The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget - <AUTHOR> http://www.zenmoments.org/the-cab-ride-ill-never-forget/ <comment><USER2> I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to interact with many people in a similar way.

I'm a volunteer EMT with the ambulance service in my town, with several 'assisted living' facilities in our district. My rough guess would be that 25-30% of the folks we take to the hospital are in the last year of their life, and likely will spend the rest of their days in the facility where we picked them up (with occasional 'field trips' to the ER).

While it's popular to complain about these sorts of calls (they certainly lack the excitement of a car wreck, or the glamour of saving a child), I generally enjoy them. Even in the grips of dementia, many of these people have fascinating stories to tell. We're stuck together in the back of the truck for 20 minutes... I can either get a head start on my paperwork, or I can engage them in conversation. In the past month, I've met a WW2 bomber pilot (who flew in a pathfinder squadron) and a former Rockette (plus a schoolteacher, a librarian, a surveyor, and several others I'm sure I've forgotten). I learned something from each of them (well... most of them... grumpy old people are still grumpy...).

The statement "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated," really rang home for me. I've heard that same sentiment (practically verbatim, just s/passengers/patients/) from several providers, all of whom I regard very highly. I think it's one of the best predictors of someone's ability as an EMS provider. While I know a few extremely capable medics who have a lousy bedside manner, every medic I know who seems to genuinely care about their patients is a top-notch medical provider.

<comment><USER3> Can you give any advice in becoming a volunteer emt? I've wanted to do this, but have no idea how to start...

<comment><USER4> You have to get licensed as an EMT, I took this course, it's very good: <https://www.cpc.mednet.ucla.edu/cpc/course/emt>

You can transfer licensure between states.

<comment><USER2> A minor quibble... You're _certified_ as an EMT, not licensed.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the class certifies you, so you can get your license.

You have to be licensed to volunteer as an EMT, as I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I took away from the story wasn't so much related to death, but rather its great _visceral_ conveying of the point of the golden rule. The author says he treated her like he would want his mother to be treated. Many of us apply these sorts of rules, but we tend to do it much more rigorously with people close to us, because they are already more similar, and thus fit easier within the "do unto others" formulation (whether you use the positive or negative).

It isn't great moments that catch us unaware as he says, it's that our life is a constant stream of such moments, usually unbeknownst to us. It's only occasionally that we _realize_ the sort of impact we have on those around us.

This story reminds me to continue applying these principles (within certain limits, the golden rule isn't a moral panacea) to every interaction, including the most incidental. The feelings expressed in the story are exactly the sort from which I derive my compassion and which I use as the intuitive component of my ethical reasoning. It reminds me to consider the side-effects of not just my actions, but also how I express my internal states to others.

<comment><USER6> The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths.

Only help people worth helping.

<comment><USER7> People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others. First, this is an edge case. Second, it is out of context.

The golden rule was given by Jesus secondary to the command "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

If you follow both those commands, you'll only do good to your fellow man.

<comment><USER6> > People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are > deranged, it gives you license to hurt others.

You are shifting the argument. That has nothing to do with my comment. Straw man fallacy.

> The golden rule was given by Jesus secondary to the command "Love the Lord > your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

No, in the christian bible it says a man named Jesus gave a new commandment. The "Golden Rule" is a generalization made in more recent times to try to find a common ground across religions. And it's very vague as many religions are closer to what's named as the "Silver Rule".

> If you follow both those commands, you'll only do good to your fellow man.

That's not on the bible and even if it were, it's your dogma book. You provide me no proof it is that way. Not even a decent hypothesis.

<comment><USER8> Small problem:

 _alleco: The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths.

lancefisher: People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others.

alleco: You are shifting the argument. That has nothing to do with my comment. Straw man fallacy._

It isn't a straw man fallacy. It is a direct paraphrase of your statement. "enabling" and "giving license" are pretty much the same thing. As are forms of "sociopath" and "deranged (who will) hurt others" -- at least in common vernacular.

<comment><USER6> "The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths" obviously means people following the golden rule helping indiscriminately are helping sociopaths. And sociopaths, by definition, do not follow the rule. Sociopaths thriving in society are very bad, obviously.

"People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others", this vague accusation first generalices all criticism of the golden rule as the same. Second it states something that has nothing to do with my coments. I did not claim "if you are deranged, [the golden rule] gives you license to hurt others'. I wouldn't be surprised if that was made up on the spot by lancefisher.

Your points are hard-headed nonsense and a waste of time.

Edit: minor typos

<comment><USER8> _"The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths" obviously means people following the golden rule helping indiscriminately are helping sociopaths. And sociopaths, by definition, do not follow the rule. Sociopaths thriving in society are very bad, obviously._

Your claim of obviously is not true because you say so. You may have meant it the way you claim, but an equally valid interpretation of the term enabling is:

The golden rule allows sociopaths to justify behavior by claiming "I expect to be treated the way I am treating you". In a society that puts the golden rule at the top of social norms, this allows the sociopaths to do their thing while within the guidelines. Allowing something to be justified is in fact enabling it. This is why the term for codependent family who make excuses for their addict loved ones and who clean up the addict's messes is enabler.

It is important to note when there are multiple subtly different ways of defining words, it can lead to confusion when you think you are being clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This doesn't look like spam at all....

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Because+I+drove+the+night+sh...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Because+I+drove+the+night+shift%2C+my+cab+became+a+moving+confessional.+Passengers+climbed+in%2C+sat+behind+me+in+total+anonymity%2C+and+told+me+about+their+lives.+I+encountered+people+whose+lives+amazed+me%2C+ennobled+me%2C+and+made+me+laugh+and+weep).

<comment><USER10> This is by the actual author though, at least according to <http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/c/cabbie.htm>

<comment><USER11> I'm going to guess this story has been Mike Daisey'd.

The author quite likely did work as a cabbie, did pick up an elderly woman on her final trip to hospice care, and did make an unexpected detour around town to look at some landmarks from her life.

It probably also happened in the middle of the day, only took about half an hour, and the patient probably didn't say "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," because she fell asleep near the end of the ride.

This is sad, because, just like Mike Daisey's story, there's plenty of value in what really transpired, and by exaggerating it, it loses its believability. By becoming overly sentimental, bordering on mawkish, it loses the impact that a frank, thoughtful reflection on the actual event could have had.

<comment><USER12> > By becoming overly sentimental, bordering on mawkish, it loses the impact > that a frank, thoughtful reflection on the actual event could have had.

Or it reflects how the event _happened to him_ , as opposed to how the event just _happened_.

When writing narrative essays, remember that truth is subjective, and you have a choice between being loyal to how it impacted the narrator and how it 'objectively happened'. If you want the latter, you'll just end up with an overdetermined logfile.

I don't know what parts of David Sedaris's stories are true, and I don't care - all I know is that some of them are incredibly powerful emotionally, and that man sure knows how to nail the ending of a story.

<comment><USER13> Belief is subjective. Reality is objective. Since "truth" compares belief and reality, the output is not subjective. The belief that I can fly can make me expect to fly away when I jump off a cliff; only the truth of that belief can prevent me from hitting the ground.

<comment><USER12> We're talking about an inspirational story told as a personal narrative. I'm willing to suspend some disbelief in this case to get the larger picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the second time I've seen this story this week, and this version is subtly different from the previous one I saw. This is making me wonder whether either version of the story actually happened. I wish I remembered where I saw the other one.

<comment><USER15> It's reads like a creative writing piece, and is taken from a book about living with the prayer of Saint Francis. I don't believe it's meant to have literally happened, so much as to convey a lesson.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meta question: how is this related to hacker news (related to technology or science)?

<comment><USER17> The guidelines quite clearly state that HN stories don't have to be related to tech/science:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

 _"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."_

on the other hand:

 _"If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."_

Now that you know the criteria, I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions as to whether this story belongs.

<comment><USER18> I feel that this article is suitable to HN, not for its actual content, but for the intelligent discussions that eventually spring out of it.

<comment><USER19> If you take such an ex post facto rationalization, you must conclude that there is nothing out of bounds for HN as long as it spawns an intellectual discussion. We could have an intellectual discussion about a blank page, cute kitten pictures, or pharmaceutical spam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If this story doesn't nearly or outright bring a tear to your eye, please pause for a moment and ask yourself why.

[edit: it doesn't matter whether it's real vs fiction, it's a question of how you would react if you did something in the normal course of what you do, and then come to realize at it had a profoundly positive impact on someone else. Is not the romanticized part of the modern conception of a startup a blend of changing people's lives positively at skill via products that make the world better plus a dash of hopefully positioning yourself to there after only work on projects that capture your eye?

I will not dispute that the story here is cute and possibly fiction. But even if your day to do focus is building better tech in some domain, it's about building better tools for other people. ]

<comment><USER21> Because it isn't true. Because it's a hackneyed creation of a shallow imagination peopled with cardboard characters, made to press the emotional buttons especially popular today. Because real people don't say "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy". Because death and loneliness and loss and memory are all so much more than this Hallmark card of a story.

Because it's so fake, and so corny.

<comment><USER22> I'm going to take a moment to burn a little karma.

May you choke on your cynicism while you sleep.

Edit: what, no downvotes? Clearly I have no idea what motivates you people.

<comment><USER23> You seem like a nice human being, truly wishing death upon someone because they find your precious sob story hokey is the hallmark of someone who is empathic and mature.

EDIT: Oh wait, I see now! It was not your intention to actually emulate the hilariously 2D caricatures in the story and be sympathetic and nice to all comers, no that something you reserve for the safe idealized realm of fiction where there is no chance for disappointment by the messy and contradictory things we call humans. I've got your ticket man and you seem to be in good company with the majority of HN, I mean who would have guessed that the money hungry posers on this site would be into empty sentimentality?

<comment><USER22> You see the little gray triangles to the left of my post? Click the one pointing down and be about your business.

Edit: you talk too much.

<comment><USER24> He doesn't have enough karma to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This story just sold a book.

Off topic question: I know many here aren't necessarily religious (Though some would say they are spiritual)... Do the non-religious among us still find value in the writing of overtly religious authors? I'm not interested in arguing about religion. I'm just curious if the HN crowd find value in the words of people with differing opinions.

<comment><USER26> I am non-religious, in the sense that I do not follow any organised religion, nor do I believe in the vast majority of the superstitions of many religions. I don't believe there is a God as described by the christians, muslims or jews, or supernatural beings as proposed by Hinduism, etc.

However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid.

Religion, religious texts, concepts of religion, and so on, have been a natural repository for boundless amounts of human wisdom accumulated over the centuries. Each religion, with all its flaws, is trying to grasp at an essential Truth of human existence. That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. Nor is it intelligent to ignore the _fact_ that there have been numerous people throughout history whom one could call "enlightened", who touched on something beyond our normal existences.

There is a very deep well of _value_ in religion. Those who spit in that well are to be pitied.

I'll close with an idea from Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher of the late 19th Century, who suggested that much of humanity's efforts (in the intellectual spheres) aim to reconcile the physical and the spiritual, to answer the question of how it is possible that there is matter and thinking (two apparently fundamentally different things), and how it is possible that there is such a thing as matter that thinks about its own nature.

He suggests that this striving to reconcile the two is split into three great movements: art, science and religion.

Dismissing one in favour of the other is like choosing to ignore your left leg in favour of your right. A complete human being will not ignore one of the three pillars of human thought.

<comment> mike-cardwell Who dismisses religion as worthless? It obviously has both costs and benefits...

I don't think it's important to discuss how much religion is "worth". How much religion is "worth" bares no relation to how true it is. How true religion is, is the much more important discussion.

<comment><USER27> Some examples of the "new atheists" or commentators who dismiss religion as worthless: Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens

<comment> mike-cardwell That is flat out untrue. All of the people you quoted are well aware that religion provides some value/worth alongside the costs. They're all highly intelligent people who are able to perform basic cost/benefit analysis like the rest of us.

What's the difference between an "atheist" and a "new atheist"? I've found that religious people use "new atheist" almost as a derogatory term, but I just don't get where the insult is supposed to come from?

[edit] Ah, I looked up "new atheism" on wikipedia and got: "New Atheism is the name given to the ideas promoted by a collection of 21st-century atheist writers who have advocated the view that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."

<comment><USER28> It's a bit of a signal in some religious/evangelical language. "new atheism" implies a few things - there's a renewed urgency, an implied "new" "attack" on religion, etc. It's not meant as an insult so much as a buzzword to signal to the faithful that there's a 'new' menace to ward against.

Also, 'new' atheism is viewed as actively oppositional - loud, proud, 'coming out' in public, etc. Being aggressively atheistic is a hallmark of those labelled 'new atheists'. It's _probably_ more accurate to refer to this more aggressive public movement as antitheism, but that would be another label/word which would confuse people. Putting 'new' in front of the old word, I think it becomes easier to rally the troops, so to speak.

<comment><USER29> "It's probably more accurate to refer to this more aggressive public movement as antitheism"

I disagree that this "movement" is aggressive. It is only perceived as aggressive because people are not used to having their religion publicly questioned, and held to the same standards of rational scrutiny as other products of human thought. I also disagree that it is "probably" anti-theist. The "new atheists" sometimes ridicule theists, but concede that merely believing in a personal god is fairly harmless in itself. I think they are definitely anti- _dogma_.

<comment><USER28> Hitchens seemed pretty anti-theist, and I don't recall him ever saying that belief in a personal god was "fairly harmless".

I was using 'aggressive' from the perspective of those using the term 'new atheist' - should've been more clear on that. I don't think 'new atheism' is 'aggressive', except to the extent that it's being vocal vs 'in the closet' year ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Saw a slight different variation being shared on Facebook. Wonder why the difference if its a true story and who modified it...

<comment><USER31> This story has been cut-and-pasted countless times: [https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...</a>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> and HN's signal-to-noise ratio is lowered once again

<comment><USER33> Agreed. Flag it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very moving story. There's something about death, about the ending of life, about the closing of a life, that puts things in perspective, that makes things which you normally consider important (like charging for a cab ride) seem so petty it is ridiculous to even consider them, and that makes simple anodine events take on what I can only call a divine aspect (without any connection to traditional religion).

These stories, these moments, are not just life, they're what life is about.

<comment><USER34> "A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come."

<comment><USER35> Where is this from?

<comment><USER36> The Wire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Every year I grow older brings a new understanding of the concept of nostalgia. Driving through an old neighborhood, even just 5 or 10 years later, can hit like a ton of bricks.

I can't even imagine what that taxi ride must have been like for her.

<comment><USER38> That's exactly what occurred to me as I read the story.

I graduated from college 20 years ago, and a few years back I drove through the old neighborhoods there and _something_ just blasted me in the gut, or heart, or something. A flood of memories of friends and lovers and struggles and parties and fun and hurt and everything.

What is that? Is it a realization of time passed, or opportunities missed, never to be available to us again?

I can't imagine what it would be life after 80 years or so, and knowing that the door of life is closing quickly. Wow. Didn't mean to wax sentimental but I do love these ideas.

<comment><USER39> "Didn't mean to wax sentimental"

Don't be ashamed. It's appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm not going to lie, I teared up half way through the article. Rather than contemplate the fact of it being real or not, I'll spend some time drawing more meaningful conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER41> Real or not, it's still a very powerful piece of literature. I think there's an underlying theme to the story - a lot of our history is being lost or superseded by the internet.

There's so many things we have left to learn from "The Greatest Generation" yet when given the opportunity, most would rather downplay the story, or simply go back their smartphones social networks.

</comment><comment><USER42> For anyone who can't get to the site (I guess a bandwidth issue), you can get the article off google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wznsub_...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wznsub_hiJwJ:www.zenmoments.org/the- cab-ride-ill-never-forget/&hl=en&prmd=imvns&strip=1)

</comment><comment> dot-sean This guy posted it to his google+ page, without crediting original author. Let's make sure we +1 it so his friends know where his great ideas come from:

[https://plus.google.com/104314192726025938964/posts/4GjXTPTz...](https://plus.google.com/104314192726025938964/posts/4GjXTPTzSJx)

</comment><comment><USER43> It's an incredible story and it moved me greatly. It also appears to have moved many more people around the globe once again. I've just noticed my mum share this exact story on Facebook and she's very far removed from Hacker News (it appears to be part of a note).

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm certain that I read this or a similar short story in high school but i can't remember much else about it. it's funny how the short stories and books i read in high school are so much more recallable than things learned in the other classes.

</comment><comment><USER45> What an interesting coincidence. Just minutes ago I watched a short film with a similar story: <https://vimeo.com/40846220>

</comment><comment><USER46> Best story I've heard in a bit. Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER47> Seems like the tl;dw version of "Trip to Bountiful"

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090203/>

</comment><comment><USER48> I feel as though he should have taken the money from her. There was nobody to leave her money to.

<comment><USER38> _There was nobody to leave her money to._

1\. The beautiful moral of the story is a split-finger fastball that you never saw coming.

2\. Maybe she had heirs who would receive her assets upon her passing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This made me burst out in tears. I rarely post here, but i felt this had to be said.

</comment><comment><USER50> Wow, that was way better than I expected. Damn onions.

</comment><comment><USER51> You made me cry.

<comment><USER52> As the great Jack Handey of Deep Thoughts once said, "It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Damnit. There's not supposed to be crying at Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER54> Very touching story. I got a chance to ride with a taxi driver for a night one time -- those guys have really interesting jobs. It's kind of like being a cop, except without carrying the gun (Though i think some do carry). Never know who you'll pick up for a ride.

</comment><comment><USER55> Weird coincidence; by the end of the story something had gotten in my eyes. Excuse me.

<comment><USER56> Yeah, it's either really dusty or someone in the office is cutting onions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Nice story</comment>


John McAfee on Russian Hack of DNC - <AUTHOR> http://ibankcoin.com/flyblog/2016/12/30/john-mcafee-i-can-guarantee-you-it-was-not-the-russians/ <comment><USER2> This is the same man who admitted to lying about the Apple FBI dispute earlier this year to "get a shitload of public attention" ([http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/john-mcafee-lied-iphone- apple...](http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/john-mcafee-lied-iphone-apple-fbi/)). I'm not interested in hearing anything more from this chronic attention seeker.

<comment><USER3> Here, here. JM has long since jumped the shark. Don't worry though, Herr Trumpf will hire him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this guy have any credibility left? Why do we care what he says, to me it's akin to a random person on the street espousing ramblings.

</comment><comment><USER5> Didn't some Russian politician already admit that they tried to help Trump and what's the big deal?

Didn't Putin even hint at it in some way during the run up to the election?

I mean what do people want a statement from the Kremlin that they tried to help Trump? I thought Americans knew that Russia has invested billions in Trumps real estate businesses, hence the close relationship with Putin and the fact that Trump will never release his tax returns.

[http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the- curious-...](http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious- world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/)

[http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential- campaign/...](http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential- campaign/302216-how-much-money-does-the-trump-organization-owe)

</comment><comment><USER6> Admittedly, a generalized diagram from a press release is not direct evidence. A diagram only serves to clarify a concept in terms clearer than a passage of text.

It's true that any actor in an espionage/sabotage operation will attempt to obscure their hand in the matter, and obvious evidence should be treated with suspicion. One might be tempted to conclude that the anticipation of evidence among actors renders actual evidence collection futile.

Unfortunately, John McAfee's hypothesis is not backed by evidence at all. It's just his gut instinct.

I wonder if John McAfee's methodology of inverting evidence, by way of evidence tampering/obscuring motives, holds up against other scenarios. Stuxnet, or Snowden leaks for example.

      Sure, all *THOSE* things *LOOK* like
      they originate from the NSA, but that
      what you're *SUPPOSED* to think, mannn!

</comment><comment><USER7> Here we go again:

[http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/john-mcafee-i-know-who-hacked- sony-...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/john-mcafee-i-know-who-hacked-sony- pictures-it-wasnt-north-korea-1483581)

Every time some "mysterious" hacking scheme comes out, John McAfee has a formula: "I know who did it, it wasn't $BADGUY"

</comment><comment><USER8> What I don't understand is, ignoring whoever did the hack, for whatever reason, the election was compromised. Why isn't congress or supreme Court asking for a new election if this one was a fraud?

<comment><USER9> How was the election "compromised"? The DNC was compromised which is not a part of the government at all. It's the organizing body of a political party. Not only that but they only provided stolen information for the public and media to use or misuse.</comment></comment>


Books programmers don't really read - <AUTHOR> http://www.billthelizard.com/2008/12/books-programmers-dont-really-read.html

<comment><USER2> There are books that nobody reads because they don't contain good ideas, and there are books that nobody reads because they're too dense. The second category contains some of the most valuable books out there.

I'd put the gang of four design patterns book into the second category. Often, a book or journal article is there to be cited as a breakthrough work on a subject, but very few people read it - instead, they read the thousands of other, more easily accessible books and articles on the subject.

This is why "Head First Design Patterns" is in the "books I've read list", and "GOF" is in the books nobody reads list. GOF is on my shelf, and I've browsed through it, but I go to other sources to understand and implement design patterns.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally I recommend the first half of Ivan Horton's Beginning C++ for any beginning to intermediate programmer. It's a little dated, but it does a great job of explaining what things look like in memory and why longs are not all the same size etc. It's clear without being overly verbose. And more importantly it's examples are strong examples of what type of code I want to read.

</comment><comment><USER4> In his list of "Books Most Programmers Have Actually Read", I miss a book that I'm convinced that every self-respecting Mac OS X programmer read: Aaron Hillegass' "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X"

</comment><comment><USER5> In short: _"Please stop recommending books to others that you haven't read yourself."_

I've really wondered how many people have actually read TAOCP, in particular. I haven't. I'm still trying to finish SICP (which _is_ fantastic, IMHO, as is CTM), among others. It's too easy to just start reading yet another book, but the real value comes when you get past the first chapter or two - that's usually just rehashed intro material, anyway.

For discussion's sake, what are some programming books people consider worth reading that _aren't_ Big Highly-Regarded Tomes?

I'm really fond of _The Little MLer_ (for understanding types), _Thinking Forth_ (a lot of good ideas about refactoring and general program design), and _Programming in Lua_ (as concise and well-written as K&R, lucidly covers material like coroutines and prototype-based OO). Any of them could also be mostly read in a weekend. Also, _Peopleware_, though it's more about the industry, project management, working in teams, etc.

<comment><USER6> I have, first edition even. :-) The first algorithms book that I really found readable was Sedgewick's Algorithms now updated to C, C++ and Java. Even now I will read Sedgewick first for clarity and go back to TAOCP or CLRS for analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meh. I'm not convinced. I've only read one book on his _list of books programmers have actually read_ and have read more than half of the books (not AOCP or Dragon Book) on the _list of book programmers haven't actually read_.

I've not even heard of a few of the ones on the first list.

CLRS _is_ a reasonable introduction to _computer science_ , not programming. It starts off with basic concepts of the math in CS and then sorting algorithms -- just like any decent intro to CS course / book.

The C++ Programming Language _is definitely not_ for language implementors. For that there's a (fairly accessible) language specification that's also published in book form, which is also useful as a reference for things which are out of scope for the The C++ Programming Language. It is, however, not a good intro book, and honestly, not a great reference book either. It's just that it's somewhat more comprehensive than other references.

</comment><comment><USER8> I dunno about this. Of the books under "books most programmers have actually read," the only one I've read is the C programming language (K&R). But I think I'm probably more likely to read the GoF design patterns book or the rest of my college algorithms book ( [http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Jon- Kleinberg/dp/0321...](http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Jon- Kleinberg/dp/0321295358/) ) than Programming Pearls or Effective Java.

</comment><comment><USER9> _"... I've read all of these books myself, so I have no difficulty believing that any moderately competent programmer has read them as well ..."_

Books, books doesn't anyone read code?

</comment><comment><USER10> I read a large portion of the Dragon Book in University. It was interesting, but I didn't get all the way through it. I've honestly found books like "Refactoring" to be a more valuable a read.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hurray for Amazon affiliate book spamming!

<comment><USER12> You could always try this greasemonkey script which always substitutes your own Amazon affiliate id so you can sponsor yourself.

<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3468>

<comment><USER13> Which directly breaks the Amazon Associates TOS and would allow Amazon to not pay you and delete your account.

<https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement>

"You may not purchase products during sessions initiated through the links on your site for your own use, for resale or commercial use of any kind. This includes orders for customers or on behalf of customers or orders for products to be used by you or your friends, relatives, or associates in any manner. Such purchases may result (in our sole discretion) in the withholding of referral fees and/or the termination of this Agreement."</comment></comment></comment>


Vue Loop – Infinite scrolling - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lookstudios/vue-loop <comment><USER2> This just looks like bad UI to me. On my desktop browser I often press End to get somewhere near the end of the page, here if you do that it just goes back up.

If I accidentally scroll to the end while reading something I can't scroll back up, I'll have to scroll down to the end and hope I don't scroll too far and trigger the loop again.

<comment><USER3> I am planning on adding two new props to the component

scroll-past-top - default: false, scroll-past-bottom - default: true

this will allow the user to either scroll loop from bottom, top or both :)

Thanks for the feedback. Update coming soon.

<comment><USER4> Does this fix the "page up" and "page down" keys as well?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tried viewing the Look Studios website on Firefox, scrolling down with the touchpad. The website skips over some content sections and once I get to the page footer, the page suddenly scrolls extremely slowly. To the point where it looks like my browser crashes every time I reach the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, the website seem fairly broken. i.e. the right side is clipped as well on Firefox (can't see the Contact link on the mast head).

On (desktop) Safari hovering over a few sections causes the site to just randomly scroll to another section (e.g. Hovering any of the first 2 links of "Get in touch" goes a section back and the third one goes to the last hero section").

In mobile Safari (latest version) the website stops functioning after the first scroll until the end, the hero is the only thing that is viewable.

Lastly, the infinite scrolling loop doesn't work backwards (i.e. scrolling up) which gets a bit confusing.

There's something extremely fundamental in scrolling, it gets embedded in the user's cognition. I wonder what we need to do to raise awareness in finally stopping to meddle with it.

<comment><USER7> Furthermore, it loads a bunch of multi-megabyte png's that it doesn't even display, adding up to a page load of 17 Mb. I wouldn't be surprised if it loads these images on mobile too, but I can't be bothered to check.

I'm continuously baffled by how many of these agencies/studios have incredibly shitty websites.

<comment><USER8> > I wouldn't be surprised if it loads these images on mobile too, but I can't > be bothered to check.

It does. 5+ second load time over 4G before first render and even then it took a few more seconds to fully load...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried the live demo on Safari on iPhone. When it arrives to the end (with the logo) it's starts flickering around 10 times. Then you can continue scrolling.

I don't know if it's on purpose (distracting effect while doing your stuff). But it's more looking like a bug.

Despite that, works like a charm.

<comment><USER3> This is due to the fact that on mobile devices the scroll event is triggered when you've released your finger. Unlike web which is during the scroll. I am working on a fix for this now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Title is a bit misleading, this is not an actual infinite scrolling as we generally know it by, but a looped scrolling, as the name suggests.

<comment><USER11> Ironically it is actually infinite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are there implementations of infinite scrolling that delete DOM elements outside of a specified range of the viewport? Then the scrolling still appears responsive to within _X_ pages of scrolling from the current viewport, but any pages beyond that range are actually inserted in on demand when the viewport moves towards them, saving browser memory at the cost of bandwidth and computational time on both the browser and server sides.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps react virtual list ([https://github.com/developerdizzle/react-virtual- list](https://github.com/developerdizzle/react-virtual-list)) ?

I've investigated the problem on a VueJS app which rendered a live-updated table-like DOM with thousands of rows, and was quite slow in rendering and scrolling, especially on mobile. For my use case the easiest solution was to render the first X elements, on-the-fly render the next elements as you scrolled down and disable the VueJS watching and reactivity logic for the DOM elements outside the viewport, so that when you scroll back up the elements are still there and you do not spend too much time recreating them (the DOM is slow).

I had to use unexported, private VueJS methods, I raised an issue on Github asking them to provide public hooks but it was declined.

This method works when you have a big but not huge list. In the latter case the bottleneck is not your JS framework but the browser, so yeah, you should delete and create DOM elements on the fly.

(I'd share my code but it's on a commercial app, and a huge hack that I'm surprised I've managed to make work.)

<comment><USER14> What's the relation (if anything) of [1] [https://github.com/developerdizzle/react-virtual- list](https://github.com/developerdizzle/react-virtual-list) to [2] [https://github.com/OutSystems/react-virtualized- list](https://github.com/OutSystems/react-virtualized-list), who blogged [3] about their component in July 2016?

For the GP, the technique itself is older [4][5][6][7], but with this new crop of component-oriented frameworks I can see the value of a dedicated component.

[3] [https://medium.com/outsystems-engineering/virtualizing- the-v...](https://medium.com/outsystems-engineering/virtualizing-the-virtual- dom-pushing-react-further-d76a16e5f209) [4] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12613113/](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12613113/) [5] [http://engineering.linkedin.com/linkedin- ipad-5-techniques-s...](http://engineering.linkedin.com/linkedin- ipad-5-techniques-smooth-infinite-scrolling-html5) [6] [http://stackoverflow.com/a/12613687](http://stackoverflow.com/a/12613687) [7] [https://dannysu.com/2012/07/07/infinite-scroll-memory- optimi...](https://dannysu.com/2012/07/07/infinite-scroll-memory- optimization/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for all your feedback! I'll be taking it all in and making some improvements today! Expect an update to the repo and package soon

</comment><comment><USER15> Not debouncing the scroll action seems like a pretty poor idea. This could use some optimization for sure. Also, not hugely important, but my OCD hates that the source code has several misspellings and inconsistent use of const/var/let. A little confused why you're using useCapture = true in the addEventListener call. Neat CSS, I learned a couple things.

</comment><comment><USER16> just a little heads up: it looks shitty on a logitech free-wheeled mouse

</comment><comment><USER17> But... why?

<comment><USER18> why not? interaction design studios are always looking for some nice fun spin on mainstream traditional design

<comment><USER3> Exactly! This was just a little experiment we tried out on our site, a lot of people liked it so I made a little release of how it works, I understand it's not for everyone. We just had the idea and wanted to put it to the test... Thanks for the feedback everyone!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Works like a dream for me in chrome, seems like a nice way to make a simple static site feel a bit more individual and interesting. nice job.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hmm, if you get near the bottom and then resize your window smaller, it doesn't "jump" back up to the top.

</comment><comment><USER21> This actually looks really nice in my android chrome. It might be useful in some cases.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. Thats good to know, I know with ios it stops DOM manipulation until after the scroll event has been finished, hence why we're getting the flashing issue. I can fix this by taking away the -webkit- overflow-scrolling: touch; issue is then the scrolling isn't smooth.

Working on solutions using touchmove etc.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm in chrome and uh, this doesn't seem to actually do anything?

</comment><comment><USER23> Works well for me on mobile Chrome. But loads way too slowly.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is pretty cool

</comment><comment><USER25> Really liked the idea. Good one.</comment>


Why Tesla Is Selling Naughty Short-Shorts - sahin-boydas https://futurism.com/tesla-naughty-short-shorts <comment><AUTHOR> Isn't he notoriously short on cash? Maybe he doesn't have any more real estate to sell?

</comment><comment><USER2> tl;dr It's a marketing stunt/joke, and the press coverage it's generating is exactly the goal.</comment>


Google goes down, other Internet traffic drops by 22% and Bing jumps 40% - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantcast.com/inside-quantcast/2013/08/google-goes-down-other-internet-traffic-drops-by-22-and-bing-jumps-40/

<comment><USER2> If a tree falls in the forest and Google is down, is there any sound?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the sound of Bing engineers rejoicing about probably the best day in Bing history :)</comment></comment>


Don't ask your questions in private - <AUTHOR> https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/dont-ask-your-questions-in-private

<comment><USER2> I always had this policy when I was teaching college classes.

Obviously, the rule didn't apply to personal problems (grade worries, student (or family) illness), but if I got a generic question about an assignment in email, I'd ask the student to repost it in the online forum for the class.

It worked very well -- it's a rare assignment question that only one student is wondering about (whether they actually ask or not). It cut down on the number of emails I had to answer, saved time for the other students (they were supposed to check the forum before asking questions), and gave me a central location to check when I was prepping/improving the course for the next semester (rather than being buried in the Satanic depths of my email box, all of the questions and clarifications for that particular course were collected in one spot).

</comment><comment><USER3> One reason why people ask questions in private is for fear of looking incapable and dumb. It's not an entirely unfounded fear when you consider that we're knowledge workers. Our worth and opportunities are heavily influenced by how others perceive us.

Most people are probably aware of the benefits that others would get from asking questions publicly. The people that are not aware may pick it up when you publicly post the original question and answer yourself, e.g., "Someone recently asked me how to make a perfect soft boiled egg. Here's how I go about it."</comment>


Ask HN: Arrangements for working for US company from EU - <AUTHOR> I am a EU national, currently living and working in the US, but looking to move back to Europe.
One possibility is talking my currently employer into letting me work remotely. I am wondering if other people that are currently working for US companies remotely from the EU have any insights into what kind of legal and fiscal arrangements are necessary for something like this.
If I want to spare my employer the hassle, is it possible to be treated as a freelancer even though I would have a single employer? How much would that cost me if so? Any idea of how onerous would it be for the employer to comply with EU labor regulations? <comment><USER2> As employee: In order for the US company to be able to pay their share of your income tax, health insurance and similar, they need to be a registered business in Europe. That means opening a subsidiary and thus a managing directory, budget, budget authority, more tax forms and paperwork. Lots of hassle.

As a contractor: Here you register as a sole trader (depends on country) and pay income tax, health insurance etc yourself and send them a single invoice end of the month. Your contract (might need to translated in two languages side-by-side) needs to say you're free to take on other clients, you can subcontract, hire employees etc. They can't tell you how much holiday entitlement you have. You'll loose other employee privileges like stock options as well. If employees get bonus payments you won't (otherwise it looks too fishy to the tax authorities).

Third option is to find a European company which is tax registered and can make income tax, health insurance payments locally. They'd act on behalf of your employer. Look for accountancy offices. It will require lots of inquiries and phone call to find those.

Similarly you make a deal by getting hired by a European employment agency (web development shop or such) and they deal with all taxes. You get a standard salary, they send an invoice to your employer.

Actual payments (US bank account => EU bank account) is easily. I'd recommend negotiating the fees in Euro. But be prepared if it's USD and you face currency fluctuation.

VAT tax doesn't apply.

Good luck. Key is finding a lawyer specialized in employment law that can draft a bi-lingual contract. In the first year you might have to file taxes in both countries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your very thorough reply, a lot of useful information there.

Had not considered your third option. Do you have any more comments on it? Are there companies that specialize in this kind of service, or are you suggesting just trying general accounting firms? Do you know if this company would have to be in the same EU country as I would be working for? I.e., if the third party is registered in Germany but I am working from Slovenia for e.g.

<comment><USER2> I had such an arrangement for/in Germany. Our HR department found the contact. It needed to be in the same country. Only companies in Germany can pay those taxes because you need a (state?) tax id and it's too much hassle for any non- German company to set that up. Plus using a German MS Windows program to even file taxes, nevermind how many other German forms might have been needed for them to deal with the health insurance. You can contact me via [https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/contact](https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/contact)

Best is really to search for an accountant with specialized knowledge on cross-border income taxation. The big players like Earnest&Young are offering that service but you're probably a too small case.</comment></comment></comment>


How video streaming works on the web: An introduction - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/canal-tech/how-video-streaming-works-on-the-web-an-introduction-7919739f7e1 <comment><USER2> Great overview of the media streaming on the web. I'll also mention that there are 3 main DRM people would want to support on web: Fairplay for Safari, Playready for MS Edge, Widevine for Firefox and Chrome. Each one comes with its own oddities and implementation is not trivial.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah good point, that actually brings a lot of complexity in our player library. There is already bugs linked to specific DRM systems, but it only becomes worse when we talk about specific devices, like STBs or connected TVs. Some who have completely different systems than those three, some who lie on more robust implementation of those three. I ran into multiple kind of bugs, sometimes CDM-related, sometimes browser-related (CEF), sometimes a subtly different EME workflow was needed on the JS-side (we could argue that in that case the bug would also be more on the browser/CDM side if it does not just follow the EME specification).

I hesitated to talk about EME-related matters in that article but here (on an introduction) it would have become too technical and less interesting for most common folks.

But it would definitely be a good subject to talk about for another article.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Half.sh – A dashboard for your shell scripts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cablehead/half.sh <comment><USER2> This is something I hacked together over the last 2 months to try a articulate a bunch of pretty orthogonal ideas I've been bouncing around over the years.

* The command line is amazing for fluidly exploring a data set or an automation task but an adhoc session can quickly spiral to the point it's no longer discernible or reusable. Is there a way you can keep that fluidity and instant feedback but introduce some structure to make things reusable? Also, to be able to return to an adhoc session and pick up where you left off?

* 'Use small tools' gets a lot of lip service, but systems are almost exclusively composed in monolithic ecosystems (for example, Golang, Python, Node). What would it look like to actually build a system using small tools? In my experiments it quickly gets unruly. Does it look better if we have a better way to compose shell scripts?

* Have you ever produced an interesting result in a shell session and thought, 'I just want this to run forever now' Is there a way to seamlessly take these adhoc sessions and then run them redundantly and robustly?</comment>


Occupy Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

Sorry for the indirection.  I've posted this twice on HN and have gotten virtually no input.  Disconcerting because this is very much on-topic for HN.  So I figured I have to "SEO" the thing and see if I can get the right eyeballs on the post:
After twenty years working as a hardware/software engineer in various fields I am thinking about completing a degree. I never finished mine. I originally went for a EE. Took most of the science, math, physics and a couple of programming courses. Got bored.
By the time I was done with my second semester in college I had designed and built my own robots (as in: machine the parts and assemble, no kits) and all of the computers and electronics to drive them. I implemented all of the low-level code in FORTH (which I wrote from scratch) and wrote the high level operating software to run on a PC. This project became the subject of a paper I presented at an international conference on the subject. Again, school was like being in a slow-motion scene in a movie. I had to move faster.
I was designing and programming my own computers from scratch. By that I mean, wire-wrapping chips and writing the BIOS in assembler, implementing FORTH from scratch, designing my own floppy disk controllers from scratch and implementing drivers, etc. School felt very slow and painful, I was learning and doing interesting things at a much faster pace on my own.
Later-on I got in to FPGA's and went on to design boards to do real-time image processing in hardware. Again, I did the hardware (high-speed design, signal integrity, DDR memory, GHZ-range I/O), all the firmware (Verilog) and real-time OS for an embedded micro (8051 derivative) that ran the whole thing.
In all I accumulated experience programming in Assembler (various), C, C++, Forth, Lisp, Visual Basic, Objective-C, PHP, Javascript/jQuery, Verilog and probably a few more languages.
Now, years later, I am thinking about the idea of completing a bachelors in CS degree online. The motivations are many. From personal accomplishment to the idea of going further and opening the doors to get into research in a field I love, robotics. I am fascinated by humanoid robotics and want to contribute, but, despite my accomplishments, the lack of degrees stands in the way of participating in that field.
I'm wondering what HN members think about the various programs now available. I've looked at University of Illinois and a few others. Not sure how they all rank.
I am also very interested in the possibility of receiving credit for some of what I've done over the years. I mean, I could probably teach some of these courses with some prep. I wonder if these programs allow one to take a test and bypass the class altogether.
BTW, most programs start in Feb/March, hence my hurry in getting some feedback in order to make a decision.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> FWIW

If I were you, I wouldn't waste my time and money on getting a degree. If you've had that much experience in various fields it should be relatively easy to find a way into the robotics industry.

Plus, if you have the money and the time to "validate" yourself by going through the monotony of classes which sound like they would already be well beneath your level, I would say you would be better off by putting that money and time toward your own robotics company.

It sounds like you have more than enough initiative to accomplish the tasks you set out on. Why waste time getting a worthless piece of paper to show your level of worth? Just to work for a company that can't understand the value of someone beyond what they see on paper?

Think up the next wave of robotics you'd like to see in this world. Then do whatever it takes to make it a reality.

Build a company to work for if you can't find one that will hire you from your background alone.

Now. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words. In reality I was somewhat headed in that direction. I started a tech business out of my garage about 12 years ago. Self funded. A manufacturing business. Based out of the US. Tough and capital intensive. After moving out of the garage I grew it to the point of having, under one roof, just about anything you'd need to design and manufacture quite a range of products: EDA tools, lab, prototyping equipment, fully-stocked Haas CNC shop, etc. Then 2008 happened. Long story short, we were not ready for the financial test that the economic downturn brought forth. After twelve long years of hard work the business went under. So, yes, I am basically broke.

The problem with launching a robotics business is that it is very capital intensive. And, if it happens to be about humanoid robotics the potential for revenue is fairly limited. Most real humanoid robotics is still in the research domain. I don't know if I am interested in making toys. Maybe I should consider it. Still, making physical products is capital intensive and there's a very long delay between investment and revenue generation. Unless doing something relatively trivial the runway required is orders of magnitude greater than for, say, an Internet startup.

My guess is that there is no way to get into humanoid robotics research without a degree. Even if one wanted to explore SBIR funding opportunities you need the legitimacy that degrees provide.

I don't know everything. In fact, I am keenly aware of just how much I don't know. However, constant learning is a way of life for an engineer. And that's exactly what I've been doing my whole life. This, for me, seems to be one of those "if you can't beat them, join them" moments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Actually, I would go for it. I think with your experience the University of Illinois would be more than enough.. Crap.. A degree from University of Phoenix would make you CIO with that knowledge.. I'm not trying to hype you up but honestly with you experience any degree should work..

<comment><AUTHOR> University of Illinois keeps coming up as a good option. Frankly, I am not sure about some of the "easy" programs out there. For example, there's a BS in CS program out of the University of Atlanta that costs $12K for the entire program. A superficial look of at the program gives me the idea that it might just be a waste of money. For reference, UofI cost about four times that much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you could some how port all that knowledge to "right cerebral hemisphere" I would flat out give you my degree..</comment>


The "thin edge of the wedge" strategy - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.org/2010/12/26/the-thin-edge-of-the-wedge-strategy/ <comment><USER2> It is one way of saying: find way to get traction first and then have bigger vision later.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really a long way of saying "deliver a MVP (minimum visible product) ASAP" or "ship early, ship often". Nothing new there.

<comment><USER4> I didn't read it that way. I think he points out that sometimes you have to come up with a feature that wasn't in your original vision for the product in order to gain initial traction. I think it's a good thing to keep in mind - you don't have to gain traction solely through marketing effort.</comment></comment>


The main culprits for startups' diversity problem? Investors - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/02/the-main-culprits-for-startups-diversity-problem-investors

<comment><USER2> > ... it's pretty much anybody who isn't white, male, young, and privileged...

I don't know what startups these guys are talking about, but they sure don't sound like the U.S. startups I have experience with. Disproportionately male? Sure. Privileged? If by "privileged" you mean from at least an ordinary middle class background? Sure again. But white? Only if you count our large (very large?) contingent of south asian and east asian teammates.</comment>


Job Posting for Amazon.com Before it Launched (1994) - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/history_job_posting_for_amazoncom_before_it_launch.php <comment><USER2> Since we are digging through the archives...an oldie but goodie from Shackleton (1907).

      Wanted. Men for hazardous journey.
      Low wages. Bitter cold.
      Long hours of complete darkness.
      Safe return doubtful.
      Honor and recognition in the event of success.

[http://bytepawn.com/2009/01/08/shackletons-job- advertisement...](http://bytepawn.com/2009/01/08/shackletons-job- advertisement/)

<comment><USER3> _"Low wages. Bitter cold. Long hours of complete darkness."_

At least he was honest. That description applies equally well to startup life in Seattle, but I didn't see any mention of it in Bezos' email. ;-)

<comment><USER4> Seattle isn't that bad! :)

The wages are pretty good. Our locally produced Voyager gin is making me feel pretty toasty right now. iPhone+Rails contracting work around here is prevalent enough that it just paid for my Xmas trip to Maui... And, most importantly, we're past the Winter Solstice. Next stop: 17 hours of sunlight in late June!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, meta point: what is up with all of the spam on this thread? Has this been happening a lot lately and I haven't noticed because people are just really diligent with flagging, or are spammers just now finding HN?

(Since the spam will hopefully soon disappear, there are three separate comments in here from one "dsgherhrt", advising us: "Priority my friend! Christmas is coming, quick to our website shopping ::snipped:: Nike, Jordan, prada ::snipped:: ::link spam::"; "sdgerhrtj"; and, "dfgerher".)

<comment><USER5> They do crop up from time to time (you can see it if you have showdead on) but there's a lot more on this topic than usually...

I wonder if it's bots posting spam because of detecting Amazon in the title of this page?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this was a modern job posting, I'd find it overly pompous. The phd is one thing, but "you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible" would put me right off (and obviously, in this case, it'd be my loss - not that I'd have the skills...)

<comment><USER7> I too tend to be turned off by displays of coolness or bragging in a job ad. E.g. I am not a rockstar, a ninja or a junkie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I start with these guys Monday. I have a real feeling they're going somewhere.

Amusingly, the job posting I applied through gave only slightly more information (New Products Division).

<comment><USER9> I start on January 10. Maybe a HN Amazonian meetup sometime?

<comment><USER8> This sounds good to me. I wonder how spread out people are, though (I don't even know how many offices Amazon has in Seattle :). I'll be in South Lake Union office.

<comment><USER9> Same here, SLU. I'm currently in Seattle now looking for a place to live. Not much luck. Places are more expensive, smaller, and older compared to Dallas.

Good luck on your first day. Contact me so we can meet up sometime.

<comment><USER8> At least you've gotten an early start on the apartment hunt. I've heard similar things about the rents (I'm coming from a $1/square foot loft in Atlanta, so I'm quite certain I'm in for a shock). I guess I'll find out when I get there. Right now I'm still in Atlanta tying up loose ends; I get to Seattle on Sunday afternoon.

Good luck to you as well. I'll definitely get in touch once I'm in town.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks exactly like a job posting for any of the 99.99999% of startups out there that will _not_ be the next Amazon. If you saw an ad like this today it would just fade in to the background noise.

</comment><comment><USER11> Best point -

"you should be able to do so in about the third-time that most competent people think possible"

In a short description is gives exactly the amount of information that a job post needs to give - Work, environment, challenges, co-worker info, compensation.

</comment><comment><USER4> so...who ended up taking that job? Werner Vogels?

<comment><USER12> _Possibly_ Paul Davis, now lead author of <http://ardour.org>. I believe he claims to have been one of Amazon's very first employees.

Edit: Yes it was, apparently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So the challenge is to absorb that email, and perhaps other historical artifacts like it from now-wildly-successful companies, and figure out if there's a common pattern to them. If there's a common pattern, you can look for it in job postings today. Try to recognize the Next Big Thing opportunity, the diamond in the rough.

</comment><comment><USER14> I remember my own experience of taking a job back in '99 with ebay in the UK and no-one back then had any idea of how big the web was going to be...it really was a journey into the unknown. We had no idea the company would make it, this little upstart in the UK market with a three person office.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Your compensation will include meaningful equity ownership"

That should be added to Joel Spolsky's list.

<comment><USER7> What list?

<comment><USER16> He may be referring to The Joel Test: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html>

<comment><USER15> Yes, sorry, I was.

I should have added the link, plus this link: <http://vaig.be/2010/12/joel- test-for-software-companies.html> and this: [http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/10/12/26/1424243.s...](http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/10/12/26/1424243.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That Alan Kay signature quote is telling. Well done, Amazon.

<comment><USER18> Eh, not so well done--Bezos got the quote wrong.

The correct/canonical version of Alan Kay's quote is: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it".

This version has 50+ million hits vs. 5100-ish for the version Bezos has (plus 40 more if you search for it with "it is" instead of "it's") ).

<comment><USER19>
        "Misquotation is ... the pride and privilege of the learned.
        A widely-read man never quotes accurately for the rather obvious reason
        that he has read too widely."

        Hesketh Pearson (1887 – 1964)

There is a more amusing one than this but I cannot find it for the life of me. Obviously this applies more to the spoken than the written word but the point stands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am wondering .. What's meaningful equity ownership?

<comment><USER21> Shares in the company. One hopes, near an integer percentage.</comment></comment>


What else should I add to Study Stickies?  Is it good enough for more significant promotion (e.g., on StumbleUpon)? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> As I have already stated in another thread, I think the idea of your app is good and I got it straight away. I agree with most people here though that you could do with a better design and layout of the site. I think you should invest some time in this, no matter how daunting it might seem now.

That said, as long as the site works, I think you should unleash it right now to the public. Don't wait to get it perfect. Release it and carry on working to improve it - using feedback you get from users. Prepare to be very busy though and I would suggest a comprehensive FAQs/Glossary section before you launch. If you don't add one then you might get swamped and not have time to get on with your improvements. Also, I think the yellow highlight is too bright across the top of the homepage.

Finally, to aid comprehension, I suggest that you replace the text in the yellow highlight with: "Take notes (stickies) from any resource including books (both printed and online), videos, podcasts, and more. Share your stickies or keep them private. Learn from others." or similar.

All the best.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't want to sound like an asshole.

But, I have visited your site on different accounts in the past , say about 10 times. Every time I visit your site I:

a) haven't a clue of what your site is about, b) haven't a clue of where to begin to find out what it's about, c) find the design very unpleasant and frustrating.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have tried to address (a) and (b) with more info in the yellow box.

Could you be more specific about (c)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm with kyro here. Your site's design is about ten times more complicated than it needs to be, and the 'Please wait...' loading textbox is arse ugly. Have a look at sites like Wufoo or Thinkature. They have complex concepts too, but they know how to present them in a way that draws users in.

You don't need to have import data and export data as links on the front page, especially when I can't even seem to do anything with your site without logging in. Just have "Data import/export" as a bullet point in your feature list; people will get the point.

Speaking of being able to do something with your site without logging in: this is vital. If you want me to make an account, you need to give me a reason to do it. Again, see Thinkature's site, or Adobe's kuler. If you can provide even a subset of the site's functionality to people who aren't logged in, you'll get more signups. Even if you can't do that, it helps if you can explain why the heck I'd want to use your service, like Wufoo does.

</comment><comment><USER5> Dude, if you are not willing to take advice, you will not progress. Your software is too complicated! You say it allows one take notes. Well, how in heavens name does one do that? I do not see a button or link.

This is why a lot of these ycomb reject startups are failing. Their software has obvious flaws and when it is pointed out, they do not work on fixing it.

Your site is fatally flawed. If you wish, mail me at maximusklein at gmail dot com for further discussion. If you don't wish to, start fixing it by explaining to me (and hundreds of other dumbasses like me), what the hell a "resource" is.

<comment><AUTHOR> A "resource" is the artifact to which you would like to attach sticky notes. It may be a book, video, online document, etc.

To add a note, you first need to add a resource. Then you can click "Add Sticky" under the resource to add a sticky for that resource.

<comment><USER6> To put it in a nicer way, what's a resource? People work better with analogy to something they already know. For example "stickies" conveys something that can be stuck onto something else. Maybe that something else is a "stickable"? Or you could drop the generic word, and just mention the specific things you can stick to, like images, webpages, and videos.

In general, your site is daunting to a new user. Most of the things are not labeled in a way that a person unfamiliar with your terminology and layout conventions could jump right in and start using it. One thing to concentrate on is the names of actions. I see that I can import stickies, but I have no clue why I would want to. Where would they come from in the first place?

A FAQ/Help page would help out some, but it's really confusing from the outset, moreso than it should be for what I think (?) is a relatively simply idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> The import currently supports the XML format used by the export.

This allows you to make backups using export and in case of data loss on the server import your stickies back in.

It also allows you to write a utility to import stickies from some other format.

In the future, I may provide a heuristic import that works with plain text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> See:

<http://studystickies.com/>

<http://studystickies.com/#in%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideoplay%3Fdocid%3D-8246463980976635143>

<http://studystickies.com/#in%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Freports- archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu%2Fanon%2F2005%2FCMU-CS-05-193.pdf>

<http://studystickies.com/#sql%20by%3Aamichail>

<http://studystickies.com/#computer%20science>

<http://studystickies.com/#by%3Aamichail>

<http://studystickies.com/#in%3A0071350047>

<http://studystickies.com/#in%3A0070527660>

<http://studystickies.com/#psychology>

BTW, the flash demo is a bit outdated but might be worth watching anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW, how should I promote it? Pay for advertising on StumbleUpon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Based on your replies to my comments so far, I think you're still missing the point. You've implemented good functionality, but you don't have a product. You need to figure out a way to convey why someone would want to use your site and make it easy for them to do so without being confused.

For example, I now know what the import/export options do, but there's absolutely no reason for those to be on the front page. I'm not even logged in, so they have zero relevance to my experience. Even for a registered user, they should probably be tucked away under "Advanced" or under some options tab. It's functionality only the techiest of techies would care to use; in general we can trust that you'll keep our data safe and we won't need personal backups. And working on your "heuristic import" is not a good idea either. It's your format, no one else is using it, so just make it simple and parse it in and out.

Your users couldn't care less how cool your code is or how many features you've implemented, just make something useful and make it easy to understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought it was important to make it really obvious that export is available. Without it, people might not even want to register as they might think that the service may go away at any moment and they would lose their data.

<comment><USER6> Well, part of your job is to convince users that you're trustworthy (assuming that you are). Only the hardcore skeptics should have any doubt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with the others re the design. After loading your page it takes a while to work out what the site is actually about. The mass of text is quite confusing, and I think you need to better explain the relationship between "resource" and "sticky". Interested to see you use GWT for this, I know it can be difficult to make anything look good with it. Making the whole site javascript seems to make browsing quite slow, cant you speed it up a bit somehow? just a few thoughts, good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's faster now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks like you're using AJAX to load in content when I click links. That's a really weird way to implement your site. People are fine seeing pages load, especially when there's all new content coming in. Why reimplement what the browser already does?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand your point. The client gets data from a servlet using RPC. Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER6> I'm saying you could have (more easily) just let a new page load. Then javascript wouldn't be a requirement, and if I wanted to control the loading of the page I could do it with my browser controls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When loading the flash demo, the loading bar does not convey any information. It just keeps growing with no indication of when it will complete.

Also, during pageloads your little "loading" popup seems to have horizontal and vertical scrollbars.

</comment><comment><USER9> amichail; you need to redesign the user interface. start by using font size 12 across the whole site, then add margin between all the blocks. and consider something else beside yellow. Check out websites like technorati and wordpress.com

</comment><comment><USER10> just curious, how is stumbleupon "significant promotion"?

<comment><AUTHOR> They have a paid advertising feature where ads are also "stumbles" with only a subtle indicator that the stumble is sponsored. So it's less likely that people will immediately dismiss the site because it is an ad.</comment></comment>


Help UCincinnati keep its CS dept - <AUTHOR> http://csisimportant.blogspot.com/ Hi HN,
This is a very recent event, and I'd appreciate it if you can share your thoughts on this matter.
http://twitter.com/#!/csisimportant http://csisimportant.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER2> (1) This _really_ needs to be better explained. What is being proposed? Is it simply a matter of reorganization, with faculty and programs being moved to a different administrative unit? Or is it the elimination of programs and classes? Or is it the elimination of positions, and the firing of tenured faculty, etc.? The first is mostly an internal matter, of little interest to the outside world. But the other two are more serious, and some of us out here might want to take an interest.

More information, please.

(2) The grievances need work, too.

The first (Accreditation) is unclear. Even the complete elimination of a C.S. program is not going to stop the university from being accredited. On the other hand, if this is about program accreditation, then what is the issue?

The part about CS being an integral part of any good university does not make sense. Do the writers think all students take CS courses?

Most of the rest of the grievances amount to "Will we have the support necessary for the completion of our degrees?", which is certainly a worthwhile question for the students to ask. On the other hand, it is not one with any _long-term_ impact on the university.

But a couple of the grievances have great significance: "Enrollment has increased in the department in the last 2 years. How can the Dean justify this type of cut?" An excellent question. Also: "What are the facts behind this decision? It is well known that the CS department has more enrollment than other departments. So why CS is being dissolved?" This is what needs to be emphasized, I think.

<comment><USER3> I agree it is very confusing. The university will keep its accreditation and if the program is eliminated what does accreditation even mean then?

CS will probably just end up being merged with Computer Engineering again into some Computer Engineering and Computer Science department. Just like 4-5 years ago before it was split up.

The biggest problem the way I see it, is that students might be _forced_ to switch programs, and end up having different requirements for graduation. That's what I would fear -- you took classes that now count for nothing and you now have to take (and pay for!) classes you didn't plan on taking.

Mind you they already did this once when they switched CS from the College of Arts and Science to College of Engineering. They gave students a choice so they could either finish the degree they enrolled in or they could switch colleges. It wasn't that bad really.

> The part about CS being an integral part of any good university does not > make sense.

Agree.

They don't mention the main problem -- professors that don't care and don't do much and just suck resources out like parasites. I wonder if eliminating a department will provide a legal loophole to dump some undesirable tenured professors and replace them with some who really care about research and teaching.

<comment><USER4> The proposal is to dissolve the CS department. According to the Dean, his "judgement call" places CS as "not a priority" for the future of UC. Therefore specific CS classes will no longer be taught.

This effort is led by CS students. Clearly, the University of Cincinnati will not lose it's status. The accreditation, therefore, is related to the current College of Engineering, which was approved by the Ohio Board of Regents _with_ the CS department.

We (the CS students) do believe that a good engineering school _requires_ a strong CS department. I guess this is not so with either of you...

<comment><USER3> > We (the CS students) do believe that a good engineering school requires a > strong CS department. I guess this is not so with either of you...

I understand your frustration, I went through the process when they switched to the College of Engineering (I refused so I graduated from McMicken). I doubt they will simply kick you out, they will have to let you graduate from the program they admitted you to. They will probably stop receiving new freshmen into the program.

You are right, I do not see it as a big deal. You end up with the same professors there. Just switching names and departments a couple of times doesn't really matter. What's his name Schmidt is still going to do Celestial Mechanics no matter what Computer department you put him in. That's the real problem.

> We (the CS students) do believe that a good engineering school requires a > strong CS department.

Of course, because you are CS students. I am sure Nuclear Engineering students believe the University requires a strong Nuclear Engineering dept. -- it validates their choice and the huge investment of time and money. Back in the day I would have though the same thing (that's why I stayed in McMicken, I wanted to have CS on my diploma, looking back though, it didn't matter really).

EDIT:

As a side note. I think this all started with Zimpher. She is gone now, but it all started to go downhill with her. They built shops, stadiums, wasted money on crap while the govt. was subsidizing the student loans, increased tuition to astronomical proportions. While some colleges were printing tests in 7pt font, double-sided, because they didn't have money for paper.

Look at this fucking shit:

<http://www.uc.edu/president/former_presidents/zimpher.html>

* $1.7 billion spent on stadiums and "Uptown Cincinnati".

* "Established UC's new Center of City designed to facilitate innovative and productive partnerships that blah blah blah..." WTF does that even mean? I guess it means we wasted all the money ...

Sorry, don't mind me I am getting old and jaded. You are doing a great thing by organizing your fellow students. Hopefully someone will listen to you.

EDIT2:

Also, don't forget UC is a public school, so you could try writing a petition to Columbus, it surely won't hurt. Especially if your parents are from Ohio and have been paying taxes there for the longest time.

<comment><AUTHOR> This might help answer some of the questions; Letter to UC President Williams by founder of Computer Sci program Jerry Paul -- <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16466720/PresidentLetter.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> They have reshuffled the program a couple of times in the last 15 years or so. At first CS was in the college of Arts and Sciences. There was also Computer Engineering (CE) in the College Of Engineering.

Then CS dept. was moved to the College Of Engineering into a combined program of "Electrical Computer Engineering and Computer Science". Then they split it up again between Computer Engineering and Computer Science (but within the same College of Engineering).

So now they have:

School of Computing Sciences & Informatics :

<http://www.cs.uc.edu>

and School of Electronics & Computing Systems :

<http://secs.ceas.uc.edu>

Now they want to eliminate the SCSI or merge it with SECS again...

WTF are they doing? If they spent as much effort on academics as they spent on administrative reshuffling maybe they would get somewhere.

There are some good professors there but there quite a few just riding the tenure wave, not caring much about teaching or researching. Overall it was a decent school but nothing extraordinary. I learned a lot there, or should I say, I taught myself a lot there, while waiting to get a piece of paper at the end.

<comment><USER4> We respectfully question some of the choices made by the current dean. WTF is a good start to express what we are thinking at this moment as well....

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some more background would be nice.

Seems like they are trying to consolidate Computer Science, Computer Engineering into something new that may be more cheaper. It would also be a way to re-staff by picking and choosing. Does this affect tenure?

<comment><USER4> We believe this is all political... as financially there is no proof shown.

When one of your organs is hurting and not performing well, you go and consult a physician. A GOOD physician after careful examination and taking the vital readings will suggest some treatment. Follow up appointments will be scheduled to track the treatment's progress. The last thing that will be considered by our GOOD physician is a surgical RESECTION of the organ. Otherwise, most people will end up with amputations.

Even assuming that the College of Engineering is not performing well, a couple of actions that should be taken by our GOOD dean:

1\. Careful unbiased evaluation of the performance of each school before blaming the CS & IT School only.

2\. Meeting with faculty and department's head on regular basis to discuss policies, expectations and how to improve the performance and production as a team. According to the Dean, he met with 60% of faculty before making his "judgement call".

Within UC we have many qualified smart researchers who can come with creative solutions to the budget problem i.e. UC has the potential for self- restoration. To be ranked as a prestigious College, CS is a must.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Their twitter: <http://twitter.com/#!/csisimportant>

I'd appreciate it if you can share your thoughts on this matter.

</comment><comment><USER4> If possible, please work with us and help us gain momentum through the csisimportant.blogspot.com, and twitter (@csisimportant and hashtag #CSISIMPORTANT)</comment>


The Quest to Unlock an Ancient Library - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-invisible-library <comment><USER3> "In trying to read the scrolls, scholars and curators have invariably damaged or destroyed them. The Herculaneum papyri survived only because all the moisture was seared out of them—uncharred papyrus scrolls in non-desert climates have long since rotted away. In each scroll, the tightly wrapped layers of the fibrous pith of the papyrus plant are welded together, like a burrito left in the back seat of a car for two thousand years. But, because the sheets are so dry, when they are unfurled they risk crumbling into dust."

..

"Brent Seales, a software engineer .. gave a talk about the possibility of "virtually unwrapping" the scrolls, using a combination of molecular-level X-ray technology, spectral-imaging techniques, and software designed by him and his students at the university."

..

"In 2010, at a digital-restoration conference in Helsinki, Seales met Uwe Bergmann, a physicist at Stanford. Seales was familiar with Bergmann's work on the Archimedes Palimpsest."

..

"When Bergmann read about the palimpsest, in an article in GEO that his mother had given him, he immediately thought of employing a synchrotron"

..

'Once he obtained access to the palimpsest, Bergmann used X-ray fluorescence imaging, or XRF, in the synchrotron to get pictures of the iron-based molecules in the ink. Unlike MSI, XRF is sensitive to individual elements. Different elements emit characteristic wavelengths of light when the X rays hit them; by zeroing in on iron, Bergmann was able to see the letters. "What had been invisible for centuries was made, right before our eyes, visible," he said, in an interview published by the Department of Energy. "Line by line, Archimedes' original writings began to come to life, literally glowing on our screens. It was the most amazing thing."'

\</comment><comment>-

It _is_ the newyorker, why use a single sentence when a whole paragraph - <USER2> endless digressions - will do :)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is one of those stories that makes me so amazed and angry at the same time. That we can unlock absolutely ancient mysteries and read into a forgotten past is mind bending.

That politics won't let it happen is earth-shattering.

<comment><USER5> It was pretty unclear what the actual reason for not releasing the scrolls was. The article mumbles something about 'power', but doesn't really explain what that means. It's sort of a weird end to a lengthy (and pretty wordy) article, that builds at great length towards the development of a technique to read the scrolls, and then sort of tosses in the fact that they can't use the technique without really exploring why outside of a single ambiguous sentence.

Its hardly clear why locking the scrolls in the basement for another few decades would increase the Institutes power. Having a bunch of unreadable papayri sitting in a box doesn't do much for the Institute, while having them revealed to be the only copies of works by Epicures (or whomever) could only increase their prestige/power/monetary value.

<comment><USER6> Well, at the current rate, it won't be too long before copyright extends 2000 years and then the Institute can claim it and demand a royalty from everyone who wants to know what they say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At least this "data" was still somewhat readable after almost 2k years... I'm not so optimistic about a future in which everything will be (very strongly) encrypted by default due to security paranoia, making such attempts at recovery truly impossible. I can almost imagine an article appearing sometime in the future with the same title, but the subject being about DRM'd ebook files to which the keys have been long lost.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow. What a great article. How tantalizing to be only inches away from reading lost ancient literature, but unable to unroll it to read it.</comment>


A blog post leads to doubts about Cornell's food laboratory - <AUTHOR> http://www.chronicle.com/article/Spoiled-Science/239529 <comment><USER2> This is what Andrew German has been covering as "Pizzagate" [http://andrewgelman.com/2017/02/03/pizzagate-curious- inciden...](http://andrewgelman.com/2017/02/03/pizzagate-curious-incident- researcher-response-people-pointing-150-errors-four-papers-2/)

I had never heard of Wansink but it sounds like he's dominated the food science field, and has been the main purveyor of "common sense" concepts such as how serving food on a small plate will trick you into feeling fuller, and all of these findings are suddenly under attack [0]. Even worse, these attacks arise from blatantly obvious errors or anomalies that are apparent without even looking at the data -- which implies severe weaknesses in the peer review process. Given the scope and severity of the errors, it's really hard to imagine Wansink or the Food Lab surviving this.

I wonder if one of the main takeaways for other academics is to never blog? All of this only came about because Wansink seemed to sincerely want to give advice on how to succeed in academia. Though the blog post's tone of "just work really hard for free!" was already boiling into a scandal in itself, before people started actually reading what his hard working grad student actually produced.

[0] [https://mobile.twitter.com/StuartJRitchie/status/84686385484...](https://mobile.twitter.com/StuartJRitchie/status/846863854843891712)

</comment><comment><USER3> A researcher with hundreds of publications hadn't heard of p-hacking or the reproducibility crisis until a month ago? Lay people who occasionally read science news have been hearing about those for years now. This is the "I'm too stupid to be a fraud" defense, apparently.

</comment><comment><USER4> > It's also led to an undercurrent of anxiety among scientists who fear that > their labs and their publication records might come under attack from a > feisty cadre of freelance critics.

Formerly known as "peer review".

<comment><USER5> Bluntly, no. Laypeople are not the intended audience for scientific papers and usually lack the background to provide an informed review (hell, even most researchers in the field do). They _do_ lack certain biases and incentives that researchers familiar with the topic usually have, but that doesn't compensate for what they don't know (for example, whether the claimed phenomenon has been tested many other times and not shown up; whether the claimed mechanism is bunk; whether the supposedly novel idea has already been published many other times).

That being said, laypeople can (and should) absolutely call out research malpractice like what's described in the article.

<comment><USER6> I disagree pretty strongly.

You've got worldwide universities churning out masters and pdh-level educated persons, who mostly go to the private sector for employment. Many of those would be perfectly able to perform peer review. And with this p-hacking crisis, mostly due to abject statistical knowledge, there are literally millions of technically able non-scientists able to review this nonsense. Any physicist, econometricist, statistician (and >100 more technical fields) could kindly take a shot at the social science methods in dispute here.

<comment><USER5> You're focusing on exactly one aspect of peer review, determining whether the statistical methods used were valid, which I agree can be done by pretty much anyone with a background in statistics (given that these days it's pretty easy to get in touch with the authors to ask for clarification). But peer review is about more than just determining whether the paper is internally coherent (or directly lifts text from other papers by the same author, which can be determined by a machine). I shouldn't have to say this, but a former physics Ph.D. is emphatically _not_ qualified to perform peer review on papers on cell biology solely because physics and cell biology are both science. Papers don't exist in a vacuum, and by engaging in practices like selective citation (and others I mentioned in the previous post), it's possible to convince intelligent and reasonable people of a point that is completely wrong. In fact, it's so easy it even happens somewhat routinely _within_ narrow subspecialties, where there may only be a handful of experts on a phenomenon worldwide. People who aren't up to date with the field already usually don't have time to spend weeks, months, or years trudging through the literature to gain enough background knowledge to make those kinds of decisions.

<comment><USER6> You're right (and we probably agree). I did focus on the number 1 problem in social science / pop psychology today -- sloppy statistics.

But you do make a convincing point. The 'stink' that is uncovered nowadays is mostly in those sciences where the layman / statistically schooled _can_ make a difference. We hear a lot less about the replication crisis in those sciences where one indeed needs to have a lot of background knowledge before being able to do peer review. That's a problem.

There is no reason to assume that the same problems are not paramount in cell biology and other fields. We actually have enough reason to believe that many trials in medicine are flawed. Given that researchers in all fields face the same incentives (publish or perish) we are probably looking at at least 20 years of false, peer-reviewed and published results in all fields. That's a huge problem for mankind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > His insights have also attracted interest — and, more importantly, money — > from policy makers. In 2014 the U.S. Department of Agriculture forked over a > $5.5-million grant to support Wansink's Smarter Lunchrooms program, which > has since been put into practice in more than 30,000 schools across the > country.

there's something painfully appropriate about that quote appearing on the same page with a "trending" article titled: "Trump Proposal to Cut Indirect Research Payments Would Hit State Universities Hardest"

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this another example of why journals should publish negative results? Is there a way to review papers where you are just evaluating the soundness of the methodology regardless of results?

"Do good science" is easier to set up reliable cultural practices around than "discover something new".

<comment><USER9> Preregistration, as demanded for clinical trials, is essentially the only way to ensure that researcher degrees of freedom are avoided.

Buy the ticket, take the ride. Needless to say, it's a scary ride, so most groups won't do it.</comment></comment>