Moving the World to a 4 Day Workweek – An Interview with Aidan Harper - <AUTHOR> https://blog.30hourjobs.com/an-interview-with-aidan-harper-of-the-4-day-week-campaign/ <comment><USER2> I run a ~20 person digital marketing company and we are experimenting with a 4 day week this summer. Everyone has Fridays off in June and July. Pay is unchanged.

Fundamentally it seemed like a cool thing to do for staff - more time to enjoy a summer in London. Doing whatever you want on a Friday - life admin, hobbies, long weekend away, recovering from a hangover... your call.

But then it also seemed like an opportunity to experiment with this new constraint. Could we avoid losing 20% of our output? We certainly didn't want to work 2 extra hours per day. So the idea was to really take the chance to look at how we work, how we organise ourselves, how we prioritise, how we communicate and share. What can we automate or improve processes for. How we use meetings as a tool for value. And also how we really dive into our work with intensity and drive for the hours we are there.

Overall, sentiment across the company has been extremely positive. We certainly haven't made up for the lost day in measurable improvements or efficiencies. But we have maybe got half way there - without inducing increased stress during the four days. The team feels more together. And we have probably all learned some skills that will make 5 day weeks that more productive when we restart them. So overall I would be surprised if it wasn't win-win for all involved.

I can certainly see us doing this again next year - and maybe also again for a month like December. It really just feels good/right overall.

<comment><USER3> French?

<comment><USER4> The comment mentions London. Not impossible by train, only unlikely :)

<comment><USER3> Parisians often go to London for weekends

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The comments on this seem trapped by conventional thinking and pessimism. At a time, the 40 hour work week was seen as a fantasy that, if inacted, would destroy the economy. Instead, we saw rising productivity due to lower rates of illness and injury, among other factors. [1]

People aren't robots, and there's nothing magical about the current number of days and hours considered "normal". There's plenty to suggest that such a move would be a net benefit for society and the economy.

1: Robert Gordon, "The Rise and Fall of American Growth."

<comment><USER6> if 5 days worked (down from 7) and 4 days will work (down from 5) then why not just go straight to zero days?

<comment><USER7> For the same reason that we want cars to drive slower but not stop driving at all. This is the poster child for reducing an argument to ridiculousness. What is proposed is what is proposed, not an extrapolation pulled so far out of context that it becomes unthinkable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To be really clear, Aidan Harper is campaigning for the following:

 _" We make the case for a general reduction in working hours __without__ a reduction in pay. We also make the case for a steady managed transition to shorter hours with a bolstered welfare state in such a way that the most vulnerable and underpaid in society are protected."_

It's hard enough to ask companies to shift to a 4-day workweek for the various reasons outlined in the article and sibling comments, but usually this is accompanied by a corresponding cut in compensation. Adding the "without a reduction in pay" condition makes the proposition much more difficult for small-to-medium sized businesses.

In fairness to the article, there is the possibility of asking employees to work 10hr workdays for 4 days to accommodate the 40-hr work week model (or 8.75hrs/day in France to accommodate their 35-hr work week). Since (most of us?) are already overworked, maybe this then just boils down to a scheduling and staff coverage problem.

<comment><USER9> Anyone who does knowledge work in a large company knows a huge amount of the "work" is just a weird game we all agreed to play. Sure everyone is busy, but surprisingly little is really getting done. We agree to work 40 hours because that model worked for people making widgets in factories. People work extra hours to demonstrate socially that they're hard workers, but again, nothing is really getting done.

There is no reason at all you could not reduce all of this to 30 hours a week and get the same amount of productivity accomplished. Why shouldn't people be compensated the same if the end result is the same? For labor intensive job where a human is working as a type of robot then hours of labour is directly correlated with hours of product (with some point of diminishing returns as you overwork people).

<comment><USER10> I think you're over-generalizing. Yes, some people work more than 40 hours for social recognition without getting any more real work done. On the other hand, I know people who truly do work over 40 hours out of a feeling of passion or obligation, completing extra work while not advertising the extra hours they're putting in.

<comment><USER9> To be clear, I'm not talking about people "goofing off at work" (such as myself on HN right now). Socialization is something deeply internalized so it doesn't matter if you know people are watching. I've been those people working on things late a night without anyone knowing, then I realized so much of it was sweat and stress for literally nothing.

The thing is, when you look at the fruits of the labor put in, the result is nearly null. There are people who are working very hard on things that have no real long term (or short term) purpose or function for their employers, it's work that exists because "work" has to be done. When I look at the projects being busily worked on around me, nearly none of them have any value or will make a dent in the overall productivity of the larger company. These people aren't goofing off. This is the ritual of work.

People pray in the privacy of their own home but that doesn't mean there's a god listening. The same goes for the culture of "work" in most large organizations.

<comment><USER11> What industry to you work in, and how large of a company is it?

Sounds like a great opportunity for a more efficient competitor to undercut this company :D

<comment><USER7> Once you get past a certain size, efficiency is a pipe dream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a sick reality that, in this country, we sell wellness to the masses as if "wellness" and "health" are entirely one's own responsibility. One of the main roots of the problem is a work culture that exhausts many of us and pushes most families to the edge.

<comment><USER13> That is an exaggeration. We have the ability to choose careers and jobs, so we have the ability to choose a healthier lifestyle via career moves. If someone has locked themselves down with debt, children, unhealthy stress levels, etc. an employer is not the one that is held responsible at the end of the day. Part of being in a society that values the individual, is that the individual gets the praise in good times, and must own the blame in bad.

If you believe your employer should be taking better care of you, you can vote via leaving your employer. Who exactly should be responsible if not yourself, and how? Many people on HN sit at desks most of the day doing tasks that are laughably easier than what 2, 3, 4 generations ago were doing.

<comment><USER14> If I understand you right, you're saying an employer has ZERO responsibility if their employees are overworked because the employee could always just "choose another job." This does not align with reality the vast majority of the time.

<comment><USER13> I was commenting on the parent saying "It's a sick reality.." That seemed a little over the top, when you can leave your employer if the situation isn't good. I know job transfers can be hard to find, and career moves are difficult, but it is reality that quitting your job is never impossible.

<comment><USER15> Technically correct answer, but missing the point about how job transfers/retraining are way more difficult than they need to be... hence people being "unable" to quit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I beat this drum pretty regularly on HN but it is staggering to me why with our technological productivity we haven't already transitioned to less working hours. I am aware that not every industry/job could do this but how many couldn't?

It makes no sense to me why masses of people are okay with giving their prime waking hours, in the prime years of their life to earn a wage. Then we relegate living to nights and weekends. Being able to retire with the health and wealth to live your dreams is a crapshoot at best.

I realize it is a process but I would love to see more companies treat this as almost the ultimate quality of life perk they could offer.

<comment><USER17> Name the only thing that's increased in price many fold that _everyone_ requires. Not everyone has a degree, so it's not that, plus skyrocketing education costs are limited to the USA. It's not health either as this has happened in countries with proper healthcare. It's the other thing.

That's where the answer lies.

<comment><USER7> I actually have no idea what you mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At my company I enforce a no-meetings-Friday rule. Combined with being fully remote and biasing towards asynchronous communication whenever possible, it effectively means a four day work week if you want it. If you disappear on Friday, no one will really notice.

<comment><USER19> > At my company I enforce a no-meetings-Friday rule

Do you make any exceptions? Seems weird for someone who might need to discuss something will need to wait until Monday.

<comment><USER18> I mean the same could be said for someone who needs to know something on Friday having to wait until Monday.

If it's really critical you could set up a meeting on Friday or Saturday or Sunday. Or you can send an email and maybe they'll answer on the "weekend".

<comment><USER19> > Or you can send an email and maybe they'll answer on the "weekend".

If a SCUD missile isn't headed toward the office, what makes one think people in working four days a week will answer email on the weekend?

<comment><USER18> The same thing that gets them to answer email on Saturday or Sunday? Maybe they want to work. Maybe they are avoiding their family. Maybe they took some time off on Wednesday and felt the need to make up for it.

There's really little difference between a two day weekend and a three day weekend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The biggest problem if you really wanted to do this is that gross and net work aren't the same. And depending on the job, they can be really, REALLY different.

My wife is a part-time accountant and for her it's working out nicely. She spends maybe 2-3 hours every week on generic stuff like coordination, meetings or bureaucracy which she would also spend at 40h.

For Engineers, this ratio is absurdly different. To speak in a cloud metaphor, Engineers are limited by I/O bandwidth and not by compute or RAM.

Because you need to learn so much about general coding, languages, algorithms, architecture, frameworks, domain specific expertise and whatnot AS WELL AS coordinate with stakeholders, on-location and upstream contributors, reviewers, managers, architects, QA, ... — they spend maybe 2-3 hours net of _actually writing code_.

The rest of the week is spent on how and why to write that code in the first place.

Once I understood the fundamental difference, the allure of crunch mode made a whole lot more sense to me. For 10-50% more time, you can get a whopping 100-500% in output for a short time. Compare that with the negative efficiency of adding more people (which, as we all know, will make the project later).

A 30h workweek would work into the opposite direction. For 25% less time, you might get 50-70% less productivity.

Not gonna happen. Sorry.

<comment><USER21> > For 10-50% more time, you can get a whopping 100-500% in output for a short > time.

No you can't. Not quality output anyway. After a few hours writing code even the best engineers stop being productive and the quality goes down. From an ignorant manager's perspective this might be true, but it's not reality. Most people cannot code well for more than about five hours or so anyway. There's still plenty of time for bureaucratic bullshit. Of course to managers, people are robots to be pushed to the max and exploited. That's why ridiculous thinking like the above exists. And this isn't even taking into account the negative consequences on the employee being forced to work long hours over even a short period of time like a few days to a week which build up and start to reduce quality even further even in the five or so hours that could be productive. It is just a stupid managerial delusion to think putting in more time coding will be more productive, thinking completely removed from reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For the last four years I've been a data scientist whilst working a 4 day week. I look after our 3 young kids on Friday - my wife is a corporate lawyer who works 24/7 so this arrangement lets our kids have a bit more parent time. The kids and I have a lot of fun going to places in central London that I would typically avoid due to high crowds on weekends.

I don't think my career has had a negative impact - all the companies (a mix of v early startups and large multinationals) have been very supportive, and I've managed to do some of my best professional work during this time.

The work life balance is really great this way. It's clearly not an option if you need that fifth day to pay the bills, but if that's not the case then it's worth considering. One slight negative is not having time to learn new skills or work on side projects in the evenings - I'm too exhausted! - but I've also been lucky to be able to learn everything I need on the job, so it hasn't mattered much up till now.

</comment><comment><USER23> Just as Tim Ferriss's "4 hour workweek" is a simplified tagline used to convey a more complex point (there are more possibilities than ever to escape the 9-5), in my mind the "4 day workweek" term is the same (a work week need not be 5 days): it's not the precise form of the reduced workweek that matters, it's the shattering of the unchallenged acceptance of society's ideals with respect to work (full-time = 40 hours/week; hard workers work more and are better employees; aspiring to work less means you are lazy/lack ambition/will never achieve anything great etc.).

What surprises me (VC backed founder topping out at 40 hours per week) the most is how having an aspiration to work less is seen as a goal that needs to be in some way defended - why does everyone (feel they have to pretend to) love work so much? I literally felt the need to create a blog about the perils of overwork [1] just to help justify to myself why it's OK that I don't want to spend more time working (result = peace of mind that I'm not letting the entire world down by not working myself into the ground)... Of course, a lot of this pressure is in my head, but these standards are informed by society's . I have worked jobs where 60 hours per week was the _aspiration_, where leaving at 6PM was met with snide remarks of "taking a half day" and I could count on one hand the number of senior business leaders I've encountered in my career who paid more than lip service to any notion of work-life balance.

I look forward to the continuing changes in and challenges to the work ideals of high performing businesses as the composition of the workforce changes over the coming decades and (politics aside) commend movements like 4 Day Week campaign and 30hourjobs.com for their role in accelerating this progress.

[1] [https://thefreedomseries.com](https://thefreedomseries.com)

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't think this change needs obey any hand-wringing about lost efficiency. Lose the efficiency. Gain a deeper relationship to community, loved ones and self. We've been through, as a culture, more than enough self-brutalizations for growth. Enough. Time for a new metric to meet a new understanding of the world.

</comment><comment><USER25> For the past two years I've been my own boss and one of my main terms I tell my clients is that I commit to 30 hours on-site per week.

I've tried to splice this as 4x7,5 and 5x6 and I prefer the latter _by far_, even if this means one more day of commuting. After 6 hours in front of the computer my mental energy is spent and I'm basically running of the clock on the clients dime. It's demotivating and I'd much rather spend that time at home with my family and/or exercising.

</comment><comment><USER26> What would happen if everyone shifted to a 4 day week, or let's say more of a 32h week?

Would we suddenly be unable to produce and offer all the goods and services needed to sustain ourselves as a society? I doubt it. I think we'd all just be happier working less and enjoying ourselves more.

It is different though if only some businesses make that shift, because then they might be uncompetitive against other businesses. And in today's global economy, it is harder to say the impact against companies in other countries where there is already a big gap on the work week.

</comment><comment><USER27> Do what I did.

Step 1, Save up 200 vacation hours at company.

Step 2, From April-August take a vacation request, every Friday off. Willing to work during dumpster fire if needed.

Step 3, enjoy your 4 day work week.

 _Note_ Need to work at a legit company who cares about employees well being.

8 x 4 = 32 hours used per month x 5 months = 160 hours of vacation leaving your 40 hours of vacation for sick/emergency days.

You also will earn more vacation during this time for a little bit of wiggle room.

This is assuming you do not want to use your vacation for a legit 1-2 week vacation.

<comment><USER28> Step 1 will be problematic at every single company I encountered that has a fixed number of vacation days, because they all have a cap on how many you can accumulate. Which usually is 2 years worth of vacation time (usually 15-20 days per year, so 30-40 days max), after which you cannot accumulate any more and just start losing them.

EDIT: I profusely apologize for this comment. It's been a rough morning, and the math didn't check out in my head at first. Step 1 from the parent comment should work just fine with the number of vacation days I listed, since 30 days * 8 hours = 240 hours.

<comment><USER29> 200 hours is 25 days at 8h/day, so it's fine?

<comment><USER28> You are absolutely correct, I profusely apologize for my parent comment. It's been a rough morning, and the math didn't check out in my head at first.

<comment><USER30> I hope your day has gotten better. Don't worry about the math!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> so i guess this is just for office workers. For the more blue-collar among us, management is constantly pushing for 7 days.

I work as an engine mechanic for an auto chain in the midwest, and can confirm we're persistently understaffed with qualified trade-skill educated employees. random 10 hour days in our shop are not unheard of depending on if the customer is a fleet job or not.

We tried 6 day work weeks, where we offered just oil changes on saturdays, and even that proved a little hectic for apprentices and new employees (they eventually started calling it saturday suck-work.) Customers were also furious that we _only_ did oil/air and nothing else, so management predictably caved and our saturdays are reduced hours, but with full mechanics on site anyhow.

Pay for us stayed the same, but before we start talking about reduced work days, we need to address the absolute shortage of competent trade-skilled labor in this country. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, automotive, machinists, professional drivers and boilermakers...these arent just things that get done by anyone, but they keep the world running.

<comment> crooked-v Sounds like you need a union.

<comment><USER32> A union wouldn't fix the underlying issue of a shortage of blue-collar workers. To do that, you have to convince people to take up manual labor intensive work.

<comment> crooked-v A union wouldn't fix the shortage, but it would ensure that it's the workers and not the managers getting the proceeds from all that overtime work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe start Monday at noon and leave at noon on Friday?

It is hard to run a B2B business without people around all 5 days.

<comment><USER34> Lockheed is a big employer in my area. I know people who work 9 hour days and they get every other Friday off. Half the staff takes one Friday and half the other.

Planning is key here. No one is saying the whole office needs off on the same day.

<comment><USER35> Also work in defense, this is becoming pretty common. Although typically everyone takes the same friday off - that saves operating costs (no janitors or cafeteria on the off day). There's also the benefit that people tend to plan their vacations around the off-fridays, and work the full day on on- fridays. So you don't get stuck at the office trying to solve a problem with nobody to answer your questions at 3 on a summer friday.

<comment><USER34> I believe the team in question needs to support something in person so they do a split.

<comment><USER35> I was providing a counterpoint to show that it's preferable having the whole office take off together when that's possible for your business. I don't disagree that staggering the off days could be necessary, but it isn't ideal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have some friends who work at a medium-sized and very profitable company in SF that gives them every _other_ Friday off.

They have to organize it such that the office doesn't shut down completely on Fridays but that's not so hard, swapping weeks with someone is usually possible.

An interesting effect of this is retention: once people are used to working two fewer days a month, they are very reluctant to lose that "perq."

As a random point of comparison, in Germany an employee has a legal right to work part-time unless the employer can prove your job can only be done full- time. "We'd have to hire more people" is not proof. Your benefits would not change but you'd earn N% less money, based on how much less you work. IIRC the maximum is half-time. I have no idea how often it's used but in principle it's an awesome idea if you want to change your life up, have kids, get a PhD, whatever. (I don't remember whether you have a right to go back to full-time, but I think you do not.)

</comment><comment><USER37> Interesting to see this coming up so often here lately. Especially because I didn't get the raise I hoped for this year I went for it and asked if I could cut down to a 4 day week thinking that they would say no because it's quite cumbersome to work around something like that for the rest of the company but they said yes.

I'm starting in august every other week I take the Friday and Monday off creating a 4 day weekend. I'm hoping to use this time to do more music, to prepare food for a better diet (I'm overweight because I never have the energy and time to really take better care of my food habits) and perhaps even work on some interesting home automation projects.

We start temporarily for half a year and revisit the decision end of January. Money wise I'm just going back where I was 2 years ago so that's quite ok. The only drawback I can see is that the work projects accumulate 2 days of changes which I will need to catch up to every other week.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm all for the freedom to choose the length of your work week. But don't come back later complaining about widening income gap among people.

There will be differences in outcome between people who work 30 vs 60 hours in any given industry. Not in all individual cases, but generally.

<comment><USER39> Complaints against income gaps (or, more significantly, wealth gaps) tend to focus on the top 10%, 1% or <1% versus the remainder of society. I don't think a variance of +/\- 20% among the vast majority of workers (middle ~70%) is going to skew the wealth gap very much. The wealthiest, who continue to become wealthier vis-a-vis everyone else, would not be impacted by such variance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> One of the great things about the 4 day working week is that it's one of the most efficient, if not the most efficient, feasible proposal to cut down carbon emissions.

People will commute less, use less aircon at the office, and so on. The economy is either unaffected or maybe even cools down a bit, creating ripple effects that lead to further reduction of emissions.

</comment><comment><USER41> We have gone the other way during my lifetime in the UK. Once there was a time when every single shop in the local town was closed on a Sunday and most of the shops were closed on a Wednesday afternoon. The banks were only open from 10 until 3. There were very few convenience stores open until late in the evening. The choice of late night fast food options comprised of a couple of fish and chips shops or a couple of restaurants.

It was also possible for families to have just the one parent out working. That parent would also be back home in time to watch the six o clock news. People did not go on two hour commutes.

We accepted all of the changes positively. For instance, it was great that women could now do the same jobs as men. It was nice to have the shops open when you were not working. It was convenient to be able to buy stuff late in the evenings, including alcohol from places other than pubs. Sundays were not boring or difficult if you had run out of milk.

Education in those days was also about preparing the younger generation for a future where there would be leisure time. On the syllabus were lessons on how to use that time. But it did not pan out, this generation ended up working more hours than what the teachers imagined, paying for their education, being burdened with debts, unable to afford a home and having to sit in traffic jams on absurd commutes.

Why do we do this?

There is a rent-seeking class that we collectively have to pay for. The few that own the property, that have the capital and don't actually work. Sure they work, making sure that people pay their rents, but this work does not add value to the economy. We were sold this as 'trickle down economics' where the rich, by having more money, would have more crusts available for the poor.

None of us can step out of this situation. To do so would involve loss of the roof over one's head, destitution and worse. We just have to do the best we can and hope matters somehow improve for the next generation.

In the world of programming we can carve a niche working differently, to escape the tyranny of modern day capitalism. But nobody is of the strength to get into office and un-do the changes that have been made to society by the neoliberal revolution.

</comment><comment><USER42> To burn a bunch of vacation days, I once took off every Wednesday for 2 or 3 months.

It was great to be able to break the work week in half so that you only work two days in a row. It makes every Mon/Tue feel like a Thu/Fri because Wed is a "mini weekend".

</comment><comment><USER43> Wouldn't people that only work 4 days get outcompeted by people who work harder and longer?

Just seems like a very unsustainable equilibrium without some sort of legal backstop by the government.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've been working 4 days a week or less for almost a decade now. It's great. Never going back to 5 days. Never. As a software dev it's very easy to do. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER45> How? Are you working as a consultant?

Do you work as an employee and get a special deal to work for four days? Has anyonee tried this? Did you take a paycut?

<comment><USER46> When a headhunter contacts you, you tell them you want to work 30 hours. Companies have a hard time finding developers. Give it a try. (Yes, you'll earn 80% instead of 100%, just find a better paying job to compensate)

<comment><USER47> If you did it that way I bet you aren't getting good benefits, if any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The number of hours one can work a week productively will vary based on individual and lifestyle.

But to me, currently working 60 hours in my startup (sleeping well, eating well and exercising, without children and with a good social life). 40 hours does not seem like much. Am I missing something?

If I worked only 9-5, I would pick a side project, as I would feel like I wasn't challenged though.

I understand having a family would change this. I can see how if I had 3 kids, a 30 hour week would be a blessing.

But we can't assume the same optimal number of hours for everyone. 40 hours is nothing for a single person with few responsibilities.

<comment><USER21> > 40 hours is nothing for a single person with few responsibilities.

Wrong. I'm single with few responsibilities and 40 hours is still way too much. Just because you like to be a workaholic doesn't mean you can generalize that to apply to everyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I hope the younger generation is much more progressive than the status quo, this sort of thing has no chance of making it in the USA for at least 50 years. The argument I always hear made by libertarian types is "I entered an agreement with the company, I didn't have to do this". It is mind-blowing to me how quickly the corporation is made to be the victim. It is in the corporations best interest to exploit the worker as much as possible and get as much work for as little pay, and no worker has as much power as even a small organization, so the organization will come out on top the majority of the time.

A government that is concerned about its citizens could balance this power dynamic.

This mindset seems so simple and basic to me, could someone enlighten me on the other side of this argument wouldn't almost everyone's life be better if we enacted policies like these?

<comment><USER50> "It is in the corporations best interest to exploit the worker as much as possible..."

I agree with you entirely. Most people don't see themselves as exploited. Yet when the salary to hourly calculation happens and then an adjustment for actual hours worked happens (a regular 60 hour work week instead of a 40) lots of salaries suddenly look much different in the eyes of those making them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I work three 12s. I love the 12 hour days, feels like I can really get work done. But I do not like the four days of waiting for work. I got a job doing my hobby and my other hobbies are not time intensive so I have lots of down time...

</comment><comment><USER42> As I get older, my inner communist really starts to envy the European schedule (eg: France's 35h week and 6-8wks holidays).

I spent the entirety of my career working in the US and Canada, and to me it seems that no more than 80% of our collective effort goes into creating and maintaining the wonderful advanced society that we enjoy. Instead of stopping at 80% so that we can enjoy our lives, we work the extra 20%, mostly so that the rich can get a bit richer.

</comment><comment><USER52> 4 day workweek is a wild goose chase. There is no consensus about which of 5 workdays to drop to get there, which means that people will lose the precious time slots that can be used by individuals to get together at the same time as a group.

The alternative route of reducing the duration of each workday with the 5 workday week isn't much different from what we have today: some end up working longer hours, some work the bare minimum number of hours they are required. Enforcing shorter days means that the gap between the hard workers and those who are just showing up for the hours will increase even further, increasing performance gaps in the workplace and unfairly punishing dedication and productivity.

<comment><USER53> I think you're making this sound harder to implement than this really is.

> There is no consensus about which of 5 workdays to drop to get there

As a company (or better yet as a society), just redefine the weekend as Friday – Sunday, or Saturday – Monday. I don't think anyone is proposing a free-for- all approach where people get to pick and choose which day they take off.

> Enforcing shorter days means that the gap between the hard workers and those > who are just showing up for the hours

I have a hard time understanding this mentality. The law and your labor contract only requires you to work 40 hours. Some people may choose to work more than that, but to what end? So you get to feel superior to your coworkers? If the law reduced the work week to 30 hours, would you seriously hold it against people to spend more time at home with their families?

<comment><USER30> > If the law reduced the work week to 30 hours, would you seriously hold it > against people to spend more time at home with their families?

Some people would unfortunately, but it should still be done.

<comment><USER54> By in large in the UK medium to large size companies work 35 work weeks and holding it against people for family seems to not be a thing. It's a cultural accountability thing.

Balanced time at home/away from work. More time with kids, more nurtured kids, more successful kids. Same thing goes for the individual. More time to yourself, less burn out, better long quality work output, less stressful work environment.

<comment><USER30> Definitely agree it's a cultural issue which needs to be solved. You need leaders who can enforce work/life balance from the top down, and employees willing to rapidly move when a company doesn't have the will to support sane work/life balance.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Physics, Topology, Logic and Computation: A Rosetta Stone (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rosetta.pdf <comment><USER2> Homotopy Type Theory by Vladimir Voevodsky is another possibility. This is an attempt to link Topology and Computer Science

[https://homotopytypetheory.org/book/](https://homotopytypetheory.org/book/)

Back in the day there was Feynman's Lectures on Computation. Hint: pdf can be found by searching

[https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Computation- Richard-...](https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Computation- Richard-P/dp/0738202967)

See also nLab

[https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/higher+category+theory](https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/higher+category+theory)

one should never forget Jacob Lurie's "Higher Topos Theory" which is 1000 pages just like that

[http://www.math.harvard.edu/~lurie/papers/croppedtopoi.pdf](http://www.math.harvard.edu/~lurie/papers/croppedtopoi.pdf)

Actually I recommend against readin it as it only covers 2 of the 4 topics you discuss (Topology and Logic). However it certainly has applications to the other two.

<comment><USER3> The infinity groupoid models of type theory have already revolutionized our understanding of equality in type theory. So far, the 21st century has been an incredible time for logicians.

There are also older, and very different topological models for typed lambda calculi (see e.g. [http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mhe/papers/entcs87.pdf](http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mhe/papers/entcs87.pdf)). These motivate things like Escardo's "seemingly impossible functional programs" ([http://math.andrej.com/2007/09/28/seemingly-impossible- funct...](http://math.andrej.com/2007/09/28/seemingly-impossible-functional- programs/)) and, along different lines, Abstract Stone Duality ([http://www.paultaylor.eu/ASD/](http://www.paultaylor.eu/ASD/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> excerpt:

> At present, the deductive systems in mathematical logic look like > hieroglyphs to most physicists. Similarly, quantum field theory is Greek to > most computer scientists, and so on.

       Category Theory    Physics    Topology    Logic          Computation
       </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
       object             system     manifold    proposition    data type
       morphism           process    cobordism   proof          program

yup, as a computer scientist by education, sounds about right - Greek and hieroglyphs (and those are just names!)

while we're at it, we need an update with statistics, data science and machine learning.

<comment><USER5> > while we're at it, we need an update with statistics, data science and > machine learning.

See this post and its comments[0] to get some foundations upon which to think about these correspondences.

[0] [https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2014/10/where_do_probab...](https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2014/10/where_do_probability_measures.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you like this Propositions As Types by Wadler is also an excellent read. In fact, the author cites PTLC: Rosetta.

[http://m.cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/12/194626-propositions-...](http://m.cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/12/194626-propositions- as-types/fulltext)

</comment><comment><USER7> > It was then realized that the loose analogy between flow charts and Feynman > diagrams could be made more precise and powerful with the aid of category > theory

This is fascinating!

</comment><comment><USER8> Also checkout Steve Awodey's Category Theory book.

[https://global.oup.com/academic/product/category- theory-9780...](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/category- theory-9780199237180?cc=us&lang=en&)

On a personal note, I remember Awodey from my Senior Thesis seminar. He was very amicable and affable. During my presentation, I remember having to demonstrate Cantor's diagonalisation argument. Luckily for me it was one of the things I spent a good amount of time studying. Had a great time there.

<comment><USER9> Also, a book by B.Pierce [ISBN 9780262660716] is a very good short introduction to Category Theory for programmers.</comment></comment>


Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWsWoAUjjck <comment><USER2> I think Eckel sees Scala the way I do, as a somehow incomplete vision of the future of programming, but I was disappointed by this talk. I was hoping to hear some deeper insights into what specifically Eckel would want to rethink about Scala. I don't think he was really able to elucidate what he wants to change. He vaguely mentioned Scala 3, but didn't seem to have looked very deeply into it.

Like others, I was also a bit perplexed by his description of the community. In his descriptions of Python's BDFL, I couldn't help but feel Odersky's leadership was shortchanged a bit. I primarily programmed in Scala for the past year and my experience with the community has been nothing but positive, whether on mailing lists or StackOverflow.

Of course, perception is reality, and even Odersky has spoken on a culture of elitism in Scala in the past. I also think the lack of women in the Scala scene makes a point in itself, as well. I just wish more cogent examples had been provided, because the problems in the community need to be highlighted before they can be solved.

My biggest issue with Scala hasn't been community, but lack of maturity on the project level. The larger Python, JS, and Ruby communities simply have more out there in terms of community contributed content. The tradeoff for me has been that versus the sheer elegance of Scala.

I also think there's a lot of truth to the point that the multiparadigm of ways to do something in Scala leads to each team or organization developing a distinct style, which is unfortunate. On the other hand, Scala code seems have this property of evolution toward succinctness and elegance over time. You may not know how to get it right the first shot, but you'll eventually roll down the gradually sloped pit of success. In JS, by contrast, doing things the right way tends to look almost like an abuse of the language.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm disagree with his comparison of scala community to "league of legends". I've found the scala community, especially, the #scala IRC to be friendliest so far. Folks are always there to help you out irrespective of your level of proficiency with language or programming in general

<comment><USER4> I second that, I don't know where he went, but at least in reddit.com/r/scala people are very nice and helpful, and Martin Odersky visits there frequently and answers questions. I was in touch with several people in the community and from typesafe / EPFL and really don't know where the league of legends comparison comes from.

In any case, I do suggest anyone who haven't seen or tried Scala to give it a shot. It's a fun and productive language. And the community is pretty great in my experience...

<comment><USER5> I've found the Scala community to be exceptionally helpful and friendly in general, with the occasional you're doing it wrong we know better vibe from a minority. Most of the contention seems to be on forums like reddit programming where 1 or 2 specific (and disproportionately active) users have almost turned Scala-bashing into a profession.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slides: [http://www.slideshare.net/bruceeckel/rethinking-scala- presen...](http://www.slideshare.net/bruceeckel/rethinking-scala-presented-in- san-francisco-may-7-2014)

<comment><USER7> These slides seem pretty meaningless on their own. Usually if slides have meaningful information the presentation wasn't very good.

<comment><USER8> It is helpful for those of us who live in countries where Youtube is blocked.

<comment><USER9> Not in this case. Those slides don't provide anything on their own.

<comment><USER8> It gave me the sentiment of the talk, at least, to figure out if I should watch the video at work (where we have our own line to the unlocked internet). I don't feel like I wasted my time going through 30 of them.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, which is why I posted them. Even though I can access YouTube, video is not a good way for me to consume information at work, and I found I was having trouble getting a general feel for the talk from checking out snippets.

<comment><USER8> Ya, I really wish more good talks were converted into web essays, like what Bret Victor did between the Inventing on Principle talk and Learnable Programming essay. It is just easier for me to read things, skimming at first, more deeply later, than to sit through a video in one shot. But I'm getting old, I heard younger kids prefer videos exclusively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really don't mind the part about Java where class names and variable names are long and wordy, and camel cased almost to the point that a fully qualified class name, including the package name, becomes something of a run-on sentence.

This part ties directly into the premise of interactive tooling, in that, once you have an IDE with tab completion for all your types and methods, you notice the huge benefit this adds when confronting gigantic but powerful, feature- complete libraries. Doubly so, for a compiled language that can accurately infer syntax integrity as you type, based on compiled binaries that don't require painfully witchy runtime linking against fragile, obscure file system paths.

As long as you don't shoot yourself in the foot (or let some grumpy, adversarial senile developer hobble you) with a horrid, torturous crackpot scheme of reflection and introspection, or stultifying nightmare-mode XML, Java's still pretty damn handy any old day of the week.

There's definitely still an enterprisey, corporate air to the culture of Java, and it can be near as bad as dealing with an obnoxious Oracle DBA, or a smug Dennis Nedry Windows admin, but that's more a political issue than a programmerly issue. Is that the product of an "evil bit" flipped to "true" on a league of legends server? I'm not so sure. Newer languages get a lot of bro- grammers, so I'd say pick your poison...

Just sayin'...

</comment><comment><USER11> Gratuitous comment about how "rethinking Scala" and "scaling Rethink(DB)" are both valid expressions.

</comment><comment><USER12> Summarising the content: about 9:10

"virtual machines and garbage collection which when java first appeared were still ridiculous concepts"

So I'm listening to a guy's thoughts on programming languages who apparently never heard of lisp and is seemingly unaware of Guy Steele.

"Our time is much better spent using a high level language..." Which is a sweepingly generalisation for which the exceptions, nuances and caveats are very clear to most reading Hacker News.

I'm stopping now. That's 10 minutes of my life I'm not getting back. If someone thinks this promotes scala please think again, it probably has the opposite effect. If someone was kind enough to point out where the non- ridiculous content actually starts and provide some summary of why it might be worth anyone's time I'd have another look but I think I'll be looking for thoughts on scala elsewhere. Signal to noise far too low for me here. YMMV.

As an aside, promoting a wider popularity for a skill set you already have is usually a good idea professionally. Ask any Perl expert. This is probably has something to do with the vitriol in the "programming language wars." It's nothing new, Dick Gabriel described C as "a virus." Many C++ promoters hate on C reflexively even when they're right. Many Java's hate on C++, Pythonistas on Perl, Haskell on Scala etc etc. Choose life.

<comment><USER13> It's Bruce Eckel. He's selling whatever's flavor of the month. The guy switches languages more often than some people chance socks.

<comment><USER14> Really? I don't think he has been constantly chasing the hot thingy in the past 10 years, stuff like Ruby/Rails, Coffeescript, Clojure, Kotlin, Node, Typescript, F#, Go, Rust, Nim, Elixir, Meteor ...

<comment><USER13> He was C++, then Java, then he was C++ again then he was Python... Then he wrote about Flex, and now Scala...

<comment><USER14> I remember reading his blog [0] on Scala 4 years ago, it might be the flavor of the month at _that_ time.

[0] [http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=328540](http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=328540)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Paul Graham's "Hackers and Painters" in Public Domain? - <AUTHOR>

Glose, a recent ebook startup, allows its readers to read for free the entire book.
Since I also build an ebook reading app (Addr, check it on the App Store if you will), I wondered whether or not we could implement a copy of Hackers and Painters as a free sort of 'tutorial' book. <comment><USER2> Why don't you ask the author? pg@ycomb...com

<comment><AUTHOR> I sure did. I just doubt he'd answer me as soon as the HN community ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Alright. After further research, I realized Glose actually does not "sell" the Hackers and Painters book. They "only" give to read a bunch of blog posts pg has written for three or four years. My mistake.</comment></comment></comment>


These Are the Worst Major Metro Areas for IT Jobs - <AUTHOR> https://insights.dice.com/2019/03/20/worst-metro-areas-it-jobs/ <comment><USER2> That's a pretty clickbait article title. It should really be "Least Affordable Major Metro Areas for IT Jobs".</comment>


How we benefited from a mistake - <AUTHOR> http://spontaneus.posterous.com/how-we-benefited-from-a-mistake

<comment><USER2> wow, that was utterly useless. amazing.</comment>


When Hubble stared at nothing for 100 hours (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/04/24/when-hubble-stared-at-nothing-for-100-hours/ <comment><USER2> "Bob was right, I was wrong. The use of that discretionary time was a courageous thing,"

This is such a powerful statement from Rob Kirschner. It is science at it's best. Someone (rightfully) opposing an experiment, being incorrect and admitting, without reluctance, shame or regrets that they were wrong.

At the time, Bob's idea was by all available information questionable. But it was right for him to persevere, it was right that he had to face and overcome opposition and it is right that the opposition gracefully admits that Bob was right :)

<comment><USER3> This interview with Kirshner is a good read as well: [https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr- library/oral...](https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral- histories/32418) And a reminder that science is not generally moved forward by strokes of brilliance, but by a whole bunch of people grinding at the fuzzy edge until the picture becomes a little more clear.

<comment><USER4> Spectacularly appropriate metaphor - thanks for that.

<comment><USER5> Kuhns distinction between normal and revolutionary science might be interesting to you: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Science)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _In 1995, astronomer Bob Williams wanted to point the Hubble Space Telescope > at a patch of sky filled with absolutely nothing remarkable. For 100 hours.

It was a terrible idea, his colleagues told him, and a waste of valuable telescope time. People would kill for that amount of time with the sharpest tool in the shed_

And by 'Bob Williams', we mean the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Hubble. Williams chose to use some of the predefined Director's Discretionary Time to explore the limits of the telescope and our understanding of the universe.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Williams_(astronomer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Williams_\(astronomer\))

<comment><USER7> Wow! The culture sounds very risk averse. I mean 100 hours is not much given how long the telescope remained opertional

<comment><USER8> Exactly, this is exactly why I decided not to pursue academia.

Too many times I heard things along the lines of getting "low hanging fruit" to get "published" and that "don't try that you won't ever graduate". Why is graduating and publishing papers and tenure and theses the goal of academia, instead of trying the highest possible risk things that even companies wouldn't want to risk? Why isn't academia about doing the most utterly crazy things possible in the name of advancing science for civilization?

<comment><USER9> You're absolutely right. What's good for _civilization_ is to advance scientific understanding and knowledge. To take risks, because sometimes they pan out! So go on, pour resources into a thousand crazy ideas. Something will work out eventually.

Yet, what's good for the academic? Each effort costs potentially years of your life. A great discovery will catapult you to the stars, a small one will advance your career, and a negative finding does nothing. You're not alone, you have peers competing for the next round of funding, tenured position, or residency. There are literally never enough to go around, and each will judge applicants in part on their record of results.

I think you're describing a conflict between what's valuable for a system at scale and what's valuable for individual actors within it.

<comment><USER10> If you want to find nothing without hurting your career, spend your time reproducing other people's results. Lots of the time you will find what they found, which doesn't help your career much. But sometimes you'll find frauds or mistakes, and that will help your career and our civilization quite a lot.

<comment><USER11> That's very optimistic. More likely you will be disliked by your peers for, in their view, actively trying to demolish their reputation. There's a lot of politics in academia and it's way better to just try to be friends and never say bad words of other peoples works. Live and let live. Is this good for the public and "Science" in capital letters? No. But it's how it is.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps it is, but you don't have to reproduce the work of your direct colleagues.

<comment><USER11> Specialties are usually small worlds where everyone knows everyone, reviews, funding grants recommendations flow between them, as do postdocs and graduate students. Stirring up as little water as possible and playing into the hands of the others is incentivized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This and the later XDF (eXtreme Deep Field) surveys still raise the hairs on the back of my neck every time I look at them. It really puts our human scale and importance in perspective.

<comment><USER13> This almost makes me dizzy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra- Deep_Field#/media...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra- Deep_Field#/media/File:XDF-scale.jpg) (it's a picture of the night sky showing what exactly Hubble was imaging with the Moon for scale)

I never really understood how XDF is only that tiny patch of the sky and yet it has a godzillion of galaxies inside it!

<comment><USER14> TIL: Moon covers 0.5°.

<comment><USER15> The Sun- also 0.5°

<comment><USER16> Wow, they're both the same size! What a cool coincidence! Just think what would happen if the moon passed exactly in front of the sun! Has it ever happened? Has anybody looked up at the sky when this happened? I wonder what it looks like.

<comment><USER17> Yeah full solar eclipses are a lot of fun. I had an experience in Seattle a couple of years ago.

They perfectly align and all you see is a thin ring from the sun flares.

In that perfect eclipse, you can look at the sun with the naked eye and it's beautiful and humbling. Like the day suddenly turns into a night for a few minutes.

The TV series "Heroes" was all about this eclipse. It's a fun show if you enjoy this kind of things.

<comment><USER18> I witnessed the 2017 total solar eclipse in person. Very eery feeling. It's worth noting that you should still not look at the sun during a total eclipse as the corona is still bright enough to do damage, and your pupils are dilated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Since we seem to have a good discussion here, there's something I've always wanted to know.

If I understand correctly, the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old. As is mentioned frequently when staring at deep space, we are looking at the universe not as it is, but as it was, since it takes so long for the light to travel to us. Some objects in the Hubble Deep Field are over 9 billion years old, and some within 1 billion years of the beginning of the universe.

My question, as best I am able to ask it, is assuming the big bang theory is true, how can it be that we on Earth can be looking at something simultaneously so old and so far away? If everything originated from the same point, how can it be that we pick an object in the sky and say "that is what the object looked like 12 billion years ago"? Doesn't it beg the question, "well then where were we 12 billion years ago?" As in, how can we be here, observing something close to the beginning of time? Didn't both objects start at the same place?

I hope that makes sense.. Articles and videos much appreciated

<comment><USER20> Well, let's try to explain general relativity, shall we?

First of all, the universe is expanding. A good visual is to paint stuff on the surface of a balloon. Everything on the balloon started off close together. But as the balloon expands, things on the surface of that ballon get farther apart. So it is with the universe.

Where did this happen? Everywhere, and nowhere. The balloon is an analogy for the structure of the universe. The balloon exists in a 3-D world at a time and place. But all notions of time and place are defined within the structure of the universe. So I'm describing what happened everywhere. All places used to be close. And now they are not.

Now the Big Bang theory is this. If you play that tape backwards, everything that we can see was once _really_ close together. But still had all the same stuff. So the universe was a hot, dense place. Then it began expanding, and got large and cool and fairly empty.

So if everything used to be close, why does light only now reach us from somewhere that wasn't that far away originally? Well look at light as being like an ant crawling on the surface of the balloon. At first your journey doesn't look far, but the balloon starts expanding and the trip gets longer. You keep traveling and it gets longer still. That's exactly the plight of light from the early universe.

Did that help?

<comment><USER21> I have a very naive question: if everything expands, why aren't planets also expanding and why isn't any molecular structure expanding as well? In other words, what does expand the universe yet prevents the planets (and us) from also expanding with it?

<comment><USER22> Because this expansion is so infinitesimal on that scale as to be negligible. It's about 7%/Gyr, or a billion years for an unbound structure's "space" to grow by 7%. Or about 70 picometers (10^-12) per meter every year. Or in other words, about a water molecule per meter every _four_ years.

At that rate nearly every other force (from chemical bonds to gravity) prevent anything but the largest cosmological structures (like galaxies) from being effected. They simply continue with their system as they always have, and the extra space shows up as distance between galaxies.

<comment><USER23> > Or in other words, about a water molecule per meter every four years.

That still sounds measurable though. Has there been any multiyear experiments that try to measure something like that?

<comment><USER22> How? Gravity will make all such changes impossible to measure except at galactic scales.

Again any "new space" doesn't stick around where it was created. The atomic forces, chemical forces, and gravity maintain the system distances we are used to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The sheer scale on these photos is amazing. Seeing galaxies strewn around like marbles is very humbling.

I hope there are more plans for deep space photos. I wonder what a telescope on the other side of the moon could capture.

<comment><USER25> And frightening. Such photos really bring home the Great Silence. All of those specks which are entire galaxies, and not the single slightest sign of intelligent life anywhere, ever. The marbles roll on just as they have for billions and billions of years and will go on rolling for billions to come, dead pieces of inert matter tracing out their gravitational trajectories and burning as predicted.

<comment><USER26> >All of those specks which are entire galaxies, and not the single slightest sign of intelligent life anywhere, ever.

You say that as if we could tell with any certainty, at that scale. There could be interstellar civilizations spanning several of those galaxies and uncountable intelligent civilizations that simply never pursued space travel or the constant accelerated curve of energy consumption and colonization we assume they would, only because we ourselves would.

We wouldn't know, we don't even really know what we're looking for, and the universe is so vast that even if we did, we'd be all but certain to blink and miss it.

<comment><USER27> It isn't even clear that the pursuit of colonization we want to pursue is even possible. It takes a lot of energy to do those things and there are limits to how much we can safely use. We are already worried about global warming despite not having a colony to support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I remember the first time I saw the deep field image. It blew my mind then and still does today. I had no idea it was a controversial experiment at the time.

<comment><USER29> I don't think anything else that I've seen or read has properly conveyed the scale of the universe the way these images do. They did and still do stagger my imagination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > For 100 hours, between Dec. 18 and 28, Hubble stared at a patch of sky near > the Big Dipper's handle that was only about 1/30th as wide as the full moon. > In total, the telescope took 342 pictures of the region, each of which was > exposed for between 25 and 45 minutes.

How did this work? 342 pictures at 25 minutes each is already well over 100 hours. At 45 minutes, it'd be 256 hours.

<comment><USER31> Indeed, the math doesn't pencil out.

I don't know, but I'd hazard a guess that the image is 100 hr deep on multiple tiles.

The dataset spans 10 days, which is 240 hr.

<comment><USER32> The telescope's orbital period and the relative positions of the earth and the sun will affect how the exposures are scheduled.

I went looking for more detailed information -- It appears they are open enough with the data that you can see exactly how the exposures were taken. Assuming what I found is right and that someone could make sense of the data. There are postscript files listing activity for each of the 10 days, but I am not exactly sure what we're looking at.

[https://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/project/project.html](https://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/project/project.html)

<comment><USER33> Here you go:

[https://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/project/scheduling.htm...](https://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/project/scheduling.html)

Observations run from 352:16 to 362:19.

Filter Nexp hours

F300W 100 48.93

F450W 62 36.52

F606W 77 34.94

F814W 49 34.86

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't know of anything more awesome (in the literal sense of the word) than these photos. It makes my wonder just how densely packed (ignoring variation in distance) the area is. What will we see when we start looking between those dark spots? What if there's literally something in every direction...

<comment><USER35> Before our modern understanding of cosmology, a serious question astromers asked is "why is the night sky dark". If there truly were stars/galaxies in every direction you would expect the entire night sky to be bright, as no matter which way you looked you would see a star; and the combined light of all of those stars should illuminate the sky.

As it turns out, empty space isn't dark, but rather illuminated by the cosmic microwave background. This suggests that the space between us and this boundary in space from when photons started to be able to move mostly freely is mostly empty. Otherwise this backround would either be over-shadowed by stars, or obscured by whatever stuff was obscuring said stars.

Of course, it is important to keep in mind the speed of light implications.

<comment><USER36> For more on this, see Olbers' paradox - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27_paradox)

<comment><USER37> But, Hubble demonstrates that every line of sight is actually ends on surface of a star or an object, so what is your point?

<comment><USER35> When did Hubble demonstrate that? What the experiment in the article showed is that seemingly empty regions contained stars. If you want to claim that every 1 dimensional line of sight ends on an object, then you need to explain how the cosmic microwave background manages to reach us. Unless, of course, you count quark-gluon plasma as an object; in which case we do pretty much hit a wall in every direction.

<comment><USER37> It looks like your naked sight is much better than Hubble telescope. Congratulations!

<comment><USER38> You should read a basic Astronomy book and dont make a fool of yourself here

<comment><USER37> You mean, I should _write_ a book, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Isn't it great the the starlink junk doesn't photobomb Hubble?

It's amazing we have a giant telescope outside the planet. We know so much about the universe because of Hubble and friends.

When I was young I truly believed in heaven and hell as some distant planets. Then learning about Hubble, cosmic radiation and the fact that we can see millions of lightyears away which is an incomprehensible distance and the fact that our vision is limited by speed of light that seems super slow relative to those distances.

I really had a paradigm shift. Heaven and hell are probably good ideas but don't actually physically exist. Took me a while to digest that. If they were actually there, we'd have seen them by now.

I have a lot of respect for Astronomy.

<comment><USER39> Just a nitpick: Hubble is at a much higher altitude than Starlink and as such would never be interfered with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> [http://archive.is/5cgaD](http://archive.is/5cgaD)

<comment><USER41> Thank you. It's incredibly obnoxious when a website says I have 3 free articles left to read this month and 10s later pops up a non-dismissable pop- up that forces registration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> For me, those images are a sliver of the Total Perspective Vortex. The more I try to comprehend them the more blown away I am by them.

</comment><comment><USER43> _> "With this achievement, the estimated number of galaxies in the universe had multiplied enormously — to 50 billion, five times more than previously expected,"_

This numbers is sheer incredible. Each of them contains 50 billion stars. How come some think we're alone in this universe?

EDIT: yeah, I know speed of light and all... it's just a stupid fantasy that is fueled by these numbers

<comment><USER44> I have this nagging thought that maybe intelligent life really is a coincidence of a grand cosmic scale. Maybe we really really are all alone in this galaxy and among many others. What an incredible opportunity we are given, and how we squander it with our bickering.

<comment><USER45> Lol, would love to know the thought process of someone that bothered to downvote you.

 _if you don't believe aliens exist, you are wronggggg!!!_

<comment><USER44> Yeah, that one surprised me too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "With this achievement, the estimated number of galaxies in the universe had multiplied enormously — to 50 billion, five times more than previously expected,"

It seems that current estimates for this are higher, such as 100 billion in a 2020 article I saw. Anyone have an authoritative scientific source for the best current estimates?

50 billion galaxies (or 100) somehow doesn't actually seem so many. Considering that's on the same scale as the number of people on our tiny space rock. Yes each one has billions of stars inside, but still, we're talking about the entire universe.

Somehow, intuition suggests there must be more "stuff" beyond our observable universe.

<comment><USER47> I agree....

here's [https://phys.org/news/2017-01-universe-trillion- galaxies.htm...](https://phys.org/news/2017-01-universe-trillion- galaxies.html) where it's 2 trillion. Which is 1 galaxy for every dollar in the US Coronovirus stimulus package or 256 galaxies per person. Which makes it also feel like an approachable number for the amount of galaxies in the universe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I was looking at the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field photo and in there locked on a galaxy that was just a dot and imagined that out of the billions of stars and trillions of planets in that dot, there could be life on a planet with a variety and richness and vast history that is unfathomable to us. Us and them, two dots unbelievably far away yet parallelly flowing through time. I think the only reason Space doesn't generate a lot more interest than it draws now is because it is truly mind boggling.

</comment><comment><USER49> I have a sense that the article is presenting things in a more dramatic way than how it really occurred:

> So, with his job perhaps on the line, Williams went off, put together a > small team of post-docs, and did exactly as he'd planned. For 100 hours, > between Dec. 18 and 28, Hubble stared at a patch of sky near the Big > Dipper's handle that was only about 1/30th as wide as the full moon. In > total, the telescope took 342 pictures of the region, each of which was > exposed for between 25 and 45 minutes. The images were processed and > combined, then colored, and 17 days later, released to the public.

I mean, each image was only exposed for 25-45 minutes. If the full hundred hours was such a huge risk, why not take, like, 5-10 photos first to see if you get much of anything? Seems like they would have been able to know pretty early on whether it was going to be worth it.

<comment><USER50> If they found nothing in the first 5-10 images, what do you imagine they would do? Telescope scheduling is a very tricky business, not one that lets you change courses too quickly.

<comment><USER51> Schedule the 5-10 mins, then schedule again for later.

<comment><USER52> The amount of programming and orbital changes needed for this is not feasible.

For the hubble to point at something, I'd imagine it needed to station-keep and burn some hydrazine.

If you did infinite numbers of 5-10 min studies, you'd burn right out of the fuel store of a spacecraft before you'd get anything done.

From what I hear, hubble telescope times are scoped out, planned out a year or several years in advance - the telescopes and scientific instruments need to be programmed, the spacecraft needed to be moved/pivoted to aim at the right part of space, communications times needs to be booked with receivers/ground stations across the entire Deep Space Network so you can receive the data.

It's nontrivial - if you booked 5-10 min at a time you'd have wasted your most precious resource.

[https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html](https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html)

<comment><USER39> Hubble points via gyroscopes, not thrusters! But they are slow, so that's part of why you need to schedule things well. YouTube video explaining how it points: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEZI9DxIQss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEZI9DxIQss)

Also, I don't think it needs to change orbital parameters at all for its operation. Station-keeping yea, but I don't think it needs to burn more fuel because of pointing at things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53>
      We learned new words for things. The decade changed.

      The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed
      For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe.
      The second time,
      The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is—

      So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

\- excerpt from Tracy K. Smith's "My God, It's Full of Stars" [1]

Smith's father worked on the Hubble telescope, and she would be named US Poet Laureate in 2017. I highly recommend reading her poetic account of this photograph :)

[1]: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55519/my-god-its- full...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55519/my-god-its-full-of- stars)

</comment><comment><USER54> I stared at nothing. I stared at absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be.

</comment><comment><USER55> Probably it's a perspective issue, but galaxies look relatively close to each other, is that the case?

I mean they look relatively close compared to their size, in contrast our solar system's bodies are really far away from each other (of course relatively).

<comment><USER56> Average distance between galaxies is 10-100 times the diameter of the average galaxies.

Andromeda for naked eye is a smudge six time bigger than the moon (3.0 degrees across).

<comment><USER57> I found it hard to believe that Andromeda would be six times larger in the night sky than the moon, so I searched online and discovered this article showing what the galaxy would look like if it were brighter: [https://petapixel.com/2014/12/08/photos-night-sky-look- like-...](https://petapixel.com/2014/12/08/photos-night-sky-look-like- andromeda-galaxy-brighter/)

Wow. TIL.

<comment> Ono-Sendai You can see it with the naked eye in a very dark place. It looks like a big brighter smudged area, a little off the plane of the milky way. And it does appear a lot bigger than the moon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolman_surface_brightness_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolman_surface_brightness_test)

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm sorry, I haven't read the article, maybe it's explained there, but as far as I understand by 100 hours they mean that the telescope was sitting there for 100 hours exposed open like a camera, right? How come the image is so sharp then? Wouldn't all those galaxies be constantly moving and end up blurred in a photo?

<comment><USER60> Hubble is in space. They just pointed it somewhere and said "don't move" (well, multiple times and stacked, but the effect is the same). The galaxies themselves are so far away their own motion is way less than a single pixel.

<comment><USER59> Good point. But still, I think, if it really was exposed for 100 hours the photo wouldn't be as sharp.

<comment><USER39> Since it's done by stacking 30-45 min exposures, it would be sharp. All you have to do is align the images well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> So Bob was right, because Bob was right.

Good learning opportunity here.

We shouldn't think to hard whether he was right or why though.

</comment><comment><USER62> Curious how strongly apparent size correlates to youth.

I am guessing that especially in the extreme deep field,

the distant couple-pixel dots correspond to the back of the room i.e. the oldest/most distant galaxies,

so this is in some real if crude sense looking through a core sample of cosmological time?

</comment><comment><USER63> Will you reach a limit if you come up with a telescope ten times as big - where is the real limit? Is that an exciting question? I think there is a bit of rhetorics involved at interpeting the result of this experiment.

<comment><USER39> You can pretty much make a telescope as large as you'd like, depending on your technological level. Hypothetically, you can use gravitational lensing to make a telescope via the sun! It's rather unfeasible at our current level of rocketry, but in time, maybe! Article: [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/using- the-...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/using-the-sun-as-a- cosmic-telescope/)

You can also use Earth's atmosphere as a lens too! It's an amazing video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgOTZe07eHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgOTZe07eHA)

Going even crazier, I can imagine we could some day use a massive black hole as a giant telescope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I've had a framed poster of the Hubble Deep Field on my wall since the late 90s. I see it every day when I wake up. It's the only wall-art I own that I know I'll never swap out for something else.

</comment><comment><USER65> Get around "sign up if you wanna read" modal w/ window.bc.jQuery.fancybox.close(); jQuery('.fancybox- lock,body,html').css({overflow:'scroll'})

<comment><USER66> how do I use this

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I find it really sweet that the author of the article illustrates the perspective of our place in the universe as her father is known for just the same rhing :D

</comment><comment><USER68> It seems counter to the fundamentals of science culture that the director just kind of gets 10% of the time without need for approval.

Can anyone cast some light on this?

<comment><USER69> You can look at it as _the process of becoming director_ is itself approval for those kind of discetionary choices. When an organization works well, it entrusts power to those who have the judgement to use it well.

If someone needs to get ten different kinds of approvals, are they really a "director" for most meaningful senses of the word?

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Best article I've read in a long long time.

</comment><comment><USER71> Ha! I just ordered a custom skate deck with these images on the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER72> Such a brave soul.

</comment><comment><USER73> Paywall links need to be downvoted</comment>


Review my app coded in the past two days: BookBox - <AUTHOR>

http://www.lkozma.net/bookbox
embedded for ex. on my main page: http://www.lkozma.net
I made this small widget during this weekend to learn a bit of javascript. I'd be glad to get feedback on how understandable, usable, etc. it is or feature ideas, suggestions. <comment><USER2> Pretty nifty for just two days of work. If it's something you'd like to pursue then the obvious choice is to incorporate your own Amazon Associate codes into the links and thus earn income from the book sellers (be up front about doing this.) Also you can offer a cheap paid account where you allow the users to do this themselves.

For the widget, it looked somewhat easy to theme, but you may incorporate theming options into the interface as well. Color the links. Center items, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a really nice project. Overall I found it quite easy to use, but I think you could improve the distinction between creating new BookBoxs and updating BookBoxs.

Perhaps only showing one of the password options based on where you came from or what your last action was would be a good start.

As everyone else said, there is loads of scope for expansion which is great.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice.

Which reminds me, where's that StackOverflow clone that was supposed to be written over the July 4th weekend? Considering all the hullabaloo I'm curious how the final product turned out.

</comment><comment><USER5> I actually like it quite a lot! To be honest I like the simplicity, and the fact it works and does what you'd expect it to.

Plus you have the ability to do so much with it, like extending it to incorporate your own amazon ref, making it do stuff when you click a book (like display a larger image and the book blurb), or even integrating it with other book services.</comment>


Doctors are turning to YouTube to learn how to do surgical procedures - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/24/doctors-are-watching-surgical-procedures-on-youtube.html <comment><USER2> This is past click bait and in the territory of straight up lying. The actual article talks about youtube videos of surgery increasing, which makes sense. Good doctors listen to audio, watch videos and read papers all the time.

No one is only watching a video and then yoloing their way through a surgery. I have sat and watched surgery videos with a surgeon before. It is supplemental, exactly as you would expect. There are tight regulations in place for these things already.

This is terrible scare journalism and pretty fucking shameful.

<comment><USER3> I imagine that the most likely case is doctors watching how other doctors do it, perhaps to see if there's a small change to reduce scarring or something. Or maybe it's just been awhile since they did that specific surgery and they wanted to make sure they hadn't forgotten something.

When I go to a doctor, I'm not paying them to know everything off the top of their head, I'm paying them because they know what to look for and where to look. Likewise, I don't get paid as a developer because I know everything, I get paid because I can deliver results, and sometimes that involves some research.

I am 100% ok with surgeons watching YouTube surgery videos, especially for less common operations. In fact, I expect them to rewatch something before doing a surgery they haven't done in a while.

<comment><USER2> Even thinking youtube is being used primarily for review when someone is out of practice isn't really the most calibrated way to think of it from what I have seen. It's more about new technologies like sophisticated robotics or edge cases and outliers. Conferences, papers, audio and presentations are all part of the continuous education on these topics. If something is crucial there is probably more direct mentoring and gradual responsibility going on.</comment></comment></comment>


GNOME's SeedKit gets public release, HTML/JS/CSS in desktop apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/08/gnomes-seedkit-gets-public-release-aims.html <comment><USER2> I hate to be that guy but are there any screenshots?

<comment><USER3> Presumably, it would just look like a GNOME app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working on hybrid web/desktop apps for a while now. I use Qt's webkit to make the application window a HTML page (QWebView) and load pages bundled with the app or from a remote server (or mix content from both). Whenever I need to reach out to the client platform--in my case, for bluetooth and for app.exit()--I use Qt's javascript/native bridge mechanism for great justice.

As with everything there are tradeoffs. Benefits include reusing libraries for both browser-based and native-based applications portably across client platforms. I have a large library of server code for the kinds of applications I write, so knocking up a new application in that domain is easy. I find writing clients in HTML/javascript easier for my iterative development style. Client libraries like jQuery help too, although I don't use them much as my apps run on an embedded device (333MHz) where they slow down page rendering too much. I use them for mocking up and prototyping and rewrite to inline javascript for deployment.

The biggest drawback is the native client, and I try to avoid having to use one as much as I can. And while Qt is good for Windows/Linux/Mac, you need something else for Android (I can't comment on iPhone/iPad because you can't program the bluetooth on them, so it is useless for my particular requirements). So you'll be maintaining separate clients which can be a bitch, but such is the nature of tradeoffs.

On the whole I much prefer this style of application, playing around mostly in HTML/javascript/perl, dropping into C++ when I need to touch the platform. Originally I thought using a browser might be too slow on my constrained device, but webkit is quite pleasingly snappy--faster than VB for an application one of my hybrid apps replaced.

</comment><comment><USER5> While I'm not a UI person, I like html/css/js more than most other GUI toolkits I've used. The notion of using these for presentation in desktop apps gets me pretty excited. While there is something to be said for conforming to a platform's GUI standards, most of the GUIs I've been impressed with, e.g., Picasa, Lightroom, many web-apps, and Chrome use non-standard GUIs.

If SeedKit programs are easily portable to windows/mac, this might be a nice open-source replacement for Adobe AIR. Either way, I'll definitely give this a look next time I build a Linux GUI.

</comment><comment><USER6> _The kit, it is hoped, will lower the 'entry barrier of Gnome development to web developers' making the Gnome platform a more attractive proposition._

I might be the only one, but I totally facepalmed after reading this.

Maybe this kit will help them to realize that GTK isn't actually that hard if you just RTFM. Even more so if you use any of the Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, _._ bindings that make it ludicrously easy as is.

Good work though. Imagine it was pretty tough work getting this piece of kit out the door.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's a great concept! User interface design has to enable rapid turnaround in order to be improved iteratively. I wonder what are the possibilities of coding the business logic API in C, and communicating with it from an HTML5 front-end.</comment>


All the global temperature records broken in 2019, so far - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/temperature-records-set-in-2019-512a1109-99ae-45aa-8953-781ff955c91d.html <comment><USER2> Could someone point me to a website that has a simple list of land/sea global temperatures aggregated by month? You would think with all the "blah-blah month of blah-blah on record" articles someone would point to one.

I'm asking because the claim "July: Passed August 2016 at the hottest-ever month on record by 0.14ºF, according to the NOAA and Europe's Copernicus Climate Service", which is sourced from the NOAA press release, conflicts with the global satellite data record: [https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2019/july2019/tlt_201907_b...](https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2019/july2019/tlt_201907_bar.png), which shows that July is not the hottest-ever month on record (although it may be the hottest July on record).

The claim that July is the hottest month on record is looking at land-only global temperature data, so it would be nice if there was a site with land/sea/both broken out by month.

My DDG-fu must be weak, because I haven't been able to find one.

Edit: it could also be differences between satellite and ground-based temperature readings. I'd be surprised if they are that far off, though.

<comment><USER3> You can try looking at [https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/global/time- series](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/global/time-series). The specific claim that July is the warmest month ever might be due to the fact that July is the warmest month of the year, so even though the anomaly isn't as high it was still the warmest month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know how livable it would be in the next 3-5 decades?

I wonder how much innovation will be catalyzed as a result of this.</comment>


Book-banning's digital future - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2223214/?from=rss <comment><USER2> _"The "you don't own your computer" paradigm is not merely wrong. It is violently, disastrously wrong, and the consequences of this error are likely to be felt for generations to come, unless steps are taken to prevent it."_

"Ethics for Programmers: Primum non Nocere"

<http://glyf.livejournal.com/46589.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting argument, if not a bit hyperbolic. It feels like book purchasing, but it's actually signing a contract for reading rights.

</comment><comment><USER4> If they can get away with deleting my books, what's to keep Amazon from correcting newspaper articles?

Envision your five-month-old edition of NYT or WSJ, where it quotes Tim Geithner saying the stimulus package will take effect "almost immediately".

Then one day you find that quote corrected to read "within a year".

Paging Winston Smith ...</comment>


Ask HN: What moonshots are you particularly excited about? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Many-century human life, if not for me at least for my children. With time, I have several other careers in mind.</comment>


Twitter and Periscope Shadowbans Dilbert creator - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152204980091/twitter-and-periscope-shadowban-update <comment><USER2> Twitter has been shadow banning a lot of pro-trump people lately.

For example Barack Obama's brother, Malik. His entire feed is basically Trump support and he was shadow banned the other day. I am happy that they have corrected the issue, they were called out hard for it.

[https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aobamamalik%20shadow&src=...](https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aobamamalik%20shadow&src=typd)

</comment><comment><USER3> His feed died right around the time that half the internet (and Twitter) died due to the dyndns DDOS and he writes it off as a "coincidence" instead of the most likely cause. I'm normally a fan of Scott Adams, but it feels like he's getting a little tin foil hat as he is aging...

<comment><USER4> FWIW, he's been complaining about shadowbanning for at least a week, well before the effects of the DDOS: [http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151981022076/is- twitter-shadowb...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151981022076/is-twitter- shadowbanning-me)

I feel like I know Twitter...but I honestly don't know what is meant by shadowbanning in Twitter. If such a concept were to be possible, would it have something to do with Twitter tweaking out Adams' tweets show up for users who have their timelines set to be curated (instead of by timeliness)? This seems like a conspiracy theory that Adams hasn't done much to independently evaluate.

<comment><USER5> I've been provably shadowbanned by Twitter before so it is something they practice. N/s what happened in his case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Censorship is a really concerning problem, with no obvious solution, when more and more of our communication is published by privately owned third-parties. The other frustrating thing is that this so often happens, and we don't even get a response from the censoring party. I know there is no expectation of free speech on a private platform, but it's still a serious social problem when everyone voluntarily publishes there anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish that I hadn't read this link. I've enjoyed Dilbert for many years, and it will never be the same for me now that I know that Adams is crazy.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, you're a bit late to the crazy train when it comes to Adams. He's been an unrefined troll online for quite some time. He'll talk politics or other bullshit and then say it was all just a joke when he gets called on it.

I hope you don't also like Orson Scott Card...

<comment><USER9> What has he done that's crazy? People here are calling him crazy for supporting trump, but that's just a reflection of the political distribution of the HN community. Has he done anything truly crazy?

<comment><USER10> It continues the conversation started by Ellen Pao cutting off Project Include's connection with YC because of Peter Thiel donating money to Donald Trump. As Sam Altman said in his tweet: "YC is not going to fire someone for supporting a major party nominee".

I apologize for getting really political and I say that you are free to act however you see fit but voting for Hillary isn't exactly taking the high road and to act as if voting for Trump is some morally reprehensible evil while condoning her candidacy seems disingenuous.

<comment><USER11> Agreed.

I have conversations with a lot of people about politics, even though where I live it puts me sometimes into uncomfortable positions and I'm sure I've lost customers or other business opportunities due to it.

The people supporting clinton fall into two baskets (sorry, couldn't resist).

#1 are people who have reasons (sometimes good, sometimes bad) for supporting clinton. I can have very productive conversations with these people, and, intellectually honest ones.

#2 are the people that simply say that any support for trump whatsoever is tantamount to treason and betrayal (morally/personally or even one time, someone actually said it should be "illegal"). They rarely have any good reasons for supporting clinton and when it is, I generally find it to be an issue where they interpret position as indelible truth. EG: Clinton is better for LGBT people, if you support Trump, you hate LGBT people. Perhaps LGBT people, of which I am one, simply have different priorities? What if I believe trump will do a better job with the economy and I consider that more important than having legislation protecting who will bake a cake at my wedding? Many people I used to consider this friends take that position as a moral and personal treason.

I unfortunately have a lot less friends than a year ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guarantee you no one at Twitter thinks about Scott Adams even half as much as Scott Adams does.

<comment><USER9> Twitter bans or downgrades people for political reasons all the time. An example of twitter's pettiness; some time before they banned Breitbart's Milo for trolling, they removed the "verified" tag from his account. There is no sensible justification for this except that twitter was trying to hurt his credibility/give him a hard time. Regardless of what you think of Milo, that's just silly. Twitter is not at all conservative with (shadow)banning or other trickery. They'll even suppress trending tags that they don't agree with politically.

<comment><USER12> Twitter doesn't suppress trends and there's no way in heck they'd go to the trouble to auto-detect when Scott Adams mentions Donald Trump in a Periscope feed. That would require actual engineering effort (aside from being completely insane) which they don't put into stuff like this. When they want to deal with jerkoffs like Milo, the Trust & Safety team handles it, not their engineers.

<comment> rafi-bz They ABSOLUTELY suppressed #HillarysHealth

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brian-armstrong Even if this were true (he has no proof and the more likely explanation is a glitch), his thesis about this being treason is incorrect. Twitter is not required to host any content they don't like or want. Adams can still bring his message to other mediums.

Also, this post segues from conspiracy theory to political bolstering. It's likely he's using clickbait here to prop up his favored candidate.

<comment><USER2> It is treason because they are adamantly attacking Trump supporters because they are Trump supporters.

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure ChickFila established that corporations have just as much right to free speech as we do. This includes and is not limited to choosing what content they would like to share.

<comment><USER14> If that's what twitter wants to do, they need to be truthful about it, and perhaps update their mission statement:

      Our mission: To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.

\- [https://about.twitter.com/company](https://about.twitter.com/company)

Let me be clear: if they want to push a political agenda, then they have (afaik) every right to. But they should _not_ pretend they're some (ahem) Fair and Balanced firehose of everyone's thoughts and ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shockingly, the original blog post's title is much less sensational and certain than the submitted title. Mods, please update.

</comment><comment><USER16> A publisher choosing what content they want to publish and/or promote isn't "moral treason", it's the essence of free press.

If Adams is unhappy with Twitter, he is free to publish and promote his content via other means. Twitter not choosing to cooperate with him might be a contract issue between him and Twitter, but it's not an issue of Adams's liberty, which does not extend to directing Twitter's use of Twitter's resources.

<comment><USER14> Oh look, this argument again. Adams _does_ publish and promote his content via other means.

But Twitter took on this responsibility themselves. Here's their self-stated mission:

      Our mission: To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.

\- [https://about.twitter.com/company](https://about.twitter.com/company)

Recently their mission is more like, "To give everyone the power to create and share ideas that we agree with and information that furthers our personal beliefs instantly, without barriers."

<comment><USER11> Its a slight variation since Adams was careful to not use the word free speech, so they can't use that particular tact (twitter is private, you don't have any right to free speech, read the constitution somtime!).

<comment><USER14> Yep, they have every right afaik to push the conversation whichever way they please, but it's beyond sleazy to pretend they're totally hands-off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is this thread flagged?

<comment><USER18> Because it goes against the narrative SJW's want to paint. Anything with the slightest connection to being pro Trump will get flagged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We wish Scott Adams.</comment>