for you".

<comment><USER9> Unofficial(as in, one entity hedging for a separate entity) hedging is 1) illegal and 2) very inefficient and prone to screw you at tax time.

But realistically... you know non-wealthy stockholders(ie employees) want to cash in, so you buy into the retail sell-off on lockup day, bid it up 3 points, then close when you see the other retail buyers chasing the rally. Closing several thousand long shares should be sufficient to run their stops, depress the price, and present you with another buying opportunity at or near your original entry price.

All that said.. guessing what will happen with the market is how you lose your money, and fail at day trading before you ever got started.

<comment><USER10> If, say, a person owns $5MM of snapchat stock and their spouse knows this, can their spouse (acting rationally) not simply short or buy a put option for some portion of this?

They didn't agree to anything in the RSU agreement and no long as the spouse wasn't acting on insider information and simply wanted to hedge, I'm not certain a crime would have been committed, unless the person owning the shares actually asked their spouse to perform this action.

<comment><USER9> On paper: yes, that sounds good. BUT, if the SEC comes knocking...they operate in a way that looks like "guilty until proven innocent", and having your spouse do it appears at first glance as guilty. The RSU agreement would be important to see though, they may have some bits about spouses and immediate family - or they may not(in which case what you described is 100% above board).

If anyone holding RSU's is (legally) able to show the RSU agreement, it would be insightful to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like kind of a prime time to increase your holding if you bought shares on the IPO and have any faith in the vision of the company. Having such an intense fight against such a dominating company could kill Snap, or it could be the disadvantage they need to be successful in the long term.

How often is it that the now-huge tech (or any industry) firms DON'T go through trying times when they first appeared on the markets?

-Apple kicked Steve Jobs out of the company convinced the monolithic giant IBM was going to cut them out of the equation.

-Amazon almost went bankrupt when the market crashed

-Facebook dropped for almost a year when it wasn't obvious how they were going to monetize their mobile platform profitably

-Nike got hit with a customs battle brought on by Converse for millions

Obviously it remains to be seen whether they will show the resilience the aforementioned companies did but the fact that some are already speaking of Snap in the past tense is kind of crazy, they've had ONE quarterly report come out since the IPO.

<comment><USER12> This is the analysis I make based on what someone with a lot more experience in the markets told me a few days ago, related to $SNAP.

\- Apple was a company that sold computers. SJ being kicked was an relevant event for the company, but it still sold computers and was worth something.

\- Amazon was an intermediary between sellers and buyers. Today is a company that invested a lot in other things and is worth something.

\- Facebook could be monetizing something, but it's still just a webpage. Remains to be seen if it's worth something, so their shares are crap (this is from a fundamental point of view, regardless of whether they keep rising)

\- Nike sells shoes. It's worth something, though it's not a fundamental company for the market.

SNAP, on the other hand, has some face recognition algorithms, and created a free app. That's it. It produces nothing. It's a worthless company when it comes down to the assets it has and the product it sells.

<comment><USER6> This is an incredibly flawed argument and comes from an incredibly flawed perspective on "worth". The most valuable thing Facebook has is distribution and that is absolutely worth A LOT. Not only that, but it has _unprecedented global distribution_ backed by engagement numbers that keep the value afloat. You're trying to impose the values of a physical goods economy onto one that is purely digital and the concepts don't translate.

Whoever that "someone" is, probably isn't as experienced in the markets as you think.

<comment><USER12> I know for a fact he has over 25 years experience in the markets.

The concepts don't translate, that's for sure. However, to claim that Facebook is worth something if they just keep collecting data and we see nothing being done with that, is just wishful thinking.

Amazon invests in research and built a PaaS/SaaS service that's worth a lot. It innovates on several products like Kindle and Echo. Owns patents that are worth something.

What's the ACTUAL commercial value that Facebook is bringing to the world and to people that's making it so worthwhile? Sharing pics? Getting customized newsfeeds? Having yet another channel to communicate with your aunt or with that customer service? What do we lose if Facebook goes away tomorrow?

<comment><USER6> The actual commercial value is what I stated: _unprecedented global distribution_ driven by content (some of which is user-generated and some of which is partner-generated).

It's the model that has worked for TV, Radio, and Newspapers but in the new world the integration points are different from those old models making the chain of value much different.

Here's a short article that'll help explain it better than I can: [https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation- theory/](https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/)

By your friend's logic, AirBnB doesn't have any value either.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. The same logic applies. It's a glorified hotel reservation site.

<comment><USER6> You really think AirBnB has zero value?

Yes AirBnB is a glorified hotel reservation site, but isn't a car just a glorified horse and buggy? I guess I just don't understand how you could be so dismissive in the face of something so clearly valuable and so clearly wanted by the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think people are writing off Snapchat prematurely after its first soft quarter. It takes a long time to build a successful advertising driven consumer application.

I agree that Facebook's aggressive cloning of stories has impacted Snapchat but I think Snapchat is more than just a one feature company.

I'd give it at least a year or so before declaring Snapchat a losing proposition. I say this because making significant changes to a product at Snapchat's scale, I.e shipping new features, takes time.

Unlike Twitter, I've been impressed with the amount of product that Snapchat has shipped over the last few years. I think the ability to ship a lot of product is a key thing that a lot of arm chair analysts neglect when talking about these applications.

I'd also add to the above that I think a lot of people on his thread see Snapchat and Instagram as interchangeable applications. I'm not so sure about that. I use both for very different purposes.

Another point people seem to forget is that Snapchat own Bitmoji. That app has been consistently in the top 5 apps on the AppStore every time I've checked over the last 6 months.

I think the fact that Snap were able to buy another social company and not mess it up is highly underrated. Especially when you compare Bitmoji to what happened with Vine at Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER14> Most of the comments here already talk about UX or other standard 'issues' with Snapchat, so I wanted to raise a different one—

On Snapchat, there isn't much to do once you're done seeing your friends' snaps.

Instagram has an amazing discoverability feature, plus, you can go around visiting other people's profiles as long as they are public. Ditto on FB, where there is an endless list of things to do and see and explore without interacting with anyone or letting them know of your actions.

On Snapchat, there is nothing of that sort. Snaps are temporary, Stories only stay for 24 hrs, and you can't see anyone's content without them getting a notification (last I checked).

Sure, this prevents 'stalking', but that comes at the cost of engagement.

<comment><USER15> > On Snapchat, there isn't much to do once you're done seeing your friends' > snaps.

I'd argue that this does keep you coming back regularly to see what's new

<comment><USER14> You get notifications when people people send you snaps. 24-hour stories don't need you to be on the app the whole time. For example, I check my Instagram and Messenger stories once a day and that is good enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One need only look at Facebook which traded well below its IPO price 6 months later to understand this is a non-metric. All it "means" as far as I can tell is that the traders who got their 'bump' in the IPO wanted to dump their holdings and so have been continually selling. It will be really interesting when internal shareholders (aka employees) get unlocked and can sell their shares. A lot of people using their now vested and tradable equity to convert it into something like a down payment or a new car. Once _that_ first wave has passed, then you can start looking at the stock price and trying to see what the market thinks of the company.

<comment><USER17> >"All it "means" as far as I can tell is that the traders who got their 'bump' in the IPO wanted to dump their holdings and so have been continually selling."

Can you explain what is a 'bump' that traders get in the IPO?

<comment><USER16> Simply put, most IPOs are 'priced' such that the stock will go up after the IPO. So traders during the roadshow agree to buy shares at the IPO price and then they turn around and sell those shares for a profit when the stock goes up and people (nominally retail investors) are trying to buy the stock. They do this carefully so as not to put the stock in a huge tail spin.

So lets say you're Fidelity, and you've got a billion dollar fund, you take 10 million out of that, commit it to the IPO and sell it when the stock goes up 20%. You now have 12 million to put back into your fund and you've added 2 basis points to the "return" for your fund (shares are now worth 1.002 B$.)

The trick though is that you are not really "investing in SNAP" so much as you're taking advantage of a pricing advantage of a highly anticipated offering.

<comment><USER17> Sure, the "road show" is to sell to big institutional investors like pension funds, sovereign wealth funds etc but not to "traders" per se. I think that's what confused me. I'm guessing someone like Fidelity might have their own trading desk?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Snap hedged their existence on the Spectacles/hardware ([https://www.spectacles.com](https://www.spectacles.com)) to the point of rebranding themselves as a "camera" company in the SEC filing.

Has anyone seen/heard about the Spectacles used since the initial hype?

<comment><USER18> The roll out for spectacles was horrible. Where the heck do I get one? If I can't find them while living in Downtown SF, I don't know how they expect Spectacles to get any traction.

<comment><USER19> > If I can't find them while living in Downtown SF

That's the beauty of their roll out. Keeping it out of the hand of SF techies during launch helped create a cool brand for these in a mainstream audience. Google Glass' association w geeks helped cement their failure in the broader market.

<comment><USER14> Except Downtown SF is not just techies. It's plenty of so-called 'cool' people too.

If he were expecting to see them in Sunnyvale maybe you'd have a point.

<comment><USER20> > Except Downtown SF is not just techies. It's plenty of so-called 'cool' > people too.

ehhhhhh

> If he were expecting to see them in Sunnyvale maybe you'd have a point.

yeah ok

<comment><USER19> <laughing emoji /><laughing emoji /><crying emoji />

<comment><USER14> :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Snapchat is popular among people under 30 who enjoy applying bunny faces and vomiting rainbows onto their selfies, but many on Wall Street are critical of its high valuation, slowing user growth and lack of profitability. Snap has warned it may never become profitable."

<comment><USER22> "Snap has warned it may never become profitable."

Then why the hell was there an IPO?!?!

<comment><USER23> They "warned" in an SEC filing that is supposed to state possible investor risks. The way this was reported is the problem and not Snap's statement, which any investor should understand is factually correct.

Snap is a volatile play: there's a high chance, maybe bigger than 50%, that it never becomes profitable, as they warn, and there's some small chance it becomes extremely profitable. The real question is, what's the net present expected value?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't that pretty normal in the months post IPO while everybody gets past the initial excitement while the business starts working on long term plans with all the money?

</comment><comment><USER25> A huge part of the tech market is down like 10%

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm no expert on snapchat, but one thing I can say from personal experience being at an IPOing unicorn -- until about a year into our IPO, we were a "no buy", and all of these giant companies were ostensibly going to crush us with products that didn't even compete with us. Then, one year and a couple of earnings calls in, we're suddenly a "buy" and people consider us stable and successful. What did I learn from this? Never trust the stock market, and doubly so do not trust the stock market with a new stock.

<comment><USER27> I think the leason is to have a viable business with earnings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Worth pointing out that tech stocks are down heavily in June, esp. consumer tech [1]. Some portion of this decline is unrelated to investor confidence in Snapchat relative to FB etc.

[1]: [http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/09/big-five-tech-stocks-sell- off...](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/09/big-five-tech-stocks-sell-off-facebook- apple-amazon-microsoft-alphabet.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> I just don't like what Snap did to the Windows Phone platform. They consistently blocked all opportunities to place an app on the service even when offered to do so with some form of partial or total subsidy (citation needed, but I'm pretty sure I'm referring to 6snap here).

So in that regard, I'm oddly happy about what's going on.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that (effectively) no one uses that platform. It's not just the initial creation that is the problem - maintaining a windows phone app over the years to come would be a real pain in the ass, and would slow future updates.

<comment><USER30> There were existing third party apps that they forced to shut down. Understandable if it's competing against a native app, but that wasn't the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There is large downward pressure on the stock due to an impending lockup period expiry.

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/snap-short-sellers-bet- on-a...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/snap-short-sellers-bet-on-a-post- lockup-tumble-but-it-isnt-a-sure-thing-2017-06-08)

<comment><USER32> Why wouldn't this have been priced in?

Why does everyone and their uncle think they can predict stock movements with lockup periods?

<comment><USER9> "Why does everyone and their uncle...."

They don't. But every amateur with zero experience does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Sinks" is a particularly strong word for a 3.4% drop on the day after a rate hike and during a 'tech selloff'.

</comment><comment><USER9> Want to know what the stock is going to do? Look at your order book in PM on lockup day. Liquidity on either side will indicate short term direction, and the liquidity vacuum on the other side will indicate longer term direction.

disclaimer: short term is 10-15 minutes, long term is 1h or more up to RTH close

</comment><comment><USER34> On Hacker News we are enthusiastic about Snapchat as a technology without any value in terms of being technologically interesting or useful. But yet we are littered with blockchain skeptics.

</comment><comment><USER35> Isn't it weird that the stock exchange where you're also runs an article with your smashed logo? I'd expect a more "robotic" reporting from nasdaq.com

<comment><USER36> It's a Reuters article. NASDAQ presumably purchases a feed for financial news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The stuff that made Snapchat fun i.e Filters, Stories are becoming native to the platform e.g through ARKit and being copied aggressively by Zucker Zucker. I feel sorry for them, even though they were a pioneer into to leverage the smartphone's camera. Irrelevant but maybe relevant point, is us college guys mostly use it to chat with girls or just to be sure girls we wanna fuxk look good.

</comment><comment><USER38> While i am personally very skeptical about Snap.

We had similar blogposts about facebook - even google to an extend.

<comment><USER39> The difference with FB was that it rapidly shifted out of its "exclusive" user group by expanding outside of university email address holders to allowing everyone and their grandma from joining. Once Snap inevitably cleans up its UI to stoop to trying to attract older audiences, what appeal will it have?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if Facebook going to repeat that.

<comment><USER32> FB had $10.2bn net income in 2016 on $27.6bn revenue. How can it drop back to its $100bn IPO valuation?

<comment><USER41> If FB were to stop growing at the rate it has been, ~100bn would be a reasonable target market cap, given a P.E. Ratio of around 10.

<comment><USER32> 2017 is half over. Facebook is going to make about $14bn net income in 2017. At a PE of 10 that's $140bn.

The S&P has an average PE of 15.6. That brings us to $218bn.

It's mindboggling any of you can think FB would drop back to IPO valuation at this size. Maybe in 40 years when the world has changed dramatically and most of us are retired or dead.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: interactive visualization of text entropy - <AUTHOR> http://www.leebutterman.com/text-entropy/

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I wanted to explore the GBooks ngram dataset, and see what parts of sentences were less predictable by models, so I made a little visualization.</comment>


Ask HN: Moving to the valley in a week. Any room for 2 in a hacker house? - <AUTHOR>

I looked at hackerhouse.cc but all the Craigslist links were invalid so I thought I'd start here.
email@example.com
I really apologize for the anonymity. We just can't announce anything yet, but we can talk about quite openly it if there's an opportunity over email. <comment><USER2> i'm looking for a place to stay as well. month to month lease or something like that.

thanks.</comment>