Hack Back – A DIY guide to those without the patience to wait for whistleblowers - <AUTHOR> http://data.langly.fr/blackhat <comment><USER2> This article was quite fascinating. It's impressive that a series of small security holes culminate with the release of sensitive software. It's equally interesting that all those security tips we roll our eyes at, as we've heard them one too many times, they really matter! Don't write crappy code: Don't trust user input. Don't do client-side only checks on any information being processed by the server. Etc. Etc.

The Linux root exploit tools mentioned will be of assistance to me in securing our own servers. We've been "hacked" once before (the server admin had created a user named `server` with the password `server` some time in ancient history and left open a setting in SMTP that permitted the bot to send massive amounts of spam masquerading as email@example.com from our mail server. Classy.) and got lucky that the bot's sole purpose was to send spam and not take control of the server and dump its sensitive database materials to a hard drive somewhere in Asia.

<comment><USER3> None of those were 'small security holes'. SQL injection on your website? Unnecessary ports open and known vulnerabilities on a public facing server? This is embarrassing for a company that apparently focuses on security.

<comment><USER4> typically the infrastructure which is supposed to be "uber sekure" has been well vetted, and is relatively secure.

The problem is, there is almost always some "trivial" system (public web site, severely outdated wordpress blog, or worse) that some poor fool in marketing/product "HAD TO HAVE YESTERDAY". The admins knew it wasn't mission critical, and would only be "temporary". So they spent minimal effort to set it up, skipped over all of the process and security hardening they would do for a proper release, and left it.

Of course, we know what happens: some hacker finds the exploits, then pivots to explore the internal network.

You will find most big enterprise-y shops build networks with hard exteriors, and soft interiors. Very few of their security plans are capable of a threat from inside the network.

<comment><USER5> I was always baffled by the notion of "internal network". Why do so many admins think that it is secure, that the device on it should be trusted more than some random PC on the Internet?

Usually there are PCs and mobile platforms on it, handled by more or less naive users... many of them could be / are turned into unsuspecting adversary to attacks.

One should always treat internal devices as potentially compromised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found this a frank and pretty fascinating inside view of how hackers operate in the wild.

Thanks to whoever it was for publishing it. It's a must-read for anyone running any kind of IT services. Well worth running through these steps on your own systems.

</comment><comment><USER7> Every time I find or see an SQL injection issue I get angry. It's 2014, why are web developers still making the same basic mistakes? SQL injection is a fixed issue. There is no excuse.

Same with XSS, although not as serious it's staggeringly common.

<comment><USER8> I believe it is essentially a function of the skill distribution and price of developers.

There will always be a spectrum of skill level; there will always be very inexperienced, low-skilled developers just about able to knock together something that works, but is susceptible to SQL injection. These inexperienced developers will charge less, and will get work, so there will always be an endless supply of new developers making new sites that are susceptible.

I can think of three ways (and various combinations/subsets of them) it would ever stop:

1) The tools themselves to somehow fall out of favour and be replaced with tools that make it harder to make this kind of mistake

2) Developers become compelled to undergo regulation and trade guilds or related, such that their skill level just to do business exceeds the aforementioned minimum

3) Websites (or a subset thereof) become regulated such that they are inspected/audited for this kind of thing, which would compel businesses to pay more to hire competent developers.

I don't see any of this happening any time soon, so there will be a perpetual supply of new websites containing well-known vulnerabilities. Forever. This will never, ever stop.

<comment><USER7> No, it will stop. I think the tools and general lack of awareness are a big factor - those will both undoubtedly change.

<comment><USER9> I have my doubts. Think about lock design - it's been known for a long time how to design decent locks, and yet in the US we still use these crappy cylinder locks.

<comment><USER10> As someone who doesn't know, how _do_ we design decent locks? Which locks use the decent design?

<comment><USER11> Read up on Medeco. An expert lock smith _might_ be able to pick it in his career, once. That's an $80 lock. Now look at Kwikset from HomeDepot for $11. An amateur can pick that lock in 2 seconds flat.

In short, the Medeco lock basically has every deterrent you can put into a lock that the industry knows about. Medeco to Kwikset is like a major payment processor's portal to a Wordpress site with a shopping cart plugin for seeing specialty cat themed oven mitts. You get what you pay for if you high someone that knows what they're doing.

<comment><USER12> You sound like a true believer in DRM. Just like with DRM, a lock doesn't provide all that much security because all of the information necessary to break it is encoded in the lock.

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

> As of 2008, several new methods of cracking Medeco locks has been developed > by Mark Tobais and Tobias Bluzmanis and were presented at the DEF CON 2008 > and HOPE 2008. A simultaneous public release of a book detailing many of the > exploits, called "Open in Thirty Seconds" detailed many of the attacks > discovered.

> They further detailed the ability to bump current generation Medeco M3 > locks.

> Many Medeco dealers continue to make claims about the Bump and Pick proof > nature of their locks, however Medeco has retracted virtually all of its own > press indicating such claims.

Furthermore, this particular piece of rhetoric:

> An expert lock smith _might_ be able to pick it in his career, once.

makes no sense. Picking a style of lock once makes the next time easier, not harder.

<comment><USER11> >Furthermore, this particular piece of rhetoric: >> An expert lock smith might be able to pick it in his career, once.

Easy getting down off your high horse. It might blow your socks off, but I've read that Wikipedia article before. I've actually gone through the whole DEFCON presentation and paper too, where you'll see which locks have the bump mod since 2008. ;) Yet, given that I'm not concerned about the CIA or NSA sneaking in to spike my cookie jar with LSD, I'll stick with my Medeco lock, including the bump mod, to make it a little more difficult to waltz into my warehouse. If you want in, you'll have to take the door or wall down, which is the point of a quality lock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone interested in getting into penetration testing, this is a fascinating look into how techniques that have been around forever can be used to get into anything. Disregarding the scale and target, this isn't anything groundbreaking. It's just the fact that a company like Gamma was vulnerable to simple things like this that is surprising.

</comment><comment><USER14> "I recommend using servers you've hacked or a VPS paid with bitcoin to hack from."

Not a good idea considering Bitcoin isn't anonymous and a sufficiently motivated state can back track to an electronic purchase of bitcoin tied to your identity.

<comment><USER15> My understanding is that a sufficiently motivated state can find any computer criminal. It's just a matter of following them long enough until they slip and make an opsec mistake.

<comment><USER16> Usually the mistake is talking too much. Jeremy Hammond (Stratfor hack) had really good technical opsec but made the mistake of talking about his IRL exploits to Sabu which led the FBI to connect his online identity to his IRL political activism. Had he kept his mouth shut he probably would have never been caught.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How was this article found? You go up to the directory and there is a whole host of cruft. Not discounting the likelihood that this is how the attacker was successful -- none of it's bullshit anyways -- but seems odd that someone would just stumble upon this. Can't find out much about that site either other than the Datalove reference that makes it seem like some Telecomix thing. Anyways, interesting submission. Shows how quickly an attack can escalate and what easy tools are available for you to test your own sites for vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER18> I think the original paste-bin was posted on Reddit by the same account that posted the finfisher leaks. This is just a mirror.

<comment><USER17> Ah okay, that makes sense. Thank you.

<comment><USER19> It was also posted on the writers twitter [https://twitter.com/gammagrouppr](https://twitter.com/gammagrouppr)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fyi the torrent can be found at [https://netzpolitik.org/wp- upload/finfisher.torrent](https://netzpolitik.org/wp- upload/finfisher.torrent), and the encrypted archive which possibly contains the server software (which the author has asked volunteers to help crack. See section 7.) is at finfisher/www/FinFisher/Engineers7117/FinSpy/Images/FinSpy- PC+Mobile-2012-07-12-Final.zip. That file alone makes up 31.4gb of the 38.7gb total size.

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting stuff, a nice level of detail.

Phrases like this say a little about his/her personality: "At this point I can see the news stories that journalists will write to drum up views ..."

Also interesting to note just how much other stuff is exposed on data.langly.fr (mostly related to Snowden, security, and a bunch of pirated content).

</comment><comment><USER22> If you are as curious as I am and decide to browse langly.fr for other interesting stuff: Don't click on links that say "...dont clik" and if you absolutely must, turn down the volume or put down your headphones and be prepared to restart your browser.

<comment><USER23> Or just don't have flash installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very interesting read. Amazing to see where information gathering and simple hacking techniques can lead you...

Pilots have checklists, web developers have Application Security Verification Standard (2014)! [https://www.owasp.org/images/5/58/OWASP_ASVS_Version_2.pdf](https://www.owasp.org/images/5/58/OWASP_ASVS_Version_2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> We still looking for the infamous password that would allow to reverse engineer the software and found the C&C!

</comment><comment><USER26> How did he get the php shell started after uploading it attached to a ticket? I did not get this step.

<comment><USER27> The server-side upload code let him put it somewhere where PHP was enabled. So he "started" it by just going to its URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow, if a damn IT sec company can't get secuiity right, how am I supposed to?

<comment><USER29> I can incorporate tomorrow and call myself an IT security company.

Also, there's the distinction between security software (an app that accomplishes a security-related goal) and software security (an app that is resistant to malicious tampering). Coders for security software can often suck at software security (openssl, e.g.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This article has already been submitted 3 days ago under the pastebin link: [http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=cRYvK4jb](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=cRYvK4jb) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155177))</comment>


Show HN: Superplaceholder.js – super charge the way users interact with forms - <AUTHOR> http://kushagragour.in/lab/superplaceholderjs/ <comment><USER2> Very cool! I'm writing an app right now that could really use some extra direction as users start filling out forms. I'll definitely be checking this out - thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: Have any successful businesses been built around Amazon Devpay? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I know one good example. Gurobi (<http://www.gurobi.com/>) sells a very advanced Linear Programming (LP) and Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) solver. The software is more than 10K+ for a license. They use paid AMI's that let you run their software for $4-8/hour, depending on the instance size (High Memory Extra Large to High Memory Quadruple Extra Large).

I imagine is it a good way for them to get over the chicken and egg problem. It is hard for developers to convince their managers that it will solve their problem without trying it, and they can't try it without the software. It also allows people like me to experiment with Gurobi without much up front cost.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use DevPay for S3stat.

They built it as a way to upsell Amazon Web Services, but I don't use it that way. It turns out that it's also a dead-simple way to handle recurring payments for a web application. It's orders of magnitude less work to implement than Amazon's other payment services.

The downside is that they don't put much love into it. Obvious features, such as manually cancelling a subscription or being notified when somebody cancels are missing, so there is a bit of pain to offset the ease of getting it up and running.

That said, I'd use it again.</comment>


The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving - <AUTHOR> https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess <comment><USER3> > Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress in primates at Stanford University, says > a chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day while playing in a > tournament

Citation, please.

I see him making this claim in a number of articles and talks, but am having trouble finding an experiment verifying this.

<comment><USER4> I would love to see this as well. That's more than 2x what most people burn running a marathon. Hard to believe but would be really interesting if that's true.

<comment><USER5> I also doubt it, though it's not quite 2x. The number they cite is "6,000 calories a day", which presumably includes the ~2,000 calories one burns just by staying alive. A marathon runner burns ~2,600 calories on the race itself, totalling ~4,600 for the day. So it's about 1.3x rather than 2x.

The numbers all have very wide error bars, so it puts 1.3 in the range closer to 1 than to 2. Still hard to believe, but I'd consider "comparable to a marathon" far more likely than "twice as much".

<comment><USER6> If you're going to be pedantic, you subtract out the baseline, and the alleged caloric burn from chess would be 1.5x the measured burn from running a marathon.

But in any case it still astounds me the human body can run that far on just 2,000 calories (2.3kWh).

<comment><USER7> Something you learn when you're trying to lose a lot of weight: The human body is disgustingly energy efficient.

<comment><USER8> It's more about how light the body is than how efficient it is. Consider: the Tesla Model 3 has a range of 350 km, and a battery capacity of 50 kWh. That's a little more than seven km per kWh. So, less efficient than the human body, right?

Well don't forget that its curb weight is 1,611 kg. If we assume that the marathoning human weighs 100 kg, then the Tesla weighs 16x as much. So to compare the performance pound for pound, we need to imagine the energy use of sixteen human runners (36kWh for 42km, or just a little more than 1kWh per km). Also, it would be travelling that range at a much higher velocity. Of course, its coefficient of drag is probably lower than that of sixteen human runners, but considering the humans are running at 15 km/h or so, and the Tesla would be travelling at closer to 100kmh, the velocity factor of the drag calculation would be 40x higher for the Tesla than the humans. So, even if you factor in the unfairness of having skin and hair and clothes, the humans are actually a good deal less energy efficient than the car.

I just found this analysis interesting. Our machines are after all quite a bit more efficient than our bodies (for certain tasks, of course). But that doesn't detract from your point that the body is definitely more efficient than you want it to be when it comes to losing weight!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I did tests for weight loss. I found that you don't lose weight until you sleep. (stay up all night and weigh your self repeatedly, in the morning, no loss, but after you sleep and wake, your weight goes back to "morning weight")

I found that if you don't sleep well, you don't lose as much. If you eat too late before going to bed, you don't lose as much.

If you adjust your diet (however you want is my experience) to always be hungry for around an hour before every meal, you will lose weight. (no exercise at all)

What these guys are doing seems to be actual "work", I don't think stress alone makes you lose weight. With the anecdotal data I have observed over the years "stress eating" is more common that "stress based weight loss".

Maybe the activity that causes the stress directly relates to it's effect? And not all stress is equal in this way? (tournament stress vs paying the bills stress)

<comment><USER10> I hate to be blunt. But this is as much pseudoscience as the anti vaxers. Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. There is also a big difference between losing weight based on water weight and losing real body mass.

I sweat like a pig anytime I work out. I use to teach two hour fitness classes and even now after the end of a workout, I've "lost 5 pounds" but that's pure water weight. I'm burning around 1000-1200 calories during that time. If I rehydrate and drink lots of water afterwards, I'll "gain" 3 pounds.

If you are "losing weight" by being hungry or by limiting when you eat, you are losing weight because you are consuming less calories.

The same was cited in the article. The chess players are forgetting to eat.

<comment><USER11> I never understood this point of view. It's like people who didn't believe in washing hands until bacteria were discovered.

Yes sure calories in calories out. But metabolism has so many variables. It can be revved up and burn a lot of calories. It can become quiescent when you are in starvation mode. What causes it to start using the fat reserves is definitely more than a univariate analysis. If there is a catalyst that starts breaking down fats faster it won't matter that you are eating more.

Some people are naturally skinny and others put on weight quickly. This is already well known and shows that there are complex genetic inputs as well as other ones. We have to discover what those are. So saying it's just calories in/out, stupid... nope!

<comment><USER10> It is still just calories in and calories out. Some people naturally have a higher metabolism and a higher basal metabolic rate. It still doesn't change the equation.

Yes, it's a well known fact that if you eat too few calories, that your metabolism slows down - and you burn less calories. That doesn't make anything that the original poster said scientifically valid.

I saw all sorts of crazy crap that people believed would help them lose weight and tone when I was a part time fitness instructor like excercises that would help them spot reduce (no such thing) to people who tried to come into my classes wearing those plastic bags because they thought it would help them lose weight. They reported me to management plenty of times for not allowing them to come to my class like that and I would budge.

<comment><USER12> > It is still just calories in and calories out.

The problem with this line of thinking is the "just".

Sure, physics says it's calories in and out, and we all agree that mostly makes sense.

But -- how do you measure how many calories are going out? Sleep is known to have an impact on weight. How does one translate their sleep quality or sleep issues into a better "out" measure? How do you know how many calories are going out during all of the other things you do during the day? What about the thousands of assorted complex processes going on in your body that you aren't really aware of?

For the "in"... ok, so you studiously track everything you eat. What's the efficiency that your body absorbs all of the calories from the food you ate? How many of those calories pass through and aren't actually consumed? Is eating 1000 calories of lettuce really the same thing as eating 1000 calories of pork?

If fixing this for people was just about "the equation", weight loss would be a lot easier to solve.

"Calories in, calories out" is one of those things that sounds great, but is not nearly as practical for people to actually implement as people like to imagine.

<comment><USER10> Sleep only has a second order effect on weight. Almost all of the reasons that lack of sleep affect weight loss is due to overeating (calories in) and lack of exercise (calories in).

[https://www.topfitnessmag.com/lifestyle/sleep-important- weig...](https://www.topfitnessmag.com/lifestyle/sleep-important-weight-loss)

This is just like all of the studies showing diet soda causes weight gain.Diet soda doesn't actually cause weight gain. Diet soda gives people the license to overeat and it may cause some people to crave real sugar more. I'm sure we've all seen people order a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a large fry and a Diet Coke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I track my vital metrics religiously. Last week, I interviewed at three companies who have intensive technical interviews (Dropbox, Google, Apple).

The morning after the second interview, at Google which was intensive, I was my lowest weight ever in several years (dropped three to four pounds from five days before)

I gained the weight back after a week. But it was interesting to observe the physiological effects from interviewing. I'm not surprised to read about such physiological effects from long, mentally intensive activities.

(I thought I did well enough in my interviews but I didn't make it past the hiring committee at Google, or Dropbox)

<comment> half-pixel-off I was going to ask: actual weight or water weight? Because I do tend to dehydrate myself in new/unfamiliar places, especially when forced to do things to someone else's schedule and without my favorite things to drink on hand.

But a week seems too long to gain it back unless you weren't measuring very often.

I'd love to track blood pressure, pulse, and weight religiously but it's hard to remember to do any more than highly irregularly, and the app I use for bp and weight can't track pulse.

<comment><USER13> This included water weight. My body's water weight during that time, if my scale is to be trusted, was between 52.0-53.0% during that week of interviews. It is consistent with levels before my interviews.

I was wearing a HRM tracker for two of the interviews, but I didn't turn it on any activities to track frequent metrics. Heart rate was elevated for the entire interview, like I was briskly walking. In my hardest Google interview, my heart rate was at its peak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most people don't realize that a huge amount of their basal metabolism goes into operating the brain. Just "keeping the lights on" in the average person accounts for around 20% of your total daily energy expenditure! 6k cals/day is highly suspect, but anyone who has spent all day thinking hard can attest to how tiring it can be. That big brain of ours eats a lot of calories.

The other thing is that stress causes the body to produce cortisol - <USER2> catabolic hormone which makes it easier for your body to break down tissue into energy. Naturally, this causes our body to respond with an instinct to take in energy. In many folks, this prompts overeating, which is why stress is often blamed for increases in fat, but if you don't adjust your diet at all, it can accelerate energy expenditure.

</comment><comment><USER15> I first wrote this as a reply in this thread and now I'm looking at it, I think it's relevant to the article as a whole -- sugar, insulin, calorie reduction, stress, fitness in general. I believe that the "diet" mentioned in the article is in effect a calorie-restriction one.

> Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. > you are losing weight > because you are consuming less calories.

This is only true in the first up to 6 months of a calorie-restriction diet. Then, body adjusts its metabolism (lower body temperature, making you feel more lethargic to keep you from exercising, etc) and your weight begins to slowly climb back up, sans any further calorie restriction. At this point, it's easy for a dieter to blame himself of lacking willpower: "it worked, and it stopped working now, I must've been not strict enough!".

The same thing happens if you force someone to overeat even if they're not hungry. They will gain weight -- for up to 6 months. Then, the body increases its base metabolic rate and adjusts to the new food intake level.

As Dr. Jason Fung meticulously explains in his book Obesity Code, there seems to be a weight set point. He then argues that the root cause of obesity, and the body's set weight point, is insulin resistance.

The books hails your grandma's advice: "Cut back sugars and starchy foods. No snacking."

This is from the last part (The Solution):

1\. Reduce your consumption of added sugars. 2. Reduce your consumption of refined grains. 3. Moderate your protein intake. 4. Increase your consumption of natural fats. 5. Increase your consumption of fiber and vinegar.

The author also stresses the importance of fasting.

Everything the book asserts seems to be pretty well backed by science, go check for yourself.

Source: Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. Read it, it's not only a brilliant weight loss book, but also a wonderful book about how the wrong incentives for companies have led to the obesity epidemic in the US.

<comment><USER16> > _This is only true in the first up to 6 months of a calorie-restriction > diet. Then, body adjusts its metabolism (lower body temperature, making you > feel more lethargic to keep you from exercising, etc) and your weight begins > to slowly climb back up, sans any further calorie restriction. At this > point, it 's easy for a dieter to blame himself of lacking willpower: "it > worked, and it stopped working now, I must've been not strict enough!"._

> _The same thing happens if you force someone to overeat even if they 're not > hungry. They will gain weight -- for up to 6 months. Then, the body > increases its base metabolic rate and adjusts to the new food intake level._

This is pseudoscientific garbage. There is some amount of adaptation that the body experiences in response to a caloric deficit or surplus. It varies by person but is generally not a _major_ effect. A few hundred calories is typical and is largely attributable to changes in NEAT.

This is also not an unbounded effect. It won't prevent continued weight loss if the starting deficit is greater than the adaptation nor will it prevent continued weight gain if the surplus exceeds the adaptation. The many obese people in the world are proof that the "natural set point" does not place a cap on weight gain.

There is also definitely nothing magic that happens at the 6 month mark and the absurdity of this should be enough to make it clear that this is garbage.

<comment><USER17> > _This is pseudoscientific garbage._

This seems unnecessary. The rest of your comment does not support this assertion. And it's inflammatory, which is contrary to the HN guidelines.

To this point:

> _There is also definitely nothing magic that happens at the 6 month mark and > the absurdity of this should be enough to make it clear that this is > garbage._

There doesn't have to be anything magical. I would have to read the book to be sure, but pretty sure 6 months describes the general point at which the _continuous_ process fades into noise. Nothing about the body has an on/off switch, but that doesn't mean we can't describe biological processes in general terms.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps it was unnecessary. The rest of my absolutely supports it, though. The claim is that within 6 months the body will adapt to a change in caloric intake, completely canceling it out. Indeed, the claim is that the body will adapt so well that it will begin _gaining weight_ from the same caloric intake that was previously a weight-loss-inducing deficit. This is utterly untrue. Not just an incomplete picture or misleading, but an utter falsehood.

<comment><USER17> > This is utterly untrue. Not just an incomplete picture or misleading, but an > utter falsehood.

Would you be so kind as to elaborate? You are literally stating that something is 'utterly untrue' without supporting rationale. I'm not expecting you to do a peer-reviewed study. Just to explain why you feel this way.

<comment><USER16> Because there's absolutely no scientific evidence for this claim. Please share any evidence you have for the claim that a human body will "adapt" to a caloric deficit so well that it will _regain the lost weight_ without calories increasing again.

The statement is essentially that calories consumed are unrelated to weight gain and loss except in the short term after which the body will return to its normal weight no matter what you do. This simply doesn't make any sense. If this were true people couldn't starve to death and obesity wouldn't be a thing. And also the conservation of mass would not be an actual physical law.

<comment><USER17> The author claimed this was legitimate science, in which case there will be references in the book.

I am avoiding the normal urge to go out and buy the book to verify and share the references to you. But it is something you could easily verify and find for yourself.

<comment><USER16> Then it should be easy for the thread originator to provide a citation. I'm not willing to buy the book to look for citations I don't expect to be there. My bet is that the book doesn't really say what was presented and that it gives a rather more reserved statement about metabolic adaptation.

<comment><USER17> Thank you for elaborating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was 175 and have been trying to lose 5 pounds for 8 years. In the last 2 months Ive lost 10 pounds. I hit as high as 180

I started doing brazilian jiu jitsu about 7 hours/week. My body was sore for the first 1 month. I also did a low carb diet (moderate adherence)

Keto generally reduces my hunger so I would skip dinner because the exercise would kill my appetite. I would then not be hungry until lunch the next day. This ended up turning into intermittent fasting.

I hit 170 after about 1.5 months which was a huge milestone. The intermittent fasting was really easy (which was strange) to the point where I am only eating 0 or once every 24 hours. This last week I started losing about .4-.5 pounds/day and so I lost another 4 pounds in the last week.

I believe it was the keto which kills hunger spikes, the massive exercise in the evening which killed nighttime eating which transitioned me into fasting.

If you had asked me if a year ago if I could easily not eat for two days I would have said no way. Once your body is burning fat, then it is easy.

<comment><USER19> After letting myself go a bit last year, I've been (with the exception of a vacation or two) strictly keto and time-restricted (at least 18:6) feeding daily. Currently 20 pounds down from my peak, and I got as far as 25 down before I spent two weeks in Europe mostly visiting biergartens. All that with not much exercise, though I'm starting to incorporate resistance training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> After 30, one should seriously evaluate breakfast. Three meals per day becomes just too many calories to burn. Two meals for an adult is plenty. Coffee in the morning suppresses hunger, so one can go until 12-12:30 before getting woozy.

At some point I noticed that I was force-feeding myself lunch if I ate breakfast. Hunger is a normal feeling - embrace it.

<comment><USER21> Change what you eat, not how often you eat. A yogurt and some fruit is fine for breakfast.

<comment><USER22> Not if you want to limit your eating window, which is a great way to make your body burn its fat reserves.

<comment><USER21> If you have the willpower to ignore your body telling you its hungry, then yeah fasting will work for you. Most people can do this for only a little while though, and then revert to what they used to do.

<comment><USER20> Diets fail because people view them as "temporary struggles". Something to get through and then it's over. It's obvious why that doesn't work. It has to be a way of life.

<comment><USER21> All I'm saying is fasting doesn't work if you make up the calories during non fasting hours.

<comment><USER22> If you control for calories, when you eat does actually have an impact: [https://www.uab.edu/shp/nutrition/news/168-time- restricted-e...](https://www.uab.edu/shp/nutrition/news/168-time-restricted- eating-can-help)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was a competitive chess player as a kid/teenager, and distinctly remember being _exhausted_ , both physically and mentally, after the games.

It was the sort of full exhaustion that I've only experienced in sports where rapid strategy-making is deeply important; in hockey, for example. I've never gotten the same feeling from a more endurance or strength-based workout, like running or biking. I haven't done much rock climbing but I imagine it's akin to chess.

</comment><comment><USER24> I experienced this "diet" when I was having a tough time at work. Turned out for me that stress eating calories added up to way more than what the insomnia and nervous thinking burned. Your results may vary.

</comment><comment><USER25> I went to a lot of chess tournaments as a kid, and I never noticed this phenomenon. I can only name a few GMs that were on the fat side, though.

Not eating is, I think, part of it. Usually a tournament with 40/2+1 time control spaces rounds 6.5 hours apart, and a single round could take close to 6 hours. A full 6-hour game is unusual, but 4 hours of only staring at the board, drinking water, and walking around looking at other games is normal.

I can't remember if food was even allowed at the table; I only remember one time seeing food: at a scholastic tournament, my opponent ate a clementine before the match. Technically, 40/2+1 gives you enough time to drive to Taco Bell (even on your move), but I've never heard of anyone doing it.

If you ask my mom, she'll remember seeing kids from out-of-state wandering between rounds: "have you eaten lunch?" "No...?" like they hadn't even been thinking about it. Just total space cadet stuff, sometimes. (she drove the kid to McD's, I think)

</comment><comment><USER26> I lost 10kg in 90 days. I didn't follow any fancy diet. Just counted calories.

Yes, I know, I know it's flawed, but many of you are reasoning your way into eating what you want and the problem is discipline.

I ate ice cream along the way. I too ate what I wanted, but I just tracked everything (I used lose it) and never overate my budget.

The first diet that ever really worked. Nothing can replace discipline.

<comment><USER27> Diets fail because people make them something you do rather than something you are. You can stop a diet. A life change is permanent.

I'm down 42 pounds from my max weight and am at a healthy bmi. I too eat whatever I want I just eat less of it. It stuck when I stopped calling it a diet. It is just how I live now. I feel tons better and my knees stopped hating me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've never seen an overweight person who exercised regularly and ate decently well. I'm not talking about hitting the gym 6 days a week but a healthy amount of daily activity be it walking, running, surfing, hiking. It is not and never has been complicated to lead a healthy lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER29> The "wealthy friend" referenced in the first sentence would have to be Rex Sinquefield, aka the billionaire patron of American chess, based in Saint Louis. I wonder why Sinquefield would want to remain anonymous for this article. He goes out of his way to plaster his name on everything, not just his chess championships ("Sinquefield Cup") but apparently professorships ("Sinquefield Professor of Economics") [0].

[0] [https://unewsonline.com/2018/09/06/sinquefield-donation- caus...](https://unewsonline.com/2018/09/06/sinquefield-donation-causes- controversy/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Most comments so far seem to focus on the weight loss part, but I don't think that's very interesting.

What's more interesting is how he is able to manage mental exhaustion and performance with this regimen. I think everything here applies to other mentally exhaustive work such as software engineering as well.

Maybe there's a need for more systematic approach for exercise and diet for software engineering. Not for weight loss, but better sustained performance in the job.

</comment><comment><USER31> I used to play a lot of all day Magic: the Gathering tournaments where the only option was overpriced convention junk food. 12 hours of stressful competition was enough to keep off hunger and I lost weight from this.

</comment><comment><USER32> The ESPN targeted ads provider requires "several minutes" to "process" the opting out of tracking.

Blacklisted ESPN and Truste.com from my forum. Blah.

</comment><comment><USER33> So how long before it is possible to 3D-print a brain-sized, person-specific artificial organ, composed primarily of brown adipose tissue, blood vessels, and "skin", connect it to the blood supply with sterile tubing, and refrigerate it in a portable plug-in cooler, to create a 6000 kcal/day energy deficit?

Lose 100 pounds in 60 days without surgery. Some infection risk. Grid power required.

</comment><comment><USER34> >Today's players have begun to incorporate strict food and fitness regimens to increase oxygen supply to the brain during tournaments

Is there really such a possible variance when it comes to getting oxygen to the brain? Why don't they just take hits of O2 then?

<comment><USER14> Absolutely. The difference in VO2 max (essentially, efficiency of oxygen uptake) between trained and untrained individuals is stark and substantial.

Hits of pure O2 produce a euphoric high, which probably isn't what you want during intense mental competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This reminds me of the ordeals depicted in Sangatsu no Lion, a manga about professional shogi.

</comment><comment><USER36> To lose weight, eat fewer calories than you expend.

To gain weight, eat more calories than you expend.

It's that simple. This is basic physics, weight gain and loss is not complicated.

</comment><comment><USER37> Your body needs fuel (nutrition) to sustain its activity.

If you take in more fuel than your activity requires, your body will convert it into excess fat.

If you take in less fuel than your activity requires, your body will burn fat.

What else is there to discuss? I honestly do not understand how we have these convoluted discussions. The only other thing worth considering is how you can make it easier for yourself to cope with the feeling of hunger, so that you don't give in and eat more than you need.

<comment><USER38> > how you can make it easier for yourself to cope with the feeling of hunger, > so that you don't give in and eat more than you need.

It took me about 6 months to learn the portion of food that will fill me up, so that I can stop eating well before my stomach takes it's sweet-ass time telling my brain it's full. Best thing I ever did for myself.

<comment><USER37> Had a colleague who went from near-obese to slim in about 6 months. One tip was to eat small amounts throughout the day, and stuff like bread that fills you up, not stuff like salad that will leave you feeling empty.

From my own experience I think being well attuned to your own appetite patterns is helpful, like you say. That's going to be hard if you have a volatile and busy lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Eat less, lose weight. I read long ago that if you want to maintain weight, eat until you're a little bit hungry. If you want to lose weight, eat until you're still pretty hungry.

I've been following the latter on and off over the years, and have been doing it again for the past 8 weeks and have lost a pound a week. I've found it to be much easier than calculating BMR/caloric rate then calculating calories and setting up portion sizes, etc.

<comment><USER21> I've found that to be true as well. One thing I do is I eat before dinner (especially when going out for dinner). If I'm really hungry I'll order the largest thing on the menu and overeat. If I have a banana before going out I'll make a wiser choice.

Losing weight is all about hunger management. Eat free foods like fruits and vegetables when you're hungry. Eat 3 balanced meals a day. That's it, that's all it takes.

If you turn losing weight into a job by counting calories and doing meal planning and whatnot you'll quit because you already have a job. So just use some basic common sense judgments and make sure you're never too hungry because that's when you'll make mistakes.

<comment><USER40> Fruits are not free food in terms of dieting, as they have a lot of sugar (fructose). Bananas in particular are very rich in sugar so are best avoided when on a diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> How to get a high metabolism as a kid, a theory: play chess.

</comment><comment><USER42> what's the purpose of not moving to lose weight?

</comment><comment><USER43> At 7:30 the next morning, he pulls on gray Mizzou sweats and matching running shorts, rubs the sleep from his eyes and TL;DRs to those who tired of a journalismatic narrative:

Chess players have stress on tournaments and may lose 7+ kg per hard game. It is not healthy for them.

</comment><comment><USER44> I lost 35 pounds in about 45 days without working out (coding all day) by fasting for 3 to 5 days at a time.

I got a lot of keto flu tho, and would always eat after that, or try to minimize it by drinking a ton of (no sugar) vitamin water and/or 1 egg.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is it a long term coma?

</comment><comment><USER46> Sounds like amphetamine abuse to me. Presumably de rigeur in chess.

<comment><USER47> Did you read the article? It's about diet, exercise, and the energy burnt playing chess.

<comment><USER46> Did you read between the lines? The article is indeed about those things, but they're almost certainly BS.

<comment><USER48> Since we're on the topic of making things up not described in the article, I think it's secret gastric bypass surgeries the competitors are undergoing, not amphetamines.

<comment><USER49> While they were playing chess no less!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The author is in my opinion and (whatever little it may be) experience spot on. More people, have a starvation issue, they are eating carbohydrates, where the body makes them on it's own. Before we had 'food' on every corner at each gas station, we hunted, (being physical) until we scored that game. Not three or six meals a day, not chemically processed 'food stuffs' that shock the endocrine system and break the very nature of how our systems function. I say starvation as in , when food is scarce, the body somehow knows, and stores what is taken in, for future use. Yea, were all horders by nature.</comment>


Shall we fork Debian? - <AUTHOR> http://debianfork.org

<comment><USER2> > only few of us have the time and patience to interact with Debian on a > voluntary basis.

This might present a problem if they actually do try and fork it. I imagine it would take more time a patience to run a competing fork than to interact with current Debian.

Not that a fork is necessarily the wrong thing to do if your ideas of what Debian should be differ enough from where it's going. It's just that it sounds like it would be a fair amount of work :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Duplicate [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8477659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8477659)</comment>


War Is a Racket (1933) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wanttoknow.info/warisaracket <comment><USER2> > Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This > was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for > democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going > and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American > soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers > here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross > might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were > just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective. Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution.

Had those young men simply decided to do nothing rather than join, the world would have been a better place.

I'd be curious to know Butler's take on WWII (he died in 1940). That's the one that people seem most hung up on. It's the only war in living memory considered near universally "good" by those in the US. It's the war that's invoked by every administration trying to stir up popular support for a military adventure in a country most voters can't place on a map.

I'm doubtful our current reverence for WWII will stand the test of time. Long after Hitler has been replaced by the next boogeyman, history students of the future will scratch their heads at what could have possibly motivated a young man to volunteer for such a fool's errand.

<comment><USER3> I know it is not a popular view but I think WWII was a major mistake. We could of course not have stopped Hitler's initial actions, but it was the West's choice to wage war against Hitler. I think that was a mistake.

The rational was to keep Poland and the Czech republic free. However at the end of the war neither country was free. They had fallen under the Soviet sphere of influence. The goals they set hence failed.

They KNEW Hitler planned to attack Russia. He had spoken for years about that. That meant they would go through Poland. The sneaky but rational solution would have been to sacrifice Poland temporary and let Hitler attack Russia. Russia and Germany would have worn each other out.

At the end a heavily built up allied military could have marched in and cleaned up.

<comment><USER4> History doesn't tolerate what-ifs, but just in case. Soviet Union wouldn't stand war with Germany without Allies. Hitler would get access to all the Soviet's resources: cheap slaves' workforce, food, oil, coal, steel, Arctic and Far East seaports. Then attack on the US together with Japan, both East and West coast. The US would not have a chance. Game over.

<comment><USER5> As far as I know, current consensus is that the Soviet Union would have defeated Nazi Germany regardless of Western intervention, it just would have taken more time (and a lot more casualties) to get to Berlin.

It really is a case where the Nazis picked a fight they just couldn't win.

<comment><USER4> Current consensus where? I live in Russia, we currently have a state-induced wave of unhealthy "patriotic" hype here, mostly based on WW2 events. But even in these circumstances I rather got an opinions like "without West we wouldn't make it against Hitler" in my circles.

The keyword is "lend-lease" [0]. About 5% of weapons for 1942 Soviet offensive operations, decisive for the final outcome, were US-made. And 80% of cars and trucks. And lots of raw material.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend- Lease](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease)

<comment><USER5> Consensus in the West, by historians not trying to score a political point about _current_ world affairs.

Lend-lease, while critical help, is often overplayed in the West as a way to diminish the Soviet contribution to the war -- this is in itself the legacy of historical views shaped by the Cold War and (unsurprisingly) by ex Wehrmacht officers who collaborared with the West after WW2. There's no credible mainstream analysis that has Germany winning against the Soviet Union. In fact, it is often argued that by starting Barbarossa, Hitler effectively lost the war. Germany didn't have the manpower, logistics capabilities _or_ equipment to take on the Soviet Union.

That's not to say it wouldn't have cost the Soviets a lot more time, effort and bloodshed to defeat the Nazi war machine without the help of the Western Allies.

I'm not Russian and I'm completely uninterested in how current Russia and Putin are spinning this, by the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Major General Smedley Butler was a 2X Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. In his literary magnum opus, "War Is a Racket" he argues just that. A true statesman, he informed FDR & Co of the Business Plot, the cartel of big businesses who plotted to overthrow the US government. An amazing American that time will not allow us to forget.

</comment><comment><USER7> Smedley Butler is like a God figure to Marines, second only to Chesty Puller. I've often referenced this when arguing about the military-industrial complex with people who assume that if you criticize military spending you are somehow anti-military. I don't know if it has any effect.

Some might think it's a fallacious argument from authority, but I don't think it is. Fortunately, or unfortunately?, the people I tend to argue with about this stuff likely don't know what that fallacy is.

<comment><USER8> I've had several Marine and ex-Marine friends mention Butler to me. How does "War is a Racket" align or jive (or not!) with the _presumed_ reason that most young men and women sign up for the military, which is to valiantly protect and defend the country?

<comment><USER9> "How does "War is a Racket" align or jive (or not!) with the presumed reason that most young men and women sign up for the military, which is to valiantly protect and defend the country?"

It aligns with the fact that the warmongers are putting out a lot of propaganda that makes it a virtue to go to war and die for the warmongers.

<comment><USER10> We're no longer living in the 19th century, most people no longer believe in the nobility and glory of war.

Much of the modern recruitment efforts I've seen focus on benefits like paying for student loan debts, workforce training and healthcare.

I would bet that most people who join the military today (at least in the US) do so hoping to avoid ever having to see action, rather than looking forward to killing for their country.

<comment><USER11> I'm a Gen X-er, and people at my high school were joining the military almost entirely for the touted financial and education benefits. I had multiple friends who went into various branches and I don't recall a single one joining with the expectation that they wanted to go out and kill people.

Having said that, though, do you remember people in that age bracked signing up in the aftermath of 9/11? They were doing so explicitly because they wanted to go out and "fight back." And we've been at war in those areas ever since. I don't think it's particularly plausible that, after nearly two decades of constant deployment to war zones in the Middle East, anyone would sign up for the Marines with the expectation that they would _not_ be required to go kill for their country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> War is still a racket [0]. Interesting closing reflections from the article:

... not enough Americans know or care about what happens in other countries or what their government and military is doing in their name. Do many Americans know that there are at least 1000 American military bases around the world, or that there is a fast growing Africa Command branch of the military that is involved in almost every country in Africa? Certain politicians would like to cut "discretionary" spending for such unnecessary things as education, health care, infrastructure, and protecting the environment, but over $1 Trillion a year in allotted to the military, secret intelligence, and "homeland security" in order to continue such unholy activities we have seen for over 100 years.

It is telling that such a high profile person like General Butler could give such influential speeches in the '30's, and that even a president (who was also a general, perhaps not coincidentally) could warn against the military- industrial complex in 1961. Such a thing has been unimaginable since the Carter presidency. With the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, there are no politicians today brave enough to take on this problem, and certainly none with as high a profile as president. Maybe it's time for less money in the hands of arms producers and war profiteers. It's time for less war and weapons in general. Sadly, this means that it must be time for new politicians. Only a citizenry which not only votes, but is also informed and involved, can do this.

[0] [https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/15/war-is-still-a- racket/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/15/war-is-still-a-racket/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I firmly believe that it is our responsibility (the ones with at least half a mind) to communicate and convince our fellow citizens that oversea wars should not be supported, and protested against. So many lives have been lost for profit of others. It's truly a shame of humanity.

<comment><USER14> I think this is most effectively done offline. Attempt anything online and suddenly the haters come out of the woodwork and shout you down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> According to CBO analysis the total cost of Afghan & Iraq wars is going to be something like $2.5 trillion for the US.

Imagine if this sum would have been used mostly nonviolently for bribing and buying influence in the region. Depending how the money is distributed, it would have been:

* $35k per each person in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you divide it into households maybe something like $100k - 150k per household.

* 2.5 million millionaires, or

* assuming you need to just bribe 20,000 most influential persons/families/groups in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan that would be something like $80 million each.

corruption >> war, almost every time.

<comment><USER16> Much of the money for war flows right back into the American economy.

You pay American soldiers and contractor salaries. You buy weapons and technology from American companies.

Bribes don't have the same economic effect.

For these large dollar amounts, how you spend it matters as much as how much you spend.

<comment><USER17> > You pay American soldiers and contractor salaries. You buy weapons and > technology from American companies.

While there are wealthy individuals who profit from the military-industrial complex, it's hard to shake the impression that the majority of our bloated military budget is a federal make-work jobs program (with deaths of American troops and foreign civilians as a negative externality).

<comment><USER18> It is, and you have whole communities being completely reliant on it for survival. But listen to Eisenhowers speech about the military-industrial complex. This reliance is created by design, and it is making some people extremely rich.

<comment><USER17> I think it's something of an open secret how much public policy (military and otherwise) is manipulated by wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists. What perhaps goes underexamined, is the extent to which Congress members (even those who grandstand on "fiscal conservatism") are extremely reluctant to cut any federal expenses that would result in a loss of jobs in their state/district (be it a closed military base, or a reduced contract with Lockheed Martin).

Middle-class voters may not actively be lobbying for the perpetual [Military/Prison/etc]-Industrial Complex; but the mere fact of who writes the checks for those voters' salaries and benefits makes the racket extremely difficult to unentrench, above and beyond the already problematic influence of the 0.001% who are shamelessly fleecing the taxpayer. It's a truly wicked problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a poem by Julian Tuwim, "To a simple man" (pl. "Do prostego człowieka"), 1929.

There are a few translations, but I like the most one by Marcel Weyland ([https://www.antiwarsongs.org/canzone.php?lang=en&id=36782](https://www.antiwarsongs.org/canzone.php?lang=en&id=36782), see also ones into German and Italian).

More on Tuwim in general: [https://www.cjnews.com/perspectives/features/the-20th- centur...](https://www.cjnews.com/perspectives/features/the-20th-centurys- greatest-jewish-poet).

</comment><comment><USER20> Two big threads from 2016, for the curious:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068641)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11236553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11236553)

A bit from 2010: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1897856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1897856)

</comment><comment><USER21> His statements seem clear but upon further reflection they are not clear.

 _There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights._

Okay, so this was written in 1933. The obvious question to me is, would the author have supported US involvement in World War 2?

I guess with Pearl Harbor, the US was attacked. But the Japanese at the time might have said that the US really started the war because the trade embargo on Japan was destroying Japan's economic plans.

So was World War 2 about protecting American homes? Or was it about enabling the US to enforce a trade embargo on Japan to reduce the size of the Japanese empire?

I am not a history expert and I don't claim that these questions have simple answers. I am just saying, I don't think there is any clear-cut answer of when a war is really for self-defense or not.

<comment><USER22> The United States should not have embargoed Japan. The United stars should not have been involved in any of the world wars. Sweden has been neutral in all conflicts since 1814 and that has worked out quite well for them.

<comment><USER23> You are correct in that there were no soldiers fighting from Sweden for either side, but in Sweden it is also known: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_German_troops_throu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_German_troops_through_Finland_and_Sweden)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just in case you want a nice pdf printout read.

[https://github.com/frankMilde/interesting- reads/blob/master/...](https://github.com/frankMilde/interesting- reads/blob/master/ratville_smedley-butler_war-is-a-racket.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> "One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket."

What about your allies' homes? If an aggressor can pick off victims one at a time, you won't have any allies left when they come for your home.

It also assumes that there is no form of dramatically assummetric attack that is hard to defend against. That may have been true when this was written, but nuclear weapons changed the game.

</comment><comment><USER26> The fact these these comment threads are only about WWII, ignoring the dozens of other wars the US started, should tell people something.

The US military is killing people in, what, 7 or 8 countries right now, today? Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger? I feel like I'm missing some.

</comment><comment><USER27> We seem to be discussing WW1 and 2 while looking past the drumbeat to war in the Middle East. Are we missing the relevance of the posted content to current times?

</comment><comment><USER28> Also referenced in this article posted a few days back: "War is still a racket" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21990298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21990298)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is mostly about the WWI era, and WWI was indeed a racket, fought for elites at the expense of everyone else.

I'm curious if he would write the same article after WWII.

<comment><USER29> Yes. War is a racket ESPECIALLY in the post-WWII era, when America became both the world's armory AND the world's bank. Every single conflict that America has been in since has been a war of choice designed to pursue capitalist interest. Our wars are imperial wars designed to perpetuate American hegemony. That hegemony is designed to continue/enable the pilfering of global wealth by a relative handful of elites. It is all about centralizing power & wealth.

When I was growing up in the 90s this was pretty fringe thinking. Now, though, 20-30 years later, multiple combat tours & a military career under my belt I realize we should have been listening to Butler all along. It's painfully, agonizingly naive to think that WW2 of all things would somehow be a counterweight to Butler's point.

<comment><USER30> I have exactly the same feelings you do here, but I struggle with one thing in particular. What is the real alternative to American hegemony? I believe it's likely Chinese hegemony. China, on the one hand, is an ethno-state which is rounding up the Muslim (Uyghurs) men, tossing them in concentration camps, and assigning rapists to live with their families to re-educate them into being good Communists. On the other hand, the Chinese are also committing mass murder to fulfill orders for human organs. That's just what they're willing to do to their own people. I wonder if it's possible to thread the needle such that we temper the US while not letting China take over. I think that will be difficult, and China is likely to win in the long run anyways. What are your thoughts on the real alternatives to American hegemony?

<comment><USER29> That question is essentially impossible to answer, IMO.

The world we live in, our perceptions of it, the language we use to describe it, is deeply anchored in the technocapitalist empire America was empowered to establish in the unsettled world order left in the aftermath of WW2.

So, what are the alternatives to American hegemony? I don't know. What are the alternatives to capitalism? What are the alternatives to accumulating and hoarding wealth? Not doing that, I guess, right? So, the only answer I'm equipped to provide is that the alternative to American hegemony would be _not_ American hegemony.

(Note: I could definitely articulate a market socialist position here that might reflect my political views but that could and would be picked apart in an Internet forum. The point is that we are all so institutionalized to this hegemonic world that any alternative will be seen as inferior. It will take revolution.)

<comment><USER30> I would like to draw an important distinction between what we might like to happen vs what we think will actually happen. Particularly in a world where the two other world powers are annexing territory and/or colonizing Africa. Just imagine that we unilaterally stop. What do you think will happen next?

<comment><USER29> Aliens land? Monsters emerge out of the ocean? :P

There'd be a big war and after that who knows what the world would look like. The fact you still see the world as necessarily dipole, a tension between great powers vying for control over "the little people" kind of makes my point.

There is no difference between an American and a Chinese hegemony. The problem isn't that the hegemony we have is American. The problem is hegemony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Indeed. I've wondered if the 'great filter', and the reason why we don't see aliens is because evolution, with the inevitable struggle for power, is self destructive, because, uhh, war.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." Jimi

Or, it won't.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder what on earth could have prompted this to raise to #1 just now :)

</comment><comment><USER33> It's a lot of paragraphs that can be summed as "War is expensive and suppliers can earn a lot of money", but he doesn't really discuss the strategic or ethical value of war until the very end with this blurb:

> Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had > then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or > England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? > Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own > democracy. And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us > that the World War was really the war to end all wars.

Which is a very dismissive viewpoint that America can simply wash its hands of everything outside its borders. Surely anyone who knew about the Holocaust saw our involvement in WWII as a moral imperative and more broadly John Donne put it very well that "No man is an island". Certainly a lot of wars have been fought on dubious grounds, but it's an overly cynical point of view to try to give such a pat answer to such a huge question.

I'd also argue that there's a huge fallacy in his premise. Yes, war is profitable for many industries. I think it's inarguable that peace is vastly more profitable for even more industries. Friendly international relations, stable supply lines and prosperous consumers are far more valuable than anything else.

<comment><USER34> > Surely anyone who knew about the Holocaust saw our involvement in WWII as a > moral imperative

To be fair, we didn't go to war for this reason.

<comment><USER33> Well, consider it a hypothetical red line. I can see how Butler would be salty about the US fighting to protect some arbitrary monarchical power structure, but surely there are things worth fighting for outside our borders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Thank you for posting. I've read this before, but I feel like this deserves an annual reading.

</comment><comment><USER36> Laws are written and wars are waged to protect money.

</comment><comment><USER37> History repeats. Teaching history does not help.

</comment><comment><USER38> Conclusion of the internet Era : information is not enough. Will to act is necessary.

Just like club of rome report, this text is old news. Yet it pops up regularly and it means few.

</comment><comment><USER39> I thought he was going somewhere besides conspiracy theory-ville until he said "The trend is to poison us against the Japanese." By 1933 Japan needed no one to make them look bad. The invasion of Asia was well underway, and only those not paying attention were shocked by the Rape of Nanking.

If this guy was carrying water for the Imperial Japanese by 1933, he was making excuses for genocide, torture and horror on a scale impossible for a single person to take all in.

<comment><USER40> So you just conveniently forget Japan has always had an immensely violent history, and only care that someone "made excuses" in the midst of war? Or the innumerable atrocities historically committed on behalf of the US MIC too much for your blind patriotism?

<comment><USER39> Are you now making excuses for Japan invading Asia in 1931 and proceeding to average something like 180,000 innocent civilians murdered per month until the end of WWII? And your excuse is they were also bad some other times, and anyone who disagrees with you is a blind patriot?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> >War is just a racket. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

I'd add one more, when a genocidal meglomanic is intent on wiping out an entire race of people that I would say qualifies as one more reason.

War is terrible tragic and should be avoided at almost any cost, but there is also evil in the world that needs to be stopped.

I think part of our problem in today's society is that the anyone born after 1990 has spent the majority of our lives with the country at war. If a war is worth fighting it is worth winning, if it isn't worth winning than it isn't worth fighting.

<comment><USER42> I would agree that it qualifies. The problem is that none of the Allied countries in WW2 got involved for that reason. That a full-fledged genocide was going on, much less the true scope for it, became known only fairly late in the war.

And then you can look at events such as the Evian Conference before the war, where those same countries could have averted the worst of said genocide without firing a single bullet. But didn't, because they were hella racist themselves - as the famous quote from that conference went, "as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one". Or you can look at the polls - one such in US in 1939 had 53% of the respondents saying that "Jews are different and should be restricted". I don't know if there are any stats on how many American soldiers in that war were KKK members, but it would be an interesting study.

WW2 was a war over state interests, which themselves boil down to economic and political power of the elites. It was retconned into this glorious crusade of the Free World against the Evil Empire, and it was spectacularly successful because the Evil Empire turned out to be even more evil than the war propaganda painted it; but we should never forget that it is a post hoc justification! WW1 actually had very similar propaganda ([https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/otheringat...](https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/otheringatrocity_propaganda)) - it just didn't hold up in retrospect, which is why our perception of it is so different today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket."

By that logic, six years later, were Britain and France wrong to declare war on Nazi Germany when it attacked Poland? Should the U.S. not have joined them in 1941 in declaring war in Germany, which had not attacked the U.S.? And even regarding our fighting Japan after Pearl Harbor, American homes in the continental U.S. were not under threat. So was Allied participation in WWII a "racket"? If not, why is this piece getting so many up votes?

<comment><USER44> Germany declared war on U.S., not the other way around. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States)

<comment><USER45> WWII would have been far easier if the USA actually attacked Japan first. If the USA declared war when Britain / France did in the late 30s, then France may have not been overrun by the Germans. Maybe we wouldn't have needed to land in Normandy Beach.

I don't think anybody would look at the events of the next 10-years after 1933, and consider that war to be a "Racket". Nazis were evil. Imperial Japan, was evil.

By delaying our entry into the war for years, France was wiped out, and Japan sunk many battleships in a surprise attack. USA got lucky that our carriers were out on a training mission: if we lost our Carriers at Pearl Harbor, Japan may have very well won the war.

US had 3 carriers stationed there: USS Enterprise, USS Lexington, and USS Saratoga. All unharmed in Pearl Harbor, because they were elsewhere. And critical to the battles to come. USA won by the skin of its teeth, shear luck that our best ships were elsewhere during the surprise attack.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>---

US Pacific Fleet was composed of ~200 ships, ~18 of which were lost in the Pearl Harbor attack. The singular attack wiped out 10% of the US Pacific Power, WWII would have been far easier if US Declared war on Japan.

\</comment><comment>---

If USA helped defend France in 1939, then the incredibly deadly Normandy Beach invasion would have been unnecessary. It was due to our failure to fight against the Nazis / Japan that France fell, and many more lives were needed to reclaim that territory.

<comment><USER46> > If the USA declared war when Britain / France did in the late 30s, then > France may have not been overrun by the Germans.

Uh, no. The US wasn't capable of getting its troops to Europe fast enough in 1939, let alone supplying its troops. The Liberty Ship program only started in 1941. Hitler was already extremely dismissive of the capabilities that the Americans can provide, so any potential future threat the US might bring to bear would have been ignored in his plans.

> if we lost our Carriers at Pearl Harbor, Japan may have very well won the > war.

If the Japanese had sunk the entire US Navy (Pacific and Atlantic) on December 7, 1941, and magically completed every vessel that they planned to construct for the remainder of the war on that date, and never lost another ship, and the US did not attempt to refloat or salvage any ship it lost in the magic death of the navy, by 1943, the US would have a larger navy than Japan.

Furthermore, how could Japan have turned even a decisive naval advantage into victory against the US? It lacked sufficient logistical capacity to contemplate holding Hawaii, let alone the US west coast.

> shear luck that our best ships were elsewhere during the surprise attack.

Yeah... no. In 1941, even the most enthusiastic carrier advocates would not have argued for carriers being the backbone of the navy (it's really not until the Battle of the Coral Sea that the value of carrier task forces over battleships is demonstrated). The Lexington and Saratoga were converted battlecruisers (admittedly, the best conversions, in large part because they were _terrible_ battlecruisers), and were rather outdated by 1941.

<comment><USER45> > Furthermore, how could Japan have turned even a decisive naval advantage > into victory against the US?

Erm, by conquering the Philippines, China, and Korea. Japan had no reason to invade the US proper, its only goal was conquest of the Asian continent. Japan did conquer the Philippines for a short time, before the US counter-attacked to recapture it.

Japan had no reason to conquer the USA. Japan wanted to build the Greater East Asia Co-Propserity Sphere: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co- Prosperit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co- Prosperity_Sphere)

Japan absolutely had a crushing victory vs United States Asiatic Fleet, and WON in Philippines. It was the pesky Pacific Fleet (and its carriers) that came in later and saved the day. Atlantic-fleet was busy with the German front.

If Japan won the Battle of Midway and finished off the US Pacific Fleet, Japan probably would have created its imperialist dream. US would have retreated from the Pacific, lost the Philippines, and focused on fighting Germany (winning at least in the Atlantic). Allied efforts would have been on defending Australia from the imminent Japanese threat (but Australia was far outside the scope of Japanese imperialism, and probably safe from attack).

Of course, in real history, Japan lost the Battle of Midway in a crushing defeat. Japan lost important ships (all four carriers committed to the battle) and its most experienced admirals. From there, the USA was able to stall out the war, win in Europe, and then swing to the Pacific for a finishing blow.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>-----

EDIT: Consider how a "reverse Midway" timeline would have occurred. Instead of losing 4-carriers in the Pacific, Japan would have destroyed nearly all remaining US Pacific Carriers. (!!)

The USA would have to enter 1942 with ONE carrier remaining in the pacific. It would have lost Midway, Australia would be threatened (but likely not taken, as it wasn't part of Japanese imperialism plans). Britain / Dutch / America would have pooled resources into defending Australia while retreating from the greater Pacific.

The Pacific Theater was extremely close. USA would have done far better, and had far less risk if we just attacked Japan first.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

With only one or two capital ships left in the Pacific, why would the USA even decide to attack Japan anymore? Especially when the Allies were pursuing "Europe First" strategy? It was far more likely for the USA to give up in the Pacific and let Japan keep its new empire.

<comment><USER46> > If Japan won the Battle of Midway and finished off the US Pacific Fleet, > Japan probably would have created its imperialist dream. US would have > retreated from the Pacific, lost the Philippines, and focused on fighting > Germany (winning at least in the Atlantic).

You're making the same mistake the Japanese made in 1941. The Japanese assumed that they could kick the US really hard enough, steal a few things, and the US would just go "oh, guess I can't do anything." But in reality, as long as the US had the capability to continue the war against Japan, it would. Even if it had to delay the war with Japan until after Germany was defeated--which was the _actual_ war plans of the US in the 1940s, it just turned out that the US had such insane capacity that it could fight both Japan and Germany--the US still would have brought its inexorable military capacity to bear on Japan.

Wars don't end because the victor has achieved its objectives and want nothing more; they end because the loser has decided not to continue the fight (or, more often, because it finally realizes that it has lost). Britain continued fighting its war against Germany, even when it had no prospects of defeating it (during the Battle of Britain), and it was suffering greatly by continuing the war. Why would the US have decided to quit the Pacific merely from losing its carriers, especially since it would have gained as many carriers as it lost within a few months?

Another point to make: the other two US carriers at Midway were damaged, and the US had four operational carriers in total in the Pacific, even after the Wasp was transferred to bolster the Pacific fleet. Two of these carriers (Wasp and Hornet) would be sunk before the year was out and Essex commissioned. It wasn't until the US started churning out an Essex-class carrier (or two) every month in 1943 that the US had a decisive advantage in the Pacific.

Midway (rather like Gettysburg) is vastly overrated as a crucial turning point in war. It marked the first decisive victory for the winning side, and the start of a seemingly inexorable march to war. But the losing side in both engagements was already dangerously overstretched and would have been unable to actually press its advantage even had it won.

<comment><USER45> A well reasoned post. I think that's a fair argument.</comment></comment></comment>


Pixdo Coin – Mine the web as you browse - <AUTHOR> http://pix.do/

<comment><USER2> So...why? "Because we can" is a totally acceptable answer, and I can see it as an interesting idea...possibly even fun. I certainly have gotten more than a few giggles out of the schadenfredue that plays out daily in the _coin ecosystem. However, it seems like this is now bottoming out the_ coin bubble. It isn't even a reward, and I use that term loosely, for proof of work...it's just achievements for dicking around...hurray?

Am I off base here? Am I looking at this with to serious of an eye? I'm genuinely confused.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of The Nethernet game. It's fun for a while, until it's not.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pix.do is awesome!

<comment><USER5> Yes really awesome !

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's pretty nice, will keep testing it</comment>


The 'circle of trust' behind the world's first gene-edited babies - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/untold-story-circle-trust-behind-world-s-first-gene-edited-babies <comment><USER2> Is there any news on whether or not it worked?

I read the article (albeit quickly as I'm on lunch break), but I can't find anything reporting on whether or not the experiment resulted in healthy children, or if they are immune to HIV (if that can be tested without infecting them, of course - I don't know anything about immunity detection either).

<comment><USER3> It "worked" is binary and that doesn't exist in medicine. The people who have the naturally occurring deletion 32 CCR5 mutation aren't immune. they have decreased risk of infection. There are safe and approved medicines that can greatly reduce the risk of transmission whether given before or shortly after exposure. Unconsented Germ line genetic modification of humans cannot justified, at very least for this use case.

<comment><USER4> > _Unconsented Germ line genetic modification of humans cannot justified_

How are you going to get consent from a human that isn't even conceived yet?

<comment><USER5> I don't believe that speaking of "future consent" of a "potential person" is useful. A child was never asked if he or she wanted to be born. After birth, parents essentially own their children until majority.

Parents make many, many decisions that will shape their child's future. Maybe editing an embryo is just one more. How is that different than choosing to feed your baby formula, put them in front of a TV all day, or drinking/smoking while pregnant (neither of which is illegal)?

This is the essence of the law: figuring out what happens when various rights intersect. I don't think there are right answers here but I think we need to generate some precedent in this area, and quick.

<comment><USER4> Well, I think most people would look poorly on (say) signing a deal with the Mob eight months before birth to steal your child from the hospital and sell them into slavery. Another argument that gets bandied about is how we shouldn't pollute the planet and ruin Earth for our presently nonexistent grand-children. Another example of worrying about the life of non-existent children is when people start saving early for a college fund.

I'm not sure about the exact philosophical mechanics required to transfer rights from the future to the present (or however you want to phrase it) but parents should not be drinking during pregnancy; and it's for their future child's sake that they shouldn't.

Foolishly subjecting your child to an unproven genetic therapy could ruin their future to an extent closer to the mob example than the TV example.

<comment><USER6> But what if ruining the future is not the outcome? If the therapy is beneficial, or even more so, required for the child to survive?

Not editing in this case could be construed as future child abuse or even murder.

As a note, chances of a child given the therapy, if it's randomly working, are no different than general population, most likely. And if they're better, there goes this argument.

Fearing known unknowns more than unknown unknowns is not logical. Of course people do it all the time. Why does nature get to play the dice but we cannot?

<comment><USER4> > _As a note, chances of a child given the therapy, if it 's randomly working, > are no different than general population, most likely._

That's not true - the average gene is more likely to be working than not, and the average mutation is more likely to break something, if it changes anything, than not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "That circle included leading scientists—among them a Nobel laureate—in China and the United States, business executives, an entrepreneur connected to venture capitalists, authors of the NASEM report, a controversial U.S. IVF specialist who discussed opening a gene-editing clinic with He, and at least one Chinese politician. "He had an awful lot of company to be called a 'rogue,'" says geneticist George Church, a CRISPR pioneer at Harvard University who was not in the circle of trust and is one of the few scientists to defend at least some aspects of He's experiment."

"an entrepreneur connected to venture capitalists" made me chuckle.

<comment><USER8> Holy cow. Jeffrey Epstein funded George Church, which is also on the front page right now: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey- ep...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-epstein- science-donations-apologies-statements)

These tentacles are all over the place.

<comment><USER9> Epstein himself also was interested in eugenics for this purpose.

It's incredibly chilling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's only matter of time before gene-editing becomes commonplace. March of progress can't be stopped. He Jiankui will eventually be vindicated and possibly lauded as visionary and pioneer.

<comment><USER11> What prevents us from using traditional selective breeding on humans? Why can't women just go to a sperm bank and buy premium DNA?

<comment><USER12> I believe the term you're looking for is Eugenics. If you google it for some background, it has been tried before and uh, didn't end out so well.

<comment><USER13> only thing that actually speaks against it is being associated with [godwin's law]. As far as everyone involved is consenting this shouldn't be an issue.

<comment><USER12> Trying to make better babies through breeding / genetics feeds right into the white supremacy narrative however. It is a really slippery slope, one I'd rather we not try again.

Will we inevitably have "designer" babies at some point in the future morals / legality be damned? Probably so. Is this a good thing? Not necessarily.

The area I can see it being acceptable is fixing congenital defects or genetic abnormalities. "We've made your fetus 10x less likely to develop vascular disease or we've prevented cyctic fibrosis in your baby" vs "We made super strong soldiers who don't feel pain".

<comment><USER14> > Trying to make better babies through breeding / genetics feeds right into > the white supremacy narrative however. It is a really slippery slope, one > I'd rather we not try again.

So.. we'll make them non-white, and sidestep that issue? I mostly kid. Yet, it's a shame that even a fairly tame discussion about selecting sperm based on DNA has to be dragged through the mud with racism and godwin-eugenics.

At some point humanity needs to stop being so anti-racist-racist. I'm not saying I don't understand where you come from, I just long for the day when we can discuss DNA selection without someone bringing up skin color.

<comment><USER15> It's not just skin color, though. It's height. It's face structure. It's the fact that some Sneeches have stars while others are without thars. It's a natural diversity of _everything_. Yes some aspects of that diversity are devastating congenital issues, but IMO we're not ready — socially or technically — for such power to be safely applied through gene editing.

<comment><USER14> I agree that we're in over our heads; but your comment makes it sound like I should be concerned with accidentally wiping out square jaw or blond hair people for moral reasons. I am not.

In the same way that I don't care about skin color; I also don't care about features continuing to exist and be diverse.

As mentioned, I recognize that we're in over our heads technically. I respect that if we were to "wipe something out" it very likely could end up a huge negative to humanity, due to unknown genes and etc.

However the discussion largely took a moral twist when racism/etc got brought up, and frankly I just don't care. I'm not one for history; so the moral implication of not having a physical-feature-group of humanity around, be it freckles, blue eyes, brown hair, light skinned, tall people or whatever, is entirely lost on me.

Humanity from my perspective seems far worse off having cared so much about our differences that I see little reason to be morally concerned about their absence. I imagine we would be better off for it, since we clearly fail with diversity now, it's not buying us any favors.

Likewise, with or without diversity, we will still certainly find reasons to hate each other. The conversation will just change. We're good at hate.

<comment><USER15> > I'm not one for history; so the moral implication of not having a physical- > feature-group of humanity around, be it freckles, blue eyes, brown hair, > light skinned, tall people or whatever, is entirely lost on me.

It might be worth reconsidering that viewpoint. As you say, we're good at hate. We've been good at it, too.

We've seen that something as simple as preferring male children to female children has dramatic societal consequences. It might be reasonable to decide you want to bias your child against being left-handed — lefties do have higher rates of accidents due to using right-handed tools after all. What might the societal shifts be as a result? Might we effectively loose some diversity of _thought_ and progress in our society at large? How might remaining lefties be perceived?

<comment><USER14> The bigger question I think is would it _increase_ hate? This is not something easily measured, imo.

But if we're that worried about even something as minor as lefties, should we not release products either? How are people on phones all the time perceived? If I release a tanning product, should I be concerned about how tanning users are perceived? If I engineer kids with longer hair, am I concerned how they are perceived?

I think we run the risk of _anything_ being hate-able, and thus nothing matters in that regard. Or at least, roughly speaking. Any big change has potentially huge and unknown societal consequences. I mean hell, people were freaking out about a McDonalds McNugget sauce a year ago over a TV Show. I'm not sure the worst of humanity is what we need to nix life saving medical procedures over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article doesn't seem to mention any of the risks of this type of procedure, only the potential benefit (possible immunity to AIDS)

Is this benefit worth what I assume is a massive risk of developing cancer?

<comment><USER17> Probably not cancer? Cancer is usually caused by a large enough number of mutations occurring in some cell over its lifetime that it starts reproducing uncontrollably. It's very bad in that a single bad cell can kill you but it takes a bunch of mutations to occur.

A typical child has 0-3 or so new mutations depending on chance, how old their parents are, etc. We might very well expect that if this treatment was badly targeted it would produce many more. Generally a random mutation won't hit anything that has an effect at all on a cell's operation. Fairly often a mutation occurs in an area that's critical to a cell's function and the fertalized egg never turns into a pregnancy. Rarely the embryo turns into a child which survives to birth but has some problem with missing some protein or other that you need. If this was, e.g., AMY1 which is used to digest starch and which you probably have a bunch of copies of if your ancestors were farmers no big deal. But if it hit Factor VIII then you've got hemophilia and that really sucks.

Only a small fraction of the genes in your body are involved in cancer and it's very unlikely that if you get a germline mutation that it will be one of these that it affects. Again, it's different as an adult because mutagens affect different genes in different cells and you only need the mutations to line up the right way once across essentially all the cells in your body to give you cancer. If one cell in your body gets Factor VIII knocked out then it doesn't matter, other cells can keep making the clotting factor you need and you'll be fine.</comment></comment>


Was Megaupload taken down because of their Megabox plan for 90% royalty sharing? - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq

<comment><USER2> Duplicate : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3504180>

</comment><comment><USER3> No. They were taken down because the site's only purpose was to profit from piracy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are articles with questions in their link-bait titles nothing but baseless speculation?</comment>


Ask HN: Help writting a Google Summer of Code application - <AUTHOR>

I was planning to do an internship this summer in a startup in the US, but they changed their minds. So with no that much time before summer, I guess my best option to land in an internship is Google Summer of Code. I had participated twice in GSoC, but I only have one week to prepare an application.
I wonder if any HN fellas with experience in any of these topics can help me developing any idea that he would like to see implemented in any of the projects below, or reviewing my proposals before submitting them.
These are a bunch of organization that I would like to apply to.

    - Django Software Foundation.
      - http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/SummerOfCode2011

    - Python Software Foundation
      - Ideas, http://wiki.python.org/moin/SummerOfCode/2011

    - Code For America.
      - http://codeforamerica.org/projects/

    - Sunlight labs
      - http://sunlightlabs.com/wiki/GSOC_2011/

    - Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
      - http://wiki.hiit.fi/display/gsoc2011/GSOC+2011+Idea+page

    - Sencha Labs
      - http://thejit.org/ideas/

    - <USER2>
      - https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MGT/Google+Summer+of+Code+2011+ideas+list

 xibanya78 #{at} gmail. <comment><AUTHOR> clickable urls

Django Software Foundation. <http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/SummerOfCode2011>

Python Software Foundation Ideas, <http://wiki.python.org/moin/SummerOfCode/2011>

Code For America. <http://codeforamerica.org/projects/>

Sunlight labs <http://sunlightlabs.com/wiki/GSOC_2011/>

Helsinki Institute for Information Technology <http://wiki.hiit.fi/display/gsoc2011/GSOC+2011+Idea+page>

Sencha Labs <http://thejit.org/ideas/> <USER2> [https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MGT/Google+Summe...](https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MGT/Google+Summer+of+Code+2011+ideas+list)

</comment><comment><USER3> As a fellow Hacker News user I am stunned by just how much overlap their was in our short list of places we are interested in applying. I deeply considered Python, Django, Sunlight labs, and Sencha labs.

I ended up applying for Sencha Labs. I might send in a back-up application to Sunlight Labs. My first choice organization was LispNYC, but they didn't get accepted.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was looking to apply to Chrome (were I worked last summer) but It didn't get accepted neither.

Did you pick up one of their ideas or did you wrote your own?

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> I picked one of their ideas. My goal was to find a project that would allow me to learn and I think I'll have a lot of opportunity to do that.</comment></comment></comment>


Omg the php documentation is down - <AUTHOR> http://www.php.net/manual-lookup.php?pattern=rand&lang=en&scope=404quickref

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently it will be back online when the next build is finished.

<comment><AUTHOR> This mirror works: <http://php.tonnikala.org/></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Sources for recreational math for kids? - <AUTHOR> What are good sources for recreational math for elementary school kids? I have a great collection of recreational math books, but my kids are younger so I prefer video at this stage and challenges that don't require too much knowledge but rather focus on logic, number senses, shapes, spatial cognition and so on.<p>For example, riddles about finding fake coins using scales seem to work well. <comment><USER2> Your kids might like computer science unplugged activities, they're hands on (no computer required) and can dovetail into some fun CS programming projects down the road:

[https://code.org/curriculum/unplugged](https://code.org/curriculum/unplugged)

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess this will be helpful: [http://www.bagtheweb.com/b/pJ53Qm](http://www.bagtheweb.com/b/pJ53Qm)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Two nice resources, though not recreational in the way I had in mind, are The Number Race and The Number Catcher.

[http://thenumberrace.com/nr/home.php](http://thenumberrace.com/nr/home.php)

[http://www.thenumbercatcher.com/nc/home.php](http://www.thenumbercatcher.com/nc/home.php)

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.graphwar.com/](http://www.graphwar.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Beyond the skills I had in mind, but this is a cool idea - wish I had this when I was first learning about these functions.</comment></comment>


A Sustainable Food System Starts with Packaging - <AUTHOR> https://zume.com/a-sustainable-food-system-starts-with-packaging/ <comment><USER2> This BBC article brought up point on the topic that I wouldn't have thought of:

How to solve the plastic packaging paradox [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47161379](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47161379)

tldr: there are environment arguments _for_ plastic wrap (besides just cost). An ideal solution would keep these advantages.

\</comment><comment>-----

It also seems like packaging is broader than sustainable food. And that packaging can be used less or avoided by buying less processed food and more local food.</comment>