Were Early Modern People Perpetually Drunk? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://recipes.hypotheses.org/8385 <comment><USER2> They were most certainly tossed off their butts in the antebellum US at least: "Drink was everywhere in early America. "Liquor at that time," recalled the Massachusetts carpenter Elbridge Boyden, "was used as commonly as the food we ate." Americans drank in enormous quantities. Their yearly consumption at the time of the Revolution has been estimated at the equivalent of three-and-a- half gallons of pure, two-hundred proof alcohol for each person. After 1790 American men began to drink even more. By the late 1820s imbibing had risen to an all-time high of almost four gallons per capita."[0]

That 1820s number, if you do the math, was ~1.4 shots of Everclear or 3.5 shots of modern 80 proof whiskey _per day_ for the average citizen. Wikipedia [1] has some more info on the boozing of people in those antebellum days. Suffice to say, it was a _lot_ of booze. You can debate the strengths of these particular spirits and beers and people's drinking habits, but form what written evidence we have, the US was a nation populated by either a lot of very tipsy people, or a lot of sober people and some _very_ drunk people.

[0] [http://www.teachushistory.org/second-great-awakening-age- ref...](http://www.teachushistory.org/second-great-awakening-age- reform/articles/historical-note-temperance-reform-early-19th-century) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Antebellum_America#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Antebellum_America#Alcohol_in_the_antebellum_United_States)

<comment><USER3> I have to wonder how it impacted human evolution. I mean, evolutionary psychology (for what little good the field is) usually dwells on "savannah ancestors" and whatnot, but centuries of being perpetually drunk is going to have an impact too.

Not just in terms of tolerance, but in terms of mental conditions. If the ground-state of the human mind is tipsy, then is sobriety functionally an abnormal state we're maladapted for?

<comment><USER4> I think any alcohol dependence would be much more recent than that, I doubt asian glow ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction)) would be a thing of we were getting drunk on the Savannah.

<comment><USER5> Actually, some monkeys develop alcohol dependence in the wild (they get their alcohol from ripe fermenting fruits).

Source: [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/chimpanzees-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/chimpanzees- found-routinely-drinking-alcohol-in-wild-10309101.html)

Here's also an extract from a BBC Nature documentary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk)

Apparently, the monkeys are divided among heavy drinkers, occasional drinkers or teetootalers in proportions that are roughly equal to those among human beings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was a bit taken aback by this statement: "[Dr.] James [Sumner], a historian of science and technology... argues that 'alcohol by volume' was rarely used as a measure of strength for beers and wines until the work of nineteenth- century French chemists such as Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, and that it's therefore ahistorical to apply it to earlier cultures and beverages." To me, this is like saying that because trilobites did not make measurements of ocean pH, it would be wrong for us to estimate the acidity of Cambrian oceans. Is there more to this than just an absurdly dogmatic backlash against Whig historiography?

<comment><USER7> That's a good question. Reading it charitably, one could interpret that to mean either 1) we can't reliably estimate alcohol by volume prior to the 19th century because there weren't reliable tools to measure it or 2) pre-19th century people didn't think in terms of ABV, and that this may have meant that they experienced drunkenness differently on a subjective level. I'm generally anti-Whig but I'm with you on this one in hoping that there's more to it than that.

<comment><USER6> The article does mention some more quantitative methods for estimating potency, including working from recipes.

Dr. Sumner may have reasons for doubting the efficacy of these methods. On reflection, I suspect that the article has mixed up two different arguments by Dr. Sumner, one about the estimates of potency, and a different one about how or whether we should judge these allegedly inebriated societies.

Of course, Hogarth (among others) had something to say at what I think was a slightly later time, about the effects of cheap gin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I made cyder at home a couple of years ago (about 8 gallons).

I had 2 pints at one sitting, I have no memory of the evening past about 10pm and when I woke up my first thought was that I had had a stroke.

The rest of the stuff is still sitting in the shed.

<comment><USER9> You might need to distill off the methanol that might be present, if you're blacking out. Had a similar problem with some homebrew wine where a glass tossed me to blacking out (yet I can toss back a half pint of vodka without too much issue.) Turned out there was a good amount of methanol in there.

<comment><USER10> How sure are you about this?

From what I've read, it is very hard to generate methanol via fermentation alone[0] and home-brew usually has 2-3 ppm, versus a LD_{50} in the tens of thousands of ppm. Obviously, there might be problems well before the LD_{50}, but that's a lot of wiggle room (and methanol would be out-competed by the ethanol which is presumably also in the booze).

[0] Concentrating the wine via freezing (as in some ice wines or applejack) might be an exception to this, but I'm not sure.

<comment><USER9> Very sure as I was using naturally-present yeast instead of any brewer's yeast or bread yeast. Methanol content is something to look out for when you use natural yeasts.

Source: 15 years brewing/distilling. Just got lazy/too self-assured one day.

<comment><USER10> Hmmm....

It _does_ look pectin can be degraded into methanol by some microbes. I'm surprised there was enough feedstock to generate a problematic amount of methanol, but I'm glad you're ok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast has an episode on how drugs and alcohol affected some major historical events: [http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-20-blitz-h...](http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-20-blitz-history-under-the-influence/)

</comment><comment><USER12> As a home brewer, any of these styles, even 10% or higher is easily accomplished by any seasoned brewmaster. And for the quantity of beer brewed, and number of breweries, there must have been many. I must say that I cannot agree with the authors conclusion surrounding strong beer, as I have one in my fridge, made with barley and rye in the old way at 10.7 as determened by hydrometer. It kicks like a mule but is very drinkable.

<comment><USER13> 10% is easy with modern equipment and yeast, but remember that pure yeast strains didn't exist until Emil Hansen isolated one at the Carlsberg Laboratory in 1883 [1]. In Early Modern times people used whatever yeast happened to grow locally, saved between batches as "barm" (flocculated yeast). Selection pressure with this propagation technique is primarily for flocculation ability, and it produces strains much more flocculant than wild strains. These strains have lower attenuation because they drop out of suspension before all the sugar is fermented. Try reaching 10% ABV with a traditional English strain like Fermentis Safale S-04 - it's pretty much impossible.

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

<comment><USER14> Despite what Fermentis claims, I don't think S-04 is that "traditional." It's a beast of a yeast and it will keep going and going. 10% is pushing the upper end of its range, but more because of the limited alcohol tolerance of the yeast than because of anything else.

It makes sense if you consider where it came from-- it was supposedly used in the tower fermenters of the old Whitbread brewery. Where the most important thing was a cockaroach-like ability to survive and keep fermenting no matter what, as new wort was fed into one end of the system and fermented beer came out the other end.

I don't like s-04 because it throws lactic acid, which tastes like someone squeezed a lemon into the beer. Not what I want in an English ale.

If you want traditional, go with something like Danstar Winsor. But be warned, the yeast can't ferment maltotriose, and it struggles with gravities above 1.040.

As to what early moderns did-- well, they could have just put sugar in the wort if they wanted to push up the ABV. I guess that wouldn't apply back in the middle ages though (not sure what you are considering early modern).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are modern-day people perpetually drunk on mass-media opiates from consuming up to a gallon of behaviorally-engineered dopamine shots each day?

<comment><USER16> > Are modern-day people perpetually drunk on mass-media opiates from consuming > up to a gallon of behaviorally-engineered dopamine shots each day?

Yes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have always noticed contradictions within the history of booze. I can't understand how anyone who has ever tried well-water can believe that misconception about choosing beer over water. Also, an old U.S. History textbook in high school suggesting to us that the Temperance Movement was a reaction to people suddenly discovering strong alcohol. This article confirmed my suspicions on both of those events.

<comment><USER18> > I can't understand how anyone who has ever tried well-water can believe that > misconception about choosing beer over water.

But for urban folk in the middle of London, or New York, was the water they were consuming as fresh as what you're imagining when you think of "well water?"

Even if it was drawn from nearby wells, and not from dirty cisterns, was their sewage system good enough to keep it from getting contaminated?

I don't know so much about water cleanliness, and the article suggests it may not have been _that_ dirty, but I wouldn't assume that it was all as clean as a perfect little rural well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very interesting read. Assuming I descended from these people, I wonder if I could build up such a tolerance, because it sure doesn't seem that way on the rare occassions I do drink.

Does anyone have links to a similar history of coffee? When and how it originated, effects it had on the people, etc.

<comment><USER20> Fernand Braudel has some pretty interesting material about coffee in passing, in _The Structures of Everyday Life_. One thing he discusses is how alcohol, coffee, and tobacco all substituted for each other to an extent: where coffee consumption spread in France, for example, wine consumption fell.

<comment><USER21> If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that all three were primarily social activities - you'd go and meet your friends for a drink at the bar, or some coffee at the coffeeshop, or to smoke cigars at a lounge. If your friends are all drinking coffee, you're likely going to start seeking a caffeine buzz rather than an alcohol one.

<comment><USER20> That sounds about right. To judge by _The Structures of Everyday Life_ (my source for talking about all this), even "drinking to get drunk" was something done socially. Taverns were the ruin of the peasantry when they spread into the French countryside; there were enormous taverns just outside the walls of Paris, where the whole city gathered to drink too much wine and dodge the city's heavy taxes on it; and English society got blitzed on gin in the 18th century (a drinking epidemic even by early-modern standards), but specifically on gin sold by the glass and drunk on the spot, in the company of other patrons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would really love to know the prevalence of liver disease then vs now. Because now it is apparently at a record high or so we are being told all the time.

<comment><USER23> Problem is life expectancy was so low then it would be hard to do a proper comparison, and most cases of liver failure happen in later life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I absolutely love that they're trying to reach a broader public engagement of their historical academic work through innovative events such as the pub nights. I mean it's pretty easy for this when your research is into brewing habits of early modern people but it marks a significant depature from the lofty circles of academia and helps to really engage Joe Public with historical research and academic discovery in an easily accessable way.

I think that's an absolutely fantastic goal to shoot for. Scientific (and in a broader sense, academic in general) outreach is really important and beneficial for society as a whole, so I'm only too happy to read about how some people are trying to do that!

</comment><comment><USER25> > beer was more important as a source of energy (via calories both from grain > and alcohol)

> they were likely to have been pushing for 'sweetness and body' rather than > maximum alcoholic strength

So, basically, people drank beer like they drink soda-pop today, and wanted the same things out of it (sweet, fizzy, not necessarily alcoholic, goes well with food.)

Anyone know what those people of the Early Modern era had to say about coffee? Were people who drank coffee, but not beer, considered teetotalers?

<comment><USER26> IIRC, coffee was introduced to Europe at about the end of the Dark Ages. I don't think it's a coincidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "James S. goes on to point out that while you can achieve the percentages suggested by Craig using modern barley, malting techniques, yeast, and equipment, such 'show-stopping' figures were unlikely to have been achieved by even the commercial producers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

This is a key point. Malting is tricky: The barley seed must be germinated, since the enzyme that converts starch to fermentable sugars is produced by the sprouting seed. Then the germinated seed must be sterilized in a way that prevents too much of the starch from being converted but also does little damage to the grain. This can be done with drying, toasting, and smoking, but it requires a lot of process control to get a uniformly "pale" malt rather than a darker caramel or chocolate malt where some of the starches and sugars have been caramelized.

The development and popularization of pilseners and other light, clear beers in the 19th century was driven by techical advances in malting. 18th century malts were certainly less advanced, more uneven in quality, with a higher proportion of caramelized and toasted sugars and consequently a lot of body and a lower alcohol content.

</comment><comment><USER28> Reminded me of the theory that early humans ate tons of psychedelic fungus and that is what helped us create the neural pathways towards sentience. (if you think we are sentient now that is)

Between that, and the cannabis receptors in our brains, perhaps we're not supposed to be sober.

Maybe everything is going to shit in the world because we as a species are going through a collective withdrawal from the substances that made us in the first place.

Edit: I think this is the documentary that I saw that referenced weaker beer. [http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/watch- video/#id=2082...](http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/watch- video/#id=2082675582)

</comment><comment><USER29> In my early 20s I could drink 5% ABV beer all day long and never get too drunk to pass a field-sobriety test.

</comment><comment><USER30> This link is just timing out for me. HN hug of death?

<comment><USER31> Fullhn.com has it saved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How did they avoid massive weight gain?

<comment><USER33> Exercise. People had to physically work a whole lot harder than we do. Local travel was mostly by foot. Heating the house meant hauling & shoveling coal or wood. Food & clothing was far more labor intensive. Entertainment was far more likely physical; even watching a show meant traveling to the theater.

Contrast today, where the thermostat keeps temperatures comfortable automatically, car/bus/taxi takes most people everywhere, prepared food is cheap (heat via microwave), work for the HN crowd is sitting/reading/typing, and entertainment is staring at a glowing wall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> TLDR:

* Because beer was consumed as a source of energy rather than as an alternative to water, and high alcohol content was favored, it seems like the answer is "Yes."

* However, it's unclear whether early brewers could make drinkable beer at high ABV, throwing this conclusion into doubt.

<comment><USER35> * But even if they couldn't hit the high ABV numbers, they were still drinking at least 3% beer pretty much all day long.

From what I've read, this behavior pretty much continued straight through until prohibition in the States. Usually a cider before about lunch, then beer and spirits.

<comment> village-idiot From what I understand prohibition was the result of revolutionary drinking habits meeting up with increasing supplies of industrialized and cheap high alcohol beer and spirits.

<comment><USER33> As urban populations grew, rural grain farmers soon found that transporting spirits was a far more profitable per-volume process than raw dry grains.

BTW: that eventually led to institutionalizing the Southern US's illegal "moonshine culture", which as the automobile became commonplace started using cars for smuggling spirits, which then led to car racing (smugglers had powerful vehicles and talented drivers) which eventually manifested as NASCAR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > Were early modern people perpetually drunk?

It's an idiotic premise. Turn up to work drunk and see how well you do.

Who the hell would want to do a labourer's job drunk.

Who would hire someone drunk?

Imagine the whole workforce drunk?

Even tipsy, seems worse, the afternoon sucks after lunch drinks.

I think if you look at current 3rd world countries they are not far off culturally to 'Early Modern People'

There's a huge crutch on alcohol, it kills a lot of people.

But most people are not drunk (or tipsy) most of the time.

<comment><USER37> You can sweat out a lot of beer doing brute-force manual labor. Especially if it's relatively low-test beer - it's pretty hard to drink it fast enough to get tipsy.

I mean, the daily ration of beer in the Royal Navy, when they were in English waters and not on hard stuff, was _one gallon_ per man per day. And they were scampering around in the mastheads...

<comment><USER38> > _one gallon per man per day_

No it wasn't. There was never a time that a whole gallon per day was a normal rum ration. It was a gallon of _beer_ , later a _half pint_ of rum. A half pint of strong rum is still a lot to consume every day, but it's nowhere near a gallon.

Over time it was reduced until it turned into basically a shot, and then even that was stopped.

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

<comment><USER39> You just said the same thing as your parent comment (one gallon of beer per day). Please read carefully before disagreeing.

<comment><USER38> I read that a half dozen times before replying. Not sure how I misread that. Oops

Thanks for pointing out my mistake.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Textmate Alternatives? - <AUTHOR>

I really like TM, but 2011 seems a nice year to try new alternatives. <comment><USER2> Of course vim. You can view Vim Casts (<http://vimcasts.org/episodes/archive>) for easy migration from TM.

</comment><comment><USER3> I chose Eclipse over Textmate earlier this year. As a user of mostly Python, Javascript, HTML and CSS, Eclipse has provided my ideal programming setup. All of my code, for all of my projects, resides on a development server of mine (Ubuntu). With Eclipse, I'm able to install the Eclipse software on my PCs and Macbook and am able to use the Remote System Explorer to edit my code over SSH. I then have the Aptana suite to provide the syntax highlighting and stuff. I close most of the unnecessary Eclipse GUI elements so I'm left with a very bare-bones feeling editor. So, my same editing environment works across all of my computers.

When I used Textmate on my Macbook and Notepad++ on my Windows PCs, I always had issues with indentations, and stuff from one editor to the next. I also used to have to setup Samba on my Ubuntu server to map the network drives, and edit them over a mapped drive.

Once I found Eclipse to be as awesome as it is, I don't think I'll ever look back. lol.

<comment><USER4> I'll second the Eclipse vote. Sure, it has plenty of Enterprise-y cruft, but if you peel off (close) most of it, you've got a really great editor with version control integration for all major flavors(svn,cvs,git,etc...) and you can probably find an editor plugin for any language under the sun that is half decent. I don't love Java, but I sure do like Eclipse.

<comment><USER5> How do you peel of the cruft? I've been using it for a while, if I can get rid of the extraneous stuff I'd be even happier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> MacVim + PeepOpen (<http://peepcode.com/products/peepopen>) are a pretty decent alternative, particularly if you already have some experience in vim.

If you don't have a history of vim mastery, you should still think about it. Yehuda Katz wrote an interesting blog article[1] on his experience switching to MacVim as a vim beginner relying on OSX-isms.

1\. [http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to- convi...](http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me- to-use-vim-was-wrong/)

<comment><USER7> FWIW, I just switched from Textmate to MacVim 6 days ago, and am already nearly as productive in it as I was on Textmate (no prior vim experience)

I personally found it best to just embrace the vimness (with cheat-sheets beside my monitor). I barely accomplished any work on day 1, but by the end of day 2 I was moving along pretty comfortably.

<comment><USER8> I switched some months ago and I'm not going back. Don't forget to install vimperator on firefox too.

I posted some screenshots of my setup here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2053516>

Using tmux instead of normal terminal tabs is also a huge improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For PHP I use phpStorm (<http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/>) it's Eclipse- like but fast.

<comment><USER10> >it's Eclipse-like but fast

It also costs $100 (though it is on sale right now) where Eclipse costs $0. Not an insignificant fact for many of us.

<comment><USER9> Not everybody can afford those 100 bucks, I know. A lot of people can but wont.

I don't mind buying good software. Unless you're developing OS without any benefits any speed increase would lead to benefits increase (well, not any, but you know).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://textmate2.com> ?

</comment><comment><USER12> Try an IDE designed specifically for whatever language you're working in. Most will have key commands to do just about anything you can do with Textmate. Spend a little time trying to customize and learn the environment. This will give you a good experience to weigh a lightweight editor against a heavyweight IDE. Most people seem to just fire up Eclipse or Rubymine or whatever else, see it take 30 seconds to start, not bother to learn what sets it apart from a text editor, then swear them off because of bloat.

</comment><comment><USER10> For a solid text editor, Vim (MacVim if you prefer).

For a solid IDE, Netbeans. I find it easier to use than Eclipse.

</comment><comment><USER13> Kod (www.kodapp.com) looks like it has potential with a few features that TM doesn't have. It is currently in beta.

<comment><AUTHOR> Downloaded it a few days ago. Seems nice. But still has a lot of things to accomplish

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is an OSX port of gedit that is similar in UI to TM and has lots of nice features.

</comment><comment><USER15> Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER16> UltraEdit

</comment><comment><USER17> BBEdit</comment>


Important women in CS who aren't Grace Hopper (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/important-women-in-cs/ <comment><USER2> Kinda sad to not see Joanna Rutkowska in the article or in the comments anywhere. She's contributed a lot to computer science generally, but the biggest thing is probably her work on qubes os, which is an awesome project.

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

<comment><USER3> > ... or in the comments anywhere

You fixed that particular problem ;)

From the article:

> I left a lot of qualified people out because there were a lot of people and > I got lazy. Consider this a sampler rather than an exhaustive list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am a woman. Fucking thank you. So tired of hearing about the same people over and over again.

</comment><comment><USER5> Glad to see Fran Allen on the list.

I remember reading (in the early 90's) several papers authored or co-authored by "F.E. Allen" and having no clue "F.E." was a woman until a few years later.

I was in a compiler workshop several years ago and when I looked up I realized she was sitting directly in front of me at the workshop. I believe she was retired at the time but still attending conferences out of personal interest.

</comment><comment><USER6> To Betty Holberton, inventor of breakpoints, thank you. Sincerely, everyone.

<comment><USER7> When I got to that line I thought to myself... wow imagine inventing breakpoints. Like, hey guys this debugging is a monumental pain in the ass what if we did this thing here. BOOM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sally Floyd? did heaps of work on TCP/IP Alison Mankin? head of the IRTF, also big in networking. RFCs Elise Gerich? ran NSFnet, Was IANA for many years. RFCs Susan Hares? does BGP stuff. RFCs

</comment><comment><USER9> I went to a bootcamp that had a room named after Lovelace, a room named after Hamilton and a room named after Hopper. Those were the only rooms aside from the open floor plan. There were no women on the staff.

</comment><comment><USER10> These two come to mind. They're technically more math but they've had a significant impact on CS in certain areas like cryptography and data compression:

Ingrid Daubechies: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Daubechies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Daubechies)

Tanja Lange: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanja_Lange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanja_Lange)

</comment><comment><USER11> Harriette Kollman went to work for Boeing while her husband was fighting in World War II. She would later go on to become their first female computer programmer.

Unfortunately I don't know more about her achievements in the field. I know the name because we get letters addressed to her sometimes, but she passed away a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fei-Fei Li deserves to be on this list too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fei-Fei_Li](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fei- Fei_Li)

</comment><comment><USER13> Leslie Kaelbling: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_P._Kaelbling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_P._Kaelbling)

Interview on AI podcast: [https://youtu.be/Er7Dy8rvqOc](https://youtu.be/Er7Dy8rvqOc)

Maybe doesn't meet the "sound-bite" condition, but a really impressive human none-the-less.

<comment><USER14> Wild. She taught me about partially observable Markov decision processes, didn't know she invented them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems like there used to be a lot more women in computing. In my first job out of college (late 80's), I worked in a group of software developers with 12 women and two men. It was not considered odd.

<comment><USER16> That is a basic feminism that in a patriarchal society as soon as a profession becomes more prestige and/or well paid it also becomes more male dominated.

<comment><USER17> Not true. There are more and more female physicians and the trend is that females will progressively take over that profession, percentage wise.

[https://www.healthline.com/health-news/women-doctors- better-...](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/women-doctors-better- patient-interactions)

<comment><USER18> Which doesn't dispute what the parent said: [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take- over...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male- dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html)

<comment><USER17> They said that high paying jobs are sought after by men. Doctors are highly paid and women are taking over that job. Sounds like the opposite of what was claimed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tin Kam Ho (who introduced the random forests ML technique) should be on the list too. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Kam_Ho](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Kam_Ho)

</comment><comment><USER20> Wang Xiaoyun Broke MD5. Broke SHA-0. Broke SHA-1.

Awesome !

</comment><comment><USER21> Adele Goldberg of Xerox PARC / Smalltalk fame.

</comment><comment><USER22> Jeannette Wing was my PhD (co)advisor. She is absurdly brilliant. Another CS woman I know who is ridiculously brilliant is Dawn Song (Berkeley).

In my years in academia, IBM Research and Mozilla I mostly worked with men, and many of them were outstanding, but no more than one or two of them could compete with Jeannette or Dawn in terms of sheer intellectual firepower.

</comment><comment><USER23> Setting the record straight: Cynthia Dwork, not Latanya Sweeney, (co-)invented Differential Privacy. And Proof Of Work (later used by Bitcoin and HashCash). And Lattice-based Crypto (resistant to quantum computer attack). And Nonmalleable Cryptography. But I'm admittedly biased.

</comment><comment><USER24> My mom started as a data entry operator, who then became an accountant who had to pickup COBOL and FORTRAN programming on punch-cards for a time as part of her job.

In the early days of computing, women were only allowed to _operate_ computers that were designed and programmed almost exclusively by men. To be a female programmer in the early days was rare, and to be an African-American programmer in the times of segregation would seem to be that much more difficult. The film _Hidden Figures (2016)_ seems like a pertinent fictional- recreation/parable lesson in these barriers that were more prevalent in the past, but it's important to be mindful that biases are a constant of human nature and never disappear.

</comment><comment><USER25> Audrey Tang as well. She's awesome.

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

</comment><comment><USER26> > _Radia Perlman - Invented the Spanning-Tree Protocol._

Thanks for posting this. I've even read the STP poem before, but I never had any idea about the person behind it.

<comment><USER27> She came up with STP over a weekend. A friend of mine calls her the "Mother of the Internet".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> After reading the post I was exploring some of the other content on this site. Hillel (the author) does consulting work to help teams design better software systems using a tool called TLA+

I had never heard of TLA+ at all until this point. I am going to reserve my opinion on it seeing as I have about 10 minutes of experience with it -- but I am super curious if others here have anything they'd like to share on TLA+?

<comment><USER28> In short: it's great, learn it.

Slightly longer, it may seem useless at first given that TLA+ doesn't verify code you write, but is rather better thought of as a formal design language for designing abstract state machines. However, it is extremely useful for clarifying thoughts and serving as a concrete design artifact for other engineers to examine. Also because its apparent weakness that it doesn't verify code you write is in my opinion a strength because it means you don't incur a dependency on it if you or your team doesn't like it and wants to throw it away. You lose no more time than what you put in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If we include the theory of error correcting codes, add Jessie MacWilliams and Vera Pless.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER30> That's pretty interesting. Only knew of two, myself.

Would love to see a similar list of relatively prolific women open source programmers.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'd add Ingrid Daubechies, more mathematician, but has had an enormous influence on signal processing:

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

</comment><comment><USER32> No mention of Sr. Mary Kenneth Keller, B.V.M., a Catholic religious sister and the first woman with a PhD in CS? She helped develop FORTRAN and BASIC.

</comment><comment><USER33> Need to add Ann Wollrath to this list. (Primary author of the RMI whitepaper.)

</comment><comment><USER34> Here's an idea that we've implemented where I work: when coming up with working names for projects or whatever, go out of your way to name them after notable women in STEM. Bonus, purposely retire the example women that everybody knows -- that means no "Project Lovelace" or "Ada", no "Grace Hopper" network optimization effort, none of that.

Make it a rewarded _challenge_ for people to spend time finding out, bringing forward, and celebrating the contributions of amazing women.

Feel free to be expansive in what you consider technology and STEM. For example, women who've written music on music synths: Wendy Carlos, Imogen Heap, etc.

Or videogame designers: Carol Shaw, Dona Bailey, Joyce Weisbecker,...actually here's a list [1]

Cryptography: Dorothy Denning, Margaret Rock, and so on. [2]

 _Make it a point_ to explain the history of the person you named the project after as part of your project charter and when you onboard new people onto your project, explain the history of the name to them and why you are making it a practice to name projects in order to celebrate the contributions of women in technology.

It doesn't have to be a long, drawn out affair. But I can tell you that (from first hand experience) this type of celebration can have amazing effects on mixed gendered teams. I've never seen so many talented women staff suddenly get so supercharged. It's honestly amazing and incredibly humbling and it will absolutely become a continued practice wherever I go.

The number of times I've also heard from women staff "if I had only known about so many of these women growing up, I might have made different choices in life"....you can _feel_ the unfed hunger for recognition.

You can do variants on this approach for many underserved and underrepresented groups of people. It actually becomes kind of fun for people to spend time learning about what people other than Turing, or Babbage, or some mythological God figure (or Star Wars/Trek character) and how they contributed to where we are as a species today.

Get _cheeky_ with it. Instead of "Beatrice Cave-Brown-Cave" turn it into "Project Brown Square Cave" and have a designer make a cool logo design, or "Pamela Hardt-English" into "The Angled Heart Project" and make an 8-bit pixel art version of a heart or something. Make memes out of Margaret Hamilton's smiling face and send it around as a local meme when somebody does something really cool. Keep all references to women associated with positive/cool/etc. things. _Never_ use them as a degrading joke, or to make fun or somebody or something.

Pick women who are currently in STEM, e.g. Katie Bouman is a great name for an effort to add better visibility into the workings of a tech stack.

 _Meet_ these women. Many of them are still alive. I know that the ANTIC podcast [3] has many dozens of amazing interviews as does Matt Chat [4]. Even though these are mostly about games and computing, many of the women featured went on to some pretty great careers. (ha! The most recent interview as of this comment on Matt Chat is Annie VanderMeer, a game designer)

Make this an official policy. There's enough recognition for men already -- we're good.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_women_in_the_video_gam...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_women_in_the_video_game_industry)

2 - [https://cryptologicfoundation.org/what-we- do/stimulate/women...](https://cryptologicfoundation.org/what-we- do/stimulate/women-in-cryptology.html)

3 - [https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/](https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/)

4 - [https://www.youtube.com/user/blacklily8](https://www.youtube.com/user/blacklily8)

5 - and some more if you need [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing)

<comment><USER30> This seems quite patronizing. Better: Make sure everyone is paid right and that any jerks are removed from the team.</comment></comment>


Tragectory of meteor with Google earth - <AUTHOR> http://owl.li/hN8fT

<comment><USER2> Saw this yesterday, and it was wrong yesterday. Meteors don't travel in straight lines, they follow curved paths under the influence of gravity. And their velocity changes rather rapidly as they enter the atmosphere because much of their kinetic energy is converted to heat by friction. The second effect (heating and energy loss) causes the curvature of the first effect (gravitation) to change as well.</comment>


Planetary Protection Officer - happy-go-lucky https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/474414000 <comment><AUTHOR> That would be an _awesome_ business card. But the job sounds like a lot of meetings.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I was a at conference last year where there was a talk from an existing Planetary Protection Officer at NASA. She seemed mostly concerned with what kind of cleaning procedures had been performed on the various probes that had were going to each planet/moon. Sounds like you'd have to be the one delivering bad news like: "nope, this new probe will have to miss its launch window, because the latest science we have says that microbes could survive where it's going, so we have to cook it for 5 days"

<comment><USER2> I found the conference talk online: [https://vimeo.com/144769901](https://vimeo.com/144769901)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Was really hoping it was a Starship Trooper type role, always wanted to go fight bugs...

<comment><USER4> Positions are available: [https://careers.orkin.com/](https://careers.orkin.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Relevant xkcd (what-if actually, but close enough): [https://what- if.xkcd.com/117/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/)

</comment><comment><USER6> "Frequent travel may be required"

me gusta.

</comment><comment><USER7> "ntended"

</comment><comment><USER8> it would be nice to be an ecological judge dredd and dish out justice to polluting scum

</comment><comment><USER9> aka MiB

</comment><comment><USER10> Oooh, oooh, pick me!

      This job is open to…
      U.S. citizens and U.S. nationals

Oh :(

</comment><comment><USER11> Elon Musk doesn't give a shit about this.</comment>


CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They're Cool, and How To Use'em - <AUTHOR> http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites-what-they-are-why-theyre-cool-and-how-to-use-them/ <comment><USER2> I've done this for my site, in a list of more than 20 elements in which each element has it's own image.

Merging all those little images together was a great improvement in loading time of the page. I really recommend to use this technique :)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some interesting languages you use or have used? - <AUTHOR> I mean programming languages. Also, the qualifier is: you should have been able to use it for practical non-trivial programs: a small utility, a simple game, a data processing task, etc. Not just for computing Fibonacci or factorial number sequences <comment><USER2> Interesting is in the eye of the beholder.

SQL is interesting because it forces you to think in terms of sets. And because it wants you to tell it what to do but not how to do it.

Lisp is interesting because:

It is expressed in one of its own primary data types: the list.

But the thing that reads Lisp -- the Lisp reader, is itself programmable. So if you want it to understand JSON syntax for example, or maybe Python dictionary literals -- you can write reader macros to add the new syntax.

And of course because it can manipulate data stored in lists, that means it can manipulate source code. Code in Lisp, is data. And data can be code if you need it to. That's essentially what Lisp macros are: code that writes code on the fly.

The backquote facility. This is basically a little template language for rewriting data structures on the fly. It is the killer feature that, along with the reader, enables the killer feature lispers won't shut up about.

The condition system. It separates signaling of conditions (including errors) from the decision about how to deal with them. One implication of this is that when an error is reached, you need not unwind the stack to handle it.

And because it is pretty.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's some good points about Lisp.

I did know about the fact that code is data (everything is a list) and so Lisp programs can write programs, parse their own code more easily than other languages can, etc.

Didn't know the reader was programmable. Do remember reading a PG article, where I think he said in Lisp, reading can be done compile or run time, compiling at read or run time, and so on - all 3 possibilities. Not sure what the uses of those are though, since I don't know Lisp much. Find it interesting, though, for sure. I've read some of Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel, and parts of a few other small tutorials. Do you have any other recommendations? Also, what Lisp would you recommend for someone learning it, in the early stages?

Didn't know about the backquote facility or that point about the Lisp condition system. Will check it them.

Thanks for all the info.

<comment><USER2> > Also, what Lisp would you recommend for someone learning it, in the early > stages?

I'm partial to Common Lisp and I think it fits the brain pretty easily.

But Racket is a good choice too. There is a nice, friendly development environment and plenty of libraries and learning materials.

> Do you have any other recommendations?

Sure. Check out SNOBOL: [http://www.snobol4.org](http://www.snobol4.org)

Oh, and Pharo Smaltalk is definitely worth looking at, imo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just remembered, I had tried out the Icon language some years ago, for a while. Interesting, and had some unusual features. Just saw in the SNOBOL Wikipedia article that it influenced Icon (and also Lua). And Ralph Griswold was involved in both languages, SNOBOL and Icon.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I recently used Inform 7 for a workshop and have a half cooked game done using it. It's interesting and the whole culture around the genre even more so. I wrote about the workshop and posted the sample game here [http://thelycaeum.in/blog/2016/02/24/inform_7_talk_at_fossme...](http://thelycaeum.in/blog/2016/02/24/inform_7_talk_at_fossmeet_2016/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Will check it out, thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> The semi-natural language thing does seem good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Off the top of my head: Scheme, Tcl, Prolog, ML, Kernel, Rust, and Kitten. Each one blew my mind in one way or another when I first encountered it.

On a related note, Go is the most utterly _un_ interesting language I've encountered in recent memory. Depending on where you're standing, that can be an argument in its favor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Of the ones you mention, in the past, I've explored Scheme, very little, Tcl a little, and Prolog a little. Did not know about Kernel and Kitten. Kernel looks very advanced. Will check out Kitten. I thought you were kitten me at at first - about the name :)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Tcl a little

Actually Tcl more than a little, in the context of Expect, and also some with Tk (and Tkinter in Python, though that is about the toolkit, not the Tcl language). Tcl definitely is mind-blowing in its dynamic nature. So are the capabilities of Expect, actually. I read most of the Expect book by its author, Don Libes. He goes very deep into it. Fascinating. Even his writing style is unique.

<comment><USER4> What I found most interesting about Tcl was its capacity for metaprogramming, due in large part to its quoting mechanism. Due to this, procedures in Tcl wind up somewhat akin to the fexpr construct found in some ancient Lisp dialects -- a construct which forms the theoretical basis for Kernel, albeit in a rigorous, formal manner called "vau calculus".

<comment><AUTHOR> >What I found most interesting about Tcl was its capacity for metaprogramming, due in large part to its quoting mechanism.

Cool.

Ah yes, memories coming back a bit now. (Had read both the Ousterhout (Tcl and Tk) and Libes (Expect) books years ago.) I remember that though the Libes book is about Expect, he does go into talking about Tcl a lot, including some of the advanced features you mention (though always or a lot, in the context of how they are used in Expect).

I guess part of its (Tcl's) dynamic nature comes from the fact that everything in Tcl is a string (and the quoting and the ability to evaluate expressions), like everything in Lisp is a list (or an atom).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all who replied or will, BTW.</comment>


Ask HN: Google Reader replacement  - <AUTHOR>

I decided not to switch to a new RSS reader, until others had a chance to explore the options.  Now as the deadline looms, I would like to know which reader you have switched to, and are you happy with it.
Things I like about Google reader:
• Folders
• Moble web UI (can me crazy, but I am not a fan of apps)
Thanks <comment><USER2> feedly.com

Pretty identical to Google reader, but you'll have to turn on the "titles only" view first. I don't think it has a "mobile site", though, just apps. It doesn't even work as a regular website anymore. You have to install a Chrome or Firefox extension, which I do find pretty unnecessary. On a PC at least, I'm quite satisfied with it.</comment>


Advice on Beggining a Career as a Freelance Web-Developer. - <AUTHOR> http://ericharrison.info/2010/06/01/ama-how-do-i-get-started-as-a-freelance-web-developer/ <comment><USER2> I'm a web dev freelancer as well. And here my thoughts and tips.

\- First, I don't find it a crazy lifestyle, in fact it changed my life for good. I can manage my schedule, I've no boss, damn I'm my own boss. I can choose who I work with and I get to meet very cool people all around the world. Unlike being stuck in a office, with people that you probably don't even like. Also, I can work in any place in the world, as long as I have a computer + internet connection. Take that you in-house Senior Software Engineer (just kidding)

\- However, isolation is your worst enemy, you better have friends you can hang out with at the end of the day, or this can really be a very lonely life.

Organization, you MUST BE FREAKING organized, you must really know you. You need to record everything, working hours, projects timelines. To-do lists will help you a lot on this. Always create for the next day before you go to bed.

Freelancing is great, but there will be times where you will have no projects and no money getting in. So put aside money enough for you to live for at least 4 to 6 month. Have a network of friends who do also freelance, we trade a lot of projects and it's a great help. You can also create a product but just remember that this takes time, and time is money.

Forget bidding boards, really, get the hell out of there. Do you really want to value yourself/compete against to some guy who codes for less than $10 an hour ? Instead, find job boards, contact clients directly, just don't spam anyone. If you are good at this, look at yourself as a brand, have a a great portfolio, brand yourself, and price yourself for how good you are. You may not get that "I need a wordpress ninja for custom plugin", but if you are good at it you can get much more reliable clients, and by reliable I include, awesome connections, work, steady projects and cool apps to build.

Last but not least...

Instead of trying to be a swiss army knife, focus on what you are really good, and apply yourself, and be the best you can. This will be your turning point after awhile, believe me.

<comment><USER3> Excellent points.

I might take a bit of exception with the 'focus on what you're good at', with the reply that some people may simply be really good generalists. Besides understanding tech, you generally need to have good people skills. Between good social skills and having a good graps on the tech to serve your clients, you may not need to become a domain expert on DNS, or email spam filters, or CSS3, or JavaScript, or any number of tech skills (or business domain skills). Sometimes being able to parse out a client's problem and bring in the appropriate freelance skills when necessary may be the best skill you have.

That said, you have to know yourself. If you're really passionate about search, go become a Lucene expert and become the 'go to search guy' in your area (or perhaps even in a vertical).

Isolation can hurt - I have regular phone calls with a distributed group of guys who are all in similar (yet different) career stages as me, and we bounce ideas off each other, critique, offer support and skills when needed, and so on. Hearing real people on a phone helps much more than solely email or forums.

phatbyte - I'd like to pick your brain a bit more - firstname.lastname@example.com please if you're so inclined. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked for a couple of years as a freelance web developer and the only tip I think is really valuable here is "Bonus tip: Make friends with small design shops."

As a freelancer, I think it is very difficult to try and attract work via your web presence. There is too much competition online. In fact, when I was freelancing, I didn't have a professional website of my own at all, I just had my own personal blog, which brought me zero clients.

For me, being an effective freelance web developer was all about making and cultivating personal connections. As a freelancer you must be reasonably good at all aspects of business, including business development and sales. I think most salespeople would tell you that the key to sales is meeting people, telling them what you do, and finding out if they need your services or if they know anyone else who does.

The great thing about being employed in web development work is that it is a skill with a lot of demand, so it is not difficult to find people who need it. What is more difficult is finding people who will pay at a level that makes the pain of freelancing worthwhile (for me, the pain of freelancing was mainly being solely responsible for absolutely everything, including the parts I detest, which are primarily billing and collections.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Odd, it's a guy who's not nor has ever been a freelance web developer giving advice on how to become a freelance web developer.

<comment><USER6> As a career freelancer I find it difficult to find the time or motivation for open source work. I feel like most of the people who get involved in open source are probably doing it on the clock at the office, where the extra time spent perfecting free software is subsidized by a salary. But maybe I'm wrong?

<comment><USER7> I picked a hard problem (Drupal Performance) and worked on a open source project (Boost Module) for about 7 months till I was approached by a company and offered a job. This was an exit strategy I had in mind, get highered. I'm now paid to work on performance related issues & I enjoy it. When it comes to performance, I open source (GPLv2) most of my code since sharing is the fastest way to solve complex issues involving speed and scalability.

All of this to say if you don't find the open source work exciting, maybe you picked the wrong problem for you to solve. Now that I have a 9-5 job, I have less time to perfect the free software I've created. If it works 100% for the biz, why would they want to pay me (time) to fix problems the biz doesn't have.

I've spent time in various open source projects and Drupal was the first one where something stuck (people wanted to higher me). Luck has a lot to do with it; picking the right project at the right time. I've been contributing to Open Source since 2004, 2009 was the first time someone saw my code/work and wanted to higher me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Because I see you wrote this, blister, don't spell stuff wrong in titles. That's my advice.

</comment><comment><USER9> _My full-time job pays me far too much money to make it worth my time to realistically ever waste it freelancing on the side.

Whenever I do actually sit down and start doing freelance work, it's at my extremely ridiculous hourly rate. I charge effectively triple my hourly salary just to make it worth my time._

This seems quite self-contradictory. Regardless, I've found that after doing it for a few years, I can make 2-3x more doing freelance than I could in a salary job. All it takes is hustle.

<comment><USER10> 3x salary is actually a great formula for equivalent compensation.

If you make $30/hr salary, you really make $40/hr with vacation/health/employer-paid taxes/use of office and equipment for free/reimbursed travel+conferences

+you don't get paid for slow times, and non-billable tasks

+you have to compensated for the increased risk you take on (consider the reverse--you would take less average pay to know that it's completely reliable and consistent)

<comment><USER11> While you don't get paid for slow times, you do get paid for busy times. That seems to balance out in my experience.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. That's what I meant when I said all it takes is hustle. When you freelance, your have very direct and tangible control over how much you make. You have some control when salary, but the correlation with effort is a lot murkier, in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think this is a dangerous platitude:

> Every single thing you build from here on out should have as much quality as > you can provide.

On one hand, it would discourage me from just going out and building stuff, to get experience. On the other hand, exceptional circumstances ought to be treated as exceptional. If I'm moving between servers, I'd better triple-check that everything has been moved properly before hitting the switch.

</comment><comment><USER13> I do not like this guy.</comment>


Open Data Portals by Country - <AUTHOR> https://www.opendatasoft.com/a-comprehensive-list-of-all-open-data-portals-around-the-world/ <comment><USER2> I think I've seen this before - I think this is an old list. Yeah, the blog post for this is from 2015.

With data sets like this, the question is always what do you do to keep these up to date? Well done for putting in the work in the first place but with no attention paid to updates it just gets stale.

I'm familiar with this problem due to my work on [https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/](https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/) \- a list of tech events in the UK - and some other projects I'm currently working on. I already have some tricks to help with this.

So I am honestly interested in answers to this question - if you maintain a data set like this, how do you do so? And how do you keep it refreshed? Thanks,

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm the guy maintaining the dataset. There are two ways the dataset is updated : people can use a Google Form to add a portal are signal a mistake in one records, that form seeds a spreadsheet which is a scheduled source for the dataset (the OpenDataSoft data platform makes it really easy to schedule the sourcing of data). The second way is just to update the data by hand because a lot of people just prefer to send us emails.

So the dataset is always up-to-date : [https://data.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/open-data- sour...](https://data.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/open-data- sources%40public/table/)</comment></comment>


How to Thwart Facial Recognition - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/magazine/how-to-thwart-facial-recognition.html <comment><USER2> TL;DR - Someone made a mask of their exact face that you can wear[0]. The article[1] goes into some other things that you _could_ do but doesn't elucidate any more on those things (which, IMHO, is pretty underwhelming).

[0] - [https://archive.fo/qmqN7](https://archive.fo/qmqN7)

[1] - [https://archive.fo/b41zN](https://archive.fo/b41zN)</comment>


Start testing your app with Casper.js - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codeship.io/2013/03/07/Smoke-Testing-with-Casperjs.html <comment><USER2> (I've made this comment before on CasperJS/PhantomJS postings, but I've never gotten an answer.)

I love the idea, but I'm a bit worried that it's just webkit. Aren't all the other browsers important too? This is why I feel that Selenium still has a place, even though I agree that Casper is easier to use. Perhaps browserling is an appropriate answer?

I don't mean to disrespect CasperJS _or_ PhantomJS, they're certainly wonderful tools, and any final automated functional test like this is infinitely better than none, but it's bad enough that people are developing for Webkit, do we really have to make it explicit by only testing on Webkit? ;)

<comment><USER3> Something else worth noting: the most recent release of PhantomJS actually has an implementation of the Selenium WebDriver protocol, so you can use that, if you wish:

<http://phantomjs.org/release-1.8.html>

<comment><USER4> It implements the Selenium WebDriver protocol, but still executes it under WebKit.

The point of the parent is to test on multiple browsers.

<comment><USER5> I think the point of the person you're responding to, was that if you use the selenium interface with PhantomJS, you can change your testing browser to Firefox, Safari, etc with very little work on your part. i.e start with Phantom/Selenium, then test with the rest when you're ready.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While the topic is very interesting, I was very disappointed that the examples are written in some minor esotheric language instead of JavaScript.

<comment><USER7> I'm not so sure that CoffeeScript is accurately described as "minor and esoteric" these days…

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Given that you're using CoffeeScript, is there a reason you're not using @ instead of this.?

<comment><USER8> @ is the shorthand for this.

<comment><USER9> That's exactly what he was asking: Since @foo is shorthand for this.foo, why are the code snippets littered with this.method, this.prop, this.blah and the likes?

<comment><USER8> Ah, my bad, I've misread the question

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're looking to use Casper.js on a Django project, have a look at the small wrapper around LiveServerTestCase we wrote to make it easier to call Casper, pass params (like server url), and the like: <https://github.com/dobarkod/django-casper>

</comment><comment><USER11> Casper.js (and Phantom, for that matter) has been pretty buggy and difficult to work with for me. Had better luck with Selenium, which makes me unhappy because I'd rather use something more code oriented.

<comment><USER12> Are you using the PageObjects pattern? It seems pretty code oriented to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Casper.js is definitely a great tool, with helpful documentation

</comment><comment><USER14> In case it's not clear, Caspar.js is a framework/library for PhantomJS

</comment><comment><USER15> Please don't encourage the use of phantomjs and its wacky ecosystem. It's incredible instability will bite you in the face very soon.

<comment><USER16> Can you expand? I'll be evaluating casper.js soon and would like to hear the 'pitfalls' Thanx!

<comment><USER15> phantomjs crashes almost non stop [https://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/issues/list?can=2&q=...](https://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/issues/list?can=2&q=crash&sort=-id&colspec=ID+Type+Status+Priority+Milestone+Owner+Summary&cells=tiles)</comment></comment></comment>


A New Weapon in Russia's Arsenal, and It's Inflatable - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/world/europe/russia-decoy-weapon.html <comment><USER2> Hah, I wonder if these are obtainable outside the country, it would be a much more impressive lawn ornament than an inflatable cartoon character!

There was a Discovery show on decoy weapons once which went into some of the amazing work to give them accurate heat signatures to add to the spectrum where they appeared legit. Given an adversary willing to kill a tank or airplane with a multi million dollar weapon, if you can can get them to waste them on a few hundred thousand dollars of fabric and paint you come out ahead.</comment>


Steve Jobs has six weeks to live - <AUTHOR> http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-brief/54196-steve-jobs-has-six-weeks-to-live-tabloid

<comment><USER2> Oh no, not again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2228842>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2228854>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2230042>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2230361>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2230497>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2230702>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2234776>

<comment><AUTHOR> See my remark below. How do you track that?

<comment><USER2> I use <http://searchyc.com>. It used to be the case that if it less than an hour old it was on "newest", and if it was more than an hour old it was on SearchYC.

Here's a lengthy discussion of the question:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1329334>

In that PG says it's hard, but SearchYC seems to have got something that's good enough. Ironically enough, I found that using it:

<http://searchyc.com/submissions/PG+search?sort=by_date>

Recently, however, it would appear that SearchYC has been lagging, and I wonder if it has been blocked by PG/YC. PG has said elsewhere that he's developing his own search engine for HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1955703>

Perhaps he's deliberately blocking it to make his search seem better. Seems unlikely. Perhaps they scraped too aggressively and triggered a block. Seems more likely.

But the subject comes up a lot, and many people are dissatisfied. Lots of people therefore scrape, and that puts extra load on the server. You're proposing to do the same. It would be better if a distributed scraping system were devised, and that had a proper API. Alternatively, if PG provided a proper API, but why should he?

Let PG focus on getting good discussions, and someone else to provide a better filter or tagging system. More scraping, more load, but if someone does something "properly" then maybe the others can finally stop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Coincidentally I just wondered about how to not get in trouble with HN for providing a custom live feed (I decided to make my own rather than relying on unknown services or learning how to use searchyc).

My solution to that problem will be easy - I will hack Hacker News, sort of, by injecting client script which is fully capable of everything, and would not be considered a foreign service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> … says tabloid.

EDIT:

"An Open Letter to the Apple News Community on Steve Jobs' Health, Professional Boundaries and Not Being Douchebags"

\-- <http://forkbombr.net/apple-news-open-letter/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, just popped up on google news, not more than a rumor, but I thought to post it nevertheless.

EDIT: And this is a duplicate (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2234776>)

Any chance of getting a search function into HN?

<comment><USER4> <http://searchyc.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nevermind, I'll create one myself..

I always wanted a better feed view of HN. I guess grouped by automatically derived tags and instant live-update could improve on that matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trying to pursue many different directions at once? - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/donkey

<comment><USER2> Is this true, though?

The unstated assumption appears to be that doing any single thing can be highly parallelized and the window of opportunity is infinite. But reality is rarely that kind.

(1) Some things take 40 years of consistent mid-level effort. Even if you could quadruple your effort on it, it wouldn't get you there in 10 years. Building a family, for instance.

(2) The chronological window. We live in a unique time in history (as have people in every other time). It's an incredible time to be a web developer, for instance. Ten years from now I doubt there will be as many opportunities. In the 1950's, you had amazing opportunities at being a worker in heavy industry; in the 1960's you could play a valorized role in the space race. Nowadays neither is an option.

(3) Age window. Different ages lend themselves to different things. Sure, people in their sixties can run a marathon, but it's a hell of a lot easier to do it in your twenties. And unfortunately many of the things we might want to do are early on in life--people's career paths are fairly set by 30, and we've passed our physical peaks by 30. These aren't hard and fast rules, but they're both very real tendencies that you've got to account for in managing your life plans.

(4) Some things actively conflict in more than just competing for your time and dedication. It's impossible to have an undergraduate experience that is both set in a large Southern state university centered around sports and a small private liberal arts college in New England.

Multitasking to the point of constant stress can lead only to disaster, of course. The solution isn't to pretend that you'll eventually get to do everything you want but instead to choose carefully what you want most and then do it well.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

I'd like to expand more on (2), timing is incredibly important for technology- based ideas. An idea that is ahead of its time or too late could fail just for that reason.

Let's recount the numerous attempts at tablet computing since the Newton in the early 90s to the iPad just a couple of years ago. Timing and the state of technology in time is important.

Sometimes a new technology comes around and threatens to disrupt everything, like Bitcoin. If you have an amazing idea that capitalizes on this momentum, now is the time to execute—not 10 years from now when the Bitcoin economy has been banned and destroyed or matured and stabilized (one can dream). This is the same way that mobile applications were an incredible opportunity in the iPhone age of Smart Phones, but much less so today.

Ask yourself: What is the ideal time window for your idea? Though some ideas are always good, given the right uncompetitive conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OK, I had to laugh at this one. First off, I have a huge amount of respect for Mr. Sivers; he's one of the few advice-peddlers in the startup world that I think is probably worth listening to most of the time.

But this is quite the opposite of long-term thinking.

(Except, maybe, in the startup world, where long-term often seems to mean, "next year".)

Focusing on just one thing at a time for a few years means leaving it entirely behind when you're done with it; it means not thinking about other things in the meantime; it means ignoring the possibility that, in 10 years' time, the three projects that you're juggling simultaneously could tie together in a really neat (and maybe profitable) way.

Maybe some people are doing lots of things at once because they feel like they have to hurry, and that could indicate really short-term thinking; but slowing down to a rate of one thing every few years is, at best, near-term thinking.

I've spent the last three years building a really tiny business because, one day, I intend to build an empire.

</comment><comment><USER5> This only applies when the opportunities you want pursue will still be available when you have time to pursue them.

Sometimes that's not the case, and you simply have to give up on one to pursue another.

<comment><USER6> I think that people under-estimate their ability to multi-task!

<comment><USER7> While some/many/most people may under-estimate how well they could multi-task, a lot of people over-estimate how well they actually do multi-task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Or you can do the human thing. Grab the water, move it next to the food, and enjoy them together. While you're at it, you can even pay someone to take the donkey to market and trade him for a case of scotch. That's multitasking!

</comment><comment><USER9> I can definitely relate to this.

I've been trying to push the related "you can have everything you want to have, just not all at once" ideology into my subconscious. It's still so easy to forget. Projects get dropped for more exciting ones. And I know you have to keep telling yourself to just hold off and be patient.

This is a great reminder, very well written.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm just a university student coming back from a year of work. My ambition and passion is hampering myself; I love to program, I love computer science, I love the web, I love the world. There's nothing I don't want to do - but I sincerely feel the lack of discipline in this world full of opportunities.

How can you focus on one single thing when you want to do them all and when you see that everything is connected and you don't have the necessary experience yet?

I've ended up in an infinite loop. Jumping from task to task. Help - I need a breakpoint.

<comment><USER11> I know this exact feeling; in fact I'm in the same position having just finished a year of work before going back to university.

I've got more ideas and interests I want to pursue _right now_ than I have time in the day. I also can't imagine going back to being an employee after having this realisation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very good advice. Thank you! I do the donkey thing a lot, without realizing I was the donkey.

</comment><comment><USER13> Da Vinci didn't spend much time in any given direction. What I see Da Vinci doing is relating what he's learning to what he already knows.</comment>


RaspberryPi Home Automation in Enterprise Starship - <AUTHOR> http://www.raspberrypi.org/home-automation-for-your-enterprise-class-starship/

<comment><USER2> Nice UI. Code looks like Qt. Hopefully, he'll add pocketsphinx speech detection and Majel Barrett's voice recordings too!</comment>


Deploy your Node.js apps for free—Duostack is now in public beta - <AUTHOR> http://blog.duostack.com/post/5128347496/public-beta-launch

<comment><USER2> Congrats to the Duostack guys! I was lucky enough to co-work with them while they were in Pittsburgh working on their previous startup (we were both in the Alphalab incubator). They have a lot of experience and I know will be very successful with this venture.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm liking the new site. The old site's grey and black made it seem very enterprisey, but now the blue and textures and such give it a much "younger" feel to it. As you know, the web (in general) is blue...

</comment><comment><USER4> The service is pretty slick, and it's nice to have a 'true' open beta without any coupons & whatnot needed.

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome! Can't wait to try it out :)</comment>


The motherhood trap - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/motherhood-trap

<comment><USER2> This is UK-focused: the news in the US seems to be at least a little better. Where there are 15% of women in the House of Commons, there are 20% in Congress. In the UK, 45% of female MPs were childless; in the US, it's 32%.

Here's a (very rough) breakdown:

Senate: 20 women (20%), 70% have children (2.07 average) House: 87 women (20%), 66% have children (2.42 average) Cabinet: 7 women (30%), 86% have children (2.33 average)

And just to instigate discussion:

Republicans: 29 women (10%), 72% have children (2.29 average) Democrat: 85 women (33%), 66% have children (2.38 average)</comment>