Gluten intolerance may really be immune dysfunction - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-big-bad-gluten.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&src=me&WT.nav=MostEmailed <comment><USER2> My wife doesn't have celiac disease. Her knee suffered some damage some years ago. If she adds gluten to her diet, it swells up like crazy and hurts. If she removes gluten from her diet, within two days it shrinks back down and looks like a normal knee again and feels (mostly) fine. I won't pretend to understand how gluten affects everyone's body, but I know something about what it does to hers.

It's odd to use the word "myth" in the title, but then leave the door open in the penultimate paragraph to immune system issues being wrapped up in all of this because I think it's entirely possible that for some people (like my wife), the immune system is counterproductively stimulated by gluten.

Having said that, I think a lot of this current GF stuff is simply a fad. But fad or not I'm grateful for it because it gives my wife, who really does have a problem with gluten, many more options when shopping than she had just ten years ago.

<comment> TD-Linux What you describe is a common symptom of celiac disease. Did you get tested?

<comment><USER3> And just to add to that, the blood test can be unreliable. A stomach biopsy is the best way to verify the condition.

<comment><USER4> I doubt that. Remember a paper I read about how a stomach biopsy may not necessarily always find a gluten intolerant.

I nearly died on that shit (Gluten). My life would have been very different if it hat been picked up in my teens. In the end I figured it out myself when I was basically dying (they looked at me when I waked into the hospital and said: Mate, sorry to tell you but the first thing we have to do is an HIV Test. This may give you an idea how I looked.) I know my form of intolerance is rare (1:10.000 to 1:100.000).

My life is different now. I feel better than ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The editorializing of the headline here is changing the argument. The article (titled "The Myth of Big, Bad Gluten") is arguing that gluten may not itself be bad, but rather the body's reaction. This new title implies gluten intolerance is a myth, which is contradicted by stuff like [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837) .

<comment><USER6> Perhaps the submitter was trying to make the title less baity, in accordance with the HN guidelines. (Submitted title was "Myth of gluten intolerance".)

We've changed it to something that uses neutral language from the article. Suggestions for a better title are welcome.

<comment><USER5> Thanks as always for maintaining the tone of the site!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a much better summary of the evidence, in my opinion: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/30/wheat-much-more-than- yo...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/30/wheat-much-more-than-you-wanted- to-know/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Not one single mention of RoundUp or any of the other toxic chemicals farmers spray on crops (especially wheat) right before/during harvest to kill them and dry them out faster. Like the article says, we as a species have eaten wheat for thousands of years with little problem. Why now? The correlation between gluten intolerance and the rise of late-crop RoundUp raises some big questions.

<comment><USER9> Um... The whole point here is that unscientific nonsense needs to be killed. And specifically that non-Celiac gluten sensitivity has no real evidence for it.

So your response is to trot out an equally unfounded (AFAIK) hippie-inspired pseudo-theory. Seriously?

<comment><USER10> Why is it so urgent to kill this?

It does nobody harm if some people choose to avoid gluten, and greatly benefits coeliac sufferers who have increasing good nutrition options.

<comment><USER11> anecdote: my wife has had exema her entire life. after a particularly bad episode, we eventually we tried an elimination diet methodically eliminating one food category at a time. it took about 2 months to rotate through all the possible suspects but in the end, eliminating wheat completely cleared the problem. then, one morning we had meatless sausage and she had a bad reoccurrence. first ingredient on the sausage? wheat gluten. (this was before allergy labelling in the US, and we just didn't think it would contain wheat).

On the other hand, we've had other family members try avoiding gluten because they perceived it was 'bad', without a causal linkage to any symptoms.

So, is non-celiac gluten intolerance rare? Probably. Do most people avoid it for the wrong reason? Probably. But to make the blanket statement that intolerance doesn't exist is misinformed and denigrates the very real problem that a small subset of the population does have.

<comment><USER12> Important note on anecdotes (especially on HN):

There are many thousands of active users on Hacker News. If there are 50 active users over an hours time looking at a given topic, and those 50 active users know an average of 50 people fairly well, that means there's potentially ~2500 anecdotes for any given topic.

Say something happens in .1% of the general population, but it's noteworthy enough to be an anecdote. For any given topic, it's quite possible to drastically over represent that anecdote, as it's quite possible that there will be ~3 such anecdotes for any given topic and the normal case, which isn't especially noteworthy, gets no mention.

Lesson: At a large enough scale, one-in-a-thousand anecdotes can occur several times for a given topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here is an alternative theory that tries to explain why people in the United States don't tolerate wheat very well: [http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for- toxic...](http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic-wheat- its-not-gluten/)

<comment><USER14> Be sure to dig up the USDA source document and observe on page 3 that glyphosate is _not_ applied to a majority of wheat acres:

[http://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemi...](http://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemical_Use/ChemUseHighlights- Wheat-2012.pdf)

<comment><USER15> glyphosate is on 45% of acres, so approximately half of the wheat you eat.

<comment><USER14> There are 3 types of wheat shown in the table, glyphosate is only applied to 45% of the acres for one of them (Durum).

Durum is only a small fraction of wheat grown in the US:

 _Durum wheat, accounting for 3-5 percent of total production_

[http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/background.aspx](http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/background.aspx)

So, no, it is not applied to nearly half of the wheat that is grown.

There's also not a whole lot of evidence that it is widely applied to the mature plants prior to harvest.

edit: This is poor phrasing: "only applied to 45% of the acres for one of them". The table does not claim to be comprehensive. So a better statement would say something like: the table only lists glyphosate being applied to 45% of one of the types.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "How to become Gluten intolerant" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798)

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting story. I had a friend that didn't have celiac disease, but genuinely had some form of gluten intolerance. It mostly just caused her terrible cramps. For about six years, doctors couldn't figure out what was causing it, so she had changed her diet to be nearly carb-free, and went on with her life. Problem? Hint: she liked camping.

Ending up being a parasite she likely caught on a camping trip, which also brought on a combination of a fungal and viral infection. She was getting desperate, so she had went to an osteopath which ended up making the discovery. Her PCP prescribed a 4-week regimen of heavy meds to kill off the parasites and fungal infection, and now she's back to eating normally.

<comment><USER15> > osteopath which ended up making the discovery.

> PCP prescribed a 4-week regimen of heavy meds to kill off the parasites and > fungal infection

nice teamwork!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> My continued hunch is that is not gluten, but a general collection of foods that cause inflammation.

Commonly, these foods are made up of carbohydrates (such as wheat) but there are fats and proteins as well.

Not to sound too crude, but if you fill your gullet full of inflammation- causing food day in, day out - yes, you will not feel well.

If you are not at all an active person - and you're consuming 2-3 meals of over 1500 calories, well - maybe you should point to that is a potential problem?

Simply removing gluten isn't going to make your day too much better if you are washing down GF products with sodas and eating trans fats.

</comment><comment><USER19> The article mentions hygiene in passing, even though it seems like the Hygiene hypothesis ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis)) deserves at least a paragraph.

I'm not claiming that the Hygiene hypothesis is true -- we clearly don't know that. But I think it definitely deserves further consideration.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why is an opinion piece about a nutrition topic with 1 citation worthy of discussion on Hacker News?

Here is an article with citations and discussion of modern research and patient experience that comes to a different conclusion: [http://chriskresser.com/3-reasons-gluten-intolerance-may- be-...](http://chriskresser.com/3-reasons-gluten-intolerance-may-be-more- serious-than-celiac-disease/)

I won't bother submitting it to Hacker News since it doesn't have the official NYTimes scientific stamp of approval.

<comment><USER21> _Chris Kresser, M.S., L.Ac is a globally recognized leader in the fields of ancestral health, Paleo nutrition, and functional and integrative medicine_

Yeah...

Really scientific, unbiased, peer reviewed, modern research. Not a snake oil salesman at all.

Also any article in the format "X reasons [thing] is more harmful than [other thing]" can generally be laughed at.

<comment><USER22> TFA clearly doesn't support your re-written straw man headline, and by comparison:

\- Kresser: 21 citations to "scientific, unbiased, peer reviewed, modern research"

\- NYT OpEd guest writer: naked unsupported assertion that "most of these assertions [about gluten], however, are contradicted by significant evidence" providing no references or scientific discussion

Which one is snake oil again? More ironic, the Kresser article does talk about gluten as an auto-immune trigger, making your dismissal seem even more knee- jerk. There are people doing serious work on nutrition, but you won't have much luck finding them in the NYT, much less the OpEd section.

<comment> atinoda-kestrel _Which one is snake oil again?_

Well... cod liver oil, actually. And that would be here: [http://store.chriskresser.com/](http://store.chriskresser.com/)

Frankly, I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQF3vr2I0XY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQF3vr2I0XY) <\- Clap along if you're gluten free because you think it's cool.

</comment><comment><USER4> "If eating wheat was so bad for us, it's hard to imagine that populations that ate it would have tolerated it for 10,000 years," Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies lactase persistence, told me.

Sarah, turn on your brain. What about Game Theory? What if wheat is addictive and mankind did not enslave Wheat but wheat (and possible other crops) "enslaved" mankind?

There is evidence that wheat may not be as healthy for you as you think. Also, the wheat from 60 years ago has very little to do with our current wheat.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_exorphin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_exorphin)

[http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/04/wheat-is-an- opiate/](http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/04/wheat-is-an-opiate/)

[http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins- and-](http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins-and-) toxicity/wheat- grains/

[http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-obesity- more-...](http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-obesity-more-from- the-china-study/)

<comment><USER24> > Are the gluten haters correct that modern wheat varietals contain more > gluten than past cultivars, making them more toxic? Unlikely, according to > recent analysis by Donald D. Kasarda, a scientist with the United States > Department of Agriculture. He analyzed records of protein content in wheat > harvests going back nearly a century. It hasn't changed.

<comment><USER25> As a plant breeder I can assure you the gluten content has certainly gone up! We call it a "Multi Trait Index" for baking quality, and we can show nearly every years released varieties increase in the MTI. What is the number one weighted factor of the baking quality MTI? Gluten percentage. Also, this article is bunk, saying, "if people can maintain an enzyme to digest lactoes, we should be able to evolve an enzyme to break down gluten too. "Total hoggerty poggerty applesauce!" NYT, you are cut off!

<comment><USER24> Not trying to put you on the defensive, but do you have some objective online resources I can examine to learn more about this?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Compiling Clojure to javascript pt 1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2011/07/21/compiling-clojure-to-javascript-pt1/

<comment><USER2> Wow. I didn't know Google Closure implemented a real optimizer like that.

<comment><USER3> Not many people did. It's a pretty stunning project that they just give away for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the fact that the Closure compiler realizes "oh, that's 2" and outputs it. Personally I'll probably give them more time to build things out a bit in case they start adding some of the missing pieces like transients, but I'm more exited by this the more I read.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think transiants are hugely importend in that setting. I can really see how agents are useful and the could be nicly implmenteted with webworkers.

<comment><USER4> I like them for being able to modify normally persistent structures to build them faster but still hand back a persistent one for the guarantees they allow throughout the rest of the system, threads or no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This should make a lot of the authentication stuff easier. You only need to write the code once and use it on both the front end and the backend.

</comment><comment><USER6> The heavy use of |arguments| may be an issue here. arguments is an object that is only created if actually needed in most JS engines, but it looks like here every single function will need it? That might be a significant amount of additional overhead.

<comment><USER7> Only functions which leverage multiple arities will use arguments.

That said, it seems like a fairly simple optimization to the compiler to avoid resorting to arguments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gosh that's really neat.

This is another arrow in the quiver for Javascript as the assembly language of the web.

The bonus is that it's a very nice little language, becoming highly performant, and universally available.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Video up now: [http://blip.tv/file/get/Richhickey- RichHickeyUnveilsClojureS...](http://blip.tv/file/get/Richhickey- RichHickeyUnveilsClojureScript918.avi)</comment>


Roquette Science: How computerized arugula farms take over the world (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/07/this-is-roquette-science/ <comment><USER2> Why not grow hydroponically with the Kratky method instead? It's basically the Ronco Rotisserie of hydroponics - just set it and forget it.

This is a fairly good intro video to the method:

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

I only spent ~£30 on all of the supplies to set up my system and have grown lettuce, rocket, spinach, tomatillos, and peppers in my apartment. It's fantastic and simple and will allow me to have a supply of fresh green food after Brexit.

If you're interested in hoby hydroponics, it's a great way to start.

Here's a link to the original Kratky paper on the method:

[https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/hawaii/downloads/Three_Non- circ...](https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/hawaii/downloads/Three_Non- circulating_Hydroponic_Methods_for_Growing_lettuce.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Cool! Can you roughly estimate how much electrical power it takes to grow some of these from seed to edible item? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Depends on the lights you use and how efficiently you are using them. I use a simple kitchen light led system mounted under the kitchen cabinet to grow some herbs. 450 lumen, nothing fancy, just ordinary white kitchen leds. The system is rated at 14 W. So that's 0.014 kwh. It's on for about two thirds of a day. So, a month of running this would cost me about 7 kwh/month. Depending where you live that's about a 1-2$ in electricity cost per month. Low enough that I did not actually look up my KWH price so can't tell you down to the cent. But cheap enough and I like having fresh herbs around.

I've been running this over a month now. It's mainly a proof of concept before I invest in some proper led grow lights next winter. Works great so far, my basil plants are doing fine and will move to the balcony when the temperatures rise a bit. There's enough room to have two or three small plants below the lights. Two healthy basil plants translate into an enormous amount of pesto if you treat them well. I must have harvested several kilos last year by the end of the summer. That's starting with two anemic supermarket plants.

This improvised kratky system probably uses a bit more. I would say it's probably 10x or worse. I've seen some fluorescent systems similar to what the lady in the video uses starting at 140W. But you can get bigger lights. LEDs are probably more efficient for the same amount of lumen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Indoor farming looks pretty promising, but we shouldn't be building indoor farms in the middle of dense cities.

If you live in a high-cost city, the best thing to grow in your backyard from an environmental standpoint is probably an ADU (backyard cottage for someone to live in), and the best thing to grow in your spare bedroom is probably a roommate. Displacing walking-distance housing to do farming is a huge loser from a climate perspective.

Of course there is more to life than emitting as little CO2 as possible, but to the extent that urban farming has environmental benefits, it is in exploiting niches caused by shitty land use decisions in the past and present.

(By way of illustration, the average car commuting 20 miles each way every weekday for a year emits 4.6 metric tons of CO2, so according to the article you could grow and transport something like four and a half tons of greens for the same carbon footprint. Maybe I'm weird but that's a lot more than I go through in a year.)

<comment><USER4> Depends, people seem to appreciate being surrounded by green stuff for esthetic reasons. And there also positive side effects on air quality. You can actually improve air quality in a lot of buildings simply by doing some indoor/vertical farming. IMHO it would improve most offices I've been in. Also more green outdoors, would probably be not a bad idea in many cities. I was debating this with a friend some time ago while looking at the blank wall of an apartment across his street. Unused vertical space blasted by the sun most of the day. It gets hot indoor because of that. A layer of green would definitely help. Add water and nutrients and you have a farm waiting to happen. Also, it might look pretty and provide some space for birds and other critters.

The point being here is that this is not a zero sum game; there are many benefits to growing stuff other than producing food.

A lot of the vegetables grown in Dutch greenhouses mentioned in the article are actually exported; though other countries are starting to do the same now.

This area here is the most well known and largest greenhouse area in the Netherlands (and probably world wide). It's comparatively tiny (about 100 square KM). [https://email@example.com,4.233423,25389m/data=...](https://email@example.com,4.233423,25389m/data=!3m1!1e3) [https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA21986](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA21986)

The reason greenhouses are used there is because they produce way more per square meter than traditional farms can. That and access to cheap gas decades ago caused a boom in greenhouses to happen. Currently many of these greenhouses are switching from gas to clean energy. Over the last 4-5 decades, local farmers have optimized their production and they now run very efficiently.

The Netherlands is (by far) the largest exporter of tomatoes world wide. Most of those are grown in these and similar facilities as well as many other crops (i.e. this is not dedicated to just tomatoes). It's a vastly more efficient way to use land. The point here is that it doesn't take much space to feed a city.

<comment><USER5> Yes, to be fair, there probably are some exploitable niches unrelated to crappy land use (which I should point out is much more common in the parts of the US that co-evolved with the automobile).

For example, fresh herbs cost a fortune in grocery stores here, and are festooned with single-use plastic packaging, and come in far larger quantities than one can reasonably use before they go bad. So it makes tons of sense to have a little herb garden in your house or yard, especially if you can grow things that are adapted to your local climate (e.g. my rosemary bush is taller than I am).

But I think the optimal scale inside of expensive cities is probably closer to "houseplants that you can eat" rather than an urban farm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the love of dirt just go outside and plant some vegetables. With half the loving care that you put into your tech you can have a beautiful productive garden.

My mother is an amazing gardener because she pays careful attention to her crops and applies reasoning and careful experimentation to grow her knowledge.

Have patience, read up, and dig in. You can grow things yourself too.

Perhaps I'm becoming a Luddite...

<comment><USER7> If you have a house with space for a garden and the time to dedicate gardening, sure. You can grow some things in an apartment even, but not much. Taking the labor, time, and space requirements out of food production is a huge deal, especially today. If computerized farming means fresher and cheaper vegetables in the city, why shouldn't we use that?

<comment><USER8> Power efficiency for one.

<comment><USER9> There's a table in the article about the Net carbon emissions of indoor vs outdoor farming, claiming a total of 1.1 for outdoor vs 1.0 for indoor.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't trust that table.

1) I redid the calculations using the numbers shown in the table. With more decimal places, it's 1.054 for outdoor and 1.036 for indoor. The _actual_ penalty for outdoor growing, using their own input numbers, is more like 1.7% than 10%. Presenting the results rounded to 1 decimal place is misleading.

2) The only reason indoor comes out ahead _at all_ is that they gave indoor lettuce a 0.18 kg credit for sequestered CO2 and gave the outdoor lettuce no credit. Plants absorb CO2 while growing regardless of whether they are indoor or outdoor. In the case of lettuce, there is no long term sequestration anyway; the plant matter is soon converted back to CO2 when it's metabolized by humans or microbes. Setting both indoor and outdoor sequestration credits to 0, indoor has a CO2 footprint of 1.253, significantly larger than outdoor's 1.054.

The original source for the table is cited as a blog article from the Breakthrough Institute titled "Don't Count Out Vertical Farms." I tried going back to the original source to see if the numbers were misrepresented here, or if they had more justification in the original, but the Breakthrough Institute appears to have removed the article from their site. Existing links to it 404 now.

<comment><USER11> Looks like they changed the link along the way:

[https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/vertical-farms- raise...](https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/vertical-farms-raise-yields- but-what-about-emissions)

<comment><USER10> Thanks. It appears that the sequestration credit for vertical farming presumes that agricultural land formerly used for lettuce will be converted to a forest. That's questionable but not crazy.

It gets worse when you look at the footnotes. They assume that the electricity going to the vertical farm is produced at the Swedish average carbon intensity per kWh. Sweden is _far_ below the OECD average for electrical energy carbon intensity:

[http://www.compareyourcountry.org/climate- policies?cr=oecd&l...](http://www.compareyourcountry.org/climate- policies?cr=oecd&lg=en&page=2)

Only Switzerland, Sweden, Iceland, and Norway have low enough electrical carbon intensities for vertical farming to have a smaller carbon footprint, even conceding the re-forestation assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about the CO2 footprint of the building, ventilation systems, lamps, cameras, sensors, electronics etc?

<comment><USER4> Not 0 of course but you can amortize a lot of that over a lot of time and weigh it against e.g. transportation cost, the cost of intensively farmed soil not capturing any carbon because it is over fertilized, compacted, and sprayed with poison, the cost of producing fertilizer, poison, and fuel needed for operating the machines, etc. There are two sides to this coin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting - there was a ready-made pun there, and they mangled it in the headline. In the UK it's just called rocket, not roquette [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruca_sativa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruca_sativa)

<comment><USER14> I independently came up with the same pun just last week! I'm disappointed to learn that I wasn't the first after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a good start. Like any nascent operation, there is plenty of room for efficiency improvements.

What would be really cool to see is an offshoot of this tech for greenhouses, or rooms with piped in sunlight, or leveraging geothermal energy, etc. Micro machines for apartments... So many possibilities!

</comment><comment><USER16> Worth reading if only for the nice play on the words _arugula_ and _roquette_ in the title. If you are not amused, you should read your seed catalog.

</comment><comment><USER17> Most of the responses here are missing an important point.

Yes, you can grow leafy greens semi-profitably in urban environments, or in your garage.

How many calories do those leafy greens contain? Calories are what keep eight billion people alive. You may be able to grow salad garnish in your office, but good luck growing the 2,200 calories/day that the average adult needs.

There's no transition from this, to actually useful agriculture, just like how there's no transition from throwing a Frisbee, to putting a satellite in orbit.

<comment><USER18> _to actually useful agriculture_

Sorry.. are you saying the 'eat leafy green vegetables' thing is wrong? I understand your underlying concern is the lack of calories, but we don't eat purely for calorific content: vegetables have vitamins and fibre without which we get unhealthy.

Your 'useful' is what worries me. Please don't eat a diet absent any greens except on doctors advice.

<comment><USER17> If you eat nothing but empty carbs, you will die.

However, growing calories is hard. It's really hard. It's just about impossible to, outside of a real, outdoor, field.

And we need to do it, to keep people fed. It's the hard part of feeding people. Urban farming of a small number of high-vitamin, low calorie crops doesn't solve a problem that anyone is likely to have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Why vertical farming wont save the world" \- Nuff said!

[https://youtu.be/ISAKc9gpGjw](https://youtu.be/ISAKc9gpGjw)

</comment><comment><USER20> These systems all feel like the worst parts of failed industrial automation projects. They take something that is extremely simple (growing lettuce) and claim to make it "easy" by attaching robotic watering systems and lighting systems that "work automatically" which then ends up being a very timeconsuming hobby project to keep alive.

Gardening isn't all that hard in the first place. Put seeds in the ground, water occasionally. If you buy a sprinkler you'll have a more reliable system than 90% of these arduino based 3d printers hacked into "growing systems". Of cause for all the startups the focus is on the "IOT crowdsourced disruption" not about actual end user value.</comment>


Apple prepares macOS users for discontinuation of 32-bit app support - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/apple-prepares-macos-users-for-discontinuation-of-32-bit-app-support/ <comment><USER2> I love many things about Mac OS, but one thing that I really truly absolutely love with a passion above all else about Microsoft Windows is that a Win32 executable compiled 17 years ago in XP will still run today on a brand new Windows 10 machine with zero fuss. There's something to be said for not destroying the past in the name of progress. Not everything gets rewritten for the shiny new system framework. Sometimes people make something great and then die.

<comment><USER3> Windows XP? Even Deus Ex, which is compatible with Windows 95, runs on Windows 10. Note that such compatibility is also dependend on the game developer. If the used undocumented methods or undefined behavior it may not run on more modern OS. Especially games like The Sims have this issue - and ironically, some relative newer AAA games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a huge crap sandwich if you need to use 32 bit version of pro apps(especially pro audio apps, in my case) to use sometimes expensive plugins that aren't compatible with the 64 bit version of the software, or aren't without expensive upgrades or shim libraries.

Obviously you can work around this for new projects, but it leaves you in the position of needed to keep an old machine or VM around just for opening old project files that would be useless without those plugins. I've talked to multiple people in this situation.

The 64 bit only switch was easy on iOS compared to this. Yes, there's new versions of the applications themselves available, but a whole host of plugins for audio(and i've heard video and photo apps) are going to get left in the dust here leaving people in the lurch.

<comment><USER5> Glad to see the last of the old 32bit legacy go, of course the good thing is if someone did want to run some ancient software that's 32bit or even 16bit you can still spin up a VM of a legacy OS that can run those binaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This will be the final death of the Carbon API, since it was never supported for 64-bit.

<comment><USER7> that was my first thought when I read this - I just didn't think anyone much cared about Carbon anymore - but it will be the last gasp of the traditional Macintosh ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> About time. There was only 1 generation of Intel macs that didn't have 64-bit and it is not supported by latest OS anyways.

<comment><USER9> Would that have been MacBook/iMac/Mac Mini type models?

I have a first-gen Mac Pro (August 2006) and it's 64-bit.

<comment><USER10> The lower models in the 2006 line used 32-bit processors, including MacBooks, iMacs and Mac Minis, while more expensive models favoured the 64-bit Core 2 Duo processors.

<comment><USER11> That's not accurate; first generation MacBook Pros used 32-bit Core Duo processors as well, as did almost all the early-2006 models; the exception being the lowest-end Mac Mini, which had a single-core 32-bit Core Solo. 32-vs-64-bit was never used for price differentiation within a lineup; Intel's 64-bit chips just weren't ready in time.

Late-2006 models, including the first-generation Mac Pro, moved from the 32-bit Yonah Core Duo/Core Solo architecture to the 64-bit Conroe Core 2 Duo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess this is the perfect place to ask: what virtualization platforms run 32-bit OS X (since I guess that's what it was called when it was 32-bit) Really Really Well, and how/where can I learn about how to set everything up perfectly?

<comment><USER13> I think there are a few options that can boot OS X including VirtualBox (x86), SheepShaver (PPC), and QEMU (both?). The big missing piece for a good user experience is video acceleration. From experience using OS X in VMs for build it's pretty miserable with the software renderer.

<comment><USER12> Yeah. [https://github.com/John-K/qxlGraphics](https://github.com/John-K/qxlGraphics) was last updated 3 years ago :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://github.com/BlastarIndia/OSX- KVM/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/BlastarIndia/OSX- KVM/blob/master/README.md)

It is possible to run older MacOS installs in QEMU under MacOS or Linux on a real Mac.

So if you need 32 bit MacOS apps just run an older MacOS in an emulator.

On Windows they shut out 16 bit apps in 64 bit Windows but DOSBOX and Windows 3.1 under DOSBOX solve that via emulation.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this the end of iwork 09?

I still have some manuscripts in Pages 09, as Pages 13 never added many of the features. I guess I'll have to look for a new workflow.

<comment><USER16> Learn word. It's still best in class.

Or LibreOffice. Depending on the type of manuscript, Dryad or celtx.

Of course, I don't know your workflow.

<comment><USER17> Yikes, Word on macOS is certainly nowhere near best in class. It's a completely buggy heap of trash, as soon as numbered styles, images, or tables of contents become important. On the plus side, Word doesn't crash as much as Excel on macOS does for me. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are far better on macOS than their respective MS apps in my experience.

If I had to use Word for anything except the most simple documents, I'd probably run it in a VM.

<comment><USER18> Hopefully, that will change in 16.9.0 with Office for Mac sharing a codebase with Office for Windows:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/office-for-mac- final...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/office-for-mac-finally-has- real-time-collaboration-in-16-9-0-update/)

<comment><USER5> Been beta testing this for quite some time, if anything it's getting worse. The performance of outlook and word is abysmal, random crashes, high CPU usage under no activity and the list goes on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Out of all apps I have I know of four which are 32-bit:

\- 3 of them are from my (older?) Brother Printer. \- 32-bit kdb+ I use sometime for calculations

I can live without them. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Too bad that Apple never made AV Fondation having the same features than QuickTime... How can we add dynamically video codecs to macOS ? How can we extend the support of acquisition devices ? What API can we use to do video editing... How can we support ProRes on Windows in 64 bits ?

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious if they'll drop support for 32-bit processes in the kernel or just stop shipping fat libraries.

<comment><USER22> I'm curious what it means for Fat Binaries in general. Methinks this will be the first time in a long while where Apple became a true CPU monoculture on the desktop, previously they straddled 68k, PowerPC, IA-32, and AMD64. It gives Apple an excuse to stop using Fat executables entirely - unless they decide to look at using ARM on laptops...

<comment><USER23> They aren't dropping fat binaries. ARM desktops and laptops are on deck. They might make sense next year or in three years or never, but Apple is going to leave that door open. They've learned the lesson not to be locked to a single CPU architecture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sadly, it appears this will kill most of the Wine projects on macOS. It's a bummer as I've used it for a couple Windows projects to run on mac.

</comment><comment><USER25> Good luck with completely removing support to run 32 bit applications and all those 32 bit videogames (which is the vast majority of them). Or any other 32 bit application that won't ever receive updates.

<comment><USER26> What makes you think Apple cares? Most serious gamers would already be dual- booting Windows if they want to game on a Mac, and most casual gamers presumably wouldn't consider it a dealbreaker to have older games stop working.

<comment><USER27> _> Most serious gamers would already be dual-booting Windows if they want to game on a Mac_

I'd say serious gamers already switched from macOS to Linux if they don't want to use Windows to begin with. Simply because you can run DX11 games in Wine on Linux, but not on macOS. Borking 32-bit games would only accelerate this shift.

<comment><USER28> Gamers who use macOS probably use a console for gaming anyways.

<comment><USER27> Try running something like VtM Bloodlines on a console. It runs perfectly in Wine on Linux on the other hand. And I suppose it would on macOS, at least until 32-bit support will still be there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So no more 32-bit games in Wine for macOS users? Another reason to switch to Linux for them.

<comment><USER29> Asking seriously: are there any 32-bit games so new that they wouldn't run just as well under VirtualBox?

<comment><USER30> Which is not necessarily a big deal for someone sufficiently technical, but I know my siblings aren't going to be running a different OS in a VM to play games.

Out of curiosity, I just checked on my Mac and I see a few 32-bit apps. Steam (surprisingly?) is 32-bit only, as are a couple of games. The games I actually play on my Mac have 64-bit slices.</comment></comment></comment>


The Adult Brain Does Grow New Neurons After All, Study Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-adult-brain-does-grow-new-neurons-after-all-study-says/ <comment><USER2> I have always had great difficulty in believing that in the human body, _everything_ is regularly regenerated with the exception of neurons/ganglia.

The case in point is the sciatic nerve is massive, and prone to constant stresses and strains, yet supposedly never regenerates.

<comment><USER3> I thought nerves aren't regenerated either?

<comment><USER4> Intact I read somewhere Cannabis consumption results in Neurogenesis. I am trying to find something for citation but unable to find anything backing this claim

<comment><USER5> Claims of legitimacy aside, The CBD portion of cannabis is supposed to have this affect, not thc.

<comment><USER6> Why CBD specifically? Where do you get that data?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a talk in DEFCON about different substances that could stimulate neurogenisis and potential risks. The speaker mentioned the 1986 Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini who found NGF gave herself some dosage of NGF. The lady lived to 103 years old but the remarkable thing is that she is very productive in very old age. Later I found those peptids are extremly expinsive for normal people to consume

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPwjn17XQfs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPwjn17XQfs)

<comment><USER8> This? [https://www.amazon.com/Neuron-Growth-Factors-NGF- capsules/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Neuron-Growth-Factors-NGF- capsules/dp/B001HBQ5A0)

Doesn't seem that expensive

<comment><USER9> No, she used the good stuff (eyedrops).

<comment><USER10> Are you joking or are you serious? How are you going to respond to a serious discussion with a flippant fact and not point us in the right direction? Care to share where eye drops are obtained? I'm so curious

<comment><USER7> He is not joking. The speaker mentioned in the talk. Peptides are not stable substance to be put into capsule. And the Bioavailability of NGF make it not effective even by injection let alone put pills in mouth. Nasal spray and sublingual are two other ways to absorb supplements but eye drop probably is the most effective one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's important to note that this is talking about normal brain neurogenesis. We have long known that external stimulus such as ECT, and chemicals such as 25i-nbome are neurogenic.

<comment><USER12> 25i-nbome? The psychedelic substance?

<comment><USER13> Yea I don't think synthetic LSD makes you smarter haha.

<comment><USER11> However, psilocybin (the active component of magic mushrooms) is also a strong neurogenic compound, although not as effective as ECT. 25i-nbome is much stronger than ECT, even in tiny doses which are far below the threshold for any noticeable changes to perception.

<comment><USER13> I mean if that's what you call getting high now then go for it. You are completely discounting any damaging effects and the associated disconnect with reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Two things to note from the article:

1) It seems to mostly be focused on neurogenesis in the hippocampus, not necessarily elsewhere in the brain.

2) It seems the key item these researchers hit on to invalidate the previous study was the method of preservation for brain tissue in deceased individuals, not study of tissue in living humans. I think new studies in that latter area in the future will put the matter to rest.

<comment><USER15> Neurogenesis has always been about the hippocampus in humans. It's been lightly suggested it might happen in the olfactory bulb (as in other animals) but not very seriously. When neuroscientists talk about human neurogenesis in adulthood it is _always_ about the hippocampal formation and the dentate gyrus.

For an up to date review/link-set of neurogenesis in humans as compared to other mammals check out the summary write-up over at [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2019/01/30/ne...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2019/01/30/new- look-neurogenesis-humans/) which makes the case that human neurogenesis isn't found in adulthood because of relative lifespan differences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm experimenting with Piracetam and Noopept while learning coding. With a morning coffee I feel incredibly focused in ways I normally am not with caffeine alone.

<comment><USER17> I always wonder how people buy such chemicals, and know for sure that what they receive is the exact ordered stuff with the given purity.

<comment><USER18> Indeed, there's all kinds of reasons to want to verify received products. I'd love to have a way to test supposedly organic foods for various pesticides. If there was a book on basic chemistry needed for this kind of thing I think I'd spend a season with it as a hobby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So what age is considered "adult"? I've read other sources that say 26 or so, but they base that on the fact that it's when the brain stops growing. Forgive me if I missed something, but nowhere in the article do they define what adult means in this context.

<comment><USER20> > Forgive me if I missed something, but nowhere in the article do they define > what adult means in this context.

The two alternative conclusions presented are skepticism of any new neurons in the target area _after toddlerhood_ and the conclusion that neuron development _seems to be lifelong_ , though reduced in and with the progress of Alzheimer's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anybody know of any diseases where there is excessive neurogenesis (and whether that's a proliferation of ordinary or malfunctioning neurons)?

<comment><USER22> Excessive neurogenesis from supplements almost always lead to things to like glioblastomas, or brain cancer more simply put. You should always be wary of anything related to increased growth or cell division.

<comment><USER23> Glioblastomas are what the name implies- tumors of glial cells. Neurons aren't involved in proliferation.

<comment><USER22> Glioblastomas are generally the only really common type of brain cancer precisely because your neurons aren't proliferating in adulthood, which is very much a good thing.

That's why I mentioned you should always be wary of anything that purports to increase neurogenesis, as even if it does, that can lead to significantly increased probabilities of cancer development. And brain cancer specifically, is one of if not the most difficult types of cancer to treat, with extremely limited survival outlooks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been seeing articles with this title far longer than I ever heard otherwise. Even if there are still people who think you can't regrow brain cells after more than two decades of science to the contrary, it's probably time we stopped saying things like "after all" as if neuroscientists just recently figured it out.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think this conclusion was fairly obvious, the key point is that realising the neurons don't grow as quickly as they do in our early years.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Llorens-Martin said she began carefully collecting and preserving brain > samples in 2010, when she realized that many brains stored in brain banks > were not adequately preserved for this kind of research.

I was always curious about it, and this piece shed some light over it: as death is a process where all cells undergo chemical transformation, all you add to stop the process and preserve some state also induces changes. So, depending on how you preserve something, you will also lose information and won't be able to further study something.

Interesting how we have a long road regarding preservation of bodies and how much we still can improve about it.

</comment><comment><USER27> More on this in Aajonus Vonderplanitz's work -- We Want to Live and The Recipe for Living Without Disease.

The best way to reconstitute neurons is to eat plenty of raw fish, specifically saltwater fish.

<comment><USER28> Too much toxins from pollution, you are doing a lot of damage to your brain.

<comment><USER27> You can soak up the toxins with raw no-salt-added cheese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "after all" is pretty misleading (edit: clickbaity?) for 2019. adult neurogenesis has been known since 2009.

<comment><USER14> FTA: "A growing body of research suggested they could, but then a Nature paper[1] last year raised doubts."

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25975](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25975) "Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults"

<comment><USER29> thanks for this, explains the context.

still, "a growing body of reseach" vs "a nature paper last year"?

<comment><USER15> It's not just that paper. There are many papers from many groups that have failed to detect neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of adult humans. Even groups who's work is based on trying to find it have concluded it probably doesn't happen. They did not want that result.

<comment><USER30> Looks like Wikipedia has a summary of the history that might be useful to the lay person (like me): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_neurogenesis#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_neurogenesis#History)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I had the impression that hippocampal neurogenesis in adults has been accepted as fact for quite some time.

</comment><comment><USER32> So does Alzheimer's and dementia kick in when this process ends?

<comment><USER33> No it's more the case that Alzheimers and dementia are caused by other processes which reduce or end this process. And a lot of the damage isn't necessarily caused by reduce neurogenesis but by other factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It does, eh? Hold my beer. No wait, I'm gonna need that.</comment>


Gaming website metrics - <AUTHOR> http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2011/06/02/ortsbo-website-metrics/

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes you wonder how many companies are padding their stats to meet marketing goals.

<comment><USER2> I think it is really a function of how many sites tell their investors how much they are "padding". It is one thing to be Engadget buying clicks from adsense, and another to be using "buy traffick from China".

Or the difference between Marketing, and mis-representing market share.

<comment><USER3> If you can't Trust Gene Simmons and the Kiss Army who can you trust? Do you think he is on the market manipulation?</comment></comment></comment>


Who Should Control Pricing—Publishers Or Amazon? - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.org/article/419-e-book-smackdown-who-should-control-the-prices-publishers-or-amazon/ <comment><USER2> I hate Amazon. Why? They abuse their power and treat their marketplace sellers like crap.

If you have any major problems with your Amazon marketplace seller account, you have no phone support and can't really talk to anyone besides someone that emails you automated cookie-cutter responses and signs it with a name.

I think this is because they are hiring workers from India at a cheaper rate (The little phone support they do have for customers is from India).

Customers can also scam you very easily. As an example, if they have any problems with the item that you sold them and they file an A-Z claim, 9/10 times, Amazon will just give them their money back and not require the customer to actually return the item. You have no option to ban scammers and once they place an order with you (even if you cancel it), they can leave you negative feedback (which can and will get you kicked off).

The only reason they are getting away with this is because they know they are one of only two marketplaces with the most traffic.

If you are thinking about doing business with Amazon, think again.</comment>


Open Cloud for all - <AUTHOR> http://blog.clever-cloud.com/Press/2013/01/30/open-cloud-month.html

<comment><USER2> I'm interested to try it out for some components of <https://blamestella.com>. Is there a beta for Ruby?

<comment><AUTHOR> please drop a mail to firstname.lastname@example.com and we will add to the beta start on 1 or 2 weeks :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Met these guys at Angelhack, cool guys with great tech. Go them!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx a lot !

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> :-)</comment>


Robert Scoble reviews Google Glass - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z12hudjhjmnpvtei104cffurjy3rwli5eyk0k

<comment><USER2> ^ It looks dorky

This coming from Robert Scoble, who already looks dorky. ;)

Actually, this is a big thing for me. I hate glasses and I NEVER wear them (sunglasses in my case because I have perfect vision.)

All I want to know is, can I run my terminal with them? ;)</comment>


Blue Origin – Historic Rocket Landing - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo <comment><USER2> Is it my impression or was the rocket's landing smoother than the capsule's?</comment>


Comments on the MISRA C coding guidelines (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.knosof.co.uk/misracom.html <comment><USER2> > Some rules have their basis in psychological findings, i.e. how developers > read the source. Such issues are not important in machine generated code > (because such code is never read by humans).

I wish. Sometimes code generators are also bug generators.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Software developers working in countries whose keyboards do not offer all of > the characters required to write C programs will require special equipment, > or to break this rule.

I've never seen C code actually using trigraphs. The way I heard it, is that different charactersets in the 70s didn't contain all characters for C. This was not a problem in 2012 and not even in 2002 or even 1992 I think.

<comment><USER4> Italian keyboards don't have { and }. In DOS I was using ALT+1+2+3 and ALT+1+2+5. Now in Linux, I use SHIFT+ALT+[ and SHIFT+ALT+]

After some time, muscle memory does the work, and you don't even realize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> N.B., the MISRA guidelines for C were revised in 2012. This critique is directed at an older publication.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Rule 6: This rule excludes the use of an EBCDIC character set. No use of IBM > 370's in embedded systems.

Yeah... um... I wasn't really intending to use a 370 anyway, but thanks for pointing it out.

<comment><USER7> What? You've moved on already?

<comment><USER6> Had to. The weight of the 370 was killing the gas mileage.

;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> (Last modified 10 October 2012)</comment>


Linux-insides: Linux kernel load address randomization - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides/blob/master/Booting/linux-bootstrap-6.md <comment><USER2> [https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/bypass-aslr-browser- javasc...](https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/bypass-aslr-browser- javascript.html)

[http://www.cs.vu.nl/~herbertb/download/papers/anc_ndss17.pdf](http://www.cs.vu.nl/~herbertb/download/papers/anc_ndss17.pdf)

 _XI. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we described how ASLR is fundamentally insecure on modern architectures. Our attack relies on the interplay between the MMU and the caches during virtual to physical address translation—core hardware behavior that is central to efficient code execution on modern CPUs. The underlying problem is that the complex nature of modern microarchitectures allows attackers with knowledge of the architecture to craft a carefully chosen series of memory accesses which manifest timing differences that disclose what memory is accessed where and to infer all the bits that make up the address. Unfortunately, these timing differences are fundamental and reflect the way caches optimize accesses in the memory hierarchy. The conclusion is that such caching behavior and strong address space randomization are mutually exclusive. Because of the importance of the caching hierarchy for the overall system performance, all fixes are likely to be too costly to be practical. Moreover, even if mitigations are possible in hardware, such as separate cache for page tables, the problems may well resurface in software. We hence recommend ASLR to no longer be trusted as a first line of defense against memory error attacks and for future defenses not to rely on it as a pivotal building block._

<comment><USER3> In every context that I've seen it, ASLR is there to be annoying to circumvent instead of being the sole line of defense. Generally other techniques are present as well to mitigate the risk of such an attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An informative read on ASLR: [https://blog.polyverse.io/why-aslr-stops-rop- attacks-8e961ca...](https://blog.polyverse.io/why-aslr-stops-rop- attacks-8e961ca6951e)

</comment><comment><USER5> Outside of Linux, is there any point to ASLR in a provably memory safe kernel like sel4? Like, I get the main point is to stop ROP gadgets, which obviously aren't an issue when you can't corrupt memory. Are there side benefits though?

<comment><USER6> Formally verified kernels are pretty rare, and you can always have bugs in verification or side channel attacks that your proofs don't cover, like speculative execution timing bugs in your CPU. (K)ASLR doesn't defeat all memory bugs but it helps (a little). It is a very low overhead element of defense in depth that doesn't require major code changes (unlike say, rewriting your kernel in a memory safe language).

<comment><USER5> Sure, but those same speculative execution attacks also trivially defeat ASLR. And practically speaking, memory safety in formally proved software tends to be pretty bullet proof.

So, outside of memory unsafety, is there another threat profile where ASLR gains you something?

<comment><USER6> Sure, consider that the hashCode() of objects in Java are based on memory addresses, which means they're predictable to an attacker without ASLR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one who sees this as gibberish and feels bad :(

<comment><USER8> I don't think a lot of people can jump into Page 6 of a document called Kernel booting process and understand it.

It requires knowing something about the topic, and maybe some of those who don't would have to look up and read about 1, 2, 5, 10 different topics that show up in the article that they didn't know about before.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Splindid: A minimalist photo and text blogging platform - <AUTHOR> http://Splindid.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I just spent the last few weeks developing this site. One of the features that I thought would be interesting to have is a'Graffiti' feature. It allows any user to put their message and/or link on the home page indefinitely until the next person 'graffitis' over it. It's essentially a free form of advertising. I may monetize this feature down the road, but right now it wouldn't make sense. It's entirely free.

Besides that, it's kind of like Instagram and Hacker News put together. There's a 'Top' and a 'New' page for the most recently liked and newest posts, similar to HN. The layout is similar to Instagram, but Splindid supports text and link-only posts in addition to photos.

I don't know exactly how I'm going to monetize it yet. Right now and for the next few weeks I'll be trying to get people in front of it to see whether they use it or find value in it. I'm seeking feedback too, so please roast it as much as you like. :)

</comment><comment><USER2> There's lots of pictures shown when I go to the page, but I'm not seeing any summaries of articles. So, I would say that it is not at all like HN.

But if you want me to try it out, then I'm going to want the account named "brad". ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice concept, but if you get more than 5 visitors per day one of those will be a spammer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had that thought too. I think there are ways to mitigate this with graffiti post limits for a set length of time once it becomes a problem though</comment></comment>


Show HN: Discover new music artists on YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://viralj.am

<comment><AUTHOR> I built this little web app as a weekend project based on crowd sourced data from Quora and other places.

The goal is to have a place to go and discover talently people who (mostly) haven't been signed on a record label yet.

This is just a prototype of the idea, i have a few thoughts on how to make the app more useful, but would love to receive some more feedback from it's current stand point.</comment>


Ask HN: What other important news are we missing due to the Covid crisis? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The EARN IT Act continues to be pushed thru the US lawmaking gang. It wants to remove anti liability protections from platforms. It is also purportedly attempting to stop encryption.

But we must be vigilant - Professor Dan Bernstein delivered us some of the best cryptographic algorithms, amazing DNS software, unarguably the best email daemon and more, but he also delivered us a case law ruling that encryption is protected free speech[1].

Let's not forget that. Our Bill of Rights is very strong. Thanks Professor Bernstein for proving that!

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States)

Edit: Both Dr Matthew Green and Bruce Schneier are covering this topic as well [2].

[2] [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/the_earn- it_a...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/the_earn-it_act.html)</comment>


OpenTTD 1.8.0-RC1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.openttd.org/en/news/233 <comment><USER2> Great news!

My train / resources transport fix is met with Factorio ( [https://www.factorio.com/](https://www.factorio.com/) ) , if you are part of the few you don't know this game and love logistics/automation, give it a try.

But be prepared to sacrifice a bit of your social/love/professional life for a while..

<comment><USER3> Does not look like it's launched/final yet... what os do my you need to run it?

<comment><USER4> It's stable. Most of the core community even hangs out on the "experimental" upgrade channel, because even that seldomly has noticeable bugs.

As for content, I'd say there's enough of it, especially if you include the content that the modding community has produced.

The biggest problem here might be that it doesn't really drag you through that content, as it's a sandbox game. There's no real goal.

You sort of build a factory to produce components for building your factory, to produce science for unlocking components for building your factory.

Also, there's alien creatures that dislike you building a factory (or rather the pollution from it), so they send a small squad every now and then to try to smash your stuff. And when you want to expand your factory, you have to smash their stuff. But their AI is rather limited, so it's not a central component of the gameplay.

All in all, I think, it's best described as a sandbox puzzle game. How do you wire up your belts, pipes, rails and wires to produce the thing that you want to produce in the least spaghetti of ways?

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Will give it a shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Trains & Railroads - is best part of OpenTTD! And its look like someone working on deeper railroad implementation[0]

I discovered that there is also cool opensource CAD for model railroad layout design & train running simulation - _XTrackCAD 5.1.0_ [1] (few days ago new major version released[2,3])

[0] [https://github.com/Furthen64/lumo](https://github.com/Furthen64/lumo)

[1] [http://www.xtrkcad.org/Wikka/CurrentRelease](http://www.xtrkcad.org/Wikka/CurrentRelease)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/86kp7n/xtrackca...](https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/86kp7n/xtrackcad_51_released_cad_program_for_designing/)

[3] [https://www.reddit.com/r/modeltrains/comments/86kom5/xtrackc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/modeltrains/comments/86kom5/xtrackcad_51_released_now_support_cornu_joins/)

<comment><USER5> Okay, now OpenTTD 1.8.0-RC1 installed & start "Downloading content..."[0] ;-)

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/mzZWPrq.png](http://i.imgur.com/mzZWPrq.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _OpenTTD is an open source simulation game based upon the popular Microprose game "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", written by Chris Sawyer._

</comment><comment><USER7> Like MineCraft, this is a great world-building game. I'd like to see OpenTTD as the 2D variant of MineCraft - or vice versa.

Anyone who wants to conquer the VR world should build a world-building game and build a lasting community around it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Even though I appreciate the retro look, I've found installing OpenGFX got me a lot more hours out of OpenTTD (along with the bigGUI kit).

<comment><USER9> Any tips on decoding the railroad signal logic?

After I installed the graphics update, that was really the piece that limited my interest

<comment><USER8> just use path signals most of the time. "Programming" the signals is sort of the "fun" :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have lost untold hours to this magnificent game.

</comment><comment><USER5> OpenTTD 1.8.0 released as stable release![0]

Noted on downloads page

> _Latest release in stable is 1.8.0, released on 2018-04-01 13:07 UTC._

in `readme.txt`[1]

        Last updated:    2018-04-01
        Release version: 1.8.0

and in `changelog.txt`[2]

        1.8.0 (2018-04-01)
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
        (None)

[0] [https://www.openttd.org/en/download- stable](https://www.openttd.org/en/download-stable)

[1] [https://binaries.openttd.org/releases/1.8.0/readme.txt](https://binaries.openttd.org/releases/1.8.0/readme.txt)

[2] [https://binaries.openttd.org/releases/1.8.0/changelog.txt](https://binaries.openttd.org/releases/1.8.0/changelog.txt)

</comment><comment><USER11> Simutrans ([https://www.simutrans.com/](https://www.simutrans.com/)) is also a good option if you like this sort of thing. I like the "Simutrans Extended" version, which is a bit more simulator-ish and fixes some silly behaviors of the base.

<comment><USER12> Simultrans always looked nice, but scarily in-depth too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> OpenTTD is great but I highly recommend checking out Jan Zelenys Mashinky on Steam if you want a more modern take on this game. He's doing railroads right now but has long term plans for multiple transportation options.

<comment><USER5> > _Jan Zelenys Mashinky on Steam_

Proprietary, payware, only on Steam, with empty installation instruction[0]... No, thanks.

I prefer OpenTTD as already avaliable for Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, Symbian, etc. Fully free & opensource.

[0] [https://mashinky.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installation](https://mashinky.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installation)

<comment><USER13> Your point is what exactly? Its another option... more options are good. I like it, and none of those things you listed are important to me and many other people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Best Game ever.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really think the best part of OpenTTD is the multiplayer component. It works well and it is very fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. My nephew and I played it tonight. He's 10 and I'm 35. We had no troubles and had a lot of fun setting the company owner's name to stupid stuff like "butthead".</comment></comment>


California exploring charging for road use in lieu of gas taxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.californiaroadchargepilot.com/about/ <comment><USER2> I'm cautious simply because all previous attempts at this have involved the addition of a logging GPS device to all vehicles, when really the vehicle mileage should be used as a good-enough measure (with no privacy implications).

In particular the privacy language on that page seems to imply it's still the logging approach, only with some token privacy measures.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> although they mention increasing efficiency as an explanation for lowering gas-tax revenues, i suspect the rise of electric cars is at least partially behind this initiative.</comment>


'This is crazy,' sobs Utah hospital nurse as cop arrests her for doing her job - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/01/this-is-crazy-sobs-utah-hospital-nurse-as-cop-roughs-her-up-arrests-her-for-doing-her-job/ <comment><USER2> Saw this on earlier news reports and am flabbergasted at the police response to this.

IMO the nurse was trapped between a rock and a hard place - she had to comply with hospital policy, as well as HIPAA standards or risk losing her licence and/or her job versus complying with a police command.

I'm not a lawyer, so can't comment on whether the request from the police was legally valid or not, but the reaction to grab her and cuff her like that when she was not showing any signs of outward aggression or threats is beyond the pale.

I also heard that the officer has not been disciplined or stood down from duty, only been restricted from collecting blood at the hospital in person again, which doesn't go towards solving the power imbalance and ethical problems here.

<comment><USER3> It is important to note that the police officer arrested her because his supervisor ordered him to do so if she refuses.

Due to that it is possible that the officer, seeing his job threatened, did not feel he had another choice.

Source of this information: [http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/08/31/utah-nurse- arrested-af...](http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/08/31/utah-nurse-arrested- after-complying-with-hospital-policy-that-bars-taking-blood-from-unconscious- victim/) \- "Payne [...] said he was advised by Lt. James Tracy, the watch commander on duty that night, to arrest Wubbels for interfering with a police investigation if she refused to let him get the sample [...]"

Pretty sad that the washington post would fail to report such a crucial detail.

<comment><USER4> The cop's behavior was inexcusable. Even if he had those orders, he could have informed her and arrest her calmly without unecessarily escalating the situation. The loss of temper is a clear sign of him being unfit for duty.

<comment><USER3> In an ideal world, yes. In practice, in the USA? This is what your policy makers deem "good enough".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let us not mince our words. This has a name. More than one. It's called wrongful arrest, wrongful imprisonment and assault, she may (per laws of Utah) very well even have had the right to forceful self defence against the police offer but wouldn't have stood a chance. The perpetrator should be charged and convicted according to the full force of the law, the mayor's apology is meaningless, as it does not compensate for the crime, and is a tactic to prevent a wholesale pitchfork-bearing protest against law enforcement. Paid leave is theft of tax payers money, a compounded obscenity and effectively an evasion of justice and, frighteningly, for the need to state the bleeding obvious, law enforcement is not above the law. The police force conducting an internal (as opposed to an independent commission appointed by the DOJ) investigation adds insult to injury. What is needed is deterrence, i.e. costs for action of this kind. In fact it may be legal for someone to hypothetically with a spine, torque and some unusual but lawful requisite authorisation to arrest the police officer in question for the above crimes. The nurse was manifestly in the right legally, ethically and should be given an award for courage to stand up to someone bigger and stronger than her, who clearly lacks the judgement required for his office, to defend an unconscious patient in her care. This incident portends fascism, which always begin with arbitrary arrests. Dear nurse, let us applaud you for your professionalism, ethics and courage, and let us stand by you as you see the wrongs done to you made right.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just another cop on an insane power trip, driven to apoplectic rage by the idea that he cannot do whatever he wants to whomever he wants, whenever he wants.

I look forward to his union standing squarely behind him and insisting he did nothing wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Salt Lake police spokesman Sgt. Brandon Shearer told local media that Payne had been suspended from the department's blood draw unit but remained on active duty."

Constantly reading things like this makes it _extremely_ difficult to believe the "it's just few a bad apples" comments we always hear.

<comment><USER8> Cops constantly protecting each other instead of reporting each other makes it very hard to trust the system.

<comment><USER9> The Blue Wall of Silence

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My hopes and prayers are with this lady's attorneys. May she get a comically large settlement.

<comment><USER11> To be honest, I don't think we should be seeking monetary settlements in cases like these, but rather criminal prosecution.

Large settlements are about as good at deterring cops from committing crimes as they are at deterring bankers from committing fraud in the name of the bank, because in either case the "principal" \-- person paying the penalty -- is neither the cop nor the banker. Police departments don't care because the money is coming from the taxpayers and not the cops. The banks don't care, because the fine they pay for the fraud is less than the profit taken by the fraud.

<comment><USER12> Why not both?

Send a message loud and clear that roughing up well-meaning and innocent citizens shall never be tolerated and will be prosecuted with a great risk to one's personal accumulated wealth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm always more than disappointed by who generally becomes a police officer. I dream of a world where police officers are obsessed with justice and have book clubs in which they discuss Peter Singer and Kant like software engineers might do with GoF for example.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sometimes, it's the right thing to do to allow yourself to be arrested if it's in defense of others. Especially those who can't defend themselves under you care.

<comment><USER14> She might have felt strongly -- or she might have been well trained by hospital administrators and legal staff.

<comment><USER15> And disciplined. The nurse competed in 2 separate Olympics as an Alpine skier. You can get to that level only with some insane amount of discipline and will power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On a unrelated note: Glad to see the hospital is using a modern OS (Windows 10) and not stuck on XP.

</comment><comment><USER17> More proof that it takes a white victim for the general public to start noticing abuses that have been standard for minorities.

<comment><USER18> Your premise doesn't hold up very well. For example, in a given year over 50% more white people are shot and killed by police than eg black people. There's a sizable population difference, which points to the obvious imbalance of abuse by police toward black people, however that's still an immense number of white people getting shot. It would be considered insane in almost any other country. You're underestimating the awareness of the problem by white people, they've noticed the substantial amount of abuse & police militarization going on (which is why so many white people now support doing something about it, from ending the war on drugs to body cameras etc, the majority of white people support these changes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can hospital security neutralise the rogue cop in a case like that?

<comment><USER18> Legally there may be grounds to attempt it for safety reasons for patients (would have to look at state law most likely); I'm skeptical though, the police seem to always have overruling authority in such instances (for example they can dictate the actions of firemen, arrest them at the scene of a fire if they don't obey commands, etc). In practical terms, either way, trying it could likely be a death sentence (multiple cops were on the scene).

<comment><USER20> There was an incident here in St. Louis years ago. A fire truck blocked one lane of a major highway to prevent anyone from rear-ending the accident scene and the first responders. A police officer ordered the fire truck driver to move the truck. A fire officer then told the fire truck driver that he was to leave the truck right where it was because it was a safety issue. The fire officer and the police officer exchanged words and the fire officer was arrested and taken away from the scene of an active rescue. So yeah, police arrested the fireman, but later a court case ruled against the police officer and awarded the fire officer $18000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That cop belongs in jail. People who enforce the law should be held to higher standards.

But he'll get paid leave, and will be back once it all blows over.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why does this belong on HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because body cams are the most important technology for freedom of the decade.

<comment><USER22> This article isn't about body cameras.

<comment><AUTHOR> You think any of us would ever have heard about this is the cop hadn't been required to wear a body camera?

<comment><USER23> I want to understand the protocol for body cam footage and how it becomes released. Seems like this puts the officer in a bad light, so who released the footage and why? Is there a standard in place for releasing body cam video? How does it normally come into the hands of the public?

I am not defending or praising the officer...I am genuinely curious.

EDIT: Thanks, guys. I read up a bit on FOIA and have a much better understanding about that now.

<comment><USER24> Having worked for a local municipality IT: All the electronic information held by the city is public property. Emails, documents, videos; everything. When asked to release information, they are allowed to redact certain personal data points about citizens (such as SSNs) but they are obliged to release the requested information. This is because the public bought those servers, pays the employees, pays the bills to keep everything running, and therefore owns it all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well gee, I'm thoroughly outraged. Anyone else totally outraged right now? I am. Good job, Washington Post. See everyone back here tomorrow for more outrage? Okay then.

<comment><USER26> Why get outraged, when you can just stick your head in the sand?

<comment><USER25> Because outrage is viral. Don't you know?

<comment><USER26> So is sticking your head in the sand—everyone is doing it!

<comment><USER25> Really?! I'm always out of the loop. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robot uses balloon full of coffee grounds to pick up anything - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/robot-uses-balloon-full-of-coffee-grounds-to-pick-up-anything-2010112/

<comment><USER2> Comments from an earlier submission of this story (from a different source) can be found here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1836462></comment>


Reddit joins Digg, Twitter on Cassandra - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reddit.com/2010/03/she-who-entangles-men.html

<comment><USER2> I have read that Cassandra needs good IO performance to do well. So I am wondering what type of performance you guys are getting on EC2 and what are the sort of things you have done specifically in regards to it (like RAID).

We are looking into Cassandra for thecadmus.com and any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I have read that Cassandra needs good IO performance to do well

If you're writing to disk, _anything_ will need good i/o performance to do well. That's sort of the name of the game.

EBS is kind of ass for i/o, not so much for average but because you get huge latency spikes for no reason. Most cassandra installs "in the cloud" are on rackspace cloud servers instead (where you get persistent, raided local disk) for this reason.

But, you do see people like reddit and simplegeo and openx running it on ec2 and it seems to work well enough.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clearing that up. We have been dealing with the weird spikes as well and so we were a little iffy about Cassandra on EC2.

<comment><USER3> For the moment, Reddit is using Cassandra just for persistent cache, which implies high read/write ratio.

Also it seems most of reads are done from the memory anyways (they mentioned 6GB RAM for 94% of their database in old memcachedb setting [1]).

So much less stress on I/O for this particular use-case.

[1] [http://blog.reddit.com/2010/03/and-fun-weekend-was-had-by- al...](http://blog.reddit.com/2010/03/and-fun-weekend-was-had-by-all.html)

<comment><USER2> Thats a good point. My understanding is that Cassandra is ideal for write heavy scenarios. So it is interesting to see a slightly different use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I spent several hours Thursday night re-reading Cassandra docs and doing another test install. I am trying to decide between MongoDB (which I have a fair amount of experience with) and Cassandra for a 2 node setup where I care less (at least right now) about latency than about redundancy and convenience. I want to (initially) use an EC2 instance and a non-Amazon VPS and since I can't tell from reading the docs (and I have not seen any published comparisons), I am going to have to set up both a 2 node Cassandra install and a MongoDB replica-pair to see which does better given the hit of one service running in an east coast Amazon availability center and the other in a data center in Texas. If I am ever fortunate to have more than a few users so performance becomes an issue, I would like to add another EC2 (or two) to the mix, but still keep a service running in a non-Amazon data center.

If anyone has any links to Cassandra/MongoDB comparisons for my desired setup I would appreciate seeing them.

</comment><comment><USER5> What is exactly the difference between Casandra and a document store like CouchDB? Or are they similar?

Just trying to get my head around this nosql thing and the different approaches...

<comment><USER6> CouchDB is an MVCC document store, it isn't concerned with scaling the way Cassandra, HBase and Voldemort are. This is a pretty good overview of the landscape [http://www.vineetgupta.com/2010/01/nosql-databases- part-1-la...](http://www.vineetgupta.com/2010/01/nosql-databases- part-1-landscape.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It sort of looks like Cassandra is where all the people with A LOT of data are going. Any particular reason(s) for that?

(Edit: as compared to other 'non traditional' database systems).

<comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_(database)> has a pretty good overview if you're not familiar with Cassandra.

Cassandra only guarantees eventual consistency where as most RDBMS systems are focused on always showing a consistent view of data. Because of this (and other trade-offs), Cassandra is able to provide much higher IO rates as well as improved fault tolerance and linear scalability.

Twitter, Digg, and Facebook all happen to have usages which fit perfectly with this model. If you see a status update a few seconds (or even minutes) late occasionally it's no big deal. If your bank funds aren't matching for that long, it can be a big deal.

Edit: I just started looking into Cassandra a few days ago so someone please correct me if I've mis-stated anything.

<comment><USER7> I'm more interested in the comparison with Redis, MongoDB, et alia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reddit also investigated (and maybe is still investigating) Riak, as they asked some detailed questions on the list. It will be interesting to see another high profile deployment of Cassandra, but I want them to start putting things that actually matter in there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, reddit said they evaluated riak + the other usual suspects: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/bcqhi/reddits_n...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/bcqhi/reddits_now_running_on_cassandra/c0m3rs9)</comment></comment>


Teenage Engineering's Pocket Operator series goes modular - <AUTHOR> https://www.factmag.com/2019/01/18/teenage-engineering-pocket-operator-modular-announced/ <comment><USER2> Love it. Their ongoing IKEA collaboration is definitely rubbing off. (downside: you pretty much get one shot folding the sheet metal the right way). Flat packed DIY build is great. Compatible with Eurorack, and the OP-Z is getting a CV/gate module.

Now that Teenage has 2 products out there that are designed with modular expansion in mind, it will be exciting to see how they update them over the years.

<comment><USER3> What IKEA is good at is continuously decreasing the work involved, error rate, quality issues etc. I can see no practical purpose to folding the metal yourself in this case, other than to make it feel more special than it is.

<comment><USER4> I produce a some what similar Eurorack module. Ours is electrically more complicated, but mechanically much simpler.

The final assembly is the most labor intensive part of our process. When we get an order from one of our retailers for 10+ products, it takes us a full day just to build/test/pack, because of this.

By selling these as "Ikea style" I promise they're able to massively reduce the cost for consumers by outsourcing their assembly.

<comment><USER3> Unlikely for a number of reasons. For one Stockholm (and Sweden) is very expensive and their products already show more advanced manufacturing techniques. This suggests some sort of contract manufacturing. Their products are also already expensive themselves so it would really make sense to spend a lot of resources designing something to save on shipping or manufacturing. For IKEA it does because they have very large volume and small margins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been wanting to buy a new analog synthesizer for a few years now, but i almost always balk at the price of these things. I can afford these things, but they never feel like a sound financial choice.

Personally, I blame the Raspberry Pi. Having played with a quad-core, 1GHz device with a GPU and wifi chip that retails for ~$30, i just can't see myself dropping $300 - $500 on an underpowered analog synthesizer...i've mostly just moved to digital synthesis now, which is quite enriching and fun. if anyone's in the same boat as me, I'd highly recommend nanoloop, which is quite fun to make music with on your phone: [https://nanoloop.com/](https://nanoloop.com/)

I get that the analog synthesizers have a great musical feel and history to them, but i just don't think they provide that much more utility or flexibility than 10-100x cheaper digital instruments.

<comment><USER3> It's all fake of course. It probably costs <$50 to produce, most likely in China. It isn't custom by any means. It is modular, but seemingly it wouldn't make a lot of sense since that isn't what you are paying for. Doesn't matter much. A lot of hobbies are a status thing. Most people aren't going to actually make something out of it. An unused computer program doesn't say much. So you want the "custom" gear to compensate. I guess there is nothing wrong with that as such. It is still fake though.

<comment><USER6> That's stupid. Boutique musical gear is expensive because somebody spent a lot of time designing it and needs to make a living. As far as sound quality, there are a lot of fm sounds that are not possible to produce on a computer since it lacks the resolution.

<comment><USER3> If it is so stupid, explain this to me.

1\. Who actually needs boutique gear? I am not saying it isn't fun. I am not saying that it can't be a hobby in itself nor am I saying some tiny percentage of the music industry might need it. But in pretty much all the interviews I have read with successful musician they use something horribly mundane for most of their career, because it isn't about the gear. So does the weekend warrior need boutique stuff?

2\. Is teenage engineering actually boutique? I don't know that much about music gear, but I do know a fair bit about electronics and it certainly doesn't look in anyway custom to me. You might think that it is because e.g. they use bare PCBs. But that would be a faulty assumption. So what is expensive part here?

<comment><USER6> 1\. What does that have to do with the question at hand? Boutique gear is expensive because not many people buy it. As you were saying, the cost is not in the production, but in the development and tooling setup for a given product. Whether or not someone "really needs" it is a different question. I will say that most all modular analog fm synthesis gear is expensive, and it can produce sounds that are not possible in software (or not possible on current CPUs without setting a really high latency). You may not find examples of extreme fm synthesis enjoyable but they are a key part of some genres of music: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q26LR5SJ2jU&t=1793s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q26LR5SJ2jU&t=1793s)

2\. Teenage engineering seems to have moved down the boutique scale a bit by attempting to make a more affordably priced unit that will be sold more widely. Good marketing is probably a key component of this strategy since they will need to hit a certain volume to break even.

<comment><USER3> 1\. I don't really think it is a different question. I am just saying that a lot of the revere for "boutique" gear isn't in its utility. (which is related to what the OP was saying). I don't deny there are use cases just that it doesn't necessarily match its reputation or price. You are the one saying it has to cost a certain amount, that isn't usually my experience. I would be interested in that case actually being made though, but I hasn't seen one here so far.

2\. My intention wasn't really to argue against teenage engineering. I think they are doing good products in general and that people like them a lot. I just don't think they should sell it as ~DIY when it really isn't. Teenage engineering is specifically a sort of "design studio". It isn't that they suddenly needed marketing, they are founded by at least one marketeer from the beginning. They do seem to have the right idea in mind overall, but I don't think this is the correct way to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I highly recommend to anyone interested in synths and music to go to a local shop and try out any modular system they have on display.

It really brings a lot of creativity and playfulness to playing music.

Me playing around on my modular system: [http://youtu.be/jD-2xqTkGUc](http://youtu.be/jD-2xqTkGUc)

<comment><USER8> Love it, thanks for sharing. Also curious as to what I could search to find more music similar to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that they decided to stick with the "Pocket Operator" name despite the fact that these can fit in _nobody 's_ pockets.

<comment><USER10> The individual modules (the "operators") are about the same size as the PO line products.

<comment><USER9> I guess, but they're not exactly _useful_ when carried around individually in a pocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For anyone into this, you can undoubtedly enjoy playing around with [https://vcvrack.com/](https://vcvrack.com/) ;)

<comment><USER12> The (by now ancient) Caustic synth app also has a modular approach, and free desktop versions:

[http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/caustic](http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/caustic)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love their stuff, and wish they'd issue another batch of OP-1 synths:

[https://www.teenageengineering.com/products/op-1](https://www.teenageengineering.com/products/op-1)

That thing is seriously amazing, and (for me at least) more appealing than the OP-Z or the pocket operators - but I am intrigued by this modular approach, since I've long wanted to play with something like it.</comment>


Advice on doing development for equity/deferred payment - <AUTHOR>

I am the founder of Ideas2It(www.ideas2it.com) which has a onshore/offshore team. The idea is to be technology partners for startups to bring their ideas to market without taking too much funding. A good case of this model is www.scoobydeal.com, a rails site which we implemented from concept to completion in just 3 months.
Though I am willing to share the risk on ideas I believe in, by taking part of the compensation in equity, I am being repeatedly asked to do the whole work for equity or deferred payment.
There is a particularly interesting(very interesting technology, good background of the founder,etc) project on the table, which I am being asked to do on deferred payment. I.e. payment on Angel funding, till then 1% interest after first 6 months.
What are the pitfall of such a deal? If I go for it, how should I structure the deal? <comment><USER2> If you're doing it for free, you're a co-founder. As such, you should have a lot of founder equity. 30% sounds about right - don't forget it might get diluted later. And in that case, don't work on it unless it's a business you do want to start, obviously - and of course you can't start several of them at the same time.

If they want you to do it for free without giving you a large chunk of equity, fuck'em.

If they want to pay you, payment is within 30 days after the invoice is sent, not "when we have cash". That's a joke, not a contract.

<comment><USER3> _If they want to pay you, payment is within 30 days after the invoice is sent, not "when we have cash". That's a joke, not a contract._

This is more true than I can tell you. Even when it comes from "friends". Once you agree to these 'terms', you will go right to the very bottom of the list. There will _always_ be something more pressing to spend money on than to pay you for something that is already done. They'll also find a way to make you feel bad for asking even if you do it while they're unpacking their new Aeron chairs and 24" monitors.

I have traveled this road, friend. Here be sorrows.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the sanitized version of the payment terms. This is put in as an exhibit in the software contract agreement itself. I do like the idea and after some research, do like the founder and his background. Among other things, he has a phd in the area his product is in and also worked for a company in this space for 9 years. Also has some working core software(he spend last couple of year full time on this). But are the terms fair? Under what circumstances would you take on such a project(if ever)? \</comment></comment></comment><comment>-- A fixed price of $X for completion Phase 1 Milestone and an additional $X for Internal Release Milestone. Payment for both Phase 1 and Phase 2 (Internal Release Milestone) will be made only after delivery and acceptance by Client of Documentation to be made pursuant to paragraph 5 of this Agreement and after Client secures funding. If funding is not secured by February 13th, 2009 an interest of 1% per month will be payable on the amount due for each month after February 13th, 2009.. However, the Client shall pay the Contractor within 60 days upon the expiry of the deadline of February 13, 2009, failing which the Contractor shall terminate this Agreement as per Clause 14.3.

<comment><USER2> That's a load of crap. "Terminating the agreement" is worthless if you've already done the work and delivered it.

I think considering how shady they're being, I wouldn't work for these guys unless they agree to a 25% payment upon signing the contract, then 25% upon completing the first milestone, then 50% at the end.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. The client is now talking hard cash for the first phase and a convertible note for the second phase.</comment>


Navigating cognition: Spatial codes for human thinking - <AUTHOR> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6415/eaat6766.editor-summary <comment><AUTHOR> Link: [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6415/eaat6766](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6415/eaat6766)</comment>