Scientists Are Giving Themselves DIY Coronavirus Vaccines - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/science/covid-19-vaccine-diy.html <comment><USER2> This article is bonkers.

I have always thought that BioShock was pretty far fetched untill reading this article, now I'm thinking that scientists if left unchecked would do all kinds of crazy stuff just because they can.

<comment><USER3> They have. The list of crazy things that scientists have done to themselves and to others is long, and truly horrific. In this case, my main complaint is that they can't really know with any confidence that their treatments worked and didn't have side effects, due to the statistically insignificant sample size, and constant protocol changes. To me, that marks the work as effectively non-scientific recreational vaccinology.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hyve - Social media streaming in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/Tawlk/hyve

<comment><AUTHOR> So seeing as people seem to be interested in social searching right now (scrolldit) I figured it only appropriate to point people to a library I hope to get some more help developing.

Hyve uses the JSONP APIs of Facebook, Twitter, Identica, Buzz, Flickr, Youtube, Foursquare, and Reddit and returns any results in a normalized format, easy for rendering however you like.

Check out this (very modest, see the source) demo:

<http://dump.lrvick.net/hyve/demo.html>

Would love to hear any ideas to make it better.

For any interested developers, I would love to see support for things like Google+, ways to make it easier to extend, ways to make it consume less memory/ be faster, etc. Also really need to think about ways to have a more meaningful 'weight' metric for each service in order to allow front-end code to sort by "relevance" instead of just by timestamp.</comment>


Apple just released a long-lost font from the original Mac–for free - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90359757/apple-just-released-a-long-lost-font-from-the-original-mac-for-free <comment><USER2> According to the Wikipedia of the original New York font, the new font is unrelated.</comment>


Tesla Intrigue Deepens with Musk's Twitter Barrage - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-04/tesla-intrigue-deepens-with-musk-s-twitter-barrage <comment><USER2> Tesla could have done a better job communicating that the internal look or feel wasn't finalised.

Clearly that didn't impact pre-orders but I think a lot of people didn't love the internal look even if they thought it was nice looking externally (disclaimer: I was one of these people).

In my OPINION the 3 won't be fully self driving (for certification/legal reasons). But we can reasonably speculate that it will have things like auto- braking, lane keep assist, automatic cruise control, and similar. Since competitor's vehicles have this, and in order to achieve "five stars in every safety category" you actually need to have auto-braking.

Look at the requirements for the IIHS's "TOP SAFETY PICK+" which is the gold standard for safety. A system like EyeSight, Honda Sensing, or similar is required in 2016[0], and this vehicle will be looking for the 2017 or 2018 TSP+ rating no doubt.

So suggesting that it will have "auto-pilot"-like functionality[1] is very reasonable. But that doesn't mean it will have full self-driving ("hands off"), in particular given the regulatory landscape, development stage of the technology, and the costs. We'll see.

[0] "Vehicles with optional front crash prevention qualify for either award only when equipped with the technology." [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP- List](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP-List) i.e. without frontal auto- braking as an option you cannot appear on the TSP+ list. But even vehicles on the list only quality as TSP+ rated when the auto-braking option is installed (without it they're TPS tier only).

[1] [https://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/autopilot](https://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/autopilot)

<comment><USER3> >auto-braking, lane keep assist, automatic cruise control, and similar

I bought a mazda cx recently with all of these feature. I must say I don't find any of these really useful, but again I don't text while driving.

I think these features breed a false sense of security and encourage users to text while driving. Features like these should be introduced only when they can protect users from all cases of distracted driving not just one or two situations.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, auto-braking isn't useful until you need it, and by that point you're about a half second away from smashing into another car so you don't have much time to think about it. That feature alone could reduce total crashes by 10% [1]

[1] [http://www.autonews.com/article/20160128/OEM06/160129871/aut...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20160128/OEM06/160129871/automatic- braking-reduces-rear-end-crashes-iihs-study-finds)

<comment><USER3> >That feature alone could reduce total crashes by 10% [1]

Well, ofcourse. I am talking about ppl become less safety conscious because these features give them (false) sense of security.

eg: Anti-Tsunami walls killed more people than they saved during great japanese tsunami because they gave people false sense of security and ppl didn't take evacuation warnings seriously assuming walls would take care of it. And ofcourse studies proved that having Tsunami walls is safer than no walls.

<comment><USER2> > eg: Anti-Tsunami walls killed more people than they saved during great > japanese tsunami [..] And ofcourse studies proved that having Tsunami walls > is safer than no walls.

Huh? So walls killed more people than they saved but studies showed that they are safer with the walls..?

I googled this, cannot find any information that the anti-Tsunami walls caused more people to be killed.

<comment><USER3> >Huh? So walls killed more people than they saved but studies showed that they are safer with the walls..?

Studies was done with average tsunami heights from previous tsunamis. 2011 was magnitudes higher than previous ones, walls were no match for the tsunami.

>I googled this, cannot find any information that the anti-Tsunami walls caused more people to be killed.

I remember seeing this in a documentary, where they were interiviewing poeople whose famalies died becuase they thought walls are going to save them.

I googled it now, this was the first result

[http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/03/22/japan-to-build- massi...](http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/03/22/japan-to-build-massive-sea- wall-to-combat-tsunami-threat.html)

'The paradox of such projects, experts say, is that while they may reduce some damage, they can foster complacency. That can be a grave risk along coastlines vulnerable to tsunamis, storm surges and other natural disasters. At least some of the 18,500 people who died or went missing in the 2011 disasters failed to heed warnings to escape in time.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Musk said the company was hoping for 0.21 drag coefficient. That's exceedingly sleek."

I looked into this. 0.21 is insanely low for a production car. How come this isn't bigger news? This alone is fascinating.

<comment><USER6> The Model S is already at 0.24 (most efficient car in production)

<comment><USER7> I'm guessing Tesla gets to cheat a bit since they don't use heat engines and don't have to run a bunch of air over a giant mesh screen to keep the engine from burning up.

Also, that giant pane of smooth glass over the top probably helps.

<comment><USER8> So by "cheat" you mean "solve the same problem in a better way"?

<comment><USER7> They get to play on a tilted playing field. They do have to lug around the weight of the batteries, but for cruising at highway speed (where the aero figure is most important), extra weight matters little.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unveil part 2 is "super next-level".

And the "steering controls and system feels like a spaceship"

And Musk tweeted a little while ago about getting a special team of Software Engineers reporting directly to him for self-driving that was "top priority" within the company.

And there are no gauges directly in front of the driver at all, which has been confirmed to be like that for production.

At this point, can it be anything other than full autonomous? (and maybe you'll have to take over sometimes, but I'm thinking 95%+ of the time it will be driving itself)

<comment><USER10> > At this point, can it be anything other than full autonomous?

There is no way that autonomous driving is going to work in most small European town and villages. There are so many downtowns which were never meant to be used by car and it is already difficult to navigate those places as a human. I just don't see how this should work over here in Europe.

Selfdriving on the highway or in a typical suburban sprawl in the US? Yes, that might work in the near future. Navigating twisted one-way streets in some old town from the middle ages during rush hour? That will take a long time to do this fully autonomously.

<comment><USER11> Why? What specifically is hard about narrow streets? That actually sounds like the kind of thing a self driving car could excel at.

The bigger problem, is imagine, would be weather. I dunno how completely they've solved that problem yet.

<comment><USER12> I recently drove in freezing storm. Whole frontend was covered in icy-slushy mixture. Parking sensors were freaking out and working totally randomly in such conditions.

If I ever get an autonomous car, manual driving is a must-have feature :|

<comment><USER9> I once had a car that didn't work at all when it was below about 32 or above about 70.

Keeping my horse was a must for those situations.

I once rode in a plane that could only go a few hundred miles before refueling.

Keeping my car was a must for those situations.

I once rode in a train that could only go ~60 mph.

Keep my car was a must for those situations.

(hint, I'm talking about early stuff)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm hoping we'll indeed see some tweaks to the nose -- it looks like a blank waiting for a cut-out to fit a grill and will leave the car feeling nearly- finished if it stays that way for production. Only bit that wasn't really a home run for me (for a pre-production, anyways).

But otherwise... shooting for autonomous-first at launch will be interesting indeed. How would that effect the opinions of the folks now on the wait list? I wonder how much we're really going to need/want these levels of performance with the car doing the driving for us, of if having the go-fast will end up being mostly a safety feature for collision avoidance?

<comment><USER14> That mask started to grow on me: it makes the car look like a spaceship, and even more importantly, it sets it apart from all other cars out there.

It's like the hatchback-shape of the Prius. I don't think anyone does actually find that attractive, but it's a great design to tell everyone from a distance that you're a better person than them.

<comment><USER15> Except a hatchback actually has a functional purpose, the Model 3's grill-less grill not so much.

<comment><USER16> I've noticed the trend in recent years of more prominent grill on many brands, especially the low end luxury lines.

I can't be the only one who hates those, I mean, Trypophobia is one of the most common phobias.

<comment><USER17> FYI for anyone tempted to google search for it: there are some pretty gross image-search results that I wish I could un-see, helpfully inserted by Google before most of the results.

From wikipedia:

> Trypophobia is a proposed phobia (pathological fear) of small holes, > particularly irregular patterns or clusters of small holes. The term was > coined in 2005 from the Greek τρύπα (trýpa) "hole" and φόβος (phóbos) > "fear". Thousands of people say they have the condition. It is not a > recognized diagnosis or condition in the American Psychiatric Association's > Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or other > scientific literature.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So I watched the Model 3 unveil. I found it to be pretty awful. I had seen Musk unveil the battery swap, and felt that he looked way more polished than he did in the Model 3 unveil. The reveal kind of stressed me out the way he was stammering over the words. It seemed as though he had either not practiced the script, not written one, or had a bout of stage fright. He really didnt "sell" the car. Just said yes its going to be great and gave 3-4 bullet points on features. It was not something that I would compare to any apple product reveal by any stretch.

<comment><USER19> He's going through a massive divorce that could cost him billions.

<comment><USER20> Assuming its 'his' to begin with. Not hers already?

<comment><USER19> I'm quite sure that Musk is the one responsible for the increase in value of his companies, not someone who's been uninvolved in running them.

<comment><USER21> I am able to concentrate on growing my career because of my spouse, not in spite of them.

<comment><USER22> That's not the case for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _WARNING_ : Auto-playing video ads that are not muted

<comment><USER24> Yeah. Also, TIL you can "Mute Tab" in Chrome before anything starts playing.

<comment><USER25> Please elaborate.

<comment><USER26> Right click, mute tab.

<comment><USER27> @mattbeckman said you could do it before anything starts playing, is that possible?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm as incredulous as the next person that a mostly self-driving car will be available by 2017-8 and that this will be it.

That said, on the way to full autonomy I can foresee a car that can handle 99% of the driving itself but calls on the driver to help out during the other 1%. In such a scenario the car may know where it is and isn't safe to drive, but not exactly where, or when.

Examples include the 1-lane, 2-directions-of-traffic rural roads. Unmapped car parks and private premises. Navigating around roadworks. Basically all the 'edge-case' scenarios people often cite.

The car could guess the route and you use a joystick to control the forward speed. You can use the joystick to change the proposed route as you drive. And if you wanted to leave the detected 'safe area' ("no, I really do want to drive into that car - it's a tow truck and I need to get on it!") you acknowledge a bunch of ominous warnings and control the car directly, albeit at a very low speed.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can someone clarify for me- will the existing Model S have any features NOT present in the vastly cheaper Model 3?

<comment><USER30> Speed (acceleration). Current Model S 0-6 times are from 5.2s to 2.8s, depending on trim. The Model 3 is "under six seconds" and maybe "substantially faster": it could overlap the slower current Model S trims.

Range. Current Model S ranges are from 240m to 270m, depending on trim. Model 3: 215m.

Cargo volume. The Model S has 31.6 ft^3. The Model 3 looks much smaller.

Free lifetime use of superchargers? I haven't seen this speculated, but I'll be surprised if the Model 3 includes unlimited supercharger use; I suspect paid use of the network will be a new Tesla revenue stream.

On the other hand, smaller makes for easier parking and maneuvering, in addition to the cost savings. And I expect the Model 3 to have more and better sensors, in support of better autonomous driving, than the current Model S can support.

All said, IMO the major advantage of the existing Model S is that it exists today. Owners are paying a huge premium to get semi-autonomous driving a couple of years ahead of schedule. "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." – William Gibson

<comment><USER31> He stated in the talk that supercharger was included with all Model 3's.

<comment><USER32> Supercharging hardware is included. Did not confirm it will be free. On the Model S there is a charge for supercharging hardware.

<comment><USER31> He said supercharging was included in the talk. And everywhere is reporting it as included on all models. "and supercharging, even for the basic version of the car." [http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/04/the-post- model-3-reveal-...](http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/04/the-post- model-3-reveal-reveals-what-we-know-about-the-new-tesla-four-days-out/)

<comment><USER32> You don't understand. "Supercharging" means hardware. It takes additional charging hardware to be compatible with a supercharger. On the Model S supercharging hardware was an option. I hope you are right but at this point it's still unconfirmed.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4dc6rs/officia...](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4dc6rs/official_response_tesla_has_not_decided_if_model/)

<comment><USER31> Thanks for that link. To me, 'supercharging' is the act of charging. And he specifically said supercharging, not supercharger hardware. So that is where the confusion came from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Part 2: Some sort of heads up display in the windshield? Could work well with self driving mode on highways.

</comment><comment><USER34> One of the things I find fascinating, and that Tesla has to grapple with at some point with real ramifications, is: are they a self driving car company that just happens to be an electric car company? Or the other way around?

I would argue that electric car companies are appealing to a much smaller subset of potential customers than are self driving cars. But the mission behind each is very different and that flows into all the key design and marketing decisions you have to make.

Tesla can easily pivot from one to the other. But Musk is so passionate about the first, and therefore so are so many of their key people, that you wonder what happens if they pivot to being first to market with the best self driving cars that just happen to be electric.

<comment><USER35> Why do you need to define a car company in a single adjective like "[self driving] car company" or "[electric] car company"?

Both are clearly the future. So what's wrong with doing both?

You say "pivot" as though these are incompatible goals, when in fact they're perfectly complementary paths to a future ideal of ground transportation.

To me, your point is like asking "Is Google a search company, or an advertising company?" They're both, in a fully symbiotic sense. You cannot describe it as one of these accurately, without the other.

<comment><USER34> Everything about Tesla has been around helping/saving the environment by accelerating the adoption of battery driven cars vs ICE. Nothing about self driving cars says they have to be electric. In fact, if the first fully self driving car was gasoline that would probably impede Tesla's growth. So it impacts where your limited R&D, manufacturing and sales and marketing $$"s go. I don't think a company as small as Tesla can be both - at least not effectively. One will have to give to the other.

<comment><USER36> Nothing about making computers says you have to make phones (Apple). As the GP mentioned, nothing about search says you have to sell advertising (Google). And none of the above say you have to make a self driving car (as both are reported to be attempting).

I think you're drawing some arbitrary distinctions here. Making big bets in several areas is no small part of why Apple, Google and Tesla are magnets for the best engineers and programmers. There's nothing unfocused about marrying great software and hardware, which is ultimately what Tesla is doing.

A lot of Musk's bet in AV is founded on the understanding that the existing automakers are/were quite capable of making a good electric car - they just have too much incentive to drag their feet. Autonomous driving will actually be the major differentiator in an industry that didn't have the software expertise to create a decent infotainment system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "The rear-wheel drive cars will be able to go zero to 60 in less than 4 seconds."

Wasn't it like 6 seconds before? Or is this the top level rear-wheel drive version?

<comment><USER38> He said 6 seconds at the presentation. I think 4 is a typo.

<comment><USER32> The 4 seconds comes from speculation from an article before the reveal. Maybe that's the target for the performance variant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> One of the folks Musk responded to, Brian Reed, did an nice job filling in the gap in this article and video [http://bgr.com/2016/04/04/tesla-model-3-hidden- details-video...](http://bgr.com/2016/04/04/tesla-model-3-hidden-details- video/)

</comment><comment><USER40> So does communicating on Twitter comply with regulatory requirements around public company communications? Cool, if so.

<comment><USER32> I'm not a lawyer but it's a public site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Just flying over the comments I find it interesting that a lot of people try their best to find negative aspects of self-driving cars. I always try to be open to all parties, but a lot of people are wayyy too confident in human abilities. We are pretty bad, seriously.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder, when Tesla unveils something that doesn't fit within the parameters that those people think of as a 'car', how many will drop their reservation?

Since we don't know the details yet, we don't know how much of a departure it will be.

<comment><USER35> I doubt that the demographic that pre-orders a Tesla Model 3 (years before shipping), is a demographic that is unwilling to embrace change.

I also doubt that it will have _no_ manual control mode, so it shouldn't an issue regardless. Tesla is clearly going the route of being a strict super-set of the capabilities of other cars, until the market decides what features are obsolete many years down the road (e.g. steering wheels).

<comment><USER42> It's really a question of demographics. How many people that have put down a reserve are buying a car _to drive_ vs buying a means of transportation?

Obviously, this is all speculative since they haven't revealed what they're talking about.

<comment><USER43> I might like to buy a car with the Model 3's general parameters - I had the electrical service on my house redone a couple of years ago in part because I wanted to have the capacity to add a car charger someday - but I am almost completely uninterested in a Tesla because I am not on board with their "just sit back and trust us" philosophy. No, thank you, I don't trust you, or any car maker, and don't want your auto-updating auto-everything machine!

And I basically just hate trying to deal with touch screens. They get smudgy and gross at the blink of an eye, and their total lack of tactile feedback demands a tedious degree of conscious attention which makes them inefficient ways of performing routine tasks, which adjustment of an automobile's cabin controls ought to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I couldn't believe it was gonna be a fully autonomous car long-term until I saw the empty dashboard in the video: [http://i.imgur.com/XcUjuDv.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/XcUjuDv.jpg)

<comment><USER45> How could it be? The regulations don't allow it. I don't see it happening sooner than 10 years. If so, what is their plan?

<comment><USER46> NHTSA is scrambling to make it possible, this is the biggest safety innovation in cars since the seat belt. And as long as they have the hardware capabilities, Tesla wouldn't have to launch it with full autonomous mode available.

<comment><USER32> Just imagine how safe we will be if we reach Level 5 autonomy, no driver control possible? I think the Model 3 is going to be the first production car to reach Level 4. I'm hoping that's what the "part 2" update is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Windshield stretching from front to back (the roof) will be quite a bit more expensive to replace than a standard windshield no doubt. Ironic given the price point.

<comment><USER27> There are seams, it's not one giant piece of glass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48>
       Is there any good analysis on the impact of EV on the gas and oil demand on the world?

     ??% of Ca, US cars are EV, as results, ??%  of Ca, US gas/oil consumptions are reduced.   If the trend continue, here's what happen when % of EV reach 10, 20, 30, 50%, the global oil demand will be drop by ??,??,?? %.

</comment><comment><USER49> > The Model 3 will come with standard rear-wheel drive, with an option for > dual-motor all-wheel drive.

It better be fully autonomous if you've ever seen how rear-wheel drive performs in a north-eastern snowstorm. Sure, there's a lot of weight over the back wheels but that sounds crazy to me as the default.

<comment><USER50> Eh, you may be defeating your own argument there. The main reason that front- wheel drive is better in slick conditions is more weight over the wheels in the typical front engined car. Rear wheel drive may actually be better if the battery pack is sitting on top of it.

<comment><USER27> That's only part of it. The other reason is that on a front wheel drive car, torque is applied in the direction you want to go. On a rear wheel drive car, torque is applied in the direction you are currently going.

<comment><USER32> A common complain about FWD is understeer though. It's worse with more torque at the front wheels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> 'The rear-wheel drive cars will be able to go zero to 60 in less than 4 seconds. '

I don't believe that.

<comment><USER52> It's a known fact that electric cars have superb acceleration mainly because they deliver all power from the beginning, in contrast to internal combustion engines that need to reach certain rpms to achieve the same thing. Even if it's 6 seconds instead of 4 it still is an impressive number for a car at that price range.

<comment><USER53> > _Even if it's 6 seconds instead of 4 it still is an impressive number for a > car at that price range._

Not really. There are multiple Ford and Suburau models (off the top of my head) that will run sub-6.0, some models $10k cheaper than the Model 3.

<comment><USER27> How many of those can do it without revving the engine and popping the clutch? An electric car's low end torque is usable for everyday driving.

Of course, where most people judge a car's power while driving it normally is the 60-80 mph time. That's the only time most people floor the accelerator, when they're pulling out to pass someone. Gasoline vehicles have a marked advantage in this metric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Didn't realize the price point has dropped to $35k that is the biggest news for me.

</comment><comment><USER55> my only head scratch on the design is the giant tablet attached to a thin pole on the dash

i live in sf, where a book on your passenger seat will get you a broken window and lose you a book

the tablet looks like it is going to inadvertantly encourage broken windows and is inevitably going to be ripped out of the dash

here's to hoping it retracts to under the dash when off

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an unfinished cabin design. I doubt they're going to leave a monitor sitting in that spot as the end look. Most likely it'll be mounted flush into the dash in some manner.

<comment><USER32> The Model X has a tablet sticking out like this for the pre-production but the production model has it molded into the dash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Anyone else getting a vaporware vibe from this car?

<comment><USER25> Lmao what? After he's delivered the S and the X, and created reusable rockets, you think this is _vaporware_? Wtf?

<comment><USER32> People are still trying to call Tesla the new Delorean. Even after all the successful deliveries.</comment></comment></comment>


Doing Continuous Delivery with CircleCI - <AUTHOR> https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/11/06/continuous-delivery-with-circleci/ <comment><AUTHOR> While the general idea presented here is solid. It's a terrible idea to deploy your apps using the latest tag. It completely obliterates marathons ability to rollback should something go terribly wrong.

It would be better to use the CIRCLE_BUILD_NUM they expose as an ENV var to tag the image and deploy that via Marathon.</comment>


Sure looks like Baxter attempted to create a worldwide pandemic - <AUTHOR> http://www.disinfo.com/2009/11/spanish-doctor-reveals-important-information-about-swine-flu/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a long video, in Spanish, with English subtitles, but the information would be absolute political dynamite if it were ever covered by the mainstream media. (Fat chance.)

And it argues strongly against taking the coming vaccine, with a lot of information about what's different and dangerous about it.</comment>


The Largest Military Agency You've Never Heard Of - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-largest-military-agency-youve-never-heard-of <comment><USER2> While most people may not have heard about DLA, anyone working with the DoD deals with it on a regular basis.

Also, the article was rather lacking on details, particularly for an organization that has bazillions of pages of public studies,regulations, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any books about failure (with no later success)? - <AUTHOR> I feel like the world of entrepreneurship, especially tech entrepreneurship, is suffering from history being written by the victor.
Everyone has a story about overcoming adversity and succeeding. It's the expectation. It's the hero's journey. But how do we know the failures weren't just red herrings -- that success was inevitable for these companies?
Are there any books that are post-mortems? Stories about companies who had every indication that they would succeed, but ultimately failed? I'd love to read about them.
Ones that come to mind that are out there: - Kozmo.com - The Hard Thing About Hard Things (sorta)
I'd love to read the history of MySpace, Wang computers, Atari, etc. <comment><USER2> Every successful endeavor involves luck. A corollary to that is that no successful endeavor is inevitable.

Anyone who claims their startup's success was "inevitable" is just trying to stroke their own ego or make some money from unsuccessful entrepreneurs.</comment>


All Belgian residents issued with iodine tablets to protect against radiation - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/28/all-belgian-residents-issued-with-iodine-tablets-to-protect-agai/ <comment><USER2> It strikes me that Iodine is not something you need to worry about from a dirty bomb. If you cracked a nuclear reactor open and processed the fuel rods right away you would get a lot of radioiodine, true, but the radiation would kill you. By the time you could work with the materials, the iodine would be decayed

Plutonium, Cesium and some Cobalt isotopes could be nicked, handled and fabricated into a dirty bomb, but (i) iodine pills won't protect you, and (ii) it's unlikely the radiation would be more harmful than the blast.</comment>


Programming language popularity - <AUTHOR> http://langpop.com/

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't put too much stock in those numbers. To start with, they are not measuring actual programing language usage. If you want to know which languages people are using, the only way to really do it is to do a simple random survey and ask them.

What these statistics do is go to specific communities and attempt to measure which languages those communities use. Using those numbers to measure language popularity in the population at large makes the assumption that those communities are representative of the population at large. That's a faulty assumption to make.

Do you, for example, think that Slashdot has a large segment of the "Excel VBA Macro Developer" market posting to it? Probably not.

There are other sites, like Stack Overflow, that show a 2:1 preference for C# over Java. Does that mean there are 2x as many C# programmers as Java programmers? No. It just means that more posts on Stack Overflow are about C# than about Java.

Information about the number of unique books written about a language at a particular store does not imply anything about popularity. If you considered "unit sales", that might give you a measure of "popular book subjects", but not about language usage. For example, it could be possible that Java programmers buy more books on Java than C# programmers do on C#. Many of the C++ programmers I know have several books on C++. I don't think that means C++ has more users than, say, Windows batch scripts.

The web site does say "these results are not scientific", but I don't think that's a strong enough statement. The "scientificness" has to do with how the data is collected, and how the results are reported. Even if they measured the same things using scientific means, the numbers still wouldn't imply what they claim them to imply. A better disclaimer might be "these results are not useful for making any decisions what so ever."

<comment><USER4> The actual data being shown is very clearly explained. They aren't drawing any conclusions so I don't see what your problem is. There is a 'Normalized Comparison' graph but the weights are right there for anyone to adjust. The authors are very honest about what this data is and what it means. It's just interesting, nothing more. They don't claim or even imply any of the things you say they do.

<comment><USER3> The name of the site is "lang pop". When the page loads the title bar says "Programming Language Popularity". The content of the page states:

"We have attempted to collect a variety of data about the relative popularity of programming languages, mostly out of curiousity."

Those are claims that what they are measuring is a proxy for language popularity.

My point is that those claims are not valid.

<comment><USER4> You're inferring things based on your own bias. Nowhere on that page did I get the impression that they even believe, much less claim that those data are representative of true language popularity. They claim its impossible to measure. What is popularity anyway? Number of users? Programs? Bytes? A critical reader would want a definition of that term before drawing any conclusions, and if you read beyond the first paragraph you'll find that they define the what they are measuring precisely. Basically you're complaining that they didn't do enough to discourage lazy brains from jumping to conclusions.

<comment><USER3> The sections that describe the measurements say things like:

"This is a fairly crude approximation of popularity, however, it's worth including, because all other things being equal, the more popular a language is, the more pages will exist mentioning it."

"Popular languages are used more in industry, and consequently, people post job listings that seek individuals with experience in those languages. "

"Books are also a lagging indicator, but a good way to eliminate languages that aren't "established"."

Those statements indicate that the measurements are proxies for language popularity. My point is that those statements are not true, that the numbers do not serve as proxies for language popularity. They are not crude proxies, they are not lagging proxies, or any other form of proxy.

Most conclusions you could draw from the numbers would be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm missing Objective-C. Fairly sure it should be top 20 considering the overall good quality -- and quantity -- of Mac apps.

<comment><USER6> Objective-C (and Cocoa) is notoriously under-documented. Much of what you do in Mac software development is tribal knowledge, which honestly sucks.

Sites like CocoaDev try to maintain some semblance of a knowledge base, but it's still woefully inadequate.

Apple refuses to publish code snippets, and their API docs consist of little more than what you would learn from the header files.

Mac development is a pain in the ass, even though I like Objective-C as a language :)

<comment><USER7> I can't really say I agree with you. There are a lot of good books on the subject, there are a lot of great tutorial sites (free) on the web (look at scott stevenson's work, or cocoa is my girlfriend, or CocoaDev). The mailing lists are pretty heavily trafficked, as is the #macdev irc channel (if not always entirely helpful).

The API documentation is better than most development environments I've worked with. Admittedly, Apple's secrecy problem gets in the way of publicly acknowledging bugs, missing features, or planned upcoming features. These things can be frustrating. Apple publishes a large selection of sample code though. In fact, they ship a lot of it with the developer tools themselves (plus all the docs), so you don't always have to go looking through the website.

iPhone development is undeniably worse right now. I imagine this will change over time, but I agree their is a lot of work to be done on that front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Odd data point: PHP is well-represented everywhere except Lamda the Ultimate (no surprise there) and ... Amazon. Why are there so few books on PHP when it's so well represented in Craigslist job postings?

My best guess is that books are a _really_ lagging indicator, because books stay in Amazon's database for so long: there's no way for PHP, Python, and Ruby, or even Perl, to come close to catching up with C and Java, given the large number of C and Java books published before those languages were even invented.

<comment><USER4> Perl is older than Java.

<comment><USER9> Python is older than Java as well.

<comment><USER10> And so is Tcl for that matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone know how many programmers are programming per language? I'm most interested in Ruby, Python, C#, Java, but any other language would do too. Very rough figures? Are there 10^4 C# programmers, 10^6?

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey, thanks for posting that... _Argh_ for posting it the one time I took a vacation in I don't know how long:-)

(It's my site, BTW).

</comment><comment><USER12> Would like to see this in relation to time. A timeline with markers like "Rails release", or Google App engine/Python.

Normalized results are good though. At first I just read Google - <USER2> Basic, D and Delphi all being just a tad more popular than Ruby.

Also thought Haskell would be higher - even if only because of one day at HN.

<comment><USER4> <http://langpop.com/timeline.html>

<comment><USER12> Nice. Thanks for posting that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another perspective: [http://www.google.com/trends?q=c%2B%2B%2C+paris+hilton&c...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=c%2B%2B%2C+paris+hilton&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

<comment><USER14> So on a typical day, C++ is searched about as frequently as Paris Hilton. Interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Where's HN and Twitter? :)

<comment><USER16> And github? They even give you the stats: <http://github.com/languages>

(Interestingly, the stats are pretty easy to change. Perl was 2%, then Yuval Kogman and I moved our repositories there, and got it up to 3%. We advertised heavily on IRC, and now it is at 6%. Tripling the amount of code on github in a few weeks is certainly a sign that Perl is not dead. It's also interesting to consider that Yuval and I are 1% of the open source community ;)

<comment><USER10> github is too new and too unstable in terms of numbers, so far. Last I checked (a few months ago), Ruby was the most popular language according to github, which doesn't jive with any of the other data sources (or my own gut instincts). I've been keeping an eye on it, though. Stackoverflow is another one that's interesting, but currently has too much bias.

Twitter... hrm. Yeah, might add that in the talk section.

HN... I'd feel kind of bad about having an influence on the numbers myself;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was curious to see the numbers for Python vs. Ruby. I had expected Python to be more popular than shown, it seems to range from 2x Ruby to 20% more. I would think a regression for the changing popularity of each language would show Ruby passing Python at some point, does anyone think that will actually happen?

My favorite argument for Python over Ruby was always that Python is more popular but it seems like that will become less true over time.

</comment><comment><USER18> What's a recommended way to get started with Ruby (on Rails)?

</comment><comment><USER19> This data is from 2004.

<comment><AUTHOR> Last data update: Sat Apr 04 23:17:06 +0200 2009

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good for knowing what is more marketable.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can has LOLCODE?</comment>


Best Shot – Protecting ourselves from the anti-vaccine movement - <AUTHOR> http://thewalrus.ca/best-shot/

<comment><USER3> I am struggling with the anti-vaccine movement right now.

My daughter - 18 months - has had her basic vaccinations, but is late for her MMR due to my wife's concerns.

I find it incredibly difficult; for every rational argument, there's an irrational "What about X" counterargument.

The fact that every rational explanation is greeted with another absurdity reveals the sad truth: she -and the other anti-vaccine people I've met - aren't interested in the truth, only following their faith that all vaccines are bad. We're based in Poland, and there's a huge amount of plausible-looking anti-vaccine information out there.

Most unhelpfully, a child in our social circle recently had to be hospitalised after a one-in-a-million allergic reaction to their MMR.

I'm close to breaking point; my marriage and life is otherwise healthy, but I can't idly stand by and leave my daughter and wider society vulnerable. God knows what'll happen when I she gets vaccinated behind her mother's back; I don't hold out much hope.

Wow, this turned out longer than I expected. Has anyone ever successfully convinced a anti-vaccine spouse? I'm at my wit's end.

<comment><USER4> I was in the same boat. My daughter is now 20. My decision, which might not work as well now, was to hold fast for the ones I thought were vital (and I apologize for not remembering which these were), to trust herd immmunization for some of the others, make sure she was strong and healthy (lots of fresh vegetables, jiu-jitsu, you know, eat well, exercise, plenty of sleep), and to have a private talk with her on her 18th birthday or soon thereafter.

She is now pretty much caught up on her vaccinations.

I don't know if I would make the same decision now, given apparently lower herd immunization rates, I might argue more vociferously.

It was easy to pick vaccines to reject, e.g., Gardasil (protects against only 2 of 4 major strains, covering ~%40 of cases, was not being given to boys, so seemed like corporate welfare for sure and could give a false sense of security), or the flu, which is useful for those at risk, less so for the strong and healthy, and by conceding on one or two I was able to get some of the more important ones.

Nowadays, now that I know the term catastrophic thinking, I might start the conversation in a general and helpful way, talking not about vaccines at all, but about how my wife reacts very strongly to bad news - or potential bad news. Over time, talk about this as a couple. With luck, her reactions will mitigate. If and when they do, discuss vaccination.

Good luck, my friend, it is a tough issue, an emotional one, and appeals to facts are not your friends (because of the emotionality of the issue - <USER2> underlying emotions must be acknowledged first).

<comment><USER5> My wife didn't want to have her daughter vaccinated with Gardisil for this reason either until she got cervical cancer. Since then she has changed her mind. ~40% is still pretty significant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's because the threat is not visible.

In the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, diseases like polio, measles, mumps, etc were very common. Everyone knew people who had them, knew how awful they were, and vaccines were a clear way of solving this imminent and pressing issue.

I'm 30, and I've never had any of those. I've never even seen a case of measles in anyone I know. I'm obviously still going to vaccinate my children, but the benefit is not immediately obvious. They are very unlikely to get measles no matter what I do.

</comment><comment><USER7> I got a lot of flak when pig SARS came around.

A few weeks after the news of an outbreak came around, a vaccine was available in Finland.

I refused the vaccine under the premise that I didn't believe it had been properly tested. People called me a nut, claiming I was "anti-vaccine" and some kind of right wing wacko and that Bush was the devil, etc.

A couple years later, it turned out the vaccine gave a bunch of Finnish kids narcolepsy, but by this point nobody was focused on pig SARS and my "See? I told you so!" fell on deaf ears.

I think vaccine-hesitance is too readily labeled as anti-vaccine, and there is a confirmation bias where it is easy to point out that someone is sick with an XYZ infection but it is difficult to show correlation between a vaccination that occurred 5 years ago and some symptoms that end up appearing as a result of that vaccination.

</comment><comment><USER8> I know this is going to get massive downvotes, but it really comes down to this decision:

Are you willing to potentially (under non-trivial odds) sacrifice your child's health in some serious, potentially life-altering way, in order that the whole community will be helped in some amorphous fashion?

Whether pro- or anti-vaccination, that's really the question.

You can put emphasis more heavily on the first or the second part as your biases and experiences warrant, but that's still the question.

<comment><USER9> No, it is not.

All medical interventions have a risk, vaccinations included. That is, there is a risk that the intervention itself will cause some harm.

But all medical interventions also have a risk of _doing nothing_. It's when the risk of the intervention is less than the risk of doing nothing that we say it's best to do the intervention. As humans, we irrationally place greater emphasis on risks from doing something over the risks from doing nothing. To the point that some who read your point won't even notice the risk on the other side. But this is irrational, and if we want to evaluate what courses of action are _most likely_ to yield good health, we must always consider the risk of doing nothing as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Like vaccination, homeopathic remedies work on the principle of like cures like_

What's the emoticon for <fistbite>?

</comment><comment><USER11> Aren't the vaccines supposed to protect us from the anti-vaccine movement? Oh right, they don't always work so we need herd immunity. How about this:

Make eradication a priority rather than endless vaccination programs that look like corporate welfare. I know this is actually very very hard.

Stop telling people the mercury really isn't a problem and just quit putting it in there as a preservative. This OTOH is not hard. I'm not going to debate weather the mercury passes through, just pointing out that we don't even need to have the discussion. I know cost is supposed to be a factor, but when my employer is having someone come to give flu shots "for free" I don't think the cost difference is too much for a first world country. Eliminate the concern rather than worry about convincing people.

<comment><USER3> _Stop telling people the mercury really isn 't a problem and just quit putting it in there as a preservative._

That's half the problem!

Mercury _hasn 't_ been in vaccines, and the confused compound hasn't been in vaccines for at least a decade:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy)

<comment><USER11> Thiomersal is a mercury compound. Mercury is know to be bad for you. The research only tells us that the compound is out of the blood stream in X hours, it does not tell us that all the mercury is gone - i.e. the compound could break down and the mercury stored away. This is not certain, but given there are alternative we may as well use them - that was my point and it has nothing to do with autism.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: non invasive analytics tool? - loup-vaillant

I was wondering if anyone knew of a lightweight, non-invasive web site analytics tool. Something that would just look at my web server's logs, or at least would be undetectable to my visitors.<p>Also, are such systems limited, compared to Javascript or PHP based tracking? <comment><AUTHOR> As others have said, AWStats is ok.

 _Also, are such systems limited, compared to Javascript or PHP based tracking?_

Yes. Javascript enabled tracking gives you a lot of additional information. For example: screen resolution, plugins, which link was clicked on a page to get to another page (not referer - the actual link).

It's also possible to track a user's mouse movements on a page (which can give you heatmaps of usage on a page)

Cookie based tracking can show if a user has visited the site previously, and track particular users throughout the site, perhaps over multiple visits.

</comment><comment><USER2> AWStats (<http://awstats.sourceforge.net/>) is decent if you just want some simple log-based analytics.

Don't know what you mean by limited, but logfile-based analytics software doesn't have access to as much data as software that can use other data sources like cookies (ie it has difficulty tracking sessions).

If I might ask, why exactly do you need to make your analytics completely undetectable to users? In most cases tracking pixels and the like have no effect whatsoever on the user experience.

<comment><USER3> It can be practical if you don't want the site to contain JavaScript (which is nice when using NoScript)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You may find AWStats helpful: <http://awstats.sourceforge.net/>

Most log-based analytics tools cannot filter out bot traffic as well as a JavaScript tool would. Additionally you would be missing other information that could be obtained from JavaScript like supported Flash versions, screen resolution, etc.</comment>


User created Starwars: a New Hope - <AUTHOR> http://starwarsuncut.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I urge you to watch the trailer. This is most likely the dawn of movies re- made by fanboys.</comment>


Job Application 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/10359826/Job-Application-20

<comment><USER2> The irony is that the application is depicted as a piece of paper, and not a web form.

<comment><USER3> It also looks like it was made in MS Paint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really dislike scribd.</comment>


Fake versus Real FTDI USB Serial Chips - <AUTHOR> http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supereal <comment><USER2> the thing is that building a work alike chip - one that speaks the same protocols, has the same pinout, (but a different USBID/part number)is perfectly OK - price competition is good right?

The vendors would have to write their own drivers but compared with the cost of spinning a chip that shouldn't be a big deal, if they'd come out and sold their chips on the open market as a clone they'd probably get a lot of business.

Of course one of the weird things about ft232s is that they're non-standard USB devices (don't meet the ACM spec). If the cloners made ACM compatible chips they wouldn't need to write drivers since all OSs have them built in these days.

Disclaimer: I build and sell open source USB boards, including serial devices (ACM, not ft232 compatible)

<comment><USER3> Price competition is great! The shady thing about the imitations is trying to insert themselves into someone else's supply & support chain, IMO.

Which is probably tied to the reason they didn't implement the ACM spec- from my limited hobbyist view, FTDI is the dominant player, so of course they would chose to mimic the non-standard ft232 instead of some underdog ACM player.

Oh, and as for costs, you're totally right that spinning a chip costs way more than a driver. But:

\- A theme as I learn about fly-by-night companies is they piggyback on other operations. As the article observes, this knockoff required only 1 mask layer, because the rest is probably a standard microcontroller.

\- Marketing & marketshare are probably the real reason, not getting out of writing drivers. Again, FTDI seems to be the entrenched player.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get it. What's the logic behind silently killing a counterfeit chip instead of showing a pop-up window with "Unlicensed chip detected, drivers stopped." or smth? I'm sure most of the buyers of these counterfeit chips get in such situation without knowing and would be happy to return the fake chips/boards to supplier what in turn could help fighting the root cause, not just punishing the unsuspecting end users. I personally have encountered many non-working FTDI cables and blamed FTDIChip for their lousy quality control, so it not only hurts the end-users but the reputation of the legitimate company as well.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A friend of mine just ran into this, and after investigation it seems it is quite the thing. Don't buy your chips on Ebay or Alibaba I guess.

<comment><USER5> Its worse than that. Don't buy a _board_ from Ebay or Alibaba.

<comment><USER6> Its worse than that. Don't buy generic electrical goods w/USB from East Asia (they might be tainted by this, unbeknownst to you).

<comment><USER7> "Don't buy generic electrical goods from East Asia" is pretty good advice in general, given that some people have been literally electrocuted by faulty low-cost equipment sourced from the region.

<comment><USER8> "Only buy electronical goods from East Asia that passed VDE, TÜV Nord, GS and CE specifications and tests".

(Interestingly, a lot of the US–produced products do _not_ pass these tests either. The German standards for product quality are some of the highest existing and they have actually the ability to test all the imported stuff. Just don't _ever_ trust the TÜV Süd)

<comment><USER3> This might have just been rumor, but I've heard tell of devices with fake CE stickers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can understand FTDI's frustration, but vigilantism is not acceptable behavior. The lawyers are going to have a feeding frenzy on this one.

</comment><comment><USER10> Pretty typical HN over-reaction. Why not wait to hear from FTDI before joining the lynching mob? If the driver broke clones without the express intention to cause damage, well, tough for the clones. If, on the other hand, they set out to actually cause damage they are out of business or will suffer greatly.

There's another angle here. I'll use a hypothetical. Say your chips are being used on MRI machines, cars, planes, glucose meters, ATM machines and a whole host of other mission critical systems. And you know clones are dangerous because they are unreliable, failure prone and nondeterministic in some way. What do you do? What should you do? Bricking these devices without warning would be a bit extreme, agreed. What if you figure out a way to ensure that legitimate chips work and others fail in whatever way based on the nature of the cloning design. Is that OK. What if people could die? Not trying to be dramatic at all. Just saying that sometimes you need to be in someone else's shoes in order to understand their ecosystem and have context from which to understand their decisions.

I've been using FTDI chips since they came out. I have designed products that could kill people and burn down buildings if they were to fail in certain ways. We bought these chips through proper distribution channels. Had we not or in the case of our distributors being duped by clone makers I'd much rather our devices be bricked than risk someone getting hurt. So, yeah, this is very real for me.

<comment><USER11> _Say your chips are being used on MRI machines, cars, planes, glucose meters, ATM machines and a whole host of other mission critical systems._

First, that's a red herring because most of those machines aren't running Windows, let alone with automatic updates.

Second, you're essentially advocating vigilantism by corporations. If FTDI was actually concerned about the lives of people due to faulty chips - and I find this supposition laughable, but let's go with it - they could have (1) warned the users, (2) disable the driver and/or (3) contact the appropriate official institutions.

A supposition that someone, somewhere might die does not justify unlawful destruction of property, and if proven that FTDI intended to brick those chips, I hope they get sued hard.

<comment><USER10> > First, that's a red herring because most of those machines aren't running > Windows, let alone with automatic updates.

Are people on HN wound up so tight that all imagination is lost? These are HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLES used to illustrate mission critical applications. And be careful about making assumptions about critical systems not running Windows. You'd be surprised. Sometimes vendors don't have a choice. If you are working under a contractual obligation to use Windows, well, that's what you use. For example, what do you think you might find in a huge array of military Command and Control centers? Yup.

You also seem to be ignoring the fact that FTDI chips typically go on all kinds of embedded systems that are attached to a computer for tasks that have nothing to do with their mission critical nature.

For example, we built a dedicated FPGA-based target tracking system used in such places as White Sands Missile Test Range that was entirely self contained. It has an FTDI-driven serial port for firmware updates and configuration. Don't assume that everything related to USB requires full time connectivity like a keyboard or a mouse.

Another example is an extremely high power LED system with over 1,500 W of LEDs (much more, but that's all I can say). FTDI-powered USB is used to control it in real time. And, yes, a Windows application is at the other end. That was the spec. And, yes, it has error correction code and a dedicated communications protocol that ensures a certain degree of safety. If that chip is a fake there is no way to know what other "features" it may have.

Again, the HN mob is quick to be judge, jury and executioner. That's to be expected. Until most of the HN crowd has another decade or two under their belt emotion will drive a lot of the thought processes. I get it.

If FTDI truly intended to cause harm, of course they deserve to be sued out of existence. What kind of a moron would not agree with that. If, on the other hand, the issues are a side effect of code that is so fine-tuned to their devices that bad clones fail, well, that's not their fault. I need to go dig- up the official FTDI position on this, everything else is bullshit and conjecture.

<comment><USER11> To be clear, I wasn't accusing FTDI themselves of anything. I was purely arguing to your hypothetical example, in which they _did_ intend to brick chips. If you didn't want to argue that position, you shouldn't have made a post arguing it.

Kindly redirect your anger against the "HN mob" somewhere else.

<comment><USER10> Not angry at the HN mob, they provide daily comic relief. They also remind me that some of the opinions I had when I was younger must have sounded just as moronic to the more experienced engineers and business people I worked with.

I mean, we are all pretty stupid and impressionable until somewhere around 30 years of age. By that time life has generaly done a pretty good job realigning young idealist thinking and opinions borne out of indoctrination.

Life experience is also a huge factor in this. For example opposite poles are found in people who spent twenty years working a government job (can't get fired, insane pension) vs. a bootstrapped entrepreneur (self reliance, responsible for own success and failure, no pension). These people reach 40-something years of age with vastly different views of reality. You come across these and other extremes here on HN.

For the record, I have nothing but contempt for people who live a life where they are not responsible and accountable for their actions and future. I think it degrades the human condition.

So, no, not angry at HN mobs or any other internet mobs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


P. Thiel 2009: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian <comment><USER2> Pure democracy--post 17th amendment, btw--has always lead to mob rule. This has been discussed for millennia.</comment>


Git 1.7.8 changes for the everyday developer - <AUTHOR> http://johnkary.net/git-1-7-8-changes-for-the-everyday-developer/

<comment><USER2> The author should try adding this to his .git/info/attributes file:

         *.py diff=python

That should make --function-context work better on python source files.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how hard it is to teach it new languages.

<comment><USER2> All you need to do is write a regex to match. Currently supported languages are:

BibTeX, C/C++, html, java, ObjectiveC, Pascal, PHP, Python, Ruby, and TeX.

More details can be found in the gitattributes(5) manpage

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "[command] learned [option]" construct is a really interesting way to phrase directed development effort. I'm not quite sure what the implications are, but it definitely changed the way I parsed and understood the post. "Git is getting smarter" versus "New features have been added to git."

<comment><USER5> We all know that Git will, one day, take over the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whatever happened to generation numbers?

<comment><USER7> IIRC (I read the git mailing list) there was a lot of arguing about whether generation numbers should be in the commit headers or stored in separate cache, and then a different fix went in to speed up "tag --contains" and the discussion was pretty much abandoned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> wow. I didn't even know about git grep. Very useful

<comment><USER9> It's probably my most commonly-used git command, to the point where I have it aliased to "g g".

<comment><USER10> You guys should really look into <http://betterthangrep.com/> :)

<comment><USER11> As amazing as ack is, it would take some effort to teach it how to grep through git history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice summary. Thanks!</comment>


Show HN: Finch.io – Save time and hassle on fixing web design bugs - <AUTHOR> https://finch.io/features/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

When our team of three were working for a digital agency, we always feared those last 10% of every web project that took 90% of the time. I'm talking about the moment when the website was almost done, but there were lots of small design details that drove the designers crazy and developers devastated. You know the story – spacing between the elements, font sizes, line heights, responsive designs etc.

So to scratch our own itch we built Finch that allows to tweak and edit any website's design just like in Photoshop or Sketch. You can alter the page and see the effect directly on the website in real–time, on any device. The changes you make can be exported as CSS code or pushed to the live website.

What do you think - could this tool improve your current workflow? If yes – what features would you expect from it?</comment>


MIT Wants You to Own Your Own Data, Not Give It Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3033414/mit-wants-you-to-own-your-own-data-not-give-it-away

<comment><USER2> Similar project: Danube: [http://projectdanube.org/](http://projectdanube.org/)</comment>


Sydney trains suck, so I wrote an application to see how much. - <AUTHOR>

Sydney trains always seem to be down for trackwork, delayed due to rain, congestion, or one of a number of things that shouldn't really stop providing a good service. Out of curiosity I created a web application to see how often the line state is anything other than a good service. I wasn't entirely surprised at the results, though on some lines I'm amazed the commuters don't outright protest.<p>You can check it out here: http://commuter.rum.io/ <comment><USER2> Clickable link: <http://commuter.rum.io/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be useful for other countries, any chance of open sourcing ... UK trains are abysmal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've experienced the UK train fun too. I've been toying with that idea, I'll update you if I do it.</comment></comment>


Under-18 users request to open up Google+ for them - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/embed/?place=topic%2Fgoogle-plus-discuss%2FRTh_laUTRFo%2Fdiscussion#!topic/google-plus-discuss/RTh_laUTRFo/discussion

<comment><USER2> I love Google marketing, it's like a Soviet propaganda assault. "The masses are clamoring for Google's new product. The next generation has spoken."

</comment><comment><USER3> Although my heart goes out for William (<http://d.pr/41VG>), I am quite happy google hasn't offered rich text features in plus.

<comment><USER4> There are some formatting options available - [https://plus.google.com/106788603501468469828/posts/849WcarV...](https://plus.google.com/106788603501468469828/posts/849WcarVCQA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is hilarious! Looks just like my little sister's Facebook feed.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's quite frustrating when you're 17 and can't use it, this is going to make a lot of kids unhappy.

<comment><USER7> For some reason me and my friends are in and i'm 17. I don't remember entering my age into Google, I never lied just never entered it. Not sure what their data source it. Once hunch was Google accounts which use YouTube as they have an age limit.

<comment><USER8> Same here. I just did some poking around for places to put a day of birth into Google or see what my current one is and couldn't find one (not in Google+ or on the Google Accounts page). I have a feeling your YouTube theory is right though; there's a good chance I set mine to be a year older so I could watch the age-restricted videos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Moreover, as far as I can tell, there is no way to change your birthday (without involving a credit card #). Heaven forbid you accidentally entered your birthday wrongly the first time, you're locked out with little recourse!

</comment><comment><USER10> While the intention is noble, the illusion of scarcity and exclusivity around G+ that this creates among teens should actually benefit G+ when its finally open to them.

Kids to want to be acknowledged as grown-ups. It frustrates them a lot when someone says they can't have or do something because they're too young. This should increase the desirability factor of G+.

So G+, by using a roll-out strategy that is demographically reversed to Facebook's path (".edu" limitation et al), may still see the same crazed adoption in the teen segment.

</comment><comment><USER11> Of course, age limits are moot if they've lied about their birthday.

<comment><USER12> But it's not Google fault if they lied, right? (In case they are for example exposed to 18+ content on Google+)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't understand why they're applying US-centric age restrictions world- wide. There are other countries out there.

<comment><USER4> The over 18 limit is nothing to do with US law, it's Google making a moral decision (or more accurately, a PR decision that, if they are to have any privacy issues occur, they want to be able ot say "at least no minors were affected").

As to the 13 and over, it's very common for companies to make that a global policy, partly because US isn't the only country to have that law (off the top of my head I can't recall which others do), partly because it's a fairly common sense decision from an adult's point of view, meaning that few would argue against it, many would argue for it on grounds of morality rather than law. And the only people who'll ever complain are a few years away from being able to vote politically or with their wallet, by which time they will be allowed to do whatever they want, and will have stopped caring. So it's pretty win/win.

<comment><USER14> Ugh. I certainly consider it immoral to lock children away from the ability to talk to one another online.

<comment><USER4> Technically they aren't being prevented from doing it, they just have to have a guardian's permission. Much the same as a 7 year old could join a local football/baseball/whatever team, but would need parental consent to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Facebook had all kinds of restrictions when it came out. my gf was not in university at the time and was very jealous, apparently, of those of us in facebook (on a highly related note, at that time facebook was just full of nerds and bros)

</comment><comment><USER16> How about opening Google+ up to Google Apps accounts, too? Google Apps accounts cannot create Google Profile accounts, which are required for G+.

</comment><comment><USER17> Actually, since google strives to make a difference here, they should cater to kids as well. Teens love social networking and, if anything, google can use its knowledge of the web to provide a safer, child and teen-safe environment even more than facebook did. It's actually going to be impossible to keep teens away if G+ ever becomes trendy.</comment>


Privacy Protects Bothersome People, and isn't about me (or probably you) - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html

<comment><USER2> This is really well written. To be honest, I'd had a hard time vocalizing how I felt about the whole thing. Though I definitely agree with everything said in the article; I've got people in my own family (my own wife, for shame :P ) who are pretty adamant about the whole "I have nothing to hide" viewpoint. On the surface, I couldn't really disagree with that. I _don 't_ have anything to hide.

But this really helped me realize that it has nothing to do with "me" ... privacy is about protecting others from abuse. Good stuff.</comment>


OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.elle.com/culture/a32459935/onlyfans-sex-work-influencers/ <comment><USER3> As I read some women in the article are making as much as a talented ivy league graduate who joins a tech company.

It seems amoral to prevent them from making money, why don't we see it as a talent as we see "tech jobs" as talent?

Can it really do more damage than what tech companies specially one who pedal ads and sell customer data and give people anxiety?

<comment><USER4> The message this sends to girls is that if you're pretty, this is the easiest way to make a lot of money. It damages the work of people who have spent decades trying to get women to be valued for things other than their bodies.

<comment><USER5> I once heard something from someone I never want to agree with but it was a decent point. If intelligence is part of the biological lottery and we value it as an employer for all the advantages it could bring your business, then it's fair to think that someone who is attractive has won a similar genetic lottery and it could bring similar benefits to your business.

It's something I want to disagree with, except I can see that there is more truth to it than not, even if it goes against what I believe the world should be.

<comment><USER6> I think it's a good point, and not one I'd considered. But there's a large lead lead time required to hone intelligence in school or by other means that it doesn't account for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with modern society is everyone's a master of plausible deniability. Our obsession with legalism over plain ol ethics in America has created a culture where everyone's assessing what they can and cannot get away with and going from there, in so many ways and domains.

This is why enough comments in this thread are just circular arguments thinly veiling an opinion that does not want to fully shed itself into the light.

America has thus become such contradictory place that trust between random strangers is null and void, already a Hobbesian game of stalemate.

Progressives aren't any better; they rely on implicit, unwritten rules just as much as any strictly heteronormative conservative and so struggle with ethical nuance just as much.

Until Americans stop trying to game each other for what they can get instead of exposing themselves to one another utterly whenever they have to confront real, indissoluble ethical problems that can't be brute forced by partisanship.

And it's precisely because America really has no culture that it falls on America to face up to this task more than any other country.

Edit: No really, go back and re-read Leviathan, Hobbes doesn't say a state of nature is all-out violence, he specifically says _nothing_ happens ("no industry or culture"); it's a stalemate. Nobody makes a move, so _everybody_ loses

<comment><USER8> I think this is exhuberated by the this very same lack of culture you are referring. Outting youself and your ethics instantly targets you to the opposing views in ways hard to defend against and enables what the "cancel culture" is good at

<comment><USER7> "Cancel Culture" is the epitome of American culture, it's truest son precisely because it is its prodigal son, exactly like the plot of King Lear, only America is King Lear, wandering around destitute still thinking its King when it thought it could have its cake and eat it too. Which goes back to my original post above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am all for letting people do what they like with their bodies, but if people are trying to makes ends meet and they believe the only way of doing so is via selling pictures of their bodies - I think society has another massive moral failing on its hands

and this probably an unrefined opinion, but I feel like firing a worker for running a NSFW OnlyFans account (or similar) would, if not should, run agrounds for sexual harassment or unlawful termination. or at the very least be should be called out for being rooted in unwarranted social standards and expectations

<comment><USER10> It's crazy to me how ubiquitous the assumption is that any kind of sex work, even something as tame as nude photography, _must_ be considered an unhappy last resort by any woman engaging in it.

<comment><USER9> this isn't quite what I was trying to say, I should've been more specific. I was more trying to say that I think bodily autonomy is a such a important part of a person's identity that a person should never feel pressure to unwillingly give up their bodily autonomy

<comment><USER11> What? Selling nudes is the epitome of bodily autonomy, if they want to sell nudes, they should be allowed to because they own their own body.

<comment><USER9> again, that's not what I'm saying. if someone wants to sell nudes, go for it. however I see an issue in having someone who had no desire to do so, but feels compelled to so just to get by

<comment><USER12> > someone who had no desire to do so, but feels compelled to so just to get by

is the definition of work for most people. How is this different?

<comment><USER13> Exactly that. It's not like janitorial staff or farm hands or factory line workers or the swaths of other people doing menial, backbreaking or extremely boring jobs by and large chose to do so for any reason other than trying to make ends meet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a guy, I'm cool with this kind of stuff. But what message does this send to girls who are not considered attractive enough or just don't want to do this kind of work? The message is that all the study, work, and effort to work in a meaningful career is a freaking joke, when all it takes is to be born a certain way and make huge amounts of money selling your body.

On the other hand, we have a generation of young males who will be trapped in this vampiric system where their money and time are spent on girls who wouldn't even look at them if they crossed paths on the street, instead of going out there and building real relationships.

I'm just generalizing of course, don't think I'm saying this applies to everyone. But man, we are so fucked.

<comment><USER15> _But what message does this send to girls_

I think the larger problem is the degree to which men refuse to engage women in a substantive intellectual fashion.

I appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN. I've been here over a decade. It continues to be the case that most men don't really want to talk much with me unless they are hitting on me.

This has proven to be a huge barrier to effective networking and a huge barrier to turning my participation into an adequate income, something men seem to have no trouble doing here if they so desire.

I am not against sex work. But I have a very big problem with the degree to which other earning opportunities are lacking for women because of this dynamic where simply being female means no one wants to take your work seriously.

I don't think it helps to put a stop to sex work. All that does is make women prisoners of their men because then earning it on your back by "marrying well" becomes the only really viable means to have an adequate income for a woman when so many career doors that aren't sex work are so hard to force open if you are female and sex work is vilified as immoral and often is made illegal as well.

I have been talking for many years on HN about my desire to establish an adequate earned income via the internet because of my medical situation. I was homeless for nearly six years of that and I have had people tell me I was "panhandling the internet" and things like that.

I was told for years "Get a real job" when men here who are trying to make money online don't get told the same thing.

I get treated like I'm just a whiner, not someone with a legitimate complaint or legitimate social observation, etc ad nauseum.

If you really are concerned about the status of women, you should be much more concerned about the myriad social factors that make sex work one of the few ways women can reliably make a good income.

Because stamping out sex work doesn't magically open other doors. If it did, I would be fabulously wealthy because I have been celibate for medical reasons for fifteen years. If this were not true, I likely would have moved to Nevada, where sex work is legal, and made a killing to pay off my debts and come up with enough money to pay cash for a house or at least a down payment on a house.

Sex work is not a viable option for me and I'm no longer amenable to the idea for various reasons. But solving my financial problems shouldn't be this hard. I have six years of college and yadda. But I can't make the same connections men make and that's a huge barrier to trying to establish an adequate income.

This is true whether we ban sex work or not. Focusing on "But what is the message to girls here..." is the wrong focus. It doesn't solve the real problem women have.

<comment><USER16> I don't mean to be personal or rude - I only say this because someone said it to me once and it helped me.

Your experiences in comment threads are often a reflection of what YOU write. Hostile people get hostility, humble people often get humbleness in return. Looking at this comment thread, some of the problems you mention in this comment have come up and perhaps it's worth considering whether that is due to how you write your comments.

<comment><USER15> I've spent a lot of time in therapy. If it were somehow the way I write, I would be thrilled to pieces to learn that fact and correct it.

After nearly 11 years of being told things like "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog if you don't tell them" and having it suggested to me that if my gender is an issue, I should simply hide that fact, I'm pretty darn sure it's not the way I write. It's the way the world reacts to women.

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't even know you are a woman unless you told me. I personally don't keep track of who says what (with exception of a few famous people). On HN, I feel at home in that what is said is viewed as important, logical reasoning and reproducible process are valued from what I have seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Remember to read "the manipulated man" by esther vilar.

</comment><comment><USER19> I watched this video recently about OnlyFans: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMojvschs0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMojvschs0)

It's more than just the content itself. "Becoming a fan" is a simulacra of a relationship, commodified. This already existed with escorts, of course, but never at this scale.

My personality type is probably closer to being a "consumer" than being a "producer" of content on OF. I don't use the site. But if I did, my status as a consumer would totally preclude being in a romantic relationship. Gonna go out on a limb and guess that most consumers and producers are in a similar situation -- if they're on OnlyFans, they're not in a real relationship.

It's only natural that taking genuine human connection, turning it financial, and then using the internet to turn it into a commodity and producing profit would extend to sex. I'm actually surprised it took so long.

<comment><USER20> Things you're assuming:

1\. Consumers use OnlyFans as a poor substitute to an in-person relationship.

2\. It's always better to be in a romantic relationship than not.

How is camgirling and pornography so different from other performance? What about comedians? They do the same thing as friends: tell jokes, laugh, entertain. A lot of them explicitly try to connect with the audience by asking questions and having short chats. But most people realize comedians aren't a substitute for friends.

The only real difference is your other assumption:

3\. Sexuality outside romantic relationships is immoral.

You can argue that point. Personally, I'd be uncomfortable watching or interacting with a live person this way (I really didn't enjoy my only visit to a strip club). But I'm not going to generalize my psyche across others.

<comment><USER19> Well, I'm not sure exactly what everyone uses OF for. I'm making the assumption that there is "something more" than just the pictures and videos, because I can search big boob on Google right now and get 2 billion hits.

The "something more" is the interaction -- recognition that you exist from the person you're tipping when you tip. Being a "follower" of an onlyfans girl to me seems much more about intimacy than about pornography.

I do think that in general close relationships, especially core intimate relationships like those with parents and spouses, are the most important things in human life. I guess that's my opinion but I find it hard to believe that anyone would disagree.

My argument really isn't about sexuality at all, because I don't think OF is about sexuality, really. Sex is a part of it but not the core of the platform. And it's not morality. I don't think it's morally wrong to do this, I do think it's depressing. That we feel so disconnected from one another that we are willing to forgo the "real thing" for a simulation.

I'm sure that for all of history there is some baseline level of the population that, for one reason or another, finds it so difficult to connect that they're not willing to enter a "real" relationship at all. What I worry about is if this portion of the population is growing, because there's a profit motive, or a psychological short circuit, or some disconnect caused by modern life.

It's hard to articulate exactly _what_ , here. I just feel that there's something broken about OF or the world we've created that enables it to be so successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> More power to people selling if it works for them, I'm just concerned they aren't thinking about their futures. As crass as people will say this is, selling your body is selling access to a depreciating asset. While they might be making good money now, eventually these girls will grow up. Slowly they'll see subscribers dip, but only enough for them to think they can adjust their product.

But there will always be someone younger, or just newer, and what they are selling won't be a "hot commodity" any more. At that point to either drop out broke, or creep towards more hardcore offerings.

Eventually they'll be burned out of the system, they'll have burned through their early career, likely with little to show for it, and with no real career skills or plan.

<comment><USER22> This sounds like most careers, though. Except for the sensational language, how is this different than agism in the software industry, or folks who never become managers? In my (limited) experience, most people don't climb the ranks or get major pay increases, especially during a pandemic like this.

<comment><USER21> Agism in the software industry is only a big issue in the "startup scene", in industry its not as big an issue and experience software architects are always in demand, even if they don't become "managers".

And even if you aren't climbing ranks, as long as you keep up your skills you can stay in a job in some places for a long time.

What I am saying is that people who go into "camming" don't have that option. Eventually their audience will go away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > the farmer's market of porn

Now that's an elevator pitch.

</comment><comment><USER24> To people coming in to read these comments - are you surprised?

Me neither.

<comment><USER25> I'm surprised and disappointed with myself for expecting more. Selling nudes is great... Until it isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I find the whole thing narcissistic, shallow, and distasteful. HOWEVER, that is part of the cost of a free society (as much as we are). People are free to make mistakes.

My problem with this is how it's marketed.

I happen to have found myself single earlier this year... and I would say 80% of the traffic on dating sites is these onlyfans/snapchat folks. The rest of the split is outright scammers and the occasional lonely heart peppered in.

The dating sites have a symbiotic relationship with these folks-- they need someone to draw users/payers in and this is the way to do it with the most plausible deniability.

Some dating sites are way more guilty than others, with a few being outright scams in my opinion (Hily is one that's a scam).

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting I read yesterday that OnlyFans started banning for nudes and is refunding customers. Some models lost thousands of dollars.

Running porn site requires a lot of paperwork and is relatively risky.

<comment><USER28> Wasn't that their main cash cow and essentially the only reason for their business to exist? I've never heard of that company in SFW contexts - that's Patreon's territory.

<comment><USER27> It was originally for cosplayers and models, very very soft-core, not porn.

Platform is liable if it is offering prostitution (google "Craigslist controversy"). Only Fans has zero paperwork for this in their disclaimers. I am not a lawyer, but I think they are in gray area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is surprising as well as depressing that someone can get enough money to buy a house from OnlyFans payout. Goes to say how many people spend money on that kind of stuff. Instagram models living rich lifestyle is different as they endorse products and advertising is involved. This is just people paying to watch someones naked photos.

<comment><USER30> Why is that in any way depressing? Making others feel better via a personal connection is one of the most noble professions one can pursue.

It's a lot more important than meaningless "influencer marketing" covert advertising that exists only to make people buy shit they don't need.

<comment><USER24> >Why is that in any way depressing?

The connection is fake. The men are desperate. The women are sleazy.

<comment><USER31> > The connection is fake. The men are desperate. The women are sleazy.

I'm with you on the first two parts but the third one is going to get you slammed here. Women who perform sex work are held in equal/high regard by the members of this community.

<comment><USER32> it's easy to signal by saying this but how many men who say this would actually want their sister / mom / daughter participating in any sort of sex work? it's both the oldest job and the oldest taboo for a reason

<comment><USER30> What reason is that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My opinion: Porn is the new drug. Our daughters are the dealers and our sons are the users. Sex addiction fueled by free internet porn has ruined countless lives.

At least OnlyFans is behind a paywall, keeping it out of view of children.

<comment><USER34> _Sex addiction fueled by free internet porn has ruined countless lives._

I would like to see a citation on this.

Moral panics around sexuality are at least a couple centuries old, and technologies that are said to have contributed to or created them include the printing press, radio, the bicycle, the car, TV, movies, magazines, and now the Internet. For many of the earlier technologies, Gay Talese's book _Thy Neighbor 's Wife_ has a serviceable overview of the moral panics.

<comment><USER35> Nicole Prause is a lucid, pioneering researcher on such issues, and she has spent a lot of time debunking myths like the one GP proposes.

One write-up here: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-the- er...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-the-erotic- code/201911/how-porn-and-sex-are-different-in-the-brain)

(She has unfortunately become a target of certain right-wing elements, so if you Google her, you will find a lot of non-scientific attacks. You should read her publications directly and form your own opinion.)

<comment><USER36> Nicole Prause did no myth busting, and your blaming of "right-wing elements" on disagreements with her is downright disingeneous.

See [https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and- articl...](https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articles- about-the-studies/critiques-of-questionable-debunking-propaganda-pieces/peer- reviewed-critiques-of-prause-et-al-2015/)

I think that the recent scientific articles cited on [https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/](https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/) and the countless of self-reports by men in various "NoFap" communities make a pretty good case the porn-addiction is not a myth.

Also, see: [https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and- articl...](https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articles- about-the-studies/critiques-of-questionable-debunking-propaganda-pieces/is- nicole-prause-influenced-by-the-porn-industry/)

<comment><USER35> Your comment is exactly what I was expecting when I wrote mine. I'm not surprised to see it or the downvotes.

Your Brain on Porn is written by a non-scientist with an axe to grind.

> _countless of self-reports by men in various "NoFap" communities make a > pretty good case the porn-addiction is not a myth._

Self-reports and anecdotes are not controlled, blinded studies. They're not scientific. They tell us nothing.

If that kind of data were scientific, then we'd all be 100% certain that drinking certain herbal teas cures 50% of the flu, or that marijuana use has a causal relationship with using cocaine.

Sex and porn addiction may or may not be a myth, but the thing that Prause debunks in her various research is that the availability of porn and sex _causes_ those addictions.

What researchers have found is that excessive, obsessive, and/or life-damaging usage of porn and sex are due to existing mental health issues. You don't have a healthy, happy man in a relationship suddenly see extreme porn for the first time and then stop going to work.

<comment><USER37> Please follow the site guidelines when posting on divisive issues. There's no need to start with a swipe. The second bit ("non-scientist with an axe to grind") arguably breaks the guideline against name-calling in arguments, too.

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

<comment><USER35> Your overall point is taken. Flamewar ended.

As far as name-calling, it was not my intention at all. If you aren't familiar, the creator of YourBrainOnPorn is literally not a scientist (he neither studies nor practices a science) and doesn't claim to be a scientist.

In describing him as I did, I didn't see any distinction from the descriptions on HN about anti-vaxxers or climate-change deniers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Who would have guessed so many people on HN are against individual freedom? There is absolutely zero ethically or morally wrong with someone selling sex, or buying sex from someone else. Or maybe we should ban pop music stars from revealing too much skin in their music videos? Where do you draw the line between "This is immoral!" and "Wow, what a successful person!" Just ignore it if you don't like it. No one puts a gun to your head to pay someone for sex - so don't point your guns at them for doing so.

<comment><USER31> > There is absolutely zero ethically or morally wrong with someone selling > sex, or buying sex from someone else.

That's an insanely modern/left view with zero consideration to basically all historically socially accepted conservative views of the past.

It's trendy to support sex workers online in 2020 but in the 2000s I'm pretty sure 95% of white suburbia wouldn't have wanted their daughters hanging out with sex workers.

<comment><USER39> >That's an insanely modern/left view with zero consideration to basically all historically socially accepted conservative views of the past.

No, not every culture in history has been saddled with the Judeo-Christian prejudice against women and their sexuality.

Also, historically socially accepted "conservative" views include slavery, rule by divine right, child labor and trial by combat. A view having been held and taken for granted for a long time doesn't make it correct.

<comment><USER31> > A view having been held and taken for granted for a long time doesn't make > it correct.

The leftist mob of blue Twitter checkmarks has been cancelling people since about... 2012? It's trendy to be pro sex work, anti-corporation in 2020.

The majority of people commenting online about how "pro sex work" they are do not have a sex worker in their life by a longshot. It's all theory/keyboard warrior/armchair activist stuff.

<comment><USER40> And who are _you_ to gatekeep what causes people can and cannot support without a direct association?

Also, you completely discredited yourself from any sort of worthy debate with "leftist mob".

<comment><USER41> Calm down neckbeard, back to your Javascript

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This was among my first thoughts when the first unemployment report came out. We are sending our daughters to OnlyFans. Still not sure where our sons end up.

<comment><USER43> Well, not to strip naked on the internet. There was a great paper that came out recently demonstrating the value of men's sexuality is negative (vs that of women).

Men don't possess anything intrinsically valuable or desirable. There is no fallback. I too wonder what this will mean for (young) men, who have already been pushed down a dark path.

<comment><USER44> We know already where it heads - to young men being radicalized to hate everyone who isn't like them (i.e. not young, male, angry, usually white, usually straight).

<comment><USER45> This would've been a good comment if you had left out the part in the parentheses.

I'd say it's more of a class thing. They will be angry at the the ruling class and wealthy. I don't think they are going to be taking it out on old ladies...

<comment><USER44> That's what you'd hope for, but in practice that's not what I'm seeing. The anger I see online is directed at politicians in some cases - but usually for said politicians supporting social programs, pro-immigration policies, and anti-gun policies.

In the rest of cases, anger is indeed directed at LGBTQ+ people - <USER2> towards trans people - people of color - especially blacks, and increasingly Asians - and women - especially those who are viewed as "promiscuous".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>