Half the people in human history who reached the age of 65 are alive now. - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.100-the-shock-of-the-old-welcome-to-the-elderly-age.html <comment><USER2> I'm surprised this statistic isn't brought out more in articles that call cancer, heart disease, etc. diseases of the developed world vs. the modern world, the difference being that instead of living in a pure time of organic everything, many people simply didn't live long enough to develop our modern diseases.

<comment><USER3> The way we eat in the 'developed world' is not necessarily the reason that people are living longer. Advances in medicine, sanitation, personal hygiene, etc probably have played a larger role.

That said, being in 'the developed world' doesn't necessarily mean that we are eating worse than in previous years. IIRC, the Irish Potato Famine happened because most of the farmers in Ireland ate a diet that mostly consisted of potatoes, so they were starving when the crops were bad (I believe the potatoes that they grew for themselves were different than the ones they grew for the land-owners, and it was the type of potato that they grew for personal food that suffered causing starving farmers). I can't imagine that a diet that largely consists of potatoes is necessarily healthier than eating McDonald's everyday. Just saying...

<comment><USER4> Actually, you could survive solely on a diet of potatoes and milk, with all the essential nutrients provided - [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i- surviv...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-survive-on- nothing-but-potatoes-and-milk) (This includes more potato famine info as well).

I doubt fries and a shake would work as well. Then again, maybe it's just evolving 'essential nutrients' to 'essential nutrients with optional cholesterol'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's kind of out of control in Japan, but lower birth rate seems like a good thing. The world could use a little population decline, and that's the best way to go about it imho.

It will unbalance the age distribution, and as a relatively young person I don't love the idea, but it's better than other forms of population decline...

edit: Seriously? You guys think lower birthrates are bad? "world fertility has halved to just 2.6 babies per woman"... if we kept up at 5.2 the world population would almost double every 20 years. Believe it or not, that will cause problems.

<comment><USER6> I don't think this shift has anything to do with people wanting to reduce the birth rate, though I agree that this situation is something we were going to have to deal with eventually.

We live in a world with finite resources. I've seen a few scientists point out that you can never continue exponential growth in a finite system. Whether it is the population or the economy, we have to level-off at some point.

Sadly, the ecological limit is imposed by starvation. I'd like to think we're smart enough to stop before that.

<comment><USER7> World population growth is not exponential, but logistic. A logistic curve looks exponential until you pass the inflection point. IIRC, we did that in the '80s.

<comment><USER8> Yes[1]; most of the current population estimates show the world population leveling off in the 9-12 billion range. Percentage growth rate actually peaked in the mid 1960s (about 2.2%), and absolute growth peaked in the late 1980s (about 85 million people per year.) This is completely expected from logistic growth models[2].

Different species reach logistic growth in different ways. As the grandparent post noted, "reduced birth rate" is better than alternatives like "mass starvation". Lower birth rates are not a bad thing from a population growth perspective, though the demographic shift they bring about will require changes to our expectations regarding retirement. It's rather unfortunate that we're still using a retirement model designed when life expectancy was lower and birth rates were higher.

[1]"Who's that insightful person who posted about logistic growth and stole my thunder? Oh, hi, honey!"

[2]The image at [http://www.growth- dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image...](http://www.growth- dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image004.gif) shows actual world population data following a logistic curve, compared to an exponential curve above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So we know that people are living longer and longer. We also know that yearly health care costs are rising. We also seem to think we can keep the latter in control while continuing with the former.

The fact is that older people incur much larger healthcare costs over their lifetimes [1]. In fact, "[those 85+] consume three times as much health care per person as those 65–74, and twice as much as those 75–84." If we keep inventing new treatments to keep you going until the next crisis, or another drug to take to prevent yet another fatal condition, then we're going to have to realize that health care costs per life-time are going to increase, and that is going to be spread through the population through insurance.

Unless our lifetime earnings increase as fast as the cost of medical technology, we will reach a point where we cannot afford to live longer even though the treatments exist. We may get to a point where we have to make the hard decision of how long we want to wait until we retire and how long we really want to live after we retire.

I don't know what the solution is, but I can't help but notice that we are not in a sustainable situation.

1\. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/>

<comment><USER9> "So we know that people are living longer and longer. We also know that yearly health care costs are rising. We also seem to think we can keep the latter in control while continuing with the former."

This is a lie spread by the medical guild to convince you to give them more money. In face, the increase in life expectancy has _leveled off_ during the past thirty years (citation: [http://daveeriqat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/us_life_expect...](http://daveeriqat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/us_life_expectancy.png)), the time period during which medical costs have risen so much. All of the extra trillions we've spent on medicine have done very little.

"The fact is that older people incur much larger healthcare costs over their lifetimes [1]."

This is, in large part, because older people have less energy, and are therefore easier to bully into handing all their money over to the medical guild.

"We may get to a point where we have to make the hard decision of how long we want to wait until we retire and how long we really want to live after we retire."

This is, again, BS spread by the medical industry to inflate prices. The US spends twice as much on healthcare as any other country, yet ranks 42nd in life expectancy (citation: <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293008,00.html>, from Fox News, no less). _The obscene amounts of money are not working_.

<comment><USER10> There are several reasons why US healthcare costs are higher than other countries, and there is certainly a lot of inefficiency that should be fixed. But one of the major reasons is that the US effectively subsidizes drug development for the rest of the world. US buyers generally have to pay full market rate, and then in other countries prices are fixed artificially low by government fiat. The US probably can't continue paying that subsidy forever, so eventually either other countries will have to pay more, or the US will also start fixing prices and thus research funds will dry up.

<comment><USER11> We're subsidizing marketing campaigns by paying market rates, not pharmaceutical development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I have to work until eighty - I might as well not wait and start relaxing now. Fortunately I don't plan to take that long.

<comment><USER13> This brings a very interesting point. If pensions are a modern invention then they are not necessary something permanent. The logical way to approach the problem is an open-ended way: no more pensions means no more living for retirement. Life should simply be lived the best way possible. Savings are of course necessary, but it's everybody's decision if/when/how they start using them.

<comment><USER14> For that to work, ageism in hiring practices needs to be illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I didn't see in this article a fact I am checking now,

[http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a916131954&...](http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a916131954&db=all)

that fully one-half of girls born this year or later in the developed world will live to the age of 100. Male life expectancy for boys born after the year 2000 is also well into nine decades of life.

<comment><USER16> That's not a fact, it's a prediction.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I know what you mean, but if you accept the statements that

a) global warming will continue

or

b) human population will continue to increase for a few more decades

or

c) the sun will rise tomorrow

you know in what sense I can take a statement about the future as a fact.

Here's a link to a popular account of research on this issue:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8284574.stm>

Here are links to research articles:

[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2961460-4/abstract)

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7288/pdf/nature08...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7288/pdf/nature08984.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There was a rant here recently that, in passing, noted that there's more blacksmiths alive today than ever in history and that more people are making neolithic arrowheads today than at any point in history.

The point of the article is that we're living longer, but the headline stat is probably mostly due to the fact that there's lots of us about.

</comment><comment><USER18> A New Scientist headline in 10 years: Half the people in human history who reached the age of 75 are alive now.

<comment><USER19> Onion headline: World Death Rate Holding Steady At 100 Percent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This reminds me a bit of the Bruce Sterling novel _Holy Fire_ , in which soaring life expectancies and prolonged professional careers create a new, more severe generation gap between the "gerontocracy" and the younger generations. Sterling's speculative future didn't include a birthrate decline, though. What happens to our society when younger people become an increasingly marginalized minority?

<comment><USER21> You would see political gridlock over pension/social security programs cutting back on anything, health care becoming an entitlement program, a casual disregard for running up debts that future generations have to pay, and education costs drastically out-pacing inflation.

<comment><USER22> So business as usual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The world can live on hemp seeds, edible mushrooms and giant silkworm moth larvae. You can power a laptop by biking. You can power a _bike_ by biking.

If every person had just one child, the world population would drop by 50% in thirty years, disregarding wars, catastrophes and epidemics.

The world won't end. It'll just change... when you notice it may end.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Half the people in human history who reached the age of 65 are alive now."

It's an interesting comment, but the article offers nothing to back it up. How would they know that?

</comment><comment><USER25> Nobody will live to 65 in a road warrior type apocalypse.

<comment><USER20> I don't think peak oil is likely to bring that about any time soon.

Several countries seem quite well on their way to bringing about the world of _Children of Men_ , though.

<comment><USER26> "... world of Children of Men, though." ah great movie. I almost cried on the scene where all the soldiers and the insurgents stop fighting to protect the baby.

<comment><USER27> I hope you're being ironic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [citation needed]</comment>


An ode to Surface 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.edandersen.com/2016/08/07/an-ode-to-surface-3/ <comment><USER2> I got an iPad Mini 4 this week to see if it could replace my Dell Venue 8 Pro as my daily web-browsing tablet.

Turns out it can't. Browsing in iOS is a 2nd rate experience no matter which browser you use. Apps are great in iOS but I just can't bring myself to give up Chrome on Windows for that.

So my wife got the new iPad Mini and I took her old 4th gen for testing stuff and using iOS when necessary...

</comment><comment><USER3> The Surface is the best piece of hardware I can never quite bring myself to buy. In an alterative universe Microsoft started making their hardware years earlier, before people like me jumped to Intel Macs and now can't justify switching back from OS X.

<comment><USER4> You make it sound like it's all about hardware in your alternative universe. After being a Windows user for many years and recently switching to a Mac Pro / Mac OS I could never return to Windows. Anything I need from Windows I can easily run using WINE.

<comment><USER3> It isn't all about software, but I've watched OS X get worse and worse over the years. I don't see Windows as a particularly bad alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As the author posted the article and the error is consistently made within the posted article:

[http://its-not-its.info/](http://its-not-its.info/)

<comment><USER6> It's/its, there/they're/their, two/too/to should and will collapse into a single form in the coming decade. In the age where English is a worldwide lingua franca, prescriptivism is a worthless endeavor.

Language changes. The subjunctive is practically dead, long since merged with the indicative and therefore only inferred from context. You had no trouble reading this article with the author using the 'wrong' its/it's.

<comment><USER7> sure in this context maybe but if you actually consciously ignore it/it's in your writing style you'll end up with a lot of confusing sentences. saying things will change in the future doesn't mean you get to ignore accepted rules in the present.

<comment><USER6> You certainly do "get to ignore accepted rules." That's how we got to where we are today, language wise. Split infinitives, sentences that end with prepositions, slang, emoji, abbrevation -- language lives.

Things aren't changing in the future. They're changing now.

I challenge you to compose a sentence, in context like this blog post, that is confusing to a native speaker with its/it's collapsed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


We Don't Need No Stinkin' Databases - <AUTHOR> https://btorpey.github.io/blog/2017/05/10/join/ <comment><USER2> Title is a bit clickbait-y.

Better: "With unix's join command you can join files somewhat similar to database joins"

<comment><USER3> Clickbait-y or not, it sums up the feelings of a lot of developers. I don't understand it myself, but it seems a lot of developers want to reinvent the database to create something "better" or just find some way to never have to use SQL.

<comment><USER4> Using SQL and being able to think both relationally and non-relationally are a valuable skill.

Working with text based datasets is a skill I don't see enough of even though it is quite prevalent. (I have spent more time than I've wanted using tools like Monarch to make text databases relational through an automated workflow)

The reality of development is working with an existing, or multiple datasets homogeneously. Cool use of the JOIN command, a title like "Join text files using the command line" probably would receive a positive response here.

It'd be sweet if everything was a nice and clean API data call with a bow on it, but part of being a developer is enabling that where it need to be.

<comment><USER5> Like I said above, the title is bit of a joke, and a tease.

If you read my blog, you'll see that I try to keep things light. (No cat pictures, though -- at least not yet ;-)

Having said that, the description in the header is "Data manipulation with plain text files". Maybe I'll see if I can find a way to show that on GitHub ...

<comment><USER4> Oh, I read the post, I assure ya. My beef is the binary link baityness of folks being one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of:

\- Command-line tools can be faster than your Hadoop cluster [[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8908462](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8908462)]

\- Going Deep [[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739)]

<comment><USER5> Interesting comment -- thanks for that.

It also reminds me of one of my favorite aphorisms: "Perfect is the enemy of good enough".

What some other commenters appear to have missed is the use case I'm discussing here: scraping log files to generate text files to feed to gnuplot.

And while the approach presented here may not work at Google scale, it works just fine for my situation. It takes me about 10 minutes on my MacBook to churn through around 50GB of logs to produce a few dozen charts. It took about a week to put the scripts together, and now anybody on my team with a shell prompt can do the same thing (including the QA folks).

Sometimes you need to dot all the i's and cross all the t's, but sometimes it's just about getting the job done quickly, with minimal dependencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good luck with getting rid of your steenking database, when it comes to the real world.

Like figuring out a reasonable access path between tables when you're dealing with billions of rows

Like guaranteeing consistency between your relations. While the join command sounds useful (I didn't know it and I'll look into it) it's not really a replacement for all the constraints, which a database provides to ensure that you don't fubar your data

Backup, recovery? Just hope to you really grab everything. No only the data, but also your carefully crafted queries. Sounds like a bummer to figure them out anew

Implementing ACID also sounds like quite a challenge

A database is not just a shipping container, where you cram in your data and provides a few tools to organize it. There's a lot more under the hood, which is just not supported in plain old files.

<comment><USER8> You're assuming quite a lot about the use case. I personally don't have a problem that's solved by this particular utility, but it's not uncommon for our analytics team to use pandas to join CSV files on their way into our data warehouse (or to otherwise reshape small datasets). I could definitely see the utility in plain text relational tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also availaible on Mac. The join command conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').

<comment><USER5> Thanks for pointing that out! I should have mentioned that in the article, and in fact I do much of this type of work on my MacBook.

Hmmm...that might be a good topic for another article.

In the meantime, here are a few packages you can install using HomeBrew (brew install <package>) that help bridge the gap between Mac and Linux for other tools:

bash binutils coreutils gawk gnu-sed gnuplot

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had no idea this tool existed. Thanks! Very cool!

<comment><USER5> Glad you liked it! Like I said in the article, I continue to be amazed at the things you can do with a simple bash prompt.

<comment><USER11> [http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less- egg...](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less-egg/)

> Knuth wrote his program in WEB, a literate programming system of his own > devising that used Pascal as its programming language. His program used a > clever, purpose-built data structure for keeping track of the words and > frequency counts; and the article interleaved with it presented the program > lucidly. McIlroy's review started with an appreciation of Knuth's > presentation and the literate programming technique in general. He discussed > the cleverness of the data structure and Knuth's implementation, pointed out > a bug or two, and made suggestions as to how the article could be improved.

> And then he calmly and clearly eviscerated the very foundation of Knuth's > program.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:Help please. Single person developing complex website - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
I am a mechanical engineer and a Masters in Business from Canada.
I had a flourishing job but resigned from it, since i had a good idea on which i wanted to capitalise.
The idea requires a very complex website and I looked in at freelancing websites. However, I was not interested in them since the quotes were not good nor the portfolios were impressing.
I then contacted couple of webdesign companies and the quote ran to couple hundred thousands.
Now I am planning to invest my own time in developing this as at this point I am not in position to invest that amount.
I have now shortlisted on the grails framework and planning to roll up my sleeves and start. With a novice (just started) programming background is this a good approach.
HN please guys help me out here.
1. Is grails a good framework or should i consider Ruby.? I am not interested in php.
2. What do you suggest me to do here? How to get help from community? Where should i look for help?
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Read this first: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product>

And then this: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Steps-Epiphany- Successful/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Steps-Epiphany- Successful/dp/0976470705/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)

And then go validate your idea with prospective customers.

 _then_ figure out whether you want to use Grails (Java-based) or Rails (which is written in Ruby. Ruby is a programming language). Or something else entirely.

edit: And, for all that is good and holy, don't do a marketplace as your first startup. It'll fail. And I know you won't listen, but you heard it here first. Still, good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Aaron, I would love to hear from you as to why you say a marketplace will fail. just mentioned u on twitter!

<comment><USER2> Marketplaces are _incredibly_ hard to get right, even for people who've been through this before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > I have now shortlisted on the grails framework

How did you shortlist grails? There's a grails conference coming up next month in Denmark, perhaps you should go to that. _(I'm assuming here you're not one of the groovy/grails consultants running that conference who're promoting their product via a newly-created handle on Hacker News.)_

<comment><AUTHOR> No Vorg, I am not groovy/grails consultant. But i just looked at few frameworks and looked at websites running them and decided on that basis

<comment><USER4> Although your approach would seem valid, looking at websites built with x is not actually a good approach for choosing a framework to develop a website.

For 99% of problems, any framework will do.

As a new programmer, you probably want to choose something with the best support for new programmers.

Having used pretty much everything over the years, I would recommend you pick a 'batteries included' language / framework with excellent documentation and a community with excellent support for beginners.

On that basis alone, I'd recommend Django or Rails over Grails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You may wish to find a student developer interested in investing their time into your idea. It may not be the best idea to try to build it yourself if you've never programmed before. It would certainly take longer.

Can you tell us a little bit about the idea?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks t0, the idea is more similar to evisors website. A place where people can reach out to professionals for career development. But its complicated in the sense it involves integration to paypal and other bank transactions etc.

I want a clear design too.</comment></comment>


Microsoft bans open source software from the Windows Marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/2/17/microsoft-bans-open-source-marketplace/

<comment><USER2> The arty assumes that open source means share-alike, ignoring the existence of open-source licenses like BSD, Apache, &c, which do not contradict article 5.

Wildeboer's blog post, which this story is based on, is discussed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2226260>

</comment><comment><USER3> As undoubtedly other people have mentioned: they did _not_ ban all open source. They banned _GPLv3_ and related licenses. (although it's not mentioned in TFA, I think AGPL also is not allowed. Would make sense, since I can just relicense any code under the AGPL.)</comment>


Ask HN: How would you guard your data privacy? - <AUTHOR>

I would like to hear what other HNers might be thiking of doing about keeping their data private. Feel free to be creative in your responses.
I no longer trust my data being stored in cloud services or data centers. I briefly considered storing them outside the US, but then I don't know who to trust there. I'm considering hosting them on my own servers, in my home, or in a trusted friends home. I'm also considering them being stored on my personal phone encrypted. I definitely want my email to be encrypted.
This has to be a problem on a lot of people's mind right now. Practically, what could one do? <comment><USER2> I deleted both my iCloud and Dropbox account for starters. I'm currently looking into hosting, specifically PRQ (Hosted Piratebay and Wikileaks for sometime)[1] and Bahnhof (The datacenter that is in a mountain. They hosted Wikileaks for sometime, as well.) [2]

[1] [http://prq.se](http://prq.se) [2] [http://www.bahnhof.net](http://www.bahnhof.net)

I read somewhere that you can find several VPN services that are based out of the same location of Bahnhof. I don't have much information on it, though.

In terms of email, obviously PGP.

I haven't decided yet if I'm switching from Mac OS X to some form of Linux. I was going to buy a new MacBook, but I'm really on the fence now.</comment>


Show HN: Moo.do – Text-based task and project organization - <AUTHOR> http://www.moo.do/#

<comment><USER2> I've been using Moo.do for the last few weeks, and I love it. The keyboard shortcuts are fantastic, and the ability to create infinitely nested lists is what really separates it from other apps like Wunderlist, Asana, and Trello. No more deciding where something belongs in the binary world of top-level todos and subtasks - with Moo.do, you can nest sub-sub-subtasks where they belong.

Another thing I really love about Moo.do is the ability to quickly shift perspective to focus on different levels of a project. With ⌘ + enter, I can quickly drill deep into a project to focus on a single item, and then with ⌘ + shift + enter I can just as easily climb up the project tree to see everything.

It's powerful without being overly complex. It's available on every device... and it has great keyboard shortcuts! Give Moo.do two days as your primary tool. You won't regret it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using Moo.do for almost two months as my todo list. It's the only thing that has ever gotten me to switch away from text files. I like it because it's basically just text, but with easy priorities and hierarchy (including collapsing). I can zoom into any level of the hierarchy and/or filter by priority levels. Plus it works seamlessly across all devices, which is nice.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great little product! Would love to chat with you [@drglitch on twitter] more about how you're doing text parsing, etc - very much along the lines of what i'm after for an unrelated project.

More importantly, i love the about/press kit page - the guy using the phone "off the grid" with his hand fully stretched out is hysterical :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I have been messing with this this morning and I think I may have found the todo list that a will actually use. I love that it's basically text but with smart features added around it.</comment>


Comprehensive SEO Site Audit Guide - <AUTHOR> http://searchenginewatch.com/3641521

<comment><USER2> Comprehensive? No, but a good introduction. What's a good follow up?

<comment><AUTHOR> ha... well I thought it was pretty comprehensive for audits... and i agree that checklist is pretty legit.

<comment><AUTHOR> as for a good follow up, I find myself referencing this list of Matt Cutts lessons fairly often: [http://www.seoegghead.com/blog/seo/mattcuttsarama-a- summary-...](http://www.seoegghead.com/blog/seo/mattcuttsarama-a-summary-of- useful-stuff-matt-cutts-has-said-p112.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Life on Mars, from Viking to Curiosity (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/57/communities/life-on-mars-from-viking-to-curiosity <comment><USER2> Elon Musk's Space Tesla Isn't Going to Mars. It's Going Somewhere More Important.

> The Falcon Heavy launch would place the Roadster into a heliocentric orbit, > meaning that like the planets and comets and so on, it will be orbiting the > sun. More specifically, the Muskmobile will go into a type of heliocentric > orbit called Trans-Mars injection, which it is the easiest and least energy- > intensive way to move objects back and forth between Earth and Mars.

[https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon- mars/a16571489/e...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon- mars/a16571489/elon-musk-space-tesla-mars/)

The Roadster will not interact with the planet Mars in any way.

<comment><USER3> unless things go very wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only planet that is, as far as we know, populated entirely by robots.</comment>


Two drugs that block cell division synergize to kill tumor cells - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2019/cancer-mitosis-drugs-combine-0710 <comment><USER2> For what it's worth, I'm not sure about the actual paper itself, but the posted article makes it seem like no one knew that TH588 was not primarily acting as an MTH1-inhibitor.

> "This is an exciting paper for two reasons," says David Pellman, associate > director for basic science at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, who was not > involved in the study. "First, Yaffe and colleagues make an important > advance for the rational design of drug therapy combinations. Second, if you > like scientific mysteries, this is a riveting example of molecular > sleuthing. A drug that was thought to act in one way is unmasked to work > through an entirely different mechanism."

Since my startup compiles all genomic knowledge from the published literature, of course the first thing I did was search the literature. The first article that comes up with a quick search for MTH1 and TH588 was from 2014 [0], which basically says TH588 is a first-class MTH1-inhibitor effective in treating certain cancer cells. Then in 2016, another article says that's not its primary mechanism of effectiveness [1]:

> In particular, we identified tubulin as the primary target of TH287 and > TH588 responsible for the antitumor effects despite the nanomolar > MTH1-inhibitory activity in vitro.

Tubulin of course is part of the mitotic spindle which the posted article claims was discovered as the actual target upon which TH588 acts.

I've found around 10 other papers between 2016 and 2018 that further conclude that TH588 doesn't act primarily as an MTH1-inhibitor.

[0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24695224](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24695224) [1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27210421](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27210421)

<comment><USER3> Just want to say that your company is really cool. Are you doing any knowledge graph stuff?

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I appreciate that!

In the abstract sense, I would say we are, in that it's the primary benefit of what we've built versus textual searching like you get with PubMed or Google Scholar. For example, if you were to search for a specific variant like BRAF V600E in Google Scholar or PubMed, you'd need to search for every way that the variant can be described in text, such as p.V600E, p.Val600Glu, c.1798T>A, C1798A, etc. Furthermore, you'd need to then read the results to determine which are specifically referencing the V600E variant in the BRAF gene, versus mentioning the V600E variant in one of the other genes mentioned in the paper.

We've already done that work ahead of time, figuring out which variants belong to which genes in papers, normalizing all the different nomenclatures used for variants so that you can do a single search for your variant and remove the need to think about how authors could have referenced it.

We do the same with taking into account all the different ways authors can talk about genes, diseases, clinical contexts, meanings and interpretations, etc.

I don't know if that answers your question. I guess it depends on what you mean by knowledge graph, since there seem to be a few different ideas of what that entails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They are hoping its 2 years away from clinical trials.

I wonder if that's mostly about red tape, regulations and funding, or are there actually two years of actual work to do to synthesize the treatment based on this finding?

Like if a scientist working on the project had terminal cancer and only had a few months to live, would she be able to test this on herself right now?

<comment><USER5> many scientists have tested substances on themselves. But, with sample size n=1, testing on yourself, would you really learn anything?

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you like to participate in a getting shot experiment? I mean, we can't be sure the first participant died because He got shot given that n=1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like this was observered in a dish?

<comment><USER7> According to the actual paper[0] they did a xenograph study in mice as well. But yeah, MIT are renowned for their over-hyped press releases.

[0]: [https://www.cell.com/cell- systems/fulltext/S2405-4712(19)301...](https://www.cell.com/cell- systems/fulltext/S2405-4712\(19\)30190-5)

<comment><USER8> Thanks. Would really help if the PR folks would also link to the paper.</comment></comment></comment>


Customer Buying Trends 2018 – ECommerce - <AUTHOR> https://pushcrew.com/blog/customer-buying-behavior-trends-2018/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you are looking for some marketing inspiration to rethink your existing marketing strategy or come up with some new ideas for your e-commerce business then this report can help you with that. Recently we interviewed 8 eCommerce industry experts, we asked them what they think would shape customer buying behaviour this year. We have put together their responses in this report. Give it a read and let us know what you think.</comment>


Big Data Firm Says It Can Link Snowden Data To Changed Terrorist Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/08/01/336958020/big-data-firm-says-it-can-link-snowden-data-to-changed-terrorist-behavior <comment><USER2> 1) There is nothing that indicates that this "encryption upgrade" wasn't planned for some time. Correlation ≠ causation, and all that.

2) The very word "terrorist" is disputed, and depends on your side in any given dispute. It is the "high treason" of the 20th and 21st century, an accusation or insinuation used mainly for political reasons and not for actual utility: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism) "In the international community, terrorism has no legally binding, criminal law definition."

3) The fact that 21st century treason is being casually associated with open source is DEEPLY disconcerting to me. I would go to war for a very few things, but any attack on open source is a direct attack on me AFAIC.

<comment><USER3> The idea that al Qaeda might not be a terrorist group is a false controversy, as is the idea that participating in open source might be treason.

<comment><USER4> I think it's safe to assume that a 15 year old kid in Palestine is much more _terrorised_ at the sight of Benjamin Netanyahu than Bin Laden.

It's also safe to assume that a kid in Ukraine is terrorised by Russians or by US/EU depending on which side of the country was he lives.

So, to you Al Qaeda is a terrorist group and I totally get that (to me too). But you have to understand that to Afghans (and a huge load of populations worldwide) the USA/NATO is the terrorist group. That's why what @lectrick said is right I'm afraid.

So either we can assume that all of these parties are terrorists since they indulge in _actions of terrorism_ ?

<comment><USER5> Is it? Which part of Palestine? Gaza or the West Bank? I guess that maybe it is true, since Bin Laden is dead and Netanyahu is alive...you got me there...

Ukrainian kids terrorized by US/EU? Really? What are you talking about? Even in the rebel held areas, how has the US/EU EVER terrorized them?

To some Afghans, we could be seen that way, but most of the population in Afghanistan would rather not take their chances with the Taliban (A terrorist group).

Actions of Terrorism. What exactly are they? Admittedly, we have caused more collateral casualties than I'm comfortable with at times in our fight against terror. But innocent civilians are NEVER OUR TARGET. And that is the differentiating factor here. Terrorists aim to take down societies, not governments. Everyone in that society is considered the enemy. Look at Afghanistan... Taliban goes around beheading people of a different sect of their own faith, they behead non-believers as well as government officials. If you aren't for us, then you are against us mentality.

Bin Laden finds a way to fly 2 planes into the twin towers in NYC, killing thousands of innocent people. Not to mention all the previous attempts to blow up those buildings in years prior, lest you forget that.

So yes, there is a difference in what we are doing in the war on terror. Have we executed perfectly? No way. Have we overreached and done things that I disagree with? Yep. But one thing is damn certain, the motivations of our actions are not the same as the terrorists.

<comment><USER6> The motivation behind the attacks don't matter, the effect on the population being attacked does. The US is/was terrorised by Al-Qaeda and afghans and Pakistanis are being terrorised by the US (e.g drone warfare).

This is a site with predominantly US and Western users so Al-Qaeda will always be the terrorists and America the freedom fighters but change the geographic location of the people you are asking and you change the labels being applied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even assuming it's true and these leaks made it harder to catch terrorists (I would be surprised if it made a _huge_ difference), I have to say I really don't care. Terrorism is not a very significant real risk to people living in the first world (compared to the risk of fatal lightning strike or drowning in a bathtub, for example), but pervasive mass surveillance is.

In general, it's kinda absurd to imagine that anything that helps terrorists is something we don't want to do. Terrorist operations are probably helped by lots of things like cheap availability of computer and communications equipment, low travel costs, access to clean drinking water and food, etc.

<comment><USER8> "Terrorism is not a very significant real risk..." ...I get what you're saying but tell that to anyone who was living in or near NYC in 2001. Or anyone in or near Copley square last year. (I qualify for both...) the "More people die from [insert ridiculous thing like bee stings]!" argument doesn't work for me because there's not much you can do about bees/lightning/the existence of bathtubs but there's plenty to be done about bombs/guns/jihadists/etc. Not advocating NSA-esque tactics just reacting to the oft-used "this isn't a significant risk so why bother" argument, which I think is BS.

<comment><USER7> There's something you can do for all of those things. You can avoid beestings by always wearing a beekeeper's outfit. You can avoid lightning strikes by always keeping yourself grounded. You can avoid dying in a bathtub by never taking a bath. These are actually _way_ easier deaths to prevent than stopping terrorism, where you have an active adversary who, without your intervention, will work to attack you. There's always a cost-benefit tradeoff with every risk you take.

Terrorism is an insanely small risk - in 2012 33,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents, which is about 2750 people each month. Compare to 9/11, which was the worst terrorist attack in history, where 3000 people died. Basically, there is accidental death on the scale of 9/11 happening _every single month_ on US roads. And I'm not even saying we need to do something about that - everyone's pretty comfortable with the level of risk they take when driving. It's just not a big flashy risk like the kind that shows up on the news.

Terrorism probably feels riskier because it happens in big clumps. If you were anywhere except a very specific building in New York or a very specific building in Washington, DC on 9/11, you were at pretty much zero risk of dying of terrorism, but a huge fraction of the people in those two places were at _extremely high_ risk for death by terrorism. By that logic, we should be spending a whole lot more on near-earth asteroid defenses and research into how to stop the Yellowstone caldera from exploding, because even though neither of those things is particularly likely to be the thing that kills any of us, if they do go off they'll kill a remarkably large number of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This provides a useful way to frame people concerns' about Snowden's revelations.

Every intelligence service exists at the intersection of two completely opposite goals: in order to fulfill their mandate to protect their country from its enemies, they need as much information about the actions of their enemies as possible. On the other hand, in order to protect their country from themselves, they need to have as light a touch as possible. There is no solution; you have to compromise.

The thing about compromises is that even though they tend to kinda sorta almost make sense when viewed in context, no one is every happy with them. Any large agency is going to employ a substantial number of people who find these compromises distasteful.

This report indicates that Al Qaeda, an organization that no one in their right mind would say should be allowed to operate freely, benefits from these sorts of disclosures. They learn what's vulnerable, they change their behavior, and they become more difficult to fight. What's worse, it's conceivable that the intelligence agency's response could be to _increase_ the intensity of their activity, the better to capture the enemy's new behaviors.

Now imagine the quandary the intelligence agency faces. They try every day to meet mandates that are _fundamentally_ unreconcilable. They employ people who disagree with the compromises at which they've arrived, and each and every one of them could potentially let the cat out of the bag and render their current work useless.

I don't mean this argument to criticize of praise the actions of the NSA. I only suggest that those (Americans) among you who demonize the NSA and advocate for it's removal consider this reframing of the discussion.

<comment><USER10> Is a sustained lack of oversight (from Congress, or anyone else) a necessary part of this compromise?

<comment><USER9> No, and I should have address this in my initial comment. I expanded on this in another comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8119589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8119589)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The NSA has been found to destroy the trust even US companies have, by spying on _everything_. As a result _everyone_ is going to want to take their privacy more seriously, now that they _know_ they can't trust US companies/government.

So I don't know why that's a surprise. It's not only the _expected_ outcome, but the _desirable_ outcome.

NSA or not, Snowden has also showed "normal people" that stuff they do on the Internet really isn't very private at all, even if when typing it on their computers alone at home "feels private". So that's a great outcome, too, the fact that people have learned the way the Internet _really_ works, and not have a false perception about it anymore. If we all start using Signal and TextSecure, we'll all be safer from _all_ bad actors.

<comment><USER12> >now that they know they can't trust US companies/government

Or the rest of the West for that matter:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Eyes#Future_enlargemen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Eyes#Future_enlargement)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's wholesale surveillance, surely everyone has changed their behaviour by at least a little.

</comment><comment><USER14> Correlation does not equal causation.

I don't think it came as a surprise to terrorist organizations that the NSA was working to break their encryption techniques—just as I'm sure it wouldn't have been a surprise to the Soviets during the Cold War.

The group that was surprised and caught off-guard was the American people.

It's been just over a year since the Snowden leaks. Overhauling an entire communication system likely took more than a year. Ground-up rewrites rarely go that well.

This strikes me more as a publicity grab for this firm than any kind of objective science.

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems pretty tenuous to me. The 'link' seems to be 'some months after Snowden, those guys released new software with new capabilities'.

</comment><comment><USER16> People who don't want to get caught doing something change their communication behaviour all the time. If anybody is interested in that kind of stuff I'd recommend watching the surprisingly good TV show "The Wire".

Even if the press would loudly be agreeing over the "fact" that "SNOWDEN PUT US ALL IN DANGER" it would be an instructive lesson in terms of freedom having value by it having a price.

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

\-- Litany against fear by the Bene Gesserit (Frank Herbert's Dune)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a great example of the "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" logical fallacy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc)

</comment><comment><USER18> There has been studies that linked the type of surveillance NSA do to behavior changes which decreases calls to hot-lines, doctors, lawyers, and priests. Since suicide is the second most common cause of death in adolescents, one would think that tampering with the effectiveness of suicide prevention is worse than blowing the whistle on the surveillance.

Now I don't doubt that this report that was made by a CIA funded company include a somewhat unbiased view, but maybe in a few years time a independent research group could look into the effect that the NSA surveillance and the Snowden leaks had onto society.

<comment><USER19> link to said studies?

<comment><USER18> Sorry, meant to say a study. There are studies that look at the localized effect of surveillance (in the work place, on the street, on a park...), but I have not seen more than this study that try to look at the effect society gets from ubiquitous surveillance.

link: [http://www.kreativrauschen.com/blog/2008/06/04/data- retentio...](http://www.kreativrauschen.com/blog/2008/06/04/data-retention- effectively-changes-the-behavior-of-citizens-in-germany/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When a reporter finds out that the police planted evidence to get a conviction, is it the reporters fault if the criminal goes free?

When a reporter uncovers the story of rapes on campus, is it the reporter's fault that the university's reputation is tarnished?

When Snowden exposed that the NSA was (unconstitutionally) spying on _every_ citizen, is it somehow Snoden's fault that terrorists gain an advantage?

<comment><USER21> Snowden has leaked more then just that. Thats the fundamental difference. Most of the revelations have nothing to do with constitutional vs unconstitutional activities of the NSA, they relate to capabilities that the NSA has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Did Snowden reveal anything about "Mujahideen Secrets" or whether the NSA was able to unscramble communications made using that program? If it really was using homebrew cryptography, one can imagine it was already vulnerable to the types of attacks that programmers make when rolling their own security schemes.

<comment><USER23> Snowden hasn't so far as I know. However, a number of security researchers have published articles analyzing Mujahideen Secrets and criticising its crypto based on publicly-available information. That probably has more to do with why they redesigned it than anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Correlation ≠ causation

"Whatever the reason, Schneier says, al-Qaida's new encryption program won't necessarily keep communications secret, and the only way to ensure that nothing gets picked up is to not send anything electronically. Osama bin Laden understood that. That's why he ended up resorting to couriers."

That basically admits the reality of the situation. They knew all along that the NSA and so on was watching/listening. It is why Osama used couriers.

I highly suspect that the answer is the obvious one:

Any _idiot_ knows not to invent your own crypto algorithms in isolation. They moved from homebrew crypto to modern, widely used standards. This is correcting a technical error they made, nothing more.

To be honest, if anything, this proves how inept the NSA is that they couldn't even break the homebrew crypto in a meaningful way to provide useful intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER25> Weird fact: Snowden leaks have changed behavior of NPR reporters and content of news reports!

</comment><comment><USER26> It's like accusing Google of facilitating Terrorist attacks through Maps. The NSA was unconstitutionally spying on everyone. If Snowden accused NSA without releasing any Data, no one would've believed him.

</comment><comment><USER27> The actual report is now linked here:

[https://www.recordedfuture.com/al-qaeda-encryption- technolog...](https://www.recordedfuture.com/al-qaeda-encryption-technology- part-2/)

First point: AlQ is now using well-studied encryption algorithms (possibly in the correct way, but not investigated in this story)

Second point: Some claim about the software not being malware. Could not deduce the technical point they want to make here.

But it is an embarrassing analysis that DOES NOT support their headline- seeking claim.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't think that's terribly difficult. The NSA has obviously changed their behavior. /snippy internet comment

</comment><comment><USER29> "...for years, al-Qaida has used an encryption program written by its own coders called Mujahideen Secrets."

Wow, that's crazy! I had no idea. Al-Qaida does their own software development? So weird.

Using their own homebrew encryption algorithms is a terrible idea, though. The NSA must have been all over this thing.

<comment><USER30> It's in this particular case, a great idea. And I hope this comment will strengthen those responsible in their attitude that what they build is absolutely unbreakable.

<comment><USER29> Sure, maybe we can talk them into using water pistols instead of real weapons, too. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think it would be much more surprising if they had not.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if this is the same sophisticated open source encryption recommended by NIST which was revealed the NSA influenced policy in?...

</comment><comment><USER32> If they can link it, why haven't they? Everything is linked by the passage of time..

</comment><comment><USER33> MRDA!</comment>


McWhopper Proposal - <AUTHOR> http://mcwhopper.com

<comment><USER2> It would be fascinating to see what is required to actually make this work. Sadly, the red tape alone seems like it would be enough to kill it before meeting the deadline.

\- Getting the permits to sell food (in Chicago of all places)

\- Getting a one day location

\- Figuring out legal liability (who gets sued if somebody gets hurt/sick)?

\- How are those custom design bags, wrappers, uniforms going to be produced? A McDonalds or Burger King supplier or 3rd party?

\- How are you going to get workers for that one day for that one location? Do you have to hire temporary workers or do you divert existing workers? How will that impact overtime and other local labor laws (in Chicago)?

\- How is the actual burger constructed? Do patties come from McDonalds or Burger King suppliers? What about the buns? What about everything else? Are side orders like fries and drinks going to be available.

\- If McDonalds and Burger King cross-promote different specific brands like Coke or Pepsi or Heinz or Del Monte, who do they use?

I'd really like to know how this would work out.

<comment><USER2> It reminds me of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It had lot of rules dictated by Disney and Warner Bros. For example, Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse had to have the same number of lines and same amount of screen time.</comment></comment>


The internet was supposed to save the world. What happened? - <AUTHOR> https://logicmag.io/03-flying-blind/ <comment><USER2> I think it probably has.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. The Internet has allowed so many more freedoms and opportunities to communicate that were just Sci-Fi dreams when I was a kid in the 70s/80s.

Now with that increased communication medium we also get the negatives of very specific propaganda and marketing. But we were getting that before anyway, just not to this level of granularity.</comment></comment>


Former NSA Official: 4 Things E. Snowden Gets Wildly Wrong About American Spying - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/expert-here-are-4-things-edward-snowden-gets-wildly-wrong-about-the-nsa-2014-10?utm_content=buffer4dfb2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

<comment><USER2> What reason do we have to believe _anything_ an NSA Official says?

</comment><comment><USER3> Somebody tell me why I should believe this guy's totally unsupported anecdotal hand-wavy BS, as opposed to believing Snowden - whose accusations are largely backed up by, ya know, actual evidence?</comment>


Heathkit – The Electronic History Mystery - <AUTHOR> http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2014/12/20/heathkit-the-electronic-history-mystery/ <comment><USER2> I'm very curious about this. My father put together a Heathkit (analog, of course) oscilloscope kit when I was a kid. It took me years to realize the amount of dedication involved in not just assembling the thing (which I helped do) but also importing it to Portugal from the US.

(I'm 95% certain it was this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoAmzsz_bJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoAmzsz_bJY) \- the knobs on ours were slightly different, though.)

I don't think they'll be doing oscilloscopes again, but I remember they had a kit catalogue I loved to pore over.

<comment><USER3> My dad built one of these: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iad37q9kNPk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iad37q9kNPk) and we spent a lot of time looking at our house power and trying to figure out where recurring patterns came from. Back in the early 70s, refrigerators and air conditioners (things with high-load motors running intermittently) were often the culprit.

He built a bunch of Heathkit products. We had an intercom system that worked over the power wiring. It quit working before I was clever enough to use it to play jokes on my little sister.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was always so jealous of the kids on Mr. Wizard's World that would get to play with the Heathkit HERO-1 robot: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT7nZwxb- DI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT7nZwxb-DI) Sad that the current owners are letting the name & IP languish.

<comment><USER2> Oh man. I saw that on the catalogue when I was a kid.

<comment><USER5> My dad actually bought and put a Hero One together; I used to type in programs on the numeric keypad when I was in 3rd grade (?). It was really cool, and really influenced my course in life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I praise them for doing customer development before wasting money iterating crazily.

Therefore, I took their long, painful survey, b/c I'd like to see them win.

Although it seems very much like they're very out-of-touch with modern everything. It seems like they just want to keep making radio kits and other familiar, safe territory for them. I hope they can acquire and control that niche.

</comment><comment><USER7> I did enjoy building Heathkit kits. I had the H11 computer. Wish I hadn't given it away.

<comment><USER8> I had an H11 in high school (late 80's), but it was already an antique by then. My wish-I-still-had-it computer is a little known machine called the "Interact", my first computer from my elementary school days:

[http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1004&st=1](http://www.old- computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1004&st=1)

<comment><USER9> Wow, the Interact was my first computer as well!

Recently I found that someone had uploaded a bunch of tape images of the machine to archive.org: [http://ia601600.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/16/items/Int...](http://ia601600.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/16/items/Interact_Family_Computer_TOSEC_2012_04_23/Interact_Family_Computer_TOSEC_2012_04_23.zip)

This caused me to spend a couple days writing a simple emulator under OS/X (mostly as an experiment since I'd never tried to write a graphical app on that platform) and got it to the "DEPRESS L TO LOAD TAPE" stage. (I luckily had kept the ROM chips when my mom pitched the computer, I was unable to save it all) Unfortunately things more complicated like Microsoft Basic crashed pretty quickly so there's probably still something a little buggy about my 8080A or other hardware emulation.

I've also got a reasonable sized collection of cassette tapes, both of interact branded software and of programs my dad wrote in BASIC and Forth. It shouldn't be too hard to extract the data from these but a converter will have to be written (the Interact's cassette interface was unique) It's clearly just pulse-width modulated though. I just need to find the right stack of tools that will convert a .wav to a cleaned-up set of pulse width timings, or write one myself. Audio/DSP is another category of programming I've never done.

Unfortunately I haven't touched this stuff in about a year since I've been too busy with other stuff. I probably need a good chunk of uninterrupted time to make much more progress -- the last time I tried I spent a few hours staring at instruction traces from BASIC trying to find out why it was failing and got nowhere. Maybe over the summer I'll have a chance to look at it again.

I will leave you with some screenshots for your nostalgia though. These are taken directly from the emulated RAM. The band on the right would actually wouldn't be shown since it's in the horizontal refresh interval -- that's why they appear off-center and sometimes with garbage on the side: [http://www.bodyfour.com/interact/snapshot.png](http://www.bodyfour.com/interact/snapshot.png) [http://www.bodyfour.com/interact/basic.png](http://www.bodyfour.com/interact/basic.png) [http://www.bodyfour.com/interact/basic2.png](http://www.bodyfour.com/interact/basic2.png)

<comment><USER8> I lost my ROM, but there are copies on the internet. (I pulled all of the chips when I was in middle/high school, intending to build a computer of my own design, but never completed the project, dunno where they ended up.)

I also had a book with very thorough documentation on the hardware, but I don't know where it is. Dunno if my parents still have the tapes. It had the tape format documented.

It looks like "MESS" supports the interact, dunno how well though. After writing that post I looked it up, got it to run "Add-Em-Up", and let my toddler play with it. It appears to have a french keyboard mapping, however, so I'm guessing it's a modified Hector emulator.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, when I said "I was unable to save it all" I meant the entire computer. I do have a complete ROM and was able to successfully extract it.

I've got some documents including schematics and some of Interaction and Micro Video magazines. I was able to determine the bytewise format of the tape data (such as the dumps on archive.org) from reading the disassembled ROM, It's pretty simple as you can imagine. There is very little circuitry driving the tape drive so I'm confident that it's just toggling between + and - tape bias and the timing determines if it's a 0 or 1 bit. I looked at the wave form of a cassette rip in an audio editor and it looked pretty clear. I'm sure with a little work I could extract the data although there are probably tools that would help clean up the audio.

I had no idea MESS had any Interact support (they certainly seem to do a good job making their web documentation has hard to use as possible) I'll have to give it a shot at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember at 3-years-old that I took endless mischievous joy in figuring out how to change the channel of a Healthkit TV* with an ultrasonic remote control system by furiously jangling keys. *My father and grandfather built it together.

</comment><comment><USER11> I love Heathkit stuff. I have an awesome guitar amp from the 60s someone built and a high voltage power supply.</comment>


Ask HN: Learn operating systems fundamentals - <AUTHOR> What is the best way to learn the fundamentals of operating systems, with a focus on UNIX/Linux? I am a recent graduate in mathematics and I've taken basic CS courses but stopped short of taking OS/Compilers.<p>Not looking for a 600+ page tome, a book in the 200-300 page range or a lecture series would be optimal. <comment><USER2> This is a good lecture series [https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a...](https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx#folderID=%22b96d90ae-9871-4fae-91e2-b1627b43e25e%22&maxResults=50)

It's CMU's 15-213 class: [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~213/schedule.html](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~213/schedule.html)

There's also a book for it, CS:App [http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/](http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/) which is a 600+ page tome filled with exercises, and the student site has all the labs that the class does like Attack/Malloc lab. The lectures are self contained enough you can do most of the labs without the assigned text but I'm glad I bought the text anyway. It's the perfect course in that you dive into x86-64 computer systems fundamentals just enough from a programmer's perspective on how to write cache friendly code, what C code looks like in assembly, how the linker/compiler works, how virtual memory works, how OS signals work, ect., but you don't go heavy into OS implementation details like you would reading an Andrew S. Tanenbaum book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, your description sounds like what I'm looking for.</comment></comment>


List of all Google Code Labs - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/labs/ <comment><USER2> I am very interested in the Google Cloud print one. I love the ability to have printers all work with my phone, laptop, ipad whatever around my house without having to have a networked printer setup and the correct drivers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Surprise to me: reCAPTCHA is still a labs product?

<comment><USER4> Android was also a Labs project it seems. Perhaps Labs is a method for Google to assimilate its purchases?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to see a Google Voice API lab. I'm tired of the Android App not working for crap. Depending on how you left the application when it paused, you get dropped in some seemingly random activity, where the back button usually won't take you back to inbox but rather takes you backwards in the conversation (literally starts erasing the last sent/received messages), or just takes you back to the home screen.

Google should be embarrassed that the app for their own product is so miserably bad. It's not even fixed in the latest version that was leaked from the G2 rom.</comment>


Testimony of Pete Seeger before the House Un-American Activities Committee - <AUTHOR> http://www.peteseeger.net/HUAC.htm

<comment><USER2> And he just passed away last night.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/pete- seeger-l...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/pete-seeger- legendary-folk-singer-dies- at-94/2014/01/28/36faeec0-c5dc-11df-94e1-c5afa35a9e59_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting exchange. Scherer kept asking him _where_ he had sung his songs; Pete kept insisting that he instead ask about _what_ he had sung — that he would sing for anybody, so it wasn't relevant, and that his songs were always in good faith.

> MR. SCHERER: Witness, you have indicated that you are perfectly willing to > tell us about all of these innumerable functions at which you entertained, > but why do you refuse to tell us about the functions that Mr. Tavenner > inquires about?

> MR. SEEGER: No, sir, I said that I should be glad to tell you about all of > the songs that I have sung, because I feel that the songs are the clearest > explanation of what I do believe in, as a musician, and as an American.

Scherer wasn't interested at all in what the songs were about.

</comment><comment><USER4> This was my take away line, on a base level:

> MR. SEEGER: I am sorry you are not interested in the song. It is a good > song.

<comment><USER5> My favorite part is:

MR. SEEGER: It is like Jesus Christ when asked by Pontius Pilate, "Are you king of the Jews?"

CHAIRMAN WALTER: Stop that.

Also, thankful for my "remove background" bookmarklet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American. I will tell you about my songs, but I am not interested in telling you who wrote them, and I will tell you about my songs, and I am not interested in who listened to them._

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for posting. Inspiring breakfast read. Relevant 60 years later.

'Are you now, or have you ever, been associated with any terrorist organizations?'

</comment><comment><USER8> I bet this is a fascinating read, but I can't make sense of it because my eyes are confounded by all the banjoes in the background. Dammit, Pete -- you're a mighty fine protest singer, but a rotten web designer!

<comment><USER8> Aha! I told AdBlock that [http://www.peteseeger.net/Banjo.gif](http://www.peteseeger.net/Banjo.gif) was an advert, and now it doesn't render. Bingo: black text on a white background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >MR. SEEGER: I continued singing, and I expect I always will.

May you always. By far the most meaningful line of the exchange.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good debuggers you have used, for C/C++ - <AUTHOR>

I think gdb sucks as it makes people guess where the bug might be. I would like some help from debugger as to what lines have been executed and where a bug may be...Also, it is line oriented, so it is lot of typing. Visual studio debugger is cool, but its still painful... <comment><USER2> I've used Visual Studio, and WinDbg. Visual studio worked well for the most time, and had good UI to make it easy to use. WinDbg allowed me to do some more advanced things, but there's definitely a bit of a learning curve (and the UI is quite primitive).</comment>


U.S. Copyright Group 'Steal' Competitor's Website - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-copyright-group-steal-competitors-website-100730/ <comment><USER2> What I really want to know is how they got those IP addresses and how did they identify the persons involved? Besides, couldn't you argue as your defense that even if that was your IP that you did not downloaded those movies and that somebody probably hacked your wireless modem. Since they are the ones suing the burden of proof is on them right?

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean IP addresses of people downloading torrents? It's peer to peer man, if I start to DL the torrent I'll make a connection to you (assuming you set up your client to accept) and I'll see that you're sharing the data.

The "hacked wireless modem" (the term by the way makes me assume you're not hardcore) defence is good, but they don't care about that. By the time you hire a lawyer and get your shit together they'll have met their goal: stopping you from pirating their IP.

<comment><USER3> I doubt they'll take it to trial unless it was a particularly egregious violation. The idea with these is to settle out of court for a few thousand bucks, which is pure profit for these guys. They are like debt collectors. They threaten but have no teeth when it comes down to it. Lawyers cost money for them too.

<comment><USER2> Frankly I'm not so sure I would settle or even hire a lawyer if I were to face a situation like this. First, I have no assets. I guess they could garnish my wages. Isn't bankruptcy for this. I can get sued for a trillion dollars and it wouldn't matter. Am I being naive?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're being naive, not that they can extract money from you, but that you value your time so little. Imagine the pain in the ass a lawsuit would be.

I know this is part of the strategy of "Big Media", but the real solution is for the content producers to self publish (since the middle man takes too much of a cut and isn't providing the value they used to (i.e. trucking your CD to the store))

However, this doesn't justify that the content producer doesn't get paid if you pirate shit. In the long run I expect prices to drip and content producers to increase profits, but that's still a few years away.

<comment><USER2> I used to think like this also. Then I was in a car accident. The lawsuit lasted 1.5 years. 99.999% of that time was just spent waiting. The actual work that I had to do during that time was like 2 hours. Mainly one for the deposition. If you go to the judge you expose your case to the judge, it takes about an hour. Of course, this is from the point of view that says you have nothing to loose. Although, I know what you mean. I rather avoid it if I can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They seem to have changed their site. It's a pretty crappy new site too btw</comment>


Publictivity Looking for (Rockstar/Ninja Omitted for Overusage) Lead Hacker  - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuply.com/Jobs/Publictivity_Looking_for_Rockstar_Ninja_Omitted_for_Overusage_Lead_Hacker_601_1.aspx <comment><USER2> "(Rockstar/Ninja Omitted for Overusage)" is not omitting Rockstar/Ninja. It is, in fact, using both.

<comment><USER3> yeah, i would've preferred mad lib format

Publictivity _(verb)_ for _(adjective)_ Lead _(noun)_

more fun that way.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note to everyone: USE STARTUPLY.

The interface was great, the questions were the right ones, and it's free. The other companies on there are great ones to be surrounded by. Congrats to them on a great product.

<comment><USER4> I can attest that I send my resume to some great startup I am interested working for, from startuply, and got a prompt reply from them the next day.

I did send the same resume to the generic jobs@awesome startup.com on their website and didn't get a reply.

There is still some work to do for the startuply guys, some basic functionality is still missing, but I think they might be in the right track.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Startuply is sweet.

<comment><USER6> Tapinko=same boat!</comment></comment>


The Story of Tunnel 29 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/Od4dL9Lip2/tunnel_29 <comment><USER2> A great read. For those interested in NBC News Documentary "The Tunnel" that filmed the escape, it can be found here:

[https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cueca...](https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=62526)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's been broadcast on Radio 4 at lunchtime over the past fortnight and the (10x 15 minute) episodes are available for download here: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04sj2pt/episodes/downloads](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04sj2pt/episodes/downloads)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been listening to the podcast version of this. It's very gripping. I think I'll hold off on the article until I've finished the podcast series.

The same bbc podcast Intrigue also did a good story on escaping nazi's post war.</comment>


Microsoft makes AI training courses available to the public - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/microsoft-professional-program-ai/?ranMID=24542&ranEAID=je6NUbpObpQ&ranSiteID=je6NUbpObpQ-.mMWLBjZC7qyEtfMELrweg&tduid=(2439940df6f0d43345c136d9b28a9c0f)(256380)(2459594)(je6NUbpObpQ-.mMWLBjZC7qyEtfMELrweg)() <comment><USER2> At least from the 1st few comments, it seems that people want to point out the ploy to get you using MS' products/tools rather than give you a wide, general education.

So... I don't mind this. Learning via a toolset is an OK approach, in a lot of cases. I personally like it. Realistically, a big part of basic competency is familiarity with a functional toolset anyway. Some people will expand their toolsets later.

Also, if MS succeed in providing good learning tools as a way of creating demand for their services, this is cool too. Ideally AWS and others will continue to do the same, and there'll be an incentive to create and maintain free courses.

If you want a more general/abstract course, these exist too. This just isn't it.

Based on a quick glance I'd say the course wants to get you to a point where you connect to data, do a little cleanup coding, use it to build a model & then turn it all into a web service. It probably has a little bit of stats & ML "theory," but not a lot. This is useful if its useful to you. If you're mostly interested in theory, this just isn't for you. Try the big coursera course, maybe.

<comment><USER3> fast.ai's course looks great, and they even have a numerical linear algebra course.

For a theoretical background, I particularly like the Shai-Shalev Schwartz book, though it's not about deep learning. I'm told the Goodfellow book is good only in the sense that a better book simply doesn't exist.

<comment><USER4> If you are looking for profound theoretical insights in Deep Learning, you will be disappointed, but amazed with classical ML. If you are looking for practical capabilities, you'd be amazed by Deep Learning but frustrated with classical ML. Deep Learning is fairly trivial math-wise (unless you look carefully into non-linear optimization it uses, which is as brutal as any other advanced part of math).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I just signed up, and I see that this is implemented as a track, meaning there are several edX courses required to complete it. Among those are Python for Data Science, Math for Artificial Intelligence, legal stuff, NLP etc.

I like how comprehensive this is. The problem (as I've stated before) with Ng's course is he hand waves a lot of the required math away which concerns me. Specifically vectorization I remember constantly being surprised what was possible mathematically instead of 'getting it'.

That said, is there an AWS version of this track? Maybe Math/Spark/Scala/ML oriented?

I do like that it seems comprehensive, so I think I'll invest time into doing it.

<comment><USER6> Which toolsets does this course rely on?

<comment><USER7> This programme is all Python in Jupyter, backed by Azure. You can use their hosted one or spin up your own with Conda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find it interesting/good that there's an ethics course in their track.

At least from the other specializations ive seen I haven't seen this yet...

</comment><comment><USER9> I tried a couple of Microsoft's edx courses. Their strategy is to get you to use the their tools rather than teaching you.

<comment><USER10> Funny, I tried a couple of them too and got both: teaching and marketing.

Same happened on Google (AdWords, App Engine), Apple (XCode), Amazon (AWS), ...

<comment><USER7> If you see Linux Foundation's EdX course on blockchain of course they teach it with Hyperledger... Everyone uses their own toolset, why wouldn't they?

(I didn't take that course)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> does anyone know if the courses are actually free (as in free beer)? Universities have been making training courses "available to the public" for ages...

EDIT:

never mind, the small FAQ at the bottom links to the bigger real FAQ at [https://academy.microsoft.com/en-us/faq/](https://academy.microsoft.com/en- us/faq/)

there the section "How much will this cost" reveals:

"You must purchase Verified Certificates from edX.org as proof of the successful completion of courses in the Microsoft Professional Program. The cost for Verified Certificates varies by course. The prices are published in the course information on the edX site. You may always audit the course for free on edX.org, but "audit mode" does not provide MPP credit. Pricing is subject to change. Additional charges may apply."

this is clickbait advertising...

EDIT 2:

Oh its not that bad:

"Can I take the courses in the track and not sign up for the Verified Certificates of completion from edX.org? You are welcome to audit any online course for free. However, the only way to receive completion credit toward an MPP learning path is to obtain a Verified Certificate from edX.org."

<comment><USER7> _Oh its not that bad_

As in, it is exactly what it claimed to be all along? Maybe online courses are not for you if you need to be spoonfed?

<comment><USER11> That I can't say, possibly yes possibly no:

I read some of the other commenters who claimed that the tutorials were more like teaching how to use Microsoft tools. At this point I started visualizing "tutorials" on how to open and close their application, describing the GUI layout, the workbenches, ... which is not hard for me to imagine about microsoft. I simply did not feel like checking for myself, since I would risk wasting my time. Time better spent reading actual articles...

<comment><USER7> Great imagination you have. Must come in very handy, no need to do research, go straight on the Internet and post your conclusions!

<comment><USER12> Could you please stop posting uncivil comments to HN, regardless of how wrong someone is?

If you'd (re-)read [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and use this site as intended, we'd appreciate it.

<comment><USER7> Sorry. Was just irritated by all the negativity on this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks really cool, and kudos to them making it free. However, this seems very much applied, and I'd really like a course that dives more into the math and theory of AI, neural networks, deep learning, etc. etc. Anyone have any recommendations for any video lecture series, MOOCs, or anything like that?

<comment><USER14> The importance of math in understanding AI is kind of overblown. Binary Neural Networks for example are in theory worse, but the savings in computational time makes up for quite a bit.

That said, a wide foundation including a deep understanding of linear algebra is more useful than just covering the specifics relevant to AI.

<comment><USER15> That makes sense. But for me for instance, who's trying to learn about AI and have a math background, I like courses that explain the math behind everything because it makes it easier to understand the concepts. It's also a good way to check that I understand what's going on. And finally, I find it easier to skim over a text has equations, they easier to parse for me since I'm a slow prose reader. So I can go through a text by skimming through the math, and when I stop understanding, I try to backtrack what's going on and only move on once I understand what was blocking me.

EDIT: And this applies to everything. Ex: I've been playing the guitar for over a decade but have been struggling with music theory. I've recently tried to apply the little algebra I know to it to try and find structure. I've found some really cool articles, for instance [0], and it's helped quite a bit believe it or not !! For French speakers that like music, math, and algorithms, I highly encourage a presentation by Moreno Andreatta [1] where he closes the presentation by performing a "rotation around the Do of the Beatles' Hey Jude".

[0] [http://repmus.ircam.fr/_media/moreno/BigoAndreatta_Computati...](http://repmus.ircam.fr/_media/moreno/BigoAndreatta_Computational_Musicology.pdf)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3528&v=cFiT9StEy...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3528&v=cFiT9StEy00)

<comment><USER2> Recent report from my mother, who's a physicist with a strong math background, no statistics: Take the coursera intro course.

She said that the first hour or two were a little frustrating for the kinds of reasons you mention. After that, she could skip the "long" explanations & examples by going to the math directly. You'll progress 5X faster than normal after that.

She "got it" by creating ML "proofs" for math problems without doing math. She didn't like all the image recognition examples. Said it's a confusing place to start.

You are probably stuck with learning from a source that assumes you don't know math, because most people (including me) don't. This course is probably not for you if you want theory, as it's focused on "using" ML algorithms, not writing them. That said, this might be useful to you if you already have stuff that you want to do, and need a way of doing the "sticks and duct tape."

<comment><USER13> Sorry, which Coursera intro course?

<comment><USER2> "Machine Learning" by Andrew Ng, Standford

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine- learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> @dang & co: That URL...

[https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/microsoft-professional- progra...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/microsoft-professional-program-ai/)

</comment><comment><USER17> It looks like the courses use cognitive toolkit aka CNTK for deep learning. This is sort of the equivalent of watching a class from Google where they use tensorflow or fb where they use pytorch.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are several courses in that "class" (over the course of a year) that require access to the Azure cloud. The free Azure trial runs only 30 days, though.

</comment><comment><USER19> It looks like they are teaching how to integrate the Microsoft APIs to implement AI-based solutions, rather than learning about AI or ML.

</comment><comment><USER20> is it just me or these are really poorly designed courses? I took the RL course and it first started describing papers in RL with little context (under applications of RL). The course then jumped to bandits and I was hoping it will describe the foundations but it assumed students know about the regret minimization framework. Researchers are traditionally not the best educators -- I usually pick tutorials in conferences that are done by professors as opposed to researchers despite their content.

<comment><USER7> _but it assumed students know_

You jumped straight in at the 8th course in the programme and are complaining that it assumes you know something?

So many people on this thread looking for any nitpick they can, we get it guys, you just hate Microsoft. This isn't for you, then, no-one's pointing a gun at your head and saying, take this free course.

<comment><USER20> I went through all of them and I did not see any regret minimization background. If you think there is, please point me to it and clear my misunderstanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Enrolled, but I doubt I will learn that much more than just using their cognitive services which seems cool and all, but that is not really doing AI yourself. Is it?

<comment><USER22> Cognitive Services may or may not usher it in, but the inevitable democratization of AI means the definition of "doing AI" will eventually be the same as "doing Excel". i.e., it is just a means to an end, and the underlying level of automation is irrelevant.

<comment><USER2> I agree, but "doing excel" may not cover the potential. Maybe it will be more like "doing web."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 10 courses? Seems like a lot of effort for just a certificate. Some top online schools award you a recognized M.S. after 10 courses...

<comment><USER7> It was originally called the Microsoft Professional Degree, but they rebranded it to Programme, presumably after some negative feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Following the fiasco with Tay, I think it's better if 4chan were to teach this course.

EDIT: the more I think about this, the more I like the idea of a course about an adversarial approach to AI. They could name it something like "Abusing public machine learning services for fun and profit". And given the previous successful work on Katawa Shoujo, I really believe that 4chan could pull this off.</comment>


Headway – Changelog as a Service - <AUTHOR> https://headwayapp.co <comment><AUTHOR> Found it while using JS Fiddle today - they did a Show HN [0] 10 months back and didn't get much traction, but it's a really cleverly done widget and thought they deserved another look :)

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10172843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10172843)</comment>


Ask HN: My Twitter stream is suddenly empty. Anyone having the same issue? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Update: Two posts appeared, both from the last 2 hours. Nothing before.</comment>


Why Microsoft or Google Should Acquire Stack Exchange - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-microsoft-google-should-acquire-stack-exchange-fahad-uddin/ <comment> forgot-my-pw Paywalled / restricted article.

<comment><USER2> No it isn't. I logged out of Linkedin and I can still access it just fine.</comment></comment>


Vim: Spacebar as leader key, CapsLock as Esc - <AUTHOR> http://karmanebula.com/technically-borked/2013/12/16/leader-key-as-space-capslock-as-esc <comment><USER2> _Perhaps I have spent so much time on Mac that pressing the Ctrl key for things feels unnatural vs. the Command key_

Argh. OS X is the last significant platform that gets this right by not trying to use Control for menu shortcuts out of the box. When I'm in a terminal, or editor, or browser text box, it's perfectly common and reasonable to want to distinguish Control-V (literal) from Command-V (paste), Control-Z (suspend) from Command-Z (undo), and so on.

Pre-Linux X Window software typically managed this, using Meta or some other keysym for GUI operations, but current 'desktops' seem dead set on imitating MS Windows. Damn kids get off my screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is one of the main reasons I went with space in this case. Hitting a shortcut starting with a key that either thumb can reach felt more like the Command key, which is part of why I like it. It seems that my thumb is more nimble (and has a much higher range of motion) than my pinky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I basically do this, but I use "," (comma) as my leader, and I make capslock do double duty as ctrl and esc using KeyRemap4MacBook ([https://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/](https://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/)). The trick is first remap capslock to Ctrl in keyboard system preferences, then use KR4MB to remap Control_L (the left control key, which is to say, what capslock now signals) to Control_L, but if you type ONLY Ctrl_L it sends esc. so when i need escape, it sends that. when i want to use it for Ctrl-modified combos, it does that. Works fantastically for Vim, i've been doing this for a couple years now. Also nice for emacs keyboard shortcuts in other apps that respond to them.

<comment><USER4> This is what I do too: Caps Lock sends either Escape (when pressed alone) or Control (with something else). I cribbed it from Steve Losh: [http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space- cadet/](http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To the many of you using Macbooks: be aware the that the caps lock key is deadened/delayed in order to prevent mistaken pressing, and that this is a hardware feature that can't be changed. This may be the case for Mac keyboards and other new systems as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use <space> as my Easymotion leader..

[https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-easymotion](https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim- easymotion)

it's well worth a look, gives you super quick fine grained movement

similarly

        inoremap jj <ESC>

to take you from INSERT mode to NORMAL mode is nice

<comment><USER7> I've been using

        inoremap jk <ESC>

for a long time now, and it works like a charm.

<comment><USER8> Likewise. Started with 'jj', but 'jk' is significantly faster. Only downside is that you can't actually type 'jk'. Now everybody thinks I'm serious all the time.

<comment><USER9> twiddle with the timing settings (I forget). So typing 'jk' _only_ very quickly indeed will register as ESC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use CapsLock as escape but had I not gotten so used to that by now I would probably have used it for control instead and mapped escape to jk or something. I, like many people, use `,` for my <leader> and with Clever-F[0] I don't lose the original functionality which is just remapped to consecutive presses of 'f'.

[0]: [https://github.com/rhysd/clever-f.vim](https://github.com/rhysd/clever-f.vim)

</comment><comment><USER11> Love spacebar as the leader key, but not a fan of CapsLock as Esc. CapsLock as Ctrl is better. For one, you never have to stretch for the real Ctrl, and two, you _can_ use it for escape as well: Ctrl-[

<comment><USER12> > and two, you can use it for escape as well: Ctrl-[

Sadly, not (sanely) with a Norwegian keyboard layout. We "only" have one key left of z, namely "<" (and with shift ">") -- and not really any keys right of "l" and "p" \-- right home-row is "jklø" followed by "æ", and "å" is right of "p".

Way out in the cold by the enter key we have "'" (shift for "*"), and the not- so-useful composing '"' (and "^~" with shift/alt-gr respectively).

If only we could stick to something like romaji'zed Japaneze, we'd have plenty of keys left over! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I broke things down by priority. I notice that I jump around in documents by searching through them, rather than by navigation keys. Spacebar is the biggest key on the keyboard, so, spacebar is mapped to "?" in normal mode. I also find that I need to search through a project regularly, so ctrl-spacebar is mapped to the ack/ag command.

Control is mapped to caps lock at the os level for me. There are also too many useful commands in vim that use control (visual block mode is huge). I tried mapping jj to escape as well, but ctrl-c is just as easy.

Leader is mapped to comma. Most of my leader commands are comma + "some letter I can type with my left hand".

<comment><USER14> > I jump around in documents by searching through them

You might want to try vim-sneak.

[https://github.com/justinmk/vim-sneak](https://github.com/justinmk/vim-sneak)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I prefer remapping capslock to control for easier use of commands like <C-f>, <C-b>, <C-e>, <C-h>, and <C-l> (all of which were absent in the example vimrc posted). Using the leader key makes total sense for dealing with splits and buffers or plugins you might want to look into some of the other Control based commands that Vim supports.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use Ctrl-f and Ctrl-b (as well as Ctrl-e and Ctrl-y) pretty often, and you're right that there are no shortcuts for it in the provided example. Perhaps I should look into those as possible next targets. I guess I'm not entirely eliminating the Ctrl key from my vim usage (not that there's anything wrong with Ctrl, really), but you have a point.

I'm guessing I use Ctrl-e more often than :e - perhaps I should change that up.

There seems to be a lot of ringing endorsements for CapsLock as Ctrl in the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for the easy-to-understand take on the leader key. Not using the leader key is one of my known vim weaknesses I've been meaning to fix. I found your explanation and usage a great push into actually putting it in my .vimrc

</comment><comment><USER17> I end up using Ctrl for a bunch in vim: visual block, ctrlp (and <C-b> for buffer mode), window nav, and most importantly, imported emacs keybindings. The emacs line motion commands (specifically <C-a>, <C-e>, and <C-d>) are extremely useful because they work in every app on my mac, so not having to lose flow when I'm in vim or a browser is nice.

[https://github.com/CGamesPlay/dotfiles/blob/master/files/vim...](https://github.com/CGamesPlay/dotfiles/blob/master/files/vimrc#L152)

</comment><comment><USER18> If I am going to have to relearn where some of the keys are in vim then I might as well go the whole hog and get a Dvorak keyboard whilst I am at it!

<comment><AUTHOR> lol - well, it's just an option. Certainly less invasive than changing the keyboard layout, but I understand the muscle memory element of it.

I definitely stuck with the default vim bindings (and for the most part can switch back to them quickly) until I wanted to customize the experience to my preferences. There's definitely something to be said about keeping the stock bindings unchanged, if that's one's preference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been using this since [~2010]([https://github.com/sethwoodworth/dotfiles/commit/801f4a7163d...](https://github.com/sethwoodworth/dotfiles/commit/801f4a7163db017c0be7edaee2e358b7f3d4bf50#diff-4e12c6a37ff2cbb2c93d1b33324a6051R77)). I highly recommend leader as space.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why not map caps lock key to both escape AND control? I've been doing this successfully for a long time and couldn't live without it. You can use Autohotkey on windows and similar tools on other systems to interpret caps lock pressed by itself as escape, and caps lock pressed + another key as control.

</comment><comment> 97-109-107 The is a way of minimizing the frequency of having to reach esc (be it at esc or caps lock) " jj For Quicker Escaping between normal and editing mode. inoremap jj <ESC>

</comment><comment><USER21> What is a leader key? How much typing class did I miss?!

<comment><USER22> I think he means instead of using a colon to begin Vim commands, he begins by typing a space.

I started using Caps Lock as an extra Ctrl a couple months ago. It's great, except now I can't use other people's computers because I end up in caps-lock shout mode.

E.g. instead of "ctrl+l" in my browser to visit a site, it ends up:

        CTRL+SHOUT+L BROWSER TAKE ME TO FACEBOOK I COMMAND THEE

<comment><USER23> Leader is actually a different key than the colon in Vim. Here's a nice description of it: [http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/06.ht...](http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/06.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I use ',' and my leader; but have been considering remapping 'esc' ... any suggestions other than CapsLock?

<comment><USER25> jj is what I use and is also pretty common. Some other suggestions: [http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key)

</comment></comment><comment> ryan-thompson I love this idea, I never thought of using the spacebar as anything other than a space.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nobody said it yet, so I have to do it: Happy Hacking Keyboard

</comment><comment><USER27> i have capslock as my backspace key. where do i put escape now?

</comment><comment><USER28> i use my caps as control key.</comment>


Show HN: MovieDebate, discover and discuss thought-provoking movies - <AUTHOR> https://moviedebate.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> I build this because I want a place on the internet that celebrates lesser- known, but interesting, thought-provoking movies. Big budget blockbusters are fine (I watch them too), but thats not really why I fell in love with movies.

Also since imdb shut down its discussion boards, maybe there is a need for a new place to discuss movies?</comment>