Happy 1.5B Unix Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/happy-15-billion-unix-seconds <comment><USER2> Just checking ...

        >>> import time
        >>> time.ctime(1500000000)
        'Fri Jul 14 03:40:00 2017'
        >>> time.ctime(1.5*2**30)
        'Thu Jan 14 08:25:36 2021'

So 1.5B in decimal will be in July 2017, whereas 3/2 times the computing billion, 2^30, will be in January 2021.</comment>


New Storybook addon to fetch real data easily - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ArrayKnight/storybook-addon-headless <comment><AUTHOR> Just created my first open source project to connect a Restful and/or GraphQL API or Headless CMS to your Storybook component library.

[https://storybook-addon-headless.netlify.com/](https://storybook-addon- headless.netlify.com/)

[https://medium.com/@arrayknight/how-to-get-real-data-into- st...](https://medium.com/@arrayknight/how-to-get-real-data-into- storybook-8915f5371b6)</comment>


Finishing a Year of College in 10 Weeks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MarkEstefanos/finishing-a-year-of-college-in-10-weeks-210f1536cdb3 <comment><USER2> Interesting idea. I think the #1 issue with this approach is the time it takes for our minds to "adapt" to some of these problems. Especially with trickier computer science and mathematical concepts it often takes hours or days to suss out an answer to a problem.

(e.g. I had a professor in college who would assign four problems for homework. I would have to work on each problem for some hours, take a walk, eat dinner, work on the problem some more, take another walk, sleep a night, and the next morning I would have the answer. Then I would move on to the next problem.)

Additionally, it often took me some time to fully grok a concept. Perhaps Mark is intelligent enough that he'll be able to pick up everything as it comes, but a lot of the concepts in computer science build on each other. It took me about three weeks to get my mind around object-oriented programming when I first learned it in high school.

I'm excited to see how this experiment goes and I wish Mark the best of luck. But I'll be amazed if he picks up two weeks worth of CS in a day without giving those concepts time to sink in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mark here, thanks for the comments! I think my best bet on that front is to switch gears if I get stuck on a problem. So long as I'm able to make headway on some of the material at a given moment, then I should be able to keep pace. I suspect the basics electronics and statistics courses will save me on that front.

When it comes to grokking difficult concepts, I can often grasp an idea at a basic level rather quickly, but it can take me up to months before I'm able to realize all the implications of it. Also, I've noticed the rate at which I grasp things is very dependent on how well it's taught. If a concept is taught well I can leverage it very quickly, but if I have to spend hours disentangling a concept I often don't end up able to leverage it until months later when my subconscious has had time to make sense of the idea.

<comment><USER3> Hi Mark, how are you going to pull this off while going to school full time? Or are you taking some leave as well?</comment></comment></comment>


Create a payment form in a click. - <AUTHOR> http://www.persollo.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello!

I am 16 years old guy from Donetsk, Ukraine. Yep, we have war here.

To collect payments now you have to create personal website and integrate api there or send your card/PayPal number to customer.

I am working on service, where regular people can create a payment form in a click and get simple link to it. Collect donations, sell stuff in social networks or send invoices right to customer. Do everything you want with it.

I've created prototype for tests and feedback. Feel free to try it! persollo.com</comment>


Pirate Bay Founder Released From Solitary Confinement  - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-released-from-solitary-confinement-121209/

<comment><AUTHOR> Solitary confinement... What kind of justice system still considers this kind of punishment a valid form of reformation. Heres an insightful article by The NewYorker with regards to the ethical implications of solitary confinement: [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all)

<comment><USER2> It's torture, there's no doubt about it. Especially when it goes on for more than a few days, then the psychological damage can become becomes permanent. In this case he was in there three months.

Many prisoners tortured this way become so psychologically fractured they can no longer defend themselves in court, such as the case of Jose Padilla, kept in solitary for years, and who went completely insane as a result.

Burning someone with hot irons leaves marks on the outside, but you can get over it. The damage done from solitary confinement doesn't go away.

Another article on the practice - [http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/03/2011371259...](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/03/201137125936219469.html)

Interestingly, at the time that was written a year and a half ago they stated "In Europe, solitary confinement has largely been abandoned, and it is widely viewed as a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of international human rights conventions".

And yet here is Sweden implementing this practice, recognized in Europe as torture, for someone accused of copyright infringement. Certainly not a violent crime.

<comment><USER3> I believe it's also harder on you if you're mentally ill, and so because the torture is likely to provoke or worsen mental illness, it becomes worse torture the longer it continues. To be fair, most if not all tortures have this quality.

The Ashley Smith case up in Canada is also terrible - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Smith_inquest> \- the girl killed herself in solitary while guards watched as they were instructed not to intervene. It would be nice if there were a point where prisoners were guaranteed transfer to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.

<comment><USER2> Wow, thanks for that link, that is amazing. So a child is flinging crabapples (which are tiny) at the mailman. Rather than ignore it or tell her to cut it out, she is arrested and put in the system to teach her a lesson where she is brutalized with progressive increasing severity, making her more and more angry, and misbehave more and more, getting charged with trespassing and creating a disturbance. Finally, with her never having committed anything that most rational people would consider serious crimes, she turns 18 and they lock her in adult prison in solitary confinement where she kills herself in despair.

According to <http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/out_of_control/> the crab apple flinging charge ended up resulting in a total of 4 years hard prison time.

The methods used against this child by the Canadian authorities are quite interesting. In this article we find that they would transfer her from place to place wearing a black hood, CIA torture/Guatanamo Bay style, and drugged with powerful sedatives administered without oversight of competent medical authorities: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/10/31/ashley- smith-...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/10/31/ashley-smith- inquest-scope.html). From this it is clear her abuse was not something that just happened at a single rogue facility.

If you beat your dog everyday and it finally bites you, is it a bad dog? Is the dog mentally ill?

I see she was adopted and is obviously from her appearance an indigenous first nations child. It's quite common for these children to be kidnapped from their nations by the canadian government in order to be resocialized away from their culture under the guise of protecting them and the premise that first nations people are incapable of caring for their own children and exposure to their own culture is a form of abuse. It's a racist and genocidal policy the goal of which is to exterminate their ethnicity and culture. This has been called "The Lost Generation". [http://www.akha.org/content/missiondocuments/thelostgenerati...](http://www.akha.org/content/missiondocuments/thelostgeneration.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's just tragic isn't it... the video is hard to watch.

I'd say it's a dog with a spiritual dis-ease that did something violent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Torrentfreak isn't exactly an unbiased source in this case.

While has has been held under restrictions it is not like he has been totally cut off from the world, he has still met some other people, gotten mail, been able to buy snacks etc.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10pivx/pirate_ba...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10pivx/pirate_bay_founder_remains_locked_up_without/c6fkuji) Offers a pretty good overview of how the Swedish judicial system works.

The key reasons why he has been held in restrictive custody are as follows (From the link above):

There is a risk the suspect destroys evidence or in other ways affect the investigation.

There is risk that the person might flee or avoid a future trial.

<comment><USER2> The source of claims he has been kept in solitary has been his mother Kristina Svartholm since the prison officials have refused comment regarding his care.

On the particular issue of whether or not solitary confinement is now used in Sweden, here is a newspaper in Sweden confirming they currently do use solitary confinement for some prisoners in Sweden:

<http://www.thelocal.se/1927/20050822/>

This article quotes Jerzy Sarnecki, a Swedish expert in criminology who teaches at Stockholm University. He states, "Solitary confinement worsens the quality of criminal care. Long term isolation is powerfully destructive. When you consider that many of those who are confined have psychological problems, the effects can be devastating."

The article also quotes Christer Karlsson, Swedish and chairman of the help organisation Criminals Return Into Society, saying solitary confinement "can break prisoners down, physically and psychologically".

The article also notes that Swedish prisons have more hardened criminals as prisoners than before. Thus perhaps one would argue that solitary confinement for non-violent prisoners protects them from being harmed by the hardened criminals. Perhaps the vast majority of prisoners in Sweden are dangerous violent serial killers and rapists and thus it is more economical to put the small number of harmless non-violent prisoners in solitary confinement to protect them rather than put the violent offenders in solitary to protect others from them. It has yet to be demonstrated that this is the case though, that the majority of prisoners are violent and can not be managed. In addition, it is known that solitary confinement is damaging and is a form of torture, thus to force torture upon someone in order to protect them seems counterproductive. Torture as therapy is not an established or recognized way of protecting people, and runs counter to what is known about torture.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't call his mother an unbiased source either to be honest but you have very valid points otherwise.

Solidarity confinement is not something I wish upon anyone but it is not like he is in total separation from everyone, he has had access to both "fan" mail and visits from his mother and lawyers.

Torture is indeed not therapy and should of course not be used. As for the less serious crime, If memory serves there are different types of prisons in Sweden and there is a great degree of separation between minor and very serious crime but don't quote me on that - I am not entirely up to date on the penal system in my home country.

That said, He obviously is a flight risk and that must be taken into account when discussing the issue.

<comment><USER2> Do you have a source regarding the fan mail and visits from his mother other than the sources that you have stated you will not accept because you believe there is bias?

Here is a Swedish press report covering her attempts early on to see her son, which were denied.

[http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/misstankt-for- dataintrang-f...](http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/misstankt-for-dataintrang- far-inte-traffa-sin-mamma)

This article covers more on her getting the run around.

[http://debatt.svt.se/2012/09/18/hanteringen-av-gottfrid- har-...](http://debatt.svt.se/2012/09/18/hanteringen-av-gottfrid-har-fatt-mig- att-tappa-fortroendet-for-ud/)

She has since reported that she saw was permitted to see him once, on September 18.

On November 10th she reported she was allowed to see him one hour a week, but some weeks it is cancelled because the guard that must listen to the conversation is unavailable.

> "I am allowed to visit him for an hour every week but this week the police > men that must go with me to listen to our conversations didn't have time to > do so," says Kristina.

> "This has happened before. Of course the uncertainty this creates makes his > time in isolation more difficult. This is of course also obvious both to the > police and to the prosecutor."

[http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-arrested-again- on...](http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-arrested-again-on-suspicion- of-new-hacking-fraud-offenses-121110/)

The source here is torrentfreak and his mother, which you have suggested are lying and misrepresenting the situation. Strangely, there are no other sources I can find detailing how often and for how long she is allowed to visit. Given the widespread international interest in Sweden's abuse of human rights here, it is quite odd that there is a near blackout of reliable news on the case from the Swedish press. Since you live there perhaps you have some insights into why this would be so?

Do you agree that she was seeing him at most 1 hr a week, or do you have reason to believe it was more often?

Do you assert that someone held in solitary with the exception of a 1 hr visit each week is not really being held in solitary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I do believe his confinement is somewhat unethical ... I am still quite intrigued that technical people somehow support the likes of KimDotCom or this guy.

I've never used megaupload or piratebay for anything other than ripping off companies of content they own and have right to hold a monopoly over. Every person I know does the same thing.

While I greatly appreciate and have benefitted from some of what they do I think the justice system is doing the right thing in giving these guys hell. I agree that it is inevitable that the monopolies will need to change their model but I see no problem w/ suing and fining the living hell out of people that try to bring them down illegally. A strong justice system that upholds the law is above and beyond the most important thing -- despite the inevitable inefficiencies it often introduces to a rapidly changing society.

<comment><USER6> > I've never used megaupload or piratebay for anything other than ripping off > companies of content they own and have right to hold a monopoly over. Every > person I know does the same thing.

Everyone, really?

Myself and many people I know actually do (also) use those services for legitimate purposes. In fact, when TPB got blocked by the larger ISPs in NL, the first times I was bothered by that was when I was linked to their blog (blocked) and when I was linked to a legal torrent of someone distributing some large data files (forget what) via TPB.

Another case in point, a significant part of MU's 25 petabyte that is being held, isn't infringing either.

I'm not saying these services aren't being used for illegitimate purposes, they obviously are. I just find it surprising that you, or anyone you know, has only ever used them for anything _but_ such purposes.

 _edit:_ while I'm here, I might as well point out that characterizing the confinement as "somewhat unethical" is kind of an understatement IMO.

<comment><USER7> But I am pretty sure you agree with the fact that majority of their traffic/links are directing to copyrighted material that they have no right to distribute anyways?

I am not against TPB. I think in most part they benefited good productions. If a movie is real good, enough people will still go to see it in the big screen and buy a br/dvd (production studios are limited with ways to trick people - did you notice how a trailer can be made of all good parts, 10 minutes worth, and then be a crappy movie afterwards?). I know plenty of people that love it because it saves them money on crappy movies (I am not sure if you can get refund for a movie ticket when you say "this movie sucks -- I want my money back!").

Said that, just because any company or business is doing something right while doing other evil things, LE will still go after them anyways. Simply put, you cannot setup a charity organization that feeds homeless, while selling drugs on the side, and ask LE to leave you alone, because some people love to donate for a good cause [charity].</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: what should I build - <AUTHOR>

Hello fellow HN users. I am addicted to this site. like I have formed some kind of a habbit or something.
I am learning to build websites frontend as well as back end.
I am familiar with php codeigniter, and slim framework. I know css fair enough, and use bootstrap and jquery mostly for front end.
I have made smaller apps which can send sms.
now I would like to ask you for some ideas. What should I develop.  I have thinked about it  a lot, but I can't think of anything that can add value to user.
so insights and helpful comments are welcome.
please forgive me for bad english. <comment><USER2> Well if you can't get enough hn, build something that lets you read this site faster, better, more thoroughly, etc. That shouldn't be too hard, right? ;)

You could add collapsible comments, or sortable comments. Rearrange the front page from a list to a tiled view. However you browse HN, make it better.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want to do something around ecommerce, this could be the big startup IDEA that you do!

[http://blog.uberstarter.com/planz-2-instagram- ecommerce/](http://blog.uberstarter.com/planz-2-instagram-ecommerce/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Build something you personally would find useful. If you find it useful someone else will.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't look for ideas, look for people that have a problem that they are willing to pay you to solve.

So, the question is "Ask HN: What is a problem you would pay for someone to solve."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you sir for wise words. I was looking at the problem in a different way.

I am posting this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have something you can build. @ me if your interested! (if you can't think of an idea)

</comment><comment><USER7> Scratch your own itch (solve your own problems).

</comment><comment><USER8> what is your goal? Build with a purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Goal is to learn some front end development and more User Interface and Human Interaction oriented design.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a mapping of HN usernames to well known people in tech? - <AUTHOR> I know many high profile developers participate on HN, and I often see people mention projects they've worked on which I've heard of or used before. While it can be nice to read a comment completely oblivious to who the author is, often extra context can add insight. A lot of the time the HN handle is non-obvious and even different from their GitHub username (if they have one). Is there something like a public list that shows some of the more seasoned voices and what their HN username is? <comment><USER2> I started making a spreadsheet of interesting folks but then realized it wasn't worth the effort. Some of the more famous folks (e.g. stevewoz, brianchesky) don't post any more after their initial activity years ago. And the ones who do (norvig, BrendanEich, alankay1) have names that are immediately noticeable, and I almost never read the name on a comment before reading the comment anyway.

edit: It's been more interesting tracking first announcements of products/Show HNs done by the creator of now-famous products/services, e.g. the oft-referred to Dropbox thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863), or Github Pages: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=402648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=402648)

</comment><comment><USER3> A good argument stands on its own. Who the maker of it is, is irrelevant.

<comment><USER4> This seems like it should be true but I don't think it actually is. It's very easy to frame up a plausible argument which is actually false, and inexperienced people do it all the time. The problem is that if the reader of the argument is also inexperienced, he will be unable to recognize the flaws in the argument.

For people like that, post author is an excellent heuristic.

<comment><USER5> > It's very easy to frame up a plausible argument which is actually false, and > inexperienced people do it all the time.

The problem is that experienced people do it too, though (hopefully) less often; so, if you get in the habit of trusting arguments more because of who has made them, then you will never have a chance of catching that mistake.

<comment><USER6> When you're "unable to recognize the flaws in the argument" you should make that "mistake."

If you're enough of an expert on a topic, I think you decide for yourself regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It happened recently that I saw someone insert their email in a comment and upon researching, I determined they are my arch-nemesis. Like not in just a business sense, I have fully committed my life's work to undoing this guy's daily work. And I hate that he's gotten rich doing it.

I'm not going to call him out but it hurts low-income citizens across the country so knock it off, asshole!

</comment><comment> et-al A tool like this might be useful, but I'd be concerned with the potential of hero worship and arguments from authority.

<comment><USER8> Linus Torvalds: "That's a cool show HN and all, but it's actually garbage and complete s---, and the creators of it should be thrown in prison"

Worshippers: "Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, it _is_ garbage! Grab your pitchforks!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Search for CEOs on HN: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ceo%20of%20*%20here&sort=byPop...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ceo%20of%20*%20here&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

</comment><comment><USER10> I would like a mapping from my username to a well known person in tech :)

</comment><comment><USER11> This could be a pretty cool Chrome extension!

<comment><USER12> I have toyed with the idea of an extension that lets you keep notes / tags / custom color by username with the idea of allowing the memory deficient to figure out the history of comments with that user.

I suppose the USENET kill file would inevitability be the results :(

<comment><USER13> You mean something like this: [http://imgur.com/1cxzLzD](http://imgur.com/1cxzLzD)

It's a (somewhat recent?) addition to the Hacker News Enhancement Suite chrome extension.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that looks like part of what I want. I'll have to take a look, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If they want, they can use keybase.io for that. All my digital identities are linked up through that, but of course, I'm not a "well known" person in Tech.

</comment><comment><USER15> I hope not.

If a person wants to comment anonymously, or keep their HN account separate from the rest of their online activities, that's up to them.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, but I think there are a lot of somewhat well known figures in tech who haves accounts on here and they are trying to be anonymous, but also newer HN members may not know who they are. I don't feel like we need this mapping but I could see how some might find it useful.

We DEFINITELY don't need people's account to be de-anonymized who are trying to remain anonymous

<comment><USER5> > Agreed, but I think there are a lot of somewhat well known figures in tech > who haves accounts on here and they are trying to be anonymous, but also > newer HN members may not know who they are.

I think that I don't understand this post. This sentence seems to start by saying that we should respect people's desire to be anonymous, but to conclude by saying that it's a problem when … we don't know who they are?

<comment><USER17> A lot of famous people openly post about who they are but they have non- obvious nicks, so it is hard to remember.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Turn off the clock on your menu bar - <AUTHOR> http://scottkle.in/turn-off-the-clock-on-your-menu-bar

<comment><USER2> I'm sure this idea will help some people become more productive. Not people like me, though. Maybe I just get easily distracted, but I make small deals with myself when working through a mundane (but important) task.

Deals like:

\- "15 more minutes and you can get a coffee".

\- "You can't look at HN until 4pm".

\- You get the picture.

A clock helps immensely with this. Sometimes a task feels like it's taking forever, but it's only been half an hour.

<comment><USER3> For those that have a hard time keeping commitments like yours: "You can't look at HN until 4pm"

StayFocusd for Chrome is incredible.

It has boosted my productivity tenfold.

<comment><USER4> Damn! thats exactly what i needed. The only problem i have with it is that realizing how much I needed something like it makes me feel dumb hehe

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sadly enough, I did this when I worked at $BIG_CO, not so much because it improved my productivity, but because the day was excruciatingly long with a clock staring at me in the corner. It helped a lot.

</comment><comment><USER6> Without a clock in sight ... I'd just spend the _entire_ day on Hacker News and not even realize it.

</comment><comment><USER7> The top portion is 309 words. The portion after the tl;dr heading is 386 words.

(used cat | wc to do the word count).

<comment><USER8> This is not the first time I see someone using "tl;dr" as "wall of text incoming".

Think of it as "this is what you'll say when you see what's below this mark."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I actually use the clock for something other than time: it tells me when the computer is bogged down/frozen. If the seconds stop updating, it means something else is sucking the resources (usually some loop in the latest build of whatever app I'm working on).

<comment><USER10> I keep a CPU monitor in my menu bar for that purpose. If the CPU monitor stops updating then I can be confident that I'm really screwed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I went half-way with this and went to the analog clock. It's so ridiculously tiny and hard to read that it takes effort.. so I usually don't bother. But it's still there to click on and see the time if I need to check (the time is added to the usual date item in the drop down if you go to analog).

<comment><USER12> Good to know. I'm giving this a shot. (I already tried removing it entirely for a few weeks and found that it was too much for me.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something that I would add to that is have someone you trust change your Facebook password (for the day, the week, until the weekends, however long). If you're like me, it's not uncommon to log in ~5-10 times a day just for a quick check. Doing so interrupts your flow the same way diverting your attention to an upcoming event does. However, when you get in the habit of not even being able to check it, that distraction disappears from your life.

<comment><USER14> Dude seriously... do you really get someone to change your Facebook password?

<comment><USER15> If he does? More power to him. Clearly, he sees that he's more productive when that's taken away from him, and he's not letting it distract him from more important things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, I've now been trying this for I don't know how long (yeah, I mean that literally) with interesting results.

I hid the clock on my taskbar, put masking tape over the clock on my landline phone, and put my mobile phone face down and out of my reach. Then I set up my scheduling program to remind me when it's lunch or home time.

But my mind! That little part of my consciousness where it used to keep the time, it doesn't know what to put there any more. And it's freaking out about it, too.

I never realised before this how much mental effort was dedicated to keeping track of time. Now that I know, I'm definitely not going back. I shouldn't be doing anything my computer can do as well as or better than me. That includes keeping track of time.

</comment><comment><USER17> I agree with his approach with the clock, however I can't afford to be completely lost time–wise, so I use an analogue representation of the time in the menubar that is useful for finding out the current _relative_ time (I'm pretty sure this is the only reason why it's there, since there is no way to tell time accurately from it). Screenshot: <http://cl.ly/2W1L31370I380i130I0K>

</comment><comment><USER18> Dude likes not having a clock, writes a TL;DR longer than article explaining the same.

TL;DR It was an interesting exposition on the modern Man's relationship to time an the surprising effect of detachment that results a Vegas-like visual detemporalization of the visual environment, followed by further clarification that exhibited a clear lack of understanding of proper summarization techniques appropriate for an Internet audience.

</comment><comment><USER19> Recently (and I suspect, at all times in the past) I've had trouble focusing with even one epileptic app throbbing in the background, or even redrawing some pointless animation or status update. For me one of the criteria for a desktop program is whether it can be prevented from audibly or visually disturbing me with its desires.

It may occasionally mean an impatient peer being upset at the lack of a speedy reply, but my thoughts are guaranteed to be uninterrupted unless the conversation is of sufficient importance to hold my attention after returning to real work.

The only 'active' notifications I have are mail and calendar, on my phone, which can be silenced temporarily with a single swipe. On the desktop, the only notification is Adium's small, static icon in the menu bar, which raises its wings to politely remind me of some ongoing IM.

I'd suggest disabling that almost pointless thermal monitor and the many similarly looking distracting icons long before I'd hide the clock, as it's the only reliable gauge of progress throughout the day.

</comment><comment><USER20> I use XMonad as my tiling window manager, and I make judicious use of the "toggle struts" shortcut. When 'docks' set themselves up at the edges of the screen they define 'struts' (which are the areas that they intend to use) so that normal windows can avoid them. Then they are toggled off in XMonad, the tiling manager reclaims that portion of the screen, allowing the currently displayed windows to cover the docks. This allows me to keep docks that are informative, but reclaim that desktop space or just axe the visual clutter with a Super+b ('Super' being the Windows or Apple key under Linux).

<comment><USER21> Discovered the Avoid Struts toggle from your comment. Thanks. Been wanting this since I switched to xmonad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't have the clock turned off, but all of the other cognitive distractions were removed long ago, particularly notifications of any sort. Sometimes I forget how distracting that stuff was because it's the first thing I do when I set up any new computer. For me, the clock isn't a distraction, but a popup for any of the million things that can happen on the intertubes is ridiculously distracting.

If I'm in focus mode, I'll also quit Adium, fire up think, and use Vitamin-R to do a pomodoro session. Works well for me, YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER23> Totally agree. I did this about a year or so ago and it's great. For me I was always looking at the clock in work, how long before lunch, how long before home time, etc. It was quite distracting.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some time ago I took a few steps to remove all unnecessary clutter:

\- replace all desktop icons and docks with Launchy

\- remove all system taskbar icons

\- activate the GMail labs "unread counter on favicon"

\- trim down the browser to its bare basics

I'm quite pleased with the results: <http://oi53.tinypic.com/nmc4nr.jpg>

It makes my brain happy.

<comment><USER24> How did you remove the title from GMail so that only the favicon displays?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very good advice. Giving it a try.

I read recently that stop bad habits, eliminate the triggers for the habits. These are the things in your brain strongly associated with the undesirable behavior. Seeing that clock could be one such trigger for many people.

Got rid of gmail notifier and also removed my last name from my user name for a little less clutter on the toolbar. Turns out I knew what it was anyway.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm giving this a go, though I must admit it feels weird not to have the time to glance up to - so I'm not sure how long I'll last.

Perhaps all those souls brave/stupid enough to try this should all meet back up in a week to discuss? :) We can share stories of missed appointments and accidental late nights into the early hours, before we realize the time and disappear off to bed cursing the OP :D

</comment><comment><USER27> I started heading in this direction a few years ago, and now I'm running dwm (<http://dwm.suckless.org>), no menu bar, with a couple of scripts that I have to manually run to see things like the time or my unread email count. It did take some getting used to, but I'm definitely more productive this way.

<comment><USER20> Heh. I was just thinking about creating something similar and calling it 'status,' but apparently Ubuntu has gobbled up that very generic command name for upstart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like this idea. I have a 3 monitor setup(across 2 computers) using Synergy. This affords me the luxury(distraction) of always having my IM clients/browsers open. I've taken to using a focus/fader application so that when I'm not on the screen, only my coding monitor is focused. It helps a lot. I'll try killing the clocks next!

</comment><comment><USER29> The two things in my mac menubar i _definitely_ know i can do without are the two things i can't remove:

\- Searchlight icon

\- TimeMachine icon

Everything else in my menubar is either removable myself, or indicate state about my machine that i need to track (input mode, wireless connection, volume level and the like)

<comment><USER30> System Preferences > (System Row) Time Machine > Uncheck "Show time machine status in Menu Bar"

<comment><USER31> More to the point, every icon in the menu bar except for Spotlight can be turned on or off in the System Preferences. If hunting down those checkboxes is too much work, you can also Command-click on any of Apple's icons [0] and drag them out of the menu bar. This also allows you to rearrange icons. (That works also for buttons on toolbars.)

Super User has a hacky way of disabling the Spotlight icon: [http://superuser.com/questions/32593/remove-spotlight- icon-f...](http://superuser.com/questions/32593/remove-spotlight-icon-from- the-menu-bar)

[0] I only have one third-party icon in my menu bar (Dropbox) and it can't be dragged out of the menu bar. I don't know whether that's the case for all third-party icons.

<comment><USER32> _I only have one third-party icon in my menu bar (Dropbox) and it can't be dragged out of the menu bar. I don't know whether that's the case for all third-party icons._

It is. Apple has their own private API for their "menu extras" and actually loads them into the windowserver itself. It's a major PITA to support one of these things, so only a very small number of third party apps choose to do it.

The alternative public API is basically just a tiny window for each item sitting in the menubar. There's no technical reason why Apple couldn't implement the same kind of command-drag behaviour, but thus far they haven't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I use gkrellm in the top right corner, and a small vertical panel in the lower right corner that has a clock and notification, nothing else.

I find that tucking the clock away in this place where my eyes scan to last causes me to look at it very little except when I want to.

</comment><comment> wilbur-d I no longer even use a menu bar at all. It took a few days to get used to it but I don't miss it.

</comment><comment><USER34> At an internship two summers ago, I found the last few hours on Fridays took forever, so I started covering the clock the corner of my screen with a post- it note with a smiley face on it. It helped quite a bit. :-)

</comment><comment><USER35> Because I have my bar set to auto hide I totally forget about time when I work. Alarm reminders are great to remind you that you should take a break :)

</comment><comment><USER36> I need to see my clock so I can spend at least a good hour dreading the next scheduled conference call!</comment>


Show HN: Screenr – Automated Workflow for Your Email - <AUTHOR> https://www.feval.ca/posts/screenr/ <comment><USER2> Sort of related, this type of thing isn't difficult if you use Thunderbird. All your email is stored in a big sqlite file. You can query with all the power of SQL.

A few things I've done: use it to ignore my email except for a small number of senders while I'm working, viewing only starred messages the majority of the day, and copying email threads as html documents inside a project folder. There's something nice about being able to look at an "email inbox" that's a plain html page with six messages.

<comment><USER3> Oh I've been looking for something like this forever. I'm ok with SQL.

My idea is to be able to manage my mail through thunderbird but also have the ability to hook in with python (and SQL is the way)

Do you have a write up or some examples anywhere (I'm trying to learn Godot at the moment so any shortcuts would be so useful!) ?

<comment><USER2> I haven't written anything up (maybe I should) but it's easy enough.

In Thunderbird, go to Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory.

That opens your profile directory. In there is a file global-messages- db.sqlite that holds all your messages. Treat that as read-only. If it does get messed up for some reason, you can delete it. It's an index that will get rebuilt.

If you close Thunderbird, you can open the db in sqlitebrowser to view the tables. Some tables I've used for queries:

folderLocations - tells you the id of each email folder

messages - metadata for each message

messagesText_content - subject, recipients, body of each email message

conversations - info about your email threads that can be matched with data in messages to retrieve full email threads

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use sanebox.com for approximately this behavior, and I'm happy with their service.

Sanebox works by logging into my mail server, not replacing it. I have three "send" addresses, and I've learned the hard way that I must authenticate through the SMTP server that goes with the address I'm claiming, or risk being classified as spam by my recipients' email servers. Of course, various email programs allow one to assert any return address one likes. It is a mistake to use this feature. Particularly if one is more tech savvy than one's recipients, it is all too easy to blame them when your mail goes to spam. No, it's your fault. I was that idiot.

Similarly, Qualtrics will send out surveys for colleges and businesses, but won't use the business domain without extra steps. Those surveys don't get read. My college was making this mistake, till I pointed it out. Qualtrics has clear instructions on fixing this.

So Hey is clearly not ready for market, if it can't support its users correctly using business domains for business matters. This isn't a matter of waiting till one's employer signs on with Hey; anyone using Hey who is employed is going to hit this issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing, didn't know it, seems interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been looking into this type of system with a colleague for a few years now. We have been working on a concept of an attention based email network which is essentially a way to map our natural limited attention to the digital world.

This type of system requires a mindset that involves multiple parties, not just the receiver, so it becomes a non-trival exercise when considering the attention of multiple parties using multiple email systems.

In a practical sense, we looked at adding a multi party reputation system to the email standard which would involve adding meta data to emails to indicate the "trust" level between the recipients. There are clearly quite a number of technical challenges for this type of system. Fastmail seems to be doing some interesting work in this space.

[https://fastmail.blog/2015/12/17/the-endless-battle- against-...](https://fastmail.blog/2015/12/17/the-endless-battle-against- spam/) [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-2.1.1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-2.1.1)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to see this functionality implemented by mailserver tech like dovecot.

<comment><USER7> Couldn't this be done by Sieve filters already?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recently looked around to see if this was possible in gmail and found the following: [https://github.com/garyholeman/CreateGmailFilters](https://github.com/garyholeman/CreateGmailFilters)

It has some limitations but mostly it was useful to learn that google app scripts are a thing.

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks interesting. How does it handle spoofed email addresses?

A feature I'd like along with this (although I realise this breaks the paradigm of only accepting email you actively want) would be to let unwanted people email me provided they completed a certain amount of mechanical Turk effort up to a suitable standard (ie you'd have a handful of known good values interspersed and see that they gave the expected scores). For some it could be a direct earner of a very modest but for me it would be directly useful for various ML projects. If you had a really inflated self image, you could have those you really didn't like get a higher target (whether that was communicated would be a interesting point)

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't, however it's less of a security related thing than a sorting filter. I haven't received a spoofed email in a while so the need is not as high.

Re: your mechanical turk idea, my email provider actually has something like that: [https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/1144Docs/BoxTrapper](https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/1144Docs/BoxTrapper) \- however there are so many use-cases where I think this would block some email I actually want (like my kid's school, my MD, ...) that I never dared doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice. Can you add a small example to better understand how it works?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I added some

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks interesting does it reclassify previously received email or only incoming once I classify a sender?

<comment><AUTHOR> It reclassifies email afterwards, you just have to move it the same way you would for the original classification.

It also moves all email from that sender that has been classified previously as well ; although it will not move the mail in folders for which you use a "screening folder" (i.e. if you use an intermediary folder used only to tell Screenr where to classify email) by design. The reason is that I wanted to be able to allow a behavior where mail gets classified as a best guess, but you can move email manually if need be. The best example is the "papertrail" folder I'm using: it receives all the order confirmation, invoices and such automatically, but sometimes I'm also putting similar emails my wife is forwarding me ; but I don't want screenr to classify her as papertrail - so I use a "Classify in papertrail" folder which is only used for me to tell the tool where it should land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shameless plug: I built [https://autosnoozer.com](https://autosnoozer.com) to bring batch processing to my Inbox handling

</comment><comment><USER13> Would there by any easy way to make this work in Gmail with filters?

<comment><AUTHOR> As in replicate the behaviour? I think you can get close but setting the filters is cumbersome. Gmail exposes imap i believe, so it should work right out</comment></comment>


Apple threatens to remove music if bands don't agree to new royalty policy - <AUTHOR> http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/06/report-apple-threatens-to-remove-bands-music-from-itunes-if-they-dont-agree-to-new-royalty-policy/

<comment><USER2> As I mentioned in the other thread re: Beggar's Group, the 3 months free streaming is likely to represent a significant financial hardship to indie labels. Since everyone with an iTunes account gets free Apple Music for 3 months, you can expect that sales on iTunes will plummet during that period.

While the major labels can weather the resulting loss of revenue, losing a significant number of your sales from the world's largest music store for a full _quarter_ is likely to put some indie labels and artists in a position where they're unable to pay their bills. Apple Music's impact will likely ripple out to sales at other stores, too, which will worsen its impact on revenues. And while artists can at least fall back on touring revenue, small labels don't have that option.

I can see why labels and artists are upset. Apple Music's free trial may very well have a ruinous effect on their livelihoods.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry, but if you can't survive, as a band, for 3 months by playing live gigs or temporarily getting a different job, then maybe....it was never meant to be?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to listen to Taylor Swift and Jason Derulo all day long either, but if some indie band is _so obscure and hip_ that it can't pay the bills for 3 months....I dunno....maybe they were never that good?

No band _deserves_ some kind of regular income. Nobody does, in our society.

If I listen to your stuff for 3 months, for free, and _like it_ , why would I stop after my trial expires? Heck, with a free trial, I'm more likely to discover your hip obscure super-cool indie band and more likely to support them later.

<comment><USER2> > _I 'm sorry, but if you can't survive, as a band, for 3 months by playing > live gigs or temporarily getting a different job, then maybe....it was never > meant to be?_

I specifically mentioned that as an option - hence why this is a much larger concern for labels than artists (though I'm sure it's a concern for artists as well). Also keep in mind that a live tour takes months to pull together. Apple hasn't given artists that sort of lead time.

And all of that having been said: in what other industry is it normal to say, "Well, if you can't handle a full _quarter_ of decimated revenues dropped on your head with weeks notice it was never meant to be"? Many SMBs couldn't weather that storm. That doesn't mean they're fundamentally broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like every new apple venture has a hidden "fuck you" wrapped in it somewhere, for someone.

<comment><USER5> If all you have is an Apple hate hammer then everything looks like a nail.

<comment><USER6> Or maybe Apple just does a lot of things that are negative for everyone but Apple, and all of the profit they steal from other people they keep in cash and don't even reinvest, leading to the largest misappropriation of resources in human history.

<comment><USER5> It must be painful to see a company you hate so much loved by so many users who just can't wait to get their hands on the next product. Better to pretend they are all tricked by marketing. You probably think the world would be freer if the government banned people from buying Apple products.

<comment><USER7> That is not a valid argument. The happy apple fans are _consumers_ , they are not the ones losing their livelihood here, they are just buying a better quality product. I guess meesterdude is not talking about them, he is talking about those people whose livelihood is being affected. It is also true that Apple is sitting on huge amounts of cash, most of it in tax havens, so forthefuture is right too.

You can love Apple products while still hate their heavy handed business style.

<comment><USER5> > It is also true that Apple is sitting on huge amounts of cash

While it may be appealing to you to hamstring Apple with some foolish law, that law would have to apply to all companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One other big point that iOS users don't have the same freedom of choosing other merchants to purchase music on their devices. Purchases made and downloads made in iOS from 3rd party services are not added to your music library to play, unlike Android where any app can add music to your library and any app can play it. So, any band/label deciding to remove their music from iTunes because they'd rather not forgo a full quarter of revenue will lose out on a good percentage of iOS users.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, this is a new development. I will state that my personal experience is different than what is claimed here. With the distribution service I pay for / use, Apple Music was an "opt-in" service. My music can be on iTunes or Apple Music, or both. Different releases can be categorized as I see fit, at least for now.

So, I'm not sure the claim of "will remove bands" is entirely accurate. They might remove Brian Jonestown Massacre, but I'd like to have a good look at the contract they have with their record label, and the label has with Apple, before I expand such a claim. Maybe Newcombe doesn't know that it's a bargaining position between his label (or affiliated labels) and Apple...because while he's obviously really, really mad, I'm unsure if I believe his situation is entirely representative of the entire sphere of musicians out to make some money in this arena. In other words, maybe he signed a bad contract and should go yell at the mirror for a little while just to be fair.

While I'm on this soapbox, I'd also like to point out that unless Newcombe has a contractual obligation to his label to have music on iTunes, then pack up and leave. Go join TIDAL on principle. Or, even more to his point about wanting to get paid, go exclusively with Bandcamp and set the sales price to $50 per track. Take a stand, show the world - _actions speak louder than words_ is an old but good expression for cases like this.

Again, unless the contract he/they signed handcuffs their decision making, there are a lot of options other than ranting at a behemoth retailer with a significant market share. Do I work for Apple or even use iTunes personally? Nope. Do I like getting pennies from Spotify versus some pretty decent revenue from iTunes or Amazon? Not particularly. I've marched down my own path as an independent who doesn't make a living in music, mostly because I've never wanted to try making a living in music. It's a ridiculously hard industry, and I dislike living in poverty quite a bit.

It will be interesting to see what the 'investigations' turn up regarding Apple's negotiating tactics and behavior during this process. Many people understand they're sitting on a giant pile of off-shore, un-taxed cash...and believe the company could pay artists / labels / meat popsicles like me for every listener's 3 months worth of royalties without a catastrophic impact to its business. But, like with those billions of dollars, I'm also aware that Apple's mentality seems to be "We don't want to pay, and if we don't have to pay, we won't pay." I don't like it, but I'm not remotely surprised by it.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's simple. Apple wants to launch with a credible claim of "all iTunes music" in their service. So they really really want you to agree, and probably make block deals with labels (who generally control streaming rights).

A band like Brian Jonestown Massacre might control all or most of their streaming rights. The band is only important to Apple if they are helping Apple's marketing for Apple Music.

It's heavy handed, but it's typical Apple: unless you are a huge partner, you have to sign up for the whole enchilada, no piecemealy crap. Hanging back a few months to ride the future success of Apple Music's marketing plan without being a part of the marketing effort? That doesn't really seem fair either.

Apple has no time for hesitant minor partners. You're either in, or you're out.

Unfortunate comparisons to George Bush and Heidi Klum are unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER10> if ownership is measured by the ability to do what you want with something, than Apple almost owns music.

does this constitute a basis for suing Apple under anti-monopoly laws?

<comment><USER11> Ownership isn't measured by the ability to do what you want with something. It's the exclusive right to do what you want with something.

Apple's music licenses do not prevent artists or labels from selling their music elsewhere.

What Apple does own is its own platform.

<comment><USER10> Compare this with Microsoft and the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. Certainly, the MS case sounds like a joke when compared against this. And MS lost...

To me, this Apple story is clearly an abuse of dominant market position.

<comment><USER11> So you are asserting that Apple isn't facing serious competition in the music space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As far as I'm concerned - the man who owns the press controls the price books are sold for - this analogy is directly applicable here.

</comment><comment><USER13> If everyone says no they'll have nothing in the iTunes store

Seems simple enough.

<comment><USER14> They already have a 'yes' from the big labels. The big labels probably look at 3 months of no revenue from Apple streaming as a storm they can weather on the way to bigger profits from Apple Music in the long term. Smaller labels are more likely to be sensitive to temporary lapses in income.

<comment><USER15> What is their current income from Apple streaming?

Since it hasn't even launched yet, wouldn't it be $0? Thus, there are no temporary lapses in income.

<comment><USER16> Apple providing a temporarily free alternative to its paid-music store is going to shift customers to the free alternative, especially since purchased music rarely lives the iCage of devices. I can pay $15 for an album to listen to it on my device on my drive home, or I can stream it for free on my device -- why pay?

iTunes income will drop, hence the lost income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Isn't Google doing the same thing with the new YouTube deals?

<comment><AUTHOR> One difference is, even if they did, the bands can have their music available on other services within Android that can download music right into their music library on their phone/tablet. Apple purposely disallows 3rd party apps from adding music to the iOS music library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Headline is false. Apple will remove bands from iTunes if they don't offer a free trial.

As for this being a 'threat'. It's clearly not - it's a mutual disagreement. The statement could just as easily be 'some bands abandon iTunes because they don't want to give free trials'

<comment><USER18> So, Apple wants to promote its new streaming service using musicians' music for free, and threatens to to remove them from a different platform, iTunes, if they don't comply. Still pretty bullshit.

<comment><USER11> False. iTunes is not a different platform. Companies are not forced to keep their services the same forever.</comment></comment></comment>


What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783 <comment><USER2> I suppose it's a worthwhile concept. You can certainly look at professional politics, corporate messaging and the financial crises, basically all elite- preservation systems, through a kayfabe lens.

On the other hand, I think everyone would be better off reading Propaganda, by Bernays.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_\(book\))

It's short.

<comment><USER3> I don't know. I just don't see it.

Unlike in professional wrestling politicians, corporations, etc have real conflicts over zero sum games. Of course, there are situations where there's are incentives to cooperate.

As for his critique of neoclassical economics' reliance on perfect information - that's already been addressed by many economists, Stiglitz, etc. It's frankly banal to even bring it up any longer.

I just don't see this concept adding much value to a conceptual toolkit. Whenever I try to apply it, it feels forced and it seems simpler concepts do the job just fine.

For example, it's easier to just assume that sometimes competitors finds situations where it makes sense to cooperate.

And it's simpler to assume that even staunch enemies want to appear "gentlemanly" at times, either in public or behind the scenes.

Kayfabe seems worst that useless to me. It seems to violate Occam's razor. It offers an elaborate explanation where a simply explanation would be just as good.

<comment><USER4> > politicians, corporations, etc have real conflicts over zero sum games. Of > course, there are situations where there's are incentives to cooperate.

I have a great example, called the 'mating call of the banks' (in Australia, don't know if there's something similar elsewhere).

We only have four major banks here, and sometimes one or more of them wants to raise interest rates out of cycle (ie without the Australian Reserve bank changing official rates).

Of course, if only one of them raises rates, they'll lose business.

And ultimately, they all want higher rates.

So one of them will book some media spots (easy if you're a big advertiser) and start talking about the state of the economy and how it's out of step with fiscal policy, etc etc.

That's a mating call.

If some other bank's talking head turns up saying the same thing, then that's another one. That's a signal that at least two banks will raise rates together.

Once they've done that, the other two will surely follow.

Publicly executed conspiracy to fix prices.

<comment><USER5> This is an interesting concept -- I would assume "mating call of the airlines" is a similar phenomenon that exists in the US airline industry (pre-corona of course) -- all want to raise fees / stuff planes, so there's this pantomime of whatever ails the industry covered in the media, before one (and then all) change policies that are pro-airline-profit but net-negative-passenger.

All this is possible of course due to the consolidation allowed over the past 15 years, but separate topic for a separate thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Upvoted due to the interesting story, but the point is conceptually unclear (at least to me, but I'm quite slow) how _would_ this improve my cognitive toolkit?

I understand the (one) example presented apart from wrestling, but it is not quite obvious that the actual framework of Kayfabe immediately maps to it. It feels like there are easier constructions that would explain this exactly as well, if not better (perhaps most notably, the Prisoner's dilemma and the fact that coordination games are hard[0]).

\---

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580](https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580)

<comment><USER7> Put simply, one might think of kayfabe as a consensus on the agreement of illusion; a suspension of reality.

Why would anyone do this?

For one, suspended reality allows us to be creative and simulate outcomes that otherwise would not occur in real life.

But also, it can occur under information asymmetry. If something seems fake to me, but I am not sure if _you_ believe it is fake or not (and vice versa), we both might pretend something is real for the sake of not offending one another.

This segues into another of Weinstein's terms (originally from Timur Kuran) called "preference falsification": if no one has to falsify their beliefs, we might just _state_ things we don't actually believe in, since we don't know what other people actually believe, and we don't want to run the risk of being ostracized.

Overall, these two concepts explain how otherwise tenuous theories can be believed (or at least stated to be believed) by large groups of people.

<comment><USER8> We have much bigger illusions than wrestling. Ironically, a piece of fiction made the point much clearer to me:

"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY."

― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

Likewise, paper money: [https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Paper_Money](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Paper_Money)

<comment><USER9> > TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE

This has always stuck with me. I'm not well enough read to know if he borrowed it from somewhere, but I'm not sure Terry Pratchett ever wrote finer words than those. Beautifully concise and apt summary of the human condition.

<comment><USER10> A variation of that quote is in a book by Robert Ardrey in 1961:

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Ardrey](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Ardrey)

<comment><USER11> and maybe related to Nietzsche's "Man is a rope" [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/384722-man-is-a-rope- stretc...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/384722-man-is-a-rope-stretched- between-the-animal-and-the)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Eric Weinstein is a delight to listen to: a polymath, a contrarian, a great interviewer, really gifted verbally. I'm a Portal subscriber and I've listened to his Rogan interviews all the way through. That said...

I have the sinking feeling that you're right about the breadth-first thing, and it's about to become a bigger issue. Back in the 80s Weinstein was working on an alternative Grand Unified Theory. When his work was marginalized, he never really got over it, and he's now using his platform (an important platform for many other reasons!) to try and right that wrong. To that end, he just published a 2013 talk he gave at Oxford on this theory. [0]

What he _has not published_ in all these years, afaik, is an _actual math paper_ describing his theory. This is the mark of a charlatan. I fear for Eric, and for all the other positive things springing up around The Portal, if it's discovered he lacks the depth and rigor we've all been assuming he has.

In other words, he could turn out to be not just a "breadth-first associative thinker," but someone who lacks the self-awareness to know when he's out of his depth; a dangerous know-it-all. Eric if you're reading this: publish the paper the damn paper -- with the help of a mathematician or physicist if needed -- or drop it.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg)

<comment><USER13> PhD student in theoretical physics here. I will confirm: Weinstein _is_ a charlatan, and all of us know it. As far as I can tell, the only people who believe in him are non-physicists who consume exclusively pop science. In other words, he's acting as the literal definition of a dishonest public intellectual.

It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency and real expertise.

<comment><USER14> > It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency > and real expertise.

I agree, if by "verbal fluency" you mean stringing together heavyweight jargon and concepts like Eddy Van Halen doing a guitar riff.

Even in a colloquium filled with subject matter experts that kind of pace is off-putting and raises red-flags instantly-- but this guy does it when communicating with the general public, fully knowing that people are going to be lost in a matter of seconds.

... so yeah, that and NO FREAKING PAPERS. It's a bit disconcerting for a theory that purports to unify relativity with quantum mechanics.

<comment><USER13> Exactly, he was obviously intentionally trying to overwhelm people with jargon. That drives me crazy. Other physicists don't do this, because it serves no purpose aside from making the speaker look smart, and we have other priorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The writer was a guest on Rogan this weekend, and he was very engaging, he did wander a bit. He has a particular kind of breadth-first associative intelligence that can cause listeners to become almost hypnotized by all the open cognitive loops his conversation creates, not unlike the kayfabe concept he's touting.

Similar things come up in the theory of musical composition where you create and resolve "tension," and you can drive the listeners perceptions by loading them up with mental anchors to notes and then resolving them all at once. If you learn to play any Bach, you can begin to see and articulate how he discovered it. Eric Weinsteins example of pro wrestling is identifying where it appears in narrative, but there are analogous concepts in areas like so- called, "neuro linguistic programming," where ideas are "stacked," and then collapsed into a conclusion. I only know about that part of it because I have some very diverse and interesting friends.

As a writer, I use a similar technique all the time, but in smaller more digestible loops, and only rarely with enough to take the reader into that kind of "hall of mirrors," effect great fiction writers use, where each new sentence introduces plot elements that cascade back through the story and closes loops on ideas you have already set up. Mystery novels are a the most simple example of it, where at the end _it all falls into place_.

Great auteur films like 13 Conversations About One Thing, and any Cohen Brother's pic uses a similar device.

Anyway it's fun and addictive, and while I'm sure smarter people than me have a more coherent theory of it, I can see why this fellow thinks it's important.

When you think about it, how our mind works is fundamentally the only actual problem. Everything else is just an artifact of it.

<comment><USER16> Eric Weinstein also has a podcast of his own, the most recent episode of which features his original lecture detailing the Geometric Unity model he discussed on Rogan (though even the dumbed-down version flies right over my head): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg)

> He has a particular kind of breadth-first associative intelligence that can > cause listeners to become almost hypnotized by all the open cognitive loops > his conversation creates

Well said. Eric is also gaining a reputation for coining labels, the best known being the "Intellectual Dark Web", alongside lesser-known acronyms like EGO (Embedded Growth Obligation), GIN (Gated Institutional Narrative), and DISC (Distributed Idea Suppression Complex).

<comment><USER17> Had the disorienting experience of listening to this very episode while absently browsing hacker news and reading this comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kayfabe is also apparently a convenient method for sidestepping an entire discipline for ideological purposes.

>Perhaps confusing battles between "quantum" and "classical" physicists could be best understood as happening within a single "orthodox promotion" given that both groups suffered no injury from failing (equally) to develop a unified theory of gravity.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pretty sure this is the least likely concept to improve anyone's cognitive toolkit on the entire list. Its presence almost seems like an inside joke.

</comment><comment><USER20> Eric Weinstein most recently explained his Kayfabe theory on the Joe Rogan podcast, in this Episode: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA) He also makes reference to this particular article.

<comment><USER21> A bit shorter, and more focused from a different interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsgWSPWX-6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsgWSPWX-6A)

<comment><USER22> I found the video to be worthwhile overall. For anyone looking for the Kayfabe-specific part, though, it starts at about 23:40: [https://youtu.be/bsgWSPWX-6A?t=1420](https://youtu.be/bsgWSPWX-6A?t=1420)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> AI is a kind of kayfabe?

\- Marketing depts want to sell AI solutions as it's higher perceived value

\- Execs/managers want to check an AI checkbox to show their using the latest tech

\- Practioners want to grow AI skills to find interesting opportunities and stand out from regular devs

\- Academia wants to talk up their AI solution to get more attention and funding (and find jobs!)

\- The media wants to write about robots taking over the world

Whether or not there's real value when any particular machine learning solution on any given domain problem is seen as less important than the signaling that we're all using cutting edge tech. We all just participate in the mutual deception.

</comment><comment><USER24> Less cool word for it: conspiracy.

I guess it's a particular kind of conspiracy, so maybe it's useful to have a word for that? But I don't think it describes the political scene well. Politicians from opposite parties aren't rehearsing debates with their opponents and choosing who wins before the debate starts.

There's some level of "cover your ass" and "don't annoy too many people" that makes accountability almost impossible, but kayfabe isn't the right analogy IMHO. It's not intentional cooperative theatrical performances, it's just an effect of incentives being what they are.

</comment><comment><USER25> Before reading TFA, I was thinking "What's their agenda?" / "What's in it for them?" / "What's their bias?" etc.

But this is a deeper cut.

However, in looking for kayfabe, there's the risk of conspiracy thinking.

<comment><USER26> I used to follow him on Twitter but got a conspiracy vibes from him. Got the same in this post. After other noted here that he has some kind of Grand theory of physics, that sadly experts dont agree with, I mentally classify him as a crackpot from now on

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> >The decades old battle in theoretical physics over bragging rights between the "string" and "loop" camps would seem to be an even more significant example within the hard sciences of a collaborative intra-promotion rivalry given the apparent failure of both groups to produce a quantum theory of gravity.

In string theory we quantize gravity by attaching voodoo parameters to particles, and manipulating those parameters so that they forbid the gravitational ultraviolet catastrophe. In LQG or NQFT we attach voodoo parameters to spacetime, forbidding tiny singularities. We can also attach voodoo parameters to gravity itself and get the theory of asymptotically safe gravity. I think that would be four theories. Anyone who finds better- justified voodoo parameters should be welcomed into the ring, but that is very difficult.

Personally I find the voodoo parameters in NQFT to be the least weird, but Connes (a leading proponent) earned some raspberries for his oh-wait-I- didn't-mean-that revision of his prediction of the Higgs mass ( [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030.pdf) ).

</comment><comment><USER28> Could this not be summarized as "organized fake rivalries to create entertainment while the audience doesn't care". Thus, it's not applicable to politics unless it's organized. This is not an emergent system property, but must be designed and organized in order to happen.

</comment><comment><USER29> Other than the obvious application to the Democrat/Republican rivalry puppeteered by corporatists, the other application that came to mind is Youtube celebritydom.

</comment><comment><USER30> I had a similar experience when I read Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit. It's one of those concepts that is obvious in retrospect, but really helps clarify understanding. His conceptual framework of bullshit as communication that is intended to persuade with no regard either way for truth has certainly helped me read this article.

</comment><comment><USER31> Does this mean Tiger King was all a Kayfabe?

<comment><USER32> Maybe you mean this as a joke but it absolutely was. At one point Joe mentions he and Carole made a lot of money off each other. He ran a whole internet show on the premise of vilifying her, and her whole "Cat Rescue" zoo couldn't exist without the likes of him.

They both denounce each-other but depend on each-other. Though I suppose Kayfabe would maybe imply some mutual understanding of this interdependence and some agreed-upon boundaries.

<comment><USER33> Sort of like Batman and the Joker?

<comment><USER34> "you won't kill me out of some misguided sense of self righteousness and I won't kill you because you're just too much fun"

I had the same thought

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Are you telling me that Blake and Adam weren't actually rivals??!!

</comment><comment><USER36> "The falseness of a judgement is not necessarily an objection to a judgment: it is here that our new language perhaps sounds strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding; and our fundamental tendency is to assert that the falsest judgements (to which synthetic judgments a priori belong ) are the most indispensable to us, that without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live - that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life, would be to deny life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself , by that act alone, beyond good and evil." Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Society is based on shared concepts/stories, the effectiveness of that society is based on the value of these shared concepts, not their truth/untruth.

On a small scale: Washington and the cherry tree Daily conversation (How are you ? Good !) Santa Claus Public persona of hollywood stars, entertainers, politicians, etc. etc

On a large scale: Freedom/Democracy Capitalism/Socialism Religion

</comment><comment><USER37> This really puts into words/framework what I've been thinking for a while. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER38> The Elephant in the Brain is a good read that generally supports this article.

<comment><USER26> does it really? I am in the middle of reading it The Elephant in the Brain and I agree with the parts I read.

I strongly disagree with Weinstein and think he's spreading conspiracy theories

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> RTFM

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm astonished that a search of the comments here produces no hits for that master of modern Kayfabe... Trump.

<comment><USER41> Or that the article author is Managing Director of Thiel Capital.

I'll grant this is getting into Ad hominem territory, but I point it out because an 'it's all just a performance' viewpoint seems kind of worrying when you wield signifiant influence.

<comment><USER42> Weinstein is very publicly in opposition to Thiel over the suitability of Trump for the presidency, but the fact that they both think about a concept like kayfaybe and its influence on serious public affairs, indicates something interesting about how they think about the forces at play in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Kayfabe is such an important concept in this historical moment! To me, the "audience" is the most interesting component, and the "performers" are almost irrelevant, except to the extent that they must provide some fantasy that (ever so nominally) purports to be reality (or lies purporting to be truth). The psychological process by which the audience fully commits to and "believes" the fantasy, while at the same time being fully aware on some level that the fantasy is obviously untrue is fascinating, and deserves much more attention and research. Obviously, this is closely related to the idea of doublethink, but kayfabe gives more agency to the audience. Rather than being forced to engage in doublethink by big brother and an authoritarian government, kayfabe "believers" are all together with each other the agents of their own delusion. I think the biggest contributor to whether someone "buys in" to a kayfabe fantasy is their capacity for conformity; seeing the rest of the crowd treat the obviously untrue fantasy as if it were reality gives the individual permission, or "cover", to participate in the fantasy themselves.

I'm guessing anyone reading this knows what non-wrestling kayfabe scene I'm talking about—except maybe those who are already participating in it themselves—and even for those folks, well, it all depends on what "knows" means, doesn't it?

</comment><comment><USER44> > a world in which investigative journalism seems to have vanished and bitter > corporate rivals cooperate on everything from joint ventures to lobbying > efforts

Says the man behind Thiel capital.

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i am good writer and poet i have publish to many books but now i am getting start website you can check on below link

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How many of you hackers ACTUALLY understand the 2's complement? - <AUTHOR> http://crossplatform.net/dev/how-the-twos-complement-binary-representation-actually-works.html

<comment><USER2> Congratulations! You've just made the case as to why one should pursue a study in computer science. Can we expect the wonders of finite state automata next?</comment>


Contract termination fee standing between you and an iPhone? Try this. - <AUTHOR> http://mlyoung.wordpress.com/2007/07/07/contract-termination-fee-standing-between-you-and-an-iphone-try-this/

<comment><USER2> Calling Sprint service a few hundred times to get canceled is far more extreme than waiting in line all day long on opening day. Is the Iphone worth that much pain? (If the idea catches on, it would really be impressive)

<comment><USER3> Not if you have a program do it.

<comment><USER2> Nice! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Web Search Broken? - <AUTHOR> These days I have been having hard time to find great content on search, too many irrelevant search results popping up whenever I searched for some subject I want to learn.<p>Do you think it's because of search or SEO pumped content? Maybe both? <comment><USER2> For me, yes. These days, pretty much all my searches are prefixed with specific domains, such as `site:news.ycombinator.com`. It's a small whitelist of domains like, reddit, HN, stackoverflow, twitter, wikipedia, etc.

If I don't do this, I usually don't get what I'm looking for. Instead, I'm overwhelmed by low-quality self-branding content on Medium, dev.to, towardsdatascience, Quora, etc. There are too many of these now.

Overall, my search has shifted to largely social sites, especially semi- anonymous ones like HN/reddit. The upvoted content (and comments) I find there tends to be miles better than anything Google surfaces on their first page. This has definitely changed over the recent years, it used to not be like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answer. Yeah, I felt like the same way. There are too many SEO pumped content. These days, I am starting check until 4th page of Google. Before I only need to go 3rd search result.

I am only talking about content by the way, I still find what I am looking for if I am searching something else

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My personal experience has lead me to believe yes, it's broken. Or at least severely damaged. Thanks in large part to the SEO/marketing awfulness.

A week or so ago I noticed I've begun to adapt to this poor state of search results by almost immediately navigating to the second "page" and beyond. Not all that long ago, searching beyond the "first page" was almost taboo. Nowadays it's become the norm for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I started searching at my favorite sites first. For instance, If I am looking some resource for my startup, most of the time I first check out YC, a16z, first round or other reliable sites first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, in both cases.

Web search via search engines is filled with low quality content, rehashed stuff from mainstream media outlets and bad attempts at trying to 'guess' what the user wants rather than showing them what they're actually looking for.

And on site search makes Google search look like perfection by comparison. Trying to search a social media site, internet forum, blog or wiki is often a complete nightmare, and gets you nothing close to what you actually want to find. If your ideal page doesn't come up via auto suggest, then trying to find it is probably going to be a miserable experience.</comment>


Build your own Khan Academy - <AUTHOR> http://holoklip.blogspot.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Servers all set for the folks who ran into the 503 :) Thanks.

<comment><USER2> Looking good, where are the details to set something like this up?

<comment><AUTHOR> it is actually quite basic, when you login you can :

add videos, annotate them, enable commenting enable clipping enable embedding.

From there you have the core of what is needed to have an effective educational video portal.</comment></comment></comment>


Libcsp: a fast C concurrency library influenced by the CSP model - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shiyanhui/libcsp <comment><USER2> There is also [http://libdill.org/](http://libdill.org/) which has a different, better in my view, model and I have actually used in production.

<comment><USER3> I dont think libdill supports multiple CPUs, which is really hard to get right

<comment><USER4> Well it does not allow coroutines to migrate to different OS threads and handles to be shared across OS threads, but that does not mean it doesn't support multiple CPUs.

It's more correct to say that it doesn't come with that support out of the box, but it certainly does allow for it and nudges you towards a specific direction (no shared mutable state).

<comment><USER5> That has been my experience using the library, I have found that it really encourages, by means of making it the most expedient option to have write once data structures.

My use case is certainly not the common one though, so others may have different experiences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The side by side with Go is actually impressive:

[https://libcsp.com/](https://libcsp.com/)

<comment><USER7> I suspect it stops being so nice when you want to do something equivalent to go's `select` statement. Though that's purely speculation, and if I'm wrong it should definitely go in the examples!

<comment><USER8> Your skepticism made me look through the library more carefully. I came across some limitations in comparison to what Go provides:

1\. As you suggest, there's no equivalent to the `select` mechanism. To perform the equivalent, you must busy loop and call `csp_chan_try_pop`.

2\. It appears you cannot nest coroutines.

3\. The mutex implementation does not provide an RWMutex.

4\. `csp_yield` seems somewhat necessary for practical applications.

Normally I would not use another language as a basis for comparison to a C library, but that's precisely what the author of Libcsp appears to be aiming for.

All that said, there's a really slick implementation of a lock free RB queue backing this library, and It's a neat project. I think it would stand on its own better than as a "go style in C" library.

<comment><USER9> RB queue?

<comment><USER10> ring buffer queue [0]

[0] [https://github.com/shiyanhui/libcsp/blob/48782baf0e63cbf2914...](https://github.com/shiyanhui/libcsp/blob/48782baf0e63cbf2914930c67adbb884604fc3b7/src/rbq.h#L33)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People should check out the Plan 9 libthread if they are interested [http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/2/thread](http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/2/thread)

</comment><comment> jagged-chisel The linked Wikipedia article[1] on CSP says

> communicating sequential processes (CSP) is a formal language for describing > patterns of interaction in concurrent systems

The Libcsp project says it's _influenced_ by CSP. Does libcsp stick to this formal language?

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_proce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_processes)

<comment><USER12> Of course not. It implements much (not all!) of the available semantics of CSP, but does so embedded in the C language with function calls and macros. Though macros can do truly disturbing things in C, these are not enough to truly implement the syntax of CSP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone have resources related to learning concurrency ?

I've had a very short introduction to pthreads in a CS class, but it was too succinct to get any practical benefit IMO. Knowing that a mutex can be used to limit access to a shared variable is easy enough to understand. How to structure software that runs concurrent tasks is still a mystery to me. Code I've written that uses threads appears to work but I'm not confident I haven't introduced a deadlock in there that's just waiting the worst possible timing to trigger. For instance, the pthreads manpage does a good job at listing the available functions. I have no idea when they should be used though.

If anyone can point me to learning resources around concurrency (books, presentations, talks, sample open source software that does good use of concurrency patterns, ... anything goes, really) I will be eternally grateful.

<comment><USER14> This book give a broad overview of the problem space:

[https://pragprog.com/book/pb7con/seven-concurrency-models- in...](https://pragprog.com/book/pb7con/seven-concurrency-models-in-seven- weeks)

Also because I have it, here's a distributed systems meta-reading-list. It's old and thus I'm sure there are some broken links, but it's a deep rabbit hole if you're interested in distributed systems, which is basically concurrency on steroids.

[https://gist.github.com/macintux/6227368](https://gist.github.com/macintux/6227368)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish I had a minimal version of something like this for microcontrollers (ARM Cortex M0+ and M4). Implementing event-driven code with interrupts is always a pain, even with neatly structured state machines.

<comment><USER16> You can use Protothreads[1] for this which work on anything that runs C, as they are just using setjmp/longjmp.

I would recommend FreeRTOS instead, as it has proper prempetive scheduling, context switching and wide debugger support. It's actually only 4 files[2] so not very heavyweight in either memory or stuff to learn, and has decent abstractions for cross thread communication (queues etc). Then you can write continuous code and use preemption, rather than have to code everything as a state machine and co-operatively schedule, which is painful sometimes.

[1] [http://dunkels.com/adam/pt/](http://dunkels.com/adam/pt/)

[2] [https://www.freertos.org/Creating-a-new-FreeRTOS- project.htm...](https://www.freertos.org/Creating-a-new-FreeRTOS-project.html)

</comment></comment><comment> grayed-down Hmm...nice examples. Let's give this a whirl. Thanks!

<comment> grayed-down Ha! Only on HN will a golem gray you down for wanting to give a guy's library a test. And I'm getting ready to do a PR in the next few days to help him out!</comment></comment>


Ted Dialogues (2017) Yuval Noah Harari: Nationalism vs. Globalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_nationalism_vs_globalism_the_new_political_divide?language=en <comment><AUTHOR> this particular Ted Dialogues help me better frame the world around me. Just finished reading the book Sapiens and can't stop think about it.</comment>


Outsourced copywriting at its finest - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20100106060312/http://www.beernut.com.au/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is what happens when you use colloquialisms and are otherwise vague when providing a brief to copywriters who don't primarily speak English. In other words - be specific, avoid slang, and don't leave any room for strange interpretation.

I imagine the brief for this went something like this: "Here are a bunch of keywords to write about... tell us about how it works, what makes it tick etc" and the rest is history.</comment>


Hosted blogging platform - <AUTHOR>

I'm wanting to start a personal blog to write about startup things and am considering a hosted solution for once. What are people using/recommending? <comment><USER2> I use Posterous.

I love it - it gives you enough features but also automates some of the mundane things. It allows custom templates, uploads, and just about anything you'd want for free.

For me, a blog is about the content more than anything. Different platforms don't matter to me as a reader or a person who _tries_ to write stuff. That being said, Posterous is the easiest to work with at the moment. All I have to do is write - there is very little effort I need to put into managing it.

Some issues: If you don't like emailing posts, the WYSIWYG interface they provide isn't amazing (I like it, but it can feel slightly clunky at times). If you need widgets or a drag & drop interface for adding external content, you won't feel at home. These don't really affect me, but everyone's different.

<comment><USER3> I like the fact that in drafting a post you simply save it to the drafts folder in your email client. Since my workflow rotates around the Inbox it comes nicely into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tumblr, Posterous, Wordpress.com (probably in that order)

</comment><comment><USER5> Check whether it lets you export. That could be a massive pain further down the line.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tumblr is awesome, and in my opinion the easiest hosted blog platform to use. WordPress.com, though, is the most powerful, and you can actually use a couple of the themes basically as a free hosted CMS for a small website with static pages. Another advantage of WordPress.com is that it works almost the same as full WordPress.org, so anything you learn on it would be knowledge you can use with any WordPress-powered site. At the end of the day, it really depends on what you need:

\- Tumblr is by far the easiest, and has the most features (domain mapping, CSS/HTML editing) for free

\- WordPress.com is the most powerful, and has more advanced features (full site with just pages, shortcodes) than most other free hosted platforms.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am using Posterous and can recommend it.

Whatever you choose, make sure to use your own custom domain. Doing so, you can later change your blogging platform wherever you want.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you're a developer and want a free solution and don't mind hacking up your own blog, I totally recommend <http://pages.github.com/> it's powered by jekyll (<http://jekyllrb.com/>). I used to use tumblr because it's easy and highly customizable, haven't used posterous but the fact that you can post via mail with very granular control and integration with other sites looks awesome. Yet, if you feel like hacking a little, github pages is a rad choice -you can write in the markup language you like better and the text editor you love; and can even do it offline, you just have to git push when you want to update stuff. Also, it allows custom domains.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would've recommended Posterous a few months ago when they were in their earlier stages, but their "switch to Posterous" campaign has left a bad taste in my mouth, and the web interface has actually gotten incredibly confusing. Nowadays I would use Tumblr.

<comment><AUTHOR> tumblr seems to promote itself as 'microblogging done right' but I guess it's fine for a normal content type blog as well?

<comment><USER9> Yes. You can post just text if you want to, but if there's a link, video, quote, or picture that you want to post, it's obviously going to be pretty easy to do that as well because of the nature of Tumblr.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love using posterous, though I mainly use it for pictures.</comment>


Agile Ideology - <AUTHOR> http://blog.simeonov.com/2010/09/20/agile-ideology-startups/

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you decide when to keep going on a given assumption as opposed to question it?</comment>


NumCommand.com – new tool for mathematics and statisitics - <AUTHOR> http://www.numcommand.com <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author. Num inputs numbers and outputs statistics such as sum, range, variance, skewness, kurtosis, quartiles, and the like.

Example: echo "1 2 3 4" | num sum => 10

Num is a small shell script written in awk. It's a lightweight way to do descriptive statistics in the shell, without needing R/CRAN, Python/pandas, or a compiler.

Num a work in progress. Feedback welcome. The website has examples, functions, FAQ, and more. I'm happy to answer questions, take feature requests, and discuss statistics.</comment>


Calypso: Wordpress Rewritten in Node.js, React.js, Flux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso <comment><USER2> I don't understand why there isn't a Windows or Linux client from the start. This bothers me :/

</comment><comment><USER3> Actualy, it's just the admin console.</comment>


What would I use bitcoin for? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bodhi49.com/2012/08/what-would-i-use-bitcoin-for.html

<comment><USER2> Has anyone tried to exchange EUR/USD/.. to bitcoins or bitcoins to EUR/USD/.. ? I haven't any bitcoins, so I can't test it, but I want to know how well it works in practice.

<comment><USER3> That's almost exclusively what people actually use Bitcoins for, outside of Silk Road stuff. There are so few BTC stores that it's hard to justify the value of it as a currency.

It's like having a wallet filled with $100 bills at a row of soda machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should use bitcoins to buy drugs on silk road using tor. The rising popularity of silk road can be seen in the exchange rates for bitcoins in the last few months.

<comment><USER5> Really? SR is the reason why?

Sales volume is estimated at two million dollars a month: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/06/black-m...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/06/black- market-drug-site-silk-road-booming-22-million-in-annual-mostly-illegal-sales/)

Let's say it takes a week between when a person buys bitcoin and when those coins are spent.

That mean about half a million dollars of currency is tied up for these users. That's about 50K BTC. That's less than one week's production from mining.

This marketplace has almost no impact on the exchange rate directly. What it might be doing is introducing a number of people to bitcoin. They might then speculate on the exchange rate (simply by buying more than they plan to use for purchases, in anticipation of the exchange rate rising), or use bitcoins for purchases or for person-to-person payments.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does Google 404 serve invalid HTML? - <AUTHOR> e.x. http://google.com/notfound
The "html" tag is not closed. "body" does not exist. CSS refers to elements that do not exist.
Are they minifying to the extreme and relying on the browser to add <body> and close the HTML? <comment><USER2> The Google Style Guide[0] for HTML recommends omitting all optional tags. That includes , , ,
 and
.

[0] [https://google.github.io/styleguide/htmlcssguide.xml#Optiona...](https://google.github.io/styleguide/htmlcssguide.xml#Optional_Tags)

 _For file size optimization and scannability purposes, consider omitting optional tags. The HTML5 specification defines what tags can be omitted._

 _(This approach may require a grace period to be established as a wider guideline as it's significantly different from what web developers are typically taught. For consistency and simplicity reasons it's best served omitting all optional tags, not just a selection.)_

      <!DOCTYPE html>

          <title>Spending money, spending bytes</title>

Sic.

      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <title>Saving money, saving bytes</title>

Qed.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's interesting to know. A Body css without a  tag..!!</comment>